The number of companies going bust this year is on track to be the highest since the depths of the financial crisis in 2009. Insolvencies rose 10% from a year ago in the three months to the end of September, the latest official figures for England and Wales show.
I don't know about anybody else, but I rather feel like we are in the situation where Wile E. Coyote has run off the cliff, legs still pumping, haven't not yet realised there isn't any ground below.
I think you are absolutely right. That is what we are seeing.
In my industry, I work in Engineering for a manufacturing company servicing food and beverage producers and offshore oil and sea producers, we are seeing a real decline year on year and we are not expecting a real pick up until the middle of next year at the earliest.
Our customers are expecting this to continue and our supply chain are trying to get reductions from the supply base. The feedback from the suppliers is volume is down as well.
We are heading for a real slowdown in election year. It is not going to be pretty and unemployment is going to increase quite a bit. PMI is still very flat.
The number of companies going bust this year is on track to be the highest since the depths of the financial crisis in 2009. Insolvencies rose 10% from a year ago in the three months to the end of September, the latest official figures for England and Wales show.
I don't know about anybody else, but I rather feel like we are in the situation where Wile E. Coyote has run off the cliff, legs still pumping, haven't not yet realised there isn't any ground below.
A lot of the problem is that Companies took advantage of the very generous and easy to get Government Covid loans without any thought of how they would be paid back. I know of businesses who managed to get loans which were far too large for their turnover/profit.
Since I'm doing pics I find amusing, here are a couple of interesting barriers.
1 - This one looks like a legal tripwire so people going round it can be definitely shown to have done something unauthorised.
2 - Not sure how new this is, but it is unlawful as it will substantially disadvantage many disabled people. Are they planning to build a fence?
3 - This is like 2, but has been there for at least 25 and perhaps 50 years. I think I recall cycling through this on my Raleigh RSW14 at the age of 8. Also unlawful for the same reasons. And a total waste of money / space.
Off now - have a good day all.
I once ran full tilt into a no 3 in the dark, rather painful. Like that one it was painted a colour that doesn't show up in the dark, and if I had a headtorch on, it was pointed more at the ground
I presume the thinking behind 1) is that if they put the fence to the edge of the platform, it risks hitting trains and people can still climb round it?
3) is the kind of thing that was ancient when I was child.
What are the sensible, rational, effective methods for preventing urban paths becoming rat runs for the electric bike Deliveroo types?
Bring back the old country stiles. Try getting a bike over that!
Chanelling Top Gear - GOOD NEWS !!! (Especially for people with asthma.)
ULEZ compliance in London is now above 95%: Not bad.
First data on @SadiqKhan's Ulez expansion: 🔴Londonwide zone raises up to £26m in first month in levies and fines 🟢95.2% of vehicles now comply with the exhaust emission rules 🟢 77,000 fewer non-compliant vehicles a day being driven in London, down 45% https://twitter.com/RossLydall/status/1719246092091392085
I particularly liked the part about rather being electrocuted than being eaten by a shark.
In contrast, I think Biden has been extremely Presidential in the way he has dealt with the Hamas crisis. It plays to his strengths and long experience but he has been measured, clear and not at all afraid of action (as shown by the air raids in Iraq and the interception of missiles in the Red Sea).
I think the multiplicity of law suits, the increasing risks to his wealth and indeed his liberty, is making Trump desperate. His fund raising is increasingly focused on paying for the plethora of lawyers he needs to deploy. Assumptions about him being the Republican nominee may well prove to be misplaced.
Yes. For me if you take a holistic impressionist view of the Donald Trump situation rather than an analytical mechanistic one (a Monet rather than a Stubbs if you will) you see a man with little chance of regaining the White House. The 2.9 current price is truly something to behold imo. I envy people with a clean book who can start laying him at that sort of level.
You keep trying to apply a rational analysis to American politics. At the moment we are deep into shark jump territory. Or perhaps.... General Boulanger territory. A large chunk of the population will vote for Trump, no matter what. He has a solid lock one of the two main parties.
Take your point but no, I'm doing the opposite of that on this one. I'm usually Mr Spock but here I'm Captain Kirk. I'm using fuzzy 'big pic' intuition not bottoms up logical analysis. I've learnt to trust it when I have it. There'll be no POTUS Trump 2.0.
Given the solid MAGA lock on the vote counting and affirming process, in many states?
"The people will vote. My brother will count the votes" - Napoleon.
Good luck with that thinking.
They had a lock on those states in 2020 but there were not enough of them to win the EC, if Trump is convicted and jailed next year he probably won't be, if he isn't he may well be as the swing voting states are not happy with the economy and high inflation
...if Trump is convicted and jailed next year he probably won't be, if he isn't he may well be...
Edit: I think I've deciphered that on the 6th reading.
The take over of electoral related offices in various states came out of the refusal of officials in many places to do what Trump wanted in 2020. With the declared intention of making sure "the system" cooperates next time.
Hardline MAGA installed all over the place.
Yep.
I suspect Trump will refuse to do the debates so indie voters dont get to see how out of touch with reality and frankly old he has become.
There will be relentless focus on whether Harris is fit to be POTUS because Biden's age makes that a massive issue.
I assume the Dems have thought that through and concluded we are stuck with her?
I particularly liked the part about rather being electrocuted than being eaten by a shark.
In contrast, I think Biden has been extremely Presidential in the way he has dealt with the Hamas crisis. It plays to his strengths and long experience but he has been measured, clear and not at all afraid of action (as shown by the air raids in Iraq and the interception of missiles in the Red Sea).
I think the multiplicity of law suits, the increasing risks to his wealth and indeed his liberty, is making Trump desperate. His fund raising is increasingly focused on paying for the plethora of lawyers he needs to deploy. Assumptions about him being the Republican nominee may well prove to be misplaced.
Yes. For me if you take a holistic impressionist view of the Donald Trump situation rather than an analytical mechanistic one (a Monet rather than a Stubbs if you will) you see a man with little chance of regaining the White House. The 2.9 current price is truly something to behold imo. I envy people with a clean book who can start laying him at that sort of level.
You keep trying to apply a rational analysis to American politics. At the moment we are deep into shark jump territory. Or perhaps.... General Boulanger territory. A large chunk of the population will vote for Trump, no matter what. He has a solid lock one of the two main parties.
Take your point but no, I'm doing the opposite of that on this one. I'm usually Mr Spock but here I'm Captain Kirk. I'm using fuzzy 'big pic' intuition not bottoms up logical analysis. I've learnt to trust it when I have it. There'll be no POTUS Trump 2.0.
Given the solid MAGA lock on the vote counting and affirming process, in many states?
"The people will vote. My brother will count the votes" - Napoleon.
Good luck with that thinking.
Trumps best chance of stealing the election was when he was already POTUS - and we basically see that is what he tried to do, using his network and influence as President to try and force GOP pols in states to overturn results and, when that failed, trying to pressure Pence and the House with the threat of violence.
I think Trump has a reasonable chance of winning the EC just because the US is 46/46 and that 8% who aren't fixed into a party have weird priorities that don't quite make them "the centre" but do mean they could vote either way depending on what they care about most on the day.
A bigger issue, in my mind, will be if Trump loses but the GOP keep the House - they would totally refuse to accept the delegates and that does put you in "civil war" territory where the constitution doesn't really provide a workable answer (I think if the EC isn't accepted it becomes a vote of the states, where each delegation votes and then whichever is the majority in that state can say who they support, which would probably go in favour of the GOP)
It is only the Vice President as Senate President who affirms the result of the EC and Harris will of course still be VP in Jan 2025. The House can challenge state EC results but only with Senate support have a chance to change anything.
It only goes to state representatives if there is no EC majority for any one candidate
In my understanding a majority in the House can refuse to accept delegates from certain states / the entire delegation of the Electoral College without the VP needing to agree. They could do so to either manufacture a tie (by denying one or two states to make the maths work) or denying ALL electors. In a situation where they deny all electors, I assume that will count as "no EC majority for any one candidate".
I particularly liked the part about rather being electrocuted than being eaten by a shark.
In contrast, I think Biden has been extremely Presidential in the way he has dealt with the Hamas crisis. It plays to his strengths and long experience but he has been measured, clear and not at all afraid of action (as shown by the air raids in Iraq and the interception of missiles in the Red Sea).
I think the multiplicity of law suits, the increasing risks to his wealth and indeed his liberty, is making Trump desperate. His fund raising is increasingly focused on paying for the plethora of lawyers he needs to deploy. Assumptions about him being the Republican nominee may well prove to be misplaced.
Yes. For me if you take a holistic impressionist view of the Donald Trump situation rather than an analytical mechanistic one (a Monet rather than a Stubbs if you will) you see a man with little chance of regaining the White House. The 2.9 current price is truly something to behold imo. I envy people with a clean book who can start laying him at that sort of level.
You keep trying to apply a rational analysis to American politics. At the moment we are deep into shark jump territory. Or perhaps.... General Boulanger territory. A large chunk of the population will vote for Trump, no matter what. He has a solid lock one of the two main parties.
Take your point but no, I'm doing the opposite of that on this one. I'm usually Mr Spock but here I'm Captain Kirk. I'm using fuzzy 'big pic' intuition not bottoms up logical analysis. I've learnt to trust it when I have it. There'll be no POTUS Trump 2.0.
Given the solid MAGA lock on the vote counting and affirming process, in many states?
"The people will vote. My brother will count the votes" - Napoleon.
Good luck with that thinking.
Who are they going to instal if Trump is in jail for 20 years with no chance of pardon?
I particularly liked the part about rather being electrocuted than being eaten by a shark.
In contrast, I think Biden has been extremely Presidential in the way he has dealt with the Hamas crisis. It plays to his strengths and long experience but he has been measured, clear and not at all afraid of action (as shown by the air raids in Iraq and the interception of missiles in the Red Sea).
I think the multiplicity of law suits, the increasing risks to his wealth and indeed his liberty, is making Trump desperate. His fund raising is increasingly focused on paying for the plethora of lawyers he needs to deploy. Assumptions about him being the Republican nominee may well prove to be misplaced.
Yes. For me if you take a holistic impressionist view of the Donald Trump situation rather than an analytical mechanistic one (a Monet rather than a Stubbs if you will) you see a man with little chance of regaining the White House. The 2.9 current price is truly something to behold imo. I envy people with a clean book who can start laying him at that sort of level.
You keep trying to apply a rational analysis to American politics. At the moment we are deep into shark jump territory. Or perhaps.... General Boulanger territory. A large chunk of the population will vote for Trump, no matter what. He has a solid lock one of the two main parties.
Take your point but no, I'm doing the opposite of that on this one. I'm usually Mr Spock but here I'm Captain Kirk. I'm using fuzzy 'big pic' intuition not bottoms up logical analysis. I've learnt to trust it when I have it. There'll be no POTUS Trump 2.0.
Given the solid MAGA lock on the vote counting and affirming process, in many states?
"The people will vote. My brother will count the votes" - Napoleon.
Good luck with that thinking.
Who are they going to instal if Trump is in jail for 20 years with no chance of pardon?
I particularly liked the part about rather being electrocuted than being eaten by a shark.
In contrast, I think Biden has been extremely Presidential in the way he has dealt with the Hamas crisis. It plays to his strengths and long experience but he has been measured, clear and not at all afraid of action (as shown by the air raids in Iraq and the interception of missiles in the Red Sea).
I think the multiplicity of law suits, the increasing risks to his wealth and indeed his liberty, is making Trump desperate. His fund raising is increasingly focused on paying for the plethora of lawyers he needs to deploy. Assumptions about him being the Republican nominee may well prove to be misplaced.
Yes. For me if you take a holistic impressionist view of the Donald Trump situation rather than an analytical mechanistic one (a Monet rather than a Stubbs if you will) you see a man with little chance of regaining the White House. The 2.9 current price is truly something to behold imo. I envy people with a clean book who can start laying him at that sort of level.
You keep trying to apply a rational analysis to American politics. At the moment we are deep into shark jump territory. Or perhaps.... General Boulanger territory. A large chunk of the population will vote for Trump, no matter what. He has a solid lock one of the two main parties.
Take your point but no, I'm doing the opposite of that on this one. I'm usually Mr Spock but here I'm Captain Kirk. I'm using fuzzy 'big pic' intuition not bottoms up logical analysis. I've learnt to trust it when I have it. There'll be no POTUS Trump 2.0.
Given the solid MAGA lock on the vote counting and affirming process, in many states?
"The people will vote. My brother will count the votes" - Napoleon.
Good luck with that thinking.
Who are they going to instal if Trump is in jail for 20 years with no chance of pardon?
Serious question.
Trump. If the GOP go full out and either a) win or b) steal the election, him being behind bars will hardly stop them. He will pardon all federal convictions, and they will find a way in Georgia to bypass the system they have in place, even if they have to go to SCOTUS to do so.
Today's big news is that the Ulez-X is working, and working well.
Well done Sadiq Khan – a bold, ambitious policy executed brilliantly despite the usual whiners trying to turn back the clock.
Presumably we will see several PBers publicly feasting on gluttonous volumes of humble pie.
Did people doubt that Ulez would work? Very odd people if they did. The complaints were more about costs to those who could not afford to change their vehicle but still needed to drive an uncompliant car in the zone.
The number of companies going bust this year is on track to be the highest since the depths of the financial crisis in 2009. Insolvencies rose 10% from a year ago in the three months to the end of September, the latest official figures for England and Wales show.
I don't know about anybody else, but I rather feel like we are in the situation where Wile E. Coyote has run off the cliff, legs still pumping, haven't not yet realised there isn't any ground below.
A lot of the problem is that Companies took advantage of the very generous and easy to get Government Covid loans without any thought of how they would be paid back. I know of businesses who managed to get loans which were far too large for their turnover/profit.
Both during 2008 and COVID that the state encouraged / shielded companies from going bust or making too many people unemployed e.g. in 2008, there was lots of push for everybody to take a pay cut, reduce hours but keep your job etc.
Now unemployment can be a terrible personal experience and too many all at once again can be very tough. However, my thesis has been that this cycle of having bust times, forces the weak companies to go under and for other companies to really revolutionise to stay alive. The upshot is when we recover, you have much more productive and competitive organisations.
Instead, what we have now is low productivity across the economy.
@HYUFD Thanks for the discussion on religious schools last night. It was a good discussion. I didn't reply to your last post because I had gone to bed, but read it this morning with interest. Freedom to be able to do or choose stuff is a complicated subject with lots of conflicts and contradictions so it is good to see stuff from different perspectives.
Plans to close hundreds of railway ticket offices in England are set to be cancelled, a rail industry source has told the BBC.
An announcement is expected shortly from the Department for Transport.
Is there an election in the offing?
I'm hearing whispers of next October, now...
A year today I hear. 31 October 2024.
It'll forever be known as the Halloween election.
I prefer the the Tory Bloodbath election, or just 1997 revisited. Either will do.
No love for Starmer or labour, but the country needs different idiots running things, mainly so that some folk can realise that being in government isn't that easy.
Today's big news is that the Ulez-X is working, and working well.
Well done Sadiq Khan – a bold, ambitious policy executed brilliantly despite the usual whiners trying to turn back the clock.
Presumably we will see several PBers publicly feasting on gluttonous volumes of humble pie.
Did people doubt that Ulez would work? Very odd people if they did. The complaints were more about costs to those who could not afford to change their vehicle but still needed to drive an uncompliant car in the zone.
Also cost to business, which will be passed onto the consumer.
I particularly liked the part about rather being electrocuted than being eaten by a shark.
In contrast, I think Biden has been extremely Presidential in the way he has dealt with the Hamas crisis. It plays to his strengths and long experience but he has been measured, clear and not at all afraid of action (as shown by the air raids in Iraq and the interception of missiles in the Red Sea).
I think the multiplicity of law suits, the increasing risks to his wealth and indeed his liberty, is making Trump desperate. His fund raising is increasingly focused on paying for the plethora of lawyers he needs to deploy. Assumptions about him being the Republican nominee may well prove to be misplaced.
Yes. For me if you take a holistic impressionist view of the Donald Trump situation rather than an analytical mechanistic one (a Monet rather than a Stubbs if you will) you see a man with little chance of regaining the White House. The 2.9 current price is truly something to behold imo. I envy people with a clean book who can start laying him at that sort of level.
You keep trying to apply a rational analysis to American politics. At the moment we are deep into shark jump territory. Or perhaps.... General Boulanger territory. A large chunk of the population will vote for Trump, no matter what. He has a solid lock one of the two main parties.
Take your point but no, I'm doing the opposite of that on this one. I'm usually Mr Spock but here I'm Captain Kirk. I'm using fuzzy 'big pic' intuition not bottoms up logical analysis. I've learnt to trust it when I have it. There'll be no POTUS Trump 2.0.
Given the solid MAGA lock on the vote counting and affirming process, in many states?
"The people will vote. My brother will count the votes" - Napoleon.
Good luck with that thinking.
Who are they going to instal if Trump is in jail for 20 years with no chance of pardon?
Today, Lee Cain says that Boris Johnson went on a two week holiday.
But yesterday, Martin Reynolds, the Principal Private Secretary to Boris Johnson said he didn't know why Johnson was away for 10 days. How could he not know about the holiday when Lee Cain did? #CovidInquiry https://twitter.com/implausibleblog/status/1719301084479402164
The number of companies going bust this year is on track to be the highest since the depths of the financial crisis in 2009. Insolvencies rose 10% from a year ago in the three months to the end of September, the latest official figures for England and Wales show.
I don't know about anybody else, but I rather feel like we are in the situation where Wile E. Coyote has run off the cliff, legs still pumping, haven't not yet realised there isn't any ground below.
A lot of the problem is that Companies took advantage of the very generous and easy to get Government Covid loans without any thought of how they would be paid back. I know of businesses who managed to get loans which were far too large for their turnover/profit.
Both during 2008 and COVID that the state encouraged / shielded companies from going bust or making too many people unemployed e.g. in 2008, there was lots of push for everybody to take a pay cut, reduce hours but keep your job etc.
Now unemployment can be a terrible personal experience and too many all at once again can be very tough. However, my thesis has been that this cycle of having bust times, forces the weak companies to go under and for other companies to really revolutionise to stay alive. The upshot is when we recover, you have much more productive and competitive organisations.
Instead, what we have now is low productivity across the economy.
I think what really killed productivity in our economy is the uncontrolled rise in online blogs and forums where people can waste time writing tens of thousands of pointless posts.
I particularly liked the part about rather being electrocuted than being eaten by a shark.
In contrast, I think Biden has been extremely Presidential in the way he has dealt with the Hamas crisis. It plays to his strengths and long experience but he has been measured, clear and not at all afraid of action (as shown by the air raids in Iraq and the interception of missiles in the Red Sea).
I think the multiplicity of law suits, the increasing risks to his wealth and indeed his liberty, is making Trump desperate. His fund raising is increasingly focused on paying for the plethora of lawyers he needs to deploy. Assumptions about him being the Republican nominee may well prove to be misplaced.
Yes. For me if you take a holistic impressionist view of the Donald Trump situation rather than an analytical mechanistic one (a Monet rather than a Stubbs if you will) you see a man with little chance of regaining the White House. The 2.9 current price is truly something to behold imo. I envy people with a clean book who can start laying him at that sort of level.
You keep trying to apply a rational analysis to American politics. At the moment we are deep into shark jump territory. Or perhaps.... General Boulanger territory. A large chunk of the population will vote for Trump, no matter what. He has a solid lock one of the two main parties.
Take your point but no, I'm doing the opposite of that on this one. I'm usually Mr Spock but here I'm Captain Kirk. I'm using fuzzy 'big pic' intuition not bottoms up logical analysis. I've learnt to trust it when I have it. There'll be no POTUS Trump 2.0.
Given the solid MAGA lock on the vote counting and affirming process, in many states?
"The people will vote. My brother will count the votes" - Napoleon.
Good luck with that thinking.
Who are they going to instal if Trump is in jail for 20 years with no chance of pardon?
Serious question.
Trump. Seriously.
He'll get shivved with a chicken bone in a Georgia jail before inauguration.
Some rare policing good news which I’m sure* everyone will applaud. No wonder they had a forensic tent to spare for Nicla’s front garden.
*not totally sure about that actually.
So... Are Scottish cops smarter than their counterparts south of the border? Or are Scottish murderers dumber than their counterparts south of the border?
The number of companies going bust this year is on track to be the highest since the depths of the financial crisis in 2009. Insolvencies rose 10% from a year ago in the three months to the end of September, the latest official figures for England and Wales show.
I don't know about anybody else, but I rather feel like we are in the situation where Wile E. Coyote has run off the cliff, legs still pumping, haven't not yet realised there isn't any ground below.
A lot of the problem is that Companies took advantage of the very generous and easy to get Government Covid loans without any thought of how they would be paid back. I know of businesses who managed to get loans which were far too large for their turnover/profit.
Both during 2008 and COVID that the state encouraged / shielded companies from going bust or making too many people unemployed e.g. in 2008, there was lots of push for everybody to take a pay cut, reduce hours but keep your job etc.
Now unemployment can be a terrible personal experience and too many all at once again can be very tough. However, my thesis has been that this cycle of having bust times, forces the weak companies to go under and for other companies to really revolutionise to stay alive. The upshot is when we recover, you have much more productive and competitive organisations.
Instead, what we have now is low productivity across the economy.
I am aware that a lot of the Covid Business Loans were not used to benefit the business, but paid for nice things for the Director's of the businesses. Going bust gets rid of that debt but the nice things are still in the possession of the Directors.
Since I'm doing pics I find amusing, here are a couple of interesting barriers.
1 - This one looks like a legal tripwire so people going round it can be definitely shown to have done something unauthorised.
2 - Not sure how new this is, but it is unlawful as it will substantially disadvantage many disabled people. Are they planning to build a fence?
3 - This is like 2, but has been there for at least 25 and perhaps 50 years. I think I recall cycling through this on my Raleigh RSW14 at the age of 8. Also unlawful for the same reasons. And a total waste of money / space.
Off now - have a good day all.
I once ran full tilt into a no 3 in the dark, rather painful. Like that one it was painted a colour that doesn't show up in the dark, and if I had a headtorch on, it was pointed more at the ground
I presume the thinking behind 1) is that if they put the fence to the edge of the platform, it risks hitting trains and people can still climb round it?
3) is the kind of thing that was ancient when I was child.
What are the sensible, rational, effective methods for preventing urban paths becoming rat runs for the electric bike Deliveroo types?
Bring back the old country stiles. Try getting a bike over that!
I don't know whether these are are still built.
The sticky wicket for LHAs is around elderly, disabled and parents with children.
People riding cycles have essentially zero enforcible access rights, except for bridleways and designated paths.
Plans to close hundreds of railway ticket offices in England are set to be cancelled, a rail industry source has told the BBC.
An announcement is expected shortly from the Department for Transport.
Is there an election in the offing?
I'm hearing whispers of next October, now...
A year today I hear. 31 October 2024.
An effort to suppress turnout by parents of young children, who will be busy organising trick or treating and are overwhelmingly hostile towards the Tories for obvious reasons? Also students who may not have organised to vote in their new address yet? Pretty cynical stuff if this turns out to be the date.
Plans to close hundreds of railway ticket offices in England are set to be cancelled, a rail industry source has told the BBC.
An announcement is expected shortly from the Department for Transport.
Is there an election in the offing?
I'm hearing whispers of next October, now...
A year today I hear. 31 October 2024.
It'll forever be known as the Halloween election.
I prefer the the Tory Bloodbath election, or just 1997 revisited. Either will do.
No love for Starmer or labour, but the country needs different idiots running things, mainly so that some folk can realise that being in government isn't that easy.
I sadly agree strongly with that.
I had more confidence with Blair/Brown taking over in 97 than Starmer taking over this time. My issue isn't with Starmer either. He seems ok. It is the team behind him. On a non party political issue I have been involved in contacts with both Anneliese Dodds and Rachel Reeves and found both (or at least their staff) to be as useless as chocolate teapots. That doesn't bode well. On the other hand I have found that committee chairs Meg Hillier and Stephen Timms to be excellent.
The number of companies going bust this year is on track to be the highest since the depths of the financial crisis in 2009. Insolvencies rose 10% from a year ago in the three months to the end of September, the latest official figures for England and Wales show.
I don't know about anybody else, but I rather feel like we are in the situation where Wile E. Coyote has run off the cliff, legs still pumping, haven't not yet realised there isn't any ground below.
A lot of the problem is that Companies took advantage of the very generous and easy to get Government Covid loans without any thought of how they would be paid back. I know of businesses who managed to get loans which were far too large for their turnover/profit.
Both during 2008 and COVID that the state encouraged / shielded companies from going bust or making too many people unemployed e.g. in 2008, there was lots of push for everybody to take a pay cut, reduce hours but keep your job etc.
Now unemployment can be a terrible personal experience and too many all at once again can be very tough. However, my thesis has been that this cycle of having bust times, forces the weak companies to go under and for other companies to really revolutionise to stay alive. The upshot is when we recover, you have much more productive and competitive organisations.
Instead, what we have now is low productivity across the economy.
I think what really killed productivity in our economy is the uncontrolled rise in online blogs and forums where people can waste time writing tens of thousands of pointless posts.
Yep, it's really hindered productivity. What's that ? Is it the sound of a 50 tonne boulder rolling onto my glass hou.. Aaargh !
Plans to close hundreds of railway ticket offices in England are set to be cancelled, a rail industry source has told the BBC.
An announcement is expected shortly from the Department for Transport.
Is there an election in the offing?
I'm hearing whispers of next October, now...
A year today I hear. 31 October 2024.
An effort to suppress turnout by parents of young children, who will be busy organising trick or treating and are overwhelmingly hostile towards the Tories for obvious reasons? Also students who may not have organised to vote in their new address yet? Pretty cynical stuff if this turns out to be the date.
Will the leaders debates have to be in halloween costumes?
I particularly liked the part about rather being electrocuted than being eaten by a shark.
In contrast, I think Biden has been extremely Presidential in the way he has dealt with the Hamas crisis. It plays to his strengths and long experience but he has been measured, clear and not at all afraid of action (as shown by the air raids in Iraq and the interception of missiles in the Red Sea).
I think the multiplicity of law suits, the increasing risks to his wealth and indeed his liberty, is making Trump desperate. His fund raising is increasingly focused on paying for the plethora of lawyers he needs to deploy. Assumptions about him being the Republican nominee may well prove to be misplaced.
Yes. For me if you take a holistic impressionist view of the Donald Trump situation rather than an analytical mechanistic one (a Monet rather than a Stubbs if you will) you see a man with little chance of regaining the White House. The 2.9 current price is truly something to behold imo. I envy people with a clean book who can start laying him at that sort of level.
You keep trying to apply a rational analysis to American politics. At the moment we are deep into shark jump territory. Or perhaps.... General Boulanger territory. A large chunk of the population will vote for Trump, no matter what. He has a solid lock one of the two main parties.
Take your point but no, I'm doing the opposite of that on this one. I'm usually Mr Spock but here I'm Captain Kirk. I'm using fuzzy 'big pic' intuition not bottoms up logical analysis. I've learnt to trust it when I have it. There'll be no POTUS Trump 2.0.
Given the solid MAGA lock on the vote counting and affirming process, in many states?
"The people will vote. My brother will count the votes" - Napoleon.
Good luck with that thinking.
Who are they going to instal if Trump is in jail for 20 years with no chance of pardon?
Serious question.
Trump. Seriously.
He'll get shivved with a chicken bone in a Georgia jail before inauguration.
Next? Who will be his running mate?
I think 'Slasher' his cell mate will be up for it.
The number of companies going bust this year is on track to be the highest since the depths of the financial crisis in 2009. Insolvencies rose 10% from a year ago in the three months to the end of September, the latest official figures for England and Wales show.
I don't know about anybody else, but I rather feel like we are in the situation where Wile E. Coyote has run off the cliff, legs still pumping, haven't not yet realised there isn't any ground below.
A lot of the problem is that Companies took advantage of the very generous and easy to get Government Covid loans without any thought of how they would be paid back. I know of businesses who managed to get loans which were far too large for their turnover/profit.
Both during 2008 and COVID that the state encouraged / shielded companies from going bust or making too many people unemployed e.g. in 2008, there was lots of push for everybody to take a pay cut, reduce hours but keep your job etc.
Now unemployment can be a terrible personal experience and too many all at once again can be very tough. However, my thesis has been that this cycle of having bust times, forces the weak companies to go under and for other companies to really revolutionise to stay alive. The upshot is when we recover, you have much more productive and competitive organisations.
Instead, what we have now is low productivity across the economy.
I am aware that a lot of the Covid Business Loans were not used to benefit the business, but paid for nice things for the Director's of the businesses. Going bust gets rid of that debt but the nice things are still in the possession of the Directors.
The problem for the Gov't was (And I'm not excusing them) that banks left to their own devices barely want to loan anything to anyone when it comes to business banking; so the Gov't told them we'll be on the hook not you at which point it wasn't the bank's problem so they were happy as Larry to lend to any Tom, Dick or Pavel that came asking for the ££.
Since I'm doing pics I find amusing, here are a couple of interesting barriers.
1 - This one looks like a legal tripwire so people going round it can be definitely shown to have done something unauthorised.
2 - Not sure how new this is, but it is unlawful as it will substantially disadvantage many disabled people. Are they planning to build a fence?
3 - This is like 2, but has been there for at least 25 and perhaps 50 years. I think I recall cycling through this on my Raleigh RSW14 at the age of 8. Also unlawful for the same reasons. And a total waste of money / space.
Off now - have a good day all.
I once ran full tilt into a no 3 in the dark, rather painful. Like that one it was painted a colour that doesn't show up in the dark, and if I had a headtorch on, it was pointed more at the ground
I presume the thinking behind 1) is that if they put the fence to the edge of the platform, it risks hitting trains and people can still climb round it?
3) is the kind of thing that was ancient when I was child.
What are the sensible, rational, effective methods for preventing urban paths becoming rat runs for the electric bike Deliveroo types?
Bring back the old country stiles. Try getting a bike over that!
That's fine on a footpath but not on a multi-use route. We have lots of these stupid barriers too and when I'm with a family member on a mobility scooter they have to get off and manoeuvre themselves through the barrier whilst I deconstruct the thing and carry it over. Nuts.
I managed to get a mountain bike over a 10ft deer gate without a stile, so a normal stile is no issue at all if I want to ride somewhere legally dubious. They only really stop motor bikes.
Apologies if already mentioned but on my X-twitter feed someone has posted pictures of Met officers tearing down posters of kidnapped Israelis. Apparently, the Met says it is "looking into the matter."
Flyposting is illegal.
Not to trivialise the situation but it would be interesting to see how dozens of fly posted posters of dead Palestinian kids would be treated by the authorities, not to mention how the outrage generators would react to their placement and cops removing them.
There's definitely a point in there, albeit it is convoluted to the point of complete obscurity.
But I'm not sure if what you describe would be "interesting" to anyone apart from your good self.
The police tearing down the hostage posters is rank cowardice. Sure, fly posting is illegal, but so is bicycle theft and they don't give two hoots about that.
"Community relations" is all fine and well, but when you also have thousands of people chanting "jihad" and "river to the sea", with detailed explanations by the police explaining why this is fine, you don't get the sense that all communities are valued quite the same.
The double standard is obvious, even if their actions are within their role upholding the law. It's also that cowardice, masquerading as "community", that gave us Rotherham (etc).
This whole episode has been deeply depressing. I find myself clinging onto Humza Yousaf as the only person who seems to be navigating it sensibly, probably because he has actual family in the firing line rather than the performative nonsense we have from the ultras on both "sides".
Humza is a useless tw*t. He could not run a bath. Utterly and totally rank and should be booted out along with eth other dodgy gits in the SNP.
I particularly liked the part about rather being electrocuted than being eaten by a shark.
In contrast, I think Biden has been extremely Presidential in the way he has dealt with the Hamas crisis. It plays to his strengths and long experience but he has been measured, clear and not at all afraid of action (as shown by the air raids in Iraq and the interception of missiles in the Red Sea).
I think the multiplicity of law suits, the increasing risks to his wealth and indeed his liberty, is making Trump desperate. His fund raising is increasingly focused on paying for the plethora of lawyers he needs to deploy. Assumptions about him being the Republican nominee may well prove to be misplaced.
Yes. For me if you take a holistic impressionist view of the Donald Trump situation rather than an analytical mechanistic one (a Monet rather than a Stubbs if you will) you see a man with little chance of regaining the White House. The 2.9 current price is truly something to behold imo. I envy people with a clean book who can start laying him at that sort of level.
You keep trying to apply a rational analysis to American politics. At the moment we are deep into shark jump territory. Or perhaps.... General Boulanger territory. A large chunk of the population will vote for Trump, no matter what. He has a solid lock one of the two main parties.
Take your point but no, I'm doing the opposite of that on this one. I'm usually Mr Spock but here I'm Captain Kirk. I'm using fuzzy 'big pic' intuition not bottoms up logical analysis. I've learnt to trust it when I have it. There'll be no POTUS Trump 2.0.
Given the solid MAGA lock on the vote counting and affirming process, in many states?
"The people will vote. My brother will count the votes" - Napoleon.
Good luck with that thinking.
Who are they going to instal if Trump is in jail for 20 years with no chance of pardon?
Serious question.
Trump. Seriously.
He'll get shivved with a chicken bone in a Georgia jail before inauguration.
Next? Who will be his running mate?
If he's in jail he won't get the nomination.
It's probably not DeSantis, either. At least Macron wears well designed lifts..
Some rare policing good news which I’m sure* everyone will applaud. No wonder they had a forensic tent to spare for Nicla’s front garden.
*not totally sure about that actually.
So... Are Scottish cops smarter than their counterparts south of the border? Or are Scottish murderers dumber than their counterparts south of the border?
Since I'm doing pics I find amusing, here are a couple of interesting barriers.
1 - This one looks like a legal tripwire so people going round it can be definitely shown to have done something unauthorised.
2 - Not sure how new this is, but it is unlawful as it will substantially disadvantage many disabled people. Are they planning to build a fence?
3 - This is like 2, but has been there for at least 25 and perhaps 50 years. I think I recall cycling through this on my Raleigh RSW14 at the age of 8. Also unlawful for the same reasons. And a total waste of money / space.
Off now - have a good day all.
I once ran full tilt into a no 3 in the dark, rather painful. Like that one it was painted a colour that doesn't show up in the dark, and if I had a headtorch on, it was pointed more at the ground
I presume the thinking behind 1) is that if they put the fence to the edge of the platform, it risks hitting trains and people can still climb round it?
3) is the kind of thing that was ancient when I was child.
What are the sensible, rational, effective methods for preventing urban paths becoming rat runs for the electric bike Deliveroo types?
Bring back the old country stiles. Try getting a bike over that!
I don't know whether these are are still built.
The sticky wicket for LHAs is around elderly, disabled and parents with children.
People riding cycles have essentially zero enforcible access rights, except for bridleways and designated paths.
PS The sensible solution for Deliveroo etc is to make the delivery vehicles the responsibility of the company, and to police the ones which are illegal motorbikes / mopeds (which is any non-standard pedal cycle). Police already have powers to seize them on the spot for no insurance, and sometimes do:
I particularly liked the part about rather being electrocuted than being eaten by a shark.
In contrast, I think Biden has been extremely Presidential in the way he has dealt with the Hamas crisis. It plays to his strengths and long experience but he has been measured, clear and not at all afraid of action (as shown by the air raids in Iraq and the interception of missiles in the Red Sea).
I think the multiplicity of law suits, the increasing risks to his wealth and indeed his liberty, is making Trump desperate. His fund raising is increasingly focused on paying for the plethora of lawyers he needs to deploy. Assumptions about him being the Republican nominee may well prove to be misplaced.
Yes. For me if you take a holistic impressionist view of the Donald Trump situation rather than an analytical mechanistic one (a Monet rather than a Stubbs if you will) you see a man with little chance of regaining the White House. The 2.9 current price is truly something to behold imo. I envy people with a clean book who can start laying him at that sort of level.
You keep trying to apply a rational analysis to American politics. At the moment we are deep into shark jump territory. Or perhaps.... General Boulanger territory. A large chunk of the population will vote for Trump, no matter what. He has a solid lock one of the two main parties.
Take your point but no, I'm doing the opposite of that on this one. I'm usually Mr Spock but here I'm Captain Kirk. I'm using fuzzy 'big pic' intuition not bottoms up logical analysis. I've learnt to trust it when I have it. There'll be no POTUS Trump 2.0.
Given the solid MAGA lock on the vote counting and affirming process, in many states?
"The people will vote. My brother will count the votes" - Napoleon.
Good luck with that thinking.
Who are they going to instal if Trump is in jail for 20 years with no chance of pardon?
Serious question.
Trump. Seriously.
He'll get shivved with a chicken bone in a Georgia jail before inauguration.
Next? Who will be his running mate?
My money is on Kari Lake - she's a telegenic nutter who strokes his ego, she isn't going to steal his spotlight, but is a good communicator, she's a woman (which I think he will want) and she will go to bat for pro-life stuff whilst Trump continues to kind of hand wave it off, and she is also a election was stolen truther - for Trump and herself. She is also from Arizona, which is purplish. Only issue is she is a proven loser, which Trump won't like.
Fascinating description of how underground fighting works in Gaza from the impressively impartial Tortoisemedia, who I find a good resource every day (at a trivial level I love their daily graph of news on an X/Y axis of important/unimportant vs surprising/unsurprising):
I particularly liked the part about rather being electrocuted than being eaten by a shark.
In contrast, I think Biden has been extremely Presidential in the way he has dealt with the Hamas crisis. It plays to his strengths and long experience but he has been measured, clear and not at all afraid of action (as shown by the air raids in Iraq and the interception of missiles in the Red Sea).
I think the multiplicity of law suits, the increasing risks to his wealth and indeed his liberty, is making Trump desperate. His fund raising is increasingly focused on paying for the plethora of lawyers he needs to deploy. Assumptions about him being the Republican nominee may well prove to be misplaced.
Yes. For me if you take a holistic impressionist view of the Donald Trump situation rather than an analytical mechanistic one (a Monet rather than a Stubbs if you will) you see a man with little chance of regaining the White House. The 2.9 current price is truly something to behold imo. I envy people with a clean book who can start laying him at that sort of level.
You keep trying to apply a rational analysis to American politics. At the moment we are deep into shark jump territory. Or perhaps.... General Boulanger territory. A large chunk of the population will vote for Trump, no matter what. He has a solid lock one of the two main parties.
Take your point but no, I'm doing the opposite of that on this one. I'm usually Mr Spock but here I'm Captain Kirk. I'm using fuzzy 'big pic' intuition not bottoms up logical analysis. I've learnt to trust it when I have it. There'll be no POTUS Trump 2.0.
Given the solid MAGA lock on the vote counting and affirming process, in many states?
"The people will vote. My brother will count the votes" - Napoleon.
Good luck with that thinking.
Who are they going to instal if Trump is in jail for 20 years with no chance of pardon?
Serious question.
Trump. Seriously.
He'll get shivved with a chicken bone in a Georgia jail before inauguration.
Next? Who will be his running mate?
If he's in jail he won't get the nomination.
I doubt this - if the GOP base votes for him and he argues he's been stitched up in Georgia, the base will not allow the GOP to drop him. He can run from prison (Eugene V Debs sets the legal precedent). I guess it depends on the timing - if he is literally behind bars before the primaries start, maybe he won't win? But I can see his campaign leaning into the victimhood narrative, the "now Trump, next you", the martyrdom etc. Every new charge was good for him in the primary polling, and his national polling has bounced back to be statistically tied with Biden.
Since I'm doing pics I find amusing, here are a couple of interesting barriers.
1 - This one looks like a legal tripwire so people going round it can be definitely shown to have done something unauthorised.
2 - Not sure how new this is, but it is unlawful as it will substantially disadvantage many disabled people. Are they planning to build a fence?
3 - This is like 2, but has been there for at least 25 and perhaps 50 years. I think I recall cycling through this on my Raleigh RSW14 at the age of 8. Also unlawful for the same reasons. And a total waste of money / space.
Off now - have a good day all.
I once ran full tilt into a no 3 in the dark, rather painful. Like that one it was painted a colour that doesn't show up in the dark, and if I had a headtorch on, it was pointed more at the ground
I presume the thinking behind 1) is that if they put the fence to the edge of the platform, it risks hitting trains and people can still climb round it?
3) is the kind of thing that was ancient when I was child.
What are the sensible, rational, effective methods for preventing urban paths becoming rat runs for the electric bike Deliveroo types?
Bring back the old country stiles. Try getting a bike over that!
I don't know whether these are are still built.
The sticky wicket for LHAs is around elderly, disabled and parents with children.
People riding cycles have essentially zero enforcible access rights, except for bridleways and designated paths.
PS The sensible solution for Deliveroo etc is to make the delivery vehicles the responsibility of the company, and to police the ones which are illegal motorbikes / mopeds (which is any non-standard pedal cycle). Police already have powers to seize them on the spot for no insurance, and sometimes do:
The bikes that are souped up to do 30mph are a plague now. They've drive a serious percentage of cyclists out of the new cycle lanes. They charge through, and if you get hit by the enormous boxes on their machines, they don't care.
I think the only answer is geo-locking and a campaign of spot checks - if your bike has bypassed geo-locking, you wont be seeing it again. This worked in Hamburg, in Germany.
I particularly liked the part about rather being electrocuted than being eaten by a shark.
In contrast, I think Biden has been extremely Presidential in the way he has dealt with the Hamas crisis. It plays to his strengths and long experience but he has been measured, clear and not at all afraid of action (as shown by the air raids in Iraq and the interception of missiles in the Red Sea).
I think the multiplicity of law suits, the increasing risks to his wealth and indeed his liberty, is making Trump desperate. His fund raising is increasingly focused on paying for the plethora of lawyers he needs to deploy. Assumptions about him being the Republican nominee may well prove to be misplaced.
Yes. For me if you take a holistic impressionist view of the Donald Trump situation rather than an analytical mechanistic one (a Monet rather than a Stubbs if you will) you see a man with little chance of regaining the White House. The 2.9 current price is truly something to behold imo. I envy people with a clean book who can start laying him at that sort of level.
You keep trying to apply a rational analysis to American politics. At the moment we are deep into shark jump territory. Or perhaps.... General Boulanger territory. A large chunk of the population will vote for Trump, no matter what. He has a solid lock one of the two main parties.
Take your point but no, I'm doing the opposite of that on this one. I'm usually Mr Spock but here I'm Captain Kirk. I'm using fuzzy 'big pic' intuition not bottoms up logical analysis. I've learnt to trust it when I have it. There'll be no POTUS Trump 2.0.
Given the solid MAGA lock on the vote counting and affirming process, in many states?
"The people will vote. My brother will count the votes" - Napoleon.
Good luck with that thinking.
Who are they going to instal if Trump is in jail for 20 years with no chance of pardon?
Serious question.
Trump. Seriously.
He'll get shivved with a chicken bone in a Georgia jail before inauguration.
Next? Who will be his running mate?
If he's in jail he won't get the nomination.
I doubt this - if the GOP base votes for him and he argues he's been stitched up in Georgia, the base will not allow the GOP to drop him. He can run from prison (Eugene V Debs sets the legal precedent). I guess it depends on the timing - if he is literally behind bars before the primaries start, maybe he won't win? But I can see his campaign leaning into the victimhood narrative, the "now Trump, next you", the martyrdom etc. Every new charge was good for him in the primary polling, and his national polling has bounced back to be statistically tied with Biden.
The narrative will be "Trump cooked the books. He got massive loans he shouldn't have. Loans that could have gone to YOU."
Today's big news is that the Ulez-X is working, and working well.
Well done Sadiq Khan – a bold, ambitious policy executed brilliantly despite the usual whiners trying to turn back the clock.
Presumably we will see several PBers publicly feasting on gluttonous volumes of humble pie.
Did people doubt that Ulez would work? Very odd people if they did. The complaints were more about costs to those who could not afford to change their vehicle but still needed to drive an uncompliant car in the zone.
Most of the 'complaints' were in fact from people unaware/being lied to that their car wasn't already compliant.
Some rare policing good news which I’m sure* everyone will applaud. No wonder they had a forensic tent to spare for Nicla’s front garden.
*not totally sure about that actually.
So... Are Scottish cops smarter than their counterparts south of the border? Or are Scottish murderers dumber than their counterparts south of the border?
Since I'm doing pics I find amusing, here are a couple of interesting barriers.
1 - This one looks like a legal tripwire so people going round it can be definitely shown to have done something unauthorised.
2 - Not sure how new this is, but it is unlawful as it will substantially disadvantage many disabled people. Are they planning to build a fence?
3 - This is like 2, but has been there for at least 25 and perhaps 50 years. I think I recall cycling through this on my Raleigh RSW14 at the age of 8. Also unlawful for the same reasons. And a total waste of money / space.
Off now - have a good day all.
I once ran full tilt into a no 3 in the dark, rather painful. Like that one it was painted a colour that doesn't show up in the dark, and if I had a headtorch on, it was pointed more at the ground
I presume the thinking behind 1) is that if they put the fence to the edge of the platform, it risks hitting trains and people can still climb round it?
3) is the kind of thing that was ancient when I was child.
What are the sensible, rational, effective methods for preventing urban paths becoming rat runs for the electric bike Deliveroo types?
Bring back the old country stiles. Try getting a bike over that!
That's fine on a footpath but not on a multi-use route. We have lots of these stupid barriers too and when I'm with a family member on a mobility scooter they have to get off and manoeuvre themselves through the barrier whilst I deconstruct the thing and carry it over. Nuts.
I managed to get a mountain bike over a 10ft deer gate without a stile, so a normal stile is no issue at all if I want to ride somewhere legally dubious. They only really stop motor bikes.
Actually it's not fine on a footpath.
Footpaths are required to be accessible to pedestrians, which includes wheelchairs and mobility aids.
That one looks like a case that no one will worry about - the sharp end is where useful and accessible paths are blocked off.
There's a bizarre one in North London at present where trolls have tried to hijack a consultation about a former railway path called the Parkland Walk, and are trying to keep wheelchairs out because they say Harringey Council want to resurface it all in tarmac and turn it into a "cycle superhighway" (they don't).
Despite having lived in Hampstead for years, I never knew there were so many Fawlty Towers types in Highgate and Muswell Hill.
Fascinating description of how underground fighting works in Gaza from the impressively impartial Tortoisemedia, who I find a good resource every day (at a trivial level I love their daily graph of news on an X/Y axis of important/unimportant vs surprising/unsurprising):
One thing I wonder about (and I don't pretend to know anything about this), why can't the Israeli's pump either coloured gas through the tunnels to observe exits and / or repeat what the Chechan terrorists did back in the day when they pumped the sleeping gas into the cinema.
I particularly liked the part about rather being electrocuted than being eaten by a shark.
In contrast, I think Biden has been extremely Presidential in the way he has dealt with the Hamas crisis. It plays to his strengths and long experience but he has been measured, clear and not at all afraid of action (as shown by the air raids in Iraq and the interception of missiles in the Red Sea).
I think the multiplicity of law suits, the increasing risks to his wealth and indeed his liberty, is making Trump desperate. His fund raising is increasingly focused on paying for the plethora of lawyers he needs to deploy. Assumptions about him being the Republican nominee may well prove to be misplaced.
Yes. For me if you take a holistic impressionist view of the Donald Trump situation rather than an analytical mechanistic one (a Monet rather than a Stubbs if you will) you see a man with little chance of regaining the White House. The 2.9 current price is truly something to behold imo. I envy people with a clean book who can start laying him at that sort of level.
You keep trying to apply a rational analysis to American politics. At the moment we are deep into shark jump territory. Or perhaps.... General Boulanger territory. A large chunk of the population will vote for Trump, no matter what. He has a solid lock one of the two main parties.
Take your point but no, I'm doing the opposite of that on this one. I'm usually Mr Spock but here I'm Captain Kirk. I'm using fuzzy 'big pic' intuition not bottoms up logical analysis. I've learnt to trust it when I have it. There'll be no POTUS Trump 2.0.
Given the solid MAGA lock on the vote counting and affirming process, in many states?
"The people will vote. My brother will count the votes" - Napoleon.
Good luck with that thinking.
Who are they going to instal if Trump is in jail for 20 years with no chance of pardon?
Serious question.
Trump. Seriously.
He'll get shivved with a chicken bone in a Georgia jail before inauguration.
Next? Who will be his running mate?
If he's in jail he won't get the nomination.
I doubt this - if the GOP base votes for him and he argues he's been stitched up in Georgia, the base will not allow the GOP to drop him. He can run from prison (Eugene V Debs sets the legal precedent). I guess it depends on the timing - if he is literally behind bars before the primaries start, maybe he won't win? But I can see his campaign leaning into the victimhood narrative, the "now Trump, next you", the martyrdom etc. Every new charge was good for him in the primary polling, and his national polling has bounced back to be statistically tied with Biden.
The narrative will be "Trump cooked the books. He got massive loans he shouldn't have. Loans that could have gone to YOU."
When times are tough, he doesn't survive that.
The response will be that the Deep State has jailed the man who will stand up for YOU.
The mistake is to judge US voters by our standards, rather than their own.
Since I'm doing pics I find amusing, here are a couple of interesting barriers.
1 - This one looks like a legal tripwire so people going round it can be definitely shown to have done something unauthorised.
2 - Not sure how new this is, but it is unlawful as it will substantially disadvantage many disabled people. Are they planning to build a fence?
3 - This is like 2, but has been there for at least 25 and perhaps 50 years. I think I recall cycling through this on my Raleigh RSW14 at the age of 8. Also unlawful for the same reasons. And a total waste of money / space.
Off now - have a good day all.
I once ran full tilt into a no 3 in the dark, rather painful. Like that one it was painted a colour that doesn't show up in the dark, and if I had a headtorch on, it was pointed more at the ground
I presume the thinking behind 1) is that if they put the fence to the edge of the platform, it risks hitting trains and people can still climb round it?
3) is the kind of thing that was ancient when I was child.
What are the sensible, rational, effective methods for preventing urban paths becoming rat runs for the electric bike Deliveroo types?
Bring back the old country stiles. Try getting a bike over that!
I don't know whether these are are still built.
The sticky wicket for LHAs is around elderly, disabled and parents with children.
People riding cycles have essentially zero enforcible access rights, except for bridleways and designated paths.
PS The sensible solution for Deliveroo etc is to make the delivery vehicles the responsibility of the company, and to police the ones which are illegal motorbikes / mopeds (which is any non-standard pedal cycle). Police already have powers to seize them on the spot for no insurance, and sometimes do:
The bikes that are souped up to do 30mph are a plague now. They've drive a serious percentage of cyclists out of the new cycle lanes. They charge through, and if you get hit by the enormous boxes on their machines, they don't care.
I think the only answer is geo-locking and a campaign of spot checks - if your bike has bypassed geo-locking, you wont be seeing it again. This worked in Hamburg, in Germany.
Yep - in general I agree, plus responsibility with the delivery company.
Tackle it the same way some police forces have been doing for ASB using off road motorbikes for decades.
Fascinating description of how underground fighting works in Gaza from the impressively impartial Tortoisemedia, who I find a good resource every day (at a trivial level I love their daily graph of news on an X/Y axis of important/unimportant vs surprising/unsurprising):
One thing I wonder about (and I don't pretend to know anything about this), why can't the Israeli's pump either coloured gas through the tunnels to observe exits and / or repeat what the Chechan terrorists did back in the day when they pumped the sleeping gas into the cinema.
At Iwo Jima, the US pumped seawater into the tunnels, laced with oil and petrol, before setting it alight.
Today's big news is that the Ulez-X is working, and working well.
Well done Sadiq Khan – a bold, ambitious policy executed brilliantly despite the usual whiners trying to turn back the clock.
Presumably we will see several PBers publicly feasting on gluttonous volumes of humble pie.
Did people doubt that Ulez would work? Very odd people if they did. The complaints were more about costs to those who could not afford to change their vehicle but still needed to drive an uncompliant car in the zone.
Also cost to business, which will be passed onto the consumer.
Reduced health costs of air pollution, passed on to the consumer.
Always makes me laugh how many out-of-towner PBers, who spend their lives slagging off London and almost never visit us, suddenly became London Experts and keen to talk about London when the Ulez-X came to town!
I particularly liked the part about rather being electrocuted than being eaten by a shark.
In contrast, I think Biden has been extremely Presidential in the way he has dealt with the Hamas crisis. It plays to his strengths and long experience but he has been measured, clear and not at all afraid of action (as shown by the air raids in Iraq and the interception of missiles in the Red Sea).
I think the multiplicity of law suits, the increasing risks to his wealth and indeed his liberty, is making Trump desperate. His fund raising is increasingly focused on paying for the plethora of lawyers he needs to deploy. Assumptions about him being the Republican nominee may well prove to be misplaced.
Yes. For me if you take a holistic impressionist view of the Donald Trump situation rather than an analytical mechanistic one (a Monet rather than a Stubbs if you will) you see a man with little chance of regaining the White House. The 2.9 current price is truly something to behold imo. I envy people with a clean book who can start laying him at that sort of level.
You keep trying to apply a rational analysis to American politics. At the moment we are deep into shark jump territory. Or perhaps.... General Boulanger territory. A large chunk of the population will vote for Trump, no matter what. He has a solid lock one of the two main parties.
Take your point but no, I'm doing the opposite of that on this one. I'm usually Mr Spock but here I'm Captain Kirk. I'm using fuzzy 'big pic' intuition not bottoms up logical analysis. I've learnt to trust it when I have it. There'll be no POTUS Trump 2.0.
Given the solid MAGA lock on the vote counting and affirming process, in many states?
"The people will vote. My brother will count the votes" - Napoleon.
Good luck with that thinking.
Who are they going to instal if Trump is in jail for 20 years with no chance of pardon?
Serious question.
Trump. Seriously.
He'll get shivved with a chicken bone in a Georgia jail before inauguration.
Next? Who will be his running mate?
My money is on Kari Lake - she's a telegenic nutter who strokes his ego, she isn't going to steal his spotlight, but is a good communicator, she's a woman (which I think he will want) and she will go to bat for pro-life stuff whilst Trump continues to kind of hand wave it off, and she is also a election was stolen truther - for Trump and herself. She is also from Arizona, which is purplish. Only issue is she is a proven loser, which Trump won't like.
The number of companies going bust this year is on track to be the highest since the depths of the financial crisis in 2009. Insolvencies rose 10% from a year ago in the three months to the end of September, the latest official figures for England and Wales show.
I don't know about anybody else, but I rather feel like we are in the situation where Wile E. Coyote has run off the cliff, legs still pumping, haven't not yet realised there isn't any ground below.
A lot of the problem is that Companies took advantage of the very generous and easy to get Government Covid loans without any thought of how they would be paid back. I know of businesses who managed to get loans which were far too large for their turnover/profit.
Both during 2008 and COVID that the state encouraged / shielded companies from going bust or making too many people unemployed e.g. in 2008, there was lots of push for everybody to take a pay cut, reduce hours but keep your job etc.
Now unemployment can be a terrible personal experience and too many all at once again can be very tough. However, my thesis has been that this cycle of having bust times, forces the weak companies to go under and for other companies to really revolutionise to stay alive. The upshot is when we recover, you have much more productive and competitive organisations.
Instead, what we have now is low productivity across the economy.
I think what really killed productivity in our economy is the uncontrolled rise in online blogs and forums where people can waste time writing tens of thousands of pointless posts.
Since I'm doing pics I find amusing, here are a couple of interesting barriers.
1 - This one looks like a legal tripwire so people going round it can be definitely shown to have done something unauthorised.
2 - Not sure how new this is, but it is unlawful as it will substantially disadvantage many disabled people. Are they planning to build a fence?
3 - This is like 2, but has been there for at least 25 and perhaps 50 years. I think I recall cycling through this on my Raleigh RSW14 at the age of 8. Also unlawful for the same reasons. And a total waste of money / space.
Off now - have a good day all.
I once ran full tilt into a no 3 in the dark, rather painful. Like that one it was painted a colour that doesn't show up in the dark, and if I had a headtorch on, it was pointed more at the ground
I presume the thinking behind 1) is that if they put the fence to the edge of the platform, it risks hitting trains and people can still climb round it?
3) is the kind of thing that was ancient when I was child.
What are the sensible, rational, effective methods for preventing urban paths becoming rat runs for the electric bike Deliveroo types?
Will end up just being pedal-power only I reckon.
Otoh, electric bikes and scooters are almost certainly the future for travelling around cities on the road network, being cheaper to run and easier to store than cars. It's just that they are operated by numpties at the moment.
This is the kind of nonsense why I don't have huge faith in the inquiry.
He says Anne Longfield - the children's commissioner of England at the time - constantly asked Boris Johnson and others to hold a press conference "especially for children". O'Connor asks Cain if he was aware of this lobbying - and why such a briefing was never held.
---
Ouch....
A few moments ago Boris Johnson's former aide Lee Cain told the inquiry that his boss was someone who would often delay making decisions and change his mind on issues. Covid was the ''wrong challenge'' for him, he says.
Since I'm doing pics I find amusing, here are a couple of interesting barriers.
1 - This one looks like a legal tripwire so people going round it can be definitely shown to have done something unauthorised.
2 - Not sure how new this is, but it is unlawful as it will substantially disadvantage many disabled people. Are they planning to build a fence?
3 - This is like 2, but has been there for at least 25 and perhaps 50 years. I think I recall cycling through this on my Raleigh RSW14 at the age of 8. Also unlawful for the same reasons. And a total waste of money / space.
Off now - have a good day all.
I once ran full tilt into a no 3 in the dark, rather painful. Like that one it was painted a colour that doesn't show up in the dark, and if I had a headtorch on, it was pointed more at the ground
I presume the thinking behind 1) is that if they put the fence to the edge of the platform, it risks hitting trains and people can still climb round it?
3) is the kind of thing that was ancient when I was child.
What are the sensible, rational, effective methods for preventing urban paths becoming rat runs for the electric bike Deliveroo types?
Bring back the old country stiles. Try getting a bike over that!
That's fine on a footpath but not on a multi-use route. We have lots of these stupid barriers too and when I'm with a family member on a mobility scooter they have to get off and manoeuvre themselves through the barrier whilst I deconstruct the thing and carry it over. Nuts.
I managed to get a mountain bike over a 10ft deer gate without a stile, so a normal stile is no issue at all if I want to ride somewhere legally dubious. They only really stop motor bikes.
Actually it's not fine on a footpath.
Footpaths are required to be accessible to pedestrians, which includes wheelchairs and mobility aids.
That one looks like a case that no one will worry about - the sharp end is where useful and accessible paths are blocked off.
There's a bizarre one in North London at present where trolls have tried to hijack a consultation about a former railway path called the Parkland Walk, and are trying to keep wheelchairs out because they say Harringey Council want to resurface it all in tarmac and turn it into a "cycle superhighway" (they don't).
By footpath I meant a route across fields - these are unlikely to be wheelchair accessible between stiles in any case. There's plenty of those round here where they are barely accessible to the average pedestrian never mind anyone with wheels.
On a constructed route they should definitely be accessible, I agree.
The number of companies going bust this year is on track to be the highest since the depths of the financial crisis in 2009. Insolvencies rose 10% from a year ago in the three months to the end of September, the latest official figures for England and Wales show.
I don't know about anybody else, but I rather feel like we are in the situation where Wile E. Coyote has run off the cliff, legs still pumping, haven't not yet realised there isn't any ground below.
A lot of the problem is that Companies took advantage of the very generous and easy to get Government Covid loans without any thought of how they would be paid back. I know of businesses who managed to get loans which were far too large for their turnover/profit.
Both during 2008 and COVID that the state encouraged / shielded companies from going bust or making too many people unemployed e.g. in 2008, there was lots of push for everybody to take a pay cut, reduce hours but keep your job etc.
Now unemployment can be a terrible personal experience and too many all at once again can be very tough. However, my thesis has been that this cycle of having bust times, forces the weak companies to go under and for other companies to really revolutionise to stay alive. The upshot is when we recover, you have much more productive and competitive organisations.
Instead, what we have now is low productivity across the economy.
I think what really killed productivity in our economy is the uncontrolled rise in online blogs and forums where people can waste time writing tens of thousands of pointless posts.
Today's big news is that the Ulez-X is working, and working well.
Well done Sadiq Khan – a bold, ambitious policy executed brilliantly despite the usual whiners trying to turn back the clock.
Presumably we will see several PBers publicly feasting on gluttonous volumes of humble pie.
Did people doubt that Ulez would work? Very odd people if they did. The complaints were more about costs to those who could not afford to change their vehicle but still needed to drive an uncompliant car in the zone.
Also cost to business, which will be passed onto the consumer.
Reduced health costs of air pollution, passed on to the consumer.
Always makes me laugh how many out-of-towner PBers, who spend their lives slagging off London and almost never visit us, suddenly became London Experts and keen to talk about London when the Ulez-X came to town!
Not my criticism, but it was widely reported that lots of small businesses were very concerned about the cost (at a time when my under enormous pressure *) and that ultimately they would try to pass that onto the consumer e.g. contractors were already adding a ULEV surcharge to every bill.
You might have noticed, I haven't really posted much about ULEV.
* And today we find businesses are going bust at highest rate since 2008, so clearly that strain is real.
Transport Secretary Mark Harper says the Government has asked train operators to withdraw their proposals for a widespread closure of station ticket offices in England
Some rare policing good news which I’m sure* everyone will applaud. No wonder they had a forensic tent to spare for Nicla’s front garden.
*not totally sure about that actually.
So... Are Scottish cops smarter than their counterparts south of the border? Or are Scottish murderers dumber than their counterparts south of the border?
Murder detection rates have always been high. As Morse's nemesis said, decrying his elaborate theories, murder's about stupid people doing stupid things to each other, usually to people they know, leaving a treasure trove of forensic evidence, and quite often cctv pictures.
Since I'm doing pics I find amusing, here are a couple of interesting barriers.
1 - This one looks like a legal tripwire so people going round it can be definitely shown to have done something unauthorised.
2 - Not sure how new this is, but it is unlawful as it will substantially disadvantage many disabled people. Are they planning to build a fence?
3 - This is like 2, but has been there for at least 25 and perhaps 50 years. I think I recall cycling through this on my Raleigh RSW14 at the age of 8. Also unlawful for the same reasons. And a total waste of money / space.
Off now - have a good day all.
I once ran full tilt into a no 3 in the dark, rather painful. Like that one it was painted a colour that doesn't show up in the dark, and if I had a headtorch on, it was pointed more at the ground
I presume the thinking behind 1) is that if they put the fence to the edge of the platform, it risks hitting trains and people can still climb round it?
3) is the kind of thing that was ancient when I was child.
What are the sensible, rational, effective methods for preventing urban paths becoming rat runs for the electric bike Deliveroo types?
Bring back the old country stiles. Try getting a bike over that!
That's fine on a footpath but not on a multi-use route. We have lots of these stupid barriers too and when I'm with a family member on a mobility scooter they have to get off and manoeuvre themselves through the barrier whilst I deconstruct the thing and carry it over. Nuts.
I managed to get a mountain bike over a 10ft deer gate without a stile, so a normal stile is no issue at all if I want to ride somewhere legally dubious. They only really stop motor bikes.
Actually it's not fine on a footpath.
Footpaths are required to be accessible to pedestrians, which includes wheelchairs and mobility aids.
That one looks like a case that no one will worry about - the sharp end is where useful and accessible paths are blocked off.
There's a bizarre one in North London at present where trolls have tried to hijack a consultation about a former railway path called the Parkland Walk, and are trying to keep wheelchairs out because they say Harringey Council want to resurface it all in tarmac and turn it into a "cycle superhighway" (they don't).
By footpath I meant a route across fields - which are unlikely to be wheelchair accessible between stiles in any case. There's plenty of those round here where they are barely accessible to the average pedestrian never mind anyone with wheels.
On a constructed route they should definitely be accessible, I agree.
I once had to write a policy for a hiking club, explaining our approach if a member wished to bring their infant child up the Aonach Eagach. I'm managed to say "nope" in about 500 words.
Fascinating description of how underground fighting works in Gaza from the impressively impartial Tortoisemedia, who I find a good resource every day (at a trivial level I love their daily graph of news on an X/Y axis of important/unimportant vs surprising/unsurprising):
One thing I wonder about (and I don't pretend to know anything about this), why can't the Israeli's pump either coloured gas through the tunnels to observe exits and / or repeat what the Chechan terrorists did back in the day when they pumped the sleeping gas into the cinema.
This is the kind of nonsense why I don't have huge faith in the inquiry.
He says Anne Longfield - the children's commissioner of England at the time - constantly asked Boris Johnson and others to hold a press conference "especially for children". O'Connor asks Cain if he was aware of this lobbying - and why such a briefing was never held.
---
Ouch....
A few moments ago Boris Johnson's former aide Lee Cain told the inquiry that his boss was someone who would often delay making decisions and change his mind on issues. Covid was the ''wrong challenge'' for him, he says.
I really feel sorry for Boris Johnson, so unfair that he had to face a challenge that was so wrong for him. What a cruel disease Covid was.
Fascinating description of how underground fighting works in Gaza from the impressively impartial Tortoisemedia, who I find a good resource every day (at a trivial level I love their daily graph of news on an X/Y axis of important/unimportant vs surprising/unsurprising):
One thing I wonder about (and I don't pretend to know anything about this), why can't the Israeli's pump either coloured gas through the tunnels to observe exits and / or repeat what the Chechan terrorists did back in the day when they pumped the sleeping gas into the cinema.
The hostages?
Sleeping gas doesn't have to kill you. Now I seemed to remember that the gas the Russian's special forced used against the Chechen hostage takers was nasty stuff that was untried, some derivative of fentanyl, which did result in a handful of the hostages dying directly from it.
We have more recently had numerous incidents of criminals doing this to high value individuals in order to get into their homes and rob them.
I particularly liked the part about rather being electrocuted than being eaten by a shark.
In contrast, I think Biden has been extremely Presidential in the way he has dealt with the Hamas crisis. It plays to his strengths and long experience but he has been measured, clear and not at all afraid of action (as shown by the air raids in Iraq and the interception of missiles in the Red Sea).
I think the multiplicity of law suits, the increasing risks to his wealth and indeed his liberty, is making Trump desperate. His fund raising is increasingly focused on paying for the plethora of lawyers he needs to deploy. Assumptions about him being the Republican nominee may well prove to be misplaced.
Yes. For me if you take a holistic impressionist view of the Donald Trump situation rather than an analytical mechanistic one (a Monet rather than a Stubbs if you will) you see a man with little chance of regaining the White House. The 2.9 current price is truly something to behold imo. I envy people with a clean book who can start laying him at that sort of level.
You keep trying to apply a rational analysis to American politics. At the moment we are deep into shark jump territory. Or perhaps.... General Boulanger territory. A large chunk of the population will vote for Trump, no matter what. He has a solid lock one of the two main parties.
Take your point but no, I'm doing the opposite of that on this one. I'm usually Mr Spock but here I'm Captain Kirk. I'm using fuzzy 'big pic' intuition not bottoms up logical analysis. I've learnt to trust it when I have it. There'll be no POTUS Trump 2.0.
Given the solid MAGA lock on the vote counting and affirming process, in many states?
"The people will vote. My brother will count the votes" - Napoleon.
Good luck with that thinking.
Who are they going to instal if Trump is in jail for 20 years with no chance of pardon?
Serious question.
Trump. Seriously.
He'll get shivved with a chicken bone in a Georgia jail before inauguration.
Next? Who will be his running mate?
If he's in jail he won't get the nomination.
I doubt this - if the GOP base votes for him and he argues he's been stitched up in Georgia, the base will not allow the GOP to drop him. He can run from prison (Eugene V Debs sets the legal precedent). I guess it depends on the timing - if he is literally behind bars before the primaries start, maybe he won't win? But I can see his campaign leaning into the victimhood narrative, the "now Trump, next you", the martyrdom etc. Every new charge was good for him in the primary polling, and his national polling has bounced back to be statistically tied with Biden.
The narrative will be "Trump cooked the books. He got massive loans he shouldn't have. Loans that could have gone to YOU."
When times are tough, he doesn't survive that.
The response will be that the Deep State has jailed the man who will stand up for YOU.
The mistake is to judge US voters by our standards, rather than their own.
All the polling indicates that a convicted Trump would lose far too much support to be a viable candidate. That certainly leaves the GOP with a dilemma, but dumping a septuagenarian convicted felon would be the least painful choice in the end.
I don't think we have to concern ourselves with Leon's climaxes.
I particularly liked the part about rather being electrocuted than being eaten by a shark.
In contrast, I think Biden has been extremely Presidential in the way he has dealt with the Hamas crisis. It plays to his strengths and long experience but he has been measured, clear and not at all afraid of action (as shown by the air raids in Iraq and the interception of missiles in the Red Sea).
I think the multiplicity of law suits, the increasing risks to his wealth and indeed his liberty, is making Trump desperate. His fund raising is increasingly focused on paying for the plethora of lawyers he needs to deploy. Assumptions about him being the Republican nominee may well prove to be misplaced.
Yes. For me if you take a holistic impressionist view of the Donald Trump situation rather than an analytical mechanistic one (a Monet rather than a Stubbs if you will) you see a man with little chance of regaining the White House. The 2.9 current price is truly something to behold imo. I envy people with a clean book who can start laying him at that sort of level.
You keep trying to apply a rational analysis to American politics. At the moment we are deep into shark jump territory. Or perhaps.... General Boulanger territory. A large chunk of the population will vote for Trump, no matter what. He has a solid lock one of the two main parties.
Take your point but no, I'm doing the opposite of that on this one. I'm usually Mr Spock but here I'm Captain Kirk. I'm using fuzzy 'big pic' intuition not bottoms up logical analysis. I've learnt to trust it when I have it. There'll be no POTUS Trump 2.0.
Given the solid MAGA lock on the vote counting and affirming process, in many states?
"The people will vote. My brother will count the votes" - Napoleon.
Good luck with that thinking.
Who are they going to instal if Trump is in jail for 20 years with no chance of pardon?
Serious question.
Trump. Seriously.
He'll get shivved with a chicken bone in a Georgia jail before inauguration.
Next? Who will be his running mate?
My money is on Kari Lake - she's a telegenic nutter who strokes his ego, she isn't going to steal his spotlight, but is a good communicator, she's a woman (which I think he will want) and she will go to bat for pro-life stuff whilst Trump continues to kind of hand wave it off, and she is also a election was stolen truther - for Trump and herself. She is also from Arizona, which is purplish. Only issue is she is a proven loser, which Trump won't like.
It’s all been rather quiet in the media over the last few weeks, but there’s been a string of days of 1,000 losses for the enemy, alongside a dozen or more tanks and a hundred other vehicles. For how many days can they lose 10 MLRS, and still have any to field? Not that they’re a lot of good now that the defenders have ATACMS (Army TACtical Missile System, as I leaned a few months ago; and pronounced Attack’ems, as I learned a couple of weeks ago) with a massive range advantage, that will quickly push all of the Russian airfields and command posts back to what the Ukranians agree is Russia.
The Russian casualties look unsustainable but the Ukrainians have made no material advances in nearly 2 months. With the risk of ammunition being diverted to Israel the dreaded stalemate is looming.
This guy is pro Ukr but tends to the more verifable facts analysis so often lacking here and elesewhere.
You can't say the much heralded counter-offensive has failed because no objective for it was ever articulated. It seems to have been more of a political construct than a military one. The situation has been a stalemate for six months now as there has not been a significant territorial gain since Artyomovsk/Bakhmut in May.
Quite. As you and I kept gently pointing out to the mad Ukrainian boosters on here. The counter offensive was never going anywhere and never went anywhere
This is the kind of nonsense why I don't have huge faith in the inquiry.
He says Anne Longfield - the children's commissioner of England at the time - constantly asked Boris Johnson and others to hold a press conference "especially for children". O'Connor asks Cain if he was aware of this lobbying - and why such a briefing was never held.
---
Ouch....
A few moments ago Boris Johnson's former aide Lee Cain told the inquiry that his boss was someone who would often delay making decisions and change his mind on issues. Covid was the ''wrong challenge'' for him, he says.
I really feel sorry for Boris Johnson, so unfair that he had to face a challenge that was so wrong for him. What a cruel disease Covid was.
Fascinating description of how underground fighting works in Gaza from the impressively impartial Tortoisemedia, who I find a good resource every day (at a trivial level I love their daily graph of news on an X/Y axis of important/unimportant vs surprising/unsurprising):
One thing I wonder about (and I don't pretend to know anything about this), why can't the Israeli's pump either coloured gas through the tunnels to observe exits and / or repeat what the Chechan terrorists did back in the day when they pumped the sleeping gas into the cinema.
We're not sure what they used, but probably something fentanyl related. Lots of the terrorists had gas masks and hostages got killed.
This is the kind of nonsense why I don't have huge faith in the inquiry.
He says Anne Longfield - the children's commissioner of England at the time - constantly asked Boris Johnson and others to hold a press conference "especially for children". O'Connor asks Cain if he was aware of this lobbying - and why such a briefing was never held.
---
Ouch....
A few moments ago Boris Johnson's former aide Lee Cain told the inquiry that his boss was someone who would often delay making decisions and change his mind on issues. Covid was the ''wrong challenge'' for him, he says.
I really feel sorry for Boris Johnson, so unfair that he had to face a challenge that was so wrong for him. What a cruel disease Covid was.
Right PM wrong crisis!!
BJ or DC using term Fuck Pigs C***s etc??
After welcoming Mike back, you might want to edit that post.
This is the kind of nonsense why I don't have huge faith in the inquiry.
He says Anne Longfield - the children's commissioner of England at the time - constantly asked Boris Johnson and others to hold a press conference "especially for children". O'Connor asks Cain if he was aware of this lobbying - and why such a briefing was never held.
---
Ouch....
A few moments ago Boris Johnson's former aide Lee Cain told the inquiry that his boss was someone who would often delay making decisions and change his mind on issues. Covid was the ''wrong challenge'' for him, he says.
I really feel sorry for Boris Johnson, so unfair that he had to face a challenge that was so wrong for him. What a cruel disease Covid was.
Today's big news is that the Ulez-X is working, and working well.
Well done Sadiq Khan – a bold, ambitious policy executed brilliantly despite the usual whiners trying to turn back the clock.
Presumably we will see several PBers publicly feasting on gluttonous volumes of humble pie.
Did people doubt that Ulez would work? Very odd people if they did. The complaints were more about costs to those who could not afford to change their vehicle but still needed to drive an uncompliant car in the zone.
Also cost to business, which will be passed onto the consumer.
Reduced health costs of air pollution, passed on to the consumer.
Always makes me laugh how many out-of-towner PBers, who spend their lives slagging off London and almost never visit us, suddenly became London Experts and keen to talk about London when the Ulez-X came to town!
Not my criticism, but it was widely reported that lots of small businesses were very concerned about the cost (at a time when my under enormous pressure *) and that ultimately they would try to pass that onto the consumer e.g. contractors were already adding a ULEV surcharge to every bill.
You might have noticed, I haven't really posted much about ULEV.
* And today we find businesses are going bust at highest rate since 2008, so clearly that strain is real.
You got exactly the same stuff when the NMW came in, the original Ulez, the Congestion Charge, etc etc etc. Whinging, whining, special pleading. Are these businesses keen to keep air pollution levels as high as they were in London? Many are also from outside the zone, and were thus importing pollution to where their customers live.
It’s all been rather quiet in the media over the last few weeks, but there’s been a string of days of 1,000 losses for the enemy, alongside a dozen or more tanks and a hundred other vehicles. For how many days can they lose 10 MLRS, and still have any to field? Not that they’re a lot of good now that the defenders have ATACMS (Army TACtical Missile System, as I leaned a few months ago; and pronounced Attack’ems, as I learned a couple of weeks ago) with a massive range advantage, that will quickly push all of the Russian airfields and command posts back to what the Ukranians agree is Russia.
The Russian casualties look unsustainable but the Ukrainians have made no material advances in nearly 2 months. With the risk of ammunition being diverted to Israel the dreaded stalemate is looming.
This guy is pro Ukr but tends to the more verifable facts analysis so often lacking here and elesewhere.
You can't say the much heralded counter-offensive has failed because no objective for it was ever articulated. It seems to have been more of a political construct than a military one. The situation has been a stalemate for six months now as there has not been a significant territorial gain since Artyomovsk/Bakhmut in May.
Quite. As you and I kept gently pointing out to the mad Ukrainian boosters on here. The counter offensive was never going anywhere and never went anywhere
@Sandpit can be forgiven for over optimism. He has family in Ukraine. The rest weren’t using their brains
I’m still optimistic.
The Russian losses, as reported, are at unsustainable levels. They can’t keep losing a dozen tanks, a dozen MLRS, several dozen other vehicles - and 1,000 men - per day. So long as the Ukranians are still receiving weapons and training, they will eventually prevail.
This is the kind of nonsense why I don't have huge faith in the inquiry.
He says Anne Longfield - the children's commissioner of England at the time - constantly asked Boris Johnson and others to hold a press conference "especially for children". O'Connor asks Cain if he was aware of this lobbying - and why such a briefing was never held.
---
Ouch....
A few moments ago Boris Johnson's former aide Lee Cain told the inquiry that his boss was someone who would often delay making decisions and change his mind on issues. Covid was the ''wrong challenge'' for him, he says.
I really feel sorry for Boris Johnson, so unfair that he had to face a challenge that was so wrong for him. What a cruel disease Covid was.
Right PM wrong crisis!!
BJ or DC using term Fuck Pigs C***s etc??
After welcoming Mike back, you might want to edit that post.
Can't believe the BBC are broadcasting it live without apologies every 30 seconds
This is the kind of nonsense why I don't have huge faith in the inquiry.
He says Anne Longfield - the children's commissioner of England at the time - constantly asked Boris Johnson and others to hold a press conference "especially for children". O'Connor asks Cain if he was aware of this lobbying - and why such a briefing was never held.
---
Ouch....
A few moments ago Boris Johnson's former aide Lee Cain told the inquiry that his boss was someone who would often delay making decisions and change his mind on issues. Covid was the ''wrong challenge'' for him, he says.
I really feel sorry for Boris Johnson, so unfair that he had to face a challenge that was so wrong for him. What a cruel disease Covid was.
Right PM wrong crisis!!
BJ or DC using term Fuck Pigs C***s etc??
After welcoming Mike back, you might want to edit that post.
Can't believe the BBC are broadcasting it live without apologies every 30 seconds
It’s all been rather quiet in the media over the last few weeks, but there’s been a string of days of 1,000 losses for the enemy, alongside a dozen or more tanks and a hundred other vehicles. For how many days can they lose 10 MLRS, and still have any to field? Not that they’re a lot of good now that the defenders have ATACMS (Army TACtical Missile System, as I leaned a few months ago; and pronounced Attack’ems, as I learned a couple of weeks ago) with a massive range advantage, that will quickly push all of the Russian airfields and command posts back to what the Ukranians agree is Russia.
The Russian casualties look unsustainable but the Ukrainians have made no material advances in nearly 2 months. With the risk of ammunition being diverted to Israel the dreaded stalemate is looming.
This guy is pro Ukr but tends to the more verifable facts analysis so often lacking here and elesewhere.
You can't say the much heralded counter-offensive has failed because no objective for it was ever articulated. It seems to have been more of a political construct than a military one. The situation has been a stalemate for six months now as there has not been a significant territorial gain since Artyomovsk/Bakhmut in May.
Quite. As you and I kept gently pointing out to the mad Ukrainian boosters on here. The counter offensive was never going anywhere and never went anywhere
@Sandpit can be forgiven for over optimism. He has family in Ukraine. The rest weren’t using their brains
I’m still optimistic.
The Russian losses, as reported, are at unsustainable levels. They can’t keep losing a dozen tanks, a dozen MLRS, several dozen other vehicles - and 1,000 men - per day. So long as the Ukranians are still receiving weapons and training, they will eventually prevail.
Perhaps. Perhaps not. But they certainly aren’t going to prevail this autumn, in any notable way, as we told you
This is the kind of nonsense why I don't have huge faith in the inquiry.
He says Anne Longfield - the children's commissioner of England at the time - constantly asked Boris Johnson and others to hold a press conference "especially for children". O'Connor asks Cain if he was aware of this lobbying - and why such a briefing was never held.
---
Ouch....
A few moments ago Boris Johnson's former aide Lee Cain told the inquiry that his boss was someone who would often delay making decisions and change his mind on issues. Covid was the ''wrong challenge'' for him, he says.
I really feel sorry for Boris Johnson, so unfair that he had to face a challenge that was so wrong for him. What a cruel disease Covid was.
Right PM wrong crisis!!
BJ or DC using term Fuck Pigs C***s etc??
Two minute warning.
I think Hancock, Shapps, Truss, Williamson were the people referred to as the above.
Comments
In my industry, I work in Engineering for a manufacturing company servicing food and beverage producers and offshore oil and sea producers, we are seeing a real decline year on year and we are not expecting a real pick up until the middle of next year at the earliest.
Our customers are expecting this to continue and our supply chain are trying to get reductions from the supply base. The feedback from the suppliers is volume is down as well.
We are heading for a real slowdown in election year. It is not going to be pretty and unemployment is going to increase quite a bit. PMI is still very flat.
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1719304502921040018
I suspect Trump will refuse to do the debates so indie voters dont get to see how out of touch with reality and frankly old he has become.
There will be relentless focus on whether Harris is fit to be POTUS because Biden's age makes that a massive issue.
I assume the Dems have thought that through and concluded we are stuck with her?
Well done Sadiq Khan – a bold, ambitious policy executed brilliantly despite the usual whiners trying to turn back the clock.
Presumably we will see several PBers publicly feasting on gluttonous volumes of humble pie.
Serious question.
(Serious answer.)
Now unemployment can be a terrible personal experience and too many all at once again can be very tough. However, my thesis has been that this cycle of having bust times, forces the weak companies to go under and for other companies to really revolutionise to stay alive. The upshot is when we recover, you have much more productive and competitive organisations.
Instead, what we have now is low productivity across the economy.
No love for Starmer or labour, but the country needs different idiots running things, mainly so that some folk can realise that being in government isn't that easy.
*not totally sure about that actually.
Well done the RMT and tbf well done to the SoS for Transport.
Now get the strike settled.
But yesterday, Martin Reynolds, the Principal Private Secretary to Boris Johnson said he didn't know why Johnson was away for 10 days. How could he not know about the holiday when Lee Cain did? #CovidInquiry
https://twitter.com/implausibleblog/status/1719301084479402164
Next? Who will be his running mate?
That'll get the young voting...
"Both these tragedies!"
The sticky wicket for LHAs is around elderly, disabled and parents with children.
People riding cycles have essentially zero enforcible access rights, except for bridleways and designated paths.
I had more confidence with Blair/Brown taking over in 97 than Starmer taking over this time. My issue isn't with Starmer either. He seems ok. It is the team behind him. On a non party political issue I have been involved in contacts with both Anneliese Dodds and Rachel Reeves and found both (or at least their staff) to be as useless as chocolate teapots. That doesn't bode well. On the other hand I have found that committee chairs Meg Hillier and Stephen Timms to be excellent.
"Long term security of Israel cannot be secured by bombs and bullets"
Fuel water and food cannot be withheld by Israel
We have to get this now
"Dispacement of Palestinians cannot be permanent they must be allowed to return"
Crikey
I managed to get a mountain bike over a 10ft deer gate without a stile, so a normal stile is no issue at all if I want to ride somewhere legally dubious. They only really stop motor bikes.
It's probably not DeSantis, either.
At least Macron wears well designed lifts..
3 Expert Shoemakers Say Ron DeSantis Is Probably Wearing Height Boosters
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/10/31/desantis-boots-shoemakers-00121044
Trivial I know, but devastating if true. Which seems exceedingly likely.
Example from Cardiff. Obviously the media reporting is crap; these are motor bikes not 'e-bikes'.
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/illegal-electric-bikes-seized-cardiff-27431549
I agree with 90% of what SKS just said.
Very strong on a Politically negotiated 2 state solution to start immediately with new solutions.
https://newsroom.tortoisemedia.com/7EQK-4PWG-385C92B88B0AB653UUX5WCE231AA858B9EF1F/cr.aspx
Solved does not mean convicted.
The most urgent issue is to stop the deaths in Gaza and get hostages released.
Because of the situation there has been a dereliction of duty about not enforcing the 2 state solution.
Wow FFS never expected that kind of statement. Luke Akehurst will be an unhappy Israel Lobbyist.
I think the only answer is geo-locking and a campaign of spot checks - if your bike has bypassed geo-locking, you wont be seeing it again. This worked in Hamburg, in Germany.
When times are tough, he doesn't survive that.
Footpaths are required to be accessible to pedestrians, which includes wheelchairs and mobility aids.
That one looks like a case that no one will worry about - the sharp end is where useful and accessible paths are blocked off.
There's a bizarre one in North London at present where trolls have tried to hijack a consultation about a former railway path called the Parkland Walk, and are trying to keep wheelchairs out because they say Harringey Council want to resurface it all in tarmac and turn it into a "cycle superhighway" (they don't).
Despite having lived in Hampstead for years, I never knew there were so many Fawlty Towers types in Highgate and Muswell Hill.
One thing I wonder about (and I don't pretend to know anything about this), why can't the Israeli's pump either coloured gas through the tunnels to observe exits and / or repeat what the Chechan terrorists did back in the day when they pumped the sleeping gas into the cinema.
The mistake is to judge US voters by our standards, rather than their own.
Tackle it the same way some police forces have been doing for ASB using off road motorbikes for decades.
Always makes me laugh how many out-of-towner PBers, who spend their lives slagging off London and almost never visit us, suddenly became London Experts and keen to talk about London when the Ulez-X came to town!
Otoh, electric bikes and scooters are almost certainly the future for travelling around cities on the road network, being cheaper to run and easier to store than cars. It's just that they are operated by numpties at the moment.
He says Anne Longfield - the children's commissioner of England at the time - constantly asked Boris Johnson and others to hold a press conference "especially for children". O'Connor asks Cain if he was aware of this lobbying - and why such a briefing was never held.
---
Ouch....
A few moments ago Boris Johnson's former aide Lee Cain told the inquiry that his boss was someone who would often delay making decisions and change his mind on issues. Covid was the ''wrong challenge'' for him, he says.
On a constructed route they should definitely be accessible, I agree.
viewcode Posts: 15,919
You might have noticed, I haven't really posted much about ULEV.
* And today we find businesses are going bust at highest rate since 2008, so clearly that strain is real.
We have more recently had numerous incidents of criminals doing this to high value individuals in order to get into their homes and rob them.
I don't think we have to concern ourselves with Leon's climaxes.
Even a month ago we were officiously told it was about to “cut off Crimea by land” by the likes of @foxy @JosiasJessop @Sandpit @BartholomewRoberts and many others
@Sandpit can be forgiven for over optimism. He has family in Ukraine. The rest weren’t using their brains
BJ or DC using term Fuck Pigs C***s etc??
The Russian losses, as reported, are at unsustainable levels. They can’t keep losing a dozen tanks, a dozen MLRS, several dozen other vehicles - and 1,000 men - per day. So long as the Ukranians are still receiving weapons and training, they will eventually prevail.