Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Warrington is not a model that can be transposed on to more densely populated parts of the country, particularly not the south east. You can't just build 10 lane motorways through AONB's and National Parks, which is what would happen if you try and fulfil the demand for car use through building new roads, at some point you need to start reducing the demand for car use and developing other options (public transport) - something we realised about 30-40 years ago.
Also the situation in Warrington and this part of the north west is a product of town planning, not something that has happened because town planning has been swept away. All the roads, infrastructure to go with the housing have to be planned and co-ordinated, along with policies that direct growth to certain areas. You don't just create it by throwing up a few motorways and letting people build wherever they want on vaguely defined zones. Even if you create a zonal system, like Japan and many other countries in Europe, it still has to be planned, it is just a slightly different type of planning.
Yes. I haven't ever advocated anarchy, I advocate zonal planning. Which contrary to what @Richard_Tyndall keeps claiming is not what we have in this country.
In a sensible zonal system, like Japan, you can build whatever you want subject without asking permission first if three conditions are met.
1. You own the land (obviously) 2. It is already zoned for housing. 3. You build to building codes.
Neighbours or Councils don't get a say if you want to
Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Not a problem.
There's these things called buses and coaches that can go on motorways for the small minority who have no access to private transport.
Maybe you have heard of them before?
Sadly, the cost of bus travel has increased even while fuel duty has been cut, punishing the disabled, poor and young.
That's if the bus actually exists. 1,500 routes have been cut just since 2021. 10% of all services were cut in the last year. 50% since 2010.
I extend a compromise - no new motorways until bus travel costs are cut to the same extent as fuel duty, and the number of services return to pre-2010 levels?
The one all-day last service through this small town was recently re-routed. We can get to Stansted Airport on one bus. However, getting to either of the two local hospitals requires two buses. We used to be able to get a bus directly to one.
Good morning to all. That’s a greeting, not a comment on the weather, grey and damp.
Good morning too. On the contrary, for a change in Scotland the weather here is bright and sunny, if chilly at night - have had to put the heating on briefly in the morning and evening as it was otherwise too cold for comfort at the desk all day.
Beautiful and Autumnal in South Manchester too. Off to Scotland in a week and a half (Dunkeld) - a few days like this would do very nicely.
Anyway, looking back up this thread - Bart is being a tad obtuse. You COULD get tge bus from Warrington to Manchester or Liverpool or Chester, but 99% of people making those journeys by public transport would take the train, what with Warrington also having really good rail connections to those places.
[Citation Needed] on 99% because the facts don't represent that I believe.
Yes if you want to get from Warrington Town Centre to Manchester City Centre then the train is absolutely fantastic. I've used it myself I'll have you know, when I went to Manchester Christmas Market and wanted to drink so wouldn't drive.
But if you want to go either from or to other places then buses can be better. Want to get from your home, not town centre, to the Trafford Centre for instance? Buses can work very well for that too. There's options and choice either way. Of course cars are far better, but I've met people there before for days out who took a bus rather than drive.
Plus as Rochdale said I'm in favour of building public transport as well as motorways. Indeed I can't see any reason why we couldn't with investment have a Northwest tram network that operates all the way from Liverpool to Manchester and covering all the towns in-between.
The only fanatics here are those who oppose any investment in roads just because they despise roads and cars. I'm not opposing investment in public transport, even though I don't use it.
Do you agree with getting bus services back to 2010 levels?
If latent demands is there, then absolutely of course, then the bus operating firms should invest in more buses to attract more customers.
If the demand isn't there? That's their choice.
Of course building more roads allows more routes buses can take.
If there's any infrastructure that's missing that prevents buses from operating, eg like roads, then of course that should be invested in. If all the infrastructure is there but the buses aren't operating anyway because of a lack of demand, then that's no different to cars not driving because of a lack of demand.
What do you think the buses were doing before 2010? Going off-road?
I don't know why demand has changed, you'll have to ask passengers why they aren't choosing to go on the bus.
Maybe they can afford a better alternative, like driving, so aren't forced to go on the bus due to a lack of a superior alternative? Who knows?
So long as options are available, that's all that matters. If people choose not to take a certain option, that's their choice.
Probably because bus services have been cut 50%, prices have gone up, all while the costs of motoring have fallen.
Their "choice" has been restricted. For some people, their freedom to travel further than they can walk has been eliminated almost entirely.
That's why accessibility is such an important part of indexes if multiple deprivation. The young, the old and the poor.
Why has the cost gone up?
Is it because the buses fuel has gone up? If so, maybe look at that. Is it because the cost of vehicles has gone up? If so, maybe look at that.
If the cost has gone up because the drivers wages have gone up, and there's only 2 passengers on board to pay the drivers wages, well . . . not sure what you expect to be done by that? Taxis are expensive for that reason too.
Until the last few days, the phenomenon of Western lefties defending barbarism in the name of a desired utopian, egalitarian ideal was a historical abstraction to me.
I had read about Westerners defending Stalin's purges and collectivization campaigns and thought, well, their ideological fervor was probably just amplified by the difficulty of getting good information out of the USSR.
But now I see that's not it.
Then, as now, there was plenty of information to understand what was really going on. It's just that the ideology IS about this, it IS that ends justify the means. It's how we got the Red Terror, the Great Terror and this—Western leftists cheering all the while.
And, if Soviet history is any guide, the only thing that made these can't-make-an-omelet folks reconsider whether that was really true—or if the end was worth it if these were the means—was finding themselves in an NKVD cell and thinking, "There's been a terrible mistake."
By then, of course, it was too late.
If this is the kind of revolution you support, just know: the revolution always eats its young. Always.
As a leftist I can say, honestly, that Stalinism is bad. The USSR was bad. The roughly 60 million killed in the 70 years between 1917 and 1987 was bad.
As a leftist I can also say, honestly, that the British Empire was bad. That imperialism in all forms in bad. The roughly 100 million killed in the 40 years between 1881 and 1920 by the British Empire, was bad.
I will never be treated as if I sincerely believe the first one if I ever make a comment about how the industrialisation of the USSR from serfdom under the Tsar to beating the Nazi war machine under Stalin was still pretty impressive, as was the increase in literacy and numeracy rates and the relative decline in poverty. Whereas people will legitimately defend the second statement by saying "well, we gave them the railways and democracy, so it was fine".
What is your evidence that the British Empire killed 100 million people between 1881 and 1920?
I provided the link in a later post - a study looking at census data, somewhat similar to methods used when calculating body counts of other regimes like the USSR.
I find it hard to believe without other evidence. In the USSR we had the holodomor in Ukraine, the gulags, the purges etc. In India there was a huge country with endemic poverty where the life expectancy was shit, and apparently became shitter because of Empire (although no evidence is shown to support that). I smell bullshit and would expect other historians to strongly disagree.
Certainly it was completely unable to protect its domestic manufacturing industry as part of Empire.
Counterfactuals are hard, in this case close to impossible, but it's an interesting question how the various parts of India might have fared during the industrial revolution had they been independent states.
Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Not a problem.
There's these things called buses and coaches that can go on motorways for the small minority who have no access to private transport.
Maybe you have heard of them before?
Sadly, the cost of bus travel has increased even while fuel duty has been cut, punishing the disabled, poor and young.
That's if the bus actually exists. 1,500 routes have been cut just since 2021. 10% of all services were cut in the last year. 50% since 2010.
I extend a compromise - no new motorways until bus travel costs are cut to the same extent as fuel duty, and the number of services return to pre-2010 levels?
The one all-day last service through this small town was recently re-routed. We can get to Stansted Airport on one bus. However, getting to either of the two local hospitals requires two buses. We used to be able to get a bus directly to one.
Good morning to all. That’s a greeting, not a comment on the weather, grey and damp.
Good morning too. On the contrary, for a change in Scotland the weather here is bright and sunny, if chilly at night - have had to put the heating on briefly in the morning and evening as it was otherwise too cold for comfort at the desk all day.
Beautiful and Autumnal in South Manchester too. Off to Scotland in a week and a half (Dunkeld) - a few days like this would do very nicely.
Anyway, looking back up this thread - Bart is being a tad obtuse. You COULD get tge bus from Warrington to Manchester or Liverpool or Chester, but 99% of people making those journeys by public transport would take the train, what with Warrington also having really good rail connections to those places.
[Citation Needed] on 99% because the facts don't represent that I believe.
Yes if you want to get from Warrington Town Centre to Manchester City Centre then the train is absolutely fantastic. I've used it myself I'll have you know, when I went to Manchester Christmas Market and wanted to drink so wouldn't drive.
But if you want to go either from or to other places then buses can be better. Want to get from your home, not town centre, to the Trafford Centre for instance? Buses can work very well for that too. There's options and choice either way. Of course cars are far better, but I've met people there before for days out who took a bus rather than drive.
Plus as Rochdale said I'm in favour of building public transport as well as motorways. Indeed I can't see any reason why we couldn't with investment have a Northwest tram network that operates all the way from Liverpool to Manchester and covering all the towns in-between.
The only fanatics here are those who oppose any investment in roads just because they despise roads and cars. I'm not opposing investment in public transport, even though I don't use it.
Fair enough. It has to be said, the bus is an often-overlooked mode of transport and can often work out surprisingly efficient - both halves of this statement are especially true outside of big urban areas, where the lack of congestion can mean a well-planned bus journey is often just as quick as driving.
Buses reduce congestion, of course.
The most stupid people in the UK are drivers who oppose bus lanes.
Don't be silly. There is no reason to reserve an entire lane for a bus that carries 2 people plus the driver on board and is empty then for a few minutes until the next bus uses it.
Just let the bus and cars all the lane, same any other traffic.
Until the last few days, the phenomenon of Western lefties defending barbarism in the name of a desired utopian, egalitarian ideal was a historical abstraction to me.
I had read about Westerners defending Stalin's purges and collectivization campaigns and thought, well, their ideological fervor was probably just amplified by the difficulty of getting good information out of the USSR.
But now I see that's not it.
Then, as now, there was plenty of information to understand what was really going on. It's just that the ideology IS about this, it IS that ends justify the means. It's how we got the Red Terror, the Great Terror and this—Western leftists cheering all the while.
And, if Soviet history is any guide, the only thing that made these can't-make-an-omelet folks reconsider whether that was really true—or if the end was worth it if these were the means—was finding themselves in an NKVD cell and thinking, "There's been a terrible mistake."
By then, of course, it was too late.
If this is the kind of revolution you support, just know: the revolution always eats its young. Always.
As a leftist I can say, honestly, that Stalinism is bad. The USSR was bad. The roughly 60 million killed in the 70 years between 1917 and 1987 was bad.
As a leftist I can also say, honestly, that the British Empire was bad. That imperialism in all forms in bad. The roughly 100 million killed in the 40 years between 1881 and 1920 by the British Empire, was bad.
I will never be treated as if I sincerely believe the first one if I ever make a comment about how the industrialisation of the USSR from serfdom under the Tsar to beating the Nazi war machine under Stalin was still pretty impressive, as was the increase in literacy and numeracy rates and the relative decline in poverty. Whereas people will legitimately defend the second statement by saying "well, we gave them the railways and democracy, so it was fine".
What is your evidence that the British Empire killed 100 million people between 1881 and 1920?
I provided the link in a later post - a study looking at census data, somewhat similar to methods used when calculating body counts of other regimes like the USSR.
I find it hard to believe without other evidence. In the USSR we had the holodomor in Ukraine, the gulags, the purges etc. In India there was a huge country with endemic poverty where the life expectancy was shit, and apparently became shitter because of Empire (although no evidence is shown to support that). I smell bullshit and would expect other historians to strongly disagree.
Certainly it was completely unable to protect its domestic manufacturing industry as part of Empire.
Counterfactuals are hard, in this case close to impossible, but it's an interesting question how the various parts of India might have fared during the industrial revolution had they been independent states.
India would have been a geographic expression. The sub continent would probably have consisted of 20 or so states.
13 years of Tory government and the criminal justice system has collapsed.
Even if your rapist is convicted, they still won't go to prison because there is no space.
May as well not bother having trials. Or reporting crimes. If the state won't do its job and protect us, we'll have to revert to older forms of self-protection.
Bastards.
We haven’t had mail delivered for two weeks. That’s such a trivial thing in comparison to everything else, but it seems to typify the country today.
It's nothing compared to schools literally falling down, seven million people on hospital waiting lists, ambulance waiting times leaping past three quarters of an hour, roads pocked with astonishing numbers of potholes everywhere, a massive and ongoing cost of living crisis, our courts backlogged so much that almost any case now takes literally years (three? four?) to come to trial while police ignore simple burglaries and bicycle thefts other than to give you a crime number for your insurance.
But now they can’t jail any more people, anyway. All in the face of the highest tax burden in generations. But billions have gone to scammers who happen to be friends to the ruling party.
Are Tories proud of this? Can they really go around with a straight face and ask the public to extend their rule? All I see from them is the ultimate negativity of “oh, oh, the only other option might be worse!” Nothing positive. No vision for improvement. No vision for rectifying the decaying mess that has unfolded under their stewardship. Just a desperate reliance upon fear and first-past-the-post.
It’s incredible that people don’t mention the part that closing everything down for lockdown has played in ruining the country’s finances. All major parties were behind it, Labour wanted to lockdown harder for longer (the non existent threat of the ‘Johnson Variant” in the Summer of 21).
It was always going to send the country skint, and it has - we are paying for it now & people who cheered it on shouldn’t moan about it. How is it different to spending on the never never and not wanting to pay it back?
Absolutely but your audience is wrong. Just about everyone on PB condemned out of hand as fanciful and insane if not near-murderous even to whisper the idea that lockdowns were bad for a huge number of reasons including financial ones.
I'm sure your post won't get many likes and anyone who agrees with you should look carefully at their own posting history to see how they responded at the time.
I keep banging on about it (this is, after all, PB) but only @contrarian consistently stated what a calamity lockdown was and would be and boy was he right.
There were plenty saying that Starmer was wrong to go harder, longer on lockdowns. We would have lost another Christmas if it had been down to him.
This is the man man would now have as PM? Colour me unconvinced...
Starmer: a dude or a dud? PB isn't sure. Nor is anyone else
Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Not a problem.
There's these things called buses and coaches that can go on motorways for the small minority who have no access to private transport.
Maybe you have heard of them before?
Sadly, the cost of bus travel has increased even while fuel duty has been cut, punishing the disabled, poor and young.
That's if the bus actually exists. 1,500 routes have been cut just since 2021. 10% of all services were cut in the last year. 50% since 2010.
I extend a compromise - no new motorways until bus travel costs are cut to the same extent as fuel duty, and the number of services return to pre-2010 levels?
The one all-day last service through this small town was recently re-routed. We can get to Stansted Airport on one bus. However, getting to either of the two local hospitals requires two buses. We used to be able to get a bus directly to one.
Good morning to all. That’s a greeting, not a comment on the weather, grey and damp.
Good morning too. On the contrary, for a change in Scotland the weather here is bright and sunny, if chilly at night - have had to put the heating on briefly in the morning and evening as it was otherwise too cold for comfort at the desk all day.
Beautiful and Autumnal in South Manchester too. Off to Scotland in a week and a half (Dunkeld) - a few days like this would do very nicely.
Anyway, looking back up this thread - Bart is being a tad obtuse. You COULD get tge bus from Warrington to Manchester or Liverpool or Chester, but 99% of people making those journeys by public transport would take the train, what with Warrington also having really good rail connections to those places.
[Citation Needed] on 99% because the facts don't represent that I believe.
Yes if you want to get from Warrington Town Centre to Manchester City Centre then the train is absolutely fantastic. I've used it myself I'll have you know, when I went to Manchester Christmas Market and wanted to drink so wouldn't drive.
But if you want to go either from or to other places then buses can be better. Want to get from your home, not town centre, to the Trafford Centre for instance? Buses can work very well for that too. There's options and choice either way. Of course cars are far better, but I've met people there before for days out who took a bus rather than drive.
Plus as Rochdale said I'm in favour of building public transport as well as motorways. Indeed I can't see any reason why we couldn't with investment have a Northwest tram network that operates all the way from Liverpool to Manchester and covering all the towns in-between.
The only fanatics here are those who oppose any investment in roads just because they despise roads and cars. I'm not opposing investment in public transport, even though I don't use it.
Fair enough. It has to be said, the bus is an often-overlooked mode of transport and can often work out surprisingly efficient - both halves of this statement are especially true outside of big urban areas, where the lack of congestion can mean a well-planned bus journey is often just as quick as driving.
Buses reduce congestion, of course.
The most stupid people in the UK are drivers who oppose bus lanes.
Don't be silly. There is no reason to reserve an entire lane for a bus that carries 2 people plus the driver on board and is empty then for a few minutes until the next bus uses it.
Just let the bus and cars all the lane, same any other traffic.
Hahaha. Proven.
(People don't use buses when they spend the whole journey stuck in traffic. Which means more people take the car. Which leads to more traffic. And so on.)
13 years of Tory government and the criminal justice system has collapsed.
Even if your rapist is convicted, they still won't go to prison because there is no space.
May as well not bother having trials. Or reporting crimes. If the state won't do its job and protect us, we'll have to revert to older forms of self-protection.
Bastards.
We haven’t had mail delivered for two weeks. That’s such a trivial thing in comparison to everything else, but it seems to typify the country today.
It's nothing compared to schools literally falling down, seven million people on hospital waiting lists, ambulance waiting times leaping past three quarters of an hour, roads pocked with astonishing numbers of potholes everywhere, a massive and ongoing cost of living crisis, our courts backlogged so much that almost any case now takes literally years (three? four?) to come to trial while police ignore simple burglaries and bicycle thefts other than to give you a crime number for your insurance.
But now they can’t jail any more people, anyway. All in the face of the highest tax burden in generations. But billions have gone to scammers who happen to be friends to the ruling party.
Are Tories proud of this? Can they really go around with a straight face and ask the public to extend their rule? All I see from them is the ultimate negativity of “oh, oh, the only other option might be worse!” Nothing positive. No vision for improvement. No vision for rectifying the decaying mess that has unfolded under their stewardship. Just a desperate reliance upon fear and first-past-the-post.
It’s incredible that people don’t mention the part that closing everything down for lockdown has played in ruining the country’s finances. All major parties were behind it, Labour wanted to lockdown harder for longer (the non existent threat of the ‘Johnson Variant” in the Summer of 21).
It was always going to send the country skint, and it has - we are paying for it now & people who cheered it on shouldn’t moan about it. How is it different to spending on the never never and not wanting to pay it back?
Absolutely but your audience is wrong. Just about everyone on PB condemned out of hand as fanciful and insane if not near-murderous even to whisper the idea that lockdowns were bad for a huge number of reasons including financial ones.
I'm sure your post won't get many likes and anyone who agrees with you should look carefully at their own posting history to see how they responded at the time.
I keep banging on about it (this is, after all, PB) but only @contrarian consistently stated what a calamity lockdown was and would be and boy was he right.
There were plenty saying that Starmer was wrong to go harder, longer on lockdowns. We would have lost another Christmas if it had been down to him.
This is the man man would now have as PM? Colour me unconvinced...
“Johnson Variant” - what a prat. Completely wrong too. Still, at least he’s boring
It's the number one thing that concerns me about a Labour government - what they would do if there was another pandemic. I can't shake off that awful time and the idea of a repeat terrifies me.
Until the last few days, the phenomenon of Western lefties defending barbarism in the name of a desired utopian, egalitarian ideal was a historical abstraction to me.
I had read about Westerners defending Stalin's purges and collectivization campaigns and thought, well, their ideological fervor was probably just amplified by the difficulty of getting good information out of the USSR.
But now I see that's not it.
Then, as now, there was plenty of information to understand what was really going on. It's just that the ideology IS about this, it IS that ends justify the means. It's how we got the Red Terror, the Great Terror and this—Western leftists cheering all the while.
And, if Soviet history is any guide, the only thing that made these can't-make-an-omelet folks reconsider whether that was really true—or if the end was worth it if these were the means—was finding themselves in an NKVD cell and thinking, "There's been a terrible mistake."
By then, of course, it was too late.
If this is the kind of revolution you support, just know: the revolution always eats its young. Always.
As a leftist I can say, honestly, that Stalinism is bad. The USSR was bad. The roughly 60 million killed in the 70 years between 1917 and 1987 was bad.
As a leftist I can also say, honestly, that the British Empire was bad. That imperialism in all forms in bad. The roughly 100 million killed in the 40 years between 1881 and 1920 by the British Empire, was bad.
I will never be treated as if I sincerely believe the first one if I ever make a comment about how the industrialisation of the USSR from serfdom under the Tsar to beating the Nazi war machine under Stalin was still pretty impressive, as was the increase in literacy and numeracy rates and the relative decline in poverty. Whereas people will legitimately defend the second statement by saying "well, we gave them the railways and democracy, so it was fine".
Where does the 100 million come from ?
I guess if you add in WWI and subsequent epidemics, although I don't think they can be laid entirely at the door of the British Empire.
The 100 million deaths seems to be attributed to India alone. Using similar methodologies as to how the USSR count is come to (although some estimates of the USSR death count includes the numbers of Nazi soldiers they killed - which I do not think is reasonable to add).
That all seems pretty fanciful. That would imply that the British killed off 25% of India's population in those 39 years.
It's just made up twaddle.
My bad. It would imply that the British killed off one third to forty per cent of India's population, in just 39 years.
In similar vein, a large majority of the total comes from guesses and assumptions.
Correction that claim publicised by Hickel is $ not £.
One the perceptional inflationary tricks is that we are all used to £1 = $1.25-$1.5, but the calculation uses £1 = £4.8 dollars as that was the approx exchange rate 100-250 years ago.
Another is that 150-250 years of compound interest at 5% is included. Just 150 years of compounding at 5% increases a sum by 1500 times.
Will be interested if SKS's speech or his subsequent stance on green lighting slaughter in Gaza has any impact on VI.
Suspect both will be popular with his target voter.
I thought his comments were wrong . He should have just stuck to one line re international law . Poor Emily Thornberry trying to defend his comments on Newsnight was embarrassing , talk about sinking .
I would have thought though the bigger impact on VI was Starmers planning comments which were a gift to the Tories . After a good conference the last few days has been poor from Starmer .
Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Not a problem.
There's these things called buses and coaches that can go on motorways for the small minority who have no access to private transport.
Maybe you have heard of them before?
Sadly, the cost of bus travel has increased even while fuel duty has been cut, punishing the disabled, poor and young.
That's if the bus actually exists. 1,500 routes have been cut just since 2021. 10% of all services were cut in the last year. 50% since 2010.
I extend a compromise - no new motorways until bus travel costs are cut to the same extent as fuel duty, and the number of services return to pre-2010 levels?
The one all-day last service through this small town was recently re-routed. We can get to Stansted Airport on one bus. However, getting to either of the two local hospitals requires two buses. We used to be able to get a bus directly to one.
Good morning to all. That’s a greeting, not a comment on the weather, grey and damp.
Good morning too. On the contrary, for a change in Scotland the weather here is bright and sunny, if chilly at night - have had to put the heating on briefly in the morning and evening as it was otherwise too cold for comfort at the desk all day.
Beautiful and Autumnal in South Manchester too. Off to Scotland in a week and a half (Dunkeld) - a few days like this would do very nicely.
Anyway, looking back up this thread - Bart is being a tad obtuse. You COULD get tge bus from Warrington to Manchester or Liverpool or Chester, but 99% of people making those journeys by public transport would take the train, what with Warrington also having really good rail connections to those places.
[Citation Needed] on 99% because the facts don't represent that I believe.
Yes if you want to get from Warrington Town Centre to Manchester City Centre then the train is absolutely fantastic. I've used it myself I'll have you know, when I went to Manchester Christmas Market and wanted to drink so wouldn't drive.
But if you want to go either from or to other places then buses can be better. Want to get from your home, not town centre, to the Trafford Centre for instance? Buses can work very well for that too. There's options and choice either way. Of course cars are far better, but I've met people there before for days out who took a bus rather than drive.
Plus as Rochdale said I'm in favour of building public transport as well as motorways. Indeed I can't see any reason why we couldn't with investment have a Northwest tram network that operates all the way from Liverpool to Manchester and covering all the towns in-between.
The only fanatics here are those who oppose any investment in roads just because they despise roads and cars. I'm not opposing investment in public transport, even though I don't use it.
Fair enough. It has to be said, the bus is an often-overlooked mode of transport and can often work out surprisingly efficient - both halves of this statement are especially true outside of big urban areas, where the lack of congestion can mean a well-planned bus journey is often just as quick as driving.
Buses reduce congestion, of course.
The most stupid people in the UK are drivers who oppose bus lanes.
Don't be silly. There is no reason to reserve an entire lane for a bus that carries 2 people plus the driver on board and is empty then for a few minutes until the next bus uses it.
Just let the bus and cars all the lane, same any other traffic.
Hahaha. Proven.
The only response you have as you know you're talking shit.
There's this wonderful thing called bus stops that can be built, little lay-bys that the bus can pull into when it wants to, then rejoin free flowing traffic.
Hundreds of vehicles per hour using the lane is better than 10 vehicles an hour using the lane.
Until the last few days, the phenomenon of Western lefties defending barbarism in the name of a desired utopian, egalitarian ideal was a historical abstraction to me.
I had read about Westerners defending Stalin's purges and collectivization campaigns and thought, well, their ideological fervor was probably just amplified by the difficulty of getting good information out of the USSR.
But now I see that's not it.
Then, as now, there was plenty of information to understand what was really going on. It's just that the ideology IS about this, it IS that ends justify the means. It's how we got the Red Terror, the Great Terror and this—Western leftists cheering all the while.
And, if Soviet history is any guide, the only thing that made these can't-make-an-omelet folks reconsider whether that was really true—or if the end was worth it if these were the means—was finding themselves in an NKVD cell and thinking, "There's been a terrible mistake."
By then, of course, it was too late.
If this is the kind of revolution you support, just know: the revolution always eats its young. Always.
As a leftist I can say, honestly, that Stalinism is bad. The USSR was bad. The roughly 60 million killed in the 70 years between 1917 and 1987 was bad.
As a leftist I can also say, honestly, that the British Empire was bad. That imperialism in all forms in bad. The roughly 100 million killed in the 40 years between 1881 and 1920 by the British Empire, was bad.
I will never be treated as if I sincerely believe the first one if I ever make a comment about how the industrialisation of the USSR from serfdom under the Tsar to beating the Nazi war machine under Stalin was still pretty impressive, as was the increase in literacy and numeracy rates and the relative decline in poverty. Whereas people will legitimately defend the second statement by saying "well, we gave them the railways and democracy, so it was fine".
What is your evidence that the British Empire killed 100 million people between 1881 and 1920?
I provided the link in a later post - a study looking at census data, somewhat similar to methods used when calculating body counts of other regimes like the USSR.
I find it hard to believe without other evidence. In the USSR we had the holodomor in Ukraine, the gulags, the purges etc. In India there was a huge country with endemic poverty where the life expectancy was shit, and apparently became shitter because of Empire (although no evidence is shown to support that). I smell bullshit and would expect other historians to strongly disagree.
Certainly it was completely unable to protect its domestic manufacturing industry as part of Empire.
Counterfactuals are hard, in this case close to impossible, but it's an interesting question how the various parts of India might have fared during the industrial revolution had they been independent states.
This is interesting, and I think its pretty clear what Britain did to India was primarily in British interests. My main concern is to counter the ludicrous whataboutism of a leftie claiming the British Empire behaved in the way that Stalin's regime did, without a shred of evidence.
13 years of Tory government and the criminal justice system has collapsed.
Even if your rapist is convicted, they still won't go to prison because there is no space.
May as well not bother having trials. Or reporting crimes. If the state won't do its job and protect us, we'll have to revert to older forms of self-protection.
Bastards.
We haven’t had mail delivered for two weeks. That’s such a trivial thing in comparison to everything else, but it seems to typify the country today.
It's nothing compared to schools literally falling down, seven million people on hospital waiting lists, ambulance waiting times leaping past three quarters of an hour, roads pocked with astonishing numbers of potholes everywhere, a massive and ongoing cost of living crisis, our courts backlogged so much that almost any case now takes literally years (three? four?) to come to trial while police ignore simple burglaries and bicycle thefts other than to give you a crime number for your insurance.
But now they can’t jail any more people, anyway. All in the face of the highest tax burden in generations. But billions have gone to scammers who happen to be friends to the ruling party.
Are Tories proud of this? Can they really go around with a straight face and ask the public to extend their rule? All I see from them is the ultimate negativity of “oh, oh, the only other option might be worse!” Nothing positive. No vision for improvement. No vision for rectifying the decaying mess that has unfolded under their stewardship. Just a desperate reliance upon fear and first-past-the-post.
It’s incredible that people don’t mention the part that closing everything down for lockdown has played in ruining the country’s finances. All major parties were behind it, Labour wanted to lockdown harder for longer (the non existent threat of the ‘Johnson Variant” in the Summer of 21).
It was always going to send the country skint, and it has - we are paying for it now & people who cheered it on shouldn’t moan about it. How is it different to spending on the never never and not wanting to pay it back?
Absolutely but your audience is wrong. Just about everyone on PB condemned out of hand as fanciful and insane if not near-murderous even to whisper the idea that lockdowns were bad for a huge number of reasons including financial ones.
I'm sure your post won't get many likes and anyone who agrees with you should look carefully at their own posting history to see how they responded at the time.
I keep banging on about it (this is, after all, PB) but only @contrarian consistently stated what a calamity lockdown was and would be and boy was he right.
There were plenty saying that Starmer was wrong to go harder, longer on lockdowns. We would have lost another Christmas if it had been down to him.
This is the man man would now have as PM? Colour me unconvinced...
“Johnson Variant” - what a prat. Completely wrong too. Still, at least he’s boring
It's the number one thing that concerns me about a Labour government - what they would do if there was another pandemic. I can't shake off that awful time and the idea of a repeat terrifies me.
Starmer so obviously playing politics with Covid and the NHS should scare anyone.
Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Not a problem.
There's these things called buses and coaches that can go on motorways for the small minority who have no access to private transport.
Maybe you have heard of them before?
Sadly, the cost of bus travel has increased even while fuel duty has been cut, punishing the disabled, poor and young.
That's if the bus actually exists. 1,500 routes have been cut just since 2021. 10% of all services were cut in the last year. 50% since 2010.
I extend a compromise - no new motorways until bus travel costs are cut to the same extent as fuel duty, and the number of services return to pre-2010 levels?
The one all-day last service through this small town was recently re-routed. We can get to Stansted Airport on one bus. However, getting to either of the two local hospitals requires two buses. We used to be able to get a bus directly to one.
Good morning to all. That’s a greeting, not a comment on the weather, grey and damp.
Good morning too. On the contrary, for a change in Scotland the weather here is bright and sunny, if chilly at night - have had to put the heating on briefly in the morning and evening as it was otherwise too cold for comfort at the desk all day.
Beautiful and Autumnal in South Manchester too. Off to Scotland in a week and a half (Dunkeld) - a few days like this would do very nicely.
Anyway, looking back up this thread - Bart is being a tad obtuse. You COULD get tge bus from Warrington to Manchester or Liverpool or Chester, but 99% of people making those journeys by public transport would take the train, what with Warrington also having really good rail connections to those places.
[Citation Needed] on 99% because the facts don't represent that I believe.
Yes if you want to get from Warrington Town Centre to Manchester City Centre then the train is absolutely fantastic. I've used it myself I'll have you know, when I went to Manchester Christmas Market and wanted to drink so wouldn't drive.
But if you want to go either from or to other places then buses can be better. Want to get from your home, not town centre, to the Trafford Centre for instance? Buses can work very well for that too. There's options and choice either way. Of course cars are far better, but I've met people there before for days out who took a bus rather than drive.
Plus as Rochdale said I'm in favour of building public transport as well as motorways. Indeed I can't see any reason why we couldn't with investment have a Northwest tram network that operates all the way from Liverpool to Manchester and covering all the towns in-between.
The only fanatics here are those who oppose any investment in roads just because they despise roads and cars. I'm not opposing investment in public transport, even though I don't use it.
Fair enough. It has to be said, the bus is an often-overlooked mode of transport and can often work out surprisingly efficient - both halves of this statement are especially true outside of big urban areas, where the lack of congestion can mean a well-planned bus journey is often just as quick as driving.
Buses reduce congestion, of course.
The most stupid people in the UK are drivers who oppose bus lanes.
Don't be silly. There is no reason to reserve an entire lane for a bus that carries 2 people plus the driver on board and is empty then for a few minutes until the next bus uses it.
Just let the bus and cars all the lane, same any other traffic.
Hahaha. Proven.
The only response you have as you know you're talking shit.
There's this wonderful thing called bus stops that can be built, little lay-bys that the bus can pull into when it wants to, then rejoin free flowing traffic.
Hundreds of vehicles per hour using the lane is better than 10 vehicles an hour using the lane.
Check my edit out: People don't use buses when they spend the whole journey stuck in traffic. Which means more people take the car. Which leads to more traffic. And so on
Will be interested if SKS's speech or his subsequent stance on green lighting slaughter in Gaza has any impact on VI.
Suspect both will be popular with his target voter.
I thought his comments were wrong . He should have just stuck to one line re international law . Poor Emily Thornberry trying to defend his comments on Newsnight was embarrassing , talk about sinking .
I would have thought though the bigger impact on VI was Starmers planning comments which were a gift to the Tories . After a good conference the last few days has been poor from Starmer .
I thought people agreed with house building just NIMBY. Those who are interested in all women and children not being subjected to war crimes are no longer SKSs target voter so can't see any negatives there in the short term.
Of course on the latter issue history will not be kind
13 years of Tory government and the criminal justice system has collapsed.
Even if your rapist is convicted, they still won't go to prison because there is no space.
May as well not bother having trials. Or reporting crimes. If the state won't do its job and protect us, we'll have to revert to older forms of self-protection.
Bastards.
We haven’t had mail delivered for two weeks. That’s such a trivial thing in comparison to everything else, but it seems to typify the country today.
It's nothing compared to schools literally falling down, seven million people on hospital waiting lists, ambulance waiting times leaping past three quarters of an hour, roads pocked with astonishing numbers of potholes everywhere, a massive and ongoing cost of living crisis, our courts backlogged so much that almost any case now takes literally years (three? four?) to come to trial while police ignore simple burglaries and bicycle thefts other than to give you a crime number for your insurance.
But now they can’t jail any more people, anyway. All in the face of the highest tax burden in generations. But billions have gone to scammers who happen to be friends to the ruling party.
Are Tories proud of this? Can they really go around with a straight face and ask the public to extend their rule? All I see from them is the ultimate negativity of “oh, oh, the only other option might be worse!” Nothing positive. No vision for improvement. No vision for rectifying the decaying mess that has unfolded under their stewardship. Just a desperate reliance upon fear and first-past-the-post.
It’s incredible that people don’t mention the part that closing everything down for lockdown has played in ruining the country’s finances. All major parties were behind it, Labour wanted to lockdown harder for longer (the non existent threat of the ‘Johnson Variant” in the Summer of 21).
It was always going to send the country skint, and it has - we are paying for it now & people who cheered it on shouldn’t moan about it. How is it different to spending on the never never and not wanting to pay it back?
Absolutely but your audience is wrong. Just about everyone on PB condemned out of hand as fanciful and insane if not near-murderous even to whisper the idea that lockdowns were bad for a huge number of reasons including financial ones.
I'm sure your post won't get many likes and anyone who agrees with you should look carefully at their own posting history to see how they responded at the time.
I keep banging on about it (this is, after all, PB) but only @contrarian consistently stated what a calamity lockdown was and would be and boy was he right.
There were plenty saying that Starmer was wrong to go harder, longer on lockdowns. We would have lost another Christmas if it had been down to him.
This is the man man would now have as PM? Colour me unconvinced...
“Johnson Variant” - what a prat. Completely wrong too. Still, at least he’s boring
It's the number one thing that concerns me about a Labour government - what they would do if there was another pandemic. I can't shake off that awful time and the idea of a repeat terrifies me.
Starmer so obviously playing politics with Covid and the NHS should scare anyone.
It absolutely does scare me. I will take no pleasure in seeing Starmer be PM.
But with Sunak as leader for the Tories, then he might be the least worst option.
Depressing. But if the Tories won't sort themselves out, and we are led to Starmer by default, then that's the Tories fault.
13 years of Tory government and the criminal justice system has collapsed.
Even if your rapist is convicted, they still won't go to prison because there is no space.
May as well not bother having trials. Or reporting crimes. If the state won't do its job and protect us, we'll have to revert to older forms of self-protection.
Bastards.
We haven’t had mail delivered for two weeks. That’s such a trivial thing in comparison to everything else, but it seems to typify the country today.
It's nothing compared to schools literally falling down, seven million people on hospital waiting lists, ambulance waiting times leaping past three quarters of an hour, roads pocked with astonishing numbers of potholes everywhere, a massive and ongoing cost of living crisis, our courts backlogged so much that almost any case now takes literally years (three? four?) to come to trial while police ignore simple burglaries and bicycle thefts other than to give you a crime number for your insurance.
But now they can’t jail any more people, anyway. All in the face of the highest tax burden in generations. But billions have gone to scammers who happen to be friends to the ruling party.
Are Tories proud of this? Can they really go around with a straight face and ask the public to extend their rule? All I see from them is the ultimate negativity of “oh, oh, the only other option might be worse!” Nothing positive. No vision for improvement. No vision for rectifying the decaying mess that has unfolded under their stewardship. Just a desperate reliance upon fear and first-past-the-post.
It’s incredible that people don’t mention the part that closing everything down for lockdown has played in ruining the country’s finances. All major parties were behind it, Labour wanted to lockdown harder for longer (the non existent threat of the ‘Johnson Variant” in the Summer of 21).
It was always going to send the country skint, and it has - we are paying for it now & people who cheered it on shouldn’t moan about it. How is it different to spending on the never never and not wanting to pay it back?
It's equally incredible that those who lament the cost of lockdown continually pretend that not imposing NPIs would have magically avoided the cost and damage. That companies would have taken the impact with no effect. That people would have continued normal life without pause, stepping over those who fell. That restaurants, bars, and clubs would have remained fine (@rcs1000 posted at the time the stats that showed that the UK had higher average footfall throughout 2020 than countries that didn't close restaurants. Strangely, people avoid places where they're likely to become ill). That leaping bankruptcies and huge increases in unemployment, collapsing hospitals, and a legacy of long term illnesses would have been, well, lacking in any effect whatsoever.
It doesn't matter how often you show the effects, the stats, the arguments. It would have been fine. We could have intoned the magic word "Sweden" and all would have gone away.
Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Warrington is not a model that can be transposed on to more densely populated parts of the country, particularly not the south east. You can't just build 10 lane motorways through AONB's and National Parks, which is what would happen if you try and fulfil the demand for car use through building new roads, at some point you need to start reducing the demand for car use and developing other options (public transport) - something we realised about 30-40 years ago.
Also the situation in Warrington and this part of the north west is a product of town planning, not something that has happened because town planning has been swept away. All the roads, infrastructure to go with the housing have to be planned and co-ordinated, along with policies that direct growth to certain areas. You don't just create it by throwing up a few motorways and letting people build wherever they want on vaguely defined zones. Even if you create a zonal system, like Japan and many other countries in Europe, it still has to be planned, it is just a slightly different type of planning.
Yes. I haven't ever advocated anarchy, I advocate zonal planning. Which contrary to what @Richard_Tyndall keeps claiming is not what we have in this country.
In a sensible zonal system, like Japan, you can build whatever you want subject without asking permission first if three conditions are met.
1. You own the land (obviously) 2. It is already zoned for housing. 3. You build to building codes.
Neighbours or Councils don't get a say if you want to demolish your home and rebuild it to something else as it's already zoned.
Plan the public infrastructure absolutely. But the land zoned for housing is NOT the public infrastructure land. Leave that to fill in with whatever people want.
The comment I have is that you purport to be in favour of a radical reform of planning in your posts but when it comes down to it, all you are actually arguing for is for more land to be released for housing (something almost everyone who works in the area agrees with- but subject to it being the right land in the right place which is more difficult to resolve) and a different delivery mechanism - a code based system rather than a discretionary system - something that is also not that controversial to deal with in principle, until you start trying to work out what the code should and shouldn't allow, and how deviations are resolved.
The problem with the last 13 years of planning policy is that the government don't want to tackle difficult decisions about where growth goes, they just keep avoiding it - palming it off to someone else, local authorities, civil servants etc... the Labour party seem to be making the right noises , but lets see.
I don't consider zonal planning a radical concept whatsoever.
But to switch from our current system where politicians and neighbours and assorted NIMBYs get a say in blocking development, to one where they don't, would have radical consequences.
It would end the oligopoly of developers that can play the system to acquire and sit on consent (especially but not only if done in conjunction with a switch to LVT). It would allow more variety in what is built, rather than what is It would allow adaptability as if higher density housing for example were desired people could bulldoze low density housing and rebuild to higher density, without having to get their neighbours or Councillors to approve. It would mean politicians would no longer have to appeal or pander to NIMBYs as codes being set nationally and zoning being approved locally means they have no more input after its zoned.
You may be interested to hear that our house in Finland is in a zoning system. We cannot cut down a tree in the garden without permission. The guy across the road is trying to do a self build and has been waiting for 10 months for permission to knock down the existing building and because the new house is 1m higher than the code allows. And of course, in these established built up areas there are exactly the same grievances and arguments between neighbours, they don't disappear with a code system.
The code system works and it doesn't. On the other hand a relative built an entire housing estate on his farm over the course of about 5 years through a code based system selling the plots off individually. But the latter happened not just because of the code system, also because there is unlimited land in Finland to build on and a low population density and no opposition, also because the Finns keep on top of building new infrastructure, unlike the UK. They've also made mistakes in Finland with too liberal code based systems on similar estates, there are estates where opportunistic developers have crammed in too many single storey houses with no space/gardens, it is the cheapest, poor quality type of development, something must have gone wrong with the plot/space ratios. In our relatives case he thinks it worked better because he employed a landscape architect to design the layout, but that was his choice (and expense)
If its already zoned for residential then I'm proposing abolishing seeking permission [except for special circumstances, like listed buildings]. So if the guy across the road is waiting for permission, then that's not a pure zonal system like I propose.
Absolutely agreed that low density is better, hence the parallel conversation about transport. Some people prefer high density though, so if they do then there should be freedom to do that too.
Of course if we have enough houses able to be built, and a liberal zone/code based system then situations where some developments are badly designed while others are well designed, may mean that the well designed developments are sold and lived in while the badly designed ones may end up vacant and be a burden on the owner who badly designed them as nobody is forced to buy or let them given better alternatives and the stupid owner who screwed up needs to continue paying all taxes on the land himself rather than getting an income from those who have no better alternative.
But is there a code or no code in your preferred zoning system? If there is a code then there has to be a method of dealing with situations that breach the code, hence the requirement for permission. I am not aware of any zoning system in a developed country that does not have some sort of building code that sets out limits that must be followed. The examples you use in support of your proposal all have this characteristic.
Will be interested if SKS's speech or his subsequent stance on green lighting slaughter in Gaza has any impact on VI.
Suspect both will be popular with his target voter.
I thought his comments were wrong . He should have just stuck to one line re international law . Poor Emily Thornberry trying to defend his comments on Newsnight was embarrassing , talk about sinking .
I would have thought though the bigger impact on VI was Starmers planning comments which were a gift to the Tories . After a good conference the last few days has been poor from Starmer .
I actually agree with Starmer re house building, however he has just told the blue wall he wants to concrete the place over which will reverse his support. Add in that the Tories will make it new towns are Labour colonies to pack their supporters in and he has an uphill task.
His second uphill task is that the stasis in the planning system comes from the type of legislation he supports eg net zero so he has to upset his own supporters as well.
As we're talkin about the Lizzie Line, the DfT are now saying that no funding has been released by its cancellation, and all proposed projects will have to go through the usual process. The "pot of money" created by HS2 phase 1b/2 cancellation does not exist.
"From DfT's Dame Bernadette Kelly: 'I also note that the VfM of the £35.9bn of alternative transport investments proposed will need to be considered separately and on a case-by-case basis in the light of further business case analysis for those individual projects and programmes.'"
Hang on, that isn’t saying no funding has been released. That is saying any replacement project will still have to show it adds up. That’s surely something we all agree with for any project, Government or not?
The HS2 funding doesn't exist. It's saying that every project would have to go through exactly the same hoops to get money that HS2 did.
Some people have sold this as though there was a massive pot of money hanging out somewhere down the back of a sofa in the treasury, waiting to be used on HS2; and that they could now shove their hands down the side of that sofa, pick it up, and use it on all these other wonderful projects (that have already been delivered...)
That's not the case. The money that would be used for the scrapped HS2 works is not ringfenced for the project, and will instead probably get used on something like raising nurse's salaries, or more staplers for the civil service. Probably good things, but *not* infrastructure.
Or they may just not borrow the money, and spend the non-existent money on nothing.
You’re misunderstanding Government budgeting. A thing being announced in outline never means the cash is guaranteed. Cancelling one thing to fund another never moves a “pot of cash” to a new owner.
There is nothing to see here.
There may or may not be things to see elsewhere in DfT.
Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Not a problem.
There's these things called buses and coaches that can go on motorways for the small minority who have no access to private transport.
Maybe you have heard of them before?
Sadly, the cost of bus travel has increased even while fuel duty has been cut, punishing the disabled, poor and young.
That's if the bus actually exists. 1,500 routes have been cut just since 2021. 10% of all services were cut in the last year. 50% since 2010.
I extend a compromise - no new motorways until bus travel costs are cut to the same extent as fuel duty, and the number of services return to pre-2010 levels?
The one all-day last service through this small town was recently re-routed. We can get to Stansted Airport on one bus. However, getting to either of the two local hospitals requires two buses. We used to be able to get a bus directly to one.
Good morning to all. That’s a greeting, not a comment on the weather, grey and damp.
Good morning too. On the contrary, for a change in Scotland the weather here is bright and sunny, if chilly at night - have had to put the heating on briefly in the morning and evening as it was otherwise too cold for comfort at the desk all day.
Beautiful and Autumnal in South Manchester too. Off to Scotland in a week and a half (Dunkeld) - a few days like this would do very nicely.
Anyway, looking back up this thread - Bart is being a tad obtuse. You COULD get tge bus from Warrington to Manchester or Liverpool or Chester, but 99% of people making those journeys by public transport would take the train, what with Warrington also having really good rail connections to those places.
[Citation Needed] on 99% because the facts don't represent that I believe.
Yes if you want to get from Warrington Town Centre to Manchester City Centre then the train is absolutely fantastic. I've used it myself I'll have you know, when I went to Manchester Christmas Market and wanted to drink so wouldn't drive.
But if you want to go either from or to other places then buses can be better. Want to get from your home, not town centre, to the Trafford Centre for instance? Buses can work very well for that too. There's options and choice either way. Of course cars are far better, but I've met people there before for days out who took a bus rather than drive.
Plus as Rochdale said I'm in favour of building public transport as well as motorways. Indeed I can't see any reason why we couldn't with investment have a Northwest tram network that operates all the way from Liverpool to Manchester and covering all the towns in-between.
The only fanatics here are those who oppose any investment in roads just because they despise roads and cars. I'm not opposing investment in public transport, even though I don't use it.
Fair enough. It has to be said, the bus is an often-overlooked mode of transport and can often work out surprisingly efficient - both halves of this statement are especially true outside of big urban areas, where the lack of congestion can mean a well-planned bus journey is often just as quick as driving.
Buses reduce congestion, of course.
The most stupid people in the UK are drivers who oppose bus lanes.
Don't be silly. There is no reason to reserve an entire lane for a bus that carries 2 people plus the driver on board and is empty then for a few minutes until the next bus uses it.
Just let the bus and cars all the lane, same any other traffic.
Hahaha. Proven.
The only response you have as you know you're talking shit.
There's this wonderful thing called bus stops that can be built, little lay-bys that the bus can pull into when it wants to, then rejoin free flowing traffic.
Hundreds of vehicles per hour using the lane is better than 10 vehicles an hour using the lane.
Check my edit out: People don't use buses when they spend the whole journey stuck in traffic. Which means more people take the car. Which leads to more traffic. And so on
Edinburgh is introducing 24/7 bus lanes shortly.
If you have sufficient road capacity, then traffic isn't a problem so its moot.
Unless I'm at a traffic light I spend almost all of my time driving in town at the speed limit, whether it be 30, 40 or 50mph.
Cars and buses driving at 50mph allows far more throughput of vehicles, people and goods than restricting your lanes and creating traffic jams.
The reason people aren't using buses isn't traffic, when you can drive at 30/40/50mph whatever the speed limit is, except for being at red lights and buses need to stop at red lights too.
Until the last few days, the phenomenon of Western lefties defending barbarism in the name of a desired utopian, egalitarian ideal was a historical abstraction to me.
I had read about Westerners defending Stalin's purges and collectivization campaigns and thought, well, their ideological fervor was probably just amplified by the difficulty of getting good information out of the USSR.
But now I see that's not it.
Then, as now, there was plenty of information to understand what was really going on. It's just that the ideology IS about this, it IS that ends justify the means. It's how we got the Red Terror, the Great Terror and this—Western leftists cheering all the while.
And, if Soviet history is any guide, the only thing that made these can't-make-an-omelet folks reconsider whether that was really true—or if the end was worth it if these were the means—was finding themselves in an NKVD cell and thinking, "There's been a terrible mistake."
By then, of course, it was too late.
If this is the kind of revolution you support, just know: the revolution always eats its young. Always.
As a leftist I can say, honestly, that Stalinism is bad. The USSR was bad. The roughly 60 million killed in the 70 years between 1917 and 1987 was bad.
As a leftist I can also say, honestly, that the British Empire was bad. That imperialism in all forms in bad. The roughly 100 million killed in the 40 years between 1881 and 1920 by the British Empire, was bad.
I will never be treated as if I sincerely believe the first one if I ever make a comment about how the industrialisation of the USSR from serfdom under the Tsar to beating the Nazi war machine under Stalin was still pretty impressive, as was the increase in literacy and numeracy rates and the relative decline in poverty. Whereas people will legitimately defend the second statement by saying "well, we gave them the railways and democracy, so it was fine".
What is your evidence that the British Empire killed 100 million people between 1881 and 1920?
I provided the link in a later post - a study looking at census data, somewhat similar to methods used when calculating body counts of other regimes like the USSR.
I find it hard to believe without other evidence. In the USSR we had the holodomor in Ukraine, the gulags, the purges etc. In India there was a huge country with endemic poverty where the life expectancy was shit, and apparently became shitter because of Empire (although no evidence is shown to support that). I smell bullshit and would expect other historians to strongly disagree.
Certainly it was completely unable to protect its domestic manufacturing industry as part of Empire.
Counterfactuals are hard, in this case close to impossible, but it's an interesting question how the various parts of India might have fared during the industrial revolution had they been independent states.
But there is no counterfactual where India “suddenly becomes an independent country with industry”. Before the Brits it was utterly brutalised by the Mughals, who enslaved millions and murdered equally
The only alternative to British rule was probably rule by the Portuguese (much worse), the Dutch (worse), or the French (definitely worse, but they taught you to make croissants)
Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Not a problem.
There's these things called buses and coaches that can go on motorways for the small minority who have no access to private transport.
Maybe you have heard of them before?
Sadly, the cost of bus travel has increased even while fuel duty has been cut, punishing the disabled, poor and young.
That's if the bus actually exists. 1,500 routes have been cut just since 2021. 10% of all services were cut in the last year. 50% since 2010.
I extend a compromise - no new motorways until bus travel costs are cut to the same extent as fuel duty, and the number of services return to pre-2010 levels?
The one all-day last service through this small town was recently re-routed. We can get to Stansted Airport on one bus. However, getting to either of the two local hospitals requires two buses. We used to be able to get a bus directly to one.
Good morning to all. That’s a greeting, not a comment on the weather, grey and damp.
Good morning too. On the contrary, for a change in Scotland the weather here is bright and sunny, if chilly at night - have had to put the heating on briefly in the morning and evening as it was otherwise too cold for comfort at the desk all day.
Beautiful and Autumnal in South Manchester too. Off to Scotland in a week and a half (Dunkeld) - a few days like this would do very nicely.
Anyway, looking back up this thread - Bart is being a tad obtuse. You COULD get tge bus from Warrington to Manchester or Liverpool or Chester, but 99% of people making those journeys by public transport would take the train, what with Warrington also having really good rail connections to those places.
[Citation Needed] on 99% because the facts don't represent that I believe.
Yes if you want to get from Warrington Town Centre to Manchester City Centre then the train is absolutely fantastic. I've used it myself I'll have you know, when I went to Manchester Christmas Market and wanted to drink so wouldn't drive.
But if you want to go either from or to other places then buses can be better. Want to get from your home, not town centre, to the Trafford Centre for instance? Buses can work very well for that too. There's options and choice either way. Of course cars are far better, but I've met people there before for days out who took a bus rather than drive.
Plus as Rochdale said I'm in favour of building public transport as well as motorways. Indeed I can't see any reason why we couldn't with investment have a Northwest tram network that operates all the way from Liverpool to Manchester and covering all the towns in-between.
The only fanatics here are those who oppose any investment in roads just because they despise roads and cars. I'm not opposing investment in public transport, even though I don't use it.
Fair enough. It has to be said, the bus is an often-overlooked mode of transport and can often work out surprisingly efficient - both halves of this statement are especially true outside of big urban areas, where the lack of congestion can mean a well-planned bus journey is often just as quick as driving.
Buses reduce congestion, of course.
The most stupid people in the UK are drivers who oppose bus lanes.
Don't be silly. There is no reason to reserve an entire lane for a bus that carries 2 people plus the driver on board and is empty then for a few minutes until the next bus uses it.
Just let the bus and cars all the lane, same any other traffic.
Hahaha. Proven.
The only response you have as you know you're talking shit.
There's this wonderful thing called bus stops that can be built, little lay-bys that the bus can pull into when it wants to, then rejoin free flowing traffic.
Hundreds of vehicles per hour using the lane is better than 10 vehicles an hour using the lane.
There are a number of studies which demonstrate the benefits of bus lanes in increasing traffic flow at times of peak traffic. Just do a bit of googling.
Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Not a problem.
There's these things called buses and coaches that can go on motorways for the small minority who have no access to private transport.
Maybe you have heard of them before?
Sadly, the cost of bus travel has increased even while fuel duty has been cut, punishing the disabled, poor and young.
That's if the bus actually exists. 1,500 routes have been cut just since 2021. 10% of all services were cut in the last year. 50% since 2010.
I extend a compromise - no new motorways until bus travel costs are cut to the same extent as fuel duty, and the number of services return to pre-2010 levels?
The one all-day last service through this small town was recently re-routed. We can get to Stansted Airport on one bus. However, getting to either of the two local hospitals requires two buses. We used to be able to get a bus directly to one.
Good morning to all. That’s a greeting, not a comment on the weather, grey and damp.
Good morning too. On the contrary, for a change in Scotland the weather here is bright and sunny, if chilly at night - have had to put the heating on briefly in the morning and evening as it was otherwise too cold for comfort at the desk all day.
Beautiful and Autumnal in South Manchester too. Off to Scotland in a week and a half (Dunkeld) - a few days like this would do very nicely.
Anyway, looking back up this thread - Bart is being a tad obtuse. You COULD get tge bus from Warrington to Manchester or Liverpool or Chester, but 99% of people making those journeys by public transport would take the train, what with Warrington also having really good rail connections to those places.
[Citation Needed] on 99% because the facts don't represent that I believe.
Yes if you want to get from Warrington Town Centre to Manchester City Centre then the train is absolutely fantastic. I've used it myself I'll have you know, when I went to Manchester Christmas Market and wanted to drink so wouldn't drive.
But if you want to go either from or to other places then buses can be better. Want to get from your home, not town centre, to the Trafford Centre for instance? Buses can work very well for that too. There's options and choice either way. Of course cars are far better, but I've met people there before for days out who took a bus rather than drive.
Plus as Rochdale said I'm in favour of building public transport as well as motorways. Indeed I can't see any reason why we couldn't with investment have a Northwest tram network that operates all the way from Liverpool to Manchester and covering all the towns in-between.
The only fanatics here are those who oppose any investment in roads just because they despise roads and cars. I'm not opposing investment in public transport, even though I don't use it.
Fair enough. It has to be said, the bus is an often-overlooked mode of transport and can often work out surprisingly efficient - both halves of this statement are especially true outside of big urban areas, where the lack of congestion can mean a well-planned bus journey is often just as quick as driving.
Buses reduce congestion, of course.
The most stupid people in the UK are drivers who oppose bus lanes.
Don't be silly. There is no reason to reserve an entire lane for a bus that carries 2 people plus the driver on board and is empty then for a few minutes until the next bus uses it.
Just let the bus and cars all the lane, same any other traffic.
Hahaha. Proven.
The only response you have as you know you're talking shit.
There's this wonderful thing called bus stops that can be built, little lay-bys that the bus can pull into when it wants to, then rejoin free flowing traffic.
Hundreds of vehicles per hour using the lane is better than 10 vehicles an hour using the lane.
Check my edit out: People don't use buses when they spend the whole journey stuck in traffic. Which means more people take the car. Which leads to more traffic. And so on
Edinburgh is introducing 24/7 bus lanes shortly.
If you have sufficient road capacity, then traffic isn't a problem so its moot.
Unless I'm at a traffic light I spend almost all of my time driving in town at the speed limit, whether it be 30, 40 or 50mph.
Cars and buses driving at 50mph allows far more throughput of vehicles, people and goods than restricting your lanes and creating traffic jams.
You can magic capacity out of nowhere if you take 50 cars off the road and pop those people on a bus.
Same logic for traffic signals for Trams - 250 people onboard have priority over the drivers.
Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Warrington is not a model that can be transposed on to more densely populated parts of the country, particularly not the south east. You can't just build 10 lane motorways through AONB's and National Parks, which is what would happen if you try and fulfil the demand for car use through building new roads, at some point you need to start reducing the demand for car use and developing other options (public transport) - something we realised about 30-40 years ago.
Also the situation in Warrington and this part of the north west is a product of town planning, not something that has happened because town planning has been swept away. All the roads, infrastructure to go with the housing have to be planned and co-ordinated, along with policies that direct growth to certain areas. You don't just create it by throwing up a few motorways and letting people build wherever they want on vaguely defined zones. Even if you create a zonal system, like Japan and many other countries in Europe, it still has to be planned, it is just a slightly different type of planning.
Yes. I haven't ever advocated anarchy, I advocate zonal planning. Which contrary to what @Richard_Tyndall keeps claiming is not what we have in this country.
In a sensible zonal system, like Japan, you can build whatever you want subject without asking permission first if three conditions are met.
1. You own the land (obviously) 2. It is already zoned for housing. 3. You build to building codes.
Neighbours or Councils don't get a say if you want to demolish your home and rebuild it to something else as it's already zoned.
Plan the public infrastructure absolutely. But the land zoned for housing is NOT the public infrastructure land. Leave that to fill in with whatever people want.
The comment I have is that you purport to be in favour of a radical reform of planning in your posts but when it comes down to it, all you are actually arguing for is for more land to be released for housing (something almost everyone who works in the area agrees with- but subject to it being the right land in the right place which is more difficult to resolve) and a different delivery mechanism - a code based system rather than a discretionary system - something that is also not that controversial to deal with in principle, until you start trying to work out what the code should and shouldn't allow, and how deviations are resolved.
The problem with the last 13 years of planning policy is that the government don't want to tackle difficult decisions about where growth goes, they just keep avoiding it - palming it off to someone else, local authorities, civil servants etc... the Labour party seem to be making the right noises , but lets see.
I don't consider zonal planning a radical concept whatsoever.
But to switch from our current system where politicians and neighbours and assorted NIMBYs get a say in blocking development, to one where they don't, would have radical consequences.
It would end the oligopoly of developers that can play the system to acquire and sit on consent (especially but not only if done in conjunction with a switch to LVT). It would allow more variety in what is built, rather than what is It would allow adaptability as if higher density housing for example were desired people could bulldoze low density housing and rebuild to higher density, without having to get their neighbours or Councillors to approve. It would mean politicians would no longer have to appeal or pander to NIMBYs as codes being set nationally and zoning being approved locally means they have no more input after its zoned.
You may be interested to hear that our house in Finland is in a zoning system. We cannot cut down a tree in the garden without permission. The guy across the road is trying to do a self build and has been waiting for 10 months for permission to knock down the existing building and because the new house is 1m higher than the code allows. And of course, in these established built up areas there are exactly the same grievances and arguments between neighbours, they don't disappear with a code system.
The code system works and it doesn't. On the other hand a relative built an entire housing estate on his farm over the course of about 5 years through a code based system selling the plots off individually. But the latter happened not just because of the code system, also because there is unlimited land in Finland to build on and a low population density and no opposition, also because the Finns keep on top of building new infrastructure, unlike the UK. They've also made mistakes in Finland with too liberal code based systems on similar estates, there are estates where opportunistic developers have crammed in too many single storey houses with no space/gardens, it is the cheapest, poor quality type of development, something must have gone wrong with the plot/space ratios. In our relatives case he thinks it worked better because he employed a landscape architect to design the layout, but that was his choice (and expense)
If its already zoned for residential then I'm proposing abolishing seeking permission [except for special circumstances, like listed buildings]. So if the guy across the road is waiting for permission, then that's not a pure zonal system like I propose.
Absolutely agreed that low density is better, hence the parallel conversation about transport. Some people prefer high density though, so if they do then there should be freedom to do that too.
Of course if we have enough houses able to be built, and a liberal zone/code based system then situations where some developments are badly designed while others are well designed, may mean that the well designed developments are sold and lived in while the badly designed ones may end up vacant and be a burden on the owner who badly designed them as nobody is forced to buy or let them given better alternatives and the stupid owner who screwed up needs to continue paying all taxes on the land himself rather than getting an income from those who have no better alternative.
But is there a code or no code in your preferred zoning system? If there is a code then there has to be a method of dealing with situations that breach the code, hence the requirement for permission. I am not aware of any zoning system in a developed country that does not have some sort of building code that sets out limits that must be followed. The examples you use in support of your proposal all have this characteristic.
Why do you need permission? They don't in Japan.
Yes there should be a code, no there should not be a requirement for permission.
Build to code. If you break the code, then you should face consequences, same as breaking any other law, but if you are operating legally you shouldn't need to ask permission first.
Until the last few days, the phenomenon of Western lefties defending barbarism in the name of a desired utopian, egalitarian ideal was a historical abstraction to me.
I had read about Westerners defending Stalin's purges and collectivization campaigns and thought, well, their ideological fervor was probably just amplified by the difficulty of getting good information out of the USSR.
But now I see that's not it.
Then, as now, there was plenty of information to understand what was really going on. It's just that the ideology IS about this, it IS that ends justify the means. It's how we got the Red Terror, the Great Terror and this—Western leftists cheering all the while.
And, if Soviet history is any guide, the only thing that made these can't-make-an-omelet folks reconsider whether that was really true—or if the end was worth it if these were the means—was finding themselves in an NKVD cell and thinking, "There's been a terrible mistake."
By then, of course, it was too late.
If this is the kind of revolution you support, just know: the revolution always eats its young. Always.
As a leftist I can say, honestly, that Stalinism is bad. The USSR was bad. The roughly 60 million killed in the 70 years between 1917 and 1987 was bad.
As a leftist I can also say, honestly, that the British Empire was bad. That imperialism in all forms in bad. The roughly 100 million killed in the 40 years between 1881 and 1920 by the British Empire, was bad.
I will never be treated as if I sincerely believe the first one if I ever make a comment about how the industrialisation of the USSR from serfdom under the Tsar to beating the Nazi war machine under Stalin was still pretty impressive, as was the increase in literacy and numeracy rates and the relative decline in poverty. Whereas people will legitimately defend the second statement by saying "well, we gave them the railways and democracy, so it was fine".
Where does the 100 million come from ?
I guess if you add in WWI and subsequent epidemics, although I don't think they can be laid entirely at the door of the British Empire.
The 100 million deaths seems to be attributed to India alone. Using similar methodologies as to how the USSR count is come to (although some estimates of the USSR death count includes the numbers of Nazi soldiers they killed - which I do not think is reasonable to add).
That all seems pretty fanciful. That would imply that the British killed off 25% of India's population in those 39 years.
It's just made up twaddle.
My bad. It would imply that the British killed off one third to forty per cent of India's population, in just 39 years.
100 million in those forty years is a wild exaggeration, but might be close to the total numbers that died during famines under British rule in India from the C18th to the C20th. That forty year period doesn’t even include the “Great Famine” of 1876/1878 when 8million people are believed to have died.
Obviously a counter to that is that the region suffered famines long before British rule, but even a cursory reading of history reveals that famines under earlier British rule seem to have been much worse, often exacerbated by Imperial policies & taxes. Rather like the famine in Ireland in the C19th, British rulers seem to have cared little for the people they were notionally in charge of & were more interested in tax income than they were in saving lives.
NB: The 100million number seems to come from trying to measure excess deaths: What they are really claiming is that if India was not being held back by colonialist expropriation of wealth, the economy would have been able to feed it’s population even in times of famine. Instead what happened was that agricultural workers lost their jobs in times of famine & were unable to afford to buy what food their was, as the available crops were being exported to the UK out of taxed national income. Without that expropriation, more wealth would have been kept locally & these workers would have been able to afford to buy food during difficult times. Ironically, the period from 1880 to 1920 is when the British Raj had realised that this was the major cause of deaths during famines & had started major works programs to provide income to out of work agricultural labourers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Famine_Codes
It boils down (I think) to a historical position on whether India would have developed differently without the British Raj in power: would have been replaced by an equivalent local regime which extracted just as much wealth & resources for themselves at the expense of the people, or would the economy have developed in a different direction?
There’s no real question that the taxes imposed by the Raj extracted wealth from India & that loss came at a price that was paid ultimately by ordinary Indian people? They didn’t to trade freely with the UK in return after all.
13 years of Tory government and the criminal justice system has collapsed.
Even if your rapist is convicted, they still won't go to prison because there is no space.
May as well not bother having trials. Or reporting crimes. If the state won't do its job and protect us, we'll have to revert to older forms of self-protection.
Bastards.
We haven’t had mail delivered for two weeks. That’s such a trivial thing in comparison to everything else, but it seems to typify the country today.
It's nothing compared to schools literally falling down, seven million people on hospital waiting lists, ambulance waiting times leaping past three quarters of an hour, roads pocked with astonishing numbers of potholes everywhere, a massive and ongoing cost of living crisis, our courts backlogged so much that almost any case now takes literally years (three? four?) to come to trial while police ignore simple burglaries and bicycle thefts other than to give you a crime number for your insurance.
But now they can’t jail any more people, anyway. All in the face of the highest tax burden in generations. But billions have gone to scammers who happen to be friends to the ruling party.
Are Tories proud of this? Can they really go around with a straight face and ask the public to extend their rule? All I see from them is the ultimate negativity of “oh, oh, the only other option might be worse!” Nothing positive. No vision for improvement. No vision for rectifying the decaying mess that has unfolded under their stewardship. Just a desperate reliance upon fear and first-past-the-post.
It’s incredible that people don’t mention the part that closing everything down for lockdown has played in ruining the country’s finances. All major parties were behind it, Labour wanted to lockdown harder for longer (the non existent threat of the ‘Johnson Variant” in the Summer of 21).
It was always going to send the country skint, and it has - we are paying for it now & people who cheered it on shouldn’t moan about it. How is it different to spending on the never never and not wanting to pay it back?
It's equally incredible that those who lament the cost of lockdown continually pretend that not imposing NPIs would have magically avoided the cost and damage. That companies would have taken the impact with no effect. That people would have continued normal life without pause, stepping over those who fell. That restaurants, bars, and clubs would have remained fine (@rcs1000 posted at the time the stats that showed that the UK had higher average footfall throughout 2020 than countries that didn't close restaurants. Strangely, people avoid places where they're likely to become ill). That leaping bankruptcies and huge increases in unemployment, collapsing hospitals, and a legacy of long term illnesses would have been, well, lacking in any effect whatsoever.
It doesn't matter how often you show the effects, the stats, the arguments. It would have been fine. We could have intoned the magic word "Sweden" and all would have gone away.
But we’d have killed off all the really old, or really fat people. Which would have been a huge economic bonus. I mean that quite sincerely
13 years of Tory government and the criminal justice system has collapsed.
Even if your rapist is convicted, they still won't go to prison because there is no space.
May as well not bother having trials. Or reporting crimes. If the state won't do its job and protect us, we'll have to revert to older forms of self-protection.
Bastards.
We haven’t had mail delivered for two weeks. That’s such a trivial thing in comparison to everything else, but it seems to typify the country today.
It's nothing compared to schools literally falling down, seven million people on hospital waiting lists, ambulance waiting times leaping past three quarters of an hour, roads pocked with astonishing numbers of potholes everywhere, a massive and ongoing cost of living crisis, our courts backlogged so much that almost any case now takes literally years (three? four?) to come to trial while police ignore simple burglaries and bicycle thefts other than to give you a crime number for your insurance.
But now they can’t jail any more people, anyway. All in the face of the highest tax burden in generations. But billions have gone to scammers who happen to be friends to the ruling party.
Are Tories proud of this? Can they really go around with a straight face and ask the public to extend their rule? All I see from them is the ultimate negativity of “oh, oh, the only other option might be worse!” Nothing positive. No vision for improvement. No vision for rectifying the decaying mess that has unfolded under their stewardship. Just a desperate reliance upon fear and first-past-the-post.
It’s incredible that people don’t mention the part that closing everything down for lockdown has played in ruining the country’s finances. All major parties were behind it, Labour wanted to lockdown harder for longer (the non existent threat of the ‘Johnson Variant” in the Summer of 21).
It was always going to send the country skint, and it has - we are paying for it now & people who cheered it on shouldn’t moan about it. How is it different to spending on the never never and not wanting to pay it back?
Absolutely but your audience is wrong. Just about everyone on PB condemned out of hand as fanciful and insane if not near-murderous even to whisper the idea that lockdowns were bad for a huge number of reasons including financial ones.
I'm sure your post won't get many likes and anyone who agrees with you should look carefully at their own posting history to see how they responded at the time.
I keep banging on about it (this is, after all, PB) but only @contrarian consistently stated what a calamity lockdown was and would be and boy was he right.
There were plenty saying that Starmer was wrong to go harder, longer on lockdowns. We would have lost another Christmas if it had been down to him.
This is the man man would now have as PM? Colour me unconvinced...
“Johnson Variant” - what a prat. Completely wrong too. Still, at least he’s boring
It's the number one thing that concerns me about a Labour government - what they would do if there was another pandemic. I can't shake off that awful time and the idea of a repeat terrifies me.
Starmer did not have a good Covid crisis and his instincts were troubling. He always seemed to want longer and faster lockdowns, more control and restrictions and seemed to care even less about the economic, educational and social impacts than the government. His position was very similar to Nicola Sturgeon's in Scotland which got a lot of credit at the time because it showed that she "cared" more than Boris. Or something.
Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Not a problem.
There's these things called buses and coaches that can go on motorways for the small minority who have no access to private transport.
Maybe you have heard of them before?
Sadly, the cost of bus travel has increased even while fuel duty has been cut, punishing the disabled, poor and young.
That's if the bus actually exists. 1,500 routes have been cut just since 2021. 10% of all services were cut in the last year. 50% since 2010.
I extend a compromise - no new motorways until bus travel costs are cut to the same extent as fuel duty, and the number of services return to pre-2010 levels?
The one all-day last service through this small town was recently re-routed. We can get to Stansted Airport on one bus. However, getting to either of the two local hospitals requires two buses. We used to be able to get a bus directly to one.
Good morning to all. That’s a greeting, not a comment on the weather, grey and damp.
Good morning too. On the contrary, for a change in Scotland the weather here is bright and sunny, if chilly at night - have had to put the heating on briefly in the morning and evening as it was otherwise too cold for comfort at the desk all day.
Beautiful and Autumnal in South Manchester too. Off to Scotland in a week and a half (Dunkeld) - a few days like this would do very nicely.
Anyway, looking back up this thread - Bart is being a tad obtuse. You COULD get tge bus from Warrington to Manchester or Liverpool or Chester, but 99% of people making those journeys by public transport would take the train, what with Warrington also having really good rail connections to those places.
[Citation Needed] on 99% because the facts don't represent that I believe.
Yes if you want to get from Warrington Town Centre to Manchester City Centre then the train is absolutely fantastic. I've used it myself I'll have you know, when I went to Manchester Christmas Market and wanted to drink so wouldn't drive.
But if you want to go either from or to other places then buses can be better. Want to get from your home, not town centre, to the Trafford Centre for instance? Buses can work very well for that too. There's options and choice either way. Of course cars are far better, but I've met people there before for days out who took a bus rather than drive.
Plus as Rochdale said I'm in favour of building public transport as well as motorways. Indeed I can't see any reason why we couldn't with investment have a Northwest tram network that operates all the way from Liverpool to Manchester and covering all the towns in-between.
The only fanatics here are those who oppose any investment in roads just because they despise roads and cars. I'm not opposing investment in public transport, even though I don't use it.
Fair enough. It has to be said, the bus is an often-overlooked mode of transport and can often work out surprisingly efficient - both halves of this statement are especially true outside of big urban areas, where the lack of congestion can mean a well-planned bus journey is often just as quick as driving.
Buses reduce congestion, of course.
The most stupid people in the UK are drivers who oppose bus lanes.
Don't be silly. There is no reason to reserve an entire lane for a bus that carries 2 people plus the driver on board and is empty then for a few minutes until the next bus uses it.
Just let the bus and cars all the lane, same any other traffic.
Hahaha. Proven.
The only response you have as you know you're talking shit.
There's this wonderful thing called bus stops that can be built, little lay-bys that the bus can pull into when it wants to, then rejoin free flowing traffic.
Hundreds of vehicles per hour using the lane is better than 10 vehicles an hour using the lane.
Check my edit out: People don't use buses when they spend the whole journey stuck in traffic. Which means more people take the car. Which leads to more traffic. And so on
Edinburgh is introducing 24/7 bus lanes shortly.
If you have sufficient road capacity, then traffic isn't a problem so its moot.
Unless I'm at a traffic light I spend almost all of my time driving in town at the speed limit, whether it be 30, 40 or 50mph.
Cars and buses driving at 50mph allows far more throughput of vehicles, people and goods than restricting your lanes and creating traffic jams.
You can magic capacity out of nowhere if you take 50 cars off the road and pop those people on a bus.
Same logic for traffic signals for Trams - 250 people onboard have priority over the drivers.
But the buses don't go from door to door, don't take a direct route, and have to stop to let other people on and off. So they'll always be inferior to driving.
Which is why only 2-3 people are on board, not 50.
You seem to be living in a bizarre universe where congestion is the problem. Try living outside of a city, build lower density, and have enough capacity.
13 years of Tory government and the criminal justice system has collapsed.
Even if your rapist is convicted, they still won't go to prison because there is no space.
May as well not bother having trials. Or reporting crimes. If the state won't do its job and protect us, we'll have to revert to older forms of self-protection.
Bastards.
We haven’t had mail delivered for two weeks. That’s such a trivial thing in comparison to everything else, but it seems to typify the country today.
It's nothing compared to schools literally falling down, seven million people on hospital waiting lists, ambulance waiting times leaping past three quarters of an hour, roads pocked with astonishing numbers of potholes everywhere, a massive and ongoing cost of living crisis, our courts backlogged so much that almost any case now takes literally years (three? four?) to come to trial while police ignore simple burglaries and bicycle thefts other than to give you a crime number for your insurance.
But now they can’t jail any more people, anyway. All in the face of the highest tax burden in generations. But billions have gone to scammers who happen to be friends to the ruling party.
Are Tories proud of this? Can they really go around with a straight face and ask the public to extend their rule? All I see from them is the ultimate negativity of “oh, oh, the only other option might be worse!” Nothing positive. No vision for improvement. No vision for rectifying the decaying mess that has unfolded under their stewardship. Just a desperate reliance upon fear and first-past-the-post.
It’s incredible that people don’t mention the part that closing everything down for lockdown has played in ruining the country’s finances. All major parties were behind it, Labour wanted to lockdown harder for longer (the non existent threat of the ‘Johnson Variant” in the Summer of 21).
It was always going to send the country skint, and it has - we are paying for it now & people who cheered it on shouldn’t moan about it. How is it different to spending on the never never and not wanting to pay it back?
Absolutely but your audience is wrong. Just about everyone on PB condemned out of hand as fanciful and insane if not near-murderous even to whisper the idea that lockdowns were bad for a huge number of reasons including financial ones.
I'm sure your post won't get many likes and anyone who agrees with you should look carefully at their own posting history to see how they responded at the time.
I keep banging on about it (this is, after all, PB) but only @contrarian consistently stated what a calamity lockdown was and would be and boy was he right.
There were plenty saying that Starmer was wrong to go harder, longer on lockdowns. We would have lost another Christmas if it had been down to him.
This is the man man would now have as PM? Colour me unconvinced...
“Johnson Variant” - what a prat. Completely wrong too. Still, at least he’s boring
The Johnson Variant, that was about as twattish as the time he was pictured looking at wallpaper 😂😂
Will be interested if SKS's speech or his subsequent stance on green lighting slaughter in Gaza has any impact on VI.
Suspect both will be popular with his target voter.
I thought his comments were wrong . He should have just stuck to one line re international law . Poor Emily Thornberry trying to defend his comments on Newsnight was embarrassing , talk about sinking .
I would have thought though the bigger impact on VI was Starmers planning comments which were a gift to the Tories . After a good conference the last few days has been poor from Starmer .
I thought people agreed with house building just NIMBY. Those who are interested in all women and children not being subjected to war crimes are no longer SKSs target voter so can't see any negatives there in the short term.
Of course on the latter issue history will not be kind
Starmer really should know international law and there seems to be now an overcompensation for past anti Semitic accusations.
I’m appalled by the deaths on both sides but at the moment this view seems to be viewed as heresy by some. Half of those in Gaza are under 18 , it stands to reason then that by the end of this tragic chapter thousands of children will be killed .
13 years of Tory government and the criminal justice system has collapsed.
Even if your rapist is convicted, they still won't go to prison because there is no space.
May as well not bother having trials. Or reporting crimes. If the state won't do its job and protect us, we'll have to revert to older forms of self-protection.
Bastards.
We haven’t had mail delivered for two weeks. That’s such a trivial thing in comparison to everything else, but it seems to typify the country today.
It's nothing compared to schools literally falling down, seven million people on hospital waiting lists, ambulance waiting times leaping past three quarters of an hour, roads pocked with astonishing numbers of potholes everywhere, a massive and ongoing cost of living crisis, our courts backlogged so much that almost any case now takes literally years (three? four?) to come to trial while police ignore simple burglaries and bicycle thefts other than to give you a crime number for your insurance.
But now they can’t jail any more people, anyway. All in the face of the highest tax burden in generations. But billions have gone to scammers who happen to be friends to the ruling party.
Are Tories proud of this? Can they really go around with a straight face and ask the public to extend their rule? All I see from them is the ultimate negativity of “oh, oh, the only other option might be worse!” Nothing positive. No vision for improvement. No vision for rectifying the decaying mess that has unfolded under their stewardship. Just a desperate reliance upon fear and first-past-the-post.
It’s incredible that people don’t mention the part that closing everything down for lockdown has played in ruining the country’s finances. All major parties were behind it, Labour wanted to lockdown harder for longer (the non existent threat of the ‘Johnson Variant” in the Summer of 21).
It was always going to send the country skint, and it has - we are paying for it now & people who cheered it on shouldn’t moan about it. How is it different to spending on the never never and not wanting to pay it back?
It's equally incredible that those who lament the cost of lockdown continually pretend that not imposing NPIs would have magically avoided the cost and damage. That companies would have taken the impact with no effect. That people would have continued normal life without pause, stepping over those who fell. That restaurants, bars, and clubs would have remained fine (@rcs1000 posted at the time the stats that showed that the UK had higher average footfall throughout 2020 than countries that didn't close restaurants. Strangely, people avoid places where they're likely to become ill). That leaping bankruptcies and huge increases in unemployment, collapsing hospitals, and a legacy of long term illnesses would have been, well, lacking in any effect whatsoever.
It doesn't matter how often you show the effects, the stats, the arguments. It would have been fine. We could have intoned the magic word "Sweden" and all would have gone away.
But we’d have killed off all the really old, or really fat people. Which would have been a huge economic bonus. I mean that quite sincerely
The Drake's attack on Parkrun the only blemish on his record.
I wonder if he just dislikes anything moving at more than 5mph.
Until the last few days, the phenomenon of Western lefties defending barbarism in the name of a desired utopian, egalitarian ideal was a historical abstraction to me.
I had read about Westerners defending Stalin's purges and collectivization campaigns and thought, well, their ideological fervor was probably just amplified by the difficulty of getting good information out of the USSR.
But now I see that's not it.
Then, as now, there was plenty of information to understand what was really going on. It's just that the ideology IS about this, it IS that ends justify the means. It's how we got the Red Terror, the Great Terror and this—Western leftists cheering all the while.
And, if Soviet history is any guide, the only thing that made these can't-make-an-omelet folks reconsider whether that was really true—or if the end was worth it if these were the means—was finding themselves in an NKVD cell and thinking, "There's been a terrible mistake."
By then, of course, it was too late.
If this is the kind of revolution you support, just know: the revolution always eats its young. Always.
As a leftist I can say, honestly, that Stalinism is bad. The USSR was bad. The roughly 60 million killed in the 70 years between 1917 and 1987 was bad.
As a leftist I can also say, honestly, that the British Empire was bad. That imperialism in all forms in bad. The roughly 100 million killed in the 40 years between 1881 and 1920 by the British Empire, was bad.
I will never be treated as if I sincerely believe the first one if I ever make a comment about how the industrialisation of the USSR from serfdom under the Tsar to beating the Nazi war machine under Stalin was still pretty impressive, as was the increase in literacy and numeracy rates and the relative decline in poverty. Whereas people will legitimately defend the second statement by saying "well, we gave them the railways and democracy, so it was fine".
Where does the 100 million come from ?
I guess if you add in WWI and subsequent epidemics, although I don't think they can be laid entirely at the door of the British Empire.
The 100 million deaths seems to be attributed to India alone. Using similar methodologies as to how the USSR count is come to (although some estimates of the USSR death count includes the numbers of Nazi soldiers they killed - which I do not think is reasonable to add).
That all seems pretty fanciful. That would imply that the British killed off 25% of India's population in those 39 years.
It's just made up twaddle.
My bad. It would imply that the British killed off one third to forty per cent of India's population, in just 39 years.
100 million in those forty years is a wild exaggeration, but might be close to the total numbers that died during famines under British rule in India from the C18th to the C20th. That forty year period doesn’t even include the “Great Famine” of 1876/1878 when 8million people are believed to have died.
Obviously a counter to that is that the region suffered famines long before British rule, but even a cursory reading of history reveals that famines under earlier British rule seem to have been much worse, often exacerbated by Imperial policies & taxes. Rather like the famine in Ireland in the C19th, British rulers seem to have cared little for the people they were notionally in charge of & were more interested in tax income than they were in saving lives.
Tbf the effect of British colonisation on the Indian population was child’s play compared to Australia and its aboriginal peoples. That’s how you kill off a huge percentage of an indigenous population.
Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Not a problem.
There's these things called buses and coaches that can go on motorways for the small minority who have no access to private transport.
Maybe you have heard of them before?
Sadly, the cost of bus travel has increased even while fuel duty has been cut, punishing the disabled, poor and young.
That's if the bus actually exists. 1,500 routes have been cut just since 2021. 10% of all services were cut in the last year. 50% since 2010.
I extend a compromise - no new motorways until bus travel costs are cut to the same extent as fuel duty, and the number of services return to pre-2010 levels?
The one all-day last service through this small town was recently re-routed. We can get to Stansted Airport on one bus. However, getting to either of the two local hospitals requires two buses. We used to be able to get a bus directly to one.
Good morning to all. That’s a greeting, not a comment on the weather, grey and damp.
Good morning too. On the contrary, for a change in Scotland the weather here is bright and sunny, if chilly at night - have had to put the heating on briefly in the morning and evening as it was otherwise too cold for comfort at the desk all day.
Beautiful and Autumnal in South Manchester too. Off to Scotland in a week and a half (Dunkeld) - a few days like this would do very nicely.
Anyway, looking back up this thread - Bart is being a tad obtuse. You COULD get tge bus from Warrington to Manchester or Liverpool or Chester, but 99% of people making those journeys by public transport would take the train, what with Warrington also having really good rail connections to those places.
[Citation Needed] on 99% because the facts don't represent that I believe.
Yes if you want to get from Warrington Town Centre to Manchester City Centre then the train is absolutely fantastic. I've used it myself I'll have you know, when I went to Manchester Christmas Market and wanted to drink so wouldn't drive.
But if you want to go either from or to other places then buses can be better. Want to get from your home, not town centre, to the Trafford Centre for instance? Buses can work very well for that too. There's options and choice either way. Of course cars are far better, but I've met people there before for days out who took a bus rather than drive.
Plus as Rochdale said I'm in favour of building public transport as well as motorways. Indeed I can't see any reason why we couldn't with investment have a Northwest tram network that operates all the way from Liverpool to Manchester and covering all the towns in-between.
The only fanatics here are those who oppose any investment in roads just because they despise roads and cars. I'm not opposing investment in public transport, even though I don't use it.
Fair enough. It has to be said, the bus is an often-overlooked mode of transport and can often work out surprisingly efficient - both halves of this statement are especially true outside of big urban areas, where the lack of congestion can mean a well-planned bus journey is often just as quick as driving.
Buses reduce congestion, of course.
The most stupid people in the UK are drivers who oppose bus lanes.
Don't be silly. There is no reason to reserve an entire lane for a bus that carries 2 people plus the driver on board and is empty then for a few minutes until the next bus uses it.
Just let the bus and cars all the lane, same any other traffic.
Hahaha. Proven.
The only response you have as you know you're talking shit.
There's this wonderful thing called bus stops that can be built, little lay-bys that the bus can pull into when it wants to, then rejoin free flowing traffic.
Hundreds of vehicles per hour using the lane is better than 10 vehicles an hour using the lane.
Check my edit out: People don't use buses when they spend the whole journey stuck in traffic. Which means more people take the car. Which leads to more traffic. And so on
Edinburgh is introducing 24/7 bus lanes shortly.
If you have sufficient road capacity, then traffic isn't a problem so its moot.
Unless I'm at a traffic light I spend almost all of my time driving in town at the speed limit, whether it be 30, 40 or 50mph.
Cars and buses driving at 50mph allows far more throughput of vehicles, people and goods than restricting your lanes and creating traffic jams.
You can magic capacity out of nowhere if you take 50 cars off the road and pop those people on a bus.
Same logic for traffic signals for Trams - 250 people onboard have priority over the drivers.
But the buses don't go from door to door, don't take a direct route, and have to stop to let other people on and off. So they'll always be inferior to driving.
Which is why only 2-3 people are on board, not 50.
You seem to be living in a bizarre universe where congestion is the problem. Try living outside of a city, build lower density, and have enough capacity.
If congestion isn't a problem, why do you need more roads?
Buses round me are completely packed. But then we don't have the terrible bus service you have in Warrington, much maligned in your local paper.
Some good news! Those with long memories may recall me mentioning my involvement in a collision last September when another car drove into the side of me as I was reversing into my drive. Various posters were helpful and supportive - certainly there were helpful contributions from @ydoethur and @Stocky among others, for which I was very grateful. Anyway, I've just heard that, thirteen months after the incident after various wranglings between unmotivated solicitors from either side, the other party has admitted responsibilty. Hooray! How much of the excessive insurance premiums I've had to pay over the past year I'll get back, and whether I get my no claims bonus back, I don't know - but I have the warm feeling of being in the right. Phew!
13 years of Tory government and the criminal justice system has collapsed.
Even if your rapist is convicted, they still won't go to prison because there is no space.
May as well not bother having trials. Or reporting crimes. If the state won't do its job and protect us, we'll have to revert to older forms of self-protection.
Bastards.
We haven’t had mail delivered for two weeks. That’s such a trivial thing in comparison to everything else, but it seems to typify the country today.
It's nothing compared to schools literally falling down, seven million people on hospital waiting lists, ambulance waiting times leaping past three quarters of an hour, roads pocked with astonishing numbers of potholes everywhere, a massive and ongoing cost of living crisis, our courts backlogged so much that almost any case now takes literally years (three? four?) to come to trial while police ignore simple burglaries and bicycle thefts other than to give you a crime number for your insurance.
But now they can’t jail any more people, anyway. All in the face of the highest tax burden in generations. But billions have gone to scammers who happen to be friends to the ruling party.
Are Tories proud of this? Can they really go around with a straight face and ask the public to extend their rule? All I see from them is the ultimate negativity of “oh, oh, the only other option might be worse!” Nothing positive. No vision for improvement. No vision for rectifying the decaying mess that has unfolded under their stewardship. Just a desperate reliance upon fear and first-past-the-post.
It’s incredible that people don’t mention the part that closing everything down for lockdown has played in ruining the country’s finances. All major parties were behind it, Labour wanted to lockdown harder for longer (the non existent threat of the ‘Johnson Variant” in the Summer of 21).
It was always going to send the country skint, and it has - we are paying for it now & people who cheered it on shouldn’t moan about it. How is it different to spending on the never never and not wanting to pay it back?
Absolutely but your audience is wrong. Just about everyone on PB condemned out of hand as fanciful and insane if not near-murderous even to whisper the idea that lockdowns were bad for a huge number of reasons including financial ones.
I'm sure your post won't get many likes and anyone who agrees with you should look carefully at their own posting history to see how they responded at the time.
I keep banging on about it (this is, after all, PB) but only @contrarian consistently stated what a calamity lockdown was and would be and boy was he right.
There were plenty saying that Starmer was wrong to go harder, longer on lockdowns. We would have lost another Christmas if it had been down to him.
This is the man man would now have as PM? Colour me unconvinced...
“Johnson Variant” - what a prat. Completely wrong too. Still, at least he’s boring
It's the number one thing that concerns me about a Labour government - what they would do if there was another pandemic. I can't shake off that awful time and the idea of a repeat terrifies me.
Starmer did not have a good Covid crisis and his instincts were troubling. He always seemed to want longer and faster lockdowns, more control and restrictions and seemed to care even less about the economic, educational and social impacts than the government. His position was very similar to Nicola Sturgeon's in Scotland which got a lot of credit at the time because it showed that she "cared" more than Boris. Or something.
It troubles me.
It’s not controversial to say that pretty much everyone and the Downing St cat cared more than Boris,
Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Not a problem.
There's these things called buses and coaches that can go on motorways for the small minority who have no access to private transport.
Maybe you have heard of them before?
Sadly, the cost of bus travel has increased even while fuel duty has been cut, punishing the disabled, poor and young.
That's if the bus actually exists. 1,500 routes have been cut just since 2021. 10% of all services were cut in the last year. 50% since 2010.
I extend a compromise - no new motorways until bus travel costs are cut to the same extent as fuel duty, and the number of services return to pre-2010 levels?
The one all-day last service through this small town was recently re-routed. We can get to Stansted Airport on one bus. However, getting to either of the two local hospitals requires two buses. We used to be able to get a bus directly to one.
Good morning to all. That’s a greeting, not a comment on the weather, grey and damp.
Good morning too. On the contrary, for a change in Scotland the weather here is bright and sunny, if chilly at night - have had to put the heating on briefly in the morning and evening as it was otherwise too cold for comfort at the desk all day.
Beautiful and Autumnal in South Manchester too. Off to Scotland in a week and a half (Dunkeld) - a few days like this would do very nicely.
Anyway, looking back up this thread - Bart is being a tad obtuse. You COULD get tge bus from Warrington to Manchester or Liverpool or Chester, but 99% of people making those journeys by public transport would take the train, what with Warrington also having really good rail connections to those places.
[Citation Needed] on 99% because the facts don't represent that I believe.
Yes if you want to get from Warrington Town Centre to Manchester City Centre then the train is absolutely fantastic. I've used it myself I'll have you know, when I went to Manchester Christmas Market and wanted to drink so wouldn't drive.
But if you want to go either from or to other places then buses can be better. Want to get from your home, not town centre, to the Trafford Centre for instance? Buses can work very well for that too. There's options and choice either way. Of course cars are far better, but I've met people there before for days out who took a bus rather than drive.
Plus as Rochdale said I'm in favour of building public transport as well as motorways. Indeed I can't see any reason why we couldn't with investment have a Northwest tram network that operates all the way from Liverpool to Manchester and covering all the towns in-between.
The only fanatics here are those who oppose any investment in roads just because they despise roads and cars. I'm not opposing investment in public transport, even though I don't use it.
Fair enough. It has to be said, the bus is an often-overlooked mode of transport and can often work out surprisingly efficient - both halves of this statement are especially true outside of big urban areas, where the lack of congestion can mean a well-planned bus journey is often just as quick as driving.
Buses reduce congestion, of course.
The most stupid people in the UK are drivers who oppose bus lanes.
Don't be silly. There is no reason to reserve an entire lane for a bus that carries 2 people plus the driver on board and is empty then for a few minutes until the next bus uses it.
Just let the bus and cars all the lane, same any other traffic.
Hahaha. Proven.
The only response you have as you know you're talking shit.
There's this wonderful thing called bus stops that can be built, little lay-bys that the bus can pull into when it wants to, then rejoin free flowing traffic.
Hundreds of vehicles per hour using the lane is better than 10 vehicles an hour using the lane.
Check my edit out: People don't use buses when they spend the whole journey stuck in traffic. Which means more people take the car. Which leads to more traffic. And so on
Edinburgh is introducing 24/7 bus lanes shortly.
If you have sufficient road capacity, then traffic isn't a problem so its moot.
Unless I'm at a traffic light I spend almost all of my time driving in town at the speed limit, whether it be 30, 40 or 50mph.
Cars and buses driving at 50mph allows far more throughput of vehicles, people and goods than restricting your lanes and creating traffic jams.
You can magic capacity out of nowhere if you take 50 cars off the road and pop those people on a bus.
Same logic for traffic signals for Trams - 250 people onboard have priority over the drivers.
But the buses don't go from door to door, don't take a direct route, and have to stop to let other people on and off. So they'll always be inferior to driving.
Which is why only 2-3 people are on board, not 50.
You seem to be living in a bizarre universe where congestion is the problem. Try living outside of a city, build lower density, and have enough capacity.
If congestion isn't a problem, why do you need more roads?
Buses round me are completely packed. But then we don't have the terrible bus service you have in Warrington, much maligned in your local paper.
Agreed. The problem with Lothian Buses *is* the idiots in cars getting in the way, often single occupiers of HMMWVs (High Mass Morningside Wheeled Vehicles).
Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Not a problem.
There's these things called buses and coaches that can go on motorways for the small minority who have no access to private transport.
Maybe you have heard of them before?
Sadly, the cost of bus travel has increased even while fuel duty has been cut, punishing the disabled, poor and young.
That's if the bus actually exists. 1,500 routes have been cut just since 2021. 10% of all services were cut in the last year. 50% since 2010.
I extend a compromise - no new motorways until bus travel costs are cut to the same extent as fuel duty, and the number of services return to pre-2010 levels?
The one all-day last service through this small town was recently re-routed. We can get to Stansted Airport on one bus. However, getting to either of the two local hospitals requires two buses. We used to be able to get a bus directly to one.
Good morning to all. That’s a greeting, not a comment on the weather, grey and damp.
Good morning too. On the contrary, for a change in Scotland the weather here is bright and sunny, if chilly at night - have had to put the heating on briefly in the morning and evening as it was otherwise too cold for comfort at the desk all day.
Beautiful and Autumnal in South Manchester too. Off to Scotland in a week and a half (Dunkeld) - a few days like this would do very nicely.
Anyway, looking back up this thread - Bart is being a tad obtuse. You COULD get tge bus from Warrington to Manchester or Liverpool or Chester, but 99% of people making those journeys by public transport would take the train, what with Warrington also having really good rail connections to those places.
[Citation Needed] on 99% because the facts don't represent that I believe.
Yes if you want to get from Warrington Town Centre to Manchester City Centre then the train is absolutely fantastic. I've used it myself I'll have you know, when I went to Manchester Christmas Market and wanted to drink so wouldn't drive.
But if you want to go either from or to other places then buses can be better. Want to get from your home, not town centre, to the Trafford Centre for instance? Buses can work very well for that too. There's options and choice either way. Of course cars are far better, but I've met people there before for days out who took a bus rather than drive.
Plus as Rochdale said I'm in favour of building public transport as well as motorways. Indeed I can't see any reason why we couldn't with investment have a Northwest tram network that operates all the way from Liverpool to Manchester and covering all the towns in-between.
The only fanatics here are those who oppose any investment in roads just because they despise roads and cars. I'm not opposing investment in public transport, even though I don't use it.
Fair enough. It has to be said, the bus is an often-overlooked mode of transport and can often work out surprisingly efficient - both halves of this statement are especially true outside of big urban areas, where the lack of congestion can mean a well-planned bus journey is often just as quick as driving.
Buses reduce congestion, of course.
The most stupid people in the UK are drivers who oppose bus lanes.
Don't be silly. There is no reason to reserve an entire lane for a bus that carries 2 people plus the driver on board and is empty then for a few minutes until the next bus uses it.
Just let the bus and cars all the lane, same any other traffic.
Hahaha. Proven.
The only response you have as you know you're talking shit.
There's this wonderful thing called bus stops that can be built, little lay-bys that the bus can pull into when it wants to, then rejoin free flowing traffic.
Hundreds of vehicles per hour using the lane is better than 10 vehicles an hour using the lane.
Check my edit out: People don't use buses when they spend the whole journey stuck in traffic. Which means more people take the car. Which leads to more traffic. And so on
Edinburgh is introducing 24/7 bus lanes shortly.
If you have sufficient road capacity, then traffic isn't a problem so its moot.
Unless I'm at a traffic light I spend almost all of my time driving in town at the speed limit, whether it be 30, 40 or 50mph.
Cars and buses driving at 50mph allows far more throughput of vehicles, people and goods than restricting your lanes and creating traffic jams.
You can magic capacity out of nowhere if you take 50 cars off the road and pop those people on a bus.
Same logic for traffic signals for Trams - 250 people onboard have priority over the drivers.
But the buses don't go from door to door, don't take a direct route, and have to stop to let other people on and off. So they'll always be inferior to driving.
Which is why only 2-3 people are on board, not 50.
You seem to be living in a bizarre universe where congestion is the problem. Try living outside of a city, build lower density, and have enough capacity.
If congestion isn't a problem, why do you need more roads?
Buses round me are completely packed. But then we don't have the terrible bus service you have in Warrington, much maligned in your local paper.
Agreed. The problem with Lothian Buses *is* the idiots in cars getting in the way, often single occupiers of HMMWVs (High Mass Morningside Wheeled Vehicles).
Even when you have a bus lane, you still have SUV man parked in it because the fine is so small.
Until the last few days, the phenomenon of Western lefties defending barbarism in the name of a desired utopian, egalitarian ideal was a historical abstraction to me.
I had read about Westerners defending Stalin's purges and collectivization campaigns and thought, well, their ideological fervor was probably just amplified by the difficulty of getting good information out of the USSR.
But now I see that's not it.
Then, as now, there was plenty of information to understand what was really going on. It's just that the ideology IS about this, it IS that ends justify the means. It's how we got the Red Terror, the Great Terror and this—Western leftists cheering all the while.
And, if Soviet history is any guide, the only thing that made these can't-make-an-omelet folks reconsider whether that was really true—or if the end was worth it if these were the means—was finding themselves in an NKVD cell and thinking, "There's been a terrible mistake."
By then, of course, it was too late.
If this is the kind of revolution you support, just know: the revolution always eats its young. Always.
As a leftist I can say, honestly, that Stalinism is bad. The USSR was bad. The roughly 60 million killed in the 70 years between 1917 and 1987 was bad.
As a leftist I can also say, honestly, that the British Empire was bad. That imperialism in all forms in bad. The roughly 100 million killed in the 40 years between 1881 and 1920 by the British Empire, was bad.
I will never be treated as if I sincerely believe the first one if I ever make a comment about how the industrialisation of the USSR from serfdom under the Tsar to beating the Nazi war machine under Stalin was still pretty impressive, as was the increase in literacy and numeracy rates and the relative decline in poverty. Whereas people will legitimately defend the second statement by saying "well, we gave them the railways and democracy, so it was fine".
Where does the 100 million come from ?
I guess if you add in WWI and subsequent epidemics, although I don't think they can be laid entirely at the door of the British Empire.
The 100 million deaths seems to be attributed to India alone. Using similar methodologies as to how the USSR count is come to (although some estimates of the USSR death count includes the numbers of Nazi soldiers they killed - which I do not think is reasonable to add).
That all seems pretty fanciful. That would imply that the British killed off 25% of India's population in those 39 years.
It's just made up twaddle.
My bad. It would imply that the British killed off one third to forty per cent of India's population, in just 39 years.
100 million in those forty years is a wild exaggeration, but might be close to the total numbers that died during famines under British rule in India from the C18th to the C20th. That forty year period doesn’t even include the “Great Famine” of 1876/1878 when 8million people are believed to have died.
Obviously a counter to that is that the region suffered famines long before British rule, but even a cursory reading of history reveals that famines under earlier British rule seem to have been much worse, often exacerbated by Imperial policies & taxes. Rather like the famine in Ireland in the C19th, British rulers seem to have cared little for the people they were notionally in charge of & were more interested in tax income than they were in saving lives.
Tbf the effect of British colonisation on the Indian population was child’s play compared to Australia and its aboriginal peoples. That’s how you kill off a huge percentage of an indigenous population.
It was an absolute tragedy for the aborigines. But, if you read the history - and my Aussie daughter’s grandfather is an expert - it was never the intention of the British “settlers” (with the horrible exception of Tasmania). Aboriginal society simply collapsed when confronted with a much more advanced civilisation
It’s quite a warning as we look at the possible first encounter of humanity with advanced AI. This decade
Until the last few days, the phenomenon of Western lefties defending barbarism in the name of a desired utopian, egalitarian ideal was a historical abstraction to me.
I had read about Westerners defending Stalin's purges and collectivization campaigns and thought, well, their ideological fervor was probably just amplified by the difficulty of getting good information out of the USSR.
But now I see that's not it.
Then, as now, there was plenty of information to understand what was really going on. It's just that the ideology IS about this, it IS that ends justify the means. It's how we got the Red Terror, the Great Terror and this—Western leftists cheering all the while.
And, if Soviet history is any guide, the only thing that made these can't-make-an-omelet folks reconsider whether that was really true—or if the end was worth it if these were the means—was finding themselves in an NKVD cell and thinking, "There's been a terrible mistake."
By then, of course, it was too late.
If this is the kind of revolution you support, just know: the revolution always eats its young. Always.
As a leftist I can say, honestly, that Stalinism is bad. The USSR was bad. The roughly 60 million killed in the 70 years between 1917 and 1987 was bad.
As a leftist I can also say, honestly, that the British Empire was bad. That imperialism in all forms in bad. The roughly 100 million killed in the 40 years between 1881 and 1920 by the British Empire, was bad.
I will never be treated as if I sincerely believe the first one if I ever make a comment about how the industrialisation of the USSR from serfdom under the Tsar to beating the Nazi war machine under Stalin was still pretty impressive, as was the increase in literacy and numeracy rates and the relative decline in poverty. Whereas people will legitimately defend the second statement by saying "well, we gave them the railways and democracy, so it was fine".
Where does the 100 million come from ?
I guess if you add in WWI and subsequent epidemics, although I don't think they can be laid entirely at the door of the British Empire.
The 100 million deaths seems to be attributed to India alone. Using similar methodologies as to how the USSR count is come to (although some estimates of the USSR death count includes the numbers of Nazi soldiers they killed - which I do not think is reasonable to add).
That all seems pretty fanciful. That would imply that the British killed off 25% of India's population in those 39 years.
It's just made up twaddle.
My bad. It would imply that the British killed off one third to forty per cent of India's population, in just 39 years.
Until the last few days, the phenomenon of Western lefties defending barbarism in the name of a desired utopian, egalitarian ideal was a historical abstraction to me.
I had read about Westerners defending Stalin's purges and collectivization campaigns and thought, well, their ideological fervor was probably just amplified by the difficulty of getting good information out of the USSR.
But now I see that's not it.
Then, as now, there was plenty of information to understand what was really going on. It's just that the ideology IS about this, it IS that ends justify the means. It's how we got the Red Terror, the Great Terror and this—Western leftists cheering all the while.
And, if Soviet history is any guide, the only thing that made these can't-make-an-omelet folks reconsider whether that was really true—or if the end was worth it if these were the means—was finding themselves in an NKVD cell and thinking, "There's been a terrible mistake."
By then, of course, it was too late.
If this is the kind of revolution you support, just know: the revolution always eats its young. Always.
As a leftist I can say, honestly, that Stalinism is bad. The USSR was bad. The roughly 60 million killed in the 70 years between 1917 and 1987 was bad.
As a leftist I can also say, honestly, that the British Empire was bad. That imperialism in all forms in bad. The roughly 100 million killed in the 40 years between 1881 and 1920 by the British Empire, was bad.
I will never be treated as if I sincerely believe the first one if I ever make a comment about how the industrialisation of the USSR from serfdom under the Tsar to beating the Nazi war machine under Stalin was still pretty impressive, as was the increase in literacy and numeracy rates and the relative decline in poverty. Whereas people will legitimately defend the second statement by saying "well, we gave them the railways and democracy, so it was fine".
Where does the 100 million come from ?
I guess if you add in WWI and subsequent epidemics, although I don't think they can be laid entirely at the door of the British Empire.
The 100 million deaths seems to be attributed to India alone. Using similar methodologies as to how the USSR count is come to (although some estimates of the USSR death count includes the numbers of Nazi soldiers they killed - which I do not think is reasonable to add).
That all seems pretty fanciful. That would imply that the British killed off 25% of India's population in those 39 years.
It's just made up twaddle.
My bad. It would imply that the British killed off one third to forty per cent of India's population, in just 39 years.
100 million in those forty years is a wild exaggeration, but might be close to the total numbers that died during famines under British rule in India from the C18th to the C20th. That forty year period doesn’t even include the “Great Famine” of 1876/1878 when 8million people are believed to have died.
Obviously a counter to that is that the region suffered famines long before British rule, but even a cursory reading of history reveals that famines under earlier British rule seem to have been much worse, often exacerbated by Imperial policies & taxes. Rather like the famine in Ireland in the C19th, British rulers seem to have cared little for the people they were notionally in charge of & were more interested in tax income than they were in saving lives.
Tbf the effect of British colonisation on the Indian population was child’s play compared to Australia and its aboriginal peoples. That’s how you kill off a huge percentage of an indigenous population.
It was an absolute tragedy for the aborigines. But, if you read the history - and my Aussie daughter’s grandfather is an expert - it was never the intention of the British “settlers” (with the horrible exception of Tasmania). Aboriginal society simply collapsed when confronted with a much more advanced civilisation
It’s quite a warning as we look at the possible first encounter of humanity with advanced AI. This decade
I know you bang on about this, but what do you expect AI to actually do? Did you spend too long watching Terminator as a child? I mean the AI needs electricity to keep being 'alive' and we can pretty easily pull the plug.
13 years of Tory government and the criminal justice system has collapsed.
Even if your rapist is convicted, they still won't go to prison because there is no space.
May as well not bother having trials. Or reporting crimes. If the state won't do its job and protect us, we'll have to revert to older forms of self-protection.
Bastards.
We haven’t had mail delivered for two weeks. That’s such a trivial thing in comparison to everything else, but it seems to typify the country today.
It's nothing compared to schools literally falling down, seven million people on hospital waiting lists, ambulance waiting times leaping past three quarters of an hour, roads pocked with astonishing numbers of potholes everywhere, a massive and ongoing cost of living crisis, our courts backlogged so much that almost any case now takes literally years (three? four?) to come to trial while police ignore simple burglaries and bicycle thefts other than to give you a crime number for your insurance.
But now they can’t jail any more people, anyway. All in the face of the highest tax burden in generations. But billions have gone to scammers who happen to be friends to the ruling party.
Are Tories proud of this? Can they really go around with a straight face and ask the public to extend their rule? All I see from them is the ultimate negativity of “oh, oh, the only other option might be worse!” Nothing positive. No vision for improvement. No vision for rectifying the decaying mess that has unfolded under their stewardship. Just a desperate reliance upon fear and first-past-the-post.
It’s incredible that people don’t mention the part that closing everything down for lockdown has played in ruining the country’s finances. All major parties were behind it, Labour wanted to lockdown harder for longer (the non existent threat of the ‘Johnson Variant” in the Summer of 21).
It was always going to send the country skint, and it has - we are paying for it now & people who cheered it on shouldn’t moan about it. How is it different to spending on the never never and not wanting to pay it back?
It's equally incredible that those who lament the cost of lockdown continually pretend that not imposing NPIs would have magically avoided the cost and damage. That companies would have taken the impact with no effect. That people would have continued normal life without pause, stepping over those who fell. That restaurants, bars, and clubs would have remained fine (@rcs1000 posted at the time the stats that showed that the UK had higher average footfall throughout 2020 than countries that didn't close restaurants. Strangely, people avoid places where they're likely to become ill). That leaping bankruptcies and huge increases in unemployment, collapsing hospitals, and a legacy of long term illnesses would have been, well, lacking in any effect whatsoever.
It doesn't matter how often you show the effects, the stats, the arguments. It would have been fine. We could have intoned the magic word "Sweden" and all would have gone away.
But we’d have killed off all the really old, or really fat people. Which would have been a huge economic bonus. I mean that quite sincerely
The Drake's attack on Parkrun the only blemish on his record.
I wonder if he just dislikes anything moving at more than 5mph.
I wonder whether the government could ever have a lockdown again in the same way.
There would certainly be significant resistance regardless of the rights and wrongs of it.
Until the last few days, the phenomenon of Western lefties defending barbarism in the name of a desired utopian, egalitarian ideal was a historical abstraction to me.
I had read about Westerners defending Stalin's purges and collectivization campaigns and thought, well, their ideological fervor was probably just amplified by the difficulty of getting good information out of the USSR.
But now I see that's not it.
Then, as now, there was plenty of information to understand what was really going on. It's just that the ideology IS about this, it IS that ends justify the means. It's how we got the Red Terror, the Great Terror and this—Western leftists cheering all the while.
And, if Soviet history is any guide, the only thing that made these can't-make-an-omelet folks reconsider whether that was really true—or if the end was worth it if these were the means—was finding themselves in an NKVD cell and thinking, "There's been a terrible mistake."
By then, of course, it was too late.
If this is the kind of revolution you support, just know: the revolution always eats its young. Always.
As a leftist I can say, honestly, that Stalinism is bad. The USSR was bad. The roughly 60 million killed in the 70 years between 1917 and 1987 was bad.
As a leftist I can also say, honestly, that the British Empire was bad. That imperialism in all forms in bad. The roughly 100 million killed in the 40 years between 1881 and 1920 by the British Empire, was bad.
I will never be treated as if I sincerely believe the first one if I ever make a comment about how the industrialisation of the USSR from serfdom under the Tsar to beating the Nazi war machine under Stalin was still pretty impressive, as was the increase in literacy and numeracy rates and the relative decline in poverty. Whereas people will legitimately defend the second statement by saying "well, we gave them the railways and democracy, so it was fine".
Where does the 100 million come from ?
I guess if you add in WWI and subsequent epidemics, although I don't think they can be laid entirely at the door of the British Empire.
The 100 million deaths seems to be attributed to India alone. Using similar methodologies as to how the USSR count is come to (although some estimates of the USSR death count includes the numbers of Nazi soldiers they killed - which I do not think is reasonable to add).
That all seems pretty fanciful. That would imply that the British killed off 25% of India's population in those 39 years.
It's just made up twaddle.
My bad. It would imply that the British killed off one third to forty per cent of India's population, in just 39 years.
100 million in those forty years is a wild exaggeration, but might be close to the total numbers that died during famines under British rule in India from the C18th to the C20th. That forty year period doesn’t even include the “Great Famine” of 1876/1878 when 8million people are believed to have died.
Obviously a counter to that is that the region suffered famines long before British rule, but even a cursory reading of history reveals that famines under earlier British rule seem to have been much worse, often exacerbated by Imperial policies & taxes. Rather like the famine in Ireland in the C19th, British rulers seem to have cared little for the people they were notionally in charge of & were more interested in tax income than they were in saving lives.
NB: The 100million number seems to come from trying to measure excess deaths: What they are really claiming is that if India was not being held back by colonialist expropriation of wealth, the economy would have been able to feed it’s population even in times of famine. Instead what happened was that agricultural workers lost their jobs in times of famine & were unable to afford to buy what food their was, as the available crops were being exported to the UK out of taxed national income. Without that expropriation, more wealth would have been kept locally & these workers would have been able to afford to buy food during difficult times. Ironically, the period from 1880 to 1920 is when the British Raj had realised that this was the major cause of deaths during famines & had started major works programs to provide income to out of work agricultural labourers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Famine_Codes
It boils down (I think) to a historical position on whether India would have developed differently without the British Raj in power: would have been replaced by an equivalent local regime which extracted just as much wealth & resources for themselves at the expense of the people, or would the economy have developed in a different direction?
There’s no real question that the taxes imposed by the Raj extracted wealth from India & that loss came at a price that was paid ultimately by ordinary Indian people? They didn’t to trade freely with the UK in return after all.
It's pretty well indisputable that the economy of the subcontinent would have developed differently, but quite how it would have done seems utterly imponderable to me, FWIW. It doesn't seem particularly controversial, though, to argue that nations which remained independent during the industrial revolution fared rather better than those which became part of the various European empires ?
Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Not a problem.
There's these things called buses and coaches that can go on motorways for the small minority who have no access to private transport.
Maybe you have heard of them before?
Sadly, the cost of bus travel has increased even while fuel duty has been cut, punishing the disabled, poor and young.
That's if the bus actually exists. 1,500 routes have been cut just since 2021. 10% of all services were cut in the last year. 50% since 2010.
I extend a compromise - no new motorways until bus travel costs are cut to the same extent as fuel duty, and the number of services return to pre-2010 levels?
The one all-day last service through this small town was recently re-routed. We can get to Stansted Airport on one bus. However, getting to either of the two local hospitals requires two buses. We used to be able to get a bus directly to one.
Good morning to all. That’s a greeting, not a comment on the weather, grey and damp.
Good morning too. On the contrary, for a change in Scotland the weather here is bright and sunny, if chilly at night - have had to put the heating on briefly in the morning and evening as it was otherwise too cold for comfort at the desk all day.
Beautiful and Autumnal in South Manchester too. Off to Scotland in a week and a half (Dunkeld) - a few days like this would do very nicely.
Anyway, looking back up this thread - Bart is being a tad obtuse. You COULD get tge bus from Warrington to Manchester or Liverpool or Chester, but 99% of people making those journeys by public transport would take the train, what with Warrington also having really good rail connections to those places.
[Citation Needed] on 99% because the facts don't represent that I believe.
Yes if you want to get from Warrington Town Centre to Manchester City Centre then the train is absolutely fantastic. I've used it myself I'll have you know, when I went to Manchester Christmas Market and wanted to drink so wouldn't drive.
But if you want to go either from or to other places then buses can be better. Want to get from your home, not town centre, to the Trafford Centre for instance? Buses can work very well for that too. There's options and choice either way. Of course cars are far better, but I've met people there before for days out who took a bus rather than drive.
Plus as Rochdale said I'm in favour of building public transport as well as motorways. Indeed I can't see any reason why we couldn't with investment have a Northwest tram network that operates all the way from Liverpool to Manchester and covering all the towns in-between.
The only fanatics here are those who oppose any investment in roads just because they despise roads and cars. I'm not opposing investment in public transport, even though I don't use it.
Fair enough. It has to be said, the bus is an often-overlooked mode of transport and can often work out surprisingly efficient - both halves of this statement are especially true outside of big urban areas, where the lack of congestion can mean a well-planned bus journey is often just as quick as driving.
Buses reduce congestion, of course.
The most stupid people in the UK are drivers who oppose bus lanes.
Don't be silly. There is no reason to reserve an entire lane for a bus that carries 2 people plus the driver on board and is empty then for a few minutes until the next bus uses it.
Just let the bus and cars all the lane, same any other traffic.
Hahaha. Proven.
The only response you have as you know you're talking shit.
There's this wonderful thing called bus stops that can be built, little lay-bys that the bus can pull into when it wants to, then rejoin free flowing traffic.
Hundreds of vehicles per hour using the lane is better than 10 vehicles an hour using the lane.
Check my edit out: People don't use buses when they spend the whole journey stuck in traffic. Which means more people take the car. Which leads to more traffic. And so on
Edinburgh is introducing 24/7 bus lanes shortly.
If you have sufficient road capacity, then traffic isn't a problem so its moot.
Unless I'm at a traffic light I spend almost all of my time driving in town at the speed limit, whether it be 30, 40 or 50mph.
Cars and buses driving at 50mph allows far more throughput of vehicles, people and goods than restricting your lanes and creating traffic jams.
You can magic capacity out of nowhere if you take 50 cars off the road and pop those people on a bus.
Same logic for traffic signals for Trams - 250 people onboard have priority over the drivers.
But the buses don't go from door to door, don't take a direct route, and have to stop to let other people on and off. So they'll always be inferior to driving.
Which is why only 2-3 people are on board, not 50.
You seem to be living in a bizarre universe where congestion is the problem. Try living outside of a city, build lower density, and have enough capacity.
If congestion isn't a problem, why do you need more roads?
Buses round me are completely packed. But then we don't have the terrible bus service you have in Warrington, much maligned in your local paper.
Have you not been paying attention?
We need more roads to make more direct routes from point to point. As well as to release capacity by allowing cars to travel fast wherever they're not intending to ultimately be, and allowing local roads to only serve local traffic. The default speed of vehicles moving around should be 50-70mph if they're not in the first or last mile of their journey most of the time.
I don't advocate widening motorways, I see it as a mostly pointless exercise.
I advocate building new roads where they don't currently exist.
Don't widen the M6, build a new M59, a new M580 etc
Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Not a problem.
There's these things called buses and coaches that can go on motorways for the small minority who have no access to private transport.
Maybe you have heard of them before?
Sadly, the cost of bus travel has increased even while fuel duty has been cut, punishing the disabled, poor and young.
That's if the bus actually exists. 1,500 routes have been cut just since 2021. 10% of all services were cut in the last year. 50% since 2010.
I extend a compromise - no new motorways until bus travel costs are cut to the same extent as fuel duty, and the number of services return to pre-2010 levels?
The one all-day last service through this small town was recently re-routed. We can get to Stansted Airport on one bus. However, getting to either of the two local hospitals requires two buses. We used to be able to get a bus directly to one.
Good morning to all. That’s a greeting, not a comment on the weather, grey and damp.
Good morning too. On the contrary, for a change in Scotland the weather here is bright and sunny, if chilly at night - have had to put the heating on briefly in the morning and evening as it was otherwise too cold for comfort at the desk all day.
Beautiful and Autumnal in South Manchester too. Off to Scotland in a week and a half (Dunkeld) - a few days like this would do very nicely.
Anyway, looking back up this thread - Bart is being a tad obtuse. You COULD get tge bus from Warrington to Manchester or Liverpool or Chester, but 99% of people making those journeys by public transport would take the train, what with Warrington also having really good rail connections to those places.
[Citation Needed] on 99% because the facts don't represent that I believe.
Yes if you want to get from Warrington Town Centre to Manchester City Centre then the train is absolutely fantastic. I've used it myself I'll have you know, when I went to Manchester Christmas Market and wanted to drink so wouldn't drive.
But if you want to go either from or to other places then buses can be better. Want to get from your home, not town centre, to the Trafford Centre for instance? Buses can work very well for that too. There's options and choice either way. Of course cars are far better, but I've met people there before for days out who took a bus rather than drive.
Plus as Rochdale said I'm in favour of building public transport as well as motorways. Indeed I can't see any reason why we couldn't with investment have a Northwest tram network that operates all the way from Liverpool to Manchester and covering all the towns in-between.
The only fanatics here are those who oppose any investment in roads just because they despise roads and cars. I'm not opposing investment in public transport, even though I don't use it.
Fair enough. It has to be said, the bus is an often-overlooked mode of transport and can often work out surprisingly efficient - both halves of this statement are especially true outside of big urban areas, where the lack of congestion can mean a well-planned bus journey is often just as quick as driving.
Buses reduce congestion, of course.
The most stupid people in the UK are drivers who oppose bus lanes.
Don't be silly. There is no reason to reserve an entire lane for a bus that carries 2 people plus the driver on board and is empty then for a few minutes until the next bus uses it.
Just let the bus and cars all the lane, same any other traffic.
Hahaha. Proven.
The only response you have as you know you're talking shit.
There's this wonderful thing called bus stops that can be built, little lay-bys that the bus can pull into when it wants to, then rejoin free flowing traffic.
Hundreds of vehicles per hour using the lane is better than 10 vehicles an hour using the lane.
Check my edit out: People don't use buses when they spend the whole journey stuck in traffic. Which means more people take the car. Which leads to more traffic. And so on
Edinburgh is introducing 24/7 bus lanes shortly.
If you have sufficient road capacity, then traffic isn't a problem so its moot.
Unless I'm at a traffic light I spend almost all of my time driving in town at the speed limit, whether it be 30, 40 or 50mph.
Cars and buses driving at 50mph allows far more throughput of vehicles, people and goods than restricting your lanes and creating traffic jams.
You can magic capacity out of nowhere if you take 50 cars off the road and pop those people on a bus.
Same logic for traffic signals for Trams - 250 people onboard have priority over the drivers.
But the buses don't go from door to door, don't take a direct route, and have to stop to let other people on and off. So they'll always be inferior to driving.
Which is why only 2-3 people are on board, not 50.
You seem to be living in a bizarre universe where congestion is the problem. Try living outside of a city, build lower density, and have enough capacity.
If congestion isn't a problem, why do you need more roads?
Buses round me are completely packed. But then we don't have the terrible bus service you have in Warrington, much maligned in your local paper.
Agreed. The problem with Lothian Buses *is* the idiots in cars getting in the way, often single occupiers of HMMWVs (High Mass Morningside Wheeled Vehicles).
Even when you have a bus lane, you still have SUV man parked in it because the fine is so small.
I'm actually reading a book on Edinburgh and early evolutionary thought pre-C. Darwin. 'SUV man' was somewhat resonant ... here is Homo morningsidetractorensis
13 years of Tory government and the criminal justice system has collapsed.
Even if your rapist is convicted, they still won't go to prison because there is no space.
May as well not bother having trials. Or reporting crimes. If the state won't do its job and protect us, we'll have to revert to older forms of self-protection.
Bastards.
We haven’t had mail delivered for two weeks. That’s such a trivial thing in comparison to everything else, but it seems to typify the country today.
It's nothing compared to schools literally falling down, seven million people on hospital waiting lists, ambulance waiting times leaping past three quarters of an hour, roads pocked with astonishing numbers of potholes everywhere, a massive and ongoing cost of living crisis, our courts backlogged so much that almost any case now takes literally years (three? four?) to come to trial while police ignore simple burglaries and bicycle thefts other than to give you a crime number for your insurance.
But now they can’t jail any more people, anyway. All in the face of the highest tax burden in generations. But billions have gone to scammers who happen to be friends to the ruling party.
Are Tories proud of this? Can they really go around with a straight face and ask the public to extend their rule? All I see from them is the ultimate negativity of “oh, oh, the only other option might be worse!” Nothing positive. No vision for improvement. No vision for rectifying the decaying mess that has unfolded under their stewardship. Just a desperate reliance upon fear and first-past-the-post.
It’s incredible that people don’t mention the part that closing everything down for lockdown has played in ruining the country’s finances. All major parties were behind it, Labour wanted to lockdown harder for longer (the non existent threat of the ‘Johnson Variant” in the Summer of 21).
It was always going to send the country skint, and it has - we are paying for it now & people who cheered it on shouldn’t moan about it. How is it different to spending on the never never and not wanting to pay it back?
Absolutely but your audience is wrong. Just about everyone on PB condemned out of hand as fanciful and insane if not near-murderous even to whisper the idea that lockdowns were bad for a huge number of reasons including financial ones.
I'm sure your post won't get many likes and anyone who agrees with you should look carefully at their own posting history to see how they responded at the time.
I keep banging on about it (this is, after all, PB) but only @contrarian consistently stated what a calamity lockdown was and would be and boy was he right.
There were plenty saying that Starmer was wrong to go harder, longer on lockdowns. We would have lost another Christmas if it had been down to him.
This is the man man would now have as PM? Colour me unconvinced...
“Johnson Variant” - what a prat. Completely wrong too. Still, at least he’s boring
It's the number one thing that concerns me about a Labour government - what they would do if there was another pandemic. I can't shake off that awful time and the idea of a repeat terrifies me.
Exactly
Was he seriously worried about the danger of the virus? If so he wouldn’t have risked boozing indoors with other people when no one else was allowed, whether it was allowed due to a technicality/loophole or not
So he was just scaremongering. Trying to make any deaths attributable to his rival and considering the rest of us all being trapped inside for longer a justifiable consequence
13 years of Tory government and the criminal justice system has collapsed.
Even if your rapist is convicted, they still won't go to prison because there is no space.
May as well not bother having trials. Or reporting crimes. If the state won't do its job and protect us, we'll have to revert to older forms of self-protection.
Bastards.
We haven’t had mail delivered for two weeks. That’s such a trivial thing in comparison to everything else, but it seems to typify the country today.
It's nothing compared to schools literally falling down, seven million people on hospital waiting lists, ambulance waiting times leaping past three quarters of an hour, roads pocked with astonishing numbers of potholes everywhere, a massive and ongoing cost of living crisis, our courts backlogged so much that almost any case now takes literally years (three? four?) to come to trial while police ignore simple burglaries and bicycle thefts other than to give you a crime number for your insurance.
But now they can’t jail any more people, anyway. All in the face of the highest tax burden in generations. But billions have gone to scammers who happen to be friends to the ruling party.
Are Tories proud of this? Can they really go around with a straight face and ask the public to extend their rule? All I see from them is the ultimate negativity of “oh, oh, the only other option might be worse!” Nothing positive. No vision for improvement. No vision for rectifying the decaying mess that has unfolded under their stewardship. Just a desperate reliance upon fear and first-past-the-post.
It’s incredible that people don’t mention the part that closing everything down for lockdown has played in ruining the country’s finances. All major parties were behind it, Labour wanted to lockdown harder for longer (the non existent threat of the ‘Johnson Variant” in the Summer of 21).
It was always going to send the country skint, and it has - we are paying for it now & people who cheered it on shouldn’t moan about it. How is it different to spending on the never never and not wanting to pay it back?
It's equally incredible that those who lament the cost of lockdown continually pretend that not imposing NPIs would have magically avoided the cost and damage. That companies would have taken the impact with no effect. That people would have continued normal life without pause, stepping over those who fell. That restaurants, bars, and clubs would have remained fine (@rcs1000 posted at the time the stats that showed that the UK had higher average footfall throughout 2020 than countries that didn't close restaurants. Strangely, people avoid places where they're likely to become ill). That leaping bankruptcies and huge increases in unemployment, collapsing hospitals, and a legacy of long term illnesses would have been, well, lacking in any effect whatsoever.
It doesn't matter how often you show the effects, the stats, the arguments. It would have been fine. We could have intoned the magic word "Sweden" and all would have gone away.
13 years of Tory government and the criminal justice system has collapsed.
Even if your rapist is convicted, they still won't go to prison because there is no space.
May as well not bother having trials. Or reporting crimes. If the state won't do its job and protect us, we'll have to revert to older forms of self-protection.
Bastards.
We haven’t had mail delivered for two weeks. That’s such a trivial thing in comparison to everything else, but it seems to typify the country today.
It's nothing compared to schools literally falling down, seven million people on hospital waiting lists, ambulance waiting times leaping past three quarters of an hour, roads pocked with astonishing numbers of potholes everywhere, a massive and ongoing cost of living crisis, our courts backlogged so much that almost any case now takes literally years (three? four?) to come to trial while police ignore simple burglaries and bicycle thefts other than to give you a crime number for your insurance.
But now they can’t jail any more people, anyway. All in the face of the highest tax burden in generations. But billions have gone to scammers who happen to be friends to the ruling party.
Are Tories proud of this? Can they really go around with a straight face and ask the public to extend their rule? All I see from them is the ultimate negativity of “oh, oh, the only other option might be worse!” Nothing positive. No vision for improvement. No vision for rectifying the decaying mess that has unfolded under their stewardship. Just a desperate reliance upon fear and first-past-the-post.
It’s incredible that people don’t mention the part that closing everything down for lockdown has played in ruining the country’s finances. All major parties were behind it, Labour wanted to lockdown harder for longer (the non existent threat of the ‘Johnson Variant” in the Summer of 21).
It was always going to send the country skint, and it has - we are paying for it now & people who cheered it on shouldn’t moan about it. How is it different to spending on the never never and not wanting to pay it back?
Absolutely but your audience is wrong. Just about everyone on PB condemned out of hand as fanciful and insane if not near-murderous even to whisper the idea that lockdowns were bad for a huge number of reasons including financial ones.
I'm sure your post won't get many likes and anyone who agrees with you should look carefully at their own posting history to see how they responded at the time.
I keep banging on about it (this is, after all, PB) but only @contrarian consistently stated what a calamity lockdown was and would be and boy was he right.
There were plenty saying that Starmer was wrong to go harder, longer on lockdowns. We would have lost another Christmas if it had been down to him.
This is the man man would now have as PM? Colour me unconvinced...
“Johnson Variant” - what a prat. Completely wrong too. Still, at least he’s boring
It's the number one thing that concerns me about a Labour government - what they would do if there was another pandemic. I can't shake off that awful time and the idea of a repeat terrifies me.
Starmer so obviously playing politics with Covid and the NHS should scare anyone.
It absolutely does scare me. I will take no pleasure in seeing Starmer be PM.
But with Sunak as leader for the Tories, then he might be the least worst option.
Depressing. But if the Tories won't sort themselves out, and we are led to Starmer by default, then that's the Tories fault.
Agree with Bart for once. We need a less reckless attitude to the country's finances amongst the higher reaches of the Conservative Party.
Since that is unlikely to happen whilst they are in power, istm that it needs to be Starmer.
Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Not a problem.
There's these things called buses and coaches that can go on motorways for the small minority who have no access to private transport.
Maybe you have heard of them before?
Sadly, the cost of bus travel has increased even while fuel duty has been cut, punishing the disabled, poor and young.
That's if the bus actually exists. 1,500 routes have been cut just since 2021. 10% of all services were cut in the last year. 50% since 2010.
I extend a compromise - no new motorways until bus travel costs are cut to the same extent as fuel duty, and the number of services return to pre-2010 levels?
The one all-day last service through this small town was recently re-routed. We can get to Stansted Airport on one bus. However, getting to either of the two local hospitals requires two buses. We used to be able to get a bus directly to one.
Good morning to all. That’s a greeting, not a comment on the weather, grey and damp.
Good morning too. On the contrary, for a change in Scotland the weather here is bright and sunny, if chilly at night - have had to put the heating on briefly in the morning and evening as it was otherwise too cold for comfort at the desk all day.
Beautiful and Autumnal in South Manchester too. Off to Scotland in a week and a half (Dunkeld) - a few days like this would do very nicely.
Anyway, looking back up this thread - Bart is being a tad obtuse. You COULD get tge bus from Warrington to Manchester or Liverpool or Chester, but 99% of people making those journeys by public transport would take the train, what with Warrington also having really good rail connections to those places.
[Citation Needed] on 99% because the facts don't represent that I believe.
Yes if you want to get from Warrington Town Centre to Manchester City Centre then the train is absolutely fantastic. I've used it myself I'll have you know, when I went to Manchester Christmas Market and wanted to drink so wouldn't drive.
But if you want to go either from or to other places then buses can be better. Want to get from your home, not town centre, to the Trafford Centre for instance? Buses can work very well for that too. There's options and choice either way. Of course cars are far better, but I've met people there before for days out who took a bus rather than drive.
Plus as Rochdale said I'm in favour of building public transport as well as motorways. Indeed I can't see any reason why we couldn't with investment have a Northwest tram network that operates all the way from Liverpool to Manchester and covering all the towns in-between.
The only fanatics here are those who oppose any investment in roads just because they despise roads and cars. I'm not opposing investment in public transport, even though I don't use it.
Fair enough. It has to be said, the bus is an often-overlooked mode of transport and can often work out surprisingly efficient - both halves of this statement are especially true outside of big urban areas, where the lack of congestion can mean a well-planned bus journey is often just as quick as driving.
Buses reduce congestion, of course.
The most stupid people in the UK are drivers who oppose bus lanes.
Don't be silly. There is no reason to reserve an entire lane for a bus that carries 2 people plus the driver on board and is empty then for a few minutes until the next bus uses it.
Just let the bus and cars all the lane, same any other traffic.
Don't know about your area, but in Edinburgh bus lanes are only active during peak rush hours. Mon-Fri.
Barclays' former boss has been banned from holding senior positions in the UK after he mischaracterised his relationship with convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein.
Jes Staley has also been fined £1.8m, said the Financial Conduct Authority.
The regulator said Mr Staley had claimed not to be close to Epstein when in reality he viewed him as a "cherished" friend.
Until the last few days, the phenomenon of Western lefties defending barbarism in the name of a desired utopian, egalitarian ideal was a historical abstraction to me.
I had read about Westerners defending Stalin's purges and collectivization campaigns and thought, well, their ideological fervor was probably just amplified by the difficulty of getting good information out of the USSR.
But now I see that's not it.
Then, as now, there was plenty of information to understand what was really going on. It's just that the ideology IS about this, it IS that ends justify the means. It's how we got the Red Terror, the Great Terror and this—Western leftists cheering all the while.
And, if Soviet history is any guide, the only thing that made these can't-make-an-omelet folks reconsider whether that was really true—or if the end was worth it if these were the means—was finding themselves in an NKVD cell and thinking, "There's been a terrible mistake."
By then, of course, it was too late.
If this is the kind of revolution you support, just know: the revolution always eats its young. Always.
As a leftist I can say, honestly, that Stalinism is bad. The USSR was bad. The roughly 60 million killed in the 70 years between 1917 and 1987 was bad.
As a leftist I can also say, honestly, that the British Empire was bad. That imperialism in all forms in bad. The roughly 100 million killed in the 40 years between 1881 and 1920 by the British Empire, was bad.
I will never be treated as if I sincerely believe the first one if I ever make a comment about how the industrialisation of the USSR from serfdom under the Tsar to beating the Nazi war machine under Stalin was still pretty impressive, as was the increase in literacy and numeracy rates and the relative decline in poverty. Whereas people will legitimately defend the second statement by saying "well, we gave them the railways and democracy, so it was fine".
Where does the 100 million come from ?
I guess if you add in WWI and subsequent epidemics, although I don't think they can be laid entirely at the door of the British Empire.
The 100 million deaths seems to be attributed to India alone. Using similar methodologies as to how the USSR count is come to (although some estimates of the USSR death count includes the numbers of Nazi soldiers they killed - which I do not think is reasonable to add).
That all seems pretty fanciful. That would imply that the British killed off 25% of India's population in those 39 years.
It's just made up twaddle.
My bad. It would imply that the British killed off one third to forty per cent of India's population, in just 39 years.
100 million in those forty years is a wild exaggeration, but might be close to the total numbers that died during famines under British rule in India from the C18th to the C20th. That forty year period doesn’t even include the “Great Famine” of 1876/1878 when 8million people are believed to have died.
Obviously a counter to that is that the region suffered famines long before British rule, but even a cursory reading of history reveals that famines under earlier British rule seem to have been much worse, often exacerbated by Imperial policies & taxes. Rather like the famine in Ireland in the C19th, British rulers seem to have cared little for the people they were notionally in charge of & were more interested in tax income than they were in saving lives.
Tbf the effect of British colonisation on the Indian population was child’s play compared to Australia and its aboriginal peoples. That’s how you kill off a huge percentage of an indigenous population.
It was an absolute tragedy for the aborigines. But, if you read the history - and my Aussie daughter’s grandfather is an expert - it was never the intention of the British “settlers” (with the horrible exception of Tasmania). Aboriginal society simply collapsed when confronted with a much more advanced civilisation
It’s quite a warning as we look at the possible first encounter of humanity with advanced AI. This decade
I know you bang on about this, but what do you expect AI to actually do? Did you spend too long watching Terminator as a child? I mean the AI needs electricity to keep being 'alive' and we can pretty easily pull the plug.
You are an utter moron
AI - when it exists - doesn’t have to “do” anything. The mere fact it exists will be enough. For the first time in the history of humankind we will be sharing the planet with another alien intelligent being - and one smarter than us
Some will seek to destroy it, some will fall in love with it, some will worship it. We will be like the Aztecs seeing European ships and wheels and warhorses - but times a hundred thousand
Until the last few days, the phenomenon of Western lefties defending barbarism in the name of a desired utopian, egalitarian ideal was a historical abstraction to me.
I had read about Westerners defending Stalin's purges and collectivization campaigns and thought, well, their ideological fervor was probably just amplified by the difficulty of getting good information out of the USSR.
But now I see that's not it.
Then, as now, there was plenty of information to understand what was really going on. It's just that the ideology IS about this, it IS that ends justify the means. It's how we got the Red Terror, the Great Terror and this—Western leftists cheering all the while.
And, if Soviet history is any guide, the only thing that made these can't-make-an-omelet folks reconsider whether that was really true—or if the end was worth it if these were the means—was finding themselves in an NKVD cell and thinking, "There's been a terrible mistake."
By then, of course, it was too late.
If this is the kind of revolution you support, just know: the revolution always eats its young. Always.
As a leftist I can say, honestly, that Stalinism is bad. The USSR was bad. The roughly 60 million killed in the 70 years between 1917 and 1987 was bad.
As a leftist I can also say, honestly, that the British Empire was bad. That imperialism in all forms in bad. The roughly 100 million killed in the 40 years between 1881 and 1920 by the British Empire, was bad.
I will never be treated as if I sincerely believe the first one if I ever make a comment about how the industrialisation of the USSR from serfdom under the Tsar to beating the Nazi war machine under Stalin was still pretty impressive, as was the increase in literacy and numeracy rates and the relative decline in poverty. Whereas people will legitimately defend the second statement by saying "well, we gave them the railways and democracy, so it was fine".
Where does the 100 million come from ?
I guess if you add in WWI and subsequent epidemics, although I don't think they can be laid entirely at the door of the British Empire.
The 100 million deaths seems to be attributed to India alone. Using similar methodologies as to how the USSR count is come to (although some estimates of the USSR death count includes the numbers of Nazi soldiers they killed - which I do not think is reasonable to add).
That all seems pretty fanciful. That would imply that the British killed off 25% of India's population in those 39 years.
It's just made up twaddle.
My bad. It would imply that the British killed off one third to forty per cent of India's population, in just 39 years.
And somehow nobody noticed.
That's on a par with the Mongol invasion of Northern China.
The Football Association will refuse to light up the Wembley arch in blue and white but will instead hold a minute’s silence and players will wear black armbands to mark the terrorist attacks in Israel.
Australia are scheduled to play Palestine in a World Cup qualifier next month and that is said to have been one of the factors in the decision.
A final decision on what to do with the arch was said to be still pending, with one idea switching off its illuminations altogether.
13 years of Tory government and the criminal justice system has collapsed.
Even if your rapist is convicted, they still won't go to prison because there is no space.
May as well not bother having trials. Or reporting crimes. If the state won't do its job and protect us, we'll have to revert to older forms of self-protection.
Bastards.
We haven’t had mail delivered for two weeks. That’s such a trivial thing in comparison to everything else, but it seems to typify the country today.
It's nothing compared to schools literally falling down, seven million people on hospital waiting lists, ambulance waiting times leaping past three quarters of an hour, roads pocked with astonishing numbers of potholes everywhere, a massive and ongoing cost of living crisis, our courts backlogged so much that almost any case now takes literally years (three? four?) to come to trial while police ignore simple burglaries and bicycle thefts other than to give you a crime number for your insurance.
But now they can’t jail any more people, anyway. All in the face of the highest tax burden in generations. But billions have gone to scammers who happen to be friends to the ruling party.
Are Tories proud of this? Can they really go around with a straight face and ask the public to extend their rule? All I see from them is the ultimate negativity of “oh, oh, the only other option might be worse!” Nothing positive. No vision for improvement. No vision for rectifying the decaying mess that has unfolded under their stewardship. Just a desperate reliance upon fear and first-past-the-post.
It’s incredible that people don’t mention the part that closing everything down for lockdown has played in ruining the country’s finances. All major parties were behind it, Labour wanted to lockdown harder for longer (the non existent threat of the ‘Johnson Variant” in the Summer of 21).
It was always going to send the country skint, and it has - we are paying for it now & people who cheered it on shouldn’t moan about it. How is it different to spending on the never never and not wanting to pay it back?
It's equally incredible that those who lament the cost of lockdown continually pretend that not imposing NPIs would have magically avoided the cost and damage. That companies would have taken the impact with no effect. That people would have continued normal life without pause, stepping over those who fell. That restaurants, bars, and clubs would have remained fine (@rcs1000 posted at the time the stats that showed that the UK had higher average footfall throughout 2020 than countries that didn't close restaurants. Strangely, people avoid places where they're likely to become ill). That leaping bankruptcies and huge increases in unemployment, collapsing hospitals, and a legacy of long term illnesses would have been, well, lacking in any effect whatsoever.
It doesn't matter how often you show the effects, the stats, the arguments. It would have been fine. We could have intoned the magic word "Sweden" and all would have gone away.
But we’d have killed off all the really old, or really fat people. Which would have been a huge economic bonus. I mean that quite sincerely
And a lot of other people. It's a myth that it only affected the really old or the really fat. Most of those in intensive care in London in the winter wave were of working age.
As well as having a hell of a lot more carrying brand new long-term health conditions. If you didn't have anything that could remotely be described as a long term health condition (which excludes nearly 40% of the country), then the outcome can be: okay, do you want one?
Not to mention that pretty much anything else the NHS do would have stopped. Not like what actually happened, when they reduced other things but still had 75%+ of their activity on those other things, but several times worse. And, of course, a whole load of those who weren't old were saved because they got care. Take that away and what happens?
Then what happens with fear and dread in all ages?
Until the last few days, the phenomenon of Western lefties defending barbarism in the name of a desired utopian, egalitarian ideal was a historical abstraction to me.
I had read about Westerners defending Stalin's purges and collectivization campaigns and thought, well, their ideological fervor was probably just amplified by the difficulty of getting good information out of the USSR.
But now I see that's not it.
Then, as now, there was plenty of information to understand what was really going on. It's just that the ideology IS about this, it IS that ends justify the means. It's how we got the Red Terror, the Great Terror and this—Western leftists cheering all the while.
And, if Soviet history is any guide, the only thing that made these can't-make-an-omelet folks reconsider whether that was really true—or if the end was worth it if these were the means—was finding themselves in an NKVD cell and thinking, "There's been a terrible mistake."
By then, of course, it was too late.
If this is the kind of revolution you support, just know: the revolution always eats its young. Always.
As a leftist I can say, honestly, that Stalinism is bad. The USSR was bad. The roughly 60 million killed in the 70 years between 1917 and 1987 was bad.
As a leftist I can also say, honestly, that the British Empire was bad. That imperialism in all forms in bad. The roughly 100 million killed in the 40 years between 1881 and 1920 by the British Empire, was bad.
I will never be treated as if I sincerely believe the first one if I ever make a comment about how the industrialisation of the USSR from serfdom under the Tsar to beating the Nazi war machine under Stalin was still pretty impressive, as was the increase in literacy and numeracy rates and the relative decline in poverty. Whereas people will legitimately defend the second statement by saying "well, we gave them the railways and democracy, so it was fine".
Where does the 100 million come from ?
I guess if you add in WWI and subsequent epidemics, although I don't think they can be laid entirely at the door of the British Empire.
The 100 million deaths seems to be attributed to India alone. Using similar methodologies as to how the USSR count is come to (although some estimates of the USSR death count includes the numbers of Nazi soldiers they killed - which I do not think is reasonable to add).
That all seems pretty fanciful. That would imply that the British killed off 25% of India's population in those 39 years.
It's just made up twaddle.
My bad. It would imply that the British killed off one third to forty per cent of India's population, in just 39 years.
100 million in those forty years is a wild exaggeration, but might be close to the total numbers that died during famines under British rule in India from the C18th to the C20th. That forty year period doesn’t even include the “Great Famine” of 1876/1878 when 8million people are believed to have died.
Obviously a counter to that is that the region suffered famines long before British rule, but even a cursory reading of history reveals that famines under earlier British rule seem to have been much worse, often exacerbated by Imperial policies & taxes. Rather like the famine in Ireland in the C19th, British rulers seem to have cared little for the people they were notionally in charge of & were more interested in tax income than they were in saving lives.
NB: The 100million number seems to come from trying to measure excess deaths: What they are really claiming is that if India was not being held back by colonialist expropriation of wealth, the economy would have been able to feed it’s population even in times of famine. Instead what happened was that agricultural workers lost their jobs in times of famine & were unable to afford to buy what food their was, as the available crops were being exported to the UK out of taxed national income. Without that expropriation, more wealth would have been kept locally & these workers would have been able to afford to buy food during difficult times. Ironically, the period from 1880 to 1920 is when the British Raj had realised that this was the major cause of deaths during famines & had started major works programs to provide income to out of work agricultural labourers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Famine_Codes
It boils down (I think) to a historical position on whether India would have developed differently without the British Raj in power: would have been replaced by an equivalent local regime which extracted just as much wealth & resources for themselves at the expense of the people, or would the economy have developed in a different direction?
There’s no real question that the taxes imposed by the Raj extracted wealth from India & that loss came at a price that was paid ultimately by ordinary Indian people? They didn’t to trade freely with the UK in return after all.
It's pretty well indisputable that the economy of the subcontinent would have developed differently, but quite how it would have done seems utterly imponderable to me, FWIW. It doesn't seem particularly controversial, though, to argue that nations which remained independent during the industrial revolution fared rather better than those which became part of the various European empires ?
Examples? China is the biggest. It remained largely independent but endured a century of humiliation - so much so it now guides much of their thinking
Japan stayed independent and it prospered - but it did that by slavishly copying European culture and society (right down to tartan in school uniforms) and then becoming a European style imperial power in its own right
It was an absolute tragedy for the aborigines. But, if you read the history - and my Aussie daughter’s grandfather is an expert - it was never the intention of the British “settlers” (with the horrible exception of Tasmania). Aboriginal society simply collapsed when confronted with a much more advanced civilisation
It’s quite a warning as we look at the possible first encounter of humanity with advanced AI. This decade
Oh well, at least we only did a little bit of genocide. Even on the most generous reading, Australia is an absolute refutation of the claim that colonisation was good for the locals.
Until the last few days, the phenomenon of Western lefties defending barbarism in the name of a desired utopian, egalitarian ideal was a historical abstraction to me.
I had read about Westerners defending Stalin's purges and collectivization campaigns and thought, well, their ideological fervor was probably just amplified by the difficulty of getting good information out of the USSR.
But now I see that's not it.
Then, as now, there was plenty of information to understand what was really going on. It's just that the ideology IS about this, it IS that ends justify the means. It's how we got the Red Terror, the Great Terror and this—Western leftists cheering all the while.
And, if Soviet history is any guide, the only thing that made these can't-make-an-omelet folks reconsider whether that was really true—or if the end was worth it if these were the means—was finding themselves in an NKVD cell and thinking, "There's been a terrible mistake."
By then, of course, it was too late.
If this is the kind of revolution you support, just know: the revolution always eats its young. Always.
As a leftist I can say, honestly, that Stalinism is bad. The USSR was bad. The roughly 60 million killed in the 70 years between 1917 and 1987 was bad.
As a leftist I can also say, honestly, that the British Empire was bad. That imperialism in all forms in bad. The roughly 100 million killed in the 40 years between 1881 and 1920 by the British Empire, was bad.
I will never be treated as if I sincerely believe the first one if I ever make a comment about how the industrialisation of the USSR from serfdom under the Tsar to beating the Nazi war machine under Stalin was still pretty impressive, as was the increase in literacy and numeracy rates and the relative decline in poverty. Whereas people will legitimately defend the second statement by saying "well, we gave them the railways and democracy, so it was fine".
Where does the 100 million come from ?
I guess if you add in WWI and subsequent epidemics, although I don't think they can be laid entirely at the door of the British Empire.
The 100 million deaths seems to be attributed to India alone. Using similar methodologies as to how the USSR count is come to (although some estimates of the USSR death count includes the numbers of Nazi soldiers they killed - which I do not think is reasonable to add).
That all seems pretty fanciful. That would imply that the British killed off 25% of India's population in those 39 years.
It's just made up twaddle.
My bad. It would imply that the British killed off one third to forty per cent of India's population, in just 39 years.
100 million in those forty years is a wild exaggeration, but might be close to the total numbers that died during famines under British rule in India from the C18th to the C20th. That forty year period doesn’t even include the “Great Famine” of 1876/1878 when 8million people are believed to have died.
Obviously a counter to that is that the region suffered famines long before British rule, but even a cursory reading of history reveals that famines under earlier British rule seem to have been much worse, often exacerbated by Imperial policies & taxes. Rather like the famine in Ireland in the C19th, British rulers seem to have cared little for the people they were notionally in charge of & were more interested in tax income than they were in saving lives.
Tbf the effect of British colonisation on the Indian population was child’s play compared to Australia and its aboriginal peoples. That’s how you kill off a huge percentage of an indigenous population.
It was an absolute tragedy for the aborigines. But, if you read the history - and my Aussie daughter’s grandfather is an expert - it was never the intention of the British “settlers” (with the horrible exception of Tasmania). Aboriginal society simply collapsed when confronted with a much more advanced civilisation
It’s quite a warning as we look at the possible first encounter of humanity with advanced AI. This decade
I know you bang on about this, but what do you expect AI to actually do? Did you spend too long watching Terminator as a child? I mean the AI needs electricity to keep being 'alive' and we can pretty easily pull the plug.
You are an utter moron
AI - when it exists - doesn’t have to “do” anything. The mere fact it exists will be enough. For the first time in the history of humankind we will be sharing the planet with another alien intelligent being - and one smarter than us
Some will seek to destroy it, some will fall in love with it, some will worship it. We will be like the Aztecs seeing European ships and wheels and warhorses - but times a hundred thousand
The Football Association will refuse to light up the Wembley arch in blue and white but will instead hold a minute’s silence and players will wear black armbands to mark the terrorist attacks in Israel.
Australia are scheduled to play Palestine in a World Cup qualifier next month and that is said to have been one of the factors in the decision.
A final decision on what to do with the arch was said to be still pending, with one idea switching off its illuminations altogether.
13 years of Tory government and the criminal justice system has collapsed.
Even if your rapist is convicted, they still won't go to prison because there is no space.
May as well not bother having trials. Or reporting crimes. If the state won't do its job and protect us, we'll have to revert to older forms of self-protection.
Bastards.
We haven’t had mail delivered for two weeks. That’s such a trivial thing in comparison to everything else, but it seems to typify the country today.
It's nothing compared to schools literally falling down, seven million people on hospital waiting lists, ambulance waiting times leaping past three quarters of an hour, roads pocked with astonishing numbers of potholes everywhere, a massive and ongoing cost of living crisis, our courts backlogged so much that almost any case now takes literally years (three? four?) to come to trial while police ignore simple burglaries and bicycle thefts other than to give you a crime number for your insurance.
But now they can’t jail any more people, anyway. All in the face of the highest tax burden in generations. But billions have gone to scammers who happen to be friends to the ruling party.
Are Tories proud of this? Can they really go around with a straight face and ask the public to extend their rule? All I see from them is the ultimate negativity of “oh, oh, the only other option might be worse!” Nothing positive. No vision for improvement. No vision for rectifying the decaying mess that has unfolded under their stewardship. Just a desperate reliance upon fear and first-past-the-post.
It’s incredible that people don’t mention the part that closing everything down for lockdown has played in ruining the country’s finances. All major parties were behind it, Labour wanted to lockdown harder for longer (the non existent threat of the ‘Johnson Variant” in the Summer of 21).
It was always going to send the country skint, and it has - we are paying for it now & people who cheered it on shouldn’t moan about it. How is it different to spending on the never never and not wanting to pay it back?
It's equally incredible that those who lament the cost of lockdown continually pretend that not imposing NPIs would have magically avoided the cost and damage. That companies would have taken the impact with no effect. That people would have continued normal life without pause, stepping over those who fell. That restaurants, bars, and clubs would have remained fine (@rcs1000 posted at the time the stats that showed that the UK had higher average footfall throughout 2020 than countries that didn't close restaurants. Strangely, people avoid places where they're likely to become ill). That leaping bankruptcies and huge increases in unemployment, collapsing hospitals, and a legacy of long term illnesses would have been, well, lacking in any effect whatsoever.
It doesn't matter how often you show the effects, the stats, the arguments. It would have been fine. We could have intoned the magic word "Sweden" and all would have gone away.
But we’d have killed off all the really old, or really fat people. Which would have been a huge economic bonus. I mean that quite sincerely
And a lot of other people. It's a myth that it only affected the really old or the really fat. Most of those in intensive care in London in the winter wave were of working age.
As well as having a hell of a lot more carrying brand new long-term health conditions. If you didn't have anything that could remotely be described as a long term health condition (which excludes nearly 40% of the country), then the outcome can be: okay, do you want one?
Not to mention that pretty much anything else the NHS do would have stopped. Not like what actually happened, when they reduced other things but still had 75%+ of their activity on those other things, but several times worse. And, of course, a whole load of those who weren't old were saved because they got care. Take that away and what happens?
Then what happens with fear and dread in all ages?
“I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake,” said Sen. Clinton. “And if we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win.”
Has this guy never driven outside the UK, where it isn't exactly uncommon to see bi or tri-lingual signs.
It's the Telegraph, why would he have gone outside the UK?
Even if he did physically, he may have stayed at home in his mind.
But that reminds me of the brick of coffee (remember those?) that came from our local Polish mini-supermarket last week (amazing salami range and prices) with instructions on the back in Polish, Czech and Slovak. No English.
The Football Association will refuse to light up the Wembley arch in blue and white but will instead hold a minute’s silence and players will wear black armbands to mark the terrorist attacks in Israel.
Australia are scheduled to play Palestine in a World Cup qualifier next month and that is said to have been one of the factors in the decision.
A final decision on what to do with the arch was said to be still pending, with one idea switching off its illuminations altogether.
Many, many fans need to take an Israeli flag in with them to make a point. Maybe someone can hand them out for free outside the ground?
Your kidding, right? Did you see the stats yday from YouGov on support for the various factions and I can tell you that just about every age range is more sympathetic towards the Palestinians.
Anyway, there are ways to avoid lockdowns and minimise NPIs against future respiratory pandemics. Unfortunately, few in Government seem to care about implementing them, possibly because they're not under the cosh on it any more.
We're going to have future pandemics. And despite hating what happened (as I said time and again when it was happening, I truly hated it. You try getting a severely autistic teenager through repeated lockdowns), and, again, as I said, faster and more targeted action could have reduced the scope of NPIs and potentially avoided the full lockdowns in November and January/February.
1 - HEPA filtration and far-UV treatment. We learned that outside was much safer than inside. So turn inside into outside in terms of the effects of the virus. Roll those out to schools, hospitals, encourage them into bars and restaurants and even offices. The R factor drops.
2 - More into vaccine development and funding. Selling off the Harwell VMIC was bloody stupid. Better education on vaccines and addressing the antivax morons.
3 - Significantly increased healthcare capacity. The more capacity to treat acute and general patients, the more headroom we have to try different things. For all the headlines on deaths, it was always the number hospitalised and in intensive care that drove the NPI increases.
Otherwise those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The first time as tragedy and the second as farce.
Until the last few days, the phenomenon of Western lefties defending barbarism in the name of a desired utopian, egalitarian ideal was a historical abstraction to me.
I had read about Westerners defending Stalin's purges and collectivization campaigns and thought, well, their ideological fervor was probably just amplified by the difficulty of getting good information out of the USSR.
But now I see that's not it.
Then, as now, there was plenty of information to understand what was really going on. It's just that the ideology IS about this, it IS that ends justify the means. It's how we got the Red Terror, the Great Terror and this—Western leftists cheering all the while.
And, if Soviet history is any guide, the only thing that made these can't-make-an-omelet folks reconsider whether that was really true—or if the end was worth it if these were the means—was finding themselves in an NKVD cell and thinking, "There's been a terrible mistake."
By then, of course, it was too late.
If this is the kind of revolution you support, just know: the revolution always eats its young. Always.
As a leftist I can say, honestly, that Stalinism is bad. The USSR was bad. The roughly 60 million killed in the 70 years between 1917 and 1987 was bad.
As a leftist I can also say, honestly, that the British Empire was bad. That imperialism in all forms in bad. The roughly 100 million killed in the 40 years between 1881 and 1920 by the British Empire, was bad.
I will never be treated as if I sincerely believe the first one if I ever make a comment about how the industrialisation of the USSR from serfdom under the Tsar to beating the Nazi war machine under Stalin was still pretty impressive, as was the increase in literacy and numeracy rates and the relative decline in poverty. Whereas people will legitimately defend the second statement by saying "well, we gave them the railways and democracy, so it was fine".
Where does the 100 million come from ?
I guess if you add in WWI and subsequent epidemics, although I don't think they can be laid entirely at the door of the British Empire.
The 100 million deaths seems to be attributed to India alone. Using similar methodologies as to how the USSR count is come to (although some estimates of the USSR death count includes the numbers of Nazi soldiers they killed - which I do not think is reasonable to add).
That all seems pretty fanciful. That would imply that the British killed off 25% of India's population in those 39 years.
It's just made up twaddle.
My bad. It would imply that the British killed off one third to forty per cent of India's population, in just 39 years.
100 million in those forty years is a wild exaggeration, but might be close to the total numbers that died during famines under British rule in India from the C18th to the C20th. That forty year period doesn’t even include the “Great Famine” of 1876/1878 when 8million people are believed to have died.
Obviously a counter to that is that the region suffered famines long before British rule, but even a cursory reading of history reveals that famines under earlier British rule seem to have been much worse, often exacerbated by Imperial policies & taxes. Rather like the famine in Ireland in the C19th, British rulers seem to have cared little for the people they were notionally in charge of & were more interested in tax income than they were in saving lives.
NB: The 100million number seems to come from trying to measure excess deaths: What they are really claiming is that if India was not being held back by colonialist expropriation of wealth, the economy would have been able to feed it’s population even in times of famine. Instead what happened was that agricultural workers lost their jobs in times of famine & were unable to afford to buy what food their was, as the available crops were being exported to the UK out of taxed national income. Without that expropriation, more wealth would have been kept locally & these workers would have been able to afford to buy food during difficult times. Ironically, the period from 1880 to 1920 is when the British Raj had realised that this was the major cause of deaths during famines & had started major works programs to provide income to out of work agricultural labourers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Famine_Codes
It boils down (I think) to a historical position on whether India would have developed differently without the British Raj in power: would have been replaced by an equivalent local regime which extracted just as much wealth & resources for themselves at the expense of the people, or would the economy have developed in a different direction?
There’s no real question that the taxes imposed by the Raj extracted wealth from India & that loss came at a price that was paid ultimately by ordinary Indian people? They didn’t to trade freely with the UK in return after all.
It's pretty well indisputable that the economy of the subcontinent would have developed differently, but quite how it would have done seems utterly imponderable to me, FWIW. It doesn't seem particularly controversial, though, to argue that nations which remained independent during the industrial revolution fared rather better than those which became part of the various European empires ?
The thing is there doesn't seem to be great sourcing on how many people died under British rule - and not because we were so kind as there to not have been any. Partly, as someone said before, because we "won". If you take the Indian sub continent, the British colonies in Africa, the British colonies in the US, the British involvement in the slave trade, and British worker conditions during the Empire are we really going to confidently say that the death toll was less than the roughly 60 million we can reliably put to the USSR? That's without including European wars - I will exclude the direct death toll of the Napoleonic wars and WW1 and WW2. Like, we know how bad the famines were in India during WW2 alone.
13 years of Tory government and the criminal justice system has collapsed.
Even if your rapist is convicted, they still won't go to prison because there is no space.
May as well not bother having trials. Or reporting crimes. If the state won't do its job and protect us, we'll have to revert to older forms of self-protection.
Bastards.
We haven’t had mail delivered for two weeks. That’s such a trivial thing in comparison to everything else, but it seems to typify the country today.
It's nothing compared to schools literally falling down, seven million people on hospital waiting lists, ambulance waiting times leaping past three quarters of an hour, roads pocked with astonishing numbers of potholes everywhere, a massive and ongoing cost of living crisis, our courts backlogged so much that almost any case now takes literally years (three? four?) to come to trial while police ignore simple burglaries and bicycle thefts other than to give you a crime number for your insurance.
But now they can’t jail any more people, anyway. All in the face of the highest tax burden in generations. But billions have gone to scammers who happen to be friends to the ruling party.
Are Tories proud of this? Can they really go around with a straight face and ask the public to extend their rule? All I see from them is the ultimate negativity of “oh, oh, the only other option might be worse!” Nothing positive. No vision for improvement. No vision for rectifying the decaying mess that has unfolded under their stewardship. Just a desperate reliance upon fear and first-past-the-post.
It’s incredible that people don’t mention the part that closing everything down for lockdown has played in ruining the country’s finances. All major parties were behind it, Labour wanted to lockdown harder for longer (the non existent threat of the ‘Johnson Variant” in the Summer of 21).
It was always going to send the country skint, and it has - we are paying for it now & people who cheered it on shouldn’t moan about it. How is it different to spending on the never never and not wanting to pay it back?
It's equally incredible that those who lament the cost of lockdown continually pretend that not imposing NPIs would have magically avoided the cost and damage. That companies would have taken the impact with no effect. That people would have continued normal life without pause, stepping over those who fell. That restaurants, bars, and clubs would have remained fine (@rcs1000 posted at the time the stats that showed that the UK had higher average footfall throughout 2020 than countries that didn't close restaurants. Strangely, people avoid places where they're likely to become ill). That leaping bankruptcies and huge increases in unemployment, collapsing hospitals, and a legacy of long term illnesses would have been, well, lacking in any effect whatsoever.
It doesn't matter how often you show the effects, the stats, the arguments. It would have been fine. We could have intoned the magic word "Sweden" and all would have gone away.
But we’d have killed off all the really old, or really fat people. Which would have been a huge economic bonus. I mean that quite sincerely
And a lot of other people. It's a myth that it only affected the really old or the really fat. Most of those in intensive care in London in the winter wave were of working age.
As well as having a hell of a lot more carrying brand new long-term health conditions. If you didn't have anything that could remotely be described as a long term health condition (which excludes nearly 40% of the country), then the outcome can be: okay, do you want one?
Not to mention that pretty much anything else the NHS do would have stopped. Not like what actually happened, when they reduced other things but still had 75%+ of their activity on those other things, but several times worse. And, of course, a whole load of those who weren't old were saved because they got care. Take that away and what happens?
Then what happens with fear and dread in all ages?
Google the age distribution of COVID fatalities.
Seriously? You didn't read it? Was that just an instant answer?
13 years of Tory government and the criminal justice system has collapsed.
Even if your rapist is convicted, they still won't go to prison because there is no space.
May as well not bother having trials. Or reporting crimes. If the state won't do its job and protect us, we'll have to revert to older forms of self-protection.
Bastards.
We haven’t had mail delivered for two weeks. That’s such a trivial thing in comparison to everything else, but it seems to typify the country today.
It's nothing compared to schools literally falling down, seven million people on hospital waiting lists, ambulance waiting times leaping past three quarters of an hour, roads pocked with astonishing numbers of potholes everywhere, a massive and ongoing cost of living crisis, our courts backlogged so much that almost any case now takes literally years (three? four?) to come to trial while police ignore simple burglaries and bicycle thefts other than to give you a crime number for your insurance.
But now they can’t jail any more people, anyway. All in the face of the highest tax burden in generations. But billions have gone to scammers who happen to be friends to the ruling party.
Are Tories proud of this? Can they really go around with a straight face and ask the public to extend their rule? All I see from them is the ultimate negativity of “oh, oh, the only other option might be worse!” Nothing positive. No vision for improvement. No vision for rectifying the decaying mess that has unfolded under their stewardship. Just a desperate reliance upon fear and first-past-the-post.
It’s incredible that people don’t mention the part that closing everything down for lockdown has played in ruining the country’s finances. All major parties were behind it, Labour wanted to lockdown harder for longer (the non existent threat of the ‘Johnson Variant” in the Summer of 21).
It was always going to send the country skint, and it has - we are paying for it now & people who cheered it on shouldn’t moan about it. How is it different to spending on the never never and not wanting to pay it back?
It's equally incredible that those who lament the cost of lockdown continually pretend that not imposing NPIs would have magically avoided the cost and damage. That companies would have taken the impact with no effect. That people would have continued normal life without pause, stepping over those who fell. That restaurants, bars, and clubs would have remained fine (@rcs1000 posted at the time the stats that showed that the UK had higher average footfall throughout 2020 than countries that didn't close restaurants. Strangely, people avoid places where they're likely to become ill). That leaping bankruptcies and huge increases in unemployment, collapsing hospitals, and a legacy of long term illnesses would have been, well, lacking in any effect whatsoever.
It doesn't matter how often you show the effects, the stats, the arguments. It would have been fine. We could have intoned the magic word "Sweden" and all would have gone away.
I find admitting I was wrong difficult too
I've noticed. Anyway. My early lunch break is over, and back to work.
Until the last few days, the phenomenon of Western lefties defending barbarism in the name of a desired utopian, egalitarian ideal was a historical abstraction to me.
I had read about Westerners defending Stalin's purges and collectivization campaigns and thought, well, their ideological fervor was probably just amplified by the difficulty of getting good information out of the USSR.
But now I see that's not it.
Then, as now, there was plenty of information to understand what was really going on. It's just that the ideology IS about this, it IS that ends justify the means. It's how we got the Red Terror, the Great Terror and this—Western leftists cheering all the while.
And, if Soviet history is any guide, the only thing that made these can't-make-an-omelet folks reconsider whether that was really true—or if the end was worth it if these were the means—was finding themselves in an NKVD cell and thinking, "There's been a terrible mistake."
By then, of course, it was too late.
If this is the kind of revolution you support, just know: the revolution always eats its young. Always.
As a leftist I can say, honestly, that Stalinism is bad. The USSR was bad. The roughly 60 million killed in the 70 years between 1917 and 1987 was bad.
As a leftist I can also say, honestly, that the British Empire was bad. That imperialism in all forms in bad. The roughly 100 million killed in the 40 years between 1881 and 1920 by the British Empire, was bad.
I will never be treated as if I sincerely believe the first one if I ever make a comment about how the industrialisation of the USSR from serfdom under the Tsar to beating the Nazi war machine under Stalin was still pretty impressive, as was the increase in literacy and numeracy rates and the relative decline in poverty. Whereas people will legitimately defend the second statement by saying "well, we gave them the railways and democracy, so it was fine".
Where does the 100 million come from ?
I guess if you add in WWI and subsequent epidemics, although I don't think they can be laid entirely at the door of the British Empire.
The 100 million deaths seems to be attributed to India alone. Using similar methodologies as to how the USSR count is come to (although some estimates of the USSR death count includes the numbers of Nazi soldiers they killed - which I do not think is reasonable to add).
That all seems pretty fanciful. That would imply that the British killed off 25% of India's population in those 39 years.
It's just made up twaddle.
My bad. It would imply that the British killed off one third to forty per cent of India's population, in just 39 years.
100 million in those forty years is a wild exaggeration, but might be close to the total numbers that died during famines under British rule in India from the C18th to the C20th. That forty year period doesn’t even include the “Great Famine” of 1876/1878 when 8million people are believed to have died.
Obviously a counter to that is that the region suffered famines long before British rule, but even a cursory reading of history reveals that famines under earlier British rule seem to have been much worse, often exacerbated by Imperial policies & taxes. Rather like the famine in Ireland in the C19th, British rulers seem to have cared little for the people they were notionally in charge of & were more interested in tax income than they were in saving lives.
NB: The 100million number seems to come from trying to measure excess deaths: What they are really claiming is that if India was not being held back by colonialist expropriation of wealth, the economy would have been able to feed it’s population even in times of famine. Instead what happened was that agricultural workers lost their jobs in times of famine & were unable to afford to buy what food their was, as the available crops were being exported to the UK out of taxed national income. Without that expropriation, more wealth would have been kept locally & these workers would have been able to afford to buy food during difficult times. Ironically, the period from 1880 to 1920 is when the British Raj had realised that this was the major cause of deaths during famines & had started major works programs to provide income to out of work agricultural labourers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Famine_Codes
It boils down (I think) to a historical position on whether India would have developed differently without the British Raj in power: would have been replaced by an equivalent local regime which extracted just as much wealth & resources for themselves at the expense of the people, or would the economy have developed in a different direction?
There’s no real question that the taxes imposed by the Raj extracted wealth from India & that loss came at a price that was paid ultimately by ordinary Indian people? They didn’t to trade freely with the UK in return after all.
It's pretty well indisputable that the economy of the subcontinent would have developed differently, but quite how it would have done seems utterly imponderable to me, FWIW. It doesn't seem particularly controversial, though, to argue that nations which remained independent during the industrial revolution fared rather better than those which became part of the various European empires ?
Examples? China is the biggest. It remained largely independent but endured a century of humiliation - so much so it now guides much of their thinking
Japan stayed independent and it prospered - but it did that by slavishly copying European culture and society (right down to tartan in school uniforms) and then becoming a European style imperial power in its own right
The Ottoman Empire never really experienced much in the way of an industrial breakthrough, either. Argentina and Venezuela undoubtedly prospered as independent nations.
Independent nations should certainly do better than colonies in general. In the case of India, I guess it would depend which of the Moghul successor states ended up as the dominant power.
He may have a point about the Sunak-led Conservative Party, but of course Blairite Socialists are some of the most cynical fantasists out there. Blairism/Starmerism is the definition of cynicism and the Socialism (and schemes like Iraq) gets you the fantasy.
Sunak has been a disaster. That's where cowardly arse-covering gets you.
The Football Association will refuse to light up the Wembley arch in blue and white but will instead hold a minute’s silence and players will wear black armbands to mark the terrorist attacks in Israel.
Australia are scheduled to play Palestine in a World Cup qualifier next month and that is said to have been one of the factors in the decision.
A final decision on what to do with the arch was said to be still pending, with one idea switching off its illuminations altogether.
Many, many fans need to take an Israeli flag in with them to make a point. Maybe someone can hand them out for free outside the ground?
Your kidding, right? Did you see the stats yday from YouGov on support for the various factions and I can tell you that just about every age range is more sympathetic towards the Palestinians.
Two thirds are unsure or both sides equally - that is the clear majority position of the UK public. This week sympathy may be more with Israel, other times more with Palestinians, but both sides have been badly let down by their leaders for generations and are suffering greatly for it.
THE eco-zealot who dumped glitter on Sir Keir Starmer at the Labour Party conference while demanding “democracy” is a privileged globe-trotting rich kid.
Jobless XR moaner Yaz Ashmawi, 28, studied at a private school in the oil-rich UAE and enjoys a £750,000 second home in Devon.
Until the last few days, the phenomenon of Western lefties defending barbarism in the name of a desired utopian, egalitarian ideal was a historical abstraction to me.
I had read about Westerners defending Stalin's purges and collectivization campaigns and thought, well, their ideological fervor was probably just amplified by the difficulty of getting good information out of the USSR.
But now I see that's not it.
Then, as now, there was plenty of information to understand what was really going on. It's just that the ideology IS about this, it IS that ends justify the means. It's how we got the Red Terror, the Great Terror and this—Western leftists cheering all the while.
And, if Soviet history is any guide, the only thing that made these can't-make-an-omelet folks reconsider whether that was really true—or if the end was worth it if these were the means—was finding themselves in an NKVD cell and thinking, "There's been a terrible mistake."
By then, of course, it was too late.
If this is the kind of revolution you support, just know: the revolution always eats its young. Always.
As a leftist I can say, honestly, that Stalinism is bad. The USSR was bad. The roughly 60 million killed in the 70 years between 1917 and 1987 was bad.
As a leftist I can also say, honestly, that the British Empire was bad. That imperialism in all forms in bad. The roughly 100 million killed in the 40 years between 1881 and 1920 by the British Empire, was bad.
I will never be treated as if I sincerely believe the first one if I ever make a comment about how the industrialisation of the USSR from serfdom under the Tsar to beating the Nazi war machine under Stalin was still pretty impressive, as was the increase in literacy and numeracy rates and the relative decline in poverty. Whereas people will legitimately defend the second statement by saying "well, we gave them the railways and democracy, so it was fine".
Where does the 100 million come from ?
I guess if you add in WWI and subsequent epidemics, although I don't think they can be laid entirely at the door of the British Empire.
The 100 million deaths seems to be attributed to India alone. Using similar methodologies as to how the USSR count is come to (although some estimates of the USSR death count includes the numbers of Nazi soldiers they killed - which I do not think is reasonable to add).
That all seems pretty fanciful. That would imply that the British killed off 25% of India's population in those 39 years.
It's just made up twaddle.
My bad. It would imply that the British killed off one third to forty per cent of India's population, in just 39 years.
100 million in those forty years is a wild exaggeration, but might be close to the total numbers that died during famines under British rule in India from the C18th to the C20th. That forty year period doesn’t even include the “Great Famine” of 1876/1878 when 8million people are believed to have died.
Obviously a counter to that is that the region suffered famines long before British rule, but even a cursory reading of history reveals that famines under earlier British rule seem to have been much worse, often exacerbated by Imperial policies & taxes. Rather like the famine in Ireland in the C19th, British rulers seem to have cared little for the people they were notionally in charge of & were more interested in tax income than they were in saving lives.
NB: The 100million number seems to come from trying to measure excess deaths: What they are really claiming is that if India was not being held back by colonialist expropriation of wealth, the economy would have been able to feed it’s population even in times of famine. Instead what happened was that agricultural workers lost their jobs in times of famine & were unable to afford to buy what food their was, as the available crops were being exported to the UK out of taxed national income. Without that expropriation, more wealth would have been kept locally & these workers would have been able to afford to buy food during difficult times. Ironically, the period from 1880 to 1920 is when the British Raj had realised that this was the major cause of deaths during famines & had started major works programs to provide income to out of work agricultural labourers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Famine_Codes
It boils down (I think) to a historical position on whether India would have developed differently without the British Raj in power: would have been replaced by an equivalent local regime which extracted just as much wealth & resources for themselves at the expense of the people, or would the economy have developed in a different direction?
There’s no real question that the taxes imposed by the Raj extracted wealth from India & that loss came at a price that was paid ultimately by ordinary Indian people? They didn’t to trade freely with the UK in return after all.
It's pretty well indisputable that the economy of the subcontinent would have developed differently, but quite how it would have done seems utterly imponderable to me, FWIW. It doesn't seem particularly controversial, though, to argue that nations which remained independent during the industrial revolution fared rather better than those which became part of the various European empires ?
Examples? China is the biggest. It remained largely independent but endured a century of humiliation - so much so it now guides much of their thinking
Japan stayed independent and it prospered - but it did that by slavishly copying European culture and society (right down to tartan in school uniforms) and then becoming a European style imperial power in its own right
Yes, but the century of humiliation wasn't just about internal issues - the European empires played a part in that.
Has this guy never driven outside the UK, where it isn't exactly uncommon to see bi or tri-lingual signs.
It's the Telegraph, why would he have gone outside the UK?
Even if he did physically, he may have stayed at home in his mind.
But that reminds me of the brick of coffee (remember those?) that came from our local Polish mini-supermarket last week (amazing salami range and prices) with instructions on the back in Polish, Czech and Slovak. No English.
Its not the Telegraph, its Dr Nigel Hunt, visiting professor at Wrexham University....
THE eco-zealot who dumped glitter on Sir Keir Starmer at the Labour Party conference while demanding “democracy” is a privileged globe-trotting rich kid.
Jobless XR moaner Yaz Ashmawi, 28, studied at a private school in the oil-rich UAE and enjoys a £750,000 second home in Devon.
What did I predict the other day....the media talking about the value of his home ;-)
What I actually object to is numerous articles about this guy describe him as a scientist or physicist. He has a Masters in Physics and appeared to spend all his time just being an activist during and after. He has a science degree, that's not the same, he isn't and has never been actively engaged in science as a career.
Its a bit like those open letters signed by 100s of "scientists" that were masters students, the lab cleaners, etc.
THE eco-zealot who dumped glitter on Sir Keir Starmer at the Labour Party conference while demanding “democracy” is a privileged globe-trotting rich kid.
Jobless XR moaner Yaz Ashmawi, 28, studied at a private school in the oil-rich UAE and enjoys a £750,000 second home in Devon.
As much as he as an individual will annoy me - so what? Like, 13 flights in ten years is not that much and if he has realised that the privileges of his upbringing give him some ability to make the world a better place - good? That's exactly what people with power and money should do. I understand why poor and precarious people don't protest - they have little option but to do what they must.
Uncle Barty always makes Warrington sound bloody awful, soulless identikit housing surrounded by motorways. I have been to Warrington, it’s not that bad in real life. At least not the bit I visited.
Hmm, a look at TripAdvisor throws up cultural activities like Zombie Scavenger Hunts (not sure if the undead are doinf the scavenging or being eaten), though there is a nice looking trad municipal museum with mummy and paintings and dino and all. Okay. Walton Hall is No 1 Best Thing to Do in Warrington, and the Museum is No 3., but it 's a bit worrying that Gullivers World Theme Park is no 2 and an alpaca farm is no 4. Really trad Lanc culture that, of a part with parkin and faggot and so on. It thins out a bit later, No 105 being a bcobblestoned street, which at least doesn't take long to inspect.
Of course people are mobile and via motorways you can get elsewhere within the NW within a very reasonable time too. Want to be in Liverpool, or Manchester, or Chester, or North Wales? All easily accessible.
"Of course people are mobile [...] via motorways [...]".
Lots of people don't have cars. As much reminded on here.
Not a problem.
There's these things called buses and coaches that can go on motorways for the small minority who have no access to private transport.
Maybe you have heard of them before?
Sadly, the cost of bus travel has increased even while fuel duty has been cut, punishing the disabled, poor and young.
That's if the bus actually exists. 1,500 routes have been cut just since 2021. 10% of all services were cut in the last year. 50% since 2010.
I extend a compromise - no new motorways until bus travel costs are cut to the same extent as fuel duty, and the number of services return to pre-2010 levels?
The one all-day last service through this small town was recently re-routed. We can get to Stansted Airport on one bus. However, getting to either of the two local hospitals requires two buses. We used to be able to get a bus directly to one.
Good morning to all. That’s a greeting, not a comment on the weather, grey and damp.
Good morning too. On the contrary, for a change in Scotland the weather here is bright and sunny, if chilly at night - have had to put the heating on briefly in the morning and evening as it was otherwise too cold for comfort at the desk all day.
Beautiful and Autumnal in South Manchester too. Off to Scotland in a week and a half (Dunkeld) - a few days like this would do very nicely.
Anyway, looking back up this thread - Bart is being a tad obtuse. You COULD get tge bus from Warrington to Manchester or Liverpool or Chester, but 99% of people making those journeys by public transport would take the train, what with Warrington also having really good rail connections to those places.
[Citation Needed] on 99% because the facts don't represent that I believe.
Yes if you want to get from Warrington Town Centre to Manchester City Centre then the train is absolutely fantastic. I've used it myself I'll have you know, when I went to Manchester Christmas Market and wanted to drink so wouldn't drive.
But if you want to go either from or to other places then buses can be better. Want to get from your home, not town centre, to the Trafford Centre for instance? Buses can work very well for that too. There's options and choice either way. Of course cars are far better, but I've met people there before for days out who took a bus rather than drive.
Plus as Rochdale said I'm in favour of building public transport as well as motorways. Indeed I can't see any reason why we couldn't with investment have a Northwest tram network that operates all the way from Liverpool to Manchester and covering all the towns in-between.
The only fanatics here are those who oppose any investment in roads just because they despise roads and cars. I'm not opposing investment in public transport, even though I don't use it.
Fair enough. It has to be said, the bus is an often-overlooked mode of transport and can often work out surprisingly efficient - both halves of this statement are especially true outside of big urban areas, where the lack of congestion can mean a well-planned bus journey is often just as quick as driving.
Buses reduce congestion, of course.
The most stupid people in the UK are drivers who oppose bus lanes.
Don't be silly. There is no reason to reserve an entire lane for a bus that carries 2 people plus the driver on board and is empty then for a few minutes until the next bus uses it.
Just let the bus and cars all the lane, same any other traffic.
Hahaha. Proven.
The only response you have as you know you're talking shit.
There's this wonderful thing called bus stops that can be built, little lay-bys that the bus can pull into when it wants to, then rejoin free flowing traffic.
Hundreds of vehicles per hour using the lane is better than 10 vehicles an hour using the lane.
Check my edit out: People don't use buses when they spend the whole journey stuck in traffic. Which means more people take the car. Which leads to more traffic. And so on
Edinburgh is introducing 24/7 bus lanes shortly.
If you have sufficient road capacity, then traffic isn't a problem so its moot.
Unless I'm at a traffic light I spend almost all of my time driving in town at the speed limit, whether it be 30, 40 or 50mph.
Cars and buses driving at 50mph allows far more throughput of vehicles, people and goods than restricting your lanes and creating traffic jams.
You can magic capacity out of nowhere if you take 50 cars off the road and pop those people on a bus.
Same logic for traffic signals for Trams - 250 people onboard have priority over the drivers.
But the buses don't go from door to door, don't take a direct route, and have to stop to let other people on and off. So they'll always be inferior to driving.
Which is why only 2-3 people are on board, not 50.
You seem to be living in a bizarre universe where congestion is the problem. Try living outside of a city, build lower density, and have enough capacity.
If congestion isn't a problem, why do you need more roads?
Buses round me are completely packed. But then we don't have the terrible bus service you have in Warrington, much maligned in your local paper.
Have you not been paying attention?
We need more roads to make more direct routes from point to point. As well as to release capacity by allowing cars to travel fast wherever they're not intending to ultimately be, and allowing local roads to only serve local traffic. The default speed of vehicles moving around should be 50-70mph if they're not in the first or last mile of their journey most of the time.
I don't advocate widening motorways, I see it as a mostly pointless exercise.
I advocate building new roads where they don't currently exist.
Don't widen the M6, build a new M59, a new M580 etc
If I read the DtT figures correctly those kind of roads cost £30million per mile to build & then ~£60k / mile to maintain in perpetuity thereafter. This is before including the cost of any bridges or tunnels.
I would love it if, for once, you would do the most basic cost-benefit analysis BR. I’m not saying that we don’t need more roads in the UK, but clearly there’s no point uprooting the entire population to build motorways to their new houses twenty miles further away either.
There must be a point, even in your economic world model, where an incremental mile of road isn’t worth the expense. Where is it? How would you decide that?
Has this guy never driven outside the UK, where it isn't exactly uncommon to see bi or tri-lingual signs.
It's the Telegraph, why would he have gone outside the UK?
Even if he did physically, he may have stayed at home in his mind.
But that reminds me of the brick of coffee (remember those?) that came from our local Polish mini-supermarket last week (amazing salami range and prices) with instructions on the back in Polish, Czech and Slovak. No English.
Hmmm.
He wrote: “Signs like this. They are confusing as they contain irrelevant and – to most people – unintelligible information.
“Road signs in two languages are potentially dangerous as it takes longer to determine the message.
If he can't read it in the time he gives himself, he just needs to slow down and give himself enough time, but instead he's doing the endemic "anything else but me" thing.
Is Dr Hunt or the Road Sign the more dangerous item?
Sunak seems doomed, but one thing he should try, in my opinion, is to contrast his ‘Eat out to help out’ optimism with Sir Keir’s “we better all stay in for a few more months this summer, even though the worst was way behind us” strategy,
“Johnson Variant”, Jesus Christ. He must have been secretly hoping for more cases when we opened up against his advice
THE eco-zealot who dumped glitter on Sir Keir Starmer at the Labour Party conference while demanding “democracy” is a privileged globe-trotting rich kid.
Jobless XR moaner Yaz Ashmawi, 28, studied at a private school in the oil-rich UAE and enjoys a £750,000 second home in Devon.
As much as he as an individual will annoy me - so what? Like, 13 flights in ten years is not that much and if he has realised that the privileges of his upbringing give him some ability to make the world a better place - good? That's exactly what people with power and money should do. I understand why poor and precarious people don't protest - they have little option but to do what they must.
The article is a bit silly (kid at 28? jetted or took flights?) but not quite sure how throwing glitter at Starmer makes the world a better place?
THE eco-zealot who dumped glitter on Sir Keir Starmer at the Labour Party conference while demanding “democracy” is a privileged globe-trotting rich kid.
Jobless XR moaner Yaz Ashmawi, 28, studied at a private school in the oil-rich UAE and enjoys a £750,000 second home in Devon.
As much as he as an individual will annoy me - so what? Like, 13 flights in ten years is not that much and if he has realised that the privileges of his upbringing give him some ability to make the world a better place - good? That's exactly what people with power and money should do. I understand why poor and precarious people don't protest - they have little option but to do what they must.
You've completely missed the point. PB is now about to embark upon an exploration and debate as to whether a "£750,000 second home in Devon" is actually anything more than a 2-bed flat in an unsalubrious part of Honiton or whether it is that nice Georgian pile that Labour would like to provide every voter with.
It was an absolute tragedy for the aborigines. But, if you read the history - and my Aussie daughter’s grandfather is an expert - it was never the intention of the British “settlers” (with the horrible exception of Tasmania). Aboriginal society simply collapsed when confronted with a much more advanced civilisation
It’s quite a warning as we look at the possible first encounter of humanity with advanced AI. This decade
Oh well, at least we only did a little bit of genocide. Even on the most generous reading, Australia is an absolute refutation of the claim that colonisation was good for the locals.
I never claimed colonisation was “good for the locals”
In truth it can be bad - eg the Belgian Congo - or it can be good - Scotland under England. You’d still be eating raw oats if we hadn’t taken over
Or it can be a complex mixture of both. “What have the Romans ever done for us” etc
I think most of the British Empire falls into the third category
THE eco-zealot who dumped glitter on Sir Keir Starmer at the Labour Party conference while demanding “democracy” is a privileged globe-trotting rich kid.
Jobless XR moaner Yaz Ashmawi, 28, studied at a private school in the oil-rich UAE and enjoys a £750,000 second home in Devon.
As much as he as an individual will annoy me - so what? Like, 13 flights in ten years is not that much and if he has realised that the privileges of his upbringing give him some ability to make the world a better place - good? That's exactly what people with power and money should do. I understand why poor and precarious people don't protest - they have little option but to do what they must.
13 flights in ten years is 13 more than me, and I'm not a climate "zealot".
It was an absolute tragedy for the aborigines. But, if you read the history - and my Aussie daughter’s grandfather is an expert - it was never the intention of the British “settlers” (with the horrible exception of Tasmania). Aboriginal society simply collapsed when confronted with a much more advanced civilisation
It’s quite a warning as we look at the possible first encounter of humanity with advanced AI. This decade
Oh well, at least we only did a little bit of genocide. Even on the most generous reading, Australia is an absolute refutation of the claim that colonisation was good for the locals.
The Football Association will refuse to light up the Wembley arch in blue and white but will instead hold a minute’s silence and players will wear black armbands to mark the terrorist attacks in Israel.
Australia are scheduled to play Palestine in a World Cup qualifier next month and that is said to have been one of the factors in the decision.
A final decision on what to do with the arch was said to be still pending, with one idea switching off its illuminations altogether.
Many, many fans need to take an Israeli flag in with them to make a point. Maybe someone can hand them out for free outside the ground?
Your kidding, right? Did you see the stats yday from YouGov on support for the various factions and I can tell you that just about every age range is more sympathetic towards the Palestinians.
Yes, but that still leaves a lot who aren’t (this time, at least) and I’m going to suggest that an England football crowd during the international break will disproportionately favour them.
Sunak seems doomed, but one thing he should try, in my opinion, is to contrast his ‘Eat out to help out’ optimism with Sir Keir’s “we better all stay in for a few more months this summer, even though the worst was way behind us” strategy,
“Johnson Variant”, Jesus Christ. He must have been secretly hoping for more cases when we opened up against his advice
Since then, it appears Starmer has been advised by Mandy to paint a more optimistic picture of the future, where as Sunak alleged brought Big Dom back into the fold, who immediately advised him to tip over the apple cart and advocate the crazy.
Comments
https://twitter.com/IDF/status/1712382998073454888
Is it because the buses fuel has gone up? If so, maybe look at that. Is it because the cost of vehicles has gone up? If so, maybe look at that.
If the cost has gone up because the drivers wages have gone up, and there's only 2 passengers on board to pay the drivers wages, well . . . not sure what you expect to be done by that? Taxis are expensive for that reason too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_India
Certainly it was completely unable to protect its domestic manufacturing industry as part of Empire.
Counterfactuals are hard, in this case close to impossible, but it's an interesting question how the various parts of India might have fared during the industrial revolution had they been independent states.
Just let the bus and cars all the lane, same any other traffic.
(People don't use buses when they spend the whole journey stuck in traffic. Which means more people take the car. Which leads to more traffic. And so on.)
Or psychological, remember ISIS, we are here on your doorstep & we can get into your house and do the same things.
One the perceptional inflationary tricks is that we are all used to £1 = $1.25-$1.5, but the calculation uses £1 = £4.8 dollars as that was the approx exchange rate 100-250 years ago.
Another is that 150-250 years of compound interest at 5% is included. Just 150 years of compounding at 5% increases a sum by 1500 times.
I would have thought though the bigger impact on VI was Starmers planning comments which were a gift to the Tories . After a good conference the last few days has been poor from Starmer .
There's this wonderful thing called bus stops that can be built, little lay-bys that the bus can pull into when it wants to, then rejoin free flowing traffic.
Hundreds of vehicles per hour using the lane is better than 10 vehicles an hour using the lane.
Edinburgh is introducing 24/7 bus lanes shortly.
Of course on the latter issue history will not be kind
But with Sunak as leader for the Tories, then he might be the least worst option.
Depressing. But if the Tories won't sort themselves out, and we are led to Starmer by default, then that's the Tories fault.
It doesn't matter how often you show the effects, the stats, the arguments. It would have been fine. We could have intoned the magic word "Sweden" and all would have gone away.
His second uphill task is that the stasis in the planning system comes from the type of legislation he supports eg net zero so he has to upset his own supporters as well.
There is nothing to see here.
There may or may not be things to see elsewhere in DfT.
Unless I'm at a traffic light I spend almost all of my time driving in town at the speed limit, whether it be 30, 40 or 50mph.
Cars and buses driving at 50mph allows far more throughput of vehicles, people and goods than restricting your lanes and creating traffic jams.
The reason people aren't using buses isn't traffic, when you can drive at 30/40/50mph whatever the speed limit is, except for being at red lights and buses need to stop at red lights too.
industry”. Before the Brits it was utterly brutalised by the Mughals, who enslaved millions and murdered equally
The only alternative to British rule was probably rule by the Portuguese (much worse), the Dutch (worse), or the French (definitely worse, but they taught you to make croissants)
Just do a bit of googling.
Same logic for traffic signals for Trams - 250 people onboard have priority over the drivers.
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJ3Gh9UT/
Yes there should be a code, no there should not be a requirement for permission.
Build to code. If you break the code, then you should face consequences, same as breaking any other law, but if you are operating legally you shouldn't need to ask permission first.
It boils down (I think) to a historical position on whether India would have developed differently without the British Raj in power: would have been replaced by an equivalent local regime which extracted just as much wealth & resources for themselves at the expense of the people, or would the economy have developed in a different direction?
There’s no real question that the taxes imposed by the Raj extracted wealth from India & that loss came at a price that was paid ultimately by ordinary Indian people? They didn’t to trade freely with the UK in return after all.
It troubles me.
Which is why only 2-3 people are on board, not 50.
You seem to be living in a bizarre universe where congestion is the problem. Try living outside of a city, build lower density, and have enough capacity.
I’m appalled by the deaths on both sides but at the moment this view seems to be viewed as heresy by some. Half of those in Gaza are under 18 , it stands to reason then that by the end of this tragic chapter thousands of children will be killed .
I wonder if he just dislikes anything moving at more than 5mph.
Buses round me are completely packed. But then we don't have the terrible bus service you have in Warrington, much maligned in your local paper.
No comments?
It’s quite a warning as we look at the possible first encounter of humanity with advanced AI. This decade
Important conference for Yousaf though.
There would certainly be significant resistance regardless of the rights and wrongs of it.
It doesn't seem particularly controversial, though, to argue that nations which remained independent during the industrial revolution fared rather better than those which became part of the various European empires ?
We need more roads to make more direct routes from point to point. As well as to release capacity by allowing cars to travel fast wherever they're not intending to ultimately be, and allowing local roads to only serve local traffic. The default speed of vehicles moving around should be 50-70mph if they're not in the first or last mile of their journey most of the time.
I don't advocate widening motorways, I see it as a mostly pointless exercise.
I advocate building new roads where they don't currently exist.
Don't widen the M6, build a new M59, a new M580 etc
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/21/road-safety-confronting-sculpture-shows-human-vulnerability-to-crashes
Colossus Carmichael (copyright OGH) is also in on the act.
Was he seriously worried about the danger of the virus? If so he wouldn’t have risked boozing indoors with other people when no one else was allowed, whether it was allowed due to a technicality/loophole or not
So he was just scaremongering. Trying to make any deaths attributable to his rival and considering the rest of us all being trapped inside for longer a justifiable consequence
Since that is unlikely to happen whilst they are in power, istm that it needs to be Starmer.
We could try a new approach:
https://youtu.be/UceoLeW8GoA?t=37
Jes Staley has also been fined £1.8m, said the Financial Conduct Authority.
The regulator said Mr Staley had claimed not to be close to Epstein when in reality he viewed him as a "cherished" friend.
AI - when it exists - doesn’t have to “do” anything. The mere fact it exists will be enough. For the first time in the history of humankind we will be sharing the planet with another alien intelligent being - and one smarter than us
Some will seek to destroy it, some will fall in love with it, some will worship it. We will be like the Aztecs seeing European ships and wheels and warhorses - but times a hundred thousand
Australia are scheduled to play Palestine in a World Cup qualifier next month and that is said to have been one of the factors in the decision.
A final decision on what to do with the arch was said to be still pending, with one idea switching off its illuminations altogether.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2023/10/12/england-australia-minute-silence-wembley-arch-israel-hamas/
Cowards and liars...
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/lax-british-laws-let-hamas-supporters-glorify-terrorism-warns-former-extremism-tsar/ar-AA1i3LyX?ocid=entnewsntp&cvid=8688fc5788334691ab2a27cbfb0bfcb3&ei=49
As well as having a hell of a lot more carrying brand new long-term health conditions. If you didn't have anything that could remotely be described as a long term health condition (which excludes nearly 40% of the country), then the outcome can be: okay, do you want one?
Not to mention that pretty much anything else the NHS do would have stopped. Not like what actually happened, when they reduced other things but still had 75%+ of their activity on those other things, but several times worse. And, of course, a whole load of those who weren't old were saved because they got care. Take that away and what happens?
Then what happens with fear and dread in all ages?
“Road signs in two languages are potentially dangerous as it takes longer to determine the message.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/12/wrexham-university-welsh-road-signs-dangerous/
Has this guy never driven outside the UK, where it isn't exactly uncommon to see bi or tri-lingual signs.
Japan stayed independent and it prospered - but it did that by slavishly copying European culture and society (right down to tartan in school uniforms) and then becoming a European style imperial power in its own right
Even on the most generous reading, Australia is an absolute refutation of the claim that colonisation was good for the locals.
https://observer.com/2016/10/2006-audio-emerges-of-hillary-clinton-proposing-rigging-palestine-election/
“I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake,” said Sen. Clinton. “And if we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win.”
Even if he did physically, he may have stayed at home in his mind.
But that reminds me of the brick of coffee (remember those?) that came from our local Polish mini-supermarket last week (amazing salami range and prices) with instructions on the back in Polish, Czech and Slovak. No English.
We're going to have future pandemics. And despite hating what happened (as I said time and again when it was happening, I truly hated it. You try getting a severely autistic teenager through repeated lockdowns), and, again, as I said, faster and more targeted action could have reduced the scope of NPIs and potentially avoided the full lockdowns in November and January/February.
1 - HEPA filtration and far-UV treatment. We learned that outside was much safer than inside. So turn inside into outside in terms of the effects of the virus. Roll those out to schools, hospitals, encourage them into bars and restaurants and even offices. The R factor drops.
2 - More into vaccine development and funding. Selling off the Harwell VMIC was bloody stupid. Better education on vaccines and addressing the antivax morons.
3 - Significantly increased healthcare capacity. The more capacity to treat acute and general patients, the more headroom we have to try different things. For all the headlines on deaths, it was always the number hospitalised and in intensive care that drove the NPI increases.
Otherwise those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The first time as tragedy and the second as farce.
We have to make war to prove that we are stronger than the Jews,
says a little Palestinian schoolgirl in a Gaza school.
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1712409699537072397
Anyway. My early lunch break is over, and back to work.
Not sure why
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1712405197342052626?t=WfX-6x7-ker1KAUYD0J8Cg&s=19
Independent nations should certainly do better than colonies in general. In the case of India, I guess it would depend which of the Moghul successor states ended up as the dominant power.
Jobless XR moaner Yaz Ashmawi, 28, studied at a private school in the oil-rich UAE and enjoys a £750,000 second home in Devon.
He has jetted to 13 countries on four continents in ten years, taking holiday snaps for his Instagram account — and making a nonsense of his green pretensions.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/24371064/eco-zealot-dumped-glitter-sir-keir-starmer-rich-kid/
What I actually object to is numerous articles about this guy describe him as a scientist or physicist. He has a Masters in Physics and appeared to spend all his time just being an activist during and after. He has a science degree, that's not the same, he isn't and has never been actively engaged in science as a career.
Its a bit like those open letters signed by 100s of "scientists" that were masters students, the lab cleaners, etc.
I would love it if, for once, you would do the most basic cost-benefit analysis BR. I’m not saying that we don’t need more roads in the UK, but clearly there’s no point uprooting the entire population to build motorways to their new houses twenty miles further away either.
There must be a point, even in your economic world model, where an incremental mile of road isn’t worth the expense. Where is it? How would you decide that?
He wrote: “Signs like this. They are confusing as they contain irrelevant and – to most people – unintelligible information.
“Road signs in two languages are potentially dangerous as it takes longer to determine the message.
If he can't read it in the time he gives himself, he just needs to slow down and give himself enough time, but instead he's doing the endemic "anything else but me" thing.
Is Dr Hunt or the Road Sign the more dangerous item?
“Johnson Variant”, Jesus Christ. He must have been secretly hoping for more cases when we opened up against his advice
In truth it can be bad - eg the Belgian Congo - or it can be good - Scotland under England. You’d still be eating raw oats if we hadn’t taken over
Or it can be a complex mixture of both. “What have the Romans ever done for us” etc
I think most of the British Empire falls into the third category