Listening to LBC the patriotic boomers are up for conscription. "I'm 62 and I am up for it".
Easy to say for us fortunate old timers, as we won't be invited.
The 50 to 70s should be called up first. We may be useless in the trenches, but having volunteered first, under the impression we were safe from the call up, the irony would be delicious.
I am up for this as they conscript me as a Field Marshal.
It's the Kinky Boots.
Surely if TSE was to be called up, he would insist on this uniform.
I think the most bizarre thing about the current Horizon saga is that despite all of this, the Post Office still use an updated version of Horizon.
It's been tested and 'found to be robust compared to previous systems.'
I mean - really? That's an endorsement? It's like saying somebody is more honest than Goebbels. Or has more knowledge of education than Nick Gibb.
I would have thought any sane organisation would have used paper and an abacus operated by a gorilla in preference to Horizon, but even as I typed that I spotted the flaw in my logic.
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD He’s just *unlucky*
In the same way Truss surprised on the upside?
No
Sunak is merely a lightning rod for all the dark energy directed at the Tories. If you step back, and think neutrally, he is actually OK
He is playing a terrible hand as well as he can, I do not see anyone else doing any better - which is presumably why a challenge to his leadership never actually eventuates. There is nothing to save the Tories, Sunak is as good as it gets, they are doomed, and I expect Starmer to be a massive disappointment to millions within six months of winning, when everyone realises our problems go beyond “Tory incompetence”
No. Cancelling HS2 was stupid and needless.
I was also irked by the cancellation but the whole concept of HS2 was a fucking catastrophe, from the get go
Britain is so small it does not need 200+ mph trains. That is the truth of it. Sunak probably sees it that way and was trying to extricate HMG from the mess as cheaply as possible. It was and is a calamity he inherited
The HS2 catastrophe is that you still think it was about 200+ mph trains - it never was. It was about freeing up capacity on existing lines. It was, from the start, miss-sold.
No, I understand the capacity argument. But why did the engineers say Well if we’re having more capacity let’s make it 200mph trains?
Just build more standard capacity, fuck the high speed shit. 125mph is easily fast enough for a country as compact and densely populated as the UK
Just make it affordable.
If I want to get from London to Manchester tomorrow for 9 o'clock, it's £224.70 for a standard single. Another £234.70 to add a return after 6pm.
That's a gobsmacking four hundred and sixty quid I'd be out if, say, someone rang me now and asked me to pop up to their office to talk about some new business (yes, I know there's Teams et al, but sometimes people want to, I dunno, actually meet you in person before hiring you).
Round trip in my car, petrol probably about seventy quid.
It's a 400 mile round trip.
That's a good £200 including petrol, insurance, maintenance, depreciation and so on.
Even if you go with the Treasury's parsimonious allowance it's £190.
Not including any parking fees. Not including having to drive for seven or eight hours (and even for that, add the toll on the M6 Toll).
I agree with you it should be cheaper. Much cheaper. But driving isn't quite so ridiculously a cheaper option when you weigh it all up.
Train travel is insanely expensive in the UK, I entirely agree with that
When I take trains abroad in countries with roughly similar wealth-levels as the UK the price of a train ticket is often a third of that in the UK. How do they manage it? Where have we gone wrong?
Privatisation certainly hasn't helped, but the age of our infrastructure and rolling stock isn't a great thing either.
Not sure where the obscene salaries of train drivers factor in, or if they do.
I wonder if this is actually true. It seems to be about optimizing pricing to gouge last minute business travel and make it very attractive to plan ahead and/or travel off peak.
I think I must only travel on intercities at business peak times.
I had noticed that my travel costs were substantially lower since I never have to travel peak time on a moment's notice any more.
Yes, railways are run for the benefit of older people with time on their hands, enjoy the uncertainties of having no idea whether your train will run but have all day to find out, can book in advance and use a senior rail card. Since retirement this is me. Carry with you: earplugs, cash (as all sorts of facilities suddenly go to cash only when the electronics fail) and a readable very long book, Private Eye and the Economist.
As a way of running a system for busy working people (I was one once) it's appalling and shameful.
It's not just the fares though, is it? It's the lack of logic in much of the remaining network.
I've been doing some work in north Worcestershire, Kidderminster to be exact. I looked at getting the train.
Listening to LBC the patriotic boomers are up for conscription. "I'm 62 and I am up for it".
Easy to say for us fortunate old timers, as we won't be invited.
The 50 to 70s should be called up first. We may be useless in the trenches, but having volunteered first, under the impression we were safe from the call up, the irony would be delicious.
I am up for this as they conscript me as a Field Marshal.
Listening to LBC the patriotic boomers are up for conscription. "I'm 62 and I am up for it".
Easy to say for us fortunate old timers, as we won't be invited.
The 50 to 70s should be called up first. We may be useless in the trenches, but having volunteered first, under the impression we were safe from the call up, the irony would be delicious.
I am up for this as they conscript me as a Field Marshal.
It's the Kinky Boots.
That shine maintained via daily buffing with congealed tears of conquered maidens from Suez to Sarawak.
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD He’s just *unlucky*
In the same way Truss surprised on the upside?
No
Sunak is merely a lightning rod for all the dark energy directed at the Tories. If you step back, and think neutrally, he is actually OK
He is playing a terrible hand as well as he can, I do not see anyone else doing any better - which is presumably why a challenge to his leadership never actually eventuates. There is nothing to save the Tories, Sunak is as good as it gets, they are doomed, and I expect Starmer to be a massive disappointment to millions within six months of winning, when everyone realises our problems go beyond “Tory incompetence”
No. Cancelling HS2 was stupid and needless.
I was also irked by the cancellation but the whole concept of HS2 was a fucking catastrophe, from the get go
Britain is so small it does not need 200+ mph trains. That is the truth of it. Sunak probably sees it that way and was trying to extricate HMG from the mess as cheaply as possible. It was and is a calamity he inherited
The HS2 catastrophe is that you still think it was about 200+ mph trains - it never was. It was about freeing up capacity on existing lines. It was, from the start, miss-sold.
No, I understand the capacity argument. But why did the engineers say Well if we’re having more capacity let’s make it 200mph trains?
Just build more standard capacity, fuck the high speed shit. 125mph is easily fast enough for a country as compact and densely populated as the UK
Just make it affordable.
If I want to get from London to Manchester tomorrow for 9 o'clock, it's £224.70 for a standard single. Another £234.70 to add a return after 6pm.
That's a gobsmacking four hundred and sixty quid I'd be out if, say, someone rang me now and asked me to pop up to their office to talk about some new business (yes, I know there's Teams et al, but sometimes people want to, I dunno, actually meet you in person before hiring you).
Round trip in my car, petrol probably about seventy quid.
It's a 400 mile round trip.
That's a good £200 including petrol, insurance, maintenance, depreciation and so on.
Even if you go with the Treasury's parsimonious allowance it's £190.
Not including any parking fees. Not including having to drive for seven or eight hours (and even for that, add the toll on the M6 Toll).
I agree with you it should be cheaper. Much cheaper. But driving isn't quite so ridiculously a cheaper option when you weigh it all up.
Train travel is insanely expensive in the UK, I entirely agree with that
When I take trains abroad in countries with roughly similar wealth-levels as the UK the price of a train ticket is often a third of that in the UK. How do they manage it? Where have we gone wrong?
Privatisation certainly hasn't helped, but the age of our infrastructure and rolling stock isn't a great thing either.
Not sure where the obscene salaries of train drivers factor in, or if they do.
I wonder if this is actually true. It seems to be about optimizing pricing to gouge last minute business travel and make it very attractive to plan ahead and/or travel off peak.
I think I must only travel on intercities at business peak times.
I had noticed that my travel costs were substantially lower since I never have to travel peak time on a moment's notice any more.
If you study the ticketing system you can beat it, like air fares. Getting the train to work in London can be £12 return compared with £70 if I book on the day in peak time.
Joe Lewis, the billionaire and founder of the company who own Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur, pleaded guilty to securities fraud in court on Wednesday.
The 86-year-old British businessman was indicted in the United States in July for “orchestrating a brazen insider trading scheme”.
This, according to U.S. officials, involved the passing of information to “romantic partners and his private pilots.”
Lewis’ lawyer had at the time of the indictment claimed the government had made “an egregious error in judgment” in charging him and promised to “defend him vigorously in court.”
Lewis pleaded not guilty to all 16 counts on July 25 and his bail was set at $300million, secured against his 98-metre super yacht and aircraft.
However, Lewis — who founded ENIC Sports Inc, the company which owns the vast majority of shares in Spurs — appeared in court in Manhattan on Wednesday to plead guilty to two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud.
“I am so embarrassed and I apologise to the court for my conduct,” Lewis told U.S. district judge Jessica Clarke, via Reuters.
Sentencing has been set for March with a stipulated guideline range of 18 to 24 months’ imprisonment.
Does giving share tips to lovers and pilots constitute a brazen insider trading scheme with $300 million bail? It sounds more like a silly old man trying to get his leg over. Lewis was also tied up with Irish horseracing squillionaires iirc.
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD He’s just *unlucky*
In the same way Truss surprised on the upside?
No
Sunak is merely a lightning rod for all the dark energy directed at the Tories. If you step back, and think neutrally, he is actually OK
He is playing a terrible hand as well as he can, I do not see anyone else doing any better - which is presumably why a challenge to his leadership never actually eventuates. There is nothing to save the Tories, Sunak is as good as it gets, they are doomed, and I expect Starmer to be a massive disappointment to millions within six months of winning, when everyone realises our problems go beyond “Tory incompetence”
No. Cancelling HS2 was stupid and needless.
I was also irked by the cancellation but the whole concept of HS2 was a fucking catastrophe, from the get go
Britain is so small it does not need 200+ mph trains. That is the truth of it. Sunak probably sees it that way and was trying to extricate HMG from the mess as cheaply as possible. It was and is a calamity he inherited
The HS2 catastrophe is that you still think it was about 200+ mph trains - it never was. It was about freeing up capacity on existing lines. It was, from the start, miss-sold.
No, I understand the capacity argument. But why did the engineers say Well if we’re having more capacity let’s make it 200mph trains?
Just build more standard capacity, fuck the high speed shit. 125mph is easily fast enough for a country as compact and densely populated as the UK
I think it makes sense that if you build something new you build it at a spec that reflects the technology available. When the Victorian built our rail network in the 1840s they didn't build it for horse drawn carriages. So if we're building a new train line from scratch it should be built to reasonable high speed specifications. AIUI we did over-egg it a bit by building potential for 300mph vs 250mph (or something like that), maybe that was going too far. Better to future proof it though as the costs of upgrading an existing line later are very high as we saw with the WCML. Again AIUI the real excess costs came from burying so much of the southern portion in tunnels to avoid upsetting Tory voters in the Chilterns. The bits that were cancelled in the North were much cheaper. I think we should just build the damn thing all the way to Scotland, we will still be using it in 150 years and it will more than pay for itself. We should have built it years ago in fact. We could have used the North Sea or privatisation revenues instead of giving them away in tax cuts for the rich.
Put the whole thing in a deep tunnel. Would be cheaper than the surface shenanigans.
Absolutely straight lines - so that if we want to upgrade to running in an evacuated tunnel at 1,000mph (Troll Troll) - we could.
Bet the Enquiry Wankers demand that it isn't done, though. After all, if there is nothing disturbed on the surface, their jobs go away.
It's a nice idea, but you couldn't be more wrong if you were a professor of wrongness at Wrong University.
Take a look at the Channel Tunnel: in an ideal world, it would have perfect gradient down, then be level under than channel, and be in a straight line. Instead, it is all over the place, particularly in profile.
Although it is easier when not going under the sea, long tunnels are rarely fully direct. Bromford Tunnel on HS2 has a big (though high-speed0 kink in it, as an example. The Northolt Tunnels are not quite straight, either.
Incidentally, tunnels also require surface installations every so often; in ye oden days these were access points for construction, some of which became ventilation; now they're for ventilation and (sometimes) emergency evacuation every 3km or so.
The Channel tunnel is following so rather gnarly geology.
I was exaggerating (slightly) - but the basic point stands, if the Enquiry Wankers want to turn everything into a zillion pound 2 decade nonsense, dig underneath them. It will be cheaper in the end.
That is so utterly dependent on geology. In bad geology, surface can be far cheaper than tunnelling, even with all the extra expenses. In good geology, tunnelling can be far cheaper, but sometimes operationally more expensive.
Given the overall costs for HS2, even digging through quicksand studded with unexploded German bombs, nuclear waste etc would have been cheaper.
Ah, Boris's Wizard Wheeze to dig a tunnel through Beaufort's Dyke....
Not to mention garden bridges and island airports. Rather like playing those railway system or city building games without the faff of having to find the money and do the politics - you still get the fun.
IMO yes and no. I have no problem with a few quid being spent by government asking questions like: "Can/should we build a fixed link between Scotland and Ireland?" or "What are the left-field options for fixing London's airport capacity?"
In the case of the former, the Channel Tunnel came from France and the UK asking exactly that question. And a Thames airport has been considered many times in the past, e.g. Maplin Sands, of off Sheppey.
Asking such questions is good government, even if the answer is :"No!". Occasionally the answer is "Yes!", although with caveats, and you can then start progressing. But if you don't ask the questions, you'll get...
The Garden Bridge debacle was different in that it did it the 'wrong' way around. Instead of asking: "How can we improve cross-Thames transport for pedestrians and cyclists?", an architect got 'his' design chucked where he wanted it because, well, reasons. Hence we would have ended up with a bridge in the 'wrong' place, costing an absolute fortune, that was barely fit for purpose.
Listening to LBC the patriotic boomers are up for conscription. "I'm 62 and I am up for it".
Easy to say for us fortunate old timers, as we won't be invited.
The 50 to 70s should be called up first. We may be useless in the trenches, but having volunteered first, under the impression we were safe from the call up, the irony would be delicious.
I thought the idea of the boomers was to volunteer *the young*, not themselves?
Listening to LBC the patriotic boomers are up for conscription. "I'm 62 and I am up for it".
Easy to say for us fortunate old timers, as we won't be invited.
The 50 to 70s should be called up first. We may be useless in the trenches, but having volunteered first, under the impression we were safe from the call up, the irony would be delicious.
I thought the idea of the boomers was to volunteer *the young*, not themselves?
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD He’s just *unlucky*
In the same way Truss surprised on the upside?
No
Sunak is merely a lightning rod for all the dark energy directed at the Tories. If you step back, and think neutrally, he is actually OK
He is playing a terrible hand as well as he can, I do not see anyone else doing any better - which is presumably why a challenge to his leadership never actually eventuates. There is nothing to save the Tories, Sunak is as good as it gets, they are doomed, and I expect Starmer to be a massive disappointment to millions within six months of winning, when everyone realises our problems go beyond “Tory incompetence”
No. Cancelling HS2 was stupid and needless.
I was also irked by the cancellation but the whole concept of HS2 was a fucking catastrophe, from the get go
Britain is so small it does not need 200+ mph trains. That is the truth of it. Sunak probably sees it that way and was trying to extricate HMG from the mess as cheaply as possible. It was and is a calamity he inherited
The HS2 catastrophe is that you still think it was about 200+ mph trains - it never was. It was about freeing up capacity on existing lines. It was, from the start, miss-sold.
No, I understand the capacity argument. But why did the engineers say Well if we’re having more capacity let’s make it 200mph trains?
Just build more standard capacity, fuck the high speed shit. 125mph is easily fast enough for a country as compact and densely populated as the UK
I think it makes sense that if you build something new you build it at a spec that reflects the technology available. When the Victorian built our rail network in the 1840s they didn't build it for horse drawn carriages. So if we're building a new train line from scratch it should be built to reasonable high speed specifications. AIUI we did over-egg it a bit by building potential for 300mph vs 250mph (or something like that), maybe that was going too far. Better to future proof it though as the costs of upgrading an existing line later are very high as we saw with the WCML. Again AIUI the real excess costs came from burying so much of the southern portion in tunnels to avoid upsetting Tory voters in the Chilterns. The bits that were cancelled in the North were much cheaper. I think we should just build the damn thing all the way to Scotland, we will still be using it in 150 years and it will more than pay for itself. We should have built it years ago in fact. We could have used the North Sea or privatisation revenues instead of giving them away in tax cuts for the rich.
Put the whole thing in a deep tunnel. Would be cheaper than the surface shenanigans.
Absolutely straight lines - so that if we want to upgrade to running in an evacuated tunnel at 1,000mph (Troll Troll) - we could.
Bet the Enquiry Wankers demand that it isn't done, though. After all, if there is nothing disturbed on the surface, their jobs go away.
It's a nice idea, but you couldn't be more wrong if you were a professor of wrongness at Wrong University.
Take a look at the Channel Tunnel: in an ideal world, it would have perfect gradient down, then be level under than channel, and be in a straight line. Instead, it is all over the place, particularly in profile.
Although it is easier when not going under the sea, long tunnels are rarely fully direct. Bromford Tunnel on HS2 has a big (though high-speed0 kink in it, as an example. The Northolt Tunnels are not quite straight, either.
Incidentally, tunnels also require surface installations every so often; in ye oden days these were access points for construction, some of which became ventilation; now they're for ventilation and (sometimes) emergency evacuation every 3km or so.
The Channel tunnel is following so rather gnarly geology.
I was exaggerating (slightly) - but the basic point stands, if the Enquiry Wankers want to turn everything into a zillion pound 2 decade nonsense, dig underneath them. It will be cheaper in the end.
That is so utterly dependent on geology. In bad geology, surface can be far cheaper than tunnelling, even with all the extra expenses. In good geology, tunnelling can be far cheaper, but sometimes operationally more expensive.
Given the overall costs for HS2, even digging through quicksand studded with unexploded German bombs, nuclear waste etc would have been cheaper.
Ah, Boris's Wizard Wheeze to dig a tunnel through Beaufort's Dyke....
Not to mention garden bridges and island airports. Rather like playing those railway system or city building games without the faff of having to find the money and do the politics - you still get the fun.
IMO yes and no. I have no problem with a few quid being spent by government asking questions like: "Can/should we build a fixed link between Scotland and Ireland?" or "What are the left-field options for fixing London's airport capacity?"
In the case of the former, the Channel Tunnel came from France and the UK asking exactly that question. And a Thames airport has been considered many times in the past, e.g. Maplin Sands, of off Sheppey.
Asking such questions is good government, even if the answer is :"No!". Occasionally the answer is "Yes!", although with caveats, and you can then start progressing. But if you don't ask the questions, you'll get...
The Garden Bridge debacle was different in that it did it the 'wrong' way around. Instead of asking: "How can we improve cross-Thames transport for pedestrians and cyclists?", an architect got 'his' design chucked where he wanted it because, well, reasons. Hence we would have ended up with a bridge in the 'wrong' place, costing an absolute fortune, that was barely fit for purpose.
Boris also cancelled the FAR MORE USEFUL East London River Crossing in 2008!
Joe Lewis, the billionaire and founder of the company who own Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur, pleaded guilty to securities fraud in court on Wednesday.
The 86-year-old British businessman was indicted in the United States in July for “orchestrating a brazen insider trading scheme”.
This, according to U.S. officials, involved the passing of information to “romantic partners and his private pilots.”
Lewis’ lawyer had at the time of the indictment claimed the government had made “an egregious error in judgment” in charging him and promised to “defend him vigorously in court.”
Lewis pleaded not guilty to all 16 counts on July 25 and his bail was set at $300million, secured against his 98-metre super yacht and aircraft.
However, Lewis — who founded ENIC Sports Inc, the company which owns the vast majority of shares in Spurs — appeared in court in Manhattan on Wednesday to plead guilty to two counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud.
“I am so embarrassed and I apologise to the court for my conduct,” Lewis told U.S. district judge Jessica Clarke, via Reuters.
Sentencing has been set for March with a stipulated guideline range of 18 to 24 months’ imprisonment.
Does giving share tips to lovers and pilots constitute a brazen insider trading scheme with $300 million bail? It sounds more like a silly old man trying to get his leg over. Lewis was also tied up with Irish horseracing squillionaires iirc.
Perhaps this guy ought to have consulted with Martha Stewart re: downsides of passing along hot stock tips?
Certainly now would be timely, for him to ask her re: best ways to decorate one's federal prison cell!
Tory government about to plum even lower polling depths once this three-part drama about being a medic during covid (with tory ministers' PPE shortages and so on) hits itv?
Being talked of as next 'Mr Bates' drama.
Dr Rachel Clarke @doctor_oxford · 8h Thank you @thetimes for this amazing piece about BREATHTAKING - coming to @itv in Feb.
We've tried so hard to show what really happened behind closed hospital doors - the grit & courage & compassion of NHS staff. And the same, in abundance, from patients & their families 💙
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD He’s just *unlucky*
In the same way Truss surprised on the upside?
No
Sunak is merely a lightning rod for all the dark energy directed at the Tories. If you step back, and think neutrally, he is actually OK
He is playing a terrible hand as well as he can, I do not see anyone else doing any better - which is presumably why a challenge to his leadership never actually eventuates. There is nothing to save the Tories, Sunak is as good as it gets, they are doomed, and I expect Starmer to be a massive disappointment to millions within six months of winning, when everyone realises our problems go beyond “Tory incompetence”
No. Cancelling HS2 was stupid and needless.
I was also irked by the cancellation but the whole concept of HS2 was a fucking catastrophe, from the get go
Britain is so small it does not need 200+ mph trains. That is the truth of it. Sunak probably sees it that way and was trying to extricate HMG from the mess as cheaply as possible. It was and is a calamity he inherited
The HS2 catastrophe is that you still think it was about 200+ mph trains - it never was. It was about freeing up capacity on existing lines. It was, from the start, miss-sold.
No, I understand the capacity argument. But why did the engineers say Well if we’re having more capacity let’s make it 200mph trains?
Just build more standard capacity, fuck the high speed shit. 125mph is easily fast enough for a country as compact and densely populated as the UK
I think it makes sense that if you build something new you build it at a spec that reflects the technology available. When the Victorian built our rail network in the 1840s they didn't build it for horse drawn carriages. So if we're building a new train line from scratch it should be built to reasonable high speed specifications. AIUI we did over-egg it a bit by building potential for 300mph vs 250mph (or something like that), maybe that was going too far. Better to future proof it though as the costs of upgrading an existing line later are very high as we saw with the WCML. Again AIUI the real excess costs came from burying so much of the southern portion in tunnels to avoid upsetting Tory voters in the Chilterns. The bits that were cancelled in the North were much cheaper. I think we should just build the damn thing all the way to Scotland, we will still be using it in 150 years and it will more than pay for itself. We should have built it years ago in fact. We could have used the North Sea or privatisation revenues instead of giving them away in tax cuts for the rich.
Put the whole thing in a deep tunnel. Would be cheaper than the surface shenanigans.
Absolutely straight lines - so that if we want to upgrade to running in an evacuated tunnel at 1,000mph (Troll Troll) - we could.
Bet the Enquiry Wankers demand that it isn't done, though. After all, if there is nothing disturbed on the surface, their jobs go away.
It's a nice idea, but you couldn't be more wrong if you were a professor of wrongness at Wrong University.
Take a look at the Channel Tunnel: in an ideal world, it would have perfect gradient down, then be level under than channel, and be in a straight line. Instead, it is all over the place, particularly in profile.
Although it is easier when not going under the sea, long tunnels are rarely fully direct. Bromford Tunnel on HS2 has a big (though high-speed0 kink in it, as an example. The Northolt Tunnels are not quite straight, either.
Incidentally, tunnels also require surface installations every so often; in ye oden days these were access points for construction, some of which became ventilation; now they're for ventilation and (sometimes) emergency evacuation every 3km or so.
The Channel tunnel is following so rather gnarly geology.
I was exaggerating (slightly) - but the basic point stands, if the Enquiry Wankers want to turn everything into a zillion pound 2 decade nonsense, dig underneath them. It will be cheaper in the end.
That is so utterly dependent on geology. In bad geology, surface can be far cheaper than tunnelling, even with all the extra expenses. In good geology, tunnelling can be far cheaper, but sometimes operationally more expensive.
Given the overall costs for HS2, even digging through quicksand studded with unexploded German bombs, nuclear waste etc would have been cheaper.
Ah, Boris's Wizard Wheeze to dig a tunnel through Beaufort's Dyke....
Not to mention garden bridges and island airports. Rather like playing those railway system or city building games without the faff of having to find the money and do the politics - you still get the fun.
Moving airports to offshore artificial islands has been done a fair bit.
Given the value of the real estate for Heathrow, the project might even have *made* money.
Sure - Honkers and Tokyo for two. And no earthquakes to speak of in the UK (that wartime cargo ship aside). But it didn't get anywhere, did it?
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD He’s just *unlucky*
In the same way Truss surprised on the upside?
No
Sunak is merely a lightning rod for all the dark energy directed at the Tories. If you step back, and think neutrally, he is actually OK
He is playing a terrible hand as well as he can, I do not see anyone else doing any better - which is presumably why a challenge to his leadership never actually eventuates. There is nothing to save the Tories, Sunak is as good as it gets, they are doomed, and I expect Starmer to be a massive disappointment to millions within six months of winning, when everyone realises our problems go beyond “Tory incompetence”
No. Cancelling HS2 was stupid and needless.
I was also irked by the cancellation but the whole concept of HS2 was a fucking catastrophe, from the get go
Britain is so small it does not need 200+ mph trains. That is the truth of it. Sunak probably sees it that way and was trying to extricate HMG from the mess as cheaply as possible. It was and is a calamity he inherited
The HS2 catastrophe is that you still think it was about 200+ mph trains - it never was. It was about freeing up capacity on existing lines. It was, from the start, miss-sold.
No, I understand the capacity argument. But why did the engineers say Well if we’re having more capacity let’s make it 200mph trains?
Just build more standard capacity, fuck the high speed shit. 125mph is easily fast enough for a country as compact and densely populated as the UK
I think it makes sense that if you build something new you build it at a spec that reflects the technology available. When the Victorian built our rail network in the 1840s they didn't build it for horse drawn carriages. So if we're building a new train line from scratch it should be built to reasonable high speed specifications. AIUI we did over-egg it a bit by building potential for 300mph vs 250mph (or something like that), maybe that was going too far. Better to future proof it though as the costs of upgrading an existing line later are very high as we saw with the WCML. Again AIUI the real excess costs came from burying so much of the southern portion in tunnels to avoid upsetting Tory voters in the Chilterns. The bits that were cancelled in the North were much cheaper. I think we should just build the damn thing all the way to Scotland, we will still be using it in 150 years and it will more than pay for itself. We should have built it years ago in fact. We could have used the North Sea or privatisation revenues instead of giving them away in tax cuts for the rich.
Put the whole thing in a deep tunnel. Would be cheaper than the surface shenanigans.
Absolutely straight lines - so that if we want to upgrade to running in an evacuated tunnel at 1,000mph (Troll Troll) - we could.
Bet the Enquiry Wankers demand that it isn't done, though. After all, if there is nothing disturbed on the surface, their jobs go away.
It's a nice idea, but you couldn't be more wrong if you were a professor of wrongness at Wrong University.
Take a look at the Channel Tunnel: in an ideal world, it would have perfect gradient down, then be level under than channel, and be in a straight line. Instead, it is all over the place, particularly in profile.
Although it is easier when not going under the sea, long tunnels are rarely fully direct. Bromford Tunnel on HS2 has a big (though high-speed0 kink in it, as an example. The Northolt Tunnels are not quite straight, either.
Incidentally, tunnels also require surface installations every so often; in ye oden days these were access points for construction, some of which became ventilation; now they're for ventilation and (sometimes) emergency evacuation every 3km or so.
The Channel tunnel is following so rather gnarly geology.
I was exaggerating (slightly) - but the basic point stands, if the Enquiry Wankers want to turn everything into a zillion pound 2 decade nonsense, dig underneath them. It will be cheaper in the end.
That is so utterly dependent on geology. In bad geology, surface can be far cheaper than tunnelling, even with all the extra expenses. In good geology, tunnelling can be far cheaper, but sometimes operationally more expensive.
Given the overall costs for HS2, even digging through quicksand studded with unexploded German bombs, nuclear waste etc would have been cheaper.
Ah, Boris's Wizard Wheeze to dig a tunnel through Beaufort's Dyke....
Not to mention garden bridges and island airports. Rather like playing those railway system or city building games without the faff of having to find the money and do the politics - you still get the fun.
Moving airports to offshore artificial islands has been done a fair bit.
Given the value of the real estate for Heathrow, the project might even have *made* money.
Sure - Honkers and Tokyo for two. And no earthquakes to speak of in the UK (that wartime cargo ship aside). But it didn't get anywhere, did it?
The ship? No. Bloody thing is still there ready to go up at a moment's notice.
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD He’s just *unlucky*
In the same way Truss surprised on the upside?
No
Sunak is merely a lightning rod for all the dark energy directed at the Tories. If you step back, and think neutrally, he is actually OK
He is playing a terrible hand as well as he can, I do not see anyone else doing any better - which is presumably why a challenge to his leadership never actually eventuates. There is nothing to save the Tories, Sunak is as good as it gets, they are doomed, and I expect Starmer to be a massive disappointment to millions within six months of winning, when everyone realises our problems go beyond “Tory incompetence”
No. Cancelling HS2 was stupid and needless.
I was also irked by the cancellation but the whole concept of HS2 was a fucking catastrophe, from the get go
Britain is so small it does not need 200+ mph trains. That is the truth of it. Sunak probably sees it that way and was trying to extricate HMG from the mess as cheaply as possible. It was and is a calamity he inherited
The HS2 catastrophe is that you still think it was about 200+ mph trains - it never was. It was about freeing up capacity on existing lines. It was, from the start, miss-sold.
No, I understand the capacity argument. But why did the engineers say Well if we’re having more capacity let’s make it 200mph trains?
Just build more standard capacity, fuck the high speed shit. 125mph is easily fast enough for a country as compact and densely populated as the UK
I think it makes sense that if you build something new you build it at a spec that reflects the technology available. When the Victorian built our rail network in the 1840s they didn't build it for horse drawn carriages. So if we're building a new train line from scratch it should be built to reasonable high speed specifications. AIUI we did over-egg it a bit by building potential for 300mph vs 250mph (or something like that), maybe that was going too far. Better to future proof it though as the costs of upgrading an existing line later are very high as we saw with the WCML. Again AIUI the real excess costs came from burying so much of the southern portion in tunnels to avoid upsetting Tory voters in the Chilterns. The bits that were cancelled in the North were much cheaper. I think we should just build the damn thing all the way to Scotland, we will still be using it in 150 years and it will more than pay for itself. We should have built it years ago in fact. We could have used the North Sea or privatisation revenues instead of giving them away in tax cuts for the rich.
Put the whole thing in a deep tunnel. Would be cheaper than the surface shenanigans.
Absolutely straight lines - so that if we want to upgrade to running in an evacuated tunnel at 1,000mph (Troll Troll) - we could.
Bet the Enquiry Wankers demand that it isn't done, though. After all, if there is nothing disturbed on the surface, their jobs go away.
It's a nice idea, but you couldn't be more wrong if you were a professor of wrongness at Wrong University.
Take a look at the Channel Tunnel: in an ideal world, it would have perfect gradient down, then be level under than channel, and be in a straight line. Instead, it is all over the place, particularly in profile.
Although it is easier when not going under the sea, long tunnels are rarely fully direct. Bromford Tunnel on HS2 has a big (though high-speed0 kink in it, as an example. The Northolt Tunnels are not quite straight, either.
Incidentally, tunnels also require surface installations every so often; in ye oden days these were access points for construction, some of which became ventilation; now they're for ventilation and (sometimes) emergency evacuation every 3km or so.
The Channel tunnel is following so rather gnarly geology.
I was exaggerating (slightly) - but the basic point stands, if the Enquiry Wankers want to turn everything into a zillion pound 2 decade nonsense, dig underneath them. It will be cheaper in the end.
That is so utterly dependent on geology. In bad geology, surface can be far cheaper than tunnelling, even with all the extra expenses. In good geology, tunnelling can be far cheaper, but sometimes operationally more expensive.
Given the overall costs for HS2, even digging through quicksand studded with unexploded German bombs, nuclear waste etc would have been cheaper.
Ah, Boris's Wizard Wheeze to dig a tunnel through Beaufort's Dyke....
Not to mention garden bridges and island airports. Rather like playing those railway system or city building games without the faff of having to find the money and do the politics - you still get the fun.
Moving airports to offshore artificial islands has been done a fair bit.
Given the value of the real estate for Heathrow, the project might even have *made* money.
Sure - Honkers and Tokyo for two. And no earthquakes to speak of in the UK (that wartime cargo ship aside). But it didn't get anywhere, did it?
And besides. who owns Heathrow now? Who gt the profit if the land is sold off?
Then he went on to moan about the inconvenience he's been put to in having to prepare a statement over Christmas. Poor chap. He's the victim here.
Not quite - didn't he make out that the poor folk which his charity helps over Christmas weould have been the victims if he'd done a full one? And probably his dog too. [edited for slip]
Is his dog an XXXL Bully?
If so, how many of the poor folk did it eat, along with his homework?
Timing, timing. None in the UK before, on checking, 2014.
I think the most bizarre thing about the current Horizon saga is that despite all of this, the Post Office still use an updated version of Horizon.
It's been tested and 'found to be robust compared to previous systems.'
I mean - really? That's an endorsement? It's like saying somebody is more honest than Goebbels. Or has more knowledge of education than Nick Gibb.
I would have thought any sane organisation would have used paper and an abacus operated by a gorilla in preference to Horizon, but even as I typed that I spotted the flaw in my logic.
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD He’s just *unlucky*
In the same way Truss surprised on the upside?
No
Sunak is merely a lightning rod for all the dark energy directed at the Tories. If you step back, and think neutrally, he is actually OK
He is playing a terrible hand as well as he can, I do not see anyone else doing any better - which is presumably why a challenge to his leadership never actually eventuates. There is nothing to save the Tories, Sunak is as good as it gets, they are doomed, and I expect Starmer to be a massive disappointment to millions within six months of winning, when everyone realises our problems go beyond “Tory incompetence”
No. Cancelling HS2 was stupid and needless.
I was also irked by the cancellation but the whole concept of HS2 was a fucking catastrophe, from the get go
Britain is so small it does not need 200+ mph trains. That is the truth of it. Sunak probably sees it that way and was trying to extricate HMG from the mess as cheaply as possible. It was and is a calamity he inherited
The HS2 catastrophe is that you still think it was about 200+ mph trains - it never was. It was about freeing up capacity on existing lines. It was, from the start, miss-sold.
No, I understand the capacity argument. But why did the engineers say Well if we’re having more capacity let’s make it 200mph trains?
Just build more standard capacity, fuck the high speed shit. 125mph is easily fast enough for a country as compact and densely populated as the UK
I think it makes sense that if you build something new you build it at a spec that reflects the technology available. When the Victorian built our rail network in the 1840s they didn't build it for horse drawn carriages. So if we're building a new train line from scratch it should be built to reasonable high speed specifications. AIUI we did over-egg it a bit by building potential for 300mph vs 250mph (or something like that), maybe that was going too far. Better to future proof it though as the costs of upgrading an existing line later are very high as we saw with the WCML. Again AIUI the real excess costs came from burying so much of the southern portion in tunnels to avoid upsetting Tory voters in the Chilterns. The bits that were cancelled in the North were much cheaper. I think we should just build the damn thing all the way to Scotland, we will still be using it in 150 years and it will more than pay for itself. We should have built it years ago in fact. We could have used the North Sea or privatisation revenues instead of giving them away in tax cuts for the rich.
Put the whole thing in a deep tunnel. Would be cheaper than the surface shenanigans.
Absolutely straight lines - so that if we want to upgrade to running in an evacuated tunnel at 1,000mph (Troll Troll) - we could.
Bet the Enquiry Wankers demand that it isn't done, though. After all, if there is nothing disturbed on the surface, their jobs go away.
It's a nice idea, but you couldn't be more wrong if you were a professor of wrongness at Wrong University.
Take a look at the Channel Tunnel: in an ideal world, it would have perfect gradient down, then be level under than channel, and be in a straight line. Instead, it is all over the place, particularly in profile.
Although it is easier when not going under the sea, long tunnels are rarely fully direct. Bromford Tunnel on HS2 has a big (though high-speed0 kink in it, as an example. The Northolt Tunnels are not quite straight, either.
Incidentally, tunnels also require surface installations every so often; in ye oden days these were access points for construction, some of which became ventilation; now they're for ventilation and (sometimes) emergency evacuation every 3km or so.
The Channel tunnel is following so rather gnarly geology.
I was exaggerating (slightly) - but the basic point stands, if the Enquiry Wankers want to turn everything into a zillion pound 2 decade nonsense, dig underneath them. It will be cheaper in the end.
That is so utterly dependent on geology. In bad geology, surface can be far cheaper than tunnelling, even with all the extra expenses. In good geology, tunnelling can be far cheaper, but sometimes operationally more expensive.
Given the overall costs for HS2, even digging through quicksand studded with unexploded German bombs, nuclear waste etc would have been cheaper.
Ah, Boris's Wizard Wheeze to dig a tunnel through Beaufort's Dyke....
Not to mention garden bridges and island airports. Rather like playing those railway system or city building games without the faff of having to find the money and do the politics - you still get the fun.
Moving airports to offshore artificial islands has been done a fair bit.
Given the value of the real estate for Heathrow, the project might even have *made* money.
Sure - Honkers and Tokyo for two. And no earthquakes to speak of in the UK (that wartime cargo ship aside). But it didn't get anywhere, did it?
And besides. who owns Heathrow now? Who gt the profit if the land is sold off?
"Heathrow Airport Holdings Limited is in turn owned by FGP Topco Limited, a consortium owned and led by the infrastructure specialist Ferrovial S.A. (25.00%), Qatar Investment Authority (20.00%), Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) (12.62%), GIC (11.20%), Australian Retirement Trust (11.18%), China Investment Corporation (10.00%) and Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) (10.00%)."
So that'd have been some of our academics fed in their old age, if nothing else ).
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD He’s just *unlucky*
In the same way Truss surprised on the upside?
No
Sunak is merely a lightning rod for all the dark energy directed at the Tories. If you step back, and think neutrally, he is actually OK
He is playing a terrible hand as well as he can, I do not see anyone else doing any better - which is presumably why a challenge to his leadership never actually eventuates. There is nothing to save the Tories, Sunak is as good as it gets, they are doomed, and I expect Starmer to be a massive disappointment to millions within six months of winning, when everyone realises our problems go beyond “Tory incompetence”
No. Cancelling HS2 was stupid and needless.
I was also irked by the cancellation but the whole concept of HS2 was a fucking catastrophe, from the get go
Britain is so small it does not need 200+ mph trains. That is the truth of it. Sunak probably sees it that way and was trying to extricate HMG from the mess as cheaply as possible. It was and is a calamity he inherited
The HS2 catastrophe is that you still think it was about 200+ mph trains - it never was. It was about freeing up capacity on existing lines. It was, from the start, miss-sold.
No, I understand the capacity argument. But why did the engineers say Well if we’re having more capacity let’s make it 200mph trains?
Just build more standard capacity, fuck the high speed shit. 125mph is easily fast enough for a country as compact and densely populated as the UK
I think it makes sense that if you build something new you build it at a spec that reflects the technology available. When the Victorian built our rail network in the 1840s they didn't build it for horse drawn carriages. So if we're building a new train line from scratch it should be built to reasonable high speed specifications. AIUI we did over-egg it a bit by building potential for 300mph vs 250mph (or something like that), maybe that was going too far. Better to future proof it though as the costs of upgrading an existing line later are very high as we saw with the WCML. Again AIUI the real excess costs came from burying so much of the southern portion in tunnels to avoid upsetting Tory voters in the Chilterns. The bits that were cancelled in the North were much cheaper. I think we should just build the damn thing all the way to Scotland, we will still be using it in 150 years and it will more than pay for itself. We should have built it years ago in fact. We could have used the North Sea or privatisation revenues instead of giving them away in tax cuts for the rich.
Put the whole thing in a deep tunnel. Would be cheaper than the surface shenanigans.
Absolutely straight lines - so that if we want to upgrade to running in an evacuated tunnel at 1,000mph (Troll Troll) - we could.
Bet the Enquiry Wankers demand that it isn't done, though. After all, if there is nothing disturbed on the surface, their jobs go away.
It's a nice idea, but you couldn't be more wrong if you were a professor of wrongness at Wrong University.
Take a look at the Channel Tunnel: in an ideal world, it would have perfect gradient down, then be level under than channel, and be in a straight line. Instead, it is all over the place, particularly in profile.
Although it is easier when not going under the sea, long tunnels are rarely fully direct. Bromford Tunnel on HS2 has a big (though high-speed0 kink in it, as an example. The Northolt Tunnels are not quite straight, either.
Incidentally, tunnels also require surface installations every so often; in ye oden days these were access points for construction, some of which became ventilation; now they're for ventilation and (sometimes) emergency evacuation every 3km or so.
The Channel tunnel is following so rather gnarly geology.
I was exaggerating (slightly) - but the basic point stands, if the Enquiry Wankers want to turn everything into a zillion pound 2 decade nonsense, dig underneath them. It will be cheaper in the end.
That is so utterly dependent on geology. In bad geology, surface can be far cheaper than tunnelling, even with all the extra expenses. In good geology, tunnelling can be far cheaper, but sometimes operationally more expensive.
Given the overall costs for HS2, even digging through quicksand studded with unexploded German bombs, nuclear waste etc would have been cheaper.
Ah, Boris's Wizard Wheeze to dig a tunnel through Beaufort's Dyke....
Not to mention garden bridges and island airports. Rather like playing those railway system or city building games without the faff of having to find the money and do the politics - you still get the fun.
Moving airports to offshore artificial islands has been done a fair bit.
Given the value of the real estate for Heathrow, the project might even have *made* money.
Sure - Honkers and Tokyo for two. And no earthquakes to speak of in the UK (that wartime cargo ship aside). But it didn't get anywhere, did it?
The ship? No. Bloody thing is still there ready to go up at a moment's notice.
"The Tories would collapse rapidly, and in a “statesmanlike” move you could then reverse engineer a merger between RefUK and the Tory rump." The Tory Reform Group (https://www.trg.org.uk) is a ready-made vehicle for this, nominally at least
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD He’s just *unlucky*
In the same way Truss surprised on the upside?
No
Sunak is merely a lightning rod for all the dark energy directed at the Tories. If you step back, and think neutrally, he is actually OK
He is playing a terrible hand as well as he can, I do not see anyone else doing any better - which is presumably why a challenge to his leadership never actually eventuates. There is nothing to save the Tories, Sunak is as good as it gets, they are doomed, and I expect Starmer to be a massive disappointment to millions within six months of winning, when everyone realises our problems go beyond “Tory incompetence”
No. Cancelling HS2 was stupid and needless.
I was also irked by the cancellation but the whole concept of HS2 was a fucking catastrophe, from the get go
Britain is so small it does not need 200+ mph trains. That is the truth of it. Sunak probably sees it that way and was trying to extricate HMG from the mess as cheaply as possible. It was and is a calamity he inherited
The HS2 catastrophe is that you still think it was about 200+ mph trains - it never was. It was about freeing up capacity on existing lines. It was, from the start, miss-sold.
No, I understand the capacity argument. But why did the engineers say Well if we’re having more capacity let’s make it 200mph trains?
Just build more standard capacity, fuck the high speed shit. 125mph is easily fast enough for a country as compact and densely populated as the UK
I think it makes sense that if you build something new you build it at a spec that reflects the technology available. When the Victorian built our rail network in the 1840s they didn't build it for horse drawn carriages. So if we're building a new train line from scratch it should be built to reasonable high speed specifications. AIUI we did over-egg it a bit by building potential for 300mph vs 250mph (or something like that), maybe that was going too far. Better to future proof it though as the costs of upgrading an existing line later are very high as we saw with the WCML. Again AIUI the real excess costs came from burying so much of the southern portion in tunnels to avoid upsetting Tory voters in the Chilterns. The bits that were cancelled in the North were much cheaper. I think we should just build the damn thing all the way to Scotland, we will still be using it in 150 years and it will more than pay for itself. We should have built it years ago in fact. We could have used the North Sea or privatisation revenues instead of giving them away in tax cuts for the rich.
Put the whole thing in a deep tunnel. Would be cheaper than the surface shenanigans.
Absolutely straight lines - so that if we want to upgrade to running in an evacuated tunnel at 1,000mph (Troll Troll) - we could.
Bet the Enquiry Wankers demand that it isn't done, though. After all, if there is nothing disturbed on the surface, their jobs go away.
It's a nice idea, but you couldn't be more wrong if you were a professor of wrongness at Wrong University.
Take a look at the Channel Tunnel: in an ideal world, it would have perfect gradient down, then be level under than channel, and be in a straight line. Instead, it is all over the place, particularly in profile.
Although it is easier when not going under the sea, long tunnels are rarely fully direct. Bromford Tunnel on HS2 has a big (though high-speed0 kink in it, as an example. The Northolt Tunnels are not quite straight, either.
Incidentally, tunnels also require surface installations every so often; in ye oden days these were access points for construction, some of which became ventilation; now they're for ventilation and (sometimes) emergency evacuation every 3km or so.
The Channel tunnel is following so rather gnarly geology.
I was exaggerating (slightly) - but the basic point stands, if the Enquiry Wankers want to turn everything into a zillion pound 2 decade nonsense, dig underneath them. It will be cheaper in the end.
That is so utterly dependent on geology. In bad geology, surface can be far cheaper than tunnelling, even with all the extra expenses. In good geology, tunnelling can be far cheaper, but sometimes operationally more expensive.
Given the overall costs for HS2, even digging through quicksand studded with unexploded German bombs, nuclear waste etc would have been cheaper.
Ah, Boris's Wizard Wheeze to dig a tunnel through Beaufort's Dyke....
Not to mention garden bridges and island airports. Rather like playing those railway system or city building games without the faff of having to find the money and do the politics - you still get the fun.
Moving airports to offshore artificial islands has been done a fair bit.
Given the value of the real estate for Heathrow, the project might even have *made* money.
Sure - Honkers and Tokyo for two. And no earthquakes to speak of in the UK (that wartime cargo ship aside). But it didn't get anywhere, did it?
The ship? No. Bloody thing is still there ready to go up at a moment's notice.
Aside from the farcical estimates of yield if the ship did go up, and the hilariously exaggerated effects claimed for it, the replacement for Heathrow didn’t need to be anywhere near it.
Listening to LBC the patriotic boomers are up for conscription. "I'm 62 and I am up for it".
Easy to say for us fortunate old timers, as we won't be invited.
The 50 to 70s should be called up first. We may be useless in the trenches, but having volunteered first, under the impression we were safe from the call up, the irony would be delicious.
I am up for this as they conscript me as a Field Marshal.
It's the Kinky Boots.
Surely if TSE was to be called up, he would insist on this uniform.
Sunak binned Boris supporting MP in winnable seat resigns Boris is the candidate & wins by election Becomes leader
2019 Tories are happy
Somewhere in that list is
- Boris has Damascene conversion, takes the job seriously and convinces the voters he is good at it. Hmmm....
The easier single step is
- Rishi convinces the voters he is better than Starmer at the job.
The 2019 Tories massively prefer him to Rishi. Let’s be fair, if it weren’t for the very unusual scenario of Covid, he’d be leader now, and probably on course for another majority. It suits him to be the comeback kid anyway, it’s the perfect role for chancers
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD He’s just *unlucky*
In the same way Truss surprised on the upside?
No
Sunak is merely a lightning rod for all the dark energy directed at the Tories. If you step back, and think neutrally, he is actually OK
He is playing a terrible hand as well as he can, I do not see anyone else doing any better - which is presumably why a challenge to his leadership never actually eventuates. There is nothing to save the Tories, Sunak is as good as it gets, they are doomed, and I expect Starmer to be a massive disappointment to millions within six months of winning, when everyone realises our problems go beyond “Tory incompetence”
No. Cancelling HS2 was stupid and needless.
I was also irked by the cancellation but the whole concept of HS2 was a fucking catastrophe, from the get go
Britain is so small it does not need 200+ mph trains. That is the truth of it. Sunak probably sees it that way and was trying to extricate HMG from the mess as cheaply as possible. It was and is a calamity he inherited
The HS2 catastrophe is that you still think it was about 200+ mph trains - it never was. It was about freeing up capacity on existing lines. It was, from the start, miss-sold.
No, I understand the capacity argument. But why did the engineers say Well if we’re having more capacity let’s make it 200mph trains?
Just build more standard capacity, fuck the high speed shit. 125mph is easily fast enough for a country as compact and densely populated as the UK
Just make it affordable.
If I want to get from London to Manchester tomorrow for 9 o'clock, it's £224.70 for a standard single. Another £234.70 to add a return after 6pm.
That's a gobsmacking four hundred and sixty quid I'd be out if, say, someone rang me now and asked me to pop up to their office to talk about some new business (yes, I know there's Teams et al, but sometimes people want to, I dunno, actually meet you in person before hiring you).
Round trip in my car, petrol probably about seventy quid.
It's a 400 mile round trip.
That's a good £200 including petrol, insurance, maintenance, depreciation and so on.
Even if you go with the Treasury's parsimonious allowance it's £190.
Not including any parking fees. Not including having to drive for seven or eight hours (and even for that, add the toll on the M6 Toll).
I agree with you it should be cheaper. Much cheaper. But driving isn't quite so ridiculously a cheaper option when you weigh it all up.
Train travel is insanely expensive in the UK, I entirely agree with that
When I take trains abroad in countries with roughly similar wealth-levels as the UK the price of a train ticket is often a third of that in the UK. How do they manage it? Where have we gone wrong?
You can often save a lot of money by splitting tickets, but it's a bit of a faff to do so.
I find Trainline is pretty good at splitting the tickets and getting you a cheaper fare.
Unfortunatement, they charge booking fees!
A couple of quid to save £40 on a trip I took recently.
It’s blowing a hoolie in Hamburg where I’m waiting for a flight. I just saw my incoming BA flight land - one of the advantages of an otherwise mediocre lounge is a nice runway view - and it was doing that side to side wobble thing where you wonder if the wing tip will touch the runway. Forget helicopter tours of the Grand Canyon, this is mildly disconcerting.
Tip in mediocre German airport lounges: the best of a bad bunch of drinks is usually weissburgunder (Pinot Blanc, typically mass produced in Pfalz) which every lounge in the nation seems to stock. Better than the fizzy beer.
Ahhh yes, but in most of the German airport lounges, you get to pour your own beer.
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD He’s just *unlucky*
In the same way Truss surprised on the upside?
No
Sunak is merely a lightning rod for all the dark energy directed at the Tories. If you step back, and think neutrally, he is actually OK
He is playing a terrible hand as well as he can, I do not see anyone else doing any better - which is presumably why a challenge to his leadership never actually eventuates. There is nothing to save the Tories, Sunak is as good as it gets, they are doomed, and I expect Starmer to be a massive disappointment to millions within six months of winning, when everyone realises our problems go beyond “Tory incompetence”
No. Cancelling HS2 was stupid and needless.
I was also irked by the cancellation but the whole concept of HS2 was a fucking catastrophe, from the get go
Britain is so small it does not need 200+ mph trains. That is the truth of it. Sunak probably sees it that way and was trying to extricate HMG from the mess as cheaply as possible. It was and is a calamity he inherited
The HS2 catastrophe is that you still think it was about 200+ mph trains - it never was. It was about freeing up capacity on existing lines. It was, from the start, miss-sold.
No, I understand the capacity argument. But why did the engineers say Well if we’re having more capacity let’s make it 200mph trains?
Just build more standard capacity, fuck the high speed shit. 125mph is easily fast enough for a country as compact and densely populated as the UK
I think it makes sense that if you build something new you build it at a spec that reflects the technology available. When the Victorian built our rail network in the 1840s they didn't build it for horse drawn carriages. So if we're building a new train line from scratch it should be built to reasonable high speed specifications. AIUI we did over-egg it a bit by building potential for 300mph vs 250mph (or something like that), maybe that was going too far. Better to future proof it though as the costs of upgrading an existing line later are very high as we saw with the WCML. Again AIUI the real excess costs came from burying so much of the southern portion in tunnels to avoid upsetting Tory voters in the Chilterns. The bits that were cancelled in the North were much cheaper. I think we should just build the damn thing all the way to Scotland, we will still be using it in 150 years and it will more than pay for itself. We should have built it years ago in fact. We could have used the North Sea or privatisation revenues instead of giving them away in tax cuts for the rich.
Put the whole thing in a deep tunnel. Would be cheaper than the surface shenanigans.
Absolutely straight lines - so that if we want to upgrade to running in an evacuated tunnel at 1,000mph (Troll Troll) - we could.
Bet the Enquiry Wankers demand that it isn't done, though. After all, if there is nothing disturbed on the surface, their jobs go away.
It's a nice idea, but you couldn't be more wrong if you were a professor of wrongness at Wrong University.
Take a look at the Channel Tunnel: in an ideal world, it would have perfect gradient down, then be level under than channel, and be in a straight line. Instead, it is all over the place, particularly in profile.
Although it is easier when not going under the sea, long tunnels are rarely fully direct. Bromford Tunnel on HS2 has a big (though high-speed0 kink in it, as an example. The Northolt Tunnels are not quite straight, either.
Incidentally, tunnels also require surface installations every so often; in ye oden days these were access points for construction, some of which became ventilation; now they're for ventilation and (sometimes) emergency evacuation every 3km or so.
The Channel tunnel is following so rather gnarly geology.
I was exaggerating (slightly) - but the basic point stands, if the Enquiry Wankers want to turn everything into a zillion pound 2 decade nonsense, dig underneath them. It will be cheaper in the end.
That is so utterly dependent on geology. In bad geology, surface can be far cheaper than tunnelling, even with all the extra expenses. In good geology, tunnelling can be far cheaper, but sometimes operationally more expensive.
Given the overall costs for HS2, even digging through quicksand studded with unexploded German bombs, nuclear waste etc would have been cheaper.
Ah, Boris's Wizard Wheeze to dig a tunnel through Beaufort's Dyke....
Not to mention garden bridges and island airports. Rather like playing those railway system or city building games without the faff of having to find the money and do the politics - you still get the fun.
Moving airports to offshore artificial islands has been done a fair bit.
Given the value of the real estate for Heathrow, the project might even have *made* money.
Sure - Honkers and Tokyo for two. And no earthquakes to speak of in the UK (that wartime cargo ship aside). But it didn't get anywhere, did it?
The ship? No. Bloody thing is still there ready to go up at a moment's notice.
Nor did the airport and its traffic, either.
Surely no planes have gone up from the airport at a moment or any other form of notice?
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD
I am now spending so much time OUT of the UK (a bit more than half the year, the last two years) I reckon I am getting a perspective. Or I hope so. Seen from afar Sunak’s government is not that disastrous, relatively, and Sunak himself is far from a disaster. He comes across as honest (unlike Boris), and as sane (unlike Truss) and as personable and articulate (unlike TMay). He is intelligent and kind if a bit unworldly (it seems to me). His wealth is an issue, but on the upside it insulates him from corruption - he does not need to be corrupt
His policies may disappoint many but these are disappointing times for almost every western nation. The west as a whole is in quite steep relative decline and nearly all major western countries face similar and grievous challenges - mass migration, demographic descent, illegal migration, global insecurity, climate change, energy prices, a need to beef up defence even as these societies age, and so on and so forth. Sunak is facing the same problems as Macron, Schulz, Meloni, Biden etc and it is not obvious to me that he is doing notably WORSE than any of them; and its even less obvious that Starmer has the ideas, energy, brilliance that will make things better
Sunak is a perfectly adequate prime minister doing the job of prime minister at maybe the worst possible time in the last 40 years, and he’s a Tory PM at the arse-end of 13 disappointing Tory years
He’s just *unlucky*
I’ve made the same point in respect of Biden. His record is actually pretty good verging on impressive but the west sees its power and influence slipping away and are pretty unhappy about it.
So they indulge fantasists like Trump who promise to make them top dog again. In the UK Starmer doesn’t even offer that. Just more of the same with a slightly wild claim of more competence.
But this despond has to be someone’s fault and it can’t be ours so blame the PM.
I'm a firm believer in the idea that we get the politicians we deserve. America wants Biden vs Trump rematch, despite what they may claim, that's why it will reoccur.
Sunak binned Boris supporting MP in winnable seat resigns Boris is the candidate & wins by election Becomes leader
2019 Tories are happy
Somewhere in that list is
- Boris has Damascene conversion, takes the job seriously and convinces the voters he is good at it. Hmmm....
The easier single step is
- Rishi convinces the voters he is better than Starmer at the job.
The 2019 Tories massively prefer him to Rishi. Let’s be fair, if it weren’t for the very unusual scenario of Covid, he’d be leader now, and probably on course for another majority. It suits him to be the comeback kid anyway, it’s the perfect role for chancers
It should have been hard to lose outright after the big win of 2019, I don't think it's talked enough about how strange it is that Boris was vulnerable enough to fall to an internal coup. Whether supporting or opposing that coup he really should not have been weak enough to be ousted only 3 years after that win. Be it Covid or his own flaws or a combination of both, it was really odd.
At least in this weeks PMQs, Starmer finally resisted pointing out he was a DPP putting terrorists away.
I don't know why he makes so much of it; his supporters seem to think DPP is an impotent role with no responsibilities; a sinecure.
Nonsense! It’s not easy taking the credit for every successful big case whilst spreading the blame around for each high profile blunder. It takes a skilled operator to walk that line
Interesting plot Nick. I hope you are wrong. It does highlight the problem with Reform though. What is their pitch? Farage at heart has always been a city trader. Tice is a businessman. What is Johnson? The Brexity Hezza who opened the door to mass immigration from outside the EU? Who would criticise him for this though? Maybe Farage?
The SDP seem like the more appropriate party for disgruntled red wall voters but they are still stuck in relative obscurity.
I think the most bizarre thing about the current Horizon saga is that despite all of this, the Post Office still use an updated version of Horizon.
It's been tested and 'found to be robust compared to previous systems.'
I mean - really? That's an endorsement? It's like saying somebody is more honest than Goebbels. Or has more knowledge of education than Nick Gibb.
I would have thought any sane organisation would have used paper and an abacus operated by a gorilla in preference to Horizon, but even as I typed that I spotted the flaw in my logic.
No, I believe you are misguided on this. I know little about Horizon but my experience of large complex financial services systems is that the longer they are in used the less buggy they become - because the errors do tend to get fixed eventually.
In all probability Horizon is reasonably robust now. It may not be efficient, it may not be easy to amend and enhance but it is almost certainly as robust as it has ever been.
Scrapping it now and replacing it would merely introduce another new highly bug-ridden system.
This is the reason most retail banks are running on systems that started life in the 60s or 70s.
I'm a firm believer in the idea that we get the politicians we deserve. America wants Biden vs Trump rematch, despite what they may claim, that's why it will reoccur.
Sunak binned Boris supporting MP in winnable seat resigns Boris is the candidate & wins by election Becomes leader
2019 Tories are happy
Somewhere in that list is
- Boris has Damascene conversion, takes the job seriously and convinces the voters he is good at it. Hmmm....
The easier single step is
- Rishi convinces the voters he is better than Starmer at the job.
The 2019 Tories massively prefer him to Rishi. Let’s be fair, if it weren’t for the very unusual scenario of Covid, he’d be leader now, and probably on course for another majority. It suits him to be the comeback kid anyway, it’s the perfect role for chancers
It should have been hard to lose outright after the big win of 2019, I don't think it's talked enough about how strange it is that Boris was vulnerable enough to fall to an internal coup. Whether supporting or opposing that coup he really should not have been weak enough to be ousted only 3 years after that win. Be it Covid or his own flaws or a combination of both, it was really odd.
The Tories, much like people on here, seemed to think winning a huge majority was a doddle, despite none of them except Boris managing it in the last thirty seven years.
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD He’s just *unlucky*
In the same way Truss surprised on the upside?
No
Sunak is merely a lightning rod for all the dark energy directed at the Tories. If you step back, and think neutrally, he is actually OK
He is playing a terrible hand as well as he can, I do not see anyone else doing any better - which is presumably why a challenge to his leadership never actually eventuates. There is nothing to save the Tories, Sunak is as good as it gets, they are doomed, and I expect Starmer to be a massive disappointment to millions within six months of winning, when everyone realises our problems go beyond “Tory incompetence”
No. Cancelling HS2 was stupid and needless.
I was also irked by the cancellation but the whole concept of HS2 was a fucking catastrophe, from the get go
Britain is so small it does not need 200+ mph trains. That is the truth of it. Sunak probably sees it that way and was trying to extricate HMG from the mess as cheaply as possible. It was and is a calamity he inherited
The HS2 catastrophe is that you still think it was about 200+ mph trains - it never was. It was about freeing up capacity on existing lines. It was, from the start, miss-sold.
No, I understand the capacity argument. But why did the engineers say Well if we’re having more capacity let’s make it 200mph trains?
Just build more standard capacity, fuck the high speed shit. 125mph is easily fast enough for a country as compact and densely populated as the UK
Just make it affordable.
If I want to get from London to Manchester tomorrow for 9 o'clock, it's £224.70 for a standard single. Another £234.70 to add a return after 6pm.
That's a gobsmacking four hundred and sixty quid I'd be out if, say, someone rang me now and asked me to pop up to their office to talk about some new business (yes, I know there's Teams et al, but sometimes people want to, I dunno, actually meet you in person before hiring you).
Round trip in my car, petrol probably about seventy quid.
It's a 400 mile round trip.
That's a good £200 including petrol, insurance, maintenance, depreciation and so on.
Even if you go with the Treasury's parsimonious allowance it's £190.
Not including any parking fees. Not including having to drive for seven or eight hours (and even for that, add the toll on the M6 Toll).
I agree with you it should be cheaper. Much cheaper. But driving isn't quite so ridiculously a cheaper option when you weigh it all up.
Train travel is insanely expensive in the UK, I entirely agree with that
When I take trains abroad in countries with roughly similar wealth-levels as the UK the price of a train ticket is often a third of that in the UK. How do they manage it? Where have we gone wrong?
Labyrinthine industry structures thanks to privatisation; insane engineering and consultancy prices; absolutely no sense of direction.
Example: 15 years ago or so, the Government decided to move towards electrification (which pretty much everywhere else in Europe has been doing for ages). So they started electrifying a load of lines and ordered a load of electric trains.
The electrification cost more and took longer than expected (like I say, insane prices) so the Government abandoned it halfway. The Oxford electrification only got as far as Didcot. The Bristol electrification only got as far as Chippenham. And so on.
But they'd already ordered the trains. So we now have fleets of electric trains sitting around and nowhere to run them. (@Sunil_Prasannan can tell you the numbers.) One bunch of electric intercity trains had to be expensively fitted with diesel engines. Another set of comfortable 1990s electric trains - not that old in railway terms - got carted to the scrap yard.
This is just one example. There are loads. Like the fleet of Transpennine trains that's been sent back into store after three years because no-one added to the specification "the engines should not wake up the entire town of Scarborough when starting up at 5am". The entire industry is dysfunctional. Every five years the Government wakes up and notices this and thinks "ah, what we need is another reorganisation and a STRATEGY". You can fill in the rest yourself.
Illuminating. Thankyou
The tragicomedy is that Major proposed breaking BR up into the Big 4 companies that were merged together to form BR. Much in the way the Japanese system works you would have had a regional company responsible for infrastructure and operations.
This would have provided the simplicity, stability and vertical integration that is missing today. Instead the Treasury insisted on the franchising model and so the chaos ensued until we get to where we are today - a fragmented mess. Our trains cost a fortune to administer. Contracts on contracts on contracts. An army of lawyers and middle managers taking money away from the actual service.
They probably learned the wrong lessons from the privatisation of BT.
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD
I am now spending so much time OUT of the UK (a bit more than half the year, the last two years) I reckon I am getting a perspective. Or I hope so. Seen from afar Sunak’s government is not that disastrous, relatively, and Sunak himself is far from a disaster. He comes across as honest (unlike Boris), and as sane (unlike Truss) and as personable and articulate (unlike TMay). He is intelligent and kind if a bit unworldly (it seems to me). His wealth is an issue, but on the upside it insulates him from corruption - he does not need to be corrupt
His policies may disappoint many but these are disappointing times for almost every western nation. The west as a whole is in quite steep relative decline and nearly all major western countries face similar and grievous challenges - mass migration, demographic descent, illegal migration, global insecurity, climate change, energy prices, a need to beef up defence even as these societies age, and so on and so forth. Sunak is facing the same problems as Macron, Schulz, Meloni, Biden etc and it is not obvious to me that he is doing notably WORSE than any of them; and its even less obvious that Starmer has the ideas, energy, brilliance that will make things better
Sunak is a perfectly adequate prime minister doing the job of prime minister at maybe the worst possible time in the last 40 years, and he’s a Tory PM at the arse-end of 13 disappointing Tory years
He’s just *unlucky*
I don't think he's 'just' unlucky. I have plenty of sympathy with the idea he is pretty adequate in a lot of ways, albeit inadequate to face up to the challenges the country is facing. And it may even be true that at an earlier moment he might have been a decent PM, even though since he became PM earlier than anyone in at least 120 years he could not have risen any faster.
But the counter to that is he has failed on his own terms - polling has not improved, it has declined, he's either unable to tackle major policy issues despite a comfortable majority or unwilling, and he seems to have no sense of vision or direction. Accepting that we are in disappointing, declining times for us, only mitigates him so much.
And of course most PMs might be able to claim they could have done alright had they not faced the particular challenges they did. Would Cameron have been well placed to lead the Brexit years? No. Would Boris havebeen well placed to lead a minority or a coalition? No. Would May have been ok if not facing Brexit? Maybe.
I feel like history may judge that Sunak did not deserve the sheer level of defeat he will suffer, but that's not much solace to him now.
Tory government about to plum even lower polling depths once this three-part drama about being a medic during covid (with tory ministers' PPE shortages and so on) hits itv?
Being talked of as next 'Mr Bates' drama.
Dr Rachel Clarke @doctor_oxford · 8h Thank you @thetimes for this amazing piece about BREATHTAKING - coming to @itv in Feb.
We've tried so hard to show what really happened behind closed hospital doors - the grit & courage & compassion of NHS staff. And the same, in abundance, from patients & their families 💙
I wouldn’t, say five years ago, have said that we should rule the country according to ITV dramas, but maybe it’s a better system than Tory leadership contests.
I'm a firm believer in the idea that we get the politicians we deserve. America wants Biden vs Trump rematch, despite what they may claim, that's why it will reoccur.
Sunak binned Boris supporting MP in winnable seat resigns Boris is the candidate & wins by election Becomes leader
2019 Tories are happy
Somewhere in that list is
- Boris has Damascene conversion, takes the job seriously and convinces the voters he is good at it. Hmmm....
The easier single step is
- Rishi convinces the voters he is better than Starmer at the job.
The 2019 Tories massively prefer him to Rishi. Let’s be fair, if it weren’t for the very unusual scenario of Covid, he’d be leader now, and probably on course for another majority. It suits him to be the comeback kid anyway, it’s the perfect role for chancers
It should have been hard to lose outright after the big win of 2019, I don't think it's talked enough about how strange it is that Boris was vulnerable enough to fall to an internal coup. Whether supporting or opposing that coup he really should not have been weak enough to be ousted only 3 years after that win. Be it Covid or his own flaws or a combination of both, it was really odd.
The Tories, much like people on here, seemed to think winning a huge majority was a doddle, despite none of them except Boris managing it in the last thirty seven years.
There were situational factors which contributed to it which would be hard to repeat, and of course the opposition factor, but I think it would be churlish to not accept Boris proved the right man in the right moment for them in achieving such a big win.
Of course, Boris 2022 was not the same man as Boris 2019, I think the idea all would be well that some of his fans push is improbable, but it's not as though there is no possibility they would be better off.
Interesting plot Nick. I hope you are wrong. It does highlight the problem with Reform though. What is their pitch? Farage at heart has always been a city trader. Tice is a businessman. What is Johnson? The Brexity Hezza who opened the door to mass immigration from outside the EU? Who would criticise him for this though? Maybe Farage?
The SDP seem like the more appropriate party for disgruntled red wall voters but they are still stuck in relative obscurity.
They’ve got 2 councillors, which is 40% of Reform UK’s total. It’s twice the number of councillors the Alba Party has.
O/T I have signed up for 3 free months of Apple TV on the back of Mrs P's new iPhone offer, principally to watch Masters of the Air.
Is there anything else on AppleTV I should take a look at?
Slow Horses!
I enjoyed Shrinking.
And Ted Lasso even if a bit kitschy.
I’m watching For All Mankind I like too, because it’s different. It certainly looks the part, very arty late sixties look and feel. What they should have done though, because we are not feeling what they are feeling as the first episode opened, is done the whole of the first series as a tightly observed factual, till the Russian landing in June in the last episode. The counterfactual not only means you don’t know what happens next, is Ted Kennedy so caught up in the nations mood he decides not to go partying on Chappaquiddick Island but go to Washington for the hearings? Will Apollo 11 find the surface rocky and crash?
Horrible stuff, though I'm distracted by the comment that he had not met any Tories until he was at university. Presumably he had but did not know it until then.
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD He’s just *unlucky*
In the same way Truss surprised on the upside?
No
Sunak is merely a lightning rod for all the dark energy directed at the Tories. If you step back, and think neutrally, he is actually OK
He is playing a terrible hand as well as he can, I do not see anyone else doing any better - which is presumably why a challenge to his leadership never actually eventuates. There is nothing to save the Tories, Sunak is as good as it gets, they are doomed, and I expect Starmer to be a massive disappointment to millions within six months of winning, when everyone realises our problems go beyond “Tory incompetence”
No. Cancelling HS2 was stupid and needless.
I was also irked by the cancellation but the whole concept of HS2 was a fucking catastrophe, from the get go
Britain is so small it does not need 200+ mph trains. That is the truth of it. Sunak probably sees it that way and was trying to extricate HMG from the mess as cheaply as possible. It was and is a calamity he inherited
The HS2 catastrophe is that you still think it was about 200+ mph trains - it never was. It was about freeing up capacity on existing lines. It was, from the start, miss-sold.
No, I understand the capacity argument. But why did the engineers say Well if we’re having more capacity let’s make it 200mph trains?
Just build more standard capacity, fuck the high speed shit. 125mph is easily fast enough for a country as compact and densely populated as the UK
Just make it affordable.
If I want to get from London to Manchester tomorrow for 9 o'clock, it's £224.70 for a standard single. Another £234.70 to add a return after 6pm.
That's a gobsmacking four hundred and sixty quid I'd be out if, say, someone rang me now and asked me to pop up to their office to talk about some new business (yes, I know there's Teams et al, but sometimes people want to, I dunno, actually meet you in person before hiring you).
Round trip in my car, petrol probably about seventy quid.
It's a 400 mile round trip.
That's a good £200 including petrol, insurance, maintenance, depreciation and so on.
Even if you go with the Treasury's parsimonious allowance it's £190.
Not including any parking fees. Not including having to drive for seven or eight hours (and even for that, add the toll on the M6 Toll).
I agree with you it should be cheaper. Much cheaper. But driving isn't quite so ridiculously a cheaper option when you weigh it all up.
Train travel is insanely expensive in the UK, I entirely agree with that
When I take trains abroad in countries with roughly similar wealth-levels as the UK the price of a train ticket is often a third of that in the UK. How do they manage it? Where have we gone wrong?
Labyrinthine industry structures thanks to privatisation; insane engineering and consultancy prices; absolutely no sense of direction.
Example: 15 years ago or so, the Government decided to move towards electrification (which pretty much everywhere else in Europe has been doing for ages). So they started electrifying a load of lines and ordered a load of electric trains.
The electrification cost more and took longer than expected (like I say, insane prices) so the Government abandoned it halfway. The Oxford electrification only got as far as Didcot. The Bristol electrification only got as far as Chippenham. And so on.
But they'd already ordered the trains. So we now have fleets of electric trains sitting around and nowhere to run them. (@Sunil_Prasannan can tell you the numbers.) One bunch of electric intercity trains had to be expensively fitted with diesel engines. Another set of comfortable 1990s electric trains - not that old in railway terms - got carted to the scrap yard.
This is just one example. There are loads. Like the fleet of Transpennine trains that's been sent back into store after three years because no-one added to the specification "the engines should not wake up the entire town of Scarborough when starting up at 5am". The entire industry is dysfunctional. Every five years the Government wakes up and notices this and thinks "ah, what we need is another reorganisation and a STRATEGY". You can fill in the rest yourself.
Illuminating. Thankyou
The tragicomedy is that Major proposed breaking BR up into the Big 4 companies that were merged together to form BR. Much in the way the Japanese system works you would have had a regional company responsible for infrastructure and operations.
This would have provided the simplicity, stability and vertical integration that is missing today. Instead the Treasury insisted on the franchising model and so the chaos ensued until we get to where we are today - a fragmented mess. Our trains cost a fortune to administer. Contracts on contracts on contracts. An army of lawyers and middle managers taking money away from the actual service.
They probably learned the wrong lessons from the privatisation of BT.
The Major solution was illegal under EU law.
Yes, apparently. Although I have recently heard other voices state that that was the DfT (or its predecessor) and the Treasury's reading of EU law, rather than actual EU law. In that if we'd explained why we wanted that sort of split, and put in place safeguards to allow Open Access / other operators, they would have been okay with it. But the question was never asked.
Though that sort of split would not have fixed some of the big issues that faced BR, and which privatisation in the form that happened, did. In fact, the same issues bedeviled the Big Four as well...
O/T I have signed up for 3 free months of Apple TV on the back of Mrs P's new iPhone offer, principally to watch Masters of the Air.
Is there anything else on AppleTV I should take a look at?
Slow Horses!
I enjoyed Shrinking.
And Ted Lasso even if a bit kitschy.
I’m watching For All Mankind I like too, because it’s different. It certainly looks the part, very arty late sixties look and feel. What they should have done though, because we are not feeling what they are feeling as the first episode opened, is done the whole of the first series as a tightly observed factual, till the Russian landing in June in the last episode. The counterfactual not only means you don’t know what happens next, is Ted Kennedy so caught up in the nations mood he decides not to go partying on Chappaquiddick Island but go to Washington for the hearings? Will Apollo 11 find the surface rocky and crash?
Don’t bother with Killers of the Flower Moon. You could make one neat snip taking off the first hour and end up with a better film. It surprised me I enjoyed Napoleon more, based on what I anticipated from the two films, though I still wouldn’t recommend it. It’s not about length, the Irishman was three hours too, but raced along.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD
I am now spending so much time OUT of the UK (a bit more than half the year, the last two years) I reckon I am getting a perspective. Or I hope so. Seen from afar Sunak’s government is not that disastrous, relatively, and Sunak himself is far from a disaster. He comes across as honest (unlike Boris), and as sane (unlike Truss) and as personable and articulate (unlike TMay). He is intelligent and kind if a bit unworldly (it seems to me). His wealth is an issue, but on the upside it insulates him from corruption - he does not need to be corrupt
His policies may disappoint many but these are disappointing times for almost every western nation. The west as a whole is in quite steep relative decline and nearly all major western countries face similar and grievous challenges - mass migration, demographic descent, illegal migration, global insecurity, climate change, energy prices, a need to beef up defence even as these societies age, and so on and so forth. Sunak is facing the same problems as Macron, Schulz, Meloni, Biden etc and it is not obvious to me that he is doing notably WORSE than any of them; and its even less obvious that Starmer has the ideas, energy, brilliance that will make things better
Sunak is a perfectly adequate prime minister doing the job of prime minister at maybe the worst possible time in the last 40 years, and he’s a Tory PM at the arse-end of 13 disappointing Tory years
He’s just *unlucky*
I don't think he's 'just' unlucky. I have plenty of sympathy with the idea he is pretty adequate in a lot of ways, albeit inadequate to face up to the challenges the country is facing. And it may even be true that at an earlier moment he might have been a decent PM, even though since he became PM earlier than anyone in at least 120 years he could not have risen any faster.
But the counter to that is he has failed on his own terms - polling has not improved, it has declined, he's either unable to tackle major policy issues despite a comfortable majority or unwilling, and he seems to have no sense of vision or direction. Accepting that we are in disappointing, declining times for us, only mitigates him so much.
And of course most PMs might be able to claim they could have done alright had they not faced the particular challenges they did. Would Cameron have been well placed to lead the Brexit years? No. Would Boris havebeen well placed to lead a minority or a coalition? No. Would May have been ok if not facing Brexit? Maybe.
I feel like history may judge that Sunak did not deserve the sheer level of defeat he will suffer, but that's not much solace to him now.
Sunak isn't 'just' unlucky, he's not unlucky at all.
Completely the opposite: he's lucky, lucky, lucky! - as was cogently argued in a thread header last month.
Let me repeat: Sunak has been incredibly lucky to become PM at all, unbelievably lucky.
The fact that he's a very poor PM is a in part the result that he hasn't had to strive to get there. He got there through luck, not inherent skill, and as a result we should not be surprised that he does not have the skill to do the job well.
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD
I am now spending so much time OUT of the UK (a bit more than half the year, the last two years) I reckon I am getting a perspective. Or I hope so. Seen from afar Sunak’s government is not that disastrous, relatively, and Sunak himself is far from a disaster. He comes across as honest (unlike Boris), and as sane (unlike Truss) and as personable and articulate (unlike TMay). He is intelligent and kind if a bit unworldly (it seems to me). His wealth is an issue, but on the upside it insulates him from corruption - he does not need to be corrupt
His policies may disappoint many but these are disappointing times for almost every western nation. The west as a whole is in quite steep relative decline and nearly all major western countries face similar and grievous challenges - mass migration, demographic descent, illegal migration, global insecurity, climate change, energy prices, a need to beef up defence even as these societies age, and so on and so forth. Sunak is facing the same problems as Macron, Schulz, Meloni, Biden etc and it is not obvious to me that he is doing notably WORSE than any of them; and its even less obvious that Starmer has the ideas, energy, brilliance that will make things better
Sunak is a perfectly adequate prime minister doing the job of prime minister at maybe the worst possible time in the last 40 years, and he’s a Tory PM at the arse-end of 13 disappointing Tory years
He’s just *unlucky*
7/10 for at least the effort.
And it’s not entirely untrue.
But he has no strategy or foresight. The marbles episode was foolish. Cancelling HS2 up north (and then having your party in London campaigning that potholes were being mended with the savings) was foolish. This whole Rwanda nonsense is foolish.
And he should have understood that his USP, after three PMs increasingly inadequate in their different ways, was being the sensible, moderate, practical guy who would restore us to sensible politics. That was his mission, but he buckled at the first hurdle and is now doing all this nutty stuff, trashing his own brand.
He’s made errors of course. I’m not claiming he’s a great prime monster - he clearly isn’t. I am merely saying he is a decent middling PM who just happens to be in power when times are as tough as most of us can remember - literally war and plague are stalking the globe
And he has inherited an awful lot of shite policies from prior PMs of all stripes. Migration is a massive issue - but not of his doing. Post Covid health issues are also huge - not his fault
Anyway he’ll be gone this year. And then we will have Starmer’s boring nasal tones explaining why nothing is getting especially better, and he’ll be doing it with extra loads of Wokeness
He will be unpopular after a year and likely loathed after two or three
Your initial post consists of a lot of points that might have seemed valid to me at one time, but they're not borne out by the way events have developed. Sunak being incorruptibly rich for example - I have made that very point. Yet, there is a repeated theme of the personal enrichment of the Sunaks occurring as a result of policy decisions taken by Sunak. That may all be perfectly above board, but it's there. Perhaps one can never be too rich.
As for his USP, the 'dull' managerialism - we live in challenging times requiring significant changes instigated by a determined Government. Truss understood that for all her faults. Rishi's inaction in the face of the COL crisis amounts to an attack on living standards. He seems satisfied to do some twiddling and have a few 'wedge issues', but overall to lie back and accept 'the new normal' and its devastating impact on the public.
O/T I have signed up for 3 free months of Apple TV on the back of Mrs P's new iPhone offer, principally to watch Masters of the Air.
Is there anything else on AppleTV I should take a look at?
No but the BBC is currently plugging its 2012 series Jet! When Britain Ruled the Skies Series which celebrates an unlikely story of outstanding British aviation achievement at a time of national austerity, the breathtaking planes that were built and the remarkable men who flew them. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b01m85vv/jet-when-britain-ruled-the-skies
Episode 1. Military Marvels How Britain led the world into the jet age with a new generation of fighters and bombers.
Episode 2. The Shape of Things to Come A look at how, by 1960, the UK's passenger airline industry was the largest in the world.
Horrible stuff, though I'm distracted by the comment that he had not met any Tories until he was at university. Presumably he had but did not know it until then.
He grew up in fucking Bramhall. It seems inconceivable he wouldn't have known any Tories. Granted, he is almost a decade younger than me - but still. Tories aplenty in the comfortable outer suburbs of Stockport in those days.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
Who knows. But the problem with faking something like a screenshot is that it throws what he's saying into doubt.
Unless he's managed to upload old messages onto the new system?
(I lost a load of old SMS messages I'd kept for years when an old phone went wrong. I also lost all my WhatsApp stuff at the same time...)
Did we ever get to the bottom of that Telegraph/YouGov 'Any other Tory leader' map?
There was a bit on it in the statistics program on R4 this morning. Apparently that bit of fantasy was done by the Telegraph and Yougov are disowning it. What they did is assume 100% of Reform voters would vote Tory under any other leader.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
He says it’s from Facebook, and has posted an additional screenshot. So probably real.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
Who knows. But the problem with faking something like a screenshot is that it throws what he's saying into doubt.
Unless he's managed to upload old messages onto the new system?
(I lost a load of old SMS messages I'd kept for years when an old phone went wrong. I also lost all my WhatsApp stuff at the same time...)
Off-topic briefly. Watching Sunak at PMQs I have the horrible realisation that as appalling as Sunak's performance is, he *genuinely* believes he is doing a brilliant job.
OK I’m going to Challenge the Narrative
SUNAK ISN’T THAT BAD
I am now spending so much time OUT of the UK (a bit more than half the year, the last two years) I reckon I am getting a perspective. Or I hope so. Seen from afar Sunak’s government is not that disastrous, relatively, and Sunak himself is far from a disaster. He comes across as honest (unlike Boris), and as sane (unlike Truss) and as personable and articulate (unlike TMay). He is intelligent and kind if a bit unworldly (it seems to me). His wealth is an issue, but on the upside it insulates him from corruption - he does not need to be corrupt
His policies may disappoint many but these are disappointing times for almost every western nation. The west as a whole is in quite steep relative decline and nearly all major western countries face similar and grievous challenges - mass migration, demographic descent, illegal migration, global insecurity, climate change, energy prices, a need to beef up defence even as these societies age, and so on and so forth. Sunak is facing the same problems as Macron, Schulz, Meloni, Biden etc and it is not obvious to me that he is doing notably WORSE than any of them; and its even less obvious that Starmer has the ideas, energy, brilliance that will make things better
Sunak is a perfectly adequate prime minister doing the job of prime minister at maybe the worst possible time in the last 40 years, and he’s a Tory PM at the arse-end of 13 disappointing Tory years
He’s just *unlucky*
Unlike some of the others, however, he has really failed to take on the nutters on his own side - which gives the impression of chaos. Worse, he doesn't seem to be capable of understanding it.
The version of the Sunak government people thought they were getting is that. Things being a bit shit but with a diligent, PM as problem solver working to put things back on track (also Starmer's current pitch). Might not have won the Tories the election but would have put them back in the conversation.
Instead they got Braverman, endless rows about a Rwanda policy almost no one among the general public thinks will work, and more party chaos brought about by Sunak offering up the nutters red meat and expecting them to be satisfied, rather than demand more. To the extent there are Tory MPs who will publicly go about arguing for a Truss redux.
Whether or not he's not too bad at the practicalities of being PM is an open question - but he's been absolutely terrible at the politics and party management.
He didn't start by asking the right question- what was a Sunak Premiership for?
The sensible answer would have been to tidy the worst of the mess, get a couple of low controversy personal passion legacy projects on the books. Probably leading to better regards in a decade or so.
Instead, we get these bad mad bets at increasingly poor odds. Anything to move the dial, with more and more panic as the dial refuses to move.
The half-hearted performative right wing flashes of Rishi (which in the case of his Net Zero handbrake was the only thing that resulted in a positive poll shift for him) are a shame, because they allow idiots to suggest that Rishi's problem has been that he wasn't centrist Dad enough.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
It may well be another messaging platform but the odds of a 2005 platform looking the Apple messaging platform from circa 2018 onwards, well I have my doubts.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
He says it’s from Facebook, and has posted an additional screenshot. So probably real.
Aww, a whole inverted pyramid of conspiracist piffle gone in a flash.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
He says it’s from Facebook, and has posted an additional screenshot. So probably real.
Facebook was founded in 2004 - so that could work - but Facebook Messenger not until 2011, I think?
O/T I have signed up for 3 free months of Apple TV on the back of Mrs P's new iPhone offer, principally to watch Masters of the Air.
Is there anything else on AppleTV I should take a look at?
No but the BBC is currently plugging its 2012 series Jet! When Britain Ruled the Skies Series which celebrates an unlikely story of outstanding British aviation achievement at a time of national austerity, the breathtaking planes that were built and the remarkable men who flew them. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b01m85vv/jet-when-britain-ruled-the-skies
Episode 1. Military Marvels How Britain led the world into the jet age with a new generation of fighters and bombers.
Episode 2. The Shape of Things to Come A look at how, by 1960, the UK's passenger airline industry was the largest in the world.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
He says it’s from Facebook, and has posted an additional screenshot. So probably real.
Facebook was founded in 2004 - so that could work - but Facebook Messenger not until 2011, I think?
Here’s the other screenshot. Perhaps existing conversations got imported into Messenger.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
Who knows. But the problem with faking something like a screenshot is that it throws what he's saying into doubt.
Unless he's managed to upload old messages onto the new system?
(I lost a load of old SMS messages I'd kept for years when an old phone went wrong. I also lost all my WhatsApp stuff at the same time...)
You are Boris Johnson and I claim my £5!
I've mentioned it before, when people said it was impossible to lose WhatsApp messages. Well, I blooming well managed to, and I'm supposed to be technically literate!
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
It may well be another messaging platform but the odds of a 2005 platform looking the Apple messaging platform from circa 2018 onwards, well I have my doubts.
Your doubts might be valid but it's an odd thing to fake given the risks of techies pulling the fake apart not to mention libel litigation.
I suspect it's real but I cannot pretend to know why it looks like it does.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
He says it’s from Facebook, and has posted an additional screenshot. So probably real.
Aww, a whole inverted pyramid of conspiracist piffle gone in a flash.
Facebook definitely didn't look like that in 2005. I'm also pretty sceptical he and his adversary were both on facebook in 2005. I was at uni in 2007 and it was 9nky just catching on.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
He says it’s from Facebook, and has posted an additional screenshot. So probably real.
Facebook was founded in 2004 - so that could work - but Facebook Messenger not until 2011, I think?
Here’s the other screenshot. Perhaps existing conversations got imported into Messenger.
That does not look like Messenger to me, imported or otherwise. That still looks like iMessage.
Edit - TBF, it probably isn't important. It just looks odd, especially since Jones must have kept these messages for 19 years - why?
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
He says it’s from Facebook, and has posted an additional screenshot. So probably real.
Aww, a whole inverted pyramid of conspiracist piffle gone in a flash.
Facebook definitely didn't look like that in 2005. I'm also pretty sceptical he and his adversary were both on facebook in 2005. I was at uni in 2007 and it was 9nky just catching on.
Remember Facebook was invite-only for posh unis to begin with, and he was at Oxford.
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
I was wondering about that earlier - but seeing as though I didn't get a smart phone until Jan 2016, I assumed that I was just a long way behind the curve.
The iPhone was launched in 2007 and iMessages wasn't launched until 2011.
I knew your devotion to Apple products would prove relevant or instructive eventually!
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
Who knows. But the problem with faking something like a screenshot is that it throws what he's saying into doubt.
Unless he's managed to upload old messages onto the new system?
(I lost a load of old SMS messages I'd kept for years when an old phone went wrong. I also lost all my WhatsApp stuff at the same time...)
You are Boris Johnson and I claim my £5!
I've mentioned it before, when people said it was impossible to lose WhatsApp messages. Well, I blooming well managed to, and I'm supposed to be technically literate!
Comments
I've been doing some work in north Worcestershire, Kidderminster to be exact. I looked at getting the train.
It would actually be quicker to bike it.
https://x.com/nikkihaley/status/1749942244990165333
Go on, do it Boris, you know you want to...
Getting the train to work in London can be £12 return compared with £70 if I book on the day in peak time.
I don't think Blanche is one-eyed but perhaps she should take over the leadership
In the case of the former, the Channel Tunnel came from France and the UK asking exactly that question. And a Thames airport has been considered many times in the past, e.g. Maplin Sands, of off Sheppey.
Asking such questions is good government, even if the answer is :"No!". Occasionally the answer is "Yes!", although with caveats, and you can then start progressing. But if you don't ask the questions, you'll get...
The Garden Bridge debacle was different in that it did it the 'wrong' way around. Instead of asking: "How can we improve cross-Thames transport for pedestrians and cyclists?", an architect got 'his' design chucked where he wanted it because, well, reasons. Hence we would have ended up with a bridge in the 'wrong' place, costing an absolute fortune, that was barely fit for purpose.
Certainly now would be timely, for him to ask her re: best ways to decorate one's federal prison cell!
Being talked of as next 'Mr Bates' drama.
Dr Rachel Clarke
@doctor_oxford
·
8h
Thank you @thetimes for this amazing piece about BREATHTAKING - coming to
@itv in Feb.
We've tried so hard to show what really happened behind closed hospital doors - the grit & courage & compassion of NHS staff. And the same, in abundance, from patients & their families 💙
https://twitter.com/doctor_oxford
Sunak binned
Boris supporting MP in winnable seat resigns
Boris is the candidate & wins by election
Becomes leader
2019 Tories are happy
"Heathrow Airport Holdings Limited is in turn owned by FGP Topco Limited, a consortium owned and led by the infrastructure specialist Ferrovial S.A. (25.00%), Qatar Investment Authority (20.00%), Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) (12.62%), GIC (11.20%), Australian Retirement Trust (11.18%), China Investment Corporation (10.00%) and Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) (10.00%)."
So that'd have been some of our academics fed in their old age, if nothing else ).
- Boris has Damascene conversion, takes the job seriously and convinces the voters he is good at it. Hmmm....
The easier single step is
- Rishi convinces the voters he is better than Starmer at the job.
As after I watch a good horror film, I shall be having nightmares now.
Comes mere months after Western intelligence agencies warned of attacks on water providers
https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/23/southern_water_confirms_cyberattack/
Southern Water. Attackers claim to have stolen scans of identity documents such as passports and driving licenses. Oh dear.
So they indulge fantasists like Trump who promise to make them top dog again. In the UK Starmer doesn’t even offer that. Just more of the same with a slightly wild claim of more competence.
But this despond has to be someone’s fault and it can’t be ours so blame the PM.
The SDP seem like the more appropriate party for disgruntled red wall voters but they are still stuck in relative obscurity.
In all probability Horizon is reasonably robust now. It may not be efficient, it may not be easy to amend and enhance but it is almost certainly as robust as it has ever been.
Scrapping it now and replacing it would merely introduce another new highly bug-ridden system.
This is the reason most retail banks are running on systems that started life in the 60s or 70s.
Is there anything else on AppleTV I should take a look at?
But the counter to that is he has failed on his own terms - polling has not improved, it has declined, he's either unable to tackle major policy issues despite a comfortable majority or unwilling, and he seems to have no sense of vision or direction. Accepting that we are in disappointing, declining times for us, only mitigates him so much.
And of course most PMs might be able to claim they could have done alright had they not faced the particular challenges they did. Would Cameron have been well placed to lead the Brexit years? No. Would Boris havebeen well placed to lead a minority or a coalition? No. Would May have been ok if not facing Brexit? Maybe.
I feel like history may judge that Sunak did not deserve the sheer level of defeat he will suffer, but that's not much solace to him now.
Also, who’s leader after Sunak is binned, and why would they support Johnson returning to the Commons?
Of course, Boris 2022 was not the same man as Boris 2019, I think the idea all would be well that some of his fans push is improbable, but it's not as though there is no possibility they would be better off.
And Ted Lasso even if a bit kitschy.
@OwenJones84
Simon Clarke was in the year below me at university, and his crew were the first Tories I'd then met.
And all I'm saying is it had quite the lasting impact on my politics!
His best friend was
@CllrCarlJackson
, who sent me these messages after we graduated.
https://x.com/OwenJones84/status/1750147189932782025?s=20
Though that sort of split would not have fixed some of the big issues that faced BR, and which privatisation in the form that happened, did. In fact, the same issues bedeviled the Big Four as well...
I am intrigued by what messaging platform was used.
It’s not about length, the Irishman was three hours too, but raced along.
Completely the opposite: he's lucky, lucky, lucky! - as was cogently argued in a thread header last month.
Let me repeat: Sunak has been incredibly lucky to become PM at all, unbelievably lucky.
The fact that he's a very poor PM is a in part the result that he hasn't had to strive to get there. He got there through luck, not inherent skill, and as a result we should not be surprised that he does not have the skill to do the job well.
As for his USP, the 'dull' managerialism - we live in challenging times requiring significant changes instigated by a determined Government. Truss understood that for all her faults. Rishi's inaction in the face of the COL crisis amounts to an attack on living standards. He seems satisfied to do some twiddling and have a few 'wedge issues', but overall to lie back and accept 'the new normal' and its devastating impact on the public.
My view of Starmer is changing to someone who’s a bit of a bruiser, can take it and no qualms to dish it.
Series which celebrates an unlikely story of outstanding British aviation achievement at a time of national austerity, the breathtaking planes that were built and the remarkable men who flew them.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b01m85vv/jet-when-britain-ruled-the-skies
Episode 1. Military Marvels
How Britain led the world into the jet age with a new generation of fighters and bombers.
Episode 2. The Shape of Things to Come
A look at how, by 1960, the UK's passenger airline industry was the largest in the world.
Ireland is struggling with new realities in an age of global migration.
Brian Kaller"
https://quillette.com/2024/01/19/anti-immigration-riots-in-ireland/
Granted, he is almost a decade younger than me - but still. Tories aplenty in the comfortable outer suburbs of Stockport in those days.
That said, I will be very surprised if Stone, Penkridge and Great Wyrley goes Labour.
So the conclusion is, what, Owen Jones has fabricated this whole thing?
Unless he's managed to upload old messages onto the new system?
(I lost a load of old SMS messages I'd kept for years when an old phone went wrong. I also lost all my WhatsApp stuff at the same time...)
In other words it was complete nonsense.
Boris patsy as caretaker until he’s an MP again
Carl Jackson sounds a right charmer and all if those messages are genuine.
Her first response was "it's fucking miles away". There hasn't been a second response.
I suspect it's real but I cannot pretend to know why it looks like it does.
I'm also pretty sceptical he and his adversary were both on facebook in 2005. I was at uni in 2007 and it was 9nky just catching on.
Edit - TBF, it probably isn't important. It just looks odd, especially since Jones must have kept these messages for 19 years - why?