Shoplifters to benefit most from ending short jail terms in England and Wales More than 9,000 people given six to 12 months for shoplifting in past two years would now be made to do community service ... Despite Rishi Sunak’s attempt to introduce tough sentences for criminals in the run-up to the general election, shoplifters, offenders convicted of battery, and those who have assaulted emergency workers, are the top three groups who will avoid prison under the government’s new measure. https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/dec/26/shoplifters-most-affected-by-ending-short-jail-sentences
HMG rearranges the deckchairs. Court delays are the first problem. (OK, after lack of detection or even investigation.) This measure will reduce the numbers sent to overcrowded prisons but there are long delays for community service as well. Effectively there is no deterrence because there are no visible consequences for crime, nor rehabilitation.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
I'm not sure I have any more faith in long term economic forecasts now than I had back in 2016.
I am glad that the UK economy is performing adequately right now, but that shouldn't blind us to some of the challenges ahead.
Not sure if the German and French economies doing badly is 'good news' for the UK, though it may help reconcile some to Brexit.
You are, of course, correct. The relative decline of the European economy will be a drag on our own growth. We need to develop new markets for our products and services.
Which has been an issue for decades and was precisely why we were right to leave the sclerotic European Union.
kamski puts the cart before the horse in thinking that Brexiteers are glad to see Europe failing, Europe failing is disappointing and bad for Britain but is not new, did not begin after 2016 and is why Brexit was a good idea not vice-versa.
As several EU countries with much more successful deepwater export industries than us demonstrate, membership was no bar to successful exploitation of non-EU markets. In fact in some cases it was a net benefit because it enabled integrated cross-border supply chains while retaining EU origin. Indeed as UK services trade with countries like the US and Singapore also demonstrate.
The zero sum approach to EU or non EU never made sense, anymore than Texas being part of the US inhibits its trade with international partners.
The incipient “sclerosis” suffered by some EU members is the same sclerosis suffered by the UK, by Japan in a major way, by most of Latin America and the whole CIS, and in due course expected in Korea, then China. It’s the sclerosis of ageing populations.
Which are these successful countries in your eyes?
Since 1993 (the founding of the modern EU) all major EU countries have floundered, not just Britain.
Its not just Britain but Germany, France and all other major EU countries since 1993 have done worse than non-EU developed nations - with Japan being the notable non-EU exception.
All of the Nordic members, Poland, the Baltics, the Netherlands, Ireland, Luxembourg, and until very recently Germany. France has done roughly similarly to us. Italy, Greece, Portugal and several others have done badly. Like in all regions there is a mix.
Then the question is what are we comparing with? Japan we’ve discussed. Singapore is an entrepôt city state and has done similarly to other micro states like Luxembourg. Korea has just had its economic miracle, like Japan did in the 80s, France in the 50s-70s, Ireland in the 90s to now. But its demographics are awful. The USA is the USA, and is now the worlds largest oil producer. No other country is both a resource superpower and a vast consumer market. Canada has lagged Germany, the UK and the EU average but beaten the slower EU countries. Australia and Norway are resource states in a world of resource scarcity.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
And the latest Mayoral poll is Khan 46 Hall 25.
Proposal: An "Uxbridge message" should be defined as drawing totally the wrong conclusion from a surprise success.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
I'm not sure I have any more faith in long term economic forecasts now than I had back in 2016.
I am glad that the UK economy is performing adequately right now, but that shouldn't blind us to some of the challenges ahead.
Not sure if the German and French economies doing badly is 'good news' for the UK, though it may help reconcile some to Brexit.
You are, of course, correct. The relative decline of the European economy will be a drag on our own growth. We need to develop new markets for our products and services.
Which has been an issue for decades and was precisely why we were right to leave the sclerotic European Union.
kamski puts the cart before the horse in thinking that Brexiteers are glad to see Europe failing, Europe failing is disappointing and bad for Britain but is not new, did not begin after 2016 and is why Brexit was a good idea not vice-versa.
As several EU countries with much more successful deepwater export industries than us demonstrate, membership was no bar to successful exploitation of non-EU markets. In fact in some cases it was a net benefit because it enabled integrated cross-border supply chains while retaining EU origin. Indeed as UK services trade with countries like the US and Singapore also demonstrate.
The zero sum approach to EU or non EU never made sense, anymore than Texas being part of the US inhibits its trade with international partners.
The incipient “sclerosis” suffered by some EU members is the same sclerosis suffered by the UK, by Japan in a major way, by most of Latin America and the whole CIS, and in due course expected in Korea, then China. It’s the sclerosis of ageing populations.
Which are these successful countries in your eyes?
Since 1993 (the founding of the modern EU) all major EU countries have floundered, not just Britain.
Its not just Britain but Germany, France and all other major EU countries since 1993 have done worse than non-EU developed nations - with Japan being the notable non-EU exception.
All of the Nordic members, Poland, the Baltics, the Netherlands, Ireland, Luxembourg, and until very recently Germany. France has done roughly similarly to us. Italy, Greece, Portugal and several others have done badly. Like in all regions there is a mix.
Then the question is what are we comparing with? Japan we’ve discussed. Singapore is an entrepôt city state and has done similarly to other micro states like Luxembourg. Korea has just had its economic miracle, like Japan did in the 80s, France in the 50s-70s, Ireland in the 90s to now. But its demographics are awful. The USA is the USA, and is now the worlds largest oil producer. No other country is both a resource superpower and a vast consumer market. Canada has lagged Germany, the UK and the EU average but beaten the slower EU countries. Australia and Norway are resource states in a world of resource scarcity.
We have a lot of problems in common. Low birthrates, big governments, a belief that you can regulate your way to economic success, a mediocre political class. On the populist right, you get many who actively admire the world's dicatorships and wish to emulate them, and on the left, you get many who loathe their own countries' history and think the West deserves to fail. Hence, what @Cicero calls our "blue funk."
Arsenal led the Premier League for most of last season but dropped crucial points in the spring and narrowly lost the title. Starmer will (or should) be aware of the danger.
It all went wrong in Liverpool, when they gave up a two goal lead.
Though ground out a draw in the same match this year.
I must admit to be not paying much attention to the Premier League this year, with my team in the next tier. For me the big game is away at Ipswich, who have had a brilliant first half of the season, and attack with flair.
Leicester are leading the division with a style of football very similar to Manchester City, playing out from the back with a possession based style, and an inverted fullback. Lots of teams try to park the bus against us, particularly at The King Power Stadium. Our hiccup could be losing 4 first team players to the African Cup of Nations for a month.
What's an inverted fullback ?
Out of possession the team shape is 451, but in possession becomes a 325, with one of the fullbacks (for Leicester it is Ricardo) moving to form a double pivot in midfield. The other 2 midfielders support the attacking wingers and centreforward. It is a slightly lopsided formation as the right winger doesn't have a fullback to overlap with.
Less technically, when their team has the ball, an inverted fullback moves into central midfield rather than either staying back or running forward down the wing.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
The greatest British institution - the local pub - is entirely reliant on walkable neighbourhoods.
… All of the Nordic members, Poland, the Baltics, the Netherlands, Ireland, Luxembourg, and until very recently Germany. France has done roughly similarly to us. Italy, Greece, Portugal and several others have done badly. Like in all regions there is a mix.
…
The Euro has a lot to do with that. Pitched at a level that suited the dominant economy in Europe, it was too high and maintained too high for the southern European members. They are in an EU-imposed straightjacket being unable to become competitive via depreciation and are fated to endure sluggish growth and persistent high unemployment for the foreseeable
Great header - a nice and original way of thinking about our political outlook. I've been a latecomer to the delights of the beautiful game but now watch my son play every Sunday and it is the highlight of my week. Shutting down the game to defend a lead is something his U15 team hasn't quite mastered yet, but Starmer seems to be quite good at it, as @Foxy notes.
The thing about football and GE 2024 is that you have no idea how good you are at defending a 1-0 lead until 90 mins + added time has actually ended. Until that moment you have no idea even if you think you have.
A bit easier if like Labour you’re leading 3-1.
If the Tories managed to sneak one back, I must have missed it…
They thought winning BoZo's seat was a goal, but it turned out to be an own goal
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
The greatest British institution - the local pub - is entirely reliant on walkable neighbourhoods.
As usual, the polarisation on the implementation has meant the sensible course of action has been ignored.
The combined cost of car ownership is now heavily skewed, in London. If you have a ZEV parking, driving etc is pretty much free. If you have a small ICE, quite the reverse.
At the moment ZEVs are expensive - making this an extremely regressive tax/charge regime. In a decade or 2 the prices will be much lower - but how will road revenue be raised?
A sensible idea would be to tax and charge vehicles proportionally to the actual costs they externalise. This structure should be designed to carry forward into the ZEV future.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
I don't know - it will be interesting.
Setting bombs in public places is really serious criminality.
… All of the Nordic members, Poland, the Baltics, the Netherlands, Ireland, Luxembourg, and until very recently Germany. France has done roughly similarly to us. Italy, Greece, Portugal and several others have done badly. Like in all regions there is a mix.
…
The Euro has a lot to do with that. Pitched at a level that suited the dominant economy in Europe, it was too high and maintained too high for the southern European members. They are in an EU-imposed straightjacket being unable to become competitive via depreciation and are fated to endure sluggish growth and persistent high unemployment for the foreseeable
Worse, it created an ugly dynamic within Europe. The Germans population believes that all of Germanies success is their hard work and sacrifice. A number of Southern European countries believe that German success was at their cost.
The reality, as usual, is more complicated, but with an element of truth for both sides.
I remember just a few months ago when PB was convinced ULEZ would do for Keir Starmer and Sadiq Khan.
I note Labour is 22 points ahead in a recent poll and Khan is 30 points ahead in London.
Because ULEZ was definitely opposed by fictional poor nurses who would definitely face £20k bills to get to work. And not by gammony reactionaries whipped into a frenzy by the right wing media to oppose their government's own policy.
Are the odds of a 1997 result increasing or decreasing?
From which side?
It's my mental starting point. Starmer isn't Blair, and it's an awful lot of gains at once, but there's also the lack of economic boom and Sunak's combination of silver spoon and tin ear to consider.
I remember just a few months ago when PB was convinced ULEZ would do for Keir Starmer and Sadiq Khan.
I note Labour is 22 points ahead in a recent poll and Khan is 30 points ahead in London.
Because ULEZ was definitely opposed by fictional poor nurses who would definitely face £20k bills to get to work. And not by gammony reactionaries whipped into a frenzy by the right wing media to oppose their government's own policy.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
The greatest British institution - the local pub - is entirely reliant on walkable neighbourhoods.
As usual, the polarisation on the implementation has meant the sensible course of action has been ignored.
The combined cost of car ownership is now heavily skewed, in London. If you have a ZEV parking, driving etc is pretty much free. If you have a small ICE, quite the reverse.
At the moment ZEVs are expensive - making this an extremely regressive tax/charge regime. In a decade or 2 the prices will be much lower - but how will road revenue be raised?
A sensible idea would be to tax and charge vehicles proportionally to the actual costs they externalise. This structure should be designed to carry forward into the ZEV future.
Depends on your frame of reference. The lowest household income quintile have much lower rates of car ownership than the median income household, so any policy that taxes cars and redistributes the cash through current spending will likely be technically progressive (a guess, no maths to back that up).
But yes, there will be an inevitable shift to axle-load, size or weight. The OBR has done detailed work on this reduction in revenues already. Classic problem with Pigou taxes.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
The greatest British institution - the local pub - is entirely reliant on walkable neighbourhoods.
Not sure on that as a matter of fact. The UK tolerates drink-driving more than every other country in Europe (except Malta). Our drink-driving limits having been an outlier on the "tolerate drink driving" side for a couple of decades afaik.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
The greatest British institution - the local pub - is entirely reliant on walkable neighbourhoods.
Not sure on that as a matter of fact. The UK tolerates drink-driving, unlike every other country in Europe (except Malta). Our drink-driving limits having been an outlier on the "tolerate drink driving" side for a couple of decades afaik.
The limit is a bit lower in Scotland to be fair, to match France etc
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
The greatest British institution - the local pub - is entirely reliant on walkable neighbourhoods.
Not sure on that as a matter of fact. The UK tolerates drink-driving more than every other country in Europe (except Malta). Our drink-driving limits having been an outlier on the "tolerate drink driving" side for a couple of decades afaik.
Another great Boxing Day tradition. Horse Racing! 🐎
1.20 Kempton - Il Est Francais 1.40 Aintree - Bingoo 2.30 Kempton - Shiskin 2.50 Aintree - Tahmuras
See this 🐎 that’s Shiskin bolting up. But going leftwards when the finishing line is the other way 😆
Behind the scenes a lot of work has gone into race preparation. They have actually taken a few horses to Kempton start line and put Shiskin in the middle to practice his starts, so nothing will go wrong today for sure.
Meanwhile down at Il Est Francais stables they built the last three fences of todays race for the horse to practice its finish.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
The greatest British institution - the local pub - is entirely reliant on walkable neighbourhoods.
As usual, the polarisation on the implementation has meant the sensible course of action has been ignored.
The combined cost of car ownership is now heavily skewed, in London. If you have a ZEV parking, driving etc is pretty much free. If you have a small ICE, quite the reverse.
At the moment ZEVs are expensive - making this an extremely regressive tax/charge regime. In a decade or 2 the prices will be much lower - but how will road revenue be raised?
A sensible idea would be to tax and charge vehicles proportionally to the actual costs they externalise. This structure should be designed to carry forward into the ZEV future.
Depends on your frame of reference. The lowest household income quintile have much lower rates of car ownership than the median income household, so any policy that taxes cars and redistributes the cash through current spending will likely be technically progressive (a guess, no maths to back that up).
But yes, there will be an inevitable shift to axle-load, size or weight. The OBR has done detailed work on this reduction in revenues already. Classic problem with Pigou taxes.
Driving a 2.5 ton EV (price - zillions) round London is virtually free - especially now you can use charging spots as free, reserved parking.
As driver of the same, I think something must change.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
The greatest British institution - the local pub - is entirely reliant on walkable neighbourhoods.
Not sure on that as a matter of fact. The UK tolerates drink-driving more than every other country in Europe (except Malta). Our drink-driving limits having been an outlier on the "tolerate drink driving" side for a couple of decades afaik.
The UK also has the safest roads.
The Romanians must be absolutely unhinged, Donald Trump style, behind the wheel if they have 50% more casualties than Greece.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
The greatest British institution - the local pub - is entirely reliant on walkable neighbourhoods.
As usual, the polarisation on the implementation has meant the sensible course of action has been ignored.
The combined cost of car ownership is now heavily skewed, in London. If you have a ZEV parking, driving etc is pretty much free. If you have a small ICE, quite the reverse.
At the moment ZEVs are expensive - making this an extremely regressive tax/charge regime. In a decade or 2 the prices will be much lower - but how will road revenue be raised?
A sensible idea would be to tax and charge vehicles proportionally to the actual costs they externalise. This structure should be designed to carry forward into the ZEV future.
Depends on your frame of reference. The lowest household income quintile have much lower rates of car ownership than the median income household, so any policy that taxes cars and redistributes the cash through current spending will likely be technically progressive (a guess, no maths to back that up).
But yes, there will be an inevitable shift to axle-load, size or weight. The OBR has done detailed work on this reduction in revenues already. Classic problem with Pigou taxes.
Driving a 2.5 ton EV (price - zillions) round London is virtually free - especially now you can use charging spots as free, reserved parking.
As driver of the same, I think something must change.
So do I. Just wanted to point out that the people struggling the most in the UK don't have access to cars at all, and rely in particular on public and active travel.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
The greatest British institution - the local pub - is entirely reliant on walkable neighbourhoods.
Not sure on that as a matter of fact. The UK tolerates drink-driving more than every other country in Europe (except Malta). Our drink-driving limits having been an outlier on the "tolerate drink driving" side for a couple of decades afaik.
There's a difference between 'tolerating drink driving' and having the highest blood alcohol level allowed in Europe.
There is little difference in safety between what we will allow and what, say, France will allow in alcohol level. it's a balance of risks.
What we don't do is tolerate drink driving. socially it's as frowned upon as driving without a seatbelt or smoking has become over the last 20 years. go back 50 years and drink driving was the norm but now it's rare. Peer pressure does a lot.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
The greatest British institution - the local pub - is entirely reliant on walkable neighbourhoods.
As usual, the polarisation on the implementation has meant the sensible course of action has been ignored.
The combined cost of car ownership is now heavily skewed, in London. If you have a ZEV parking, driving etc is pretty much free. If you have a small ICE, quite the reverse.
At the moment ZEVs are expensive - making this an extremely regressive tax/charge regime. In a decade or 2 the prices will be much lower - but how will road revenue be raised?
A sensible idea would be to tax and charge vehicles proportionally to the actual costs they externalise. This structure should be designed to carry forward into the ZEV future.
Depends on your frame of reference. The lowest household income quintile have much lower rates of car ownership than the median income household, so any policy that taxes cars and redistributes the cash through current spending will likely be technically progressive (a guess, no maths to back that up).
But yes, there will be an inevitable shift to axle-load, size or weight. The OBR has done detailed work on this reduction in revenues already. Classic problem with Pigou taxes.
Driving a 2.5 ton EV (price - zillions) round London is virtually free - especially now you can use charging spots as free, reserved parking.
As driver of the same, I think something must change.
So do I. Just wanted to point out that the people struggling the most in the UK don't have access to cars at all, and rely in particular on public and active travel.
It’s more complicated - I’ve got poorer relations and friends in the parts of London that don’t get as much public transport. For them, the car is how things get done.
For the very poorest - they’ve been priced out of cars by petrol, a long while back. But very often, the first thing that comes back when a better job comes in, is the car. Hence the council estate car parks are not empty.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
I don't know - it will be interesting.
Setting bombs in public places is really serious criminality.
I remember just a few months ago when PB was convinced ULEZ would do for Keir Starmer and Sadiq Khan.
I note Labour is 22 points ahead in a recent poll and Khan is 30 points ahead in London.
Because ULEZ was definitely opposed by fictional poor nurses who would definitely face £20k bills to get to work. And not by gammony reactionaries whipped into a frenzy by the right wing media to oppose their government's own policy.
… All of the Nordic members, Poland, the Baltics, the Netherlands, Ireland, Luxembourg, and until very recently Germany. France has done roughly similarly to us. Italy, Greece, Portugal and several others have done badly. Like in all regions there is a mix.
…
The Euro has a lot to do with that. Pitched at a level that suited the dominant economy in Europe, it was too high and maintained too high for the southern European members. They are in an EU-imposed straightjacket being unable to become competitive via depreciation and are fated to endure sluggish growth and persistent high unemployment for the foreseeable
At the moment the fastest growing economies in the EU are Malta, Croatia Cyprus, Greece, Portugal and Spain, so it's not obviously being held back by the Euro. Italy is stagnant, but that is due do domestic demographics and red tape rather than anything EU related.
A sound currency is a foundation of a strong economy, serial devaluation a feature of a weak one. Serial devaluation is not a treatment for tackling the weaknesses of an economy, it is a postponement of that treatment.
I'm not sure I have any more faith in long term economic forecasts now than I had back in 2016.
I am glad that the UK economy is performing adequately right now, but that shouldn't blind us to some of the challenges ahead.
Not sure if the German and French economies doing badly is 'good news' for the UK, though it may help reconcile some to Brexit.
You are, of course, correct. The relative decline of the European economy will be a drag on our own growth. We need to develop new markets for our products and services.
Which has been an issue for decades and was precisely why we were right to leave the sclerotic European Union.
kamski puts the cart before the horse in thinking that Brexiteers are glad to see Europe failing, Europe failing is disappointing and bad for Britain but is not new, did not begin after 2016 and is why Brexit was a good idea not vice-versa.
As several EU countries with much more successful deepwater export industries than us demonstrate, membership was no bar to successful exploitation of non-EU markets. In fact in some cases it was a net benefit because it enabled integrated cross-border supply chains while retaining EU origin. Indeed as UK services trade with countries like the US and Singapore also demonstrate.
The zero sum approach to EU or non EU never made sense, anymore than Texas being part of the US inhibits its trade with international partners.
The incipient “sclerosis” suffered by some EU members is the same sclerosis suffered by the UK, by Japan in a major way, by most of Latin America and the whole CIS, and in due course expected in Korea, then China. It’s the sclerosis of ageing populations.
Which are these successful countries in your eyes?
Since 1993 (the founding of the modern EU) all major EU countries have floundered, not just Britain.
Its not just Britain but Germany, France and all other major EU countries since 1993 have done worse than non-EU developed nations - with Japan being the notable non-EU exception.
All of the Nordic members, Poland, the Baltics, the Netherlands, Ireland, Luxembourg, and until very recently Germany. France has done roughly similarly to us. Italy, Greece, Portugal and several others have done badly. Like in all regions there is a mix.
Then the question is what are we comparing with? Japan we’ve discussed. Singapore is an entrepôt city state and has done similarly to other micro states like Luxembourg. Korea has just had its economic miracle, like Japan did in the 80s, France in the 50s-70s, Ireland in the 90s to now. But its demographics are awful. The USA is the USA, and is now the worlds largest oil producer. No other country is both a resource superpower and a vast consumer market. Canada has lagged Germany, the UK and the EU average but beaten the slower EU countries. Australia and Norway are resource states in a world of resource scarcity.
We have a lot of problems in common. Low birthrates, big governments, a belief that you can regulate your way to economic success, a mediocre political class. On the populist right, you get many who actively admire the world's dicatorships and wish to emulate them, and on the left, you get many who loathe their own countries' history and think the West deserves to fail. Hence, what @Cicero calls our "blue funk."
Don't you think there's plenty to loathe in our history, as well as plenty to love? For good or ill, we've been one of the most influential countries in the world, our history is littered with plenty of absolute horrors as well as stuff to be proud of.
I remember just a few months ago when PB was convinced ULEZ would do for Keir Starmer and Sadiq Khan.
I note Labour is 22 points ahead in a recent poll and Khan is 30 points ahead in London.
Because ULEZ was definitely opposed by fictional poor nurses who would definitely face £20k bills to get to work. And not by gammony reactionaries whipped into a frenzy by the right wing media to oppose their government's own policy.
Pulling down barriers to Biden’s far-reaching goals for combating climate threats was now the task of the former White House chief of staff. Right away, Podesta sat down with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. The two ran through a list of proposed high-voltage electric transmission projects critical to delivering wind and solar power to American cities and suburbs — as air conditioners run at full tilt and digital technology consumes expanding amounts of energy.
One project stood out: SunZia Wind and Transmission, which would ship carbon-free electricity from the central desert of New Mexico to Arizona and Southern California. It had been in the works for 16 years.
“Oh, my God,” Podesta blurted out. “We’ve gotten nowhere on that?”
A year later, it’s finally under construction.
Like the other projects on this list, SunZia had been stuck in yearslong spin cycles of local controversies and government reviews, challenged by critics ranging from birders to Native American tribes to the U.S. Army. Now, it was getting a prime spot on Podesta’s get-it-done list — an opening move in what White House officials call the largest investment in electric grid infrastructure in U.S. history...
One of the things that I think is really under-appreciated is the extent to which wind and solar now make economic sense without subsidy.
Now, people will say "oh yeah, but you have to build fossil fired power stations as backup", but the reality is that CCGTs are cheap from a capex and maintenance perspective; and it's the fuel that is expensive.
Absolutely. But whatever the energy mix, a modern grid of greater capacity than now is needed by all modern economies.
I’m mildly impressed that Biden (as well as recognising that) made it a serious priority from very early on.
The contrast with our government is notable - and it’s a lot less complicated in the UK.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
I don't know - it will be interesting.
Setting bombs in public places is really serious criminality.
I'm baffled as to what this has to do with Brexit .
If I am getting it right that’s an A3 offence in guidelines.
12-20 years, with a staring point of 16 years
There's a bit of ambiguity on the wording at present - they are detained aiui on SUSPICION of CONSIPRACY to cause an explosion ....; those could be holding statements, or they may have proof only of the conspiracy (ie plan) and I don't know (without digging) how that affects things.
Either way, I think all the people who are generally supportive of the criminal damage campaign and have been loose with their language may be in for a shock when this works through.
I'm not sure I have any more faith in long term economic forecasts now than I had back in 2016.
I am glad that the UK economy is performing adequately right now, but that shouldn't blind us to some of the challenges ahead.
Not sure if the German and French economies doing badly is 'good news' for the UK, though it may help reconcile some to Brexit.
You are, of course, correct. The relative decline of the European economy will be a drag on our own growth. We need to develop new markets for our products and services.
Which has been an issue for decades and was precisely why we were right to leave the sclerotic European Union.
kamski puts the cart before the horse in thinking that Brexiteers are glad to see Europe failing, Europe failing is disappointing and bad for Britain but is not new, did not begin after 2016 and is why Brexit was a good idea not vice-versa.
As several EU countries with much more successful deepwater export industries than us demonstrate, membership was no bar to successful exploitation of non-EU markets. In fact in some cases it was a net benefit because it enabled integrated cross-border supply chains while retaining EU origin. Indeed as UK services trade with countries like the US and Singapore also demonstrate.
The zero sum approach to EU or non EU never made sense, anymore than Texas being part of the US inhibits its trade with international partners.
The incipient “sclerosis” suffered by some EU members is the same sclerosis suffered by the UK, by Japan in a major way, by most of Latin America and the whole CIS, and in due course expected in Korea, then China. It’s the sclerosis of ageing populations.
Which are these successful countries in your eyes?
Since 1993 (the founding of the modern EU) all major EU countries have floundered, not just Britain.
Its not just Britain but Germany, France and all other major EU countries since 1993 have done worse than non-EU developed nations - with Japan being the notable non-EU exception.
All of the Nordic members, Poland, the Baltics, the Netherlands, Ireland, Luxembourg, and until very recently Germany. France has done roughly similarly to us. Italy, Greece, Portugal and several others have done badly. Like in all regions there is a mix.
Then the question is what are we comparing with? Japan we’ve discussed. Singapore is an entrepôt city state and has done similarly to other micro states like Luxembourg. Korea has just had its economic miracle, like Japan did in the 80s, France in the 50s-70s, Ireland in the 90s to now. But its demographics are awful. The USA is the USA, and is now the worlds largest oil producer. No other country is both a resource superpower and a vast consumer market. Canada has lagged Germany, the UK and the EU average but beaten the slower EU countries. Australia and Norway are resource states in a world of resource scarcity.
We have a lot of problems in common. Low birthrates, big governments, a belief that you can regulate your way to economic success, a mediocre political class. On the populist right, you get many who actively admire the world's dicatorships and wish to emulate them, and on the left, you get many who loathe their own countries' history and think the West deserves to fail. Hence, what @Cicero calls our "blue funk."
Don't you think there's plenty to loathe in our history, as well as plenty to love? For good or ill, we've been one of the most influential countries in the world, our history is littered with plenty of absolute horrors as well as stuff to be proud of.
The problem (in the sense of something to be solved) is how to combine that with actual pride in shared values.
Mixed Market Social Democracy isn’t an inevitable default. If we don’t sell it well, other ideas will win.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
The greatest British institution - the local pub - is entirely reliant on walkable neighbourhoods.
Not sure on that as a matter of fact. The UK tolerates drink-driving more than every other country in Europe (except Malta). Our drink-driving limits having been an outlier on the "tolerate drink driving" side for a couple of decades afaik.
There's a difference between 'tolerating drink driving' and having the highest blood alcohol level allowed in Europe.
There is little difference in safety between what we will allow and what, say, France will allow in alcohol level. it's a balance of risks.
What we don't do is tolerate drink driving. socially it's as frowned upon as driving without a seatbelt or smoking has become over the last 20 years. go back 50 years and drink driving was the norm but now it's rare. Peer pressure does a lot.
The discussion is lumping the UK as one, but that map is wrong anyway. Scotland is 0.5% - 50 milligrammes (mg) of alcohol in 100ml of blood - and should be orange, shouldn't it?
I'm not sure I have any more faith in long term economic forecasts now than I had back in 2016.
I am glad that the UK economy is performing adequately right now, but that shouldn't blind us to some of the challenges ahead.
Not sure if the German and French economies doing badly is 'good news' for the UK, though it may help reconcile some to Brexit.
You are, of course, correct. The relative decline of the European economy will be a drag on our own growth. We need to develop new markets for our products and services.
Which has been an issue for decades and was precisely why we were right to leave the sclerotic European Union.
kamski puts the cart before the horse in thinking that Brexiteers are glad to see Europe failing, Europe failing is disappointing and bad for Britain but is not new, did not begin after 2016 and is why Brexit was a good idea not vice-versa.
Maybe try reading what I actually wrote, as your interpretation is pretty much the opposite of what I said
… All of the Nordic members, Poland, the Baltics, the Netherlands, Ireland, Luxembourg, and until very recently Germany. France has done roughly similarly to us. Italy, Greece, Portugal and several others have done badly. Like in all regions there is a mix.
…
The Euro has a lot to do with that. Pitched at a level that suited the dominant economy in Europe, it was too high and maintained too high for the southern European members. They are in an EU-imposed straightjacket being unable to become competitive via depreciation and are fated to endure sluggish growth and persistent high unemployment for the foreseeable
At the moment the fastest growing economies in the EU are Malta, Croatia Cyprus, Greece, Portugal and Spain, so it's not obviously being held back by the Euro. Italy is stagnant, but that is due do domestic demographics and red tape rather than anything EU related.
A sound currency is a foundation of a strong economy, serial devaluation a feature of a weak one. Serial devaluation is not a treatment for tackling the weaknesses of an economy, it is a postponement of that treatment.
The problem was that the Euro was a bit Procrustean - it change the economies of Europe by fiat.
A chunk of the fault goes to countries like Greece and Italy, where the required reforms were eternally put off as politically impossible. So Greece borrowed at the German rate of interest (pretty much).
I'm not sure I have any more faith in long term economic forecasts now than I had back in 2016.
I am glad that the UK economy is performing adequately right now, but that shouldn't blind us to some of the challenges ahead.
Not sure if the German and French economies doing badly is 'good news' for the UK, though it may help reconcile some to Brexit.
You are, of course, correct. The relative decline of the European economy will be a drag on our own growth. We need to develop new markets for our products and services.
Which has been an issue for decades and was precisely why we were right to leave the sclerotic European Union.
kamski puts the cart before the horse in thinking that Brexiteers are glad to see Europe failing, Europe failing is disappointing and bad for Britain but is not new, did not begin after 2016 and is why Brexit was a good idea not vice-versa.
As several EU countries with much more successful deepwater export industries than us demonstrate, membership was no bar to successful exploitation of non-EU markets. In fact in some cases it was a net benefit because it enabled integrated cross-border supply chains while retaining EU origin. Indeed as UK services trade with countries like the US and Singapore also demonstrate.
The zero sum approach to EU or non EU never made sense, anymore than Texas being part of the US inhibits its trade with international partners.
The incipient “sclerosis” suffered by some EU members is the same sclerosis suffered by the UK, by Japan in a major way, by most of Latin America and the whole CIS, and in due course expected in Korea, then China. It’s the sclerosis of ageing populations.
Which are these successful countries in your eyes?
Since 1993 (the founding of the modern EU) all major EU countries have floundered, not just Britain.
Its not just Britain but Germany, France and all other major EU countries since 1993 have done worse than non-EU developed nations - with Japan being the notable non-EU exception.
All of the Nordic members, Poland, the Baltics, the Netherlands, Ireland, Luxembourg, and until very recently Germany. France has done roughly similarly to us. Italy, Greece, Portugal and several others have done badly. Like in all regions there is a mix.
Then the question is what are we comparing with? Japan we’ve discussed. Singapore is an entrepôt city state and has done similarly to other micro states like Luxembourg. Korea has just had its economic miracle, like Japan did in the 80s, France in the 50s-70s, Ireland in the 90s to now. But its demographics are awful. The USA is the USA, and is now the worlds largest oil producer. No other country is both a resource superpower and a vast consumer market. Canada has lagged Germany, the UK and the EU average but beaten the slower EU countries. Australia and Norway are resource states in a world of resource scarcity.
We have a lot of problems in common. Low birthrates, big governments, a belief that you can regulate your way to economic success, a mediocre political class. On the populist right, you get many who actively admire the world's dicatorships and wish to emulate them, and on the left, you get many who loathe their own countries' history and think the West deserves to fail. Hence, what @Cicero calls our "blue funk."
Don't you think there's plenty to loathe in our history, as well as plenty to love? For good or ill, we've been one of the most influential countries in the world, our history is littered with plenty of absolute horrors as well as stuff to be proud of.
Sure, but for some people, the sins of past generations irretrievably damn present generations. And provide an excuse for present totalitarian regimes to say "Well, your country did just the same thing back in the day."
Currently on holiday in Oz, about to watch the Newcastle soccer. It’s nearly 11PM here.
Just dropped in to wish everyone a happy winterval. Even that alcohol POS Ishmael if it is still here.
The forum is full of cranky middle aged white people with obsessions being cranky middle aged white people with obsessions.
Love it. It serves a purpose.
I know I’m one. Mine is the license fee.
Enjoy and chill. Not every political opponent is satan, and people who don’t share the same view as you aren’t bad. Even if they support the license fee.
C’Mon the toon. Not as well supported as Sunderland and the Sunderland fans are more loyal to their team but I’d like them to win the soccer.
… All of the Nordic members, Poland, the Baltics, the Netherlands, Ireland, Luxembourg, and until very recently Germany. France has done roughly similarly to us. Italy, Greece, Portugal and several others have done badly. Like in all regions there is a mix.
…
The Euro has a lot to do with that. Pitched at a level that suited the dominant economy in Europe, it was too high and maintained too high for the southern European members. They are in an EU-imposed straightjacket being unable to become competitive via depreciation and are fated to endure sluggish growth and persistent high unemployment for the foreseeable
At the moment the fastest growing economies in the EU are Malta, Croatia Cyprus, Greece, Portugal and Spain, so it's not obviously being held back by the Euro. Italy is stagnant, but that is due do domestic demographics and red tape rather than anything EU related.
A sound currency is a foundation of a strong economy, serial devaluation a feature of a weak one. Serial devaluation is not a treatment for tackling the weaknesses of an economy, it is a postponement of that treatment.
That was Churchill's rationale for reinstating the gold standard, but it's an example of economic theory coming into brutal conflict with economic reality. In theory, a currency that can't be devalued will force countries to introduce supply side reforms but it does not seem to work out like that.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4376797-trump-may-they-rot-in-hell-merry-christmas/ ..“Included also are World Leaders, both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and ‘sick’ as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!” the former president concluded. ..
He's more unhinged than a door that's been trampled by an elephant.
But he is right when he calls the Iraq war the worst decision in America's history, based on a lie about WMD, turning Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorism, costing $2 trillion, and costing American soldiers their lives or health.
Worse than slavery?
Worse than Dredd Scott?
Don't be silly, its not even remotely in the top 10.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4376797-trump-may-they-rot-in-hell-merry-christmas/ ..“Included also are World Leaders, both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and ‘sick’ as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!” the former president concluded. ..
He's more unhinged than a door that's been trampled by an elephant.
But he is right when he calls the Iraq war the worst decision in America's history, based on a lie about WMD, turning Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorism, costing $2 trillion, and costing American soldiers their lives or health.
Worse than slavery?
Worse than Dredd Scott?
Don't be silly, its not even remotely in the top 10.
Good point, but I’d like your full top 10!
One must be driving (pun intended) the motor car forward regardless of all else, with the invention of tetraethyl lead as a subpoint. Just been reading an article about those in the US whose towns have basically lost all public transport to anywhere else at all.
I'm not sure I have any more faith in long term economic forecasts now than I had back in 2016.
I am glad that the UK economy is performing adequately right now, but that shouldn't blind us to some of the challenges ahead.
Not sure if the German and French economies doing badly is 'good news' for the UK, though it may help reconcile some to Brexit.
You are, of course, correct. The relative decline of the European economy will be a drag on our own growth. We need to develop new markets for our products and services.
Which has been an issue for decades and was precisely why we were right to leave the sclerotic European Union.
kamski puts the cart before the horse in thinking that Brexiteers are glad to see Europe failing, Europe failing is disappointing and bad for Britain but is not new, did not begin after 2016 and is why Brexit was a good idea not vice-versa.
Maybe try reading what I actually wrote, as your interpretation is pretty much the opposite of what I said
If it’s not from his beloved native Australia then Barty’s not interested.
Putin has a clear choice. He can end the war now, and withdraw from Crimea with the remains of the Black Sea Fleet intact, or he can lose the war later, with nothing remaining of the Black Sea Fleet.
I'm not sure I have any more faith in long term economic forecasts now than I had back in 2016.
I am glad that the UK economy is performing adequately right now, but that shouldn't blind us to some of the challenges ahead.
What would you say is the main challenge right now?
Personally, I would think it's the enormous amount of debt (both public and private) overhanging the economy.
In no particular order
The demographic problem The nonfunctioning court/justice/prison system The long-foretold failure of debt-financed govt expenditure The US retreat from the world and the consequent failure in globalisation
We need to tax more, reduce govt expenditure, pay debt, refocus on care of the elderly and detection/capture/punishment of the bad, and establish a state which does less with less but does it competently.
I'm not sure I have any more faith in long term economic forecasts now than I had back in 2016.
I am glad that the UK economy is performing adequately right now, but that shouldn't blind us to some of the challenges ahead.
Not sure if the German and French economies doing badly is 'good news' for the UK, though it may help reconcile some to Brexit.
You are, of course, correct. The relative decline of the European economy will be a drag on our own growth. We need to develop new markets for our products and services.
Which has been an issue for decades and was precisely why we were right to leave the sclerotic European Union.
kamski puts the cart before the horse in thinking that Brexiteers are glad to see Europe failing, Europe failing is disappointing and bad for Britain but is not new, did not begin after 2016 and is why Brexit was a good idea not vice-versa.
As several EU countries with much more successful deepwater export industries than us demonstrate, membership was no bar to successful exploitation of non-EU markets. In fact in some cases it was a net benefit because it enabled integrated cross-border supply chains while retaining EU origin. Indeed as UK services trade with countries like the US and Singapore also demonstrate.
The zero sum approach to EU or non EU never made sense, anymore than Texas being part of the US inhibits its trade with international partners.
The incipient “sclerosis” suffered by some EU members is the same sclerosis suffered by the UK, by Japan in a major way, by most of Latin America and the whole CIS, and in due course expected in Korea, then China. It’s the sclerosis of ageing populations.
Which are these successful countries in your eyes?
Since 1993 (the founding of the modern EU) all major EU countries have floundered, not just Britain.
Its not just Britain but Germany, France and all other major EU countries since 1993 have done worse than non-EU developed nations - with Japan being the notable non-EU exception.
All of the Nordic members, Poland, the Baltics, the Netherlands, Ireland, Luxembourg, and until very recently Germany. France has done roughly similarly to us. Italy, Greece, Portugal and several others have done badly. Like in all regions there is a mix.
Then the question is what are we comparing with? Japan we’ve discussed. Singapore is an entrepôt city state and has done similarly to other micro states like Luxembourg. Korea has just had its economic miracle, like Japan did in the 80s, France in the 50s-70s, Ireland in the 90s to now. But its demographics are awful. The USA is the USA, and is now the worlds largest oil producer. No other country is both a resource superpower and a vast consumer market. Canada has lagged Germany, the UK and the EU average but beaten the slower EU countries. Australia and Norway are resource states in a world of resource scarcity.
We have a lot of problems in common. Low birthrates, big governments, a belief that you can regulate your way to economic success, a mediocre political class. On the populist right, you get many who actively admire the world's dicatorships and wish to emulate them, and on the left, you get many who loathe their own countries' history and think the West deserves to fail. Hence, what @Cicero calls our "blue funk."
Don't you think there's plenty to loathe in our history, as well as plenty to love? For good or ill, we've been one of the most influential countries in the world, our history is littered with plenty of absolute horrors as well as stuff to be proud of.
The problem (in the sense of something to be solved) is how to combine that with actual pride in shared values.
Mixed Market Social Democracy isn’t an inevitable default. If we don’t sell it well, other ideas will win.
Loathing elements of our own countries’ histories is about having shared values. We don’t share those values with our ancestors, but we do share those values with each other in the present. Pointing out the ills of the past is a better way of sharing values than pretending hypocritically that we share values but then refusing to acknowledge when we have deviated from those values in the past.
I'm not sure I have any more faith in long term economic forecasts now than I had back in 2016.
I am glad that the UK economy is performing adequately right now, but that shouldn't blind us to some of the challenges ahead.
Not sure if the German and French economies doing badly is 'good news' for the UK, though it may help reconcile some to Brexit.
You are, of course, correct. The relative decline of the European economy will be a drag on our own growth. We need to develop new markets for our products and services.
Which has been an issue for decades and was precisely why we were right to leave the sclerotic European Union.
kamski puts the cart before the horse in thinking that Brexiteers are glad to see Europe failing, Europe failing is disappointing and bad for Britain but is not new, did not begin after 2016 and is why Brexit was a good idea not vice-versa.
As several EU countries with much more successful deepwater export industries than us demonstrate, membership was no bar to successful exploitation of non-EU markets. In fact in some cases it was a net benefit because it enabled integrated cross-border supply chains while retaining EU origin. Indeed as UK services trade with countries like the US and Singapore also demonstrate.
The zero sum approach to EU or non EU never made sense, anymore than Texas being part of the US inhibits its trade with international partners.
The incipient “sclerosis” suffered by some EU members is the same sclerosis suffered by the UK, by Japan in a major way, by most of Latin America and the whole CIS, and in due course expected in Korea, then China. It’s the sclerosis of ageing populations.
Which are these successful countries in your eyes?
Since 1993 (the founding of the modern EU) all major EU countries have floundered, not just Britain.
Its not just Britain but Germany, France and all other major EU countries since 1993 have done worse than non-EU developed nations - with Japan being the notable non-EU exception.
Barry, yes, you hate foreigners, except those in the Commonwealth. We know. Change the record.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
The greatest British institution - the local pub - is entirely reliant on walkable neighbourhoods.
Not sure on that as a matter of fact. The UK tolerates drink-driving more than every other country in Europe (except Malta). Our drink-driving limits having been an outlier on the "tolerate drink driving" side for a couple of decades afaik.
There's a difference between 'tolerating drink driving' and having the highest blood alcohol level allowed in Europe.
There is little difference in safety between what we will allow and what, say, France will allow in alcohol level. it's a balance of risks.
What we don't do is tolerate drink driving. socially it's as frowned upon as driving without a seatbelt or smoking has become over the last 20 years. go back 50 years and drink driving was the norm but now it's rare. Peer pressure does a lot.
You do come across drunk drivers in Ireland quite frequently. People driving very slowly at night, some erratic changes of direction after they've drifted over the centre line.
And it's the only place where I've been in a car driven by someone who'd drunk too much to drive, following a funeral and whiskies drunk thereafter. I really should have walked it, was less than a couple of kilometres.
There are also so many situations where it's harder to opt out of drinking, even when it's obvious that most people will be driving. A local supermarket was offering people drinks of gin at the cheese counter on Christmas Eve.
And all the remaining rural pubs would go to the wall if drink-driving did become totally anathema. So it's definitely much more tolerated in Ireland than in Britain, despite the apparently stricter law.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4376797-trump-may-they-rot-in-hell-merry-christmas/ ..“Included also are World Leaders, both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and ‘sick’ as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!” the former president concluded. ..
He's more unhinged than a door that's been trampled by an elephant.
But he is right when he calls the Iraq war the worst decision in America's history, based on a lie about WMD, turning Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorism, costing $2 trillion, and costing American soldiers their lives or health.
Worse than slavery?
Worse than Dredd Scott?
Don't be silly, its not even remotely in the top 10.
Good point, but I’d like your full top 10!
1: Slavery 2: Dred Scott 3: Jim Crow 4: Segregation 5: Prohibition 5: War on drugs 6: Their healthcare system 7: Isolationism before and during the first three years of WWII 8: Vietnam 9: Second Amendment 10: Their legal system
There's probably some I missed, and could reorder some of those, and could expand on #6 and #10, but all of those (especially first four) utterly dwarf Iraq.
Hundreds out for the Boxing Day hunt this morning (now following a set trail). Master of Hounds warned of the pressures the hunting community still face since the ban and to check carefully who to vote for next year, just because a candidate or MP is a Tory does not mean they would automatically be supportive
I'm not sure I have any more faith in long term economic forecasts now than I had back in 2016.
I am glad that the UK economy is performing adequately right now, but that shouldn't blind us to some of the challenges ahead.
Not sure if the German and French economies doing badly is 'good news' for the UK, though it may help reconcile some to Brexit.
You are, of course, correct. The relative decline of the European economy will be a drag on our own growth. We need to develop new markets for our products and services.
Which has been an issue for decades and was precisely why we were right to leave the sclerotic European Union.
kamski puts the cart before the horse in thinking that Brexiteers are glad to see Europe failing, Europe failing is disappointing and bad for Britain but is not new, did not begin after 2016 and is why Brexit was a good idea not vice-versa.
As several EU countries with much more successful deepwater export industries than us demonstrate, membership was no bar to successful exploitation of non-EU markets. In fact in some cases it was a net benefit because it enabled integrated cross-border supply chains while retaining EU origin. Indeed as UK services trade with countries like the US and Singapore also demonstrate.
The zero sum approach to EU or non EU never made sense, anymore than Texas being part of the US inhibits its trade with international partners.
The incipient “sclerosis” suffered by some EU members is the same sclerosis suffered by the UK, by Japan in a major way, by most of Latin America and the whole CIS, and in due course expected in Korea, then China. It’s the sclerosis of ageing populations.
Which are these successful countries in your eyes?
Since 1993 (the founding of the modern EU) all major EU countries have floundered, not just Britain.
Its not just Britain but Germany, France and all other major EU countries since 1993 have done worse than non-EU developed nations - with Japan being the notable non-EU exception.
Barry, yes, you hate foreigners, except those in the Commonwealth. We know. Change the record.
WTAF are you talking about. The disgraceful way we treated the Commonwealth when we joined the EEC is one of Britain's biggest moments of shame, but despite that the Commonwealth has grown considerably faster than the EU for decades.
Germany was named as one of the EU countries that has supposedly done "well" within the EU. Since 1993 German GDP per capita has gone up by just 201%
In comparison every developed Commonwealth non-EU nation has done considerably better. Canada up 258%, Australia up 341%, New Zealand up 373%
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4376797-trump-may-they-rot-in-hell-merry-christmas/ ..“Included also are World Leaders, both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and ‘sick’ as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!” the former president concluded. ..
He's more unhinged than a door that's been trampled by an elephant.
But he is right when he calls the Iraq war the worst decision in America's history, based on a lie about WMD, turning Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorism, costing $2 trillion, and costing American soldiers their lives or health.
Rubbish. Iraq is now free of Saddam Hussein, has an elected government and ISIS have largely been defeated there.
Indeed Iraq has been in retrospect far more of a military success for the US in terms of its objectives than say Vietnam or even Afghanistan (which is now back in Taliban hands even if Bin Laden is dead)
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Very good point. There is always on this board a lot of I want it to happen it will happen thinking.
It's the consumerist mindset, and that way of thinking dominates centrist politics - the retail offer, etc.
But politics, the future of a country, is much more a collective endeavour, than a question of buying a brighter future from a different party with your vote on election day.
Cameron was somewhat on the right track with the talk about the Big Society, but it all got mixed up with austerity.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4376797-trump-may-they-rot-in-hell-merry-christmas/ ..“Included also are World Leaders, both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and ‘sick’ as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!” the former president concluded. ..
He's more unhinged than a door that's been trampled by an elephant.
But he is right when he calls the Iraq war the worst decision in America's history, based on a lie about WMD, turning Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorism, costing $2 trillion, and costing American soldiers their lives or health.
Rubbish. Iraq is now free of Saddam Hussein, has an elected government and ISIS have largely been defeated there.
Indeed Iraq has been in retrospect far more of a military success for the US in terms of its objectives than say Vietnam or even Afghanistan (which is now back in Taliban hands even if Bin Laden is dead)
And it has been 24 hours or so since America last bombed Iraq.
Currently on holiday in Oz, about to watch the Newcastle soccer. It’s nearly 11PM here.
Just dropped in to wish everyone a happy winterval. Even that alcohol POS Ishmael if it is still here.
The forum is full of cranky middle aged white people with obsessions being cranky middle aged white people with obsessions.
Love it. It serves a purpose.
I know I’m one. Mine is the license fee.
Enjoy and chill. Not every political opponent is satan, and people who don’t share the same view as you aren’t bad. Even if they support the license fee.
C’Mon the toon. Not as well supported as Sunderland and the Sunderland fans are more loyal to their team but I’d like them to win the soccer.
Most people in the UK are white, in case you'd forgotten.
I'm not sure I have any more faith in long term economic forecasts now than I had back in 2016.
I am glad that the UK economy is performing adequately right now, but that shouldn't blind us to some of the challenges ahead.
Not sure if the German and French economies doing badly is 'good news' for the UK, though it may help reconcile some to Brexit.
You are, of course, correct. The relative decline of the European economy will be a drag on our own growth. We need to develop new markets for our products and services.
Which has been an issue for decades and was precisely why we were right to leave the sclerotic European Union.
kamski puts the cart before the horse in thinking that Brexiteers are glad to see Europe failing, Europe failing is disappointing and bad for Britain but is not new, did not begin after 2016 and is why Brexit was a good idea not vice-versa.
As several EU countries with much more successful deepwater export industries than us demonstrate, membership was no bar to successful exploitation of non-EU markets. In fact in some cases it was a net benefit because it enabled integrated cross-border supply chains while retaining EU origin. Indeed as UK services trade with countries like the US and Singapore also demonstrate.
The zero sum approach to EU or non EU never made sense, anymore than Texas being part of the US inhibits its trade with international partners.
The incipient “sclerosis” suffered by some EU members is the same sclerosis suffered by the UK, by Japan in a major way, by most of Latin America and the whole CIS, and in due course expected in Korea, then China. It’s the sclerosis of ageing populations.
Which are these successful countries in your eyes?
Since 1993 (the founding of the modern EU) all major EU countries have floundered, not just Britain.
Its not just Britain but Germany, France and all other major EU countries since 1993 have done worse than non-EU developed nations - with Japan being the notable non-EU exception.
All of the Nordic members, Poland, the Baltics, the Netherlands, Ireland, Luxembourg, and until very recently Germany. France has done roughly similarly to us. Italy, Greece, Portugal and several others have done badly. Like in all regions there is a mix.
Then the question is what are we comparing with? Japan we’ve discussed. Singapore is an entrepôt city state and has done similarly to other micro states like Luxembourg. Korea has just had its economic miracle, like Japan did in the 80s, France in the 50s-70s, Ireland in the 90s to now. But its demographics are awful. The USA is the USA, and is now the worlds largest oil producer. No other country is both a resource superpower and a vast consumer market. Canada has lagged Germany, the UK and the EU average but beaten the slower EU countries. Australia and Norway are resource states in a world of resource scarcity.
We have a lot of problems in common. Low birthrates, big governments, a belief that you can regulate your way to economic success, a mediocre political class. On the populist right, you get many who actively admire the world's dicatorships and wish to emulate them, and on the left, you get many who loathe their own countries' history and think the West deserves to fail. Hence, what @Cicero calls our "blue funk."
Don't you think there's plenty to loathe in our history, as well as plenty to love? For good or ill, we've been one of the most influential countries in the world, our history is littered with plenty of absolute horrors as well as stuff to be proud of.
The problem (in the sense of something to be solved) is how to combine that with actual pride in shared values.
Mixed Market Social Democracy isn’t an inevitable default. If we don’t sell it well, other ideas will win.
Loathing elements of our own countries’ histories is about having shared values. We don’t share those values with our ancestors, but we do share those values with each other in the present. Pointing out the ills of the past is a better way of sharing values than pretending hypocritically that we share values but then refusing to acknowledge when we have deviated from those values in the past.
Indeed. But the trick is to build a narrative that is positive for the future. It’s no good saying that “I’m not interested in the positive side”. It has to be a complete package.
Otherwise you are leaving a gap. And the people and ideas that will fill that gap…
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
The greatest British institution - the local pub - is entirely reliant on walkable neighbourhoods.
Not sure on that as a matter of fact. The UK tolerates drink-driving more than every other country in Europe (except Malta). Our drink-driving limits having been an outlier on the "tolerate drink driving" side for a couple of decades afaik.
There's a difference between 'tolerating drink driving' and having the highest blood alcohol level allowed in Europe.
There is little difference in safety between what we will allow and what, say, France will allow in alcohol level. it's a balance of risks.
What we don't do is tolerate drink driving. socially it's as frowned upon as driving without a seatbelt or smoking has become over the last 20 years. go back 50 years and drink driving was the norm but now it's rare. Peer pressure does a lot.
Indeed, in the real world France has double the proportion of accidents involving alcohol than the UK does.
Drink driving is not tolerated at all in the UK, quite appropriately, it is completely frowned upon.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
The greatest British institution - the local pub - is entirely reliant on walkable neighbourhoods.
As usual, the polarisation on the implementation has meant the sensible course of action has been ignored.
The combined cost of car ownership is now heavily skewed, in London. If you have a ZEV parking, driving etc is pretty much free. If you have a small ICE, quite the reverse.
At the moment ZEVs are expensive - making this an extremely regressive tax/charge regime. In a decade or 2 the prices will be much lower - but how will road revenue be raised?
A sensible idea would be to tax and charge vehicles proportionally to the actual costs they externalise. This structure should be designed to carry forward into the ZEV future.
Depends on your frame of reference. The lowest household income quintile have much lower rates of car ownership than the median income household, so any policy that taxes cars and redistributes the cash through current spending will likely be technically progressive (a guess, no maths to back that up).
But yes, there will be an inevitable shift to axle-load, size or weight. The OBR has done detailed work on this reduction in revenues already. Classic problem with Pigou taxes.
Driving a 2.5 ton EV (price - zillions) round London is virtually free - especially now you can use charging spots as free, reserved parking.
As driver of the same, I think something must change.
As an SUV driver, can you give me a quick education on how VED has changed for such since 2010.
I was looking it up and it is ... complicated. It all changed in around 2017 following on from Osborne policies set in 2014 (iirc) when he noticed that about half of all new vehicles were in the cheapest category. AFAICS:
AIUI a big non-electric Landrover Chunker at >255 gC02/km would pay £630 pa until 2017. From 2017 that became £2365 in year 1, and £165 year 2+. Plus £300 per year (£365 now) in years 1->5 if it cost >£40k to buy.
Whilst an Electric Landrover Chunker would pay £0 pa as a ZEV plus the £300 per annum for being £40k+ to buy.
From 2020 the Electric Landrover Chunker got an exemption from the £40k+ charge. So a nearly new 2021 E-SUV is a VED-dodging sweet spot (=£0), just like a 2016-2017 diesel estate with a £20 or £30 pa VED.
From 2025 the E-SUV is back at £25 per annum, plus £300 in years 1-5 if it is >£40k list price.
What would your proposals be?
I agree that the current setup is ludicrous for SUVs, and I don't think it will last.
(Personally I think that grandfathering perhaps needs to be abolished as well.) (My diesel estate is 2018 and does 119 gCo2/km, costing <£40k, so I have been paying I think £165 a year which went up a bit last year.)
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
The greatest British institution - the local pub - is entirely reliant on walkable neighbourhoods.
Not sure on that as a matter of fact. The UK tolerates drink-driving more than every other country in Europe (except Malta). Our drink-driving limits having been an outlier on the "tolerate drink driving" side for a couple of decades afaik.
The UK also has the safest roads.
The Romanians must be absolutely unhinged, Donald Trump style, behind the wheel if they have 50% more casualties than Greece.
Lots of old cars in Romania, which are much less safe in a crash than modern ones. I suspect the figures for number of accidents, rather than fatalities, would be quite a bit closer.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
The greatest British institution - the local pub - is entirely reliant on walkable neighbourhoods.
Not sure on that as a matter of fact. The UK tolerates drink-driving more than every other country in Europe (except Malta). Our drink-driving limits having been an outlier on the "tolerate drink driving" side for a couple of decades afaik.
There's a difference between 'tolerating drink driving' and having the highest blood alcohol level allowed in Europe.
There is little difference in safety between what we will allow and what, say, France will allow in alcohol level. it's a balance of risks.
What we don't do is tolerate drink driving. socially it's as frowned upon as driving without a seatbelt or smoking has become over the last 20 years. go back 50 years and drink driving was the norm but now it's rare. Peer pressure does a lot.
Indeed, in the real world France has double the proportion of accidents involving alcohol than the UK does.
Drink driving is not tolerated at all in the UK, quite appropriately, it is completely frowned upon.
Yup.
Drink driving is now a matter of people who have drunk vastly more than any sensible limit. Not people who’ve had 1.5 pints.
Lowering the U.K. limit is a Performative Dance policy.
1) Something must be done 2) This is something, cheap and easy to enact. 3) Therefore we must do this.
Well it’s one zero in the soccer here. Newcastle poor but forest poorer. Hudson-Odoi used to play for England and Chelsea. Now slumming it at forest. He must think about what might have been.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
The greatest British institution - the local pub - is entirely reliant on walkable neighbourhoods.
Not sure on that as a matter of fact. The UK tolerates drink-driving more than every other country in Europe (except Malta). Our drink-driving limits having been an outlier on the "tolerate drink driving" side for a couple of decades afaik.
There's a difference between 'tolerating drink driving' and having the highest blood alcohol level allowed in Europe.
There is little difference in safety between what we will allow and what, say, France will allow in alcohol level. it's a balance of risks.
What we don't do is tolerate drink driving. socially it's as frowned upon as driving without a seatbelt or smoking has become over the last 20 years. go back 50 years and drink driving was the norm but now it's rare. Peer pressure does a lot.
Indeed, in the real world France has double the proportion of accidents involving alcohol than the UK does.
Drink driving is not tolerated at all in the UK, quite appropriately, it is completely frowned upon.
Yup.
Drink driving is now a matter of people who have drunk vastly more than any sensible limit. Not people who’ve had 1.5 pints.
Lowering the U.K. limit is a Performative Dance policy.
1) Something must be done 2) This is something, cheap and easy to enact. 3) Therefore we must do this.
‘What’s not to like ?’
As the care in the community brigade would say. Raise objections and it’s because you support pissed up drivers running over kids.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
The greatest British institution - the local pub - is entirely reliant on walkable neighbourhoods.
Not sure on that as a matter of fact. The UK tolerates drink-driving more than every other country in Europe (except Malta). Our drink-driving limits having been an outlier on the "tolerate drink driving" side for a couple of decades afaik.
There's a difference between 'tolerating drink driving' and having the highest blood alcohol level allowed in Europe.
There is little difference in safety between what we will allow and what, say, France will allow in alcohol level. it's a balance of risks.
What we don't do is tolerate drink driving. socially it's as frowned upon as driving without a seatbelt or smoking has become over the last 20 years. go back 50 years and drink driving was the norm but now it's rare. Peer pressure does a lot.
Indeed, in the real world France has double the proportion of accidents involving alcohol than the UK does.
Drink driving is not tolerated at all in the UK, quite appropriately, it is completely frowned upon.
Yup.
Drink driving is now a matter of people who have drunk vastly more than any sensible limit. Not people who’ve had 1.5 pints.
Lowering the U.K. limit is a Performative Dance policy.
1) Something must be done 2) This is something, cheap and easy to enact. 3) Therefore we must do this.
I'm assuming this driver had had about 501 over the 8:
Well it’s one zero in the soccer here. Newcastle poor but forest poorer. Hudson-Odoi used to play for England and Chelsea. Now slumming it at forest. He must think about what might have been.
It's not looking good for us at the moment. Luton don't want to go down and we don't seem to care.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4376797-trump-may-they-rot-in-hell-merry-christmas/ ..“Included also are World Leaders, both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and ‘sick’ as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!” the former president concluded. ..
He's more unhinged than a door that's been trampled by an elephant.
But he is right when he calls the Iraq war the worst decision in America's history, based on a lie about WMD, turning Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorism, costing $2 trillion, and costing American soldiers their lives or health.
Worse than slavery?
Worse than Dredd Scott?
Don't be silly, its not even remotely in the top 10.
Good point, but I’d like your full top 10!
1: Slavery 2: Dred Scott 3: Jim Crow 4: Segregation 5: Prohibition 5: War on drugs 6: Their healthcare system 7: Isolationism before and during the first three years of WWII 8: Vietnam 9: Second Amendment 10: Their legal system
There's probably some I missed, and could reorder some of those, and could expand on #6 and #10, but all of those (especially first four) utterly dwarf Iraq.
Just imagine what the world would have been like if people like Jeanette Rankin and other isolationists had succeeded in keeping the USA out of the war.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4376797-trump-may-they-rot-in-hell-merry-christmas/ ..“Included also are World Leaders, both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and ‘sick’ as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!” the former president concluded. ..
He's more unhinged than a door that's been trampled by an elephant.
But he is right when he calls the Iraq war the worst decision in America's history, based on a lie about WMD, turning Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorism, costing $2 trillion, and costing American soldiers their lives or health.
Worse than slavery?
Worse than Dredd Scott?
Don't be silly, its not even remotely in the top 10.
Good point, but I’d like your full top 10!
1: Slavery 2: Dred Scott 3: Jim Crow 4: Segregation 5: Prohibition 5: War on drugs 6: Their healthcare system 7: Isolationism before and during the first three years of WWII 8: Vietnam 9: Second Amendment 10: Their legal system
There's probably some I missed, and could reorder some of those, and could expand on #6 and #10, but all of those (especially first four) utterly dwarf Iraq.
I'd add something about the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Native Americans. The Confederacy must be up there. Maybe add the War of 1812. Also the initial response to the Great Depression.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
The greatest British institution - the local pub - is entirely reliant on walkable neighbourhoods.
Not sure on that as a matter of fact. The UK tolerates drink-driving more than every other country in Europe (except Malta). Our drink-driving limits having been an outlier on the "tolerate drink driving" side for a couple of decades afaik.
There's a difference between 'tolerating drink driving' and having the highest blood alcohol level allowed in Europe.
There is little difference in safety between what we will allow and what, say, France will allow in alcohol level. it's a balance of risks.
What we don't do is tolerate drink driving. socially it's as frowned upon as driving without a seatbelt or smoking has become over the last 20 years. go back 50 years and drink driving was the norm but now it's rare. Peer pressure does a lot.
Indeed, in the real world France has double the proportion of accidents involving alcohol than the UK does.
Drink driving is not tolerated at all in the UK, quite appropriately, it is completely frowned upon.
Yup.
Drink driving is now a matter of people who have drunk vastly more than any sensible limit. Not people who’ve had 1.5 pints.
Lowering the U.K. limit is a Performative Dance policy.
1) Something must be done 2) This is something, cheap and easy to enact. 3) Therefore we must do this.
I'm assuming this driver had had about 501 over the 8:
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4376797-trump-may-they-rot-in-hell-merry-christmas/ ..“Included also are World Leaders, both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and ‘sick’ as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!” the former president concluded. ..
He's more unhinged than a door that's been trampled by an elephant.
But he is right when he calls the Iraq war the worst decision in America's history, based on a lie about WMD, turning Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorism, costing $2 trillion, and costing American soldiers their lives or health.
Worse than slavery?
Worse than Dredd Scott?
Don't be silly, its not even remotely in the top 10.
Good point, but I’d like your full top 10!
1: Slavery 2: Dred Scott 3: Jim Crow 4: Segregation 5: Prohibition 5: War on drugs 6: Their healthcare system 7: Isolationism before and during the first three years of WWII 8: Vietnam 9: Second Amendment 10: Their legal system
There's probably some I missed, and could reorder some of those, and could expand on #6 and #10, but all of those (especially first four) utterly dwarf Iraq.
Just imagine what the world would have been like if people like Jeanette Rankin and other isolationists had succeeded in keeping the USA out of the war.
The US only joined the war because they were attacked at Pearl Harbour, surely.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4376797-trump-may-they-rot-in-hell-merry-christmas/ ..“Included also are World Leaders, both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and ‘sick’ as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!” the former president concluded. ..
He's more unhinged than a door that's been trampled by an elephant.
But he is right when he calls the Iraq war the worst decision in America's history, based on a lie about WMD, turning Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorism, costing $2 trillion, and costing American soldiers their lives or health.
Worse than slavery?
Worse than Dredd Scott?
Don't be silly, its not even remotely in the top 10.
Good point, but I’d like your full top 10!
1: Slavery 2: Dred Scott 3: Jim Crow 4: Segregation 5: Prohibition 5: War on drugs 6: Their healthcare system 7: Isolationism before and during the first three years of WWII 8: Vietnam 9: Second Amendment 10: Their legal system
There's probably some I missed, and could reorder some of those, and could expand on #6 and #10, but all of those (especially first four) utterly dwarf Iraq.
I'd add something about the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Native Americans. The Confederacy must be up there. Maybe add the War of 1812. Also the initial response to the Great Depression.
I wonder what Trump thinks about the genocide etc of the Native Americans. If, of course, he ever does. Could be a different question for him!
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4376797-trump-may-they-rot-in-hell-merry-christmas/ ..“Included also are World Leaders, both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and ‘sick’ as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!” the former president concluded. ..
He's more unhinged than a door that's been trampled by an elephant.
But he is right when he calls the Iraq war the worst decision in America's history, based on a lie about WMD, turning Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorism, costing $2 trillion, and costing American soldiers their lives or health.
Worse than slavery?
Worse than Dredd Scott?
Don't be silly, its not even remotely in the top 10.
Good point, but I’d like your full top 10!
1: Slavery 2: Dred Scott 3: Jim Crow 4: Segregation 5: Prohibition 5: War on drugs 6: Their healthcare system 7: Isolationism before and during the first three years of WWII 8: Vietnam 9: Second Amendment 10: Their legal system
There's probably some I missed, and could reorder some of those, and could expand on #6 and #10, but all of those (especially first four) utterly dwarf Iraq.
Just imagine what the world would have been like if people like Jeanette Rankin and other isolationists had succeeded in keeping the USA out of the war.
The US only joined the war because they were attacked at Pearl Harbour, surely.
That was one of the biggest own goals in history. It made US isolationism impossible to maintain, as well as "awakening a sleeping giant."
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4376797-trump-may-they-rot-in-hell-merry-christmas/ ..“Included also are World Leaders, both good and bad, but none of which are as evil and ‘sick’ as the THUGS we have inside our Country who, with their Open Borders, INFLATION, Afghanistan Surrender, Green New Scam, High Taxes, No Energy Independence, Woke Military, Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Iran, All Electric Car Lunacy, and so much more, are looking to destroy our once great USA. MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!” the former president concluded. ..
He's more unhinged than a door that's been trampled by an elephant.
But he is right when he calls the Iraq war the worst decision in America's history, based on a lie about WMD, turning Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorism, costing $2 trillion, and costing American soldiers their lives or health.
Worse than slavery?
Worse than Dredd Scott?
Don't be silly, its not even remotely in the top 10.
Good point, but I’d like your full top 10!
1: Slavery 2: Dred Scott 3: Jim Crow 4: Segregation 5: Prohibition 5: War on drugs 6: Their healthcare system 7: Isolationism before and during the first three years of WWII 8: Vietnam 9: Second Amendment 10: Their legal system
There's probably some I missed, and could reorder some of those, and could expand on #6 and #10, but all of those (especially first four) utterly dwarf Iraq.
I'd add something about the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Native Americans. The Confederacy must be up there. Maybe add the War of 1812. Also the initial response to the Great Depression.
I wonder what Trump thinks
The whole problem - or at least, a significant part of the problem - with Trump is that he doesn't think. About anything.
Whether that's because he can't or because he won't is another question.
The geopolitical challenges the West faces are far more serious than those of debt and demographics.
It is not written in stone anywhere that our way of life is set to continue, forevermore.
Perhaps true, but the blue funk that the West is in at the moment is probably the biggest threat of all. In order to succeed we have to believe that success is possible. So giving in to "fear itself" is the most dangerous thing we could do. When one considers the rivals to the collective West- Russia, China, India etc. It is vlear that their problems are just as difficult, if not more so, as those that we face. If the Brits would stop whinging and start working, we could deal with a good chunk of the problems quite quickly.
One of the problems at the moment, AFAIC, is that small minorities of highly motivated actors can stifle progress, and hence make belief in it very difficult.
Hence, 'activists' blocking roads, introducing meddlesome LTNs, blocking planning applications on often the flimsiest objections, trying to overturn the referendum on EU membership etc etc etc. As the economy of the West has developed - for the good - beyond the dreams of our forefathers, the public sphere seems in my lifetime to have become almost irredeemably restrictive.
Round here the disruption is by anti-ulez activists clogging up town centres with protests, attacking street cameras and TfL vehicles.
Literally setting bombs off and getting arrested by counter-terror police.
Something is wrong here. PB experts Very Strongly insisted that the SHapp ULEZ expansion would hit young nurses and the poor who would now need to pay £20k a year to drive their old car (every example of which given was actually ULEZ compliant).
And yet here we are with the polis arresting "a 60-year-old man in Sidcup and a 61-year-old man in Horsham, West Sussex, earlier on Monday." The kind of angry weaponised ignorance and stupidity Brexiteer with a classic car that I and several others pointed out would be the only outraged voices on a policy which is largely universally popular.
Given that a couple of Just Stop Oil protestors were sentenced to three years in prison, I presume at least 10 years for these two.
Just Stop Oil are ecoterrorists trying to bring our fine country to a stop and prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance. These two fine gentlemen are merely highlighting the idiocy of Shapps and his ULEZ policy. That the road has been brought to a stop which will prevent pregnant ladies getting to hospital in their ambulance is a sacrifice worth making.
The new Conservative MP for Uxbridge was actually an admin for one of the FB groups celebrating this kind of stuff.
"Rule of Law" party.
LTNs are in general an excellent thing, and we need them everywhere - to follow the majority of the country that has been using modal filtering in almost all new developments since the 1960s.. We already have the data from 2020 pre-COVID that they make roads much safer.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
The greatest British institution - the local pub - is entirely reliant on walkable neighbourhoods.
Not sure on that as a matter of fact. The UK tolerates drink-driving more than every other country in Europe (except Malta). Our drink-driving limits having been an outlier on the "tolerate drink driving" side for a couple of decades afaik.
The UK also has the safest roads.
The Romanians must be absolutely unhinged, Donald Trump style, behind the wheel if they have 50% more casualties than Greece.
Lots of old cars in Romania, which are much less safe in a crash than modern ones. I suspect the figures for number of accidents, rather than fatalities, would be quite a bit closer.
Comments
More than 9,000 people given six to 12 months for shoplifting in past two years would now be made to do community service
...
Despite Rishi Sunak’s attempt to introduce tough sentences for criminals in the run-up to the general election, shoplifters, offenders convicted of battery, and those who have assaulted emergency workers, are the top three groups who will avoid prison under the government’s new measure.
https://www.theguardian.com/law/2023/dec/26/shoplifters-most-affected-by-ending-short-jail-sentences
HMG rearranges the deckchairs. Court delays are the first problem. (OK, after lack of detection or even investigation.) This measure will reduce the numbers sent to overcrowded prisons but there are long delays for community service as well. Effectively there is no deterrence because there are no visible consequences for crime, nor rehabilitation.
"Rule of Law" party.
Then the question is what are we comparing with? Japan we’ve discussed. Singapore is an entrepôt city state and has done similarly to other micro states like Luxembourg. Korea has just had its economic miracle, like Japan did in the 80s, France in the 50s-70s, Ireland in the 90s to now. But its demographics are awful. The USA is the USA, and is now the worlds largest oil producer. No other country is both a resource superpower and a vast consumer market. Canada has lagged Germany, the UK and the EU average but beaten the slower EU countries. Australia and Norway are resource states in a world of resource scarcity.
Proposal: An "Uxbridge message" should be defined as drawing totally the wrong conclusion from a surprise success.
ULEZ compliance was already above 95% 4 months ago; it's just a matter of time for the mouth-breathing conspiraloon perps to come to terms with reality.
Don't tell them about the likely continued trend towards 20mph limits in residential areas, for which we have about 25 years of data showing road safety improvement, or we may have an uptick in apoplectic fits.
Not much Christmas tolerance on that one for me, I'm afraid,
I note Labour is 22 points ahead in a recent poll and Khan is 30 points ahead in London.
The combined cost of car ownership is now heavily skewed, in London. If you have a ZEV parking, driving etc is pretty much free. If you have a small ICE, quite the reverse.
At the moment ZEVs are expensive - making this an extremely regressive tax/charge regime. In a decade or 2 the prices will be much lower - but how will road revenue be raised?
A sensible idea would be to tax and charge vehicles proportionally to the actual costs they externalise. This structure should be designed to carry forward into the ZEV future.
Setting bombs in public places is really serious criminality.
The sentencing range is 3 years to life for "causing an explosion likely to endanger life or property".
https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/crown-court/item/explosive-substances-terrorism-only/
I'm baffled as to what this has to do with Brexit
The reality, as usual, is more complicated, but with an element of truth for both sides.
More weaponised stupidity and ignorance on transport issues: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1849136/eu-countries-britain-transport
"Scheming EU countries leave UK out of 'landmark' transport plans as map reveals betrayal"
We left the EU. Of course the UK is excluded from EU investment plans for a transport network!
It's my mental starting point. Starmer isn't Blair, and it's an awful lot of gains at once, but there's also the lack of economic boom and Sunak's combination of silver spoon and tin ear to consider.
But yes, there will be an inevitable shift to axle-load, size or weight. The OBR has done detailed work on this reduction in revenues already. Classic problem with Pigou taxes.
1.20 Kempton - Il Est Francais
1.40 Aintree - Bingoo
2.30 Kempton - Shiskin
2.50 Aintree - Tahmuras
See this 🐎 that’s Shiskin bolting up. But going leftwards when the finishing line is the other way 😆
Behind the scenes a lot of work has gone into race preparation. They have actually taken a few horses to Kempton start line and put Shiskin in the middle to practice his starts, so nothing will go wrong today for sure.
Meanwhile down at Il Est Francais stables they built the last three fences of todays race for the horse to practice its finish.
As driver of the same, I think something must change.
There is little difference in safety between what we will allow and what, say, France will allow in alcohol level. it's a balance of risks.
What we don't do is tolerate drink driving. socially it's as frowned upon as driving without a seatbelt or smoking has become over the last 20 years. go back 50 years and drink driving was the norm but now it's rare. Peer pressure does a lot.
For the very poorest - they’ve been priced out of cars by petrol, a long while back. But very often, the first thing that comes back when a better job comes in, is the car. Hence the council estate car parks are not empty.
12-20 years, with a staring point of 16 years
Just paid my respect at C B Fry's grave. He seemed quite a character...
A sound currency is a foundation of a strong economy, serial devaluation a feature of a weak one. Serial devaluation is not a treatment for tackling the weaknesses of an economy, it is a postponement of that treatment.
We left the EU partly so we could take responsibility for ourselves.
The presenting problem now is that we have had several years of Government *refusing* to take responsibility for running the country.
But whatever the energy mix, a modern grid of greater capacity than now is needed by all modern economies.
I’m mildly impressed that Biden (as well as recognising that) made it a serious priority from very early on.
The contrast with our government is notable - and it’s a lot less complicated in the UK.
Exclusive: Labour leader wants to finalise manifesto in February and move to campaign footing in anticipation of May vote
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/26/keir-starmer-tells-labour-frontbench-to-ready-policies-for-spring-election
Well, that's done for the header. Possibly. Depending what emerges.
Either way, I think all the people who are generally supportive of the criminal damage campaign and have been loose with their language may be in for a shock when this works through.
Mixed Market Social Democracy isn’t an inevitable default. If we don’t sell it well, other ideas will win.
The discussion is lumping the UK as one, but that map is wrong anyway. Scotland is 0.5% - 50 milligrammes (mg) of alcohol in 100ml of blood - and should be orange, shouldn't it?
https://twitter.com/ChakhoyanAndrew/status/1739609258390393244/photo/1
A bit of T-cut and it'll be fine.
And a few small pieces of debris were thrown around:
https://twitter.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/1739615236284395871
A chunk of the fault goes to countries like Greece and Italy, where the required reforms were eternally put off as politically impossible. So Greece borrowed at the German rate of interest (pretty much).
Just dropped in to wish everyone a happy winterval. Even that alcohol POS Ishmael if it is still here.
The forum is full of cranky middle aged white people with obsessions being cranky middle aged white people with obsessions.
Love it. It serves a purpose.
I know I’m one. Mine is the license fee.
Enjoy and chill. Not every political opponent is satan, and people who don’t share the same view as you aren’t bad. Even if they support the license fee.
C’Mon the toon. Not as well supported as Sunderland and the Sunderland fans are more loyal to their team but I’d like them to win the soccer.
That was Churchill's rationale for reinstating the gold standard, but it's an example of economic theory coming into brutal conflict with economic reality. In theory, a currency that can't be devalued will force countries to introduce supply side reforms but it does not seem to work out like that.
The demographic problem
The nonfunctioning court/justice/prison system
The long-foretold failure of debt-financed govt expenditure
The US retreat from the world and the consequent failure in globalisation
We need to tax more, reduce govt expenditure, pay debt, refocus on care of the elderly and detection/capture/punishment of the bad, and establish a state which does less with less but does it competently.
He's just named the wrong president...
And it's the only place where I've been in a car driven by someone who'd drunk too much to drive, following a funeral and whiskies drunk thereafter. I really should have walked it, was less than a couple of kilometres.
There are also so many situations where it's harder to opt out of drinking, even when it's obvious that most people will be driving. A local supermarket was offering people drinks of gin at the cheese counter on Christmas Eve.
And all the remaining rural pubs would go to the wall if drink-driving did become totally anathema. So it's definitely much more tolerated in Ireland than in Britain, despite the apparently stricter law.
2: Dred Scott
3: Jim Crow
4: Segregation
5: Prohibition
5: War on drugs
6: Their healthcare system
7: Isolationism before and during the first three years of WWII
8: Vietnam
9: Second Amendment
10: Their legal system
There's probably some I missed, and could reorder some of those, and could expand on #6 and #10, but all of those (especially first four) utterly dwarf Iraq.
Germany was named as one of the EU countries that has supposedly done "well" within the EU. Since 1993 German GDP per capita has gone up by just 201%
In comparison every developed Commonwealth non-EU nation has done considerably better. Canada up 258%, Australia up 341%, New Zealand up 373%
Indeed Iraq has been in retrospect far more of a military success for the US in terms of its objectives than say Vietnam or even Afghanistan (which is now back in Taliban hands even if Bin Laden is dead)
But politics, the future of a country, is much more a collective endeavour, than a question of buying a brighter future from a different party with your vote on election day.
Cameron was somewhat on the right track with the talk about the Big Society, but it all got mixed up with austerity.
One nil to the Arsenal
One nil to the Arsenal
One nil to the Arsenal
One nil to the Arsenal
Doesn't really compete with United's paean to their once Korean forward with an added swipe at Liverpool.....
Park Park wherever you may be
You eat dogs in your own country
It could be worse you could be scouse
Eating rats in your council house
....Nor City's to their Nordsman with a subtle swipe at United
Haaland, Haaland
Yorkshire born, Norwegian lad
Roy Keane tried to kill his dad
Ha-Ha-Ha-Haaland, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey
Hey, hey, hey, hey
Tiptoe, through the North Bank
With your boots on,
And I'll kick yer 'ead in.
Tiptoe, through the North Bank,
With me.
Pure poetry.
Otherwise you are leaving a gap. And the people and ideas that will fill that gap…
Drink driving is not tolerated at all in the UK, quite appropriately, it is completely frowned upon.
I was looking it up and it is ... complicated. It all changed in around 2017 following on from Osborne policies set in 2014 (iirc) when he noticed that about half of all new vehicles were in the cheapest category. AFAICS:
AIUI a big non-electric Landrover Chunker at >255 gC02/km would pay £630 pa until 2017.
From 2017 that became £2365 in year 1, and £165 year 2+.
Plus £300 per year (£365 now) in years 1->5 if it cost >£40k to buy.
Whilst an Electric Landrover Chunker would pay £0 pa as a ZEV plus the £300 per annum for being £40k+ to buy.
From 2020 the Electric Landrover Chunker got an exemption from the £40k+ charge. So a nearly new 2021 E-SUV is a VED-dodging sweet spot (=£0), just like a 2016-2017 diesel estate with a £20 or £30 pa VED.
From 2025 the E-SUV is back at £25 per annum, plus £300 in years 1-5 if it is >£40k list price.
What would your proposals be?
I agree that the current setup is ludicrous for SUVs, and I don't think it will last.
(Personally I think that grandfathering perhaps needs to be abolished as well.)
(My diesel estate is 2018 and does 119 gCo2/km, costing <£40k, so I have been paying I think £165 a year which went up a bit last year.)
Drink driving is now a matter of people who have drunk vastly more than any sensible limit. Not people who’ve had 1.5 pints.
Lowering the U.K. limit is a Performative Dance policy.
1) Something must be done
2) This is something, cheap and easy to enact.
3) Therefore we must do this.
That’s a soccer goal you didn’t want to see.
Notts Forest have wood !!
I see Rishi's style of management as that of Mick Channon. A great trainer and a winner, but not in the sport of choice.
As the care in the community brigade would say. Raise objections and it’s because you support pissed up drivers running over kids.
Man arrested after car crashes into Grays house on Christmas Day
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-67822316
To cause that amount of damage with an ordinary car is truly remarkable.
If, of course, he ever does. Could be a different question for him!
Should I tap out if I’ve been drinking?
Whether that's because he can't or because he won't is another question.
https://www.acea.auto/figure/average-age-of-eu-vehicle-fleet-by-country/
Though buses in Romania the oldest on average, at 20 years.
Athens smells like my childhood. First time I've heard a car backfire in thirty years.