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.
I'm not sure all that many people know who Sunak is either.
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.
Spring starts with one of the greatest of nature's spectacles: the Transhumance of the Flint Knappers, from their winter grazing in Indochina, to their summer pastures in northwest Europe
Looking at the Etihad timetable, in 2024 this should happen around March 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.
Why is everyone taken in by this faux notion that Johnson is such a supreme public speaker and campaigner?
He won the EU Referendum on the basis of falsehoods and at both the London Mayoralty election and 2019GE he was up against poor candidates. In 2019 for as many who fell for the false bon homie there were as many who found him tiresome. His performance hiding in fridges and getting flustered on the hoof was sub-optimal, but the voter's mind had already been made up. Offering free Brexit unicorns that have not so far been realised was also easier to promise than deliver.
Sunak is quite plausible against Starmer. The focus groups like the " back to square one" narrative.
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
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.
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
Need to find lots of job opportunities for the workers who will inevitably lose out and lose their jobs.
The usual politicians crap about a green new deal creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs won't cut it.
Won't impact on me, I will be retired by then, and my plans are to spend my remaining days drinking my home brew and working through my extensive DVD collection.
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
So you’ll be first up for the pilotless planes?
Er, yes, Why not?
I've been in driverless trains, so have you, do they worry you? I don't collapse in a heap of panic on the Docklands Light Railway to Beckton
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.
I suspect that while the Minimum Wage increasing to £11.44 per hour in April will be welcomed by workers, it will put an inflationary squeeze on a lot of labour intensive industries such as hospitality and Social Care. Either they charge more or become financially less viable.
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.
Spring starts with one of the greatest of nature's spectacles: the Transhumance of the Flint Knappers, from their winter grazing in Indochina, to their summer pastures in northwest Europe
Looking at the Etihad imetable, this year this should happen around March 1
The Knappers' Migration coincides with the end of the "unacceptable risk" of frost and snow in Northern Europe, which is early to mid March.
This also (unsurprisingly) leads up to the spring equinox which is Tuesday,19th March this year.
Daffodils, snowdrops, blossom etc. in Northern European towns and cities are all now precursors of "proper spring", because of the microclimates we've created. Hence why they regularly get frosted all to heck these days.
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.
President Joe Biden has opened up a sizable lead over former President Donald Trump in a new poll thanks to his massive 22-point lead with women voters.
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
The problem with the concept of "driverless cars on demand" is all the extra milage it entails. You essentially trade lots of cars doing little, for a few cars worked intensively, and to achieve that you have to shuttle the cars from one client to the next. Even if fairly well optimised, this increases the distance traveled for the same amount of humans moved a given distance.
The problem is worse in less densely populated areas as the distances between jobs are likely to increase.
Its not a wholey new problem - witness the number of almost empty trains run from Central London out to places like Dartford during the morning rush hour so that they can become heavily loaded trains headed back in again - but when the road network is already full to excess in many places, adding loads of empty vehicle movements to save to the number of cars parked up out of the way is a non-starter.
That's before you get on to all issues around the convenice of a private car being partly because it's your space, not just space rented for a few minutes. So you can leave your shopping bags in the boot ready to use, and some mints in the glove box for when the kids get travel sick. To say nothing of the hassle of fitting and removing kiddy seats every time you take the family somewhere...
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.
I'm not sure all that many people know who Sunak is either.
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
Self-driving cars will be great. Even better in the countryside, where people often live miles from anywhere and have to drive – drive!! – to the pub. I mean what a shit way of living... driving to the pub.
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.
Not all seasons are the same length. Spring is Feb-May, Summer is June-Sept, Autumn is Oct to mid December. Winter is 6-7 weeks from mid Dec to the end of January. This pattern + vitamin D and staring at the sky is good for seasonal affective disorder.
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
Self-driving cars will be great. Even better in the countryside, where people often live miles from anywhere and have to drive – drive!! – to the pub. I mean what a shit way of living... driving to the pub.
Nothing wrong with driving to the pub.
The innovation will be the car that drives you back from the pub, and is on your driveway in the morning.
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
Also worth remembering that in 1997 turnout was down 6.4%, despite the apparent enthusiasm for Blair. If that pattern holds for the Conservatives losing office, then the starting point for turnout will be 60.9% (i.e. 6.4% down on the turnout in 2019). That's actually pretty close!
Maybe a record low turnout is more likely than I thought? Any odds being offered on it?
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.
Pedant note: Advent starts on the Sunday nearest St Andrew's Day, 30 Nov.
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
The problem with the concept of "driverless cars on demand" is all the extra milage it entails. You essentially trade lots of cars doing little, for a few cars worked intensively, and to achieve that you have to shuttle the cars from one client to the next. Even if fairly well optimised, this increases the distance traveled for the same amount of humans moved a given distance.
The problem is worse in less densely populated areas as the distances between jobs are likely to increase.
Its not a wholey new problem - witness the number of almost empty trains run from Central London out to places like Dartford during the morning rush hour so that they can become heavily loaded trains headed back in again - but when the road network is already full to excess in many places, adding loads of empty vehicle movements to save to the number of cars parked up out of the way is a non-starter.
That's before you get on to all issues around the convenice of a private car being partly because it's your space, not just space rented for a few minutes. So you can leave your shopping bags in the boot ready to use, and some mints in the glove box for when the kids get travel sick. To say nothing of the hassle of fitting and removing kiddy seats every time you take the family somewhere...
You'll still be allowed to keep your private car, it will just cost you six grand a week in tax
AI will sort out everything else so it all work with maxium efficiency, and it will be brillog
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.
Pedant note: Advent starts on the Sunday nearest St Andrew's Day, 30 Nov.
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
The problem with the concept of "driverless cars on demand" is all the extra milage it entails. You essentially trade lots of cars doing little, for a few cars worked intensively, and to achieve that you have to shuttle the cars from one client to the next. Even if fairly well optimised, this increases the distance traveled for the same amount of humans moved a given distance.
The problem is worse in less densely populated areas as the distances between jobs are likely to increase.
Its not a wholey new problem - witness the number of almost empty trains run from Central London out to places like Dartford during the morning rush hour so that they can become heavily loaded trains headed back in again - but when the road network is already full to excess in many places, adding loads of empty vehicle movements to save to the number of cars parked up out of the way is a non-starter.
That's before you get on to all issues around the convenice of a private car being partly because it's your space, not just space rented for a few minutes. So you can leave your shopping bags in the boot ready to use, and some mints in the glove box for when the kids get travel sick. To say nothing of the hassle of fitting and removing kiddy seats every time you take the family somewhere...
You'll still be allowed to keep your private car, it will just cost you six grand a week in tax
AI will sort out everything else so it all work with maxium efficiency, and it will be brillog
And if it doesn’t, Computer Is Always Right.
So if you have any issue, the San Angeles Police Dept will ProtectServe you. For Great Justice.
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
Self-driving cars will be great. Even better in the countryside, where people often live miles from anywhere and have to drive – drive!! – to the pub. I mean what a shit way of living... driving to the pub.
Nothing wrong with driving to the pub.
The innovation will be the car that drives you back from the pub, and is on your driveway in the morning.
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.
As I mentioned earlier, I've started to see Labour advertising on Youtube (well, starting today I think) with Starmer speechifying. Even without a general election, we should see more of Starmer in the run-up to the locals in May and voters will make up their mind.
But you are right. Starmer is no Jeremy Corbyn in the charisma and oratory stakes, let alone Tony Blair. Luckily for him, CCHQ seems determined to squander Rishi's strengths and it may be too late to reverse ferret.
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
Self-driving cars will be great. Even better in the countryside, where people often live miles from anywhere and have to drive – drive!! – to the pub. I mean what a shit way of living... driving to the pub.
Nothing wrong with driving to the pub.
The innovation will be the car that drives you back from the pub, and is on your driveway in the morning.
I drive to the pub. My wife drives back home.
A fair division of labour.
Where I live, the local IKEA and Hard Rock Cafe are in the same huge shopping mall.
The deal is always that if she wants to go to that Swedish shop at the weekend, I’ll drive there and she’ll drive back, and I’ll buy lunch.
Sit at the bar of the HRC, and there’s usually a dozen single men who have all had exactly the same idea!
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
Also worth remembering that in 1997 turnout was down 6.4%, despite the apparent enthusiasm for Blair. If that pattern holds for the Conservatives losing office, then the starting point for turnout will be 60.9% (i.e. 6.4% down on the turnout in 2019). That's actually pretty close!
Maybe a record low turnout is more likely than I thought? Any odds being offered on it?
Worth noting that the record low turnout in 2001 was a massive Labour majority.
I think this year the "Kick the B*****s Out" motivation will GOTV, even for what seems a foregone conclusion.
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.
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
Also worth remembering that in 1997 turnout was down 6.4%, despite the apparent enthusiasm for Blair. If that pattern holds for the Conservatives losing office, then the starting point for turnout will be 60.9% (i.e. 6.4% down on the turnout in 2019). That's actually pretty close!
Maybe a record low turnout is more likely than I thought? Any odds being offered on it?
Worth noting that the record low turnout in 2001 was a massive Labour majority.
I think this year the "Kick the B*****s Out" motivation will GOTV, even for what seems a foregone conclusion.
I would guess a turnout of 60-65%
1997 was well down on 1992, because the result was a foregone conclusion.
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
Also worth remembering that in 1997 turnout was down 6.4%, despite the apparent enthusiasm for Blair. If that pattern holds for the Conservatives losing office, then the starting point for turnout will be 60.9% (i.e. 6.4% down on the turnout in 2019). That's actually pretty close!
Maybe a record low turnout is more likely than I thought? Any odds being offered on it?
Worth noting that the record low turnout in 2001 was a massive Labour majority.
I think this year the "Kick the B*****s Out" motivation will GOTV, even for what seems a foregone conclusion.
I would guess a turnout of 60-65%
1997 was well down on 1992, because the result was a foregone conclusion.
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
Doesn't everyone already use what 3 words?
It's better than a 78 figure grid reference or lat-long for Streetview, and identifies everywhere.
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
Also worth remembering that in 1997 turnout was down 6.4%, despite the apparent enthusiasm for Blair. If that pattern holds for the Conservatives losing office, then the starting point for turnout will be 60.9% (i.e. 6.4% down on the turnout in 2019). That's actually pretty close!
Maybe a record low turnout is more likely than I thought? Any odds being offered on it?
Worth noting that the record low turnout in 2001 was a massive Labour majority.
I think this year the "Kick the B*****s Out" motivation will GOTV, even for what seems a foregone conclusion.
I would guess a turnout of 60-65%
1997 was well down on 1992, because the result was a foregone conclusion.
Yep, but it wasn't Labour voters who stayed away.
Blair put on 2m votes and Major lost 4m votes. The low turnout was due to stay-at-home Tories.
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
Doesn't everyone already use what 3 words?
It's better than a 78 figure grid reference or lat-long for Streetview, and identifies everywhere.
Just send a map link. W3W is flawed because of the easy risk of transfer error. But, let's not start that again.
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!
You'd be surprised how dedicated dozy drivers are to demanding that anything they do is nothing to do with them.
The number of people who admit they were hooning into the setting sun at say 50mph, then admit in Court that they could not see anything, then testify that their behaviour was perfectly safe, is remarkable. Happens every week.
It's exactly the same for people driving round blind bends on the wrong side of the road. "I couldn't see. They should not have been there. Not my fault". Look up, for example, Dr Helen Measures.
A lot of people climbing into motor vehicles seem to suffer some sort of auto-full-frontal-lobotomy.
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.
I'm not sure all that many people know who Sunak is either.
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
Doesn't everyone already use what 3 words?
It's better than a 78 figure grid reference or lat-long for Streetview, and identifies everywhere.
Just send a map link. W3W is flawed because of the easy risk of transfer error. But, let's not start that again.
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
Arguments that start "But why would you need to..." don't really work for me: the onus is on you to persuade, not me to defend. Even if my reason is "just to be bloody awkward", it's still a reason.
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
Arguments that start "But why would you need to..." don't really work for me: the onus is on you to persuade, not me to defend. Even if my reason is "just to be bloody awkward", it's still a reason.
On ArsTechnica, there is a long running joke about the Alaskan Emergency Trombone Repairman. Essentially, someone claimed that they had a requirement to be able to drive 500 miles in winter, with a truck load of large tools, do repairs to musical instruments and drive back. Without stopping for fuel, or spending any time fuelling the vehicle.
Which meant that electric vehicles were useless for *everyone*.
Comments
They won’t want to move too quickly on this, in my view.
Looking at the Etihad timetable, in 2024 this should happen around March 1
Ferrari posted this on their social media 48 hours ago, announcing a tie-up with Peroni. Look carefully…
He won the EU Referendum on the basis of falsehoods and at both the London Mayoralty election and 2019GE he was up against poor candidates. In 2019 for as many who fell for the false bon homie there were as many who found him tiresome. His performance hiding in fridges and getting flustered on the hoof was sub-optimal, but the voter's mind had already been made up. Offering free Brexit unicorns that have not so far been realised was also easier to promise than deliver.
Sunak is quite plausible against Starmer. The focus groups like the " back to square one" narrative.
The usual politicians crap about a green new deal creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs won't cut it.
Won't impact on me, I will be retired by then, and my plans are to spend my remaining days drinking my home brew and working through my extensive DVD collection.
I've been in driverless trains, so have you, do they worry you? I don't collapse in a heap of panic on the Docklands Light Railway to Beckton
Ditto planes, ditto cars
We ain't out of the woods yet.
This also (unsurprisingly) leads up to the spring equinox which is Tuesday,19th March this year.
Daffodils, snowdrops, blossom etc. in Northern European towns and cities are all now precursors of "proper spring", because of the microclimates we've created. Hence why they regularly get frosted all to heck these days.
https://www.mediaite.com/news/new-poll-biden-opens-lead-on-trump-thanks-to-huge-lead-with-women/
The problem is worse in less densely populated areas as the distances between jobs are likely to increase.
Its not a wholey new problem - witness the number of almost empty trains run from Central London out to places like Dartford during the morning rush hour so that they can become heavily loaded trains headed back in again - but when the road network is already full to excess in many places, adding loads of empty vehicle movements to save to the number of cars parked up out of the way is a non-starter.
That's before you get on to all issues around the convenice of a private car being partly because it's your space, not just space rented for a few minutes. So you can leave your shopping bags in the boot ready to use, and some mints in the glove box for when the kids get travel sick. To say nothing of the hassle of fitting and removing kiddy seats every time you take the family somewhere...
The real gap is the next level down:
Rayner 74%, Mordaunt 64%, Kwarteng 66%, Davey 64%, Cooper 62%, Reeves 48%
The innovation will be the car that drives you back from the pub, and is on your driveway in the morning.
Maybe a record low turnout is more likely than I thought? Any odds being offered on it?
AI will sort out everything else so it all work with maxium efficiency, and it will be brillog
So if you have any issue, the San Angeles Police Dept will ProtectServe you. For Great Justice.
A fair division of labour.
But you are right. Starmer is no Jeremy Corbyn in the charisma and oratory stakes, let alone Tony Blair. Luckily for him, CCHQ seems determined to squander Rishi's strengths and it may be too late to reverse ferret.
The deal is always that if she wants to go to that Swedish shop at the weekend, I’ll drive there and she’ll drive back, and I’ll buy lunch.
Sit at the bar of the HRC, and there’s usually a dozen single men who have all had exactly the same idea!
I think this year the "Kick the B*****s Out" motivation will GOTV, even for what seems a foregone conclusion.
I would guess a turnout of 60-65%
It’s all up for Rishi, when the boats come in.
Nigel’s the laddie, though he’s a baddie,
Thinks he’ll be Daddy, when the boats come in.
Curtain’s then for Rishi, and his donors fishy,
All their plans are wishy, when the boats come in.
Turn then to Starmer? Though he’s no charmer,
Things might be calmer, when the boats come in.
It's better than a 78 figure grid reference or lat-long for Streetview, and identifies everywhere.
The number of people who admit they were hooning into the setting sun at say 50mph, then admit in Court that they could not see anything, then testify that their behaviour was perfectly safe, is remarkable. Happens every week.
It's exactly the same for people driving round blind bends on the wrong side of the road. "I couldn't see. They should not have been there. Not my fault". Look up, for example, Dr Helen Measures.
A lot of people climbing into motor vehicles seem to suffer some sort of auto-full-frontal-lobotomy.
Which meant that electric vehicles were useless for *everyone*.