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Today is Server Move Day – politicalbetting.com

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  • Options
    OldKingColeOldKingCole Posts: 32,127
    Selebian said:

    Mortimer said:

    DavidL said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Turns out I was too depressed to do dry January. Happily I don't have any alcohol in the house, or...

    I've got a cabinet full. Tbh I do actually need to drink some or there'll be no room for whatever someone might get me for my birthday in June.
    My daughter's subjects at University, whatever they were actually called, always seemed to turn into sociology. She was asked to define middle class and came up with the answer people who store alcohol in their house for more than a month.

    I think its as good a working definition as any and of course fits into the difference between living hand to mouth and having that cushion so many of our fellow citizens just don't have.

    So, I'm afraid that's you labelled. Middle class.
    Quite right. Everyone else knows the best place to store it is in the cellar.
    I would if I could but I can’t. No cellar!
    And therefore you are, of course, only middle class :disappointed:

    Last (and only) time I had a cellar was in a student house at uni. But I don't think we stored alcohol anywhere for more than a day or two at most.
    I don’t think I’ve ever lived in a house with a cellar, TBH.
  • Options
    TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 41,533
    LHR and LGW as an example get dozens of bomb threats every day.
  • Options
    JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 39,216
    Nigelb said:

    I hope the RN is paying attention to the naval war in the Black Sea.
    A lot of conventional kit is going to become obsolete. However crap the Russian navy, drone attacks are just too cost effective for it not to affect western navies too.

    Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate GUR says its Group 13 special unit overnight destroyed Russia’s Ivanovets missile ship with sea drones, sharing a video purporting to show the attack off the coast of occupied Crimea. GUR says the warship “rolled to the stern and sank.”
    https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1753015072014639303

    That video seems rather convincing. Early on you can see the drone going towards it, right next to a rather large hole that had already been made. A few seconds before, you see a couple of figures on deck nearly at the impact point.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,777
    edited February 1
    a
    Selebian said:

    Another Russian warship sunk by Ukrainian drones.
    The caption that went with the photo was: Russian MoD be like: "attacks repelled"

    Sunk? Clearly fake news - you can clearly see it's still sticking out above the water! :wink:
    Indeed. After destroying the missile(s) by hitting them.

    EDIT: that'll buff out - bit of filler and you'll never know.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,777

    Nigelb said:

    It'll be interesting to see how the Tifosi react to Hamilton at Ferrari. Will they throw a black cat at him again?

    (Weirdly, the Tifosi (Ferrari fans) seem to really matter to Ferrari. It's much more like a football team than any other F1 team; Tifosi moans can even lead to changes in management.)

    If he wins, they will love him.
    If not, it could be ugly.
    They loved Mansell, and he didn't always win. They called him 'Il Leone'. It might be because he won on his first outing, or because he was the last driver that the boss personally picked to drive for Ferrari. Or perhaps because of his rather (ahem) idiosyncratic driving style and character...

    I don't think there's that much logic behind the tifosi's views, much like many fans.
    I thought it was because he drove like an Italian taxi driver?
  • Options
    MattWMattW Posts: 18,862
    edited February 1
    Sandpit said:

    Dura_Ace said:

    Leon said:

    You can see the future of urban transport here in Phnom Penh

    Anyone who has been to urban Asia will know the "tuk tuk" - a little two-stroke three wheel motorised "rickshaw" - extremely handy in dense urban environments, able to nip about much easier than cars, BUT also considerably safer than mopeds and motorbikes, and you can carry luggage etc

    Tuk-tuks in Phnom Penh (and Bangkok etc) have been Uberised. You can now summon them with an app like Grab. There are so many one will normally arrive, ready to go, within less than two minutes, often it is about 30 seconds - basically instantaneous

    Using the app the driver takes you where you want to go (no language problem) and the payment is made from your phone/card, no money changes hands (like Uber)

    It is a supremely efficient way of doing short-medium journeys in a big city

    Now, combine the Uberised Tuk Tuk with self driving. It won't be hard to make tuk-tuks autonomous, if they can do cars (tuk tuks are lighter, they won't be used for long journeys, and so forth)

    THAT is the future of urban transport. Self driving tuk tuks. Entire fleets of them (clean and electric, not two stroke) shuttling around cities, doing 80% of human journeys, to the shops and back, to the pub, and so on. At night the uberised autonomous tuk tuks will store themselves in underground garages

    Thus the urban car becomes obsolete, for most people

    I'm negotiating with my wife at the minute, to allow me to buy a Tuk Tuk. Either that or an electric cargo bike. She keeps arguing that I've got enough bikes and scooters in bits as it is. I merely point out that I'm retired and need stuff to do, otherwise she'll be be wiping my chin and changing my nappy within a year.
    As the only person on here who is tuk-tuk type rated, I feel compelled to comment. They are all wildly dangerous and slow but if you've really got to, then the move is an Indian built Bajaj.

    Shit car YouTube specialist Hubnut did a video on them, so watch that and reflect on your choices.
    Genuine LOL at “tuk-tuk type rated”. :D
    I think you would be better off with an auto version of an EAV 2Cubed e-cycle van. They are made in the UK and already in use in a number of places.

    A 3-wheeler tuk-tuk could tip over at the nearest pothole.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,777
    biggles said:

    Carnyx said:

    isam said:

    Mike Freer standing down is a symptom of a new, worrying political phenomenon. Political sectarianism is now here and it won't go away. We must protect our MPs.

    https://x.com/nigel_farage/status/1752981445839040952?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    Aww, how sweet that the person who has done more than most to encourage political sectarianism is now worried about it.
    "Political sectarianism is now here" - I didn't know NI wasn't part of the UK, even if one discounts aspects of West Central Belt and Merseyside politics in the mid-C20.
    I think, sadly, we will need to go down the American route. Threats - even "I was only" joking - against politicians treated as serious crimes. As in make a threat, go to actual prison.
    I would go the opposite way. I dislike the idea of thought crimes, so rather than criminalise the threat, increase the security of those who get threatened. We owe our MPs a protective bubble. All of them.
    The American system is partly a bubble. But one partly created by fear of consequence.

    For example, if the Secret Service decide you are a Bit Fun, they put you on the no-fly list. Then you can't take a plane *anywhere*.
  • Options
    SelebianSelebian Posts: 7,546
    edited February 1
    biggles said:

    Carnyx said:

    isam said:

    Mike Freer standing down is a symptom of a new, worrying political phenomenon. Political sectarianism is now here and it won't go away. We must protect our MPs.

    https://x.com/nigel_farage/status/1752981445839040952?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    Aww, how sweet that the person who has done more than most to encourage political sectarianism is now worried about it.
    "Political sectarianism is now here" - I didn't know NI wasn't part of the UK, even if one discounts aspects of West Central Belt and Merseyside politics in the mid-C20.
    I think, sadly, we will need to go down the American route. Threats - even "I was only" joking - against politicians treated as serious crimes. As in make a threat, go to actual prison.
    I would go the opposite way. I dislike the idea of thought crimes, so rather than criminalise the threat, increase the security of those who get threatened. We owe our MPs a protective bubble. All of them.
    It's not criminalising the thought (which has no impact, unless acted on). It's criminalising the threat, which has a very real impact on those threatened (and their families etc).

    ETA: But there would need to be care taken around figures of speech, need to show some actual intent to intimidate at least. Legally it could be hard to define satisfactorily.
  • Options
    CookieCookie Posts: 11,547

    Regardless of Irish festivals, Spring begins on 21 March, as any fule kno…………….

    That might be your personal, idiosyncratic, definition, but the idea of sorting starting on any single day is a human simplification for what is a gradual process, and so many different definitions are both popular and useful.

    There is no meaningful way in which you can insist that your definition is right.
    Well you can, because that's (with a slight nuance of where we are in the leap year cycle) the way in which the astronomical spring is defined.
    I grant you there are several different ways in which you can define spring, but the astronomical spring which starts at the equinox is certainly a useful and accurate distinction.

    Other useful and accurate distinctions are:
    the meteorological spring, which starts on 1st March.
    the colloquial spring (I have made that term up), which starts when it starts to feel like spring.
    I'd say when the word 'spring' is used there is a roughly 30/30/30 chance that the user is talking about each one of the above definitions (with the other 10 for 'other' e.g. when the clocks go forward. All are linguistically valid and reasonably common, none are exclusively so.
  • Options
    Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,812
    Scott_xP said:

    Today might be greatest moment of European unity since the Battle of Waterloo.

    @SamCoatesSky

    An utterly fascinating picture. 👇🏻

    It’s THE inner sanctum of EU decision making. At a moment of crisis triggered by Victor Orban.

    Zoom in. Look closely at the faces. The decor. The table. The furniture.

    A moment of history. In a Feng Shui catastrophe.


    Not exactly the Yalta Conference, is it?
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,725
    Cookie said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    Mortimer said:

    Eabhal said:

    Leon said:

    You can see the future of urban transport here in Phnom Penh

    Anyone who has been to urban Asia will know the "tuk tuk" - a little two-stroke three wheel motorised "rickshaw" - extremely handy in dense urban environments, able to nip about much easier than cars, BUT also considerably safer than mopeds and motorbikes, and you can carry luggage etc

    Tuk-tuks in Phnom Penh (and Bangkok etc) have been Uberised. You can now summon them with an app like Grab. There are so many one will normally arrive, ready to go, within less than two minutes, often it is about 30 seconds - basically instantaneous

    Using the app the driver takes you where you want to go (no language problem) and the payment is made from your phone/card, no money changes hands (like Uber)

    It is a supremely efficient way of doing short-medium journeys in a big city

    Now, combine the Uberised Tuk Tuk with self driving. It won't be hard to make tuk-tuks autonomous, if they can do cars (tuk tuks are lighter, they won't be used for long journeys, and so forth)

    THAT is the future of urban transport. Self driving tuk tuks. Entire fleets of them (clean and electric, not two stroke) shuttling around cities, doing 80% of human journeys, to the shops and back, to the pub, and so on. At night the uberised autonomous tuk tuks will store themselves in underground garages

    Thus the urban car becomes obsolete, for most people

    I agree with the general idea, but split into two parts:

    There will be pool cars and vans (Uber, Enterprise, whatever) available on every street in urban Britain, and they will be cheap with scale and enormously popular. This will massively increase the amount of space available on residential streets - average mileage of personal cars is only 7,000 per year, and they spend most of their time parked. *

    However, most people, for most journeys, will get around on e-scooters (75% of car journeys in Edinburgh are single occupant, for example.)** They are used almost exclusively by arseholes at the moment but you can't escape the fact they are spectacularly efficient to store and run. That our legislation has so far stymied the scooter revolution is a gross failure.

    *Conspiracy theorists will cite Magna Carta in defence of their private vehicles and bomb a few pool cars, ULEZ style
    ** This will lead to an enormous spike in fatal road traffic collisions as cars and scooters begin to mix, but the revolution will survive it
    E Scooters are a massive safety risk, and their embrace by the anti carists is baffling.

    In most parts of the country they're banned from public roads.

    I say this as a non driver; private cars are simply not going to go away.
    They will go away in London if we introduce my brilliant driverless e-tuktuk idea

    Why spend all that money on a car if these things can whizz you about so quickly and efficiently. Sure some people will still want cars for status but you can’t legislate for insecure idiots

    And we will save millions of lives. No more drink driving. No more falling asleep at the wheel. No more cars running over kids

    It’s coming
    Will they navigate with what 3 words?
    Leon's idea is brilliant, but he may or may not be disappointed to know that it is not entirely original, and variants of it are being considered and have been considered for some time, by both public and private sector in the UK and elsewhere. Indeed, Uber's business model relies on driverless technology working: it only becomes profitable once you can elminate drivers, who are a massive part of the cost of a taxi; and minimise fuel costs, ditto.

    The problem with driverless cars in cities is that you drive down the cost of trips, which drives up trips, which causes congestion (especially once you factor in all those empty vehicles making trips to their next pickup or to overnight stabling). Whichever way you slice it, driverless cars are much more space hungry than mass transit. Tuktuks or similar do something to address this (clearly they take up less road space), but do not entirely eliminate the problem. They would talk to each other, so would use road space more efficiently, but might not lead to a pleasant urban environment to have hundreds of tuktuks constantly whizzing about (but better or worse than fewer, but noisier and more polluting, cars?)
    What you would get out of this is the virtual elmination of pavement parking, which would significantly improve road usage and lead to a more pleasant urban environment.

    Anyway, Leon - rest assured it's a worthwhile idea and it's being explored.
    I presume I am getting 10% of the profits
  • Options
    CarnyxCarnyx Posts: 40,076
    Selebian said:

    biggles said:

    Carnyx said:

    isam said:

    Mike Freer standing down is a symptom of a new, worrying political phenomenon. Political sectarianism is now here and it won't go away. We must protect our MPs.

    https://x.com/nigel_farage/status/1752981445839040952?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    Aww, how sweet that the person who has done more than most to encourage political sectarianism is now worried about it.
    "Political sectarianism is now here" - I didn't know NI wasn't part of the UK, even if one discounts aspects of West Central Belt and Merseyside politics in the mid-C20.
    I think, sadly, we will need to go down the American route. Threats - even "I was only" joking - against politicians treated as serious crimes. As in make a threat, go to actual prison.
    I would go the opposite way. I dislike the idea of thought crimes, so rather than criminalise the threat, increase the security of those who get threatened. We owe our MPs a protective bubble. All of them.
    It's not criminalising the thought (which has no impact, unless acted on). It's criminalising the threat, which has a very real impact on those threatened (and their families etc).

    ETA: But there would need to be care taken around figures of speech, need to show some actual intent to intimidate at least. Legally it could be hard to define satisfactorily.
    'Away and boil your head' - even if transliterated like that for a southern audience - might be tricky for our legislators.
  • Options
    JonathanJonathan Posts: 20,913

    Scott_xP said:

    Today might be greatest moment of European unity since the Battle of Waterloo.

    @SamCoatesSky

    An utterly fascinating picture. 👇🏻

    It’s THE inner sanctum of EU decision making. At a moment of crisis triggered by Victor Orban.

    Zoom in. Look closely at the faces. The decor. The table. The furniture.

    A moment of history. In a Feng Shui catastrophe.


    Not exactly the Yalta Conference, is it?
    If only Sunak were there to provide the occasion the gravitas it deserves.
  • Options

    Electoral Calculus has updated its prediction to a Lab Maj of 256.

    You had better all pray that this is wrong. My prediction in Ben's excellent PB competition was 254. If this turns out to be close, I will be insufferable.

    I can give you lessons on being modest to stop you being insufferable.

    Offer extends to all PBers.
  • Options

    Scott_xP said:

    Today might be greatest moment of European unity since the Battle of Waterloo.

    @SamCoatesSky

    An utterly fascinating picture. 👇🏻

    It’s THE inner sanctum of EU decision making. At a moment of crisis triggered by Victor Orban.

    Zoom in. Look closely at the faces. The decor. The table. The furniture.

    A moment of history. In a Feng Shui catastrophe.


    Not exactly the Yalta Conference, is it?
    Pretty sure that's the Holiday Inn at Bracknell.
  • Options
    FoxyFoxy Posts: 44,968
    edited February 1

    Electoral Calculus has updated its prediction to a Lab Maj of 256.

    You had better all pray that this is wrong. My prediction in Ben's excellent PB competition was 254. If this turns out to be close, I will be insufferable.

    I do like the way their chart provides a range as well as mean:


  • Options
    LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 15,579
    Cookie said:

    Regardless of Irish festivals, Spring begins on 21 March, as any fule kno…………….

    That might be your personal, idiosyncratic, definition, but the idea of sorting starting on any single day is a human simplification for what is a gradual process, and so many different definitions are both popular and useful.

    There is no meaningful way in which you can insist that your definition is right.
    Well you can, because that's (with a slight nuance of where we are in the leap year cycle) the way in which the astronomical spring is defined.
    I grant you there are several different ways in which you can define spring, but the astronomical spring which starts at the equinox is certainly a useful and accurate distinction.

    Other useful and accurate distinctions are:
    the meteorological spring, which starts on 1st March.
    the colloquial spring (I have made that term up), which starts when it starts to feel like spring.
    I'd say when the word 'spring' is used there is a roughly 30/30/30 chance that the user is talking about each one of the above definitions (with the other 10 for 'other' e.g. when the clocks go forward. All are linguistically valid and reasonably common, none are exclusively so.
    When I said "right" I should have said "exclusively right", though, to be honest, I'm not sure what's useful about the definition that starts on the equinox. If you wanted a definition that followed the astronomy and day length then you'd use the cross-quarter days.
  • Options
    Rate held at 5.25%
  • Options
    BOE expects inflation to reach 2% by April this year
  • Options
    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 76,028

    BOE expects inflation to reach 2% by April this year

    ok lets take a look at the vote.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,725
    Cookie said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    Mortimer said:

    Eabhal said:

    Leon said:

    You can see the future of urban transport here in Phnom Penh

    Anyone who has been to urban Asia will know the "tuk tuk" - a little two-stroke three wheel motorised "rickshaw" - extremely handy in dense urban environments, able to nip about much easier than cars, BUT also considerably safer than mopeds and motorbikes, and you can carry luggage etc

    Tuk-tuks in Phnom Penh (and Bangkok etc) have been Uberised. You can now summon them with an app like Grab. There are so many one will normally arrive, ready to go, within less than two minutes, often it is about 30 seconds - basically instantaneous

    Using the app the driver takes you where you want to go (no language problem) and the payment is made from your phone/card, no money changes hands (like Uber)

    It is a supremely efficient way of doing short-medium journeys in a big city

    Now, combine the Uberised Tuk Tuk with self driving. It won't be hard to make tuk-tuks autonomous, if they can do cars (tuk tuks are lighter, they won't be used for long journeys, and so forth)

    THAT is the future of urban transport. Self driving tuk tuks. Entire fleets of them (clean and electric, not two stroke) shuttling around cities, doing 80% of human journeys, to the shops and back, to the pub, and so on. At night the uberised autonomous tuk tuks will store themselves in underground garages

    Thus the urban car becomes obsolete, for most people

    I agree with the general idea, but split into two parts:

    There will be pool cars and vans (Uber, Enterprise, whatever) available on every street in urban Britain, and they will be cheap with scale and enormously popular. This will massively increase the amount of space available on residential streets - average mileage of personal cars is only 7,000 per year, and they spend most of their time parked. *

    However, most people, for most journeys, will get around on e-scooters (75% of car journeys in Edinburgh are single occupant, for example.)** They are used almost exclusively by arseholes at the moment but you can't escape the fact they are spectacularly efficient to store and run. That our legislation has so far stymied the scooter revolution is a gross failure.

    *Conspiracy theorists will cite Magna Carta in defence of their private vehicles and bomb a few pool cars, ULEZ style
    ** This will lead to an enormous spike in fatal road traffic collisions as cars and scooters begin to mix, but the revolution will survive it
    E Scooters are a massive safety risk, and their embrace by the anti carists is baffling.

    In most parts of the country they're banned from public roads.

    I say this as a non driver; private cars are simply not going to go away.
    They will go away in London if we introduce my brilliant driverless e-tuktuk idea

    Why spend all that money on a car if these things can whizz you about so quickly and efficiently. Sure some people will still want cars for status but you can’t legislate for insecure idiots

    And we will save millions of lives. No more drink driving. No more falling asleep at the wheel. No more cars running over kids

    It’s coming
    Will they navigate with what 3 words?
    Leon's idea is brilliant, but he may or may not be disappointed to know that it is not entirely original, and variants of it are being considered and have been considered for some time, by both public and private sector in the UK and elsewhere. Indeed, Uber's business model relies on driverless technology working: it only becomes profitable once you can elminate drivers, who are a massive part of the cost of a taxi; and minimise fuel costs, ditto.

    The problem with driverless cars in cities is that you drive down the cost of trips, which drives up trips, which causes congestion (especially once you factor in all those empty vehicles making trips to their next pickup or to overnight stabling). Whichever way you slice it, driverless cars are much more space hungry than mass transit. Tuktuks or similar do something to address this (clearly they take up less road space), but do not entirely eliminate the problem. They would talk to each other, so would use road space more efficiently, but might not lead to a pleasant urban environment to have hundreds of tuktuks constantly whizzing about (but better or worse than fewer, but noisier and more polluting, cars?)
    What you would get out of this is the virtual elmination of pavement parking, which would significantly improve road usage and lead to a more pleasant urban environment.

    Anyway, Leon - rest assured it's a worthwhile idea and it's being explored.
    Also, as the e-tuktuks are driverless, they can be absolutely tiny. Half the space of a normal tuk tuk is taken by the driver and his wheel. Get rid of that and my minimalist e-tuktuk for solo passengers will be the size of a Peel P50 - but you won't need to drive


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peel_P50

    You would have different sizes for different needs, of course

    Another massive benefit is that you can then get rid of all the hideous shite that cars need in cities - garages, tyre shops, fitters, repair shops, and all the fucking horrible car parks, paved over gardens, turn them into urban woods! Bring back our gardens!

    It will be such a positive revolution - removing all that pollution, saving so many lives, on top of these urban benefits - it is surely bound to happen, in some form.
  • Options
    CookieCookie Posts: 11,547
    edited February 1
    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    Mortimer said:

    Eabhal said:

    Leon said:

    You can see the future of urban transport here in Phnom Penh

    Anyone who has been to urban Asia will know the "tuk tuk" - a little two-stroke three wheel motorised "rickshaw" - extremely handy in dense urban environments, able to nip about much easier than cars, BUT also considerably safer than mopeds and motorbikes, and you can carry luggage etc

    Tuk-tuks in Phnom Penh (and Bangkok etc) have been Uberised. You can now summon them with an app like Grab. There are so many one will normally arrive, ready to go, within less than two minutes, often it is about 30 seconds - basically instantaneous

    Using the app the driver takes you where you want to go (no language problem) and the payment is made from your phone/card, no money changes hands (like Uber)

    It is a supremely efficient way of doing short-medium journeys in a big city

    Now, combine the Uberised Tuk Tuk with self driving. It won't be hard to make tuk-tuks autonomous, if they can do cars (tuk tuks are lighter, they won't be used for long journeys, and so forth)

    THAT is the future of urban transport. Self driving tuk tuks. Entire fleets of them (clean and electric, not two stroke) shuttling around cities, doing 80% of human journeys, to the shops and back, to the pub, and so on. At night the uberised autonomous tuk tuks will store themselves in underground garages

    Thus the urban car becomes obsolete, for most people

    I agree with the general idea, but split into two parts:

    There will be pool cars and vans (Uber, Enterprise, whatever) available on every street in urban Britain, and they will be cheap with scale and enormously popular. This will massively increase the amount of space available on residential streets - average mileage of personal cars is only 7,000 per year, and they spend most of their time parked. *

    However, most people, for most journeys, will get around on e-scooters (75% of car journeys in Edinburgh are single occupant, for example.)** They are used almost exclusively by arseholes at the moment but you can't escape the fact they are spectacularly efficient to store and run. That our legislation has so far stymied the scooter revolution is a gross failure.

    *Conspiracy theorists will cite Magna Carta in defence of their private vehicles and bomb a few pool cars, ULEZ style
    ** This will lead to an enormous spike in fatal road traffic collisions as cars and scooters begin to mix, but the revolution will survive it
    E Scooters are a massive safety risk, and their embrace by the anti carists is baffling.

    In most parts of the country they're banned from public roads.

    I say this as a non driver; private cars are simply not going to go away.
    They will go away in London if we introduce my brilliant driverless e-tuktuk idea

    Why spend all that money on a car if these things can whizz you about so quickly and efficiently. Sure some people will still want cars for status but you can’t legislate for insecure idiots

    And we will save millions of lives. No more drink driving. No more falling asleep at the wheel. No more cars running over kids

    It’s coming
    Will they navigate with what 3 words?
    Leon's idea is brilliant, but he may or may not be disappointed to know that it is not entirely original, and variants of it are being considered and have been considered for some time, by both public and private sector in the UK and elsewhere. Indeed, Uber's business model relies on driverless technology working: it only becomes profitable once you can elminate drivers, who are a massive part of the cost of a taxi; and minimise fuel costs, ditto.

    The problem with driverless cars in cities is that you drive down the cost of trips, which drives up trips, which causes congestion (especially once you factor in all those empty vehicles making trips to their next pickup or to overnight stabling). Whichever way you slice it, driverless cars are much more space hungry than mass transit. Tuktuks or similar do something to address this (clearly they take up less road space), but do not entirely eliminate the problem. They would talk to each other, so would use road space more efficiently, but might not lead to a pleasant urban environment to have hundreds of tuktuks constantly whizzing about (but better or worse than fewer, but noisier and more polluting, cars?)
    What you would get out of this is the virtual elmination of pavement parking, which would significantly improve road usage and lead to a more pleasant urban environment.

    Anyway, Leon - rest assured it's a worthwhile idea and it's being explored.
    I presume I am getting 10% of the profits
    At least 10%, I'm sure. I think that's how IP works?
  • Options

    https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48526-voting-intention-con-23-lab-44-30-31-jan-2024

    Latest YouGov Westminster voting intention (30-31 Jan)

    Con: 23% (+3 from 23-24 Jan)
    Lab: 44% (-3)
    Lib Dem: 9% (+1)
    Reform UK: 12% (-1)
    Green: 6% (=)
    SNP: 3% (-1)

    This is the opposite movement to Savanta's poll published this morning.

    Very close to convergence though, which would confirm my overall impression that Labour's lead is stable at around 20%.
  • Options
    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 76,028
    Pulpstar said:

    What do people think for the BoE ?

    Most to least likely to vote for a cut.

    I reckon the vote will split

    Swati Dhingra - LOWER
    Sarah Breeden - HOLD
    Ben Broadbent - HOLD
    Huw Pill - HOLD
    Andrew Bailey - HOLD. Will emphasise that we need to hold steady for now. Hint at a possible cut around June maybe.
    Dave Ramsden - HOLD
    Jonathan Haskel - HOLD
    Catherine L Mann - RAISE
    Megan Greene - RAISE for sure. She's like the Sherriff of Nottingham.

    Six members (Andrew Bailey, Sarah Breeden, Ben Broadbent, Megan Greene, Huw Pill and Dave Ramsden) voted in favour of the proposition. Three members voted against the proposition. Two members (Jonathan Haskel and Catherine L Mann) preferred to increase Bank Rate by 0.25 percentage points, to 5.5%. One member (Swati Dhingra) preferred to reduce Bank Rate by 0.25 percentage points, to 5%.

    Almost right, just got Haskel and Greene swapped.
  • Options
    Pulpstar said:

    BOE expects inflation to reach 2% by April this year

    ok lets take a look at the vote.
    Vote was 6 to keep rate unchanged, 2 to hike, 1 to cut
  • Options
    bigglesbiggles Posts: 4,370
    Selebian said:

    biggles said:

    Carnyx said:

    isam said:

    Mike Freer standing down is a symptom of a new, worrying political phenomenon. Political sectarianism is now here and it won't go away. We must protect our MPs.

    https://x.com/nigel_farage/status/1752981445839040952?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    Aww, how sweet that the person who has done more than most to encourage political sectarianism is now worried about it.
    "Political sectarianism is now here" - I didn't know NI wasn't part of the UK, even if one discounts aspects of West Central Belt and Merseyside politics in the mid-C20.
    I think, sadly, we will need to go down the American route. Threats - even "I was only" joking - against politicians treated as serious crimes. As in make a threat, go to actual prison.
    I would go the opposite way. I dislike the idea of thought crimes, so rather than criminalise the threat, increase the security of those who get threatened. We owe our MPs a protective bubble. All of them.
    It's not criminalising the thought (which has no impact, unless acted on). It's criminalising the threat, which has a very real impact on those threatened (and their families etc).

    ETA: But there would need to be care taken around figures of speech, need to show some actual intent to intimidate at least. Legally it could be hard to define satisfactorily.
    I agree with that, and is really what I mean. It’s the different between me saying “I want to attack politician X and kill their family”, with real intent, and me saying “politician X is really annoying and makes me want to slap them in the face”.

    The danger is a law that treats the latter like the former.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,725
    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    Mortimer said:

    Eabhal said:

    Leon said:

    You can see the future of urban transport here in Phnom Penh

    Anyone who has been to urban Asia will know the "tuk tuk" - a little two-stroke three wheel motorised "rickshaw" - extremely handy in dense urban environments, able to nip about much easier than cars, BUT also considerably safer than mopeds and motorbikes, and you can carry luggage etc

    Tuk-tuks in Phnom Penh (and Bangkok etc) have been Uberised. You can now summon them with an app like Grab. There are so many one will normally arrive, ready to go, within less than two minutes, often it is about 30 seconds - basically instantaneous

    Using the app the driver takes you where you want to go (no language problem) and the payment is made from your phone/card, no money changes hands (like Uber)

    It is a supremely efficient way of doing short-medium journeys in a big city

    Now, combine the Uberised Tuk Tuk with self driving. It won't be hard to make tuk-tuks autonomous, if they can do cars (tuk tuks are lighter, they won't be used for long journeys, and so forth)

    THAT is the future of urban transport. Self driving tuk tuks. Entire fleets of them (clean and electric, not two stroke) shuttling around cities, doing 80% of human journeys, to the shops and back, to the pub, and so on. At night the uberised autonomous tuk tuks will store themselves in underground garages

    Thus the urban car becomes obsolete, for most people

    I agree with the general idea, but split into two parts:

    There will be pool cars and vans (Uber, Enterprise, whatever) available on every street in urban Britain, and they will be cheap with scale and enormously popular. This will massively increase the amount of space available on residential streets - average mileage of personal cars is only 7,000 per year, and they spend most of their time parked. *

    However, most people, for most journeys, will get around on e-scooters (75% of car journeys in Edinburgh are single occupant, for example.)** They are used almost exclusively by arseholes at the moment but you can't escape the fact they are spectacularly efficient to store and run. That our legislation has so far stymied the scooter revolution is a gross failure.

    *Conspiracy theorists will cite Magna Carta in defence of their private vehicles and bomb a few pool cars, ULEZ style
    ** This will lead to an enormous spike in fatal road traffic collisions as cars and scooters begin to mix, but the revolution will survive it
    E Scooters are a massive safety risk, and their embrace by the anti carists is baffling.

    In most parts of the country they're banned from public roads.

    I say this as a non driver; private cars are simply not going to go away.
    They will go away in London if we introduce my brilliant driverless e-tuktuk idea

    Why spend all that money on a car if these things can whizz you about so quickly and efficiently. Sure some people will still want cars for status but you can’t legislate for insecure idiots

    And we will save millions of lives. No more drink driving. No more falling asleep at the wheel. No more cars running over kids

    It’s coming
    Will they navigate with what 3 words?
    Leon's idea is brilliant, but he may or may not be disappointed to know that it is not entirely original, and variants of it are being considered and have been considered for some time, by both public and private sector in the UK and elsewhere. Indeed, Uber's business model relies on driverless technology working: it only becomes profitable once you can elminate drivers, who are a massive part of the cost of a taxi; and minimise fuel costs, ditto.

    The problem with driverless cars in cities is that you drive down the cost of trips, which drives up trips, which causes congestion (especially once you factor in all those empty vehicles making trips to their next pickup or to overnight stabling). Whichever way you slice it, driverless cars are much more space hungry than mass transit. Tuktuks or similar do something to address this (clearly they take up less road space), but do not entirely eliminate the problem. They would talk to each other, so would use road space more efficiently, but might not lead to a pleasant urban environment to have hundreds of tuktuks constantly whizzing about (but better or worse than fewer, but noisier and more polluting, cars?)
    What you would get out of this is the virtual elmination of pavement parking, which would significantly improve road usage and lead to a more pleasant urban environment.

    Anyway, Leon - rest assured it's a worthwhile idea and it's being explored.
    I presume I am getting 10% of the profits
    At least 10%, I'm sure. I think that's how IP works?
    Thanks, it's good to have that reassurance. I was getting a bit nervy with your jokes about my genius idea "not being entirely original"
  • Options
    bigglesbiggles Posts: 4,370

    BOE expects inflation to reach 2% by April this year

    BoE isn’t watching events in the Middle East…
  • Options
    Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,812
    Pulpstar said:

    Pulpstar said:

    What do people think for the BoE ?

    Most to least likely to vote for a cut.

    I reckon the vote will split

    Swati Dhingra - LOWER
    Sarah Breeden - HOLD
    Ben Broadbent - HOLD
    Huw Pill - HOLD
    Andrew Bailey - HOLD. Will emphasise that we need to hold steady for now. Hint at a possible cut around June maybe.
    Dave Ramsden - HOLD
    Jonathan Haskel - HOLD
    Catherine L Mann - RAISE
    Megan Greene - RAISE for sure. She's like the Sherriff of Nottingham.

    Six members (Andrew Bailey, Sarah Breeden, Ben Broadbent, Megan Greene, Huw Pill and Dave Ramsden) voted in favour of the proposition. Three members voted against the proposition. Two members (Jonathan Haskel and Catherine L Mann) preferred to increase Bank Rate by 0.25 percentage points, to 5.5%. One member (Swati Dhingra) preferred to reduce Bank Rate by 0.25 percentage points, to 5%.

    Almost right, just got Haskel and Greene swapped.
    Slow day at work?
  • Options
    Casino_RoyaleCasino_Royale Posts: 55,812

    https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48526-voting-intention-con-23-lab-44-30-31-jan-2024

    Latest YouGov Westminster voting intention (30-31 Jan)

    Con: 23% (+3 from 23-24 Jan)
    Lab: 44% (-3)
    Lib Dem: 9% (+1)
    Reform UK: 12% (-1)
    Green: 6% (=)
    SNP: 3% (-1)

    This is the opposite movement to Savanta's poll published this morning.

    Very close to convergence though, which would confirm my overall impression that Labour's lead is stable at around 20%.
    But, how will Starmer do in the campaign?

    Remember: most people can barely recall a word from him yet.

    Sunak can't do what Corbyn did, and boom up out of nowhere, but I do wonder if Starmer could bore people into a derisory turnout.
  • Options
    Today's news from BOE on inflation would indicate that interest and mortgage rates will fall this Spring, and if inflation is anywhere near 2% then April's triple lock at 8.5% and rises in national minimum wage will be substantially higher
  • Options
    algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,684
    biggles said:

    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    File Under: OO-er

    Humans prefer AI-generated copy, survey finds
    The survey of 700 U.S. consumers found that AI-generated content was preferred by humans more than human-generated content.


    https://searchengineland.com/human-vs-ai-generated-content-survey-437062

    Polls show that the youth prefer AI content! Many discuss AI content as the interest of the time. It makes many happy and joy! AI content can be split into early AI, today AI, and future AI. Many prefer today AI but future AI may be better. Some think it may be worse but others better (shows stock graphics of current moving thru a circuit, people moving thru a financial district, something in fast motion, whatever...
    See also the BBC website, which now resembles Buzzfeed.

    People rarely get a chance to read good prose, so I suppose the youth have never seen it.
    There's too much to choose from, and most of it is free online. From Thucydides to Take Your Pick (Leon is a good example) today via Tacitus, Milton, Austen and the great Victorians.
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,777

    Nigelb said:

    I hope the RN is paying attention to the naval war in the Black Sea.
    A lot of conventional kit is going to become obsolete. However crap the Russian navy, drone attacks are just too cost effective for it not to affect western navies too.

    Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate GUR says its Group 13 special unit overnight destroyed Russia’s Ivanovets missile ship with sea drones, sharing a video purporting to show the attack off the coast of occupied Crimea. GUR says the warship “rolled to the stern and sank.”
    https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1753015072014639303

    That video seems rather convincing. Early on you can see the drone going towards it, right next to a rather large hole that had already been made. A few seconds before, you see a couple of figures on deck nearly at the impact point.
    Note the realtime avoidance of the CIWS that are shooting at the drones. Which strongly argues for (partially) manual control in the final phases of the attack.

    It's all been done before - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FL-boat
  • Options

    https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48526-voting-intention-con-23-lab-44-30-31-jan-2024

    Latest YouGov Westminster voting intention (30-31 Jan)

    Con: 23% (+3 from 23-24 Jan)
    Lab: 44% (-3)
    Lib Dem: 9% (+1)
    Reform UK: 12% (-1)
    Green: 6% (=)
    SNP: 3% (-1)

    This is the opposite movement to Savanta's poll published this morning.

    Very close to convergence though, which would confirm my overall impression that Labour's lead is stable at around 20%.
    But, how will Starmer do in the campaign?

    Remember: most people can barely recall a word from him yet.

    Sunak can't do what Corbyn did, and boom up out of nowhere, but I do wonder if Starmer could bore people into a derisory turnout.
    Reeves confirmed she was pro business this morning retaining bankers bonuses and announced 25% corporation tax for the full term of a labour government, will increase the living wage and abolish zero hours contracts

    Not sure that is too business friendly
  • Options
    kamskikamski Posts: 4,338
    Cookie said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    Mortimer said:

    Eabhal said:

    Leon said:

    You can see the future of urban transport here in Phnom Penh

    Anyone who has been to urban Asia will know the "tuk tuk" - a little two-stroke three wheel motorised "rickshaw" - extremely handy in dense urban environments, able to nip about much easier than cars, BUT also considerably safer than mopeds and motorbikes, and you can carry luggage etc

    Tuk-tuks in Phnom Penh (and Bangkok etc) have been Uberised. You can now summon them with an app like Grab. There are so many one will normally arrive, ready to go, within less than two minutes, often it is about 30 seconds - basically instantaneous

    Using the app the driver takes you where you want to go (no language problem) and the payment is made from your phone/card, no money changes hands (like Uber)

    It is a supremely efficient way of doing short-medium journeys in a big city

    Now, combine the Uberised Tuk Tuk with self driving. It won't be hard to make tuk-tuks autonomous, if they can do cars (tuk tuks are lighter, they won't be used for long journeys, and so forth)

    THAT is the future of urban transport. Self driving tuk tuks. Entire fleets of them (clean and electric, not two stroke) shuttling around cities, doing 80% of human journeys, to the shops and back, to the pub, and so on. At night the uberised autonomous tuk tuks will store themselves in underground garages

    Thus the urban car becomes obsolete, for most people

    I agree with the general idea, but split into two parts:

    There will be pool cars and vans (Uber, Enterprise, whatever) available on every street in urban Britain, and they will be cheap with scale and enormously popular. This will massively increase the amount of space available on residential streets - average mileage of personal cars is only 7,000 per year, and they spend most of their time parked. *

    However, most people, for most journeys, will get around on e-scooters (75% of car journeys in Edinburgh are single occupant, for example.)** They are used almost exclusively by arseholes at the moment but you can't escape the fact they are spectacularly efficient to store and run. That our legislation has so far stymied the scooter revolution is a gross failure.

    *Conspiracy theorists will cite Magna Carta in defence of their private vehicles and bomb a few pool cars, ULEZ style
    ** This will lead to an enormous spike in fatal road traffic collisions as cars and scooters begin to mix, but the revolution will survive it
    E Scooters are a massive safety risk, and their embrace by the anti carists is baffling.

    In most parts of the country they're banned from public roads.

    I say this as a non driver; private cars are simply not going to go away.
    They will go away in London if we introduce my brilliant driverless e-tuktuk idea

    Why spend all that money on a car if these things can whizz you about so quickly and efficiently. Sure some people will still want cars for status but you can’t legislate for insecure idiots

    And we will save millions of lives. No more drink driving. No more falling asleep at the wheel. No more cars running over kids

    It’s coming
    Will they navigate with what 3 words?
    Leon's idea is brilliant, but he may or may not be disappointed to know that it is not entirely original, and variants of it are being considered and have been considered for some time, by both public and private sector in the UK and elsewhere. Indeed, Uber's business model relies on driverless technology working: it only becomes profitable once you can elminate drivers, who are a massive part of the cost of a taxi; and minimise fuel costs, ditto.

    The problem with driverless cars in cities is that you drive down the cost of trips, which drives up trips, which causes congestion (especially once you factor in all those empty vehicles making trips to their next pickup or to overnight stabling). Whichever way you slice it, driverless cars are much more space hungry than mass transit. Tuktuks or similar do something to address this (clearly they take up less road space), but do not entirely eliminate the problem. They would talk to each other, so would use road space more efficiently, but might not lead to a pleasant urban environment to have hundreds of tuktuks constantly whizzing about (but better or worse than fewer, but noisier and more polluting, cars?)
    What you would get out of this is the virtual elmination of pavement parking, which would significantly improve road usage and lead to a more pleasant urban environment.

    Anyway, Leon - rest assured it's a worthwhile idea and it's being explored.
    Some kind of carrot and stick approach to congestion - eg a form of congestion charge, plus free use of driverless pods for users of mass transit
  • Options
    CookieCookie Posts: 11,547
    edited February 1

    Cookie said:

    Regardless of Irish festivals, Spring begins on 21 March, as any fule kno…………….

    That might be your personal, idiosyncratic, definition, but the idea of sorting starting on any single day is a human simplification for what is a gradual process, and so many different definitions are both popular and useful.

    There is no meaningful way in which you can insist that your definition is right.
    Well you can, because that's (with a slight nuance of where we are in the leap year cycle) the way in which the astronomical spring is defined.
    I grant you there are several different ways in which you can define spring, but the astronomical spring which starts at the equinox is certainly a useful and accurate distinction.

    Other useful and accurate distinctions are:
    the meteorological spring, which starts on 1st March.
    the colloquial spring (I have made that term up), which starts when it starts to feel like spring.
    I'd say when the word 'spring' is used there is a roughly 30/30/30 chance that the user is talking about each one of the above definitions (with the other 10 for 'other' e.g. when the clocks go forward. All are linguistically valid and reasonably common, none are exclusively so.
    When I said "right" I should have said "exclusively right", though, to be honest, I'm not sure what's useful about the definition that starts on the equinox. If you wanted a definition that followed the astronomy and day length then you'd use the cross-quarter days.
    The most fun of the various 'right' definitions though is the entirely subjective "when it feels like Spring" (or indeed any season). To me, this is:
    Winter: starts Dec 1st when you open the first window of the advent calendar, notwithstanding my vicar friend's annual rant about 'technically advent starts on day x' (can't be bothered to remember the details).
    Spring: starts once the consensus of the flowers and the trees agrees that Spring has started. The daffodils have to be out and the majority of the trees in blossom. Late March at the earliest.
    Summer: Starts at the start of Whit week, if the weather is good. If not, it's when the kids go back to school after the Whitsun holidays.
    Autumn: the day the kids go back to school.
    (But summer ends for me on August Bank Holiday Monday, which always feels painfully poignant, and leaves four or five days which are neither summer not autumn.)

    As I said, all entirely subjective: a mixture of weather, school calendar and tradition.
  • Options
    JosiasJessopJosiasJessop Posts: 39,216

    Nigelb said:

    I hope the RN is paying attention to the naval war in the Black Sea.
    A lot of conventional kit is going to become obsolete. However crap the Russian navy, drone attacks are just too cost effective for it not to affect western navies too.

    Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate GUR says its Group 13 special unit overnight destroyed Russia’s Ivanovets missile ship with sea drones, sharing a video purporting to show the attack off the coast of occupied Crimea. GUR says the warship “rolled to the stern and sank.”
    https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1753015072014639303

    That video seems rather convincing. Early on you can see the drone going towards it, right next to a rather large hole that had already been made. A few seconds before, you see a couple of figures on deck nearly at the impact point.
    Note the realtime avoidance of the CIWS that are shooting at the drones. Which strongly argues for (partially) manual control in the final phases of the attack.

    It's all been done before - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FL-boat
    Interestingly, normal radar can be next to useless at detecting small objects at sea, especially from a low angle, such as from another ship. Even small waves produce far too much clutter. That's where things like holographic radar come in very useful.

    Or so I'm told. Ahem. :)
  • Options
    MalmesburyMalmesbury Posts: 44,777
    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    Mortimer said:

    Eabhal said:

    Leon said:

    You can see the future of urban transport here in Phnom Penh

    Anyone who has been to urban Asia will know the "tuk tuk" - a little two-stroke three wheel motorised "rickshaw" - extremely handy in dense urban environments, able to nip about much easier than cars, BUT also considerably safer than mopeds and motorbikes, and you can carry luggage etc

    Tuk-tuks in Phnom Penh (and Bangkok etc) have been Uberised. You can now summon them with an app like Grab. There are so many one will normally arrive, ready to go, within less than two minutes, often it is about 30 seconds - basically instantaneous

    Using the app the driver takes you where you want to go (no language problem) and the payment is made from your phone/card, no money changes hands (like Uber)

    It is a supremely efficient way of doing short-medium journeys in a big city

    Now, combine the Uberised Tuk Tuk with self driving. It won't be hard to make tuk-tuks autonomous, if they can do cars (tuk tuks are lighter, they won't be used for long journeys, and so forth)

    THAT is the future of urban transport. Self driving tuk tuks. Entire fleets of them (clean and electric, not two stroke) shuttling around cities, doing 80% of human journeys, to the shops and back, to the pub, and so on. At night the uberised autonomous tuk tuks will store themselves in underground garages

    Thus the urban car becomes obsolete, for most people

    I agree with the general idea, but split into two parts:

    There will be pool cars and vans (Uber, Enterprise, whatever) available on every street in urban Britain, and they will be cheap with scale and enormously popular. This will massively increase the amount of space available on residential streets - average mileage of personal cars is only 7,000 per year, and they spend most of their time parked. *

    However, most people, for most journeys, will get around on e-scooters (75% of car journeys in Edinburgh are single occupant, for example.)** They are used almost exclusively by arseholes at the moment but you can't escape the fact they are spectacularly efficient to store and run. That our legislation has so far stymied the scooter revolution is a gross failure.

    *Conspiracy theorists will cite Magna Carta in defence of their private vehicles and bomb a few pool cars, ULEZ style
    ** This will lead to an enormous spike in fatal road traffic collisions as cars and scooters begin to mix, but the revolution will survive it
    E Scooters are a massive safety risk, and their embrace by the anti carists is baffling.

    In most parts of the country they're banned from public roads.

    I say this as a non driver; private cars are simply not going to go away.
    They will go away in London if we introduce my brilliant driverless e-tuktuk idea

    Why spend all that money on a car if these things can whizz you about so quickly and efficiently. Sure some people will still want cars for status but you can’t legislate for insecure idiots

    And we will save millions of lives. No more drink driving. No more falling asleep at the wheel. No more cars running over kids

    It’s coming
    Will they navigate with what 3 words?
    Leon's idea is brilliant, but he may or may not be disappointed to know that it is not entirely original, and variants of it are being considered and have been considered for some time, by both public and private sector in the UK and elsewhere. Indeed, Uber's business model relies on driverless technology working: it only becomes profitable once you can elminate drivers, who are a massive part of the cost of a taxi; and minimise fuel costs, ditto.

    The problem with driverless cars in cities is that you drive down the cost of trips, which drives up trips, which causes congestion (especially once you factor in all those empty vehicles making trips to their next pickup or to overnight stabling). Whichever way you slice it, driverless cars are much more space hungry than mass transit. Tuktuks or similar do something to address this (clearly they take up less road space), but do not entirely eliminate the problem. They would talk to each other, so would use road space more efficiently, but might not lead to a pleasant urban environment to have hundreds of tuktuks constantly whizzing about (but better or worse than fewer, but noisier and more polluting, cars?)
    What you would get out of this is the virtual elmination of pavement parking, which would significantly improve road usage and lead to a more pleasant urban environment.

    Anyway, Leon - rest assured it's a worthwhile idea and it's being explored.
    Also, as the e-tuktuks are driverless, they can be absolutely tiny. Half the space of a normal tuk tuk is taken by the driver and his wheel. Get rid of that and my minimalist e-tuktuk for solo passengers will be the size of a Peel P50 - but you won't need to drive


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peel_P50

    You would have different sizes for different needs, of course

    Another massive benefit is that you can then get rid of all the hideous shite that cars need in cities - garages, tyre shops, fitters, repair shops, and all the fucking horrible car parks, paved over gardens, turn them into urban woods! Bring back our gardens!

    It will be such a positive revolution - removing all that pollution, saving so many lives, on top of these urban benefits - it is surely bound to happen, in some form.
    Flying cars

    No, really.

    There are a number of designs, based on drone style electric multi-props, that are getting close to service. A number of them are only piloted in the "Go here on the map" style.

    One early application being looked at it is to and from airports next to cities - short flights, regular roots.
  • Options
    londonpubmanlondonpubman Posts: 3,245
    biggles said:

    BOE expects inflation to reach 2% by April this year

    BoE isn’t watching events in the Middle East…
    The Bank are likely to be correct on CPI moving towards 2% in April. However members of MPC will be aware of inflationary pressures due to wage increases, minimum wage increase and Middle East uncertainty. So overall there will be no rush to reduce rates, maybe very little change this year.
  • Options
    CookieCookie Posts: 11,547
    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    Mortimer said:

    Eabhal said:

    Leon said:

    You can see the future of urban transport here in Phnom Penh

    Anyone who has been to urban Asia will know the "tuk tuk" - a little two-stroke three wheel motorised "rickshaw" - extremely handy in dense urban environments, able to nip about much easier than cars, BUT also considerably safer than mopeds and motorbikes, and you can carry luggage etc

    Tuk-tuks in Phnom Penh (and Bangkok etc) have been Uberised. You can now summon them with an app like Grab. There are so many one will normally arrive, ready to go, within less than two minutes, often it is about 30 seconds - basically instantaneous

    Using the app the driver takes you where you want to go (no language problem) and the payment is made from your phone/card, no money changes hands (like Uber)

    It is a supremely efficient way of doing short-medium journeys in a big city

    Now, combine the Uberised Tuk Tuk with self driving. It won't be hard to make tuk-tuks autonomous, if they can do cars (tuk tuks are lighter, they won't be used for long journeys, and so forth)

    THAT is the future of urban transport. Self driving tuk tuks. Entire fleets of them (clean and electric, not two stroke) shuttling around cities, doing 80% of human journeys, to the shops and back, to the pub, and so on. At night the uberised autonomous tuk tuks will store themselves in underground garages

    Thus the urban car becomes obsolete, for most people

    I agree with the general idea, but split into two parts:

    There will be pool cars and vans (Uber, Enterprise, whatever) available on every street in urban Britain, and they will be cheap with scale and enormously popular. This will massively increase the amount of space available on residential streets - average mileage of personal cars is only 7,000 per year, and they spend most of their time parked. *

    However, most people, for most journeys, will get around on e-scooters (75% of car journeys in Edinburgh are single occupant, for example.)** They are used almost exclusively by arseholes at the moment but you can't escape the fact they are spectacularly efficient to store and run. That our legislation has so far stymied the scooter revolution is a gross failure.

    *Conspiracy theorists will cite Magna Carta in defence of their private vehicles and bomb a few pool cars, ULEZ style
    ** This will lead to an enormous spike in fatal road traffic collisions as cars and scooters begin to mix, but the revolution will survive it
    E Scooters are a massive safety risk, and their embrace by the anti carists is baffling.

    In most parts of the country they're banned from public roads.

    I say this as a non driver; private cars are simply not going to go away.
    They will go away in London if we introduce my brilliant driverless e-tuktuk idea

    Why spend all that money on a car if these things can whizz you about so quickly and efficiently. Sure some people will still want cars for status but you can’t legislate for insecure idiots

    And we will save millions of lives. No more drink driving. No more falling asleep at the wheel. No more cars running over kids

    It’s coming
    Will they navigate with what 3 words?
    Leon's idea is brilliant, but he may or may not be disappointed to know that it is not entirely original, and variants of it are being considered and have been considered for some time, by both public and private sector in the UK and elsewhere. Indeed, Uber's business model relies on driverless technology working: it only becomes profitable once you can elminate drivers, who are a massive part of the cost of a taxi; and minimise fuel costs, ditto.

    The problem with driverless cars in cities is that you drive down the cost of trips, which drives up trips, which causes congestion (especially once you factor in all those empty vehicles making trips to their next pickup or to overnight stabling). Whichever way you slice it, driverless cars are much more space hungry than mass transit. Tuktuks or similar do something to address this (clearly they take up less road space), but do not entirely eliminate the problem. They would talk to each other, so would use road space more efficiently, but might not lead to a pleasant urban environment to have hundreds of tuktuks constantly whizzing about (but better or worse than fewer, but noisier and more polluting, cars?)
    What you would get out of this is the virtual elmination of pavement parking, which would significantly improve road usage and lead to a more pleasant urban environment.

    Anyway, Leon - rest assured it's a worthwhile idea and it's being explored.
    Also, as the e-tuktuks are driverless, they can be absolutely tiny. Half the space of a normal tuk tuk is taken by the driver and his wheel. Get rid of that and my minimalist e-tuktuk for solo passengers will be the size of a Peel P50 - but you won't need to drive


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peel_P50

    You would have different sizes for different needs, of course

    Another massive benefit is that you can then get rid of all the hideous shite that cars need in cities - garages, tyre shops, fitters, repair shops, and all the fucking horrible car parks, paved over gardens, turn them into urban woods! Bring back our gardens!

    It will be such a positive revolution - removing all that pollution, saving so many lives, on top of these urban benefits - it is surely bound to happen, in some form.
    You could also design housing developments without the need for drives. Streets would feel much more Georgian or Victorian. Meaning you could either increase density, or increase back garden size.
  • Options
    Listening to Sky it seems interest rate reductions could come as soon as May
  • Options
    TheuniondivvieTheuniondivvie Posts: 40,384
    algarkirk said:

    biggles said:

    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    File Under: OO-er

    Humans prefer AI-generated copy, survey finds
    The survey of 700 U.S. consumers found that AI-generated content was preferred by humans more than human-generated content.


    https://searchengineland.com/human-vs-ai-generated-content-survey-437062

    Polls show that the youth prefer AI content! Many discuss AI content as the interest of the time. It makes many happy and joy! AI content can be split into early AI, today AI, and future AI. Many prefer today AI but future AI may be better. Some think it may be worse but others better (shows stock graphics of current moving thru a circuit, people moving thru a financial district, something in fast motion, whatever...
    See also the BBC website, which now resembles Buzzfeed.

    People rarely get a chance to read good prose, so I suppose the youth have never seen it.
    There's too much to choose from, and most of it is free online. From Thucydides to Take Your Pick (Leon is a good example) today via Tacitus, Milton, Austen and the great Victorians.
    Unaccountably you seemed to have missed out Boris Johnson as a purveyor of fine prose, inadvertent I’m sure.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,725
    The elimination of the private motor car would be the most miraculously positive thing for Britain's towns and cities. Our towns and cities are OLD, they are not built for cars, they are not American, they are designed around people and maybe horses, and our desperate attempts to squeeze big metal cars into them has uglified so many of them. All the stupid car parks for every fucking supermarket, all the road widening schemes knocking down lovely buildings

    Imagine a world where rhey are all gone, replaced by trees and parks and gardens

    It's a bit shit for Milton Keynes, but hey

  • Options
    DougSealDougSeal Posts: 11,371
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    kle4 said:

    Leon said:

    Elon Musk: PROFOUNDLY LAZY

    lol

    He certainly works very hard indeed, apart from when he gets high and reads things on twitter. But that seems to be his way of blowing off steam, its not all the time.
    Notoriously, when he took over Twitter, he pissed everyone off by working 20 hour days and by demanding the staff do the same (after he sacked 60% of them). He told them to sleep in the office

    "Profoundly lazy"

    I mean, lol

    Musk Derangement Syndrome is a real thing, people (for some reason) hate him so much it drives them to spout obvious irrational nonsense. And that idiot thread linked by @Scott_xP is a classic example

    It is closely related, in its symptomology, to Trump Derangement and Brexit Derangement Syndromes. I am sure there are others

    Something about the modern world and social media creates these weird mental obsessions where sane people CHOOSE to believe obviously non-true things
    There is zero evidence that he 'worked 20 hours a day'. Lots of claims are made. not least by himself and his acolytes, but evidence...?

    That might seem uncharitable, but the claims that he never has holidays were shown to be rubbish. And other claims, too. You need to separate hype from reality.

    We've seen this many times before, from Stve Jobs designing everything to Bull Gates reading every line of MS's code. T'Internet's just made it worse.
    He is the richest man in the world, he co-started PayPal, he owns and runs Tesla, he owns and runs Twitter, he owns and runs SpaceX, he personally operates a larger space programme than 95% of NATIONS

    At some point you just have to accept - despite your Musk Derangement Syndrome - that maybe, just maybe, Elon Musk occasionally shows up for work, and puts in a couple of hours
    I'm not saying he doesn't turn up for work, or put in 'a couple of hours'. Just that you need to realise that there's a massive amount of hype around him - often by Tesla share rampers - that gets regurgitated uncritically.
    What do you reckon then? Maybe he does 6 or 7 hours a week? Spends most of the time at the beach?

    I mean he's worth, what, $210 billion, that's about the same as the GDP of Algeria or Greece. You can easily make that kind of dosh by having long boozy lunches, then a nap, and then a really languid wank, then maybe ordering in a pizza
    Or investing the money you inherited from an emerald mine
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 50,024

    Another Russian warship sunk by Ukrainian drones.

    The caption that went with the photo was: Russian MoD be like: "attacks repelled"

    Not sure they’re supposed to be that way up!

    Well done Ukraine again, for a nation without a real navy they’re doing a pretty good job of destroying Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
  • Options
    algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,684
    Foxy said:

    Electoral Calculus has updated its prediction to a Lab Maj of 256.

    You had better all pray that this is wrong. My prediction in Ben's excellent PB competition was 254. If this turns out to be close, I will be insufferable.

    I do like the way their chart provides a range as well as mean:


    It is hard to know what 'Prediction' means, and what the method can be, if both the range of seats Labour can get is from 330-540 and also the prediction will change as soon as the data changes.

    One more point: EC are saying that the best the Tories can possibly do is to lose only 121 seats. I think that is optimistic; the Tories can easily do better than that.
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 50,024

    Nigelb said:

    It'll be interesting to see how the Tifosi react to Hamilton at Ferrari. Will they throw a black cat at him again?

    (Weirdly, the Tifosi (Ferrari fans) seem to really matter to Ferrari. It's much more like a football team than any other F1 team; Tifosi moans can even lead to changes in management.)

    If he wins, they will love him.
    If not, it could be ugly.
    They loved Mansell, and he didn't always win. They called him 'Il Leone'. It might be because he won on his first outing, or because he was the last driver that the boss personally picked to drive for Ferrari. Or perhaps because of his rather (ahem) idiosyncratic driving style and character...

    I don't think there's that much logic behind the tifosi's views, much like many fans.
    The Tifosi are basically football fans. They like anyone driving red cars, and especially anyone winning in red cars. If they’re not winning, then the fans call to for the manager to get the sack.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,725
    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    Mortimer said:

    Eabhal said:

    Leon said:

    You can see the future of urban transport here in Phnom Penh

    Anyone who has been to urban Asia will know the "tuk tuk" - a little two-stroke three wheel motorised "rickshaw" - extremely handy in dense urban environments, able to nip about much easier than cars, BUT also considerably safer than mopeds and motorbikes, and you can carry luggage etc

    Tuk-tuks in Phnom Penh (and Bangkok etc) have been Uberised. You can now summon them with an app like Grab. There are so many one will normally arrive, ready to go, within less than two minutes, often it is about 30 seconds - basically instantaneous

    Using the app the driver takes you where you want to go (no language problem) and the payment is made from your phone/card, no money changes hands (like Uber)

    It is a supremely efficient way of doing short-medium journeys in a big city

    Now, combine the Uberised Tuk Tuk with self driving. It won't be hard to make tuk-tuks autonomous, if they can do cars (tuk tuks are lighter, they won't be used for long journeys, and so forth)

    THAT is the future of urban transport. Self driving tuk tuks. Entire fleets of them (clean and electric, not two stroke) shuttling around cities, doing 80% of human journeys, to the shops and back, to the pub, and so on. At night the uberised autonomous tuk tuks will store themselves in underground garages

    Thus the urban car becomes obsolete, for most people

    I agree with the general idea, but split into two parts:

    There will be pool cars and vans (Uber, Enterprise, whatever) available on every street in urban Britain, and they will be cheap with scale and enormously popular. This will massively increase the amount of space available on residential streets - average mileage of personal cars is only 7,000 per year, and they spend most of their time parked. *

    However, most people, for most journeys, will get around on e-scooters (75% of car journeys in Edinburgh are single occupant, for example.)** They are used almost exclusively by arseholes at the moment but you can't escape the fact they are spectacularly efficient to store and run. That our legislation has so far stymied the scooter revolution is a gross failure.

    *Conspiracy theorists will cite Magna Carta in defence of their private vehicles and bomb a few pool cars, ULEZ style
    ** This will lead to an enormous spike in fatal road traffic collisions as cars and scooters begin to mix, but the revolution will survive it
    E Scooters are a massive safety risk, and their embrace by the anti carists is baffling.

    In most parts of the country they're banned from public roads.

    I say this as a non driver; private cars are simply not going to go away.
    They will go away in London if we introduce my brilliant driverless e-tuktuk idea

    Why spend all that money on a car if these things can whizz you about so quickly and efficiently. Sure some people will still want cars for status but you can’t legislate for insecure idiots

    And we will save millions of lives. No more drink driving. No more falling asleep at the wheel. No more cars running over kids

    It’s coming
    Will they navigate with what 3 words?
    Leon's idea is brilliant, but he may or may not be disappointed to know that it is not entirely original, and variants of it are being considered and have been considered for some time, by both public and private sector in the UK and elsewhere. Indeed, Uber's business model relies on driverless technology working: it only becomes profitable once you can elminate drivers, who are a massive part of the cost of a taxi; and minimise fuel costs, ditto.

    The problem with driverless cars in cities is that you drive down the cost of trips, which drives up trips, which causes congestion (especially once you factor in all those empty vehicles making trips to their next pickup or to overnight stabling). Whichever way you slice it, driverless cars are much more space hungry than mass transit. Tuktuks or similar do something to address this (clearly they take up less road space), but do not entirely eliminate the problem. They would talk to each other, so would use road space more efficiently, but might not lead to a pleasant urban environment to have hundreds of tuktuks constantly whizzing about (but better or worse than fewer, but noisier and more polluting, cars?)
    What you would get out of this is the virtual elmination of pavement parking, which would significantly improve road usage and lead to a more pleasant urban environment.

    Anyway, Leon - rest assured it's a worthwhile idea and it's being explored.
    Also, as the e-tuktuks are driverless, they can be absolutely tiny. Half the space of a normal tuk tuk is taken by the driver and his wheel. Get rid of that and my minimalist e-tuktuk for solo passengers will be the size of a Peel P50 - but you won't need to drive


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peel_P50

    You would have different sizes for different needs, of course

    Another massive benefit is that you can then get rid of all the hideous shite that cars need in cities - garages, tyre shops, fitters, repair shops, and all the fucking horrible car parks, paved over gardens, turn them into urban woods! Bring back our gardens!

    It will be such a positive revolution - removing all that pollution, saving so many lives, on top of these urban benefits - it is surely bound to happen, in some form.
    You could also design housing developments without the need for drives. Streets would feel much more Georgian or Victorian. Meaning you could either increase density, or increase back garden size.
    Yes

    Just thinking about my own street, Delancey Street, in Camden

    Takeaway all the parked cars, the growling traffic, the pollution, the road signs, the traffic lights, it will be transformed, and all of it positive. Magical

    Kids will be able to play in our city streets without the constant worry that they are gonna get run over - that alone will be amazing

    In 2022, in Great Britain alone

    1,700 people were killed in road traffic accidents
    30,000 (!!!) were killed or seriously injured
    136,000 had an injury in an RTA of some kind

    All that will go. Absolutely massive benefits for public health
  • Options
    algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,684

    algarkirk said:

    biggles said:

    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    File Under: OO-er

    Humans prefer AI-generated copy, survey finds
    The survey of 700 U.S. consumers found that AI-generated content was preferred by humans more than human-generated content.


    https://searchengineland.com/human-vs-ai-generated-content-survey-437062

    Polls show that the youth prefer AI content! Many discuss AI content as the interest of the time. It makes many happy and joy! AI content can be split into early AI, today AI, and future AI. Many prefer today AI but future AI may be better. Some think it may be worse but others better (shows stock graphics of current moving thru a circuit, people moving thru a financial district, something in fast motion, whatever...
    See also the BBC website, which now resembles Buzzfeed.

    People rarely get a chance to read good prose, so I suppose the youth have never seen it.
    There's too much to choose from, and most of it is free online. From Thucydides to Take Your Pick (Leon is a good example) today via Tacitus, Milton, Austen and the great Victorians.
    Unaccountably you seemed to have missed out Boris Johnson as a purveyor of fine prose, inadvertent I’m sure.
    Oh yes, I forget Boris. And the collected speeches of L Truss and T May are exemplary. Flaubert is eating his heart out.
  • Options
    williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 48,279
    In an alternative timeline, Silicon Valley would have been in the UK and Clive Sinclair would have long since turned the C5 into the driverless e-tuktuk and sold them by the million.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,725

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    Mortimer said:

    Eabhal said:

    Leon said:

    You can see the future of urban transport here in Phnom Penh

    Anyone who has been to urban Asia will know the "tuk tuk" - a little two-stroke three wheel motorised "rickshaw" - extremely handy in dense urban environments, able to nip about much easier than cars, BUT also considerably safer than mopeds and motorbikes, and you can carry luggage etc

    Tuk-tuks in Phnom Penh (and Bangkok etc) have been Uberised. You can now summon them with an app like Grab. There are so many one will normally arrive, ready to go, within less than two minutes, often it is about 30 seconds - basically instantaneous

    Using the app the driver takes you where you want to go (no language problem) and the payment is made from your phone/card, no money changes hands (like Uber)

    It is a supremely efficient way of doing short-medium journeys in a big city

    Now, combine the Uberised Tuk Tuk with self driving. It won't be hard to make tuk-tuks autonomous, if they can do cars (tuk tuks are lighter, they won't be used for long journeys, and so forth)

    THAT is the future of urban transport. Self driving tuk tuks. Entire fleets of them (clean and electric, not two stroke) shuttling around cities, doing 80% of human journeys, to the shops and back, to the pub, and so on. At night the uberised autonomous tuk tuks will store themselves in underground garages

    Thus the urban car becomes obsolete, for most people

    I agree with the general idea, but split into two parts:

    There will be pool cars and vans (Uber, Enterprise, whatever) available on every street in urban Britain, and they will be cheap with scale and enormously popular. This will massively increase the amount of space available on residential streets - average mileage of personal cars is only 7,000 per year, and they spend most of their time parked. *

    However, most people, for most journeys, will get around on e-scooters (75% of car journeys in Edinburgh are single occupant, for example.)** They are used almost exclusively by arseholes at the moment but you can't escape the fact they are spectacularly efficient to store and run. That our legislation has so far stymied the scooter revolution is a gross failure.

    *Conspiracy theorists will cite Magna Carta in defence of their private vehicles and bomb a few pool cars, ULEZ style
    ** This will lead to an enormous spike in fatal road traffic collisions as cars and scooters begin to mix, but the revolution will survive it
    E Scooters are a massive safety risk, and their embrace by the anti carists is baffling.

    In most parts of the country they're banned from public roads.

    I say this as a non driver; private cars are simply not going to go away.
    They will go away in London if we introduce my brilliant driverless e-tuktuk idea

    Why spend all that money on a car if these things can whizz you about so quickly and efficiently. Sure some people will still want cars for status but you can’t legislate for insecure idiots

    And we will save millions of lives. No more drink driving. No more falling asleep at the wheel. No more cars running over kids

    It’s coming
    Will they navigate with what 3 words?
    Leon's idea is brilliant, but he may or may not be disappointed to know that it is not entirely original, and variants of it are being considered and have been considered for some time, by both public and private sector in the UK and elsewhere. Indeed, Uber's business model relies on driverless technology working: it only becomes profitable once you can elminate drivers, who are a massive part of the cost of a taxi; and minimise fuel costs, ditto.

    The problem with driverless cars in cities is that you drive down the cost of trips, which drives up trips, which causes congestion (especially once you factor in all those empty vehicles making trips to their next pickup or to overnight stabling). Whichever way you slice it, driverless cars are much more space hungry than mass transit. Tuktuks or similar do something to address this (clearly they take up less road space), but do not entirely eliminate the problem. They would talk to each other, so would use road space more efficiently, but might not lead to a pleasant urban environment to have hundreds of tuktuks constantly whizzing about (but better or worse than fewer, but noisier and more polluting, cars?)
    What you would get out of this is the virtual elmination of pavement parking, which would significantly improve road usage and lead to a more pleasant urban environment.

    Anyway, Leon - rest assured it's a worthwhile idea and it's being explored.
    Also, as the e-tuktuks are driverless, they can be absolutely tiny. Half the space of a normal tuk tuk is taken by the driver and his wheel. Get rid of that and my minimalist e-tuktuk for solo passengers will be the size of a Peel P50 - but you won't need to drive


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peel_P50

    You would have different sizes for different needs, of course

    Another massive benefit is that you can then get rid of all the hideous shite that cars need in cities - garages, tyre shops, fitters, repair shops, and all the fucking horrible car parks, paved over gardens, turn them into urban woods! Bring back our gardens!

    It will be such a positive revolution - removing all that pollution, saving so many lives, on top of these urban benefits - it is surely bound to happen, in some form.
    Flying cars

    No, really.

    There are a number of designs, based on drone style electric multi-props, that are getting close to service. A number of them are only piloted in the "Go here on the map" style.

    One early application being looked at it is to and from airports next to cities - short flights, regular roots.
    Indeed. I've had dinner with a guy who is heavily involved in a flying car start up in Silicon Valley. He talked me through it

    They are much more advanced than people realise. And in some ways they are easier to achieve than driverless cars on the ground, because the air is so much emptier than the road
  • Options
    viewcodeviewcode Posts: 19,157

    Selebian said:

    Mortimer said:

    DavidL said:

    Pulpstar said:

    Turns out I was too depressed to do dry January. Happily I don't have any alcohol in the house, or...

    I've got a cabinet full. Tbh I do actually need to drink some or there'll be no room for whatever someone might get me for my birthday in June.
    My daughter's subjects at University, whatever they were actually called, always seemed to turn into sociology. She was asked to define middle class and came up with the answer people who store alcohol in their house for more than a month.

    I think its as good a working definition as any and of course fits into the difference between living hand to mouth and having that cushion so many of our fellow citizens just don't have.

    So, I'm afraid that's you labelled. Middle class.
    Quite right. Everyone else knows the best place to store it is in the cellar.
    I would if I could but I can’t. No cellar!
    And therefore you are, of course, only middle class :disappointed:

    Last (and only) time I had a cellar was in a student house at uni. But I don't think we stored alcohol anywhere for more than a day or two at most.
    I don’t think I’ve ever lived in a house with a cellar, TBH.
    A friend of mine in school did. Although it was more accurately termed as "subsidence". The council had to prop it up. We used to play under the house. Literally *under* the house... 😃
  • Options
    AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 20,215

    Regardless of Irish festivals, Spring begins on 21 March, as any fule kno…………….

    That might be your personal, idiosyncratic, definition, but the idea of sorting starting on any single day is a human simplification for what is a gradual process, and so many different definitions are both popular and useful.

    There is no meaningful way in which you can insist that your definition is right.
    I'm guided by the cosmos. Interestingly, the Met Office also accepts this is the usual definition. Makes sense to me.


    https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/seasons/summer/when-does-summer-start

    Weathermen use months for statistical convenience.
  • Options
    CookieCookie Posts: 11,547
    Leon said:

    The elimination of the private motor car would be the most miraculously positive thing for Britain's towns and cities. Our towns and cities are OLD, they are not built for cars, they are not American, they are designed around people and maybe horses, and our desperate attempts to squeeze big metal cars into them has uglified so many of them. All the stupid car parks for every fucking supermarket, all the road widening schemes knocking down lovely buildings

    Imagine a world where rhey are all gone, replaced by trees and parks and gardens

    It's a bit shit for Milton Keynes, but hey

    Yes, you can't really overstate the extent to which the private motor car has been responsible for the uglification of our towns and cities. So much space is given up for them.

    (Not the only factor, of course. See also bad architecture, graffiti and litter, roll shutters, and really ugly shop frontages that do nothing to complement the building they are housed in.)
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 50,024

    biggles said:

    Carnyx said:

    isam said:

    Mike Freer standing down is a symptom of a new, worrying political phenomenon. Political sectarianism is now here and it won't go away. We must protect our MPs.

    https://x.com/nigel_farage/status/1752981445839040952?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    Aww, how sweet that the person who has done more than most to encourage political sectarianism is now worried about it.
    "Political sectarianism is now here" - I didn't know NI wasn't part of the UK, even if one discounts aspects of West Central Belt and Merseyside politics in the mid-C20.
    I think, sadly, we will need to go down the American route. Threats - even "I was only" joking - against politicians treated as serious crimes. As in make a threat, go to actual prison.
    I would go the opposite way. I dislike the idea of thought crimes, so rather than criminalise the threat, increase the security of those who get threatened. We owe our MPs a protective bubble. All of them.
    The American system is partly a bubble. But one partly created by fear of consequence.

    For example, if the Secret Service decide you are a Bit Fun, they put you on the no-fly list. Then you can't take a plane *anywhere*.
    The US Secret Service really don’t mess around, and respond with a very heavy hand even to obvious jokes. The silliest of online comments generate an in-person response.

    IIRC there was someone who made a Twitter joke about ‘taking out Trump’ - except that he lived in a city the President was visiting the following week. The guy had two SS agents holding him under house arrest from hours before Air Force One landed, until it was safely back in the air.
  • Options
    AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 20,215

    Cookie said:

    Regardless of Irish festivals, Spring begins on 21 March, as any fule kno…………….

    That might be your personal, idiosyncratic, definition, but the idea of sorting starting on any single day is a human simplification for what is a gradual process, and so many different definitions are both popular and useful.

    There is no meaningful way in which you can insist that your definition is right.
    Well you can, because that's (with a slight nuance of where we are in the leap year cycle) the way in which the astronomical spring is defined.
    I grant you there are several different ways in which you can define spring, but the astronomical spring which starts at the equinox is certainly a useful and accurate distinction.

    Other useful and accurate distinctions are:
    the meteorological spring, which starts on 1st March.
    the colloquial spring (I have made that term up), which starts when it starts to feel like spring.
    I'd say when the word 'spring' is used there is a roughly 30/30/30 chance that the user is talking about each one of the above definitions (with the other 10 for 'other' e.g. when the clocks go forward. All are linguistically valid and reasonably common, none are exclusively so.
    When I said "right" I should have said "exclusively right", though, to be honest, I'm not sure what's useful about the definition that starts on the equinox. If you wanted a definition that followed the astronomy and day length then you'd use the cross-quarter days.
    And why, pray, would anyone want that? Thermal lag means such a definition is for the birds.
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 63,100

    Nigelb said:

    I hope the RN is paying attention to the naval war in the Black Sea.
    A lot of conventional kit is going to become obsolete. However crap the Russian navy, drone attacks are just too cost effective for it not to affect western navies too.

    Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate GUR says its Group 13 special unit overnight destroyed Russia’s Ivanovets missile ship with sea drones, sharing a video purporting to show the attack off the coast of occupied Crimea. GUR says the warship “rolled to the stern and sank.”
    https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1753015072014639303

    That video seems rather convincing. Early on you can see the drone going towards it, right next to a rather large hole that had already been made. A few seconds before, you see a couple of figures on deck nearly at the impact point.
    Note the realtime avoidance of the CIWS that are shooting at the drones. Which strongly argues for (partially) manual control in the final phases of the attack.

    It's all been done before - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FL-boat
    Interestingly, normal radar can be next to useless at detecting small objects at sea, especially from a low angle, such as from another ship. Even small waves produce far too much clutter. That's where things like holographic radar come in very useful.

    Or so I'm told. Ahem. :)
    This was the vessel:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantul-class_corvette

    The CIWS is supposed to have a 95% kill rate, but they clearly didn’t include sea drones in that.
    It’s going to be a huge problem for any navies operating anywhere close to hostile coastline. The sort of operation being conducted in the Red Sea at the moment is likely to become problematic/impossible.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,725
    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    The elimination of the private motor car would be the most miraculously positive thing for Britain's towns and cities. Our towns and cities are OLD, they are not built for cars, they are not American, they are designed around people and maybe horses, and our desperate attempts to squeeze big metal cars into them has uglified so many of them. All the stupid car parks for every fucking supermarket, all the road widening schemes knocking down lovely buildings

    Imagine a world where rhey are all gone, replaced by trees and parks and gardens

    It's a bit shit for Milton Keynes, but hey

    Yes, you can't really overstate the extent to which the private motor car has been responsible for the uglification of our towns and cities. So much space is given up for them.

    (Not the only factor, of course. See also bad architecture, graffiti and litter, roll shutters, and really ugly shop frontages that do nothing to complement the building they are housed in.)
    We agree entirely

    What we need is @BartholomewRoberts to come along in his Citroen of Total Certainty, and tell us what morons we are, as cars are going nowhere
  • Options
    PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 76,028
    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    Mortimer said:

    Eabhal said:

    Leon said:

    You can see the future of urban transport here in Phnom Penh

    Anyone who has been to urban Asia will know the "tuk tuk" - a little two-stroke three wheel motorised "rickshaw" - extremely handy in dense urban environments, able to nip about much easier than cars, BUT also considerably safer than mopeds and motorbikes, and you can carry luggage etc

    Tuk-tuks in Phnom Penh (and Bangkok etc) have been Uberised. You can now summon them with an app like Grab. There are so many one will normally arrive, ready to go, within less than two minutes, often it is about 30 seconds - basically instantaneous

    Using the app the driver takes you where you want to go (no language problem) and the payment is made from your phone/card, no money changes hands (like Uber)

    It is a supremely efficient way of doing short-medium journeys in a big city

    Now, combine the Uberised Tuk Tuk with self driving. It won't be hard to make tuk-tuks autonomous, if they can do cars (tuk tuks are lighter, they won't be used for long journeys, and so forth)

    THAT is the future of urban transport. Self driving tuk tuks. Entire fleets of them (clean and electric, not two stroke) shuttling around cities, doing 80% of human journeys, to the shops and back, to the pub, and so on. At night the uberised autonomous tuk tuks will store themselves in underground garages

    Thus the urban car becomes obsolete, for most people

    I agree with the general idea, but split into two parts:

    There will be pool cars and vans (Uber, Enterprise, whatever) available on every street in urban Britain, and they will be cheap with scale and enormously popular. This will massively increase the amount of space available on residential streets - average mileage of personal cars is only 7,000 per year, and they spend most of their time parked. *

    However, most people, for most journeys, will get around on e-scooters (75% of car journeys in Edinburgh are single occupant, for example.)** They are used almost exclusively by arseholes at the moment but you can't escape the fact they are spectacularly efficient to store and run. That our legislation has so far stymied the scooter revolution is a gross failure.

    *Conspiracy theorists will cite Magna Carta in defence of their private vehicles and bomb a few pool cars, ULEZ style
    ** This will lead to an enormous spike in fatal road traffic collisions as cars and scooters begin to mix, but the revolution will survive it
    E Scooters are a massive safety risk, and their embrace by the anti carists is baffling.

    In most parts of the country they're banned from public roads.

    I say this as a non driver; private cars are simply not going to go away.
    They will go away in London if we introduce my brilliant driverless e-tuktuk idea

    Why spend all that money on a car if these things can whizz you about so quickly and efficiently. Sure some people will still want cars for status but you can’t legislate for insecure idiots

    And we will save millions of lives. No more drink driving. No more falling asleep at the wheel. No more cars running over kids

    It’s coming
    Will they navigate with what 3 words?
    Leon's idea is brilliant, but he may or may not be disappointed to know that it is not entirely original, and variants of it are being considered and have been considered for some time, by both public and private sector in the UK and elsewhere. Indeed, Uber's business model relies on driverless technology working: it only becomes profitable once you can elminate drivers, who are a massive part of the cost of a taxi; and minimise fuel costs, ditto.

    The problem with driverless cars in cities is that you drive down the cost of trips, which drives up trips, which causes congestion (especially once you factor in all those empty vehicles making trips to their next pickup or to overnight stabling). Whichever way you slice it, driverless cars are much more space hungry than mass transit. Tuktuks or similar do something to address this (clearly they take up less road space), but do not entirely eliminate the problem. They would talk to each other, so would use road space more efficiently, but might not lead to a pleasant urban environment to have hundreds of tuktuks constantly whizzing about (but better or worse than fewer, but noisier and more polluting, cars?)
    What you would get out of this is the virtual elmination of pavement parking, which would significantly improve road usage and lead to a more pleasant urban environment.

    Anyway, Leon - rest assured it's a worthwhile idea and it's being explored.
    Also, as the e-tuktuks are driverless, they can be absolutely tiny. Half the space of a normal tuk tuk is taken by the driver and his wheel. Get rid of that and my minimalist e-tuktuk for solo passengers will be the size of a Peel P50 - but you won't need to drive


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peel_P50

    You would have different sizes for different needs, of course

    Another massive benefit is that you can then get rid of all the hideous shite that cars need in cities - garages, tyre shops, fitters, repair shops, and all the fucking horrible car parks, paved over gardens, turn them into urban woods! Bring back our gardens!

    It will be such a positive revolution - removing all that pollution, saving so many lives, on top of these urban benefits - it is surely bound to happen, in some form.
    You could also design housing developments without the need for drives. Streets would feel much more Georgian or Victorian. Meaning you could either increase density, or increase back garden size.
    Yes

    Just thinking about my own street, Delancey Street, in Camden

    Takeaway all the parked cars, the growling traffic, the pollution, the road signs, the traffic lights, it will be transformed, and all of it positive. Magical

    Kids will be able to play in our city streets without the constant worry that they are gonna get run over - that alone will be amazing

    In 2022, in Great Britain alone

    1,700 people were killed in road traffic accidents
    30,000 (!!!) were killed or seriously injured
    136,000 had an injury in an RTA of some kind

    All that will go. Absolutely massive benefits for public health
    It won't all go, unless you're proposing the elimination of cars in rural areas too...
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 50,024
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    Mortimer said:

    Eabhal said:

    Leon said:

    You can see the future of urban transport here in Phnom Penh

    Anyone who has been to urban Asia will know the "tuk tuk" - a little two-stroke three wheel motorised "rickshaw" - extremely handy in dense urban environments, able to nip about much easier than cars, BUT also considerably safer than mopeds and motorbikes, and you can carry luggage etc

    Tuk-tuks in Phnom Penh (and Bangkok etc) have been Uberised. You can now summon them with an app like Grab. There are so many one will normally arrive, ready to go, within less than two minutes, often it is about 30 seconds - basically instantaneous

    Using the app the driver takes you where you want to go (no language problem) and the payment is made from your phone/card, no money changes hands (like Uber)

    It is a supremely efficient way of doing short-medium journeys in a big city

    Now, combine the Uberised Tuk Tuk with self driving. It won't be hard to make tuk-tuks autonomous, if they can do cars (tuk tuks are lighter, they won't be used for long journeys, and so forth)

    THAT is the future of urban transport. Self driving tuk tuks. Entire fleets of them (clean and electric, not two stroke) shuttling around cities, doing 80% of human journeys, to the shops and back, to the pub, and so on. At night the uberised autonomous tuk tuks will store themselves in underground garages

    Thus the urban car becomes obsolete, for most people

    I agree with the general idea, but split into two parts:

    There will be pool cars and vans (Uber, Enterprise, whatever) available on every street in urban Britain, and they will be cheap with scale and enormously popular. This will massively increase the amount of space available on residential streets - average mileage of personal cars is only 7,000 per year, and they spend most of their time parked. *

    However, most people, for most journeys, will get around on e-scooters (75% of car journeys in Edinburgh are single occupant, for example.)** They are used almost exclusively by arseholes at the moment but you can't escape the fact they are spectacularly efficient to store and run. That our legislation has so far stymied the scooter revolution is a gross failure.

    *Conspiracy theorists will cite Magna Carta in defence of their private vehicles and bomb a few pool cars, ULEZ style
    ** This will lead to an enormous spike in fatal road traffic collisions as cars and scooters begin to mix, but the revolution will survive it
    E Scooters are a massive safety risk, and their embrace by the anti carists is baffling.

    In most parts of the country they're banned from public roads.

    I say this as a non driver; private cars are simply not going to go away.
    They will go away in London if we introduce my brilliant driverless e-tuktuk idea

    Why spend all that money on a car if these things can whizz you about so quickly and efficiently. Sure some people will still want cars for status but you can’t legislate for insecure idiots

    And we will save millions of lives. No more drink driving. No more falling asleep at the wheel. No more cars running over kids

    It’s coming
    Will they navigate with what 3 words?
    Leon's idea is brilliant, but he may or may not be disappointed to know that it is not entirely original, and variants of it are being considered and have been considered for some time, by both public and private sector in the UK and elsewhere. Indeed, Uber's business model relies on driverless technology working: it only becomes profitable once you can elminate drivers, who are a massive part of the cost of a taxi; and minimise fuel costs, ditto.

    The problem with driverless cars in cities is that you drive down the cost of trips, which drives up trips, which causes congestion (especially once you factor in all those empty vehicles making trips to their next pickup or to overnight stabling). Whichever way you slice it, driverless cars are much more space hungry than mass transit. Tuktuks or similar do something to address this (clearly they take up less road space), but do not entirely eliminate the problem. They would talk to each other, so would use road space more efficiently, but might not lead to a pleasant urban environment to have hundreds of tuktuks constantly whizzing about (but better or worse than fewer, but noisier and more polluting, cars?)
    What you would get out of this is the virtual elmination of pavement parking, which would significantly improve road usage and lead to a more pleasant urban environment.

    Anyway, Leon - rest assured it's a worthwhile idea and it's being explored.
    Also, as the e-tuktuks are driverless, they can be absolutely tiny. Half the space of a normal tuk tuk is taken by the driver and his wheel. Get rid of that and my minimalist e-tuktuk for solo passengers will be the size of a Peel P50 - but you won't need to drive


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peel_P50

    You would have different sizes for different needs, of course

    Another massive benefit is that you can then get rid of all the hideous shite that cars need in cities - garages, tyre shops, fitters, repair shops, and all the fucking horrible car parks, paved over gardens, turn them into urban woods! Bring back our gardens!

    It will be such a positive revolution - removing all that pollution, saving so many lives, on top of these urban benefits - it is surely bound to happen, in some form.
    Flying cars

    No, really.

    There are a number of designs, based on drone style electric multi-props, that are getting close to service. A number of them are only piloted in the "Go here on the map" style.

    One early application being looked at it is to and from airports next to cities - short flights, regular roots.
    Indeed. I've had dinner with a guy who is heavily involved in a flying car start up in Silicon Valley. He talked me through it

    They are much more advanced than people realise. And in some ways they are easier to achieve than driverless cars on the ground, because the air is so much emptier than the road
    The technology of flying cars is pretty much there, even given the wildly diverging weight requirements for the two modes of transport.

    Large drones that can work as taxis are here already, the technology is good and it’s about getting the humans on board, both literally wanting to fly in them, and the noise objections from those on the ground.
  • Options
    AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 20,215
    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    The elimination of the private motor car would be the most miraculously positive thing for Britain's towns and cities. Our towns and cities are OLD, they are not built for cars, they are not American, they are designed around people and maybe horses, and our desperate attempts to squeeze big metal cars into them has uglified so many of them. All the stupid car parks for every fucking supermarket, all the road widening schemes knocking down lovely buildings

    Imagine a world where rhey are all gone, replaced by trees and parks and gardens

    It's a bit shit for Milton Keynes, but hey

    Yes, you can't really overstate the extent to which the private motor car has been responsible for the uglification of our towns and cities. So much space is given up for them.

    (Not the only factor, of course. See also bad architecture, graffiti and litter, roll shutters, and really ugly shop frontages that do nothing to complement the building they are housed in.)
    We agree entirely

    What we need is @BartholomewRoberts to come along in his Citroen of Total Certainty, and tell us what morons we are, as cars are going nowhere
    I agree with you and I own a big SUV in north London! I'd happily park it a way away from my house and use it for long journeys only (which is what I mostly use it for). Would stop my boy nagging for lifts when he can walk. Mostly, I take the bus.
  • Options
    bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 21,912
    biggles said:

    BOE expects inflation to reach 2% by April this year

    BoE isn’t watching events in the Middle East…
    BoE have an excellent record of predicting inflation (not)
  • Options
    NigelbNigelb Posts: 63,100
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    Mortimer said:

    Eabhal said:

    Leon said:

    You can see the future of urban transport here in Phnom Penh

    Anyone who has been to urban Asia will know the "tuk tuk" - a little two-stroke three wheel motorised "rickshaw" - extremely handy in dense urban environments, able to nip about much easier than cars, BUT also considerably safer than mopeds and motorbikes, and you can carry luggage etc

    Tuk-tuks in Phnom Penh (and Bangkok etc) have been Uberised. You can now summon them with an app like Grab. There are so many one will normally arrive, ready to go, within less than two minutes, often it is about 30 seconds - basically instantaneous

    Using the app the driver takes you where you want to go (no language problem) and the payment is made from your phone/card, no money changes hands (like Uber)

    It is a supremely efficient way of doing short-medium journeys in a big city

    Now, combine the Uberised Tuk Tuk with self driving. It won't be hard to make tuk-tuks autonomous, if they can do cars (tuk tuks are lighter, they won't be used for long journeys, and so forth)

    THAT is the future of urban transport. Self driving tuk tuks. Entire fleets of them (clean and electric, not two stroke) shuttling around cities, doing 80% of human journeys, to the shops and back, to the pub, and so on. At night the uberised autonomous tuk tuks will store themselves in underground garages

    Thus the urban car becomes obsolete, for most people

    I agree with the general idea, but split into two parts:

    There will be pool cars and vans (Uber, Enterprise, whatever) available on every street in urban Britain, and they will be cheap with scale and enormously popular. This will massively increase the amount of space available on residential streets - average mileage of personal cars is only 7,000 per year, and they spend most of their time parked. *

    However, most people, for most journeys, will get around on e-scooters (75% of car journeys in Edinburgh are single occupant, for example.)** They are used almost exclusively by arseholes at the moment but you can't escape the fact they are spectacularly efficient to store and run. That our legislation has so far stymied the scooter revolution is a gross failure.

    *Conspiracy theorists will cite Magna Carta in defence of their private vehicles and bomb a few pool cars, ULEZ style
    ** This will lead to an enormous spike in fatal road traffic collisions as cars and scooters begin to mix, but the revolution will survive it
    E Scooters are a massive safety risk, and their embrace by the anti carists is baffling.

    In most parts of the country they're banned from public roads.

    I say this as a non driver; private cars are simply not going to go away.
    They will go away in London if we introduce my brilliant driverless e-tuktuk idea

    Why spend all that money on a car if these things can whizz you about so quickly and efficiently. Sure some people will still want cars for status but you can’t legislate for insecure idiots

    And we will save millions of lives. No more drink driving. No more falling asleep at the wheel. No more cars running over kids

    It’s coming
    Will they navigate with what 3 words?
    Leon's idea is brilliant, but he may or may not be disappointed to know that it is not entirely original, and variants of it are being considered and have been considered for some time, by both public and private sector in the UK and elsewhere. Indeed, Uber's business model relies on driverless technology working: it only becomes profitable once you can elminate drivers, who are a massive part of the cost of a taxi; and minimise fuel costs, ditto.

    The problem with driverless cars in cities is that you drive down the cost of trips, which drives up trips, which causes congestion (especially once you factor in all those empty vehicles making trips to their next pickup or to overnight stabling). Whichever way you slice it, driverless cars are much more space hungry than mass transit. Tuktuks or similar do something to address this (clearly they take up less road space), but do not entirely eliminate the problem. They would talk to each other, so would use road space more efficiently, but might not lead to a pleasant urban environment to have hundreds of tuktuks constantly whizzing about (but better or worse than fewer, but noisier and more polluting, cars?)
    What you would get out of this is the virtual elmination of pavement parking, which would significantly improve road usage and lead to a more pleasant urban environment.

    Anyway, Leon - rest assured it's a worthwhile idea and it's being explored.
    Also, as the e-tuktuks are driverless, they can be absolutely tiny. Half the space of a normal tuk tuk is taken by the driver and his wheel. Get rid of that and my minimalist e-tuktuk for solo passengers will be the size of a Peel P50 - but you won't need to drive


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peel_P50

    You would have different sizes for different needs, of course

    Another massive benefit is that you can then get rid of all the hideous shite that cars need in cities - garages, tyre shops, fitters, repair shops, and all the fucking horrible car parks, paved over gardens, turn them into urban woods! Bring back our gardens!

    It will be such a positive revolution - removing all that pollution, saving so many lives, on top of these urban benefits - it is surely bound to happen, in some form.
    Flying cars

    No, really.

    There are a number of designs, based on drone style electric multi-props, that are getting close to service. A number of them are only piloted in the "Go here on the map" style.

    One early application being looked at it is to and from airports next to cities - short flights, regular roots.
    Indeed. I've had dinner with a guy who is heavily involved in a flying car start up in Silicon Valley. He talked me through it

    They are much more advanced than people realise. And in some ways they are easier to achieve than driverless cars on the ground, because the air is so much emptier than the road
    Archer and Joby.
    They’ll make short range helicopters obsolete fairly quickly (and enable use cases which aren’t possible with them). That’s not a tiny market.
  • Options
    noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,907
    algarkirk said:

    Foxy said:

    Electoral Calculus has updated its prediction to a Lab Maj of 256.

    You had better all pray that this is wrong. My prediction in Ben's excellent PB competition was 254. If this turns out to be close, I will be insufferable.

    I do like the way their chart provides a range as well as mean:


    It is hard to know what 'Prediction' means, and what the method can be, if both the range of seats Labour can get is from 330-540 and also the prediction will change as soon as the data changes.

    One more point: EC are saying that the best the Tories can possibly do is to lose only 121 seats. I think that is optimistic; the Tories can easily do better than that.
    It is presumably the best they can do with about 25% of the vote, not the best they can do.
  • Options
    viewcodeviewcode Posts: 19,157

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    The elimination of the private motor car would be the most miraculously positive thing for Britain's towns and cities. Our towns and cities are OLD, they are not built for cars, they are not American, they are designed around people and maybe horses, and our desperate attempts to squeeze big metal cars into them has uglified so many of them. All the stupid car parks for every fucking supermarket, all the road widening schemes knocking down lovely buildings

    Imagine a world where rhey are all gone, replaced by trees and parks and gardens

    It's a bit shit for Milton Keynes, but hey

    Yes, you can't really overstate the extent to which the private motor car has been responsible for the uglification of our towns and cities. So much space is given up for them.

    (Not the only factor, of course. See also bad architecture, graffiti and litter, roll shutters, and really ugly shop frontages that do nothing to complement the building they are housed in.)
    We agree entirely

    What we need is @BartholomewRoberts to come along in his Citroen of Total Certainty, and tell us what morons we are, as cars are going nowhere
    I agree with you and I own a big SUV in north London! I'd happily park it a way away from my house and use it for long journeys only (which is what I mostly use it for). Would stop my boy nagging for lifts when he can walk. Mostly, I take the bus.
    Pay the fare with a card, presumably.

    Ah, my coat. Why, thank you.
  • Options
    david_herdsondavid_herdson Posts: 17,464

    biggles said:

    BOE expects inflation to reach 2% by April this year

    BoE isn’t watching events in the Middle East…
    BoE have an excellent record of predicting inflation (not)
    They have a very good record of projecting inflation though.

    Unfortunately, projections don't take into account Events all that much. Especially events that haven't happened yet (but have an assignable risk possibility of doing so).
  • Options
    CookieCookie Posts: 11,547
    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Foxy said:

    Leon said:

    Mortimer said:

    Eabhal said:

    Leon said:

    You can see the future of urban transport here in Phnom Penh

    Anyone who has been to urban Asia will know the "tuk tuk" - a little two-stroke three wheel motorised "rickshaw" - extremely handy in dense urban environments, able to nip about much easier than cars, BUT also considerably safer than mopeds and motorbikes, and you can carry luggage etc

    Tuk-tuks in Phnom Penh (and Bangkok etc) have been Uberised. You can now summon them with an app like Grab. There are so many one will normally arrive, ready to go, within less than two minutes, often it is about 30 seconds - basically instantaneous

    Using the app the driver takes you where you want to go (no language problem) and the payment is made from your phone/card, no money changes hands (like Uber)

    It is a supremely efficient way of doing short-medium journeys in a big city

    Now, combine the Uberised Tuk Tuk with self driving. It won't be hard to make tuk-tuks autonomous, if they can do cars (tuk tuks are lighter, they won't be used for long journeys, and so forth)

    THAT is the future of urban transport. Self driving tuk tuks. Entire fleets of them (clean and electric, not two stroke) shuttling around cities, doing 80% of human journeys, to the shops and back, to the pub, and so on. At night the uberised autonomous tuk tuks will store themselves in underground garages

    Thus the urban car becomes obsolete, for most people

    I agree with the general idea, but split into two parts:

    There will be pool cars and vans (Uber, Enterprise, whatever) available on every street in urban Britain, and they will be cheap with scale and enormously popular. This will massively increase the amount of space available on residential streets - average mileage of personal cars is only 7,000 per year, and they spend most of their time parked. *

    However, most people, for most journeys, will get around on e-scooters (75% of car journeys in Edinburgh are single occupant, for example.)** They are used almost exclusively by arseholes at the moment but you can't escape the fact they are spectacularly efficient to store and run. That our legislation has so far stymied the scooter revolution is a gross failure.

    *Conspiracy theorists will cite Magna Carta in defence of their private vehicles and bomb a few pool cars, ULEZ style
    ** This will lead to an enormous spike in fatal road traffic collisions as cars and scooters begin to mix, but the revolution will survive it
    E Scooters are a massive safety risk, and their embrace by the anti carists is baffling.

    In most parts of the country they're banned from public roads.

    I say this as a non driver; private cars are simply not going to go away.
    They will go away in London if we introduce my brilliant driverless e-tuktuk idea

    Why spend all that money on a car if these things can whizz you about so quickly and efficiently. Sure some people will still want cars for status but you can’t legislate for insecure idiots

    And we will save millions of lives. No more drink driving. No more falling asleep at the wheel. No more cars running over kids

    It’s coming
    Will they navigate with what 3 words?
    Leon's idea is brilliant, but he may or may not be disappointed to know that it is not entirely original, and variants of it are being considered and have been considered for some time, by both public and private sector in the UK and elsewhere. Indeed, Uber's business model relies on driverless technology working: it only becomes profitable once you can elminate drivers, who are a massive part of the cost of a taxi; and minimise fuel costs, ditto.

    The problem with driverless cars in cities is that you drive down the cost of trips, which drives up trips, which causes congestion (especially once you factor in all those empty vehicles making trips to their next pickup or to overnight stabling). Whichever way you slice it, driverless cars are much more space hungry than mass transit. Tuktuks or similar do something to address this (clearly they take up less road space), but do not entirely eliminate the problem. They would talk to each other, so would use road space more efficiently, but might not lead to a pleasant urban environment to have hundreds of tuktuks constantly whizzing about (but better or worse than fewer, but noisier and more polluting, cars?)
    What you would get out of this is the virtual elmination of pavement parking, which would significantly improve road usage and lead to a more pleasant urban environment.

    Anyway, Leon - rest assured it's a worthwhile idea and it's being explored.
    Also, as the e-tuktuks are driverless, they can be absolutely tiny. Half the space of a normal tuk tuk is taken by the driver and his wheel. Get rid of that and my minimalist e-tuktuk for solo passengers will be the size of a Peel P50 - but you won't need to drive


    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peel_P50

    You would have different sizes for different needs, of course

    Another massive benefit is that you can then get rid of all the hideous shite that cars need in cities - garages, tyre shops, fitters, repair shops, and all the fucking horrible car parks, paved over gardens, turn them into urban woods! Bring back our gardens!

    It will be such a positive revolution - removing all that pollution, saving so many lives, on top of these urban benefits - it is surely bound to happen, in some form.
    You could also design housing developments without the need for drives. Streets would feel much more Georgian or Victorian. Meaning you could either increase density, or increase back garden size.
    Yes

    Just thinking about my own street, Delancey Street, in Camden

    Takeaway all the parked cars, the growling traffic, the pollution, the road signs, the traffic lights, it will be transformed, and all of it positive. Magical

    Kids will be able to play in our city streets without the constant worry that they are gonna get run over - that alone will be amazing

    In 2022, in Great Britain alone

    1,700 people were killed in road traffic accidents
    30,000 (!!!) were killed or seriously injured
    136,000 had an injury in an RTA of some kind

    All that will go. Absolutely massive benefits for public health
    Just had a quick Google trying to find a paper from pre-covid I read about this which had some nice pretty picture in. I couldn't find it, but I did find this.
    https://www.hok.com/ideas/research/autonomous-vehicles-urban-planning/
    There's any amount of stuff out there. A lot of it is surprisingly boring given the possibilities of the subject. If only we knew someone who could unboring it spin this out into an article for some sort of newspaper:
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,398
    Pulpstar said:

    Pulpstar said:

    What do people think for the BoE ?

    Most to least likely to vote for a cut.

    I reckon the vote will split

    Swati Dhingra - LOWER
    Sarah Breeden - HOLD
    Ben Broadbent - HOLD
    Huw Pill - HOLD
    Andrew Bailey - HOLD. Will emphasise that we need to hold steady for now. Hint at a possible cut around June maybe.
    Dave Ramsden - HOLD
    Jonathan Haskel - HOLD
    Catherine L Mann - RAISE
    Megan Greene - RAISE for sure. She's like the Sherriff of Nottingham.

    Six members (Andrew Bailey, Sarah Breeden, Ben Broadbent, Megan Greene, Huw Pill and Dave Ramsden) voted in favour of the proposition. Three members voted against the proposition. Two members (Jonathan Haskel and Catherine L Mann) preferred to increase Bank Rate by 0.25 percentage points, to 5.5%. One member (Swati Dhingra) preferred to reduce Bank Rate by 0.25 percentage points, to 5%.

    Almost right, just got Haskel and Greene swapped.
    Greene voted hold !!!!

    I'd assumed she would be a raise. She seems a raise evangelist.
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,398

    biggles said:

    BOE expects inflation to reach 2% by April this year

    BoE isn’t watching events in the Middle East…
    BoE have an excellent record of predicting inflation (not)
    They are only catching up with what many monetarists have been forecasting for months.

    Could we have deflation come the summer/autumn ?
  • Options
    AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 20,215
    viewcode said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    The elimination of the private motor car would be the most miraculously positive thing for Britain's towns and cities. Our towns and cities are OLD, they are not built for cars, they are not American, they are designed around people and maybe horses, and our desperate attempts to squeeze big metal cars into them has uglified so many of them. All the stupid car parks for every fucking supermarket, all the road widening schemes knocking down lovely buildings

    Imagine a world where rhey are all gone, replaced by trees and parks and gardens

    It's a bit shit for Milton Keynes, but hey

    Yes, you can't really overstate the extent to which the private motor car has been responsible for the uglification of our towns and cities. So much space is given up for them.

    (Not the only factor, of course. See also bad architecture, graffiti and litter, roll shutters, and really ugly shop frontages that do nothing to complement the building they are housed in.)
    We agree entirely

    What we need is @BartholomewRoberts to come along in his Citroen of Total Certainty, and tell us what morons we are, as cars are going nowhere
    I agree with you and I own a big SUV in north London! I'd happily park it a way away from my house and use it for long journeys only (which is what I mostly use it for). Would stop my boy nagging for lifts when he can walk. Mostly, I take the bus.
    Pay the fare with a card, presumably.

    Ah, my coat. Why, thank you.
    No-one uses cards anymore. Apple Watch for me – Travel Express setting. Boom!
  • Options
    AnabobazinaAnabobazina Posts: 20,215
    Taz said:

    biggles said:

    BOE expects inflation to reach 2% by April this year

    BoE isn’t watching events in the Middle East…
    BoE have an excellent record of predicting inflation (not)
    They are only catching up with what many monetarists have been forecasting for months.

    Could we have deflation come the summer/autumn ?
    We need to define summer and autumn first.
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,398

    Taz said:

    biggles said:

    BOE expects inflation to reach 2% by April this year

    BoE isn’t watching events in the Middle East…
    BoE have an excellent record of predicting inflation (not)
    They are only catching up with what many monetarists have been forecasting for months.

    Could we have deflation come the summer/autumn ?
    We need to define summer and autumn first.
    Isn't summer two sunny days and a rain shower.
  • Options
    StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,662
    Leon said:

    Well that's the Tories ending up with fewer than 50 MPs at the next election.

    Tory plotters believe that Kemi Badenoch is best placed to succeed Rishi Sunak if they can manage to oust him in the coming months.

    The business and trade secretary has accused the plotters of “stirring” and said that they need to “stop messing around and get behind the leader”.

    However, the Tory rebels believe that Badenoch is the only candidate on the right who stands a chance of uniting the party and selling their policy platform.


    Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, is seen as too divisive among Tory MPs but Badenoch is perceived to have star quality.

    “The reaction to Suella is too vitriolic,” one MP familiar with the rebels’ thinking said. “She can’t run again. Kemi has the X factor, she has the capacity to cut through and communicate. She can carry off the policy platform that’s being drawn up.”

    They said she had the “added benefit” of being hated by the European Research Group of Eurosceptic Tory MPs. Badenoch clashed with them after she was accused of watering down plans to repeal EU laws. The MP said: “The ERG hate her, which means she’s inoculated by the left. She can bring people together.”

    Badenoch has had no involvement with the plotters and has gone out of her way to demonstrate her loyalty to Sunak and Downing Street. However, she has not ruled out another bid to be Tory leader should the opportunity arise.

    The rebel group is based in central London. The members are said to be working with about ten Tory MPs as they draw up plans to remove Sunak from office.


    https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-plot-to-replace-rishi-sunak-with-kemi-badenoch-she-has-x-factor-nznn6q260

    They are completely insane

    Also, Badenoch is even more completely insane if she goes along with this, it will end her career, because the Tories will still go down to a massive defeat, and then she will have to resign

    Their only hope is to stick with Sunak, do some tax cuts, fix the bloody boats, and somehow scrape to 30% in the GE and make 150-200 seats. A bad defeat, but not apocalyptic

    They seem to PREFER the apocalypse
    I'm reminded of the story of Brer
    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    The elimination of the private motor car would be the most miraculously positive thing for Britain's towns and cities. Our towns and cities are OLD, they are not built for cars, they are not American, they are designed around people and maybe horses, and our desperate attempts to squeeze big metal cars into them has uglified so many of them. All the stupid car parks for every fucking supermarket, all the road widening schemes knocking down lovely buildings

    Imagine a world where rhey are all gone, replaced by trees and parks and gardens

    It's a bit shit for Milton Keynes, but hey

    Yes, you can't really overstate the extent to which the private motor car has been responsible for the uglification of our towns and cities. So much space is given up for them.

    (Not the only factor, of course. See also bad architecture, graffiti and litter, roll shutters, and really ugly shop frontages that do nothing to complement the building they are housed in.)
    We agree entirely

    What we need is @BartholomewRoberts to come along in his Citroen of Total Certainty, and tell us what morons we are, as cars are going nowhere
    That's congestion for you.

    Possibly the car-ification and uglification of towns and cities are linked. Being connected to your surroundings is a good thing. A bit like the way that Southern Baptists who don't go to church are less trusting of people than those who do.

    If you're in a car, you are somewhat insulated from the hideousness of modern street scenes. You don't care, and they just decay.

    Nothing like walking or cycling to make you notice things that could be nicer.
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,398
    Ed "anonymous" Davey has penned words of wisdom on the Post Office scandal

    He was sorry he didn't see through the lies of the Post Office, the Tories are evil, join him on his crusade.

    So far, so bland.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/feb/01/post-office-horizon-tories-subpostmasters
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,725

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    The elimination of the private motor car would be the most miraculously positive thing for Britain's towns and cities. Our towns and cities are OLD, they are not built for cars, they are not American, they are designed around people and maybe horses, and our desperate attempts to squeeze big metal cars into them has uglified so many of them. All the stupid car parks for every fucking supermarket, all the road widening schemes knocking down lovely buildings

    Imagine a world where rhey are all gone, replaced by trees and parks and gardens

    It's a bit shit for Milton Keynes, but hey

    Yes, you can't really overstate the extent to which the private motor car has been responsible for the uglification of our towns and cities. So much space is given up for them.

    (Not the only factor, of course. See also bad architecture, graffiti and litter, roll shutters, and really ugly shop frontages that do nothing to complement the building they are housed in.)
    We agree entirely

    What we need is @BartholomewRoberts to come along in his Citroen of Total Certainty, and tell us what morons we are, as cars are going nowhere
    I agree with you and I own a big SUV in north London! I'd happily park it a way away from my house and use it for long journeys only (which is what I mostly use it for). Would stop my boy nagging for lifts when he can walk. Mostly, I take the bus.
    In my world you’d be able to summon an electric self driving SUV when you need it. A few minutes later it wouid appear at your door. Tap in your destination, off you go, it speeds off to its next customer when you’ve finished

    What you lose here, of course, is the privilege of the private space of your OWN motor car. People love their cars - I don’t underestimate that

    However the public benefits of eliminating private cars are so enormous - from road safety to less pollution to more beautiful towns to loads more space for trees and gardens (and housing) - I am sure it will happen

    They might never be forbidden but I can envisage them being taxed in an ever more punitive way until 99% of people will accept the inevitable
  • Options

    Listening to Sky it seems interest rate reductions could come as soon as May

    People's mortgages are going up, there are hundreds of thousands of people who have to remortgage over the next few months, and they ain't getting cheap money. Business insolvencies are at their highest since the GFC. Energy is still costly, food is still going up. Job figures are always massaged.
    It's not looking good out in the real world, BIg G.
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,398
    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    The elimination of the private motor car would be the most miraculously positive thing for Britain's towns and cities. Our towns and cities are OLD, they are not built for cars, they are not American, they are designed around people and maybe horses, and our desperate attempts to squeeze big metal cars into them has uglified so many of them. All the stupid car parks for every fucking supermarket, all the road widening schemes knocking down lovely buildings

    Imagine a world where rhey are all gone, replaced by trees and parks and gardens

    It's a bit shit for Milton Keynes, but hey

    Yes, you can't really overstate the extent to which the private motor car has been responsible for the uglification of our towns and cities. So much space is given up for them.

    (Not the only factor, of course. See also bad architecture, graffiti and litter, roll shutters, and really ugly shop frontages that do nothing to complement the building they are housed in.)
    We agree entirely

    What we need is @BartholomewRoberts to come along in his Citroen of Total Certainty, and tell us what morons we are, as cars are going nowhere
    I agree with you and I own a big SUV in north London! I'd happily park it a way away from my house and use it for long journeys only (which is what I mostly use it for). Would stop my boy nagging for lifts when he can walk. Mostly, I take the bus.
    In my world you’d be able to summon an electric self driving SUV when you need it. A few minutes later it wouid appear at your door. Tap in your destination, off you go, it speeds off to its next customer when you’ve finished

    What you lose here, of course, is the privilege of the private space of your OWN motor car. People love their cars - I don’t underestimate that

    However the public benefits of eliminating private cars are so enormous - from road safety to less pollution to more beautiful towns to loads more space for trees and gardens (and housing) - I am sure it will happen

    They might never be forbidden but I can envisage them being taxed in an ever more punitive way until 99% of people will accept the inevitable
    Personal Motorised vehicle travel will, again, become the preserve of the wealthy and affluent in future. Not short term but certainly in 15 or so years.

    The world will become a far larger place than it is currently and quite how that impacts on places reliant on tourism will be seen. People wanting fewer tourists in their area may end up on the receiving end of the old saying, be careful what you wish for,

    EV uptake will not happen in the numbers envisaged.
  • Options
    david_herdsondavid_herdson Posts: 17,464
    biggles said:

    Carnyx said:

    isam said:

    Mike Freer standing down is a symptom of a new, worrying political phenomenon. Political sectarianism is now here and it won't go away. We must protect our MPs.

    https://x.com/nigel_farage/status/1752981445839040952?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q

    Aww, how sweet that the person who has done more than most to encourage political sectarianism is now worried about it.
    "Political sectarianism is now here" - I didn't know NI wasn't part of the UK, even if one discounts aspects of West Central Belt and Merseyside politics in the mid-C20.
    I think, sadly, we will need to go down the American route. Threats - even "I was only" joking - against politicians treated as serious crimes. As in make a threat, go to actual prison.
    I would go the opposite way. I dislike the idea of thought crimes, so rather than criminalise the threat, increase the security of those who get threatened. We owe our MPs a protective bubble. All of them.
    No, credible threats are already crimes and need treating as such. The crucial thing there is what counts as credible. Context of past behaviour, espoused beliefs and so on will be crucial in that. But if the police / CPS / jury do their job properly, it should be possible to distinguish between the flippant and the malign.

    But threats don't always come before action. It is a serious problem that so many people feel entitled to take physical action in 'defence' or advancement of their political and/or religious beliefs.
  • Options
    noneoftheabovenoneoftheabove Posts: 20,907

    Listening to Sky it seems interest rate reductions could come as soon as May

    People's mortgages are going up, there are hundreds of thousands of people who have to remortgage over the next few months, and they ain't getting cheap money. Business insolvencies are at their highest since the GFC. Energy is still costly, food is still going up. Job figures are always massaged.
    It's not looking good out in the real world, BIg G.
    That is unfair, surely they can just quit their low paying £120k a year job and ask some of their chums for a few cushy non-execs and consultancy gigs?
  • Options
    LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 15,579

    https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48526-voting-intention-con-23-lab-44-30-31-jan-2024

    Latest YouGov Westminster voting intention (30-31 Jan)

    Con: 23% (+3 from 23-24 Jan)
    Lab: 44% (-3)
    Lib Dem: 9% (+1)
    Reform UK: 12% (-1)
    Green: 6% (=)
    SNP: 3% (-1)

    This is the opposite movement to Savanta's poll published this morning.

    Very close to convergence though, which would confirm my overall impression that Labour's lead is stable at around 20%.
    But, how will Starmer do in the campaign?

    Remember: most people can barely recall a word from him yet.

    Sunak can't do what Corbyn did, and boom up out of nowhere, but I do wonder if Starmer could bore people into a derisory turnout.
    59.4% is the low record to beat, from 2001. I think Starmer would have to go to some lengths to bore the nation below that level.
  • Options

    https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48526-voting-intention-con-23-lab-44-30-31-jan-2024

    Latest YouGov Westminster voting intention (30-31 Jan)

    Con: 23% (+3 from 23-24 Jan)
    Lab: 44% (-3)
    Lib Dem: 9% (+1)
    Reform UK: 12% (-1)
    Green: 6% (=)
    SNP: 3% (-1)

    This is the opposite movement to Savanta's poll published this morning.

    Very close to convergence though, which would confirm my overall impression that Labour's lead is stable at around 20%.
    But, how will Starmer do in the campaign?

    Remember: most people can barely recall a word from him yet.

    Sunak can't do what Corbyn did, and boom up out of nowhere, but I do wonder if Starmer could bore people into a derisory turnout.
    If you take a sample of non-PB Nerds, I suspect you'd find a lot of voters who don't know who Starmer is. Try it. Ask the next ten random people you meet who the current Leader of the Labour Party is. Good chance that at least five don't know.

    That will change during the campaign. Will he surpise on the up or down side? Dunno. My guess is that he won't be less than competent. Against Sunak that might do.

    On balance, I think that if the Conservatives are to close the gap,it won't be because SKS sends the punters to sleep.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,725
    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    The elimination of the private motor car would be the most miraculously positive thing for Britain's towns and cities. Our towns and cities are OLD, they are not built for cars, they are not American, they are designed around people and maybe horses, and our desperate attempts to squeeze big metal cars into them has uglified so many of them. All the stupid car parks for every fucking supermarket, all the road widening schemes knocking down lovely buildings

    Imagine a world where rhey are all gone, replaced by trees and parks and gardens

    It's a bit shit for Milton Keynes, but hey

    Yes, you can't really overstate the extent to which the private motor car has been responsible for the uglification of our towns and cities. So much space is given up for them.

    (Not the only factor, of course. See also bad architecture, graffiti and litter, roll shutters, and really ugly shop frontages that do nothing to complement the building they are housed in.)
    We agree entirely

    What we need is @BartholomewRoberts to come along in his Citroen of Total Certainty, and tell us what morons we are, as cars are going nowhere
    I agree with you and I own a big SUV in north London! I'd happily park it a way away from my house and use it for long journeys only (which is what I mostly use it for). Would stop my boy nagging for lifts when he can walk. Mostly, I take the bus.
    In my world you’d be able to summon an electric self driving SUV when you need it. A few minutes later it wouid appear at your door. Tap in your destination, off you go, it speeds off to its next customer when you’ve finished

    What you lose here, of course, is the privilege of the private space of your OWN motor car. People love their cars - I don’t underestimate that

    However the public benefits of eliminating private cars are so enormous - from road safety to less pollution to more beautiful towns to loads more space for trees and gardens (and housing) - I am sure it will happen

    They might never be forbidden but I can envisage them being taxed in an ever more punitive way until 99% of people will accept the inevitable
    Personal Motorised vehicle travel will, again, become the preserve of the wealthy and affluent in future. Not short term but certainly in 15 or so years.

    The world will become a far larger place than it is currently and quite how that impacts on places reliant on tourism will be seen. People wanting fewer tourists in their area may end up on the receiving end of the old saying, be careful what you wish for,

    EV uptake will not happen in the numbers envisaged.
    Yes, owning a car will be like owning a horse. A rich person’s hobby for people in the countryside

    Which is richly ironic
  • Options
    bigglesbiggles Posts: 4,370
    Nigelb said:

    Nigelb said:

    I hope the RN is paying attention to the naval war in the Black Sea.
    A lot of conventional kit is going to become obsolete. However crap the Russian navy, drone attacks are just too cost effective for it not to affect western navies too.

    Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate GUR says its Group 13 special unit overnight destroyed Russia’s Ivanovets missile ship with sea drones, sharing a video purporting to show the attack off the coast of occupied Crimea. GUR says the warship “rolled to the stern and sank.”
    https://twitter.com/ChristopherJM/status/1753015072014639303

    That video seems rather convincing. Early on you can see the drone going towards it, right next to a rather large hole that had already been made. A few seconds before, you see a couple of figures on deck nearly at the impact point.
    Note the realtime avoidance of the CIWS that are shooting at the drones. Which strongly argues for (partially) manual control in the final phases of the attack.

    It's all been done before - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FL-boat
    Interestingly, normal radar can be next to useless at detecting small objects at sea, especially from a low angle, such as from another ship. Even small waves produce far too much clutter. That's where things like holographic radar come in very useful.

    Or so I'm told. Ahem. :)
    This was the vessel:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantul-class_corvette

    The CIWS is supposed to have a 95% kill rate, but they clearly didn’t include sea drones in that.
    It’s going to be a huge problem for any navies operating anywhere close to hostile coastline. The sort of operation being conducted in the Red Sea at the moment is likely to become problematic/impossible.
    It feels like a good target for Directed Energy Weapons though. No hardening, low speed, and therefore make sense to take down within visual range. I think those systems are likely to operationalised very quickly now, on ships which can power them.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,725
    The global stats on road injuries are fairly horrific

    1.2 MILLION people are killed every year by motorised vehicles

    That must mean tens of millions are injured

    It is the LEADING cause of death for humans aged 5-29, worldwide (I had no idea of this). The most tragic deaths of all, they happen on the road

    I’m coming over quite evangelical. We must say goodbye to the car!
  • Options
    TazTaz Posts: 11,398

    https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48526-voting-intention-con-23-lab-44-30-31-jan-2024

    Latest YouGov Westminster voting intention (30-31 Jan)

    Con: 23% (+3 from 23-24 Jan)
    Lab: 44% (-3)
    Lib Dem: 9% (+1)
    Reform UK: 12% (-1)
    Green: 6% (=)
    SNP: 3% (-1)

    This is the opposite movement to Savanta's poll published this morning.

    Very close to convergence though, which would confirm my overall impression that Labour's lead is stable at around 20%.
    But, how will Starmer do in the campaign?

    Remember: most people can barely recall a word from him yet.

    Sunak can't do what Corbyn did, and boom up out of nowhere, but I do wonder if Starmer could bore people into a derisory turnout.
    If you take a sample of non-PB Nerds, I suspect you'd find a lot of voters who don't know who Starmer is. Try it. Ask the next ten random people you meet who the current Leader of the Labour Party is. Good chance that at least five don't know.

    That will change during the campaign. Will he surpise on the up or down side? Dunno. My guess is that he won't be less than competent. Against Sunak that might do.

    On balance, I think that if the Conservatives are to close the gap,it won't be because SKS sends the punters to sleep.
    "My guess is that he won't be less than competent. Against Sunak that might do."

    I think that absolutely will do. I think he would have a far harder task against Boris J.

    But Sunak is so pitiful I cannot see him outshining Starmer. Mind you given how poor Sunak is he can only surprise on the upside.
  • Options
    david_herdsondavid_herdson Posts: 17,464

    https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48526-voting-intention-con-23-lab-44-30-31-jan-2024

    Latest YouGov Westminster voting intention (30-31 Jan)

    Con: 23% (+3 from 23-24 Jan)
    Lab: 44% (-3)
    Lib Dem: 9% (+1)
    Reform UK: 12% (-1)
    Green: 6% (=)
    SNP: 3% (-1)

    This is the opposite movement to Savanta's poll published this morning.

    Very close to convergence though, which would confirm my overall impression that Labour's lead is stable at around 20%.
    But, how will Starmer do in the campaign?

    Remember: most people can barely recall a word from him yet.

    Sunak can't do what Corbyn did, and boom up out of nowhere, but I do wonder if Starmer could bore people into a derisory turnout.
    If you take a sample of non-PB Nerds, I suspect you'd find a lot of voters who don't know who Starmer is. Try it. Ask the next ten random people you meet who the current Leader of the Labour Party is. Good chance that at least five don't know.

    That will change during the campaign. Will he surpise on the up or down side? Dunno. My guess is that he won't be less than competent. Against Sunak that might do.

    On balance, I think that if the Conservatives are to close the gap,it won't be because SKS sends the punters to sleep.
    I agree. But it might be because he can't fend off Tory attacks effectively, as he's been frequently wobbly under fire. Similarly, he's neither taking the fight to the Tories with a central attack line nor laying out an overarching vision of what a Labour government would do.

    Maybe that won't matter but it's a whole set of vulnerabilities that shouldn't really exist if Labour had prepared the ground properly.
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,059
    edited February 1

    https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48526-voting-intention-con-23-lab-44-30-31-jan-2024

    Latest YouGov Westminster voting intention (30-31 Jan)

    Con: 23% (+3 from 23-24 Jan)
    Lab: 44% (-3)
    Lib Dem: 9% (+1)
    Reform UK: 12% (-1)
    Green: 6% (=)
    SNP: 3% (-1)

    This is the opposite movement to Savanta's poll published this morning.

    Very close to convergence though, which would confirm my overall impression that Labour's lead is stable at around 20%.
    But, how will Starmer do in the campaign?

    Remember: most people can barely recall a word from him yet.

    Sunak can't do what Corbyn did, and boom up out of nowhere, but I do wonder if Starmer could bore people into a derisory turnout.
    59.4% is the low record to beat, from 2001. I think Starmer would have to go to some lengths to bore the nation below that level.
    If anyone can, it’s him
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 50,024
    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    The elimination of the private motor car would be the most miraculously positive thing for Britain's towns and cities. Our towns and cities are OLD, they are not built for cars, they are not American, they are designed around people and maybe horses, and our desperate attempts to squeeze big metal cars into them has uglified so many of them. All the stupid car parks for every fucking supermarket, all the road widening schemes knocking down lovely buildings

    Imagine a world where rhey are all gone, replaced by trees and parks and gardens

    It's a bit shit for Milton Keynes, but hey

    Yes, you can't really overstate the extent to which the private motor car has been responsible for the uglification of our towns and cities. So much space is given up for them.

    (Not the only factor, of course. See also bad architecture, graffiti and litter, roll shutters, and really ugly shop frontages that do nothing to complement the building they are housed in.)
    We agree entirely

    What we need is @BartholomewRoberts to come along in his Citroen of Total Certainty, and tell us what morons we are, as cars are going nowhere
    I agree with you and I own a big SUV in north London! I'd happily park it a way away from my house and use it for long journeys only (which is what I mostly use it for). Would stop my boy nagging for lifts when he can walk. Mostly, I take the bus.
    In my world you’d be able to summon an electric self driving SUV when you need it. A few minutes later it wouid appear at your door. Tap in your destination, off you go, it speeds off to its next customer when you’ve finished

    What you lose here, of course, is the privilege of the private space of your OWN motor car. People love their cars - I don’t underestimate that

    However the public benefits of eliminating private cars are so enormous - from road safety to less pollution to more beautiful towns to loads more space for trees and gardens (and housing) - I am sure it will happen

    They might never be forbidden but I can envisage them being taxed in an ever more punitive way until 99% of people will accept the inevitable
    Personal Motorised vehicle travel will, again, become the preserve of the wealthy and affluent in future. Not short term but certainly in 15 or so years.

    The world will become a far larger place than it is currently and quite how that impacts on places reliant on tourism will be seen. People wanting fewer tourists in their area may end up on the receiving end of the old saying, be careful what you wish for,

    EV uptake will not happen in the numbers envisaged.
    The difference between now and then, is that governments never outlawed the sale of horses for transport, as they’re planning to do for cars. It’s just that cars quickly became a whole load better, and the change was organic.

    The current changes aren’t organic, they’re being forced by a global agenda that many people object to, but feel they don’t have a voice, with all political parties being on the same side of the argument.

    “The word bipartisan usually means that some larger-than-usual deception is being carried out” - George Carlin.
  • Options
    LostPasswordLostPassword Posts: 15,579

    Cookie said:

    Regardless of Irish festivals, Spring begins on 21 March, as any fule kno…………….

    That might be your personal, idiosyncratic, definition, but the idea of sorting starting on any single day is a human simplification for what is a gradual process, and so many different definitions are both popular and useful.

    There is no meaningful way in which you can insist that your definition is right.
    Well you can, because that's (with a slight nuance of where we are in the leap year cycle) the way in which the astronomical spring is defined.
    I grant you there are several different ways in which you can define spring, but the astronomical spring which starts at the equinox is certainly a useful and accurate distinction.

    Other useful and accurate distinctions are:
    the meteorological spring, which starts on 1st March.
    the colloquial spring (I have made that term up), which starts when it starts to feel like spring.
    I'd say when the word 'spring' is used there is a roughly 30/30/30 chance that the user is talking about each one of the above definitions (with the other 10 for 'other' e.g. when the clocks go forward. All are linguistically valid and reasonably common, none are exclusively so.
    When I said "right" I should have said "exclusively right", though, to be honest, I'm not sure what's useful about the definition that starts on the equinox. If you wanted a definition that followed the astronomy and day length then you'd use the cross-quarter days.
    And why, pray, would anyone want that? Thermal lag means such a definition is for the birds.
    You might be interested in a definition that involves submitting for lots of reasons. Not least, growing crops.

    If you want a definition that involves temperature, use temperature values. Thermal lag barriers a lot between maritime and continental climate, so using something that is accidentally, nearly, sort of matches for one particular location, is just bizarre.
  • Options
    eristdooferistdoof Posts: 4,916

    Taz said:

    biggles said:

    BOE expects inflation to reach 2% by April this year

    BoE isn’t watching events in the Middle East…
    BoE have an excellent record of predicting inflation (not)
    They are only catching up with what many monetarists have been forecasting for months.

    Could we have deflation come the summer/autumn ?
    We need to define summer and autumn first.
    We had a post earlier saying that today 1st of Feb is (to some) the first day of spring. It follows that 1st May is the first day of summer and 1st August is the first day of autumn.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,725
    Sandpit said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    The elimination of the private motor car would be the most miraculously positive thing for Britain's towns and cities. Our towns and cities are OLD, they are not built for cars, they are not American, they are designed around people and maybe horses, and our desperate attempts to squeeze big metal cars into them has uglified so many of them. All the stupid car parks for every fucking supermarket, all the road widening schemes knocking down lovely buildings

    Imagine a world where rhey are all gone, replaced by trees and parks and gardens

    It's a bit shit for Milton Keynes, but hey

    Yes, you can't really overstate the extent to which the private motor car has been responsible for the uglification of our towns and cities. So much space is given up for them.

    (Not the only factor, of course. See also bad architecture, graffiti and litter, roll shutters, and really ugly shop frontages that do nothing to complement the building they are housed in.)
    We agree entirely

    What we need is @BartholomewRoberts to come along in his Citroen of Total Certainty, and tell us what morons we are, as cars are going nowhere
    I agree with you and I own a big SUV in north London! I'd happily park it a way away from my house and use it for long journeys only (which is what I mostly use it for). Would stop my boy nagging for lifts when he can walk. Mostly, I take the bus.
    In my world you’d be able to summon an electric self driving SUV when you need it. A few minutes later it wouid appear at your door. Tap in your destination, off you go, it speeds off to its next customer when you’ve finished

    What you lose here, of course, is the privilege of the private space of your OWN motor car. People love their cars - I don’t underestimate that

    However the public benefits of eliminating private cars are so enormous - from road safety to less pollution to more beautiful towns to loads more space for trees and gardens (and housing) - I am sure it will happen

    They might never be forbidden but I can envisage them being taxed in an ever more punitive way until 99% of people will accept the inevitable
    Personal Motorised vehicle travel will, again, become the preserve of the wealthy and affluent in future. Not short term but certainly in 15 or so years.

    The world will become a far larger place than it is currently and quite how that impacts on places reliant on tourism will be seen. People wanting fewer tourists in their area may end up on the receiving end of the old saying, be careful what you wish for,

    EV uptake will not happen in the numbers envisaged.
    The difference between now and then, is that governments never outlawed the sale of horses for transport, as they’re planning to do for cars. It’s just that cars quickly became a whole load better, and the change was organic.

    The current changes aren’t organic, they’re being forced by a global agenda that many people object to, but feel they don’t have a voice, with all political parties being on the same side of the argument.

    “The word bipartisan usually means that some larger-than-usual deception is being carried out” - George Carlin.
    If you can order an air conditioned e-tuk tuk which arrives at your door within a minute and can take you to your destination safely and promptly even if you are blind drunk or asleep, why do you need a car?

    I get that you like having a car and I get that it’s different in the countryside, but what you personally like doesn’t really matter and most people don’t live in the countryside

    And then you add the public health benefits. No more run over kids
  • Options
    isamisam Posts: 41,059
    More migrants crossed the Channel in small boats in January than in the same month last year, according to Home Office figures. 1,335 people arrived last month - including 278 yesterday in six boats. That compares with 1,180 people in January 2023.

    https://x.com/simonjonesnews/status/1753017348263387229?s=46&t=CW4pL-mMpTqsJXCdjW0Z6Q
  • Options
    SandpitSandpit Posts: 50,024
    Leon said:

    Sandpit said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    The elimination of the private motor car would be the most miraculously positive thing for Britain's towns and cities. Our towns and cities are OLD, they are not built for cars, they are not American, they are designed around people and maybe horses, and our desperate attempts to squeeze big metal cars into them has uglified so many of them. All the stupid car parks for every fucking supermarket, all the road widening schemes knocking down lovely buildings

    Imagine a world where rhey are all gone, replaced by trees and parks and gardens

    It's a bit shit for Milton Keynes, but hey

    Yes, you can't really overstate the extent to which the private motor car has been responsible for the uglification of our towns and cities. So much space is given up for them.

    (Not the only factor, of course. See also bad architecture, graffiti and litter, roll shutters, and really ugly shop frontages that do nothing to complement the building they are housed in.)
    We agree entirely

    What we need is @BartholomewRoberts to come along in his Citroen of Total Certainty, and tell us what morons we are, as cars are going nowhere
    I agree with you and I own a big SUV in north London! I'd happily park it a way away from my house and use it for long journeys only (which is what I mostly use it for). Would stop my boy nagging for lifts when he can walk. Mostly, I take the bus.
    In my world you’d be able to summon an electric self driving SUV when you need it. A few minutes later it wouid appear at your door. Tap in your destination, off you go, it speeds off to its next customer when you’ve finished

    What you lose here, of course, is the privilege of the private space of your OWN motor car. People love their cars - I don’t underestimate that

    However the public benefits of eliminating private cars are so enormous - from road safety to less pollution to more beautiful towns to loads more space for trees and gardens (and housing) - I am sure it will happen

    They might never be forbidden but I can envisage them being taxed in an ever more punitive way until 99% of people will accept the inevitable
    Personal Motorised vehicle travel will, again, become the preserve of the wealthy and affluent in future. Not short term but certainly in 15 or so years.

    The world will become a far larger place than it is currently and quite how that impacts on places reliant on tourism will be seen. People wanting fewer tourists in their area may end up on the receiving end of the old saying, be careful what you wish for,

    EV uptake will not happen in the numbers envisaged.
    The difference between now and then, is that governments never outlawed the sale of horses for transport, as they’re planning to do for cars. It’s just that cars quickly became a whole load better, and the change was organic.

    The current changes aren’t organic, they’re being forced by a global agenda that many people object to, but feel they don’t have a voice, with all political parties being on the same side of the argument.

    “The word bipartisan usually means that some larger-than-usual deception is being carried out” - George Carlin.
    If you can order an air conditioned e-tuk tuk which arrives at your door within a minute and can take you to your destination safely and promptly even if you are blind drunk or asleep, why do you need a car?

    I get that you like having a car and I get that it’s different in the countryside, but what you personally like doesn’t really matter and most people don’t live in the countryside

    And then you add the public health benefits. No more run over kids
    Kids will still get run over, it’s just that their parents will now have to sue a multi-billion-dollar corporation domiciled in Delaware or the Cayman Islands to get any compensation.
  • Options
    StuartinromfordStuartinromford Posts: 14,662

    https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48526-voting-intention-con-23-lab-44-30-31-jan-2024

    Latest YouGov Westminster voting intention (30-31 Jan)

    Con: 23% (+3 from 23-24 Jan)
    Lab: 44% (-3)
    Lib Dem: 9% (+1)
    Reform UK: 12% (-1)
    Green: 6% (=)
    SNP: 3% (-1)

    This is the opposite movement to Savanta's poll published this morning.

    Very close to convergence though, which would confirm my overall impression that Labour's lead is stable at around 20%.
    But, how will Starmer do in the campaign?

    Remember: most people can barely recall a word from him yet.

    Sunak can't do what Corbyn did, and boom up out of nowhere, but I do wonder if Starmer could bore people into a derisory turnout.
    If you take a sample of non-PB Nerds, I suspect you'd find a lot of voters who don't know who Starmer is. Try it. Ask the next ten random people you meet who the current Leader of the Labour Party is. Good chance that at least five don't know.

    That will change during the campaign. Will he surpise on the up or down side? Dunno. My guess is that he won't be less than competent. Against Sunak that might do.

    On balance, I think that if the Conservatives are to close the gap,it won't be because SKS sends the punters to sleep.
    I agree. But it might be because he can't fend off Tory attacks effectively, as he's been frequently wobbly under fire. Similarly, he's neither taking the fight to the Tories with a central attack line nor laying out an overarching vision of what a Labour government would do.

    Maybe that won't matter but it's a whole set of vulnerabilities that shouldn't really exist if Labour had prepared the ground properly.
    Partly, that's a consequence of how quickly the opportunity to be the next government came around.

    It wasn't Starmer's job to be the next PM; he was meant to be the one who cleaned house, put some people with potential in the middle ranks, lose less badly in 2023 (260ish seats?) and retire with grudging respect for a difficult job adequately done. Like Michael Howard in 2005 on the other side.

    That Boris collapsed so soon (unexpected) and so suddenly (always pretty likely), and that he took the party with him (always very likely) has meant that SKS has to play a different role- PM in waiting- which is a bit different and harder. Not sure he's good at it, but it could all be a lot worse for all of us.
  • Options
    algarkirkalgarkirk Posts: 10,684
    edited February 1
    Cookie said:

    Cookie said:

    Regardless of Irish festivals, Spring begins on 21 March, as any fule kno…………….

    That might be your personal, idiosyncratic, definition, but the idea of sorting starting on any single day is a human simplification for what is a gradual process, and so many different definitions are both popular and useful.

    There is no meaningful way in which you can insist that your definition is right.
    Well you can, because that's (with a slight nuance of where we are in the leap year cycle) the way in which the astronomical spring is defined.
    I grant you there are several different ways in which you can define spring, but the astronomical spring which starts at the equinox is certainly a useful and accurate distinction.

    Other useful and accurate distinctions are:
    the meteorological spring, which starts on 1st March.
    the colloquial spring (I have made that term up), which starts when it starts to feel like spring.
    I'd say when the word 'spring' is used there is a roughly 30/30/30 chance that the user is talking about each one of the above definitions (with the other 10 for 'other' e.g. when the clocks go forward. All are linguistically valid and reasonably common, none are exclusively so.
    When I said "right" I should have said "exclusively right", though, to be honest, I'm not sure what's useful about the definition that starts on the equinox. If you wanted a definition that followed the astronomy and day length then you'd use the cross-quarter days.
    The most fun of the various 'right' definitions though is the entirely subjective "when it feels like Spring" (or indeed any season). To me, this is:
    Winter: starts Dec 1st when you open the first window of the advent calendar, notwithstanding my vicar friend's annual rant about 'technically advent starts on day x' (can't be bothered to remember the details).
    Spring: starts once the consensus of the flowers and the trees agrees that Spring has started. The daffodils have to be out and the majority of the trees in blossom. Late March at the earliest.
    Summer: Starts at the start of Whit week, if the weather is good. If not, it's when the kids go back to school after the Whitsun holidays.
    Autumn: the day the kids go back to school.
    (But summer ends for me on August Bank Holiday Monday, which always feels painfully poignant, and leaves four or five days which are neither summer not autumn.)

    As I said, all entirely subjective: a mixture of weather, school calendar and tradition.
    Spring starts on 2nd February. Gets winter over with. The Tories are planning a Bill to say that any court must conclusively find that spring weather starts on the second day of February and that the celandines are out, and that North Korea is a safe country.
  • Options
    FairlieredFairliered Posts: 4,049
    eristdoof said:

    Taz said:

    biggles said:

    BOE expects inflation to reach 2% by April this year

    BoE isn’t watching events in the Middle East…
    BoE have an excellent record of predicting inflation (not)
    They are only catching up with what many monetarists have been forecasting for months.

    Could we have deflation come the summer/autumn ?
    We need to define summer and autumn first.
    We had a post earlier saying that today 1st of Feb is (to some) the first day of spring. It follows that 1st May is the first day of summer and 1st August is the first day of autumn.
    In the West of Scotland we have different seasons. Winter 1st November until 15th April. Spring 16th April until 15th June. Summer 16th June until 30th June. Monsoon season 1st July until 15th September. Autumn 16th September until 31st October.
  • Options
    mwadamsmwadams Posts: 3,156
    Foxy said:

    Electoral Calculus has updated its prediction to a Lab Maj of 256.

    You had better all pray that this is wrong. My prediction in Ben's excellent PB competition was 254. If this turns out to be close, I will be insufferable.

    I do like the way their chart provides a range as well as mean:


    I think the absolute optimum hilarity would be if the LDs are 5 off their high, and the Tories 5 off their low on that chart.
  • Options
    LeonLeon Posts: 47,725
    Sandpit said:

    Leon said:

    Sandpit said:

    Taz said:

    Leon said:

    Leon said:

    Cookie said:

    Leon said:

    The elimination of the private motor car would be the most miraculously positive thing for Britain's towns and cities. Our towns and cities are OLD, they are not built for cars, they are not American, they are designed around people and maybe horses, and our desperate attempts to squeeze big metal cars into them has uglified so many of them. All the stupid car parks for every fucking supermarket, all the road widening schemes knocking down lovely buildings

    Imagine a world where rhey are all gone, replaced by trees and parks and gardens

    It's a bit shit for Milton Keynes, but hey

    Yes, you can't really overstate the extent to which the private motor car has been responsible for the uglification of our towns and cities. So much space is given up for them.

    (Not the only factor, of course. See also bad architecture, graffiti and litter, roll shutters, and really ugly shop frontages that do nothing to complement the building they are housed in.)
    We agree entirely

    What we need is @BartholomewRoberts to come along in his Citroen of Total Certainty, and tell us what morons we are, as cars are going nowhere
    I agree with you and I own a big SUV in north London! I'd happily park it a way away from my house and use it for long journeys only (which is what I mostly use it for). Would stop my boy nagging for lifts when he can walk. Mostly, I take the bus.
    In my world you’d be able to summon an electric self driving SUV when you need it. A few minutes later it wouid appear at your door. Tap in your destination, off you go, it speeds off to its next customer when you’ve finished

    What you lose here, of course, is the privilege of the private space of your OWN motor car. People love their cars - I don’t underestimate that

    However the public benefits of eliminating private cars are so enormous - from road safety to less pollution to more beautiful towns to loads more space for trees and gardens (and housing) - I am sure it will happen

    They might never be forbidden but I can envisage them being taxed in an ever more punitive way until 99% of people will accept the inevitable
    Personal Motorised vehicle travel will, again, become the preserve of the wealthy and affluent in future. Not short term but certainly in 15 or so years.

    The world will become a far larger place than it is currently and quite how that impacts on places reliant on tourism will be seen. People wanting fewer tourists in their area may end up on the receiving end of the old saying, be careful what you wish for,

    EV uptake will not happen in the numbers envisaged.
    The difference between now and then, is that governments never outlawed the sale of horses for transport, as they’re planning to do for cars. It’s just that cars quickly became a whole load better, and the change was organic.

    The current changes aren’t organic, they’re being forced by a global agenda that many people object to, but feel they don’t have a voice, with all political parties being on the same side of the argument.

    “The word bipartisan usually means that some larger-than-usual deception is being carried out” - George Carlin.
    If you can order an air conditioned e-tuk tuk which arrives at your door within a minute and can take you to your destination safely and promptly even if you are blind drunk or asleep, why do you need a car?

    I get that you like having a car and I get that it’s different in the countryside, but what you personally like doesn’t really matter and most people don’t live in the countryside

    And then you add the public health benefits. No more run over kids
    Kids will still get run over, it’s just that their parents will now have to sue a multi-billion-dollar corporation domiciled in Delaware or the Cayman Islands to get any compensation.
    Self driving e cars will be vastly safer. For a start, no sleepy or boozy drivers.... no boy racers doing 100mph.... no cars driven by jihadists plowing into festivals

    They won't be perfect, nothing is, but the difference will be tremendous, and I reckon we will look back and marvel at an age when we allowed people to drive huge metal killing machines, the same way we now marvel at people smoking on planes
This discussion has been closed.