FPT point of order it's the Lioness line not the Lionesses line.
Which is slightly (but not much) better.
Unless you're trying to pronounce it after a skinful. Come to think of it "I'm just jumping on a Suffragette" is probably going to get some traction amongst the lairy friday night out crowd.
All in all the names have a vague "if Dave Spart ran a competition for the under 8s to name the lines, then miraculously picked the worst names out of a hat" feel to them.
The London plan comes across as typical Sadiq being Sadiq, and looking for the sort of names that will offend people who don’t like him, further cementing societal division.
If you’re going to give out random names then auction them off. Loads of cities, including mine, do this, the big money is for the destination and interchange stations, or companies buying the station nearest their own business.
I don’t think Khan goes out of his way to cause division. I just think he’s a bit of a twit. His instincts are just off. Kind of a leftist Sunak.
Perhaps, but, as someone who does disgreee with him on almost everything, it comes across as needlessly antagonistic. There’s plenty of London history that can be seen as positive for the city, rather than dwelling on negative history.
What's negative about the new names? Unless yhou think votes for women are bad, and you can't possibly mean that. Liberty is nice and historical, so are some of the others.
“Windrush” recalls when Amber Rudd resigned over a scandal, “Sufragettes” recalls a load of protestors, “Lioness” is for a *women’s* football team, rather than the 1966 squad.
I stand by my original comment that it’s deliberately antagonistic. Stick with “Elizabeth Line” and similar, that have no political connotations.
Also, it will date very badly.
All of those really reflect the contemporary politics of the last few years.
Lioness reflects the contemporary politics of the last few years, but how do the others? Suffragette and Windrush are referencing events many decades ago, which have been cultural touchstones for decades. Weaver and Liberty have even longer historical roots. Mildmay goes back to the ‘80s, not quite as far as Suffragettes, but hardly “last few years”, and the name/hospital actually go back to the 19th century.
Windrush, as a cultural event, has only been a really big totemic thing in the last few years and the Suffragette stuff really took off with the 100 year anniversary of women getting the vote.
This is a play on the five year period 2018-2023, which is what will age it.
Mildmay is in there because they needed someone LGBT+ and they would have picked something more contemporary (probably without realising it) if they could have.
If the names don't really get much traction, then it will be easier for the next mayor to change them again.
I've just looked at it, and I have one massive objection.
Right now, the line that runs from Richmond and Kew Garden, along Hampstead Heath, through Camden, and all the way to Homerton and Stratford, is called the Overground.
It used to be called the North London Line.
Anybody over the age of 35 still thinks of it as the North London Line.
Why the fuck can't it simply be given its old name back? (And - for the record - no one ever confused it with the Northern Line. Please don't take us for idiots.)
Hello. I am (well) over 35. I don’t call it the North London Line. Those of us who use it all got used to calling it the Overground ages back!
I'm sure I called it the Overground when I lived across from Bruce Grove station in 1990.
It also seems this morning's economic news brought out the "things aren't so bad" or "I'm all right here" tendency.
The truth is for many in work or for those with adequate savings or investments it isn't that bad - strange how most recessions (technical or otherwise) affect the poor rather than the wealthy.
We also got the old chestnut about full employment - to re-iterate my comment of a couple of nights ago, if 20 people are chasing 10 jobs you have an unemployment problem, if 10 people are chasing 10 jobs you have full employment, if you have 5 people chasing 10 jobs you still have full employment but you don't have growth.
The huge numbers of unfilled jobs across the economy are a drag on economic growth as unfilled jobs mean everyone else has to work harder and the tax receipts aren't increased by new workers. The problem is asking the obvious question about how you fill these vacancies gets you to the i-word so because we can't talk about that sensibly we end up with ideas like cajoling the retired back to work by cutting their benefits (which won't end well).
The other approach is serious capital investment in technology to improve business processes and dare I say it the AI-word (really two words) but that requires both public and private sectors to make a proper commitment to R&D (remember that?) and the returns don't always manifest as quickly as many in the decision-making environment want.
Surely the only real route to productivity gains comes from allowing labour to become more expensive. 10 people chasing 10 jobs - full employment, but also as every employer gets an employee, little upward pressure on wages, or incentive to improve productivity. 5 people chasing 10 jobs - full employment, tight labour market so half the employers go without an extra employee. Wages rise to reflect the value extracted from the labour by the 5 most profitable jobs. To get the same work done, that means lots of investment in productivity growth - which means people produce more and are worth their higher wages, and we all get richer.
The problem has been that instead of making employers invest to improve productivity growth, for the last 20 years we've just imported immigrants to stop the labour market getting tight and shut up the squeals from employers who are too tight to invest. Result - flat wages, flat productivity, zero real growth (indeed negative gdp/capita growth), and an eternal need for more and more immigration to keep the ponzi scheme going.
I'm a small business owner - I currently employ 5 people. I've increased wages by around 50% since I bought the business two and a half years ago, and also taken it from making a loss to turning a reasonable profit. How? A simple mixture of cutting wasteful spending, focusing on profitable work streams, and investing in stuff that increases productivity; none of it is rocket science.
I don't know if you class me as a 'rightwinger', but I'm not 'furious' about them. They're just not very good, and may well say more about our times than anything about the lines themselves.
Always was the case, though. Nothing new.
Indeed. Jubilee was very of its time! And it doesn’t matter. I don’t use the Jubilee line thinking, “Gosh, this name is a dated reference.” I just know that line is called that name. If I was in charge, I might not have chosen Lioness, but I don’t think it fails to work as a name.
Lioness Line? Some of the names sound a bit clunky when you say them but we can get used to that. The worst name from this point of view is the Elizabeth Line (or Elizabeth Line Line like Battersea Power Station Station).
FPT point of order it's the Lioness line not the Lionesses line.
Which is slightly (but not much) better.
Unless you're trying to pronounce it after a skinful. Come to think of it "I'm just jumping on a Suffragette" is probably going to get some traction amongst the lairy friday night out crowd.
All in all the names have a vague "if Dave Spart ran a competition for the under 8s to name the lines, then miraculously picked the worst names out of a hat" feel to them.
The London plan comes across as typical Sadiq being Sadiq, and looking for the sort of names that will offend people who don’t like him, further cementing societal division.
If you’re going to give out random names then auction them off. Loads of cities, including mine, do this, the big money is for the destination and interchange stations, or companies buying the station nearest their own business.
I don’t think Khan goes out of his way to cause division. I just think he’s a bit of a twit. His instincts are just off. Kind of a leftist Sunak.
Perhaps, but, as someone who does disgreee with him on almost everything, it comes across as needlessly antagonistic. There’s plenty of London history that can be seen as positive for the city, rather than dwelling on negative history.
What's negative about the new names? Unless yhou think votes for women are bad, and you can't possibly mean that. Liberty is nice and historical, so are some of the others.
“Windrush” recalls when Amber Rudd resigned over a scandal, “Sufragettes” recalls a load of protestors, “Lioness” is for a *women’s* football team, rather than the 1966 squad.
I stand by my original comment that it’s deliberately antagonistic. Stick with “Elizabeth Line” and similar, that have no political connotations.
Also, it will date very badly.
All of those really reflect the contemporary politics of the last few years.
Lioness reflects the contemporary politics of the last few years, but how do the others? Suffragette and Windrush are referencing events many decades ago, which have been cultural touchstones for decades. Weaver and Liberty have even longer historical roots. Mildmay goes back to the ‘80s, not quite as far as Suffragettes, but hardly “last few years”, and the name/hospital actually go back to the 19th century.
Windrush, as a cultural event, has only been a really big totemic thing in the last few years and the Suffragette stuff really took off with the 100 year anniversary of women getting the vote.
This is a play on the five year period 2018-2023, which is what will age it.
Mildmay is in there because they needed someone LGBT+ and they would have picked something more contemporary (probably without realising it) if they could have.
Really, really, not true. Windrush was discussed well before that.
Only good thing about that was the theme tune (which was magnificent).
I've been rewatching some of my favourite 'vintage' detective/spy series lately. And I think both 'Callan' and 'Public Eye' theme tunes are amongst the best of all time.
FPT point of order it's the Lioness line not the Lionesses line.
Which is slightly (but not much) better.
Unless you're trying to pronounce it after a skinful. Come to think of it "I'm just jumping on a Suffragette" is probably going to get some traction amongst the lairy friday night out crowd.
All in all the names have a vague "if Dave Spart ran a competition for the under 8s to name the lines, then miraculously picked the worst names out of a hat" feel to them.
The London plan comes across as typical Sadiq being Sadiq, and looking for the sort of names that will offend people who don’t like him, further cementing societal division.
If you’re going to give out random names then auction them off. Loads of cities, including mine, do this, the big money is for the destination and interchange stations, or companies buying the station nearest their own business.
I don’t think Khan goes out of his way to cause division. I just think he’s a bit of a twit. His instincts are just off. Kind of a leftist Sunak.
Perhaps, but, as someone who does disgreee with him on almost everything, it comes across as needlessly antagonistic. There’s plenty of London history that can be seen as positive for the city, rather than dwelling on negative history.
What's negative about the new names? Unless yhou think votes for women are bad, and you can't possibly mean that. Liberty is nice and historical, so are some of the others.
“Windrush” recalls when Amber Rudd resigned over a scandal, “Sufragettes” recalls a load of protestors, “Lioness” is for a *women’s* football team, rather than the 1966 squad.
I stand by my original comment that it’s deliberately antagonistic. Stick with “Elizabeth Line” and similar, that have no political connotations.
Also, it will date very badly.
All of those really reflect the contemporary politics of the last few years.
Lioness reflects the contemporary politics of the last few years, but how do the others? Suffragette and Windrush are referencing events many decades ago, which have been cultural touchstones for decades. Weaver and Liberty have even longer historical roots. Mildmay goes back to the ‘80s, not quite as far as Suffragettes, but hardly “last few years”, and the name/hospital actually go back to the 19th century.
Windrush, as a cultural event, has only been a really big totemic thing in the last few years and the Suffragette stuff really took off with the 100 year anniversary of women getting the vote.
This is a play on the five year period 2018-2023, which is what will age it.
Mildmay is in there because they needed someone LGBT+ and they would have picked something more contemporary (probably without realising it) if they could have.
If the names don't really get much traction, then it will be easier for the next mayor to change them again.
Wrong sort of leaves on the line? But fair enough.
FPT point of order it's the Lioness line not the Lionesses line.
Which is slightly (but not much) better.
Unless you're trying to pronounce it after a skinful. Come to think of it "I'm just jumping on a Suffragette" is probably going to get some traction amongst the lairy friday night out crowd.
All in all the names have a vague "if Dave Spart ran a competition for the under 8s to name the lines, then miraculously picked the worst names out of a hat" feel to them.
The London plan comes across as typical Sadiq being Sadiq, and looking for the sort of names that will offend people who don’t like him, further cementing societal division.
If you’re going to give out random names then auction them off. Loads of cities, including mine, do this, the big money is for the destination and interchange stations, or companies buying the station nearest their own business.
I don’t think Khan goes out of his way to cause division. I just think he’s a bit of a twit. His instincts are just off. Kind of a leftist Sunak.
Perhaps, but, as someone who does disgreee with him on almost everything, it comes across as needlessly antagonistic. There’s plenty of London history that can be seen as positive for the city, rather than dwelling on negative history.
What's negative about the new names? Unless yhou think votes for women are bad, and you can't possibly mean that. Liberty is nice and historical, so are some of the others.
“Windrush” recalls when Amber Rudd resigned over a scandal, “Sufragettes” recalls a load of protestors, “Lioness” is for a *women’s* football team, rather than the 1966 squad.
I stand by my original comment that it’s deliberately antagonistic. Stick with “Elizabeth Line” and similar, that have no political connotations.
Also, it will date very badly.
All of those really reflect the contemporary politics of the last few years.
Lioness reflects the contemporary politics of the last few years, but how do the others? Suffragette and Windrush are referencing events many decades ago, which have been cultural touchstones for decades. Weaver and Liberty have even longer historical roots. Mildmay goes back to the ‘80s, not quite as far as Suffragettes, but hardly “last few years”, and the name/hospital actually go back to the 19th century.
Windrush, as a cultural event, has only been a really big totemic thing in the last few years and the Suffragette stuff really took off with the 100 year anniversary of women getting the vote.
This is a play on the five year period 2018-2023, which is what will age it.
Mildmay is in there because they needed someone LGBT+ and they would have picked something more contemporary (probably without realising it) if they could have.
The arrival of the Windrush was a big deal at the time and a significant part of the history of this country. I learnt about the Windrush generation at school 40 years ago. It’s long been a big totemic thing.
The Suffragettes were a huge issue at the time. They were rather forgotten about, but there’s been a focus on them since the 1960s. Again, something I learnt about at school 40 years ago.
I don’t know what bubble you’ve been living in where Windrush and Suffragettes weren’t big parts of modern British history.
I've just looked at it, and I have one massive objection.
Right now, the line that runs from Richmond and Kew Garden, along Hampstead Heath, through Camden, and all the way to Homerton and Stratford, is called the Overground.
It used to be called the North London Line.
Anybody over the age of 35 still thinks of it as the North London Line.
Why the fuck can't it simply be given its old name back? (And - for the record - no one ever confused it with the Northern Line. Please don't take us for idiots.)
Hello. I am (well) over 35. I don’t call it the North London Line. Those of us who use it all got used to calling it the Overground ages back!
I'm sure I called it the Overground when I lived across from Bruce Grove station in 1990.
However, nothing can change the fundamental truth though. I was right. The message to voters was, the country will live within its means under us. They cut a spending promise, rather than add the cost to borrowing or tax.
The problem with this kind of austerity driven approach to running the country is that it risks making Starmer and Reeves look like a Cameron and Osborne tribute act. Stingy Tories, fiscally dry on everything (except pensions, for which another £79 trillion can always be found down the back of the Treasury sofa, of course.)
We had austerity before. It's old hat, people are sick of it, and it demonstrably didn't work. Look what fourteen years of continuous cuts have done to the state and the people who live in it. Moreover, the demands for cash burning services are only going to keep growing as the legions of the sick and elderly continue to expand.
Sooner or later, somebody is going to question how on Earth Labour thinks it can pull this country out of the socio-economic omnicrisis in which it is mired based on Conservative budgets. Absent fantastical claims that they can instantly create rampant economic growth through totally cost free reforms, Labour have no other answers. The notion that their token revenue raising measures - which seem to consist of little more than closing non-dom tax loopholes and charging VAT on private school fees - can generate the funds needed to regenerate this increasingly decrepit nation are absolutely laughable.
This is an Opposition that's attempting to project an image of seriousness, yet which doesn't merely have no idea of how to make the lives of the people better - it doesn't care about making their lives better. They are do nothing imitation Tories who will just spend five years collecting their salaries and fiddling whilst the country continues to burn down around them.
I detect a deal of frustration but politics is about winning elections not sounding radical from the comfy sofa of opposition.
Starmer has decided, pace Blair, he has to endlessly re-assure wavering Conservative voters he is a serious politician leading a non-socialist party of the centre or centre left. The Redfield & Wilton "Blue Wall" poll earlier in the week showed how successful that has been - the southern Conservative-Labour marginals are going to fall quicker than a (you can fill in your own sporting or non-sporting analogy).
In the Midlands and North, Starmer knows the sense of frustration at the Conservatives who have promised much but, Brexit apart, delivered almost nothing is palpable and it may be the sense of frustration in those areas drives ex-Boris Johnson Conservatives to either vote Reform or stay at home.
I'm a little reluctant to lay too heavily into Brown - he had about five minutes before he got clobbered by the GFC - but there is a good argument that Blair was our last half-decent Prime Minister. His Government was far from perfect but there was progress.
Starmer is no Blair. He's an idea and principle free zone whose leadership and party alike have been entirely captured by the same monied interests as the Conservatives. Reassuring the Tory vote has become making policy for the Tory vote and almost entirely in their interest. They offer nothing to anybody else, which is why the Labour poll lead is illusory. We are apparently going to have a change election, but how can you run on that basis when your offer essentially boils down to reassuring the winners of the last fourteen years that they needn't be scared because you plan to change nothing except the names on ministerial office doors and headed notepaper? There is no point in bothering to traipse to a polling station to pick between two Tories. Total waste of time.
Yes, I mused on this a couple of nights ago on here.
Back in 1996-97, the general mood of enthusiasm for Blair was predicated on the fact he wouldn't change things too much. There would be no turning of the clock back to 1979, the overall economic situation was pretty good and the problem was simply the Conservative Party which, riven by sleaze and division, looked tired and out of touch. Blair represented "new management" but in accepting the Conservative spending plans for the first two years, had effectively said "no change" and the mood of the time was content with that.
27 years later, we are in a very different place. If anything, the sense of pessimism (for want of a better word), discontent and sheer anger is much more palpable than it was in 1997. There's an unfocused desire for change, more akin to 1979 when we had all realised the post-war Butskellite concensus had failed after a disastrous decade and the desire to try something new and different was palpable.
Starmer is caught between a rock and a hard place (as is Sunak, who, let's not forget, has no more answers). The country probably can't afford the changes the country would like to see.
It also seems this morning's economic news brought out the "things aren't so bad" or "I'm all right here" tendency.
The truth is for many in work or for those with adequate savings or investments it isn't that bad - strange how most recessions (technical or otherwise) affect the poor rather than the wealthy.
We also got the old chestnut about full employment - to re-iterate my comment of a couple of nights ago, if 20 people are chasing 10 jobs you have an unemployment problem, if 10 people are chasing 10 jobs you have full employment, if you have 5 people chasing 10 jobs you still have full employment but you don't have growth.
The huge numbers of unfilled jobs across the economy are a drag on economic growth as unfilled jobs mean everyone else has to work harder and the tax receipts aren't increased by new workers. The problem is asking the obvious question about how you fill these vacancies gets you to the i-word so because we can't talk about that sensibly we end up with ideas like cajoling the retired back to work by cutting their benefits (which won't end well).
The other approach is serious capital investment in technology to improve business processes and dare I say it the AI-word (really two words) but that requires both public and private sectors to make a proper commitment to R&D (remember that?) and the returns don't always manifest as quickly as many in the decision-making environment want.
Surely the only real route to productivity gains comes from allowing labour to become more expensive. 10 people chasing 10 jobs - full employment, but also as every employer gets an employee, little upward pressure on wages, or incentive to improve productivity. 5 people chasing 10 jobs - full employment, tight labour market so half the employers go without an extra employee. Wages rise to reflect the value extracted from the labour by the 5 most profitable jobs. To get the same work done, that means lots of investment in productivity growth - which means people produce more and are worth their higher wages, and we all get richer.
The problem has been that instead of making employers invest to improve productivity growth, for the last 20 years we've just imported immigrants to stop the labour market getting tight and shut up the squeals from employers who are too tight to invest. Result - flat wages, flat productivity, zero real growth (indeed negative gdp/capita growth), and an eternal need for more and more immigration to keep the ponzi scheme going.
I'm a small business owner - I currently employ 5 people. I've increased wages by around 50% since I bought the business two and a half years ago, and also taken it from making a loss to turning a reasonable profit. How? A simple mixture of cutting wasteful spending, focusing on profitable work streams, and investing in stuff that increases productivity; none of it is rocket science.
What's more. The millions the government employ, directly or indirectly, are being forced into below average wage rises. Resulting in high levels of vacancies, appalling training, recruitment and retention, and a none too surprising collapsing standard of service. As for investing...
I don't know if you class me as a 'rightwinger', but I'm not 'furious' about them. They're just not very good, and may well say more about our times than anything about the lines themselves.
Always was the case, though. Nothing new.
Indeed. Jubilee was very of its time! And it doesn’t matter. I don’t use the Jubilee line thinking, “Gosh, this name is a dated reference.” I just know that line is called that name. If I was in charge, I might not have chosen Lioness, but I don’t think it fails to work as a name.
Isn’t the Lioness line going to look a little silly if the men’s team win the Euros and/or next World Cup? Not only isn’t there a line named after the men’s team that won the World Cup, as opposed to the Euros, but it’s a hostage to fortune if the Lionesses do bugger all else for decades and the men have a golden age.
It really was just a bit of silly pandering - if you have the chance to decide the name of something in the country’s capital maybe give it a bit of thought and think if it will stand up to future scrutiny.
Why wasn’t one of the lines named after, for example, Nicholas Winton, a Londoner nicknamed “Britain’s Schindler”. Surely Sadiq could see this saviour of child refugees as more deserving than a football team?
I think you're overthinking it a bit. But I agree (in fact is it unanimous?) that the Lioness Line isn't a good name. I think it's because it's an animal and that just doesn't work for a train line. The Rabbit Line. The Kangaroo Line. The Bear Line. The Donkey Line. The Rhinoceros Line. See what I mean? It isn't right.
I don't know if you class me as a 'rightwinger', but I'm not 'furious' about them. They're just not very good, and may well say more about our times than anything about the lines themselves.
Always was the case, though. Nothing new.
Indeed. Jubilee was very of its time! And it doesn’t matter. I don’t use the Jubilee line thinking, “Gosh, this name is a dated reference.” I just know that line is called that name. If I was in charge, I might not have chosen Lioness, but I don’t think it fails to work as a name.
Lioness Line? Some of the names sound a bit clunky when you say them but we can get used to that. The worst name from this point of view is the Elizabeth Line (or Elizabeth Line Line like Battersea Power Station Station).
Battersea Power Station station is my favourite station name. They had to call it that!
FPT point of order it's the Lioness line not the Lionesses line.
Which is slightly (but not much) better.
Unless you're trying to pronounce it after a skinful. Come to think of it "I'm just jumping on a Suffragette" is probably going to get some traction amongst the lairy friday night out crowd.
All in all the names have a vague "if Dave Spart ran a competition for the under 8s to name the lines, then miraculously picked the worst names out of a hat" feel to them.
The London plan comes across as typical Sadiq being Sadiq, and looking for the sort of names that will offend people who don’t like him, further cementing societal division.
If you’re going to give out random names then auction them off. Loads of cities, including mine, do this, the big money is for the destination and interchange stations, or companies buying the station nearest their own business.
I don’t think Khan goes out of his way to cause division. I just think he’s a bit of a twit. His instincts are just off. Kind of a leftist Sunak.
Perhaps, but, as someone who does disgreee with him on almost everything, it comes across as needlessly antagonistic. There’s plenty of London history that can be seen as positive for the city, rather than dwelling on negative history.
What's negative about the new names? Unless yhou think votes for women are bad, and you can't possibly mean that. Liberty is nice and historical, so are some of the others.
“Windrush” recalls when Amber Rudd resigned over a scandal, “Sufragettes” recalls a load of protestors, “Lioness” is for a *women’s* football team, rather than the 1966 squad.
I stand by my original comment that it’s deliberately antagonistic. Stick with “Elizabeth Line” and similar, that have no political connotations.
Also, it will date very badly.
All of those really reflect the contemporary politics of the last few years.
Lioness reflects the contemporary politics of the last few years, but how do the others? Suffragette and Windrush are referencing events many decades ago, which have been cultural touchstones for decades. Weaver and Liberty have even longer historical roots. Mildmay goes back to the ‘80s, not quite as far as Suffragettes, but hardly “last few years”, and the name/hospital actually go back to the 19th century.
Windrush, as a cultural event, has only been a really big totemic thing in the last few years and the Suffragette stuff really took off with the 100 year anniversary of women getting the vote.
This is a play on the five year period 2018-2023, which is what will age it.
Mildmay is in there because they needed someone LGBT+ and they would have picked something more contemporary (probably without realising it) if they could have.
The arrival of the Windrush was a big deal at the time and a significant part of the history of this country. I learnt about the Windrush generation at school 40 years ago. It’s long been a big totemic thing.
The Suffragettes were a huge issue at the time. They were rather forgotten about, but there’s been a focus on them since the 1960s. Again, something I learnt about at school 40 years ago.
I don’t know what bubble you’ve been living in where Windrush and Suffragettes weren’t big parts of modern British history.
For sure, very many people in London know all about Empire Windrush, because it's part of their family history, or their friends or colleagues. Like a friend of mine - his parents came over on her. I found the passenger manifest online for him at the National Archives (and, do you know, it said BRITISH up front on the form).
However, nothing can change the fundamental truth though. I was right. The message to voters was, the country will live within its means under us. They cut a spending promise, rather than add the cost to borrowing or tax.
The problem with this kind of austerity driven approach to running the country is that it risks making Starmer and Reeves look like a Cameron and Osborne tribute act. Stingy Tories, fiscally dry on everything (except pensions, for which another £79 trillion can always be found down the back of the Treasury sofa, of course.)
We had austerity before. It's old hat, people are sick of it, and it demonstrably didn't work. Look what fourteen years of continuous cuts have done to the state and the people who live in it. Moreover, the demands for cash burning services are only going to keep growing as the legions of the sick and elderly continue to expand.
Sooner or later, somebody is going to question how on Earth Labour thinks it can pull this country out of the socio-economic omnicrisis in which it is mired based on Conservative budgets. Absent fantastical claims that they can instantly create rampant economic growth through totally cost free reforms, Labour have no other answers. The notion that their token revenue raising measures - which seem to consist of little more than closing non-dom tax loopholes and charging VAT on private school fees - can generate the funds needed to regenerate this increasingly decrepit nation are absolutely laughable.
This is an Opposition that's attempting to project an image of seriousness, yet which doesn't merely have no idea of how to make the lives of the people better - it doesn't care about making their lives better. They are do nothing imitation Tories who will just spend five years collecting their salaries and fiddling whilst the country continues to burn down around them.
I think when I compare the Starmer's Labour to Blair's Labour is that although both promised to follow the outgoing Conservative budget/tax/whatever - you had the feeling Blair's incoming cabinet had a plan.
And I've got zero sense of that from Starmer.
I've no idea what voting for his party might mean. For me, my neighbours, my country. Other than a different bloke stood on the other side of the telly broadcast of PMQ's.
Maybe ... that's all there is.
It is all there is. That's the Labour election campaign.
Anyway, Blair and Brown could get away with a dose of fiscal rectitude because the economy was doing reasonably well. Fast forward to 2024 and we are in the shit, with stagflation and no plan to repair collapsing public services, nor any intention to do so. Most of the nation's remaining wealth is in the hands of elderly homeowners with fat final salary pensions, and downright plutocrats. These are also the two groups in society who must always be handled with kid gloves. The only people that Labour really care about now. Their points of differentiation from the Tories are now wafer thin and consist of a couple of token tax raising measures, which either won't meaningfully affect the rich or can easily be dodged by creative accountancy, and which don't affect the grey vote at all, and perhaps some symbolic culture wars posturing on refugees.
That's it. They will follow Tory budgets because they are Tory politicians representing Tory interests.
I don't know if you class me as a 'rightwinger', but I'm not 'furious' about them. They're just not very good, and may well say more about our times than anything about the lines themselves.
Always was the case, though. Nothing new.
Indeed. Jubilee was very of its time! And it doesn’t matter. I don’t use the Jubilee line thinking, “Gosh, this name is a dated reference.” I just know that line is called that name. If I was in charge, I might not have chosen Lioness, but I don’t think it fails to work as a name.
Isn’t the Lioness line going to look a little silly if the men’s team win the Euros and/or next World Cup? Not only isn’t there a line named after the men’s team that won the World Cup, as opposed to the Euros, but it’s a hostage to fortune if the Lionesses do bugger all else for decades and the men have a golden age.
It really was just a bit of silly pandering - if you have the chance to decide the name of something in the country’s capital maybe give it a bit of thought and think if it will stand up to future scrutiny.
Why wasn’t one of the lines named after, for example, Nicholas Winton, a Londoner nicknamed “Britain’s Schindler”. Surely Sadiq could see this saviour of child refugees as more deserving than a football team?
I think you're overthinking it a bit. But I agree (in fact is it unanimous?) that the Lioness Line isn't a good name. I think it's because it's an animal and that just doesn't work for a train line. The Rabbit Line. The Kangaroo Line. The Bear Line. The Donkey Line. The Rhinoceros Line. See what I mean? It isn't right.
I've just looked at it, and I have one massive objection.
Right now, the line that runs from Richmond and Kew Garden, along Hampstead Heath, through Camden, and all the way to Homerton and Stratford, is called the Overground.
It used to be called the North London Line.
Anybody over the age of 35 still thinks of it as the North London Line.
Why the fuck can't it simply be given its old name back? (And - for the record - no one ever confused it with the Northern Line. Please don't take us for idiots.)
Hello. I am (well) over 35. I don’t call it the North London Line. Those of us who use it all got used to calling it the Overground ages back!
Ditto. I use the Overground a lot (several of the lines) and I've always called it just that - the Overground.
However, nothing can change the fundamental truth though. I was right. The message to voters was, the country will live within its means under us. They cut a spending promise, rather than add the cost to borrowing or tax.
The problem with this kind of austerity driven approach to running the country is that it risks making Starmer and Reeves look like a Cameron and Osborne tribute act. Stingy Tories, fiscally dry on everything (except pensions, for which another £79 trillion can always be found down the back of the Treasury sofa, of course.)
We had austerity before. It's old hat, people are sick of it, and it demonstrably didn't work. Look what fourteen years of continuous cuts have done to the state and the people who live in it. Moreover, the demands for cash burning services are only going to keep growing as the legions of the sick and elderly continue to expand.
Sooner or later, somebody is going to question how on Earth Labour thinks it can pull this country out of the socio-economic omnicrisis in which it is mired based on Conservative budgets. Absent fantastical claims that they can instantly create rampant economic growth through totally cost free reforms, Labour have no other answers. The notion that their token revenue raising measures - which seem to consist of little more than closing non-dom tax loopholes and charging VAT on private school fees - can generate the funds needed to regenerate this increasingly decrepit nation are absolutely laughable.
This is an Opposition that's attempting to project an image of seriousness, yet which doesn't merely have no idea of how to make the lives of the people better - it doesn't care about making their lives better. They are do nothing imitation Tories who will just spend five years collecting their salaries and fiddling whilst the country continues to burn down around them.
The problem is that Labour's classic approach is to invest in public services by borrowing more but they really can't do that after the Truss mini budget blow up. In the end, I suspect Lab will end up raising money by going after better off pensioners (for example, you could do this by merging income tax and NI)
There's also the wider issue that so many of our problems are linked.
Lab want to improve the economy This requires improving productivity Which means dealing with the issue of long-term sickness Which means bringing down the NHS waiting lists Which means getting the strikes resolved Which means paying the unions at least some of what they want (whilst not so much that the other unions strike again) Which means finding more money
FPT point of order it's the Lioness line not the Lionesses line.
Which is slightly (but not much) better.
Unless you're trying to pronounce it after a skinful. Come to think of it "I'm just jumping on a Suffragette" is probably going to get some traction amongst the lairy friday night out crowd.
All in all the names have a vague "if Dave Spart ran a competition for the under 8s to name the lines, then miraculously picked the worst names out of a hat" feel to them.
The London plan comes across as typical Sadiq being Sadiq, and looking for the sort of names that will offend people who don’t like him, further cementing societal division.
If you’re going to give out random names then auction them off. Loads of cities, including mine, do this, the big money is for the destination and interchange stations, or companies buying the station nearest their own business.
I don’t think Khan goes out of his way to cause division. I just think he’s a bit of a twit. His instincts are just off. Kind of a leftist Sunak.
Perhaps, but, as someone who does disgreee with him on almost everything, it comes across as needlessly antagonistic. There’s plenty of London history that can be seen as positive for the city, rather than dwelling on negative history.
What's negative about the new names? Unless yhou think votes for women are bad, and you can't possibly mean that. Liberty is nice and historical, so are some of the others.
“Windrush” recalls when Amber Rudd resigned over a scandal, “Sufragettes” recalls a load of protestors, “Lioness” is for a *women’s* football team, rather than the 1966 squad.
I stand by my original comment that it’s deliberately antagonistic. Stick with “Elizabeth Line” and similar, that have no political connotations.
Also, it will date very badly.
All of those really reflect the contemporary politics of the last few years.
Lioness reflects the contemporary politics of the last few years, but how do the others? Suffragette and Windrush are referencing events many decades ago, which have been cultural touchstones for decades. Weaver and Liberty have even longer historical roots. Mildmay goes back to the ‘80s, not quite as far as Suffragettes, but hardly “last few years”, and the name/hospital actually go back to the 19th century.
Windrush, as a cultural event, has only been a really big totemic thing in the last few years and the Suffragette stuff really took off with the 100 year anniversary of women getting the vote.
This is a play on the five year period 2018-2023, which is what will age it.
Mildmay is in there because they needed someone LGBT+ and they would have picked something more contemporary (probably without realising it) if they could have.
The arrival of the Windrush was a big deal at the time and a significant part of the history of this country. I learnt about the Windrush generation at school 40 years ago. It’s long been a big totemic thing.
The Suffragettes were a huge issue at the time. They were rather forgotten about, but there’s been a focus on them since the 1960s. Again, something I learnt about at school 40 years ago.
I don’t know what bubble you’ve been living in where Windrush and Suffragettes weren’t big parts of modern British history.
Lioness and Liberty are the ones that stand out as a bit rubbish.
The other ones are fine and will only wind up the kind of people who will never vote for Khan anyway.
I don't know if you class me as a 'rightwinger', but I'm not 'furious' about them. They're just not very good, and may well say more about our times than anything about the lines themselves.
Always was the case, though. Nothing new.
Indeed. Jubilee was very of its time! And it doesn’t matter. I don’t use the Jubilee line thinking, “Gosh, this name is a dated reference.” I just know that line is called that name. If I was in charge, I might not have chosen Lioness, but I don’t think it fails to work as a name.
Lioness Line? Some of the names sound a bit clunky when you say them but we can get used to that. The worst name from this point of view is the Elizabeth Line (or Elizabeth Line Line like Battersea Power Station Station).
Battersea Power Station station is my favourite station name. They had to call it that!
Blackadder - And you will have to get used to calling me - "Your Highness", Your Highness. Prince George - "Your Highness, Your Highness." Blackadder - No, just "Your Highness", Your Highness. Prince George - That's what I said, "Your Highness, Your Highness", Your Highness, Your Highness. Blackadder - Yes, let's just leave that for now, shall we? Complicated stuff obviously.
FPT point of order it's the Lioness line not the Lionesses line.
Which is slightly (but not much) better.
Unless you're trying to pronounce it after a skinful. Come to think of it "I'm just jumping on a Suffragette" is probably going to get some traction amongst the lairy friday night out crowd.
All in all the names have a vague "if Dave Spart ran a competition for the under 8s to name the lines, then miraculously picked the worst names out of a hat" feel to them.
The London plan comes across as typical Sadiq being Sadiq, and looking for the sort of names that will offend people who don’t like him, further cementing societal division.
If you’re going to give out random names then auction them off. Loads of cities, including mine, do this, the big money is for the destination and interchange stations, or companies buying the station nearest their own business.
I don’t think Khan goes out of his way to cause division. I just think he’s a bit of a twit. His instincts are just off. Kind of a leftist Sunak.
Perhaps, but, as someone who does disgreee with him on almost everything, it comes across as needlessly antagonistic. There’s plenty of London history that can be seen as positive for the city, rather than dwelling on negative history.
What's negative about the new names? Unless yhou think votes for women are bad, and you can't possibly mean that. Liberty is nice and historical, so are some of the others.
“Windrush” recalls when Amber Rudd resigned over a scandal, “Sufragettes” recalls a load of protestors, “Lioness” is for a *women’s* football team, rather than the 1966 squad.
I stand by my original comment that it’s deliberately antagonistic. Stick with “Elizabeth Line” and similar, that have no political connotations.
Also, it will date very badly.
All of those really reflect the contemporary politics of the last few years.
Lioness reflects the contemporary politics of the last few years, but how do the others? Suffragette and Windrush are referencing events many decades ago, which have been cultural touchstones for decades. Weaver and Liberty have even longer historical roots. Mildmay goes back to the ‘80s, not quite as far as Suffragettes, but hardly “last few years”, and the name/hospital actually go back to the 19th century.
Windrush, as a cultural event, has only been a really big totemic thing in the last few years and the Suffragette stuff really took off with the 100 year anniversary of women getting the vote.
This is a play on the five year period 2018-2023, which is what will age it.
Mildmay is in there because they needed someone LGBT+ and they would have picked something more contemporary (probably without realising it) if they could have.
The arrival of the Windrush was a big deal at the time and a significant part of the history of this country. I learnt about the Windrush generation at school 40 years ago. It’s long been a big totemic thing.
The Suffragettes were a huge issue at the time. They were rather forgotten about, but there’s been a focus on them since the 1960s. Again, something I learnt about at school 40 years ago.
I don’t know what bubble you’ve been living in where Windrush and Suffragettes weren’t big parts of modern British history.
Lioness and Liberty are the ones that stand out as a bit rubbish.
LIberty isn't bad - it's based in real local history, you do know?
I don't know if you class me as a 'rightwinger', but I'm not 'furious' about them. They're just not very good, and may well say more about our times than anything about the lines themselves.
Always was the case, though. Nothing new.
Indeed. Jubilee was very of its time! And it doesn’t matter. I don’t use the Jubilee line thinking, “Gosh, this name is a dated reference.” I just know that line is called that name. If I was in charge, I might not have chosen Lioness, but I don’t think it fails to work as a name.
Isn’t the Lioness line going to look a little silly if the men’s team win the Euros and/or next World Cup? Not only isn’t there a line named after the men’s team that won the World Cup, as opposed to the Euros, but it’s a hostage to fortune if the Lionesses do bugger all else for decades and the men have a golden age.
It really was just a bit of silly pandering - if you have the chance to decide the name of something in the country’s capital maybe give it a bit of thought and think if it will stand up to future scrutiny.
Why wasn’t one of the lines named after, for example, Nicholas Winton, a Londoner nicknamed “Britain’s Schindler”. Surely Sadiq could see this saviour of child refugees as more deserving than a football team?
I think you're overthinking it a bit. But I agree (in fact is it unanimous?) that the Lioness Line isn't a good name. I think it's because it's an animal and that just doesn't work for a train line. The Rabbit Line. The Kangaroo Line. The Bear Line. The Donkey Line. The Rhinoceros Line. See what I mean? It isn't right.
Sure. You can’t use animal names. That would sound ridiculous. Here are some more examples of how ridiculous animals names would sound attached to Tube stops:
Only good thing about that was the theme tune (which was magnificent).
I've been rewatching some of my favourite 'vintage' detective/spy series lately. And I think both 'Callan' and 'Public Eye' theme tunes are amongst the best of all time.
However, nothing can change the fundamental truth though. I was right. The message to voters was, the country will live within its means under us. They cut a spending promise, rather than add the cost to borrowing or tax.
The problem with this kind of austerity driven approach to running the country is that it risks making Starmer and Reeves look like a Cameron and Osborne tribute act. Stingy Tories, fiscally dry on everything (except pensions, for which another £79 trillion can always be found down the back of the Treasury sofa, of course.)
We had austerity before. It's old hat, people are sick of it, and it demonstrably didn't work. Look what fourteen years of continuous cuts have done to the state and the people who live in it. Moreover, the demands for cash burning services are only going to keep growing as the legions of the sick and elderly continue to expand.
Sooner or later, somebody is going to question how on Earth Labour thinks it can pull this country out of the socio-economic omnicrisis in which it is mired based on Conservative budgets. Absent fantastical claims that they can instantly create rampant economic growth through totally cost free reforms, Labour have no other answers. The notion that their token revenue raising measures - which seem to consist of little more than closing non-dom tax loopholes and charging VAT on private school fees - can generate the funds needed to regenerate this increasingly decrepit nation are absolutely laughable.
This is an Opposition that's attempting to project an image of seriousness, yet which doesn't merely have no idea of how to make the lives of the people better - it doesn't care about making their lives better. They are do nothing imitation Tories who will just spend five years collecting their salaries and fiddling whilst the country continues to burn down around them.
The problem is that Labour's classic approach is to invest in public services by borrowing more but they really can't do that after the Truss mini budget blow up. In the end, I suspect Lab will end up raising money by going after better off pensioners (for example, you could do this by merging income tax and NI)
There's also the wider issue that so many of our problems are linked.
Lab want to improve the economy This requires improving productivity Which means dealing with the issue of long-term sickness Which means bringing down the NHS waiting lists Which means getting the strikes resolved Which means paying the unions at least some of what they want (whilst not so much that the other unions strike again) Which means finding more money
I would just comment that last year my wife and I received a 10.1% increase in our state pension, and in April we receive a further 8.5% on that increased pension
This is not sustainable, but it seems all parties are set on confirming the triple lock
70 plus retirement age looms if this cannot be addressed
I've just looked at it, and I have one massive objection.
Right now, the line that runs from Richmond and Kew Garden, along Hampstead Heath, through Camden, and all the way to Homerton and Stratford, is called the Overground.
It used to be called the North London Line.
Anybody over the age of 35 still thinks of it as the North London Line.
Why the fuck can't it simply be given its old name back? (And - for the record - no one ever confused it with the Northern Line. Please don't take us for idiots.)
Hello. I am (well) over 35. I don’t call it the North London Line. Those of us who use it all got used to calling it the Overground ages back!
Steady on ! It was only rebranded in 2007, which is almost yesterday.
A couple of years before that Gospel Oak was my local *Silverlink* station, when I was living in South Hampstead. It was good for getting around to the ends of London avoiding the hoi-polloi who lived in or went to the centre all the time.
I left pre-rebrand, and it's interesting how memory gets foreshortened like an image in a telephoto lens.
I've just looked at it, and I have one massive objection.
Right now, the line that runs from Richmond and Kew Garden, along Hampstead Heath, through Camden, and all the way to Homerton and Stratford, is called the Overground.
It used to be called the North London Line.
Anybody over the age of 35 still thinks of it as the North London Line.
Why the fuck can't it simply be given its old name back? (And - for the record - no one ever confused it with the Northern Line. Please don't take us for idiots.)
Hello. I am (well) over 35. I don’t call it the North London Line. Those of us who use it all got used to calling it the Overground ages back!
Ditto. I use the Overground a lot (several of the lines) and I've always called it just that - the Overground.
[swaggering] I've visited all 612 stations in London, and I still call it the North London Line.
However, nothing can change the fundamental truth though. I was right. The message to voters was, the country will live within its means under us. They cut a spending promise, rather than add the cost to borrowing or tax.
The problem with this kind of austerity driven approach to running the country is that it risks making Starmer and Reeves look like a Cameron and Osborne tribute act. Stingy Tories, fiscally dry on everything (except pensions, for which another £79 trillion can always be found down the back of the Treasury sofa, of course.)
We had austerity before. It's old hat, people are sick of it, and it demonstrably didn't work. Look what fourteen years of continuous cuts have done to the state and the people who live in it. Moreover, the demands for cash burning services are only going to keep growing as the legions of the sick and elderly continue to expand.
Sooner or later, somebody is going to question how on Earth Labour thinks it can pull this country out of the socio-economic omnicrisis in which it is mired based on Conservative budgets. Absent fantastical claims that they can instantly create rampant economic growth through totally cost free reforms, Labour have no other answers. The notion that their token revenue raising measures - which seem to consist of little more than closing non-dom tax loopholes and charging VAT on private school fees - can generate the funds needed to regenerate this increasingly decrepit nation are absolutely laughable.
This is an Opposition that's attempting to project an image of seriousness, yet which doesn't merely have no idea of how to make the lives of the people better - it doesn't care about making their lives better. They are do nothing imitation Tories who will just spend five years collecting their salaries and fiddling whilst the country continues to burn down around them.
I detect a deal of frustration but politics is about winning elections not sounding radical from the comfy sofa of opposition.
Starmer has decided, pace Blair, he has to endlessly re-assure wavering Conservative voters he is a serious politician leading a non-socialist party of the centre or centre left. The Redfield & Wilton "Blue Wall" poll earlier in the week showed how successful that has been - the southern Conservative-Labour marginals are going to fall quicker than a (you can fill in your own sporting or non-sporting analogy).
In the Midlands and North, Starmer knows the sense of frustration at the Conservatives who have promised much but, Brexit apart, delivered almost nothing is palpable and it may be the sense of frustration in those areas drives ex-Boris Johnson Conservatives to either vote Reform or stay at home.
I'm a little reluctant to lay too heavily into Brown - he had about five minutes before he got clobbered by the GFC - but there is a good argument that Blair was our last half-decent Prime Minister. His Government was far from perfect but there was progress.
Starmer is no Blair. He's an idea and principle free zone whose leadership and party alike have been entirely captured by the same monied interests as the Conservatives. Reassuring the Tory vote has become making policy for the Tory vote and almost entirely in their interest. They offer nothing to anybody else, which is why the Labour poll lead is illusory. We are apparently going to have a change election, but how can you run on that basis when your offer essentially boils down to reassuring the winners of the last fourteen years that they needn't be scared because you plan to change nothing except the names on ministerial office doors and headed notepaper? There is no point in bothering to traipse to a polling station to pick between two Tories. Total waste of time.
But when Labour did make a radically different offer you hated that too.
However, nothing can change the fundamental truth though. I was right. The message to voters was, the country will live within its means under us. They cut a spending promise, rather than add the cost to borrowing or tax.
The problem with this kind of austerity driven approach to running the country is that it risks making Starmer and Reeves look like a Cameron and Osborne tribute act. Stingy Tories, fiscally dry on everything (except pensions, for which another £79 trillion can always be found down the back of the Treasury sofa, of course.)
We had austerity before. It's old hat, people are sick of it, and it demonstrably didn't work. Look what fourteen years of continuous cuts have done to the state and the people who live in it. Moreover, the demands for cash burning services are only going to keep growing as the legions of the sick and elderly continue to expand.
Sooner or later, somebody is going to question how on Earth Labour thinks it can pull this country out of the socio-economic omnicrisis in which it is mired based on Conservative budgets. Absent fantastical claims that they can instantly create rampant economic growth through totally cost free reforms, Labour have no other answers. The notion that their token revenue raising measures - which seem to consist of little more than closing non-dom tax loopholes and charging VAT on private school fees - can generate the funds needed to regenerate this increasingly decrepit nation are absolutely laughable.
This is an Opposition that's attempting to project an image of seriousness, yet which doesn't merely have no idea of how to make the lives of the people better - it doesn't care about making their lives better. They are do nothing imitation Tories who will just spend five years collecting their salaries and fiddling whilst the country continues to burn down around them.
I think when I compare the Starmer's Labour to Blair's Labour is that although both promised to follow the outgoing Conservative budget/tax/whatever - you had the feeling Blair's incoming cabinet had a plan.
And I've got zero sense of that from Starmer.
I've no idea what voting for his party might mean. For me, my neighbours, my country. Other than a different bloke stood on the other side of the telly broadcast of PMQ's.
Maybe ... that's all there is.
It is all there is. That's the Labour election campaign.
Anyway, Blair and Brown could get away with a dose of fiscal rectitude because the economy was doing reasonably well. Fast forward to 2024 and we are in the shit, with stagflation and no plan to repair collapsing public services, nor any intention to do so. Most of the nation's remaining wealth is in the hands of elderly homeowners with fat final salary pensions, and downright plutocrats. These are also the two groups in society who must always be handled with kid gloves. The only people that Labour really care about now. Their points of differentiation from the Tories are now wafer thin and consist of a couple of token tax raising measures, which either won't meaningfully affect the rich or can easily be dodged by creative accountancy, and which don't affect the grey vote at all, and perhaps some symbolic culture wars posturing on refugees.
That's it. They will follow Tory budgets because they are Tory politicians representing Tory interests.
As mentioned in my other comment, I think Lab will eventually go after better pensioners as 1) They mostly vote Tory and 2) It is a lot harder to get money out of the super rich (as they can emigrate)
Only good thing about that was the theme tune (which was magnificent).
I've been rewatching some of my favourite 'vintage' detective/spy series lately. And I think both 'Callan' and 'Public Eye' theme tunes are amongst the best of all time.
I don't know if you class me as a 'rightwinger', but I'm not 'furious' about them. They're just not very good, and may well say more about our times than anything about the lines themselves.
Always was the case, though. Nothing new.
Indeed. Jubilee was very of its time! And it doesn’t matter. I don’t use the Jubilee line thinking, “Gosh, this name is a dated reference.” I just know that line is called that name. If I was in charge, I might not have chosen Lioness, but I don’t think it fails to work as a name.
Isn’t the Lioness line going to look a little silly if the men’s team win the Euros and/or next World Cup? Not only isn’t there a line named after the men’s team that won the World Cup, as opposed to the Euros, but it’s a hostage to fortune if the Lionesses do bugger all else for decades and the men have a golden age.
It really was just a bit of silly pandering - if you have the chance to decide the name of something in the country’s capital maybe give it a bit of thought and think if it will stand up to future scrutiny.
Why wasn’t one of the lines named after, for example, Nicholas Winton, a Londoner nicknamed “Britain’s Schindler”. Surely Sadiq could see this saviour of child refugees as more deserving than a football team?
I think you're overthinking it a bit. But I agree (in fact is it unanimous?) that the Lioness Line isn't a good name. I think it's because it's an animal and that just doesn't work for a train line. The Rabbit Line. The Kangaroo Line. The Bear Line. The Donkey Line. The Rhinoceros Line. See what I mean? It isn't right.
Sure. You can’t use animal names. That would sound ridiculous. Here are some more examples of how ridiculous animals names would sound attached to Tube stops:
I've just looked at it, and I have one massive objection.
Right now, the line that runs from Richmond and Kew Garden, along Hampstead Heath, through Camden, and all the way to Homerton and Stratford, is called the Overground.
It used to be called the North London Line.
Anybody over the age of 35 still thinks of it as the North London Line.
Why the fuck can't it simply be given its old name back? (And - for the record - no one ever confused it with the Northern Line. Please don't take us for idiots.)
Hello. I am (well) over 35. I don’t call it the North London Line. Those of us who use it all got used to calling it the Overground ages back!
I'm sure I called it the Overground when I lived across from Bruce Grove station in 1990.
Errr: I don't think Bruce Grove was ever on the North London Line.
...Now when the Johnson Administration in Britain came over to talk to Donald Trump's Administration about a trade deal and they found out what the conditions would be they walked away. And then the next government came in and did the same thing and walked away (or was it Teresa May?). Anyway there were two back-to-back and so the Brits right now are in this nether world where they kind of quietly admit to themselves that, in order to find a future that has some degree of economic functionality, they have to get into bed with their kids and accept all the demands and the hit to their economy will be real and the hit to their ego will be massive...
...But the alternatives (trying to build an alternate system or maybe going back to the EU) neither of those are long-term solutions that are very functional, so really what we're doing is going through the paces until the Brits admit the obvious, and when that happens Britain will lose the thing that it values the most: its freedom to act, its agency. It will become a subsidiary of the American system for Better or For Worse and while that will be horrible for the British mindset it is the best game in town from both an economic and a security point of view and in time I have no doubt that that is where the Brits will end up, so stiff upper lip...
I'm not sure I share all this guy's analysis, but I do share his conclusion. The only real alternative to the UK being part of the EU is being much more closely aligned with the US, perhaps even as the 51st or 51st-53rd states.
And that’s why the right pushed so hard for Brexit, and told their fantastical lies to make it happen. They would rather have a small state, low tax, highly unequal UK, with a crumbling public realm and services, rather than EU-style worker protections, environmental protections, etc, etc, etc.
So they whipped up an immigration panic and promised unicorns for all to get just enough people to shoot themselves in the foot.
The idea that EU regulation resulted in higher consumer prices - a shibboleth of Euroscepticism since the early 90s - turned out to be total junk as well.
Witness food prices.
And yet we still get squealing and whining that farmers may face competition from the likes of Australia and New Zealand.
You can't have it both ways.
Why isn't affordable Aussie and Kiwi good enough for us without any tariffs?
The net impact so far is that prices are up (even net of the broader inflation issues), and choice is down. It’s possible, though I defer to Nick Palmer, that welfare standards are expected to decline too.
I'd like to see any evidence whatsoever that prices are up in the UK compared to other countries net of broader inflation issues. Or that choice is down similarly.
Food inflation has been seen across the globe, so I'm sceptical.
There's nothing wrong with animal welfare in New Zealand etc, I'd be quite delighted to see non-tariff barriers that are falsely portrayed as "welfare" issues to be abolished.
The UK has lower real food inflation than the Euro Area.
Um: stupid question: what's real inflation?
I know what prices are. Shoes used to cost £X I know what inflated prices are. Shoes now cost £2X I know what real prices are. Shoes in real terms cost £2X/(1+inflation rate) But I don't know what real inflation is. Can you give me an example?
The real inflation that X as opposed to Y else now costs more than it would have in real currency.
A prime example would be houses. House price inflation has outstripped inflation for decades, so houses now cost more in real terms than they would.
While a counter-example of real deflation is often technology goods. If you would spend £1000 in 2000 on a computer, but could get one for about £300 today, in real terms that's declined in cost by much more than 70% because £1000 in 2000 money is more than £1000 today.
Indeed. And we're all told inflation has been low for the past two decades, because the price of flatscreen tellys and fast fashion has cratered. Meanwhile, the cost of keeping a roof over your head has skyrocketed to the point where absolutely nobody feels any richer despite every home having a massive flatscreen telly. See also: energy prices, childcare prices, almost all the basics you actually need to live a half decent life, etc.
Olive oil.
Grated parmesan
How about ungrated parmesan? Has inflation been for the grater good?
Life is too short to grate your own parmesan
That's like saying life is too short to not use instant coffee.
Many of the gastroidiots on here think that.
I've recently bought some rather nice coffee mugs from Loveramics.
Sizes: flat white, cappuccino and latte.
I have an excellent espresso machine - wouldn't touch instant now.
I've acquired a taste for oat milk in coffee (50/50 with cows').
Irrational pet hate - oat milk. Milk comes from mammals. Oat milk is not a milk, its a massively processed grain.
In many countries “milk” is a protected term, and there’s been lots of arguments about it. Same with “meat”.
Talking of protected terms, the other day there was a report on the world service about Chinese Whiskey/Whisky production and how the big drinks brands were really building up production in China and it was killing some very strong Chinese Whisky/ey. They were talking to someone who ran “Maison de Whiskey” which was one of the big drinks company’s specialist whisky/ey chains - like us opening “House of Champagne” around the world but a different issue.
My point is I don’t know why Whiskey and Whisky aren’t protected produce names as Champagne is. Surely it should have been done and is it too late to make this so?
Champagne, as an example, is only protected by the EU and the countries with which they have specific trade agreements.
Whisky is a generic drink, however Scotch should be restricted to distilleries in Scotland.
Tell that to the Indians though, who have all sorts of “Scotch” brands.
These issues are always the sticking points in trade agreements, the UK in this example needs assurances that the Indian government will actually go after their own “scotch” producers, in order to protect the UK brand.
(In case anyone’s interested, the Indian whiskies are mostly crap, barely worthy of being served with a mixer in most countries.)
I'm not sure that's 100% accurate: here in the US, the only drinks I've seen marketed as actually Champagne are French Champagnes.
I've just looked at it, and I have one massive objection.
Right now, the line that runs from Richmond and Kew Garden, along Hampstead Heath, through Camden, and all the way to Homerton and Stratford, is called the Overground.
It used to be called the North London Line.
Anybody over the age of 35 still thinks of it as the North London Line.
Why the fuck can't it simply be given its old name back? (And - for the record - no one ever confused it with the Northern Line. Please don't take us for idiots.)
Hello. I am (well) over 35. I don’t call it the North London Line. Those of us who use it all got used to calling it the Overground ages back!
I'm sure I called it the Overground when I lived across from Bruce Grove station in 1990.
Errr: I don't think Bruce Grove was ever on the North London Line.
It's on the former "Lea Valley Lines" out of Liverpool Street, of which the Chingford, Enfield Town and Cheshunt services were transferred to Overground in 2015.
Bruce Grove is served by the Enfield and Cheshunt services.
However, nothing can change the fundamental truth though. I was right. The message to voters was, the country will live within its means under us. They cut a spending promise, rather than add the cost to borrowing or tax.
The problem with this kind of austerity driven approach to running the country is that it risks making Starmer and Reeves look like a Cameron and Osborne tribute act. Stingy Tories, fiscally dry on everything (except pensions, for which another £79 trillion can always be found down the back of the Treasury sofa, of course.)
We had austerity before. It's old hat, people are sick of it, and it demonstrably didn't work. Look what fourteen years of continuous cuts have done to the state and the people who live in it. Moreover, the demands for cash burning services are only going to keep growing as the legions of the sick and elderly continue to expand.
Sooner or later, somebody is going to question how on Earth Labour thinks it can pull this country out of the socio-economic omnicrisis in which it is mired based on Conservative budgets. Absent fantastical claims that they can instantly create rampant economic growth through totally cost free reforms, Labour have no other answers. The notion that their token revenue raising measures - which seem to consist of little more than closing non-dom tax loopholes and charging VAT on private school fees - can generate the funds needed to regenerate this increasingly decrepit nation are absolutely laughable.
This is an Opposition that's attempting to project an image of seriousness, yet which doesn't merely have no idea of how to make the lives of the people better - it doesn't care about making their lives better. They are do nothing imitation Tories who will just spend five years collecting their salaries and fiddling whilst the country continues to burn down around them.
I detect a deal of frustration but politics is about winning elections not sounding radical from the comfy sofa of opposition.
Starmer has decided, pace Blair, he has to endlessly re-assure wavering Conservative voters he is a serious politician leading a non-socialist party of the centre or centre left. The Redfield & Wilton "Blue Wall" poll earlier in the week showed how successful that has been - the southern Conservative-Labour marginals are going to fall quicker than a (you can fill in your own sporting or non-sporting analogy).
In the Midlands and North, Starmer knows the sense of frustration at the Conservatives who have promised much but, Brexit apart, delivered almost nothing is palpable and it may be the sense of frustration in those areas drives ex-Boris Johnson Conservatives to either vote Reform or stay at home.
I'm a little reluctant to lay too heavily into Brown - he had about five minutes before he got clobbered by the GFC - but there is a good argument that Blair was our last half-decent Prime Minister. His Government was far from perfect but there was progress.
Starmer is no Blair. He's an idea and principle free zone whose leadership and party alike have been entirely captured by the same monied interests as the Conservatives. Reassuring the Tory vote has become making policy for the Tory vote and almost entirely in their interest. They offer nothing to anybody else, which is why the Labour poll lead is illusory. We are apparently going to have a change election, but how can you run on that basis when your offer essentially boils down to reassuring the winners of the last fourteen years that they needn't be scared because you plan to change nothing except the names on ministerial office doors and headed notepaper? There is no point in bothering to traipse to a polling station to pick between two Tories. Total waste of time.
Yes, I mused on this a couple of nights ago on here.
Back in 1996-97, the general mood of enthusiasm for Blair was predicated on the fact he wouldn't change things too much. There would be no turning of the clock back to 1979, the overall economic situation was pretty good and the problem was simply the Conservative Party which, riven by sleaze and division, looked tired and out of touch. Blair represented "new management" but in accepting the Conservative spending plans for the first two years, had effectively said "no change" and the mood of the time was content with that.
27 years later, we are in a very different place. If anything, the sense of pessimism (for want of a better word), discontent and sheer anger is much more palpable than it was in 1997. There's an unfocused desire for change, more akin to 1979 when we had all realised the post-war Butskellite concensus had failed after a disastrous decade and the desire to try something new and different was palpable.
Starmer is caught between a rock and a hard place (as is Sunak, who, let's not forget, has no more answers). The country probably can't afford the changes the country would like to see.
The country can afford the changes, but the mollycoddled fraction of the electorate that controls most of the wealth doesn't want to give any of it up, of course.
You have to wonder how high the percentage of the working population that spends nearly all of its income renting and trying to heat a mouldy hovel, and therefore relies on food banks to eat, will have to rise before the entire edifice collapses? The outbreak of rioting in 2011 shows that the possibility of large scale civil disorder exists. It's happened before, it can happen again.
However, nothing can change the fundamental truth though. I was right. The message to voters was, the country will live within its means under us. They cut a spending promise, rather than add the cost to borrowing or tax.
The problem with this kind of austerity driven approach to running the country is that it risks making Starmer and Reeves look like a Cameron and Osborne tribute act. Stingy Tories, fiscally dry on everything (except pensions, for which another £79 trillion can always be found down the back of the Treasury sofa, of course.)
We had austerity before. It's old hat, people are sick of it, and it demonstrably didn't work. Look what fourteen years of continuous cuts have done to the state and the people who live in it. Moreover, the demands for cash burning services are only going to keep growing as the legions of the sick and elderly continue to expand.
Sooner or later, somebody is going to question how on Earth Labour thinks it can pull this country out of the socio-economic omnicrisis in which it is mired based on Conservative budgets. Absent fantastical claims that they can instantly create rampant economic growth through totally cost free reforms, Labour have no other answers. The notion that their token revenue raising measures - which seem to consist of little more than closing non-dom tax loopholes and charging VAT on private school fees - can generate the funds needed to regenerate this increasingly decrepit nation are absolutely laughable.
This is an Opposition that's attempting to project an image of seriousness, yet which doesn't merely have no idea of how to make the lives of the people better - it doesn't care about making their lives better. They are do nothing imitation Tories who will just spend five years collecting their salaries and fiddling whilst the country continues to burn down around them.
I detect a deal of frustration but politics is about winning elections not sounding radical from the comfy sofa of opposition.
Starmer has decided, pace Blair, he has to endlessly re-assure wavering Conservative voters he is a serious politician leading a non-socialist party of the centre or centre left. The Redfield & Wilton "Blue Wall" poll earlier in the week showed how successful that has been - the southern Conservative-Labour marginals are going to fall quicker than a (you can fill in your own sporting or non-sporting analogy).
In the Midlands and North, Starmer knows the sense of frustration at the Conservatives who have promised much but, Brexit apart, delivered almost nothing is palpable and it may be the sense of frustration in those areas drives ex-Boris Johnson Conservatives to either vote Reform or stay at home.
I'm a little reluctant to lay too heavily into Brown - he had about five minutes before he got clobbered by the GFC - but there is a good argument that Blair was our last half-decent Prime Minister. His Government was far from perfect but there was progress.
Starmer is no Blair. He's an idea and principle free zone whose leadership and party alike have been entirely captured by the same monied interests as the Conservatives. Reassuring the Tory vote has become making policy for the Tory vote and almost entirely in their interest. They offer nothing to anybody else, which is why the Labour poll lead is illusory. We are apparently going to have a change election, but how can you run on that basis when your offer essentially boils down to reassuring the winners of the last fourteen years that they needn't be scared because you plan to change nothing except the names on ministerial office doors and headed notepaper? There is no point in bothering to traipse to a polling station to pick between two Tories. Total waste of time.
Yes, I mused on this a couple of nights ago on here.
Back in 1996-97, the general mood of enthusiasm for Blair was predicated on the fact he wouldn't change things too much. There would be no turning of the clock back to 1979, the overall economic situation was pretty good and the problem was simply the Conservative Party which, riven by sleaze and division, looked tired and out of touch. Blair represented "new management" but in accepting the Conservative spending plans for the first two years, had effectively said "no change" and the mood of the time was content with that.
27 years later, we are in a very different place. If anything, the sense of pessimism (for want of a better word), discontent and sheer anger is much more palpable than it was in 1997. There's an unfocused desire for change, more akin to 1979 when we had all realised the post-war Butskellite concensus had failed after a disastrous decade and the desire to try something new and different was palpable.
Starmer is caught between a rock and a hard place (as is Sunak, who, let's not forget, has no more answers). The country probably can't afford the changes the country would like to see.
The country can afford the changes, but the mollycoddled fraction of the electorate that controls most of the wealth doesn't want to give any of it up, of course.
You have to wonder how high the percentage of the working population that spends nearly all of its income renting and trying to heat a mouldy hovel, and therefore relies on food banks to eat, will have to rise before the entire edifice collapses? The outbreak of rioting in 2011 shows that the possibility of large scale civil disorder exists. It's happened before, it can happen again.
However, nothing can change the fundamental truth though. I was right. The message to voters was, the country will live within its means under us. They cut a spending promise, rather than add the cost to borrowing or tax.
The problem with this kind of austerity driven approach to running the country is that it risks making Starmer and Reeves look like a Cameron and Osborne tribute act. Stingy Tories, fiscally dry on everything (except pensions, for which another £79 trillion can always be found down the back of the Treasury sofa, of course.)
We had austerity before. It's old hat, people are sick of it, and it demonstrably didn't work. Look what fourteen years of continuous cuts have done to the state and the people who live in it. Moreover, the demands for cash burning services are only going to keep growing as the legions of the sick and elderly continue to expand.
Sooner or later, somebody is going to question how on Earth Labour thinks it can pull this country out of the socio-economic omnicrisis in which it is mired based on Conservative budgets. Absent fantastical claims that they can instantly create rampant economic growth through totally cost free reforms, Labour have no other answers. The notion that their token revenue raising measures - which seem to consist of little more than closing non-dom tax loopholes and charging VAT on private school fees - can generate the funds needed to regenerate this increasingly decrepit nation are absolutely laughable.
This is an Opposition that's attempting to project an image of seriousness, yet which doesn't merely have no idea of how to make the lives of the people better - it doesn't care about making their lives better. They are do nothing imitation Tories who will just spend five years collecting their salaries and fiddling whilst the country continues to burn down around them.
I think when I compare the Starmer's Labour to Blair's Labour is that although both promised to follow the outgoing Conservative budget/tax/whatever - you had the feeling Blair's incoming cabinet had a plan.
And I've got zero sense of that from Starmer.
I've no idea what voting for his party might mean. For me, my neighbours, my country. Other than a different bloke stood on the other side of the telly broadcast of PMQ's.
Maybe ... that's all there is.
It is all there is. That's the Labour election campaign.
Anyway, Blair and Brown could get away with a dose of fiscal rectitude because the economy was doing reasonably well. Fast forward to 2024 and we are in the shit, with stagflation and no plan to repair collapsing public services, nor any intention to do so. Most of the nation's remaining wealth is in the hands of elderly homeowners with fat final salary pensions, and downright plutocrats. These are also the two groups in society who must always be handled with kid gloves. The only people that Labour really care about now. Their points of differentiation from the Tories are now wafer thin and consist of a couple of token tax raising measures, which either won't meaningfully affect the rich or can easily be dodged by creative accountancy, and which don't affect the grey vote at all, and perhaps some symbolic culture wars posturing on refugees.
That's it. They will follow Tory budgets because they are Tory politicians representing Tory interests.
As mentioned in my other comment, I think Lab will eventually go after better pensioners as 1) They mostly vote Tory and 2) It is a lot harder to get money out of the super rich (as they can emigrate)
They won't touch the triple lock, they won't raise death duties, they won't go after property. This is a party that won't even make the most modest moves towards forcing the assetocracy to cough up, such as hiking CGT rates, so they certainly aren't going to raid the purses of the minted elderly.
You can also write off any lies they tell you about getting decent numbers of homes built. Quite besides the fact that newly elected Labour MPs in suburban areas will prove every bit as Nimby as those from any other party, the grey vote won't tolerate policies that affect their peace, their views, or that put a lid on house price inflation by hiking supply.
Labour will provide government by the rich, of the rich and for the rich. Watch.
TSE isn't about is he? Anyway I don't know if anyone can advise me. I'm sorting out my new mortgage but I'm a bit concerned because they want to know where the cash I'm paying down is coming from and have asked for a load of bank statements.
What bothers me is that it's all in a current account and I wonder if that might look a bit odd? I've steadily been accumulating £300-400 a month so now there is about £26k in total.
The other thing is that they need a local solicitor to verify my address. I don't have one and wondering how I get that done. Presumably I'll have to somehow prove to them that I live where I live so that they can verify me for the mortgage?
I don't know if you class me as a 'rightwinger', but I'm not 'furious' about them. They're just not very good, and may well say more about our times than anything about the lines themselves.
Always was the case, though. Nothing new.
Indeed. Jubilee was very of its time! And it doesn’t matter. I don’t use the Jubilee line thinking, “Gosh, this name is a dated reference.” I just know that line is called that name. If I was in charge, I might not have chosen Lioness, but I don’t think it fails to work as a name.
Isn’t the Lioness line going to look a little silly if the men’s team win the Euros and/or next World Cup? Not only isn’t there a line named after the men’s team that won the World Cup, as opposed to the Euros, but it’s a hostage to fortune if the Lionesses do bugger all else for decades and the men have a golden age.
It really was just a bit of silly pandering - if you have the chance to decide the name of something in the country’s capital maybe give it a bit of thought and think if it will stand up to future scrutiny.
Why wasn’t one of the lines named after, for example, Nicholas Winton, a Londoner nicknamed “Britain’s Schindler”. Surely Sadiq could see this saviour of child refugees as more deserving than a football team?
I think you're overthinking it a bit. But I agree (in fact is it unanimous?) that the Lioness Line isn't a good name. I think it's because it's an animal and that just doesn't work for a train line. The Rabbit Line. The Kangaroo Line. The Bear Line. The Donkey Line. The Rhinoceros Line. See what I mean? It isn't right.
Sure. You can’t use animal names. That would sound ridiculous. Here are some more examples of how ridiculous animals names would sound attached to Tube stops:
I don't know if you class me as a 'rightwinger', but I'm not 'furious' about them. They're just not very good, and may well say more about our times than anything about the lines themselves.
Always was the case, though. Nothing new.
Indeed. Jubilee was very of its time! And it doesn’t matter. I don’t use the Jubilee line thinking, “Gosh, this name is a dated reference.” I just know that line is called that name. If I was in charge, I might not have chosen Lioness, but I don’t think it fails to work as a name.
Isn’t the Lioness line going to look a little silly if the men’s team win the Euros and/or next World Cup? Not only isn’t there a line named after the men’s team that won the World Cup, as opposed to the Euros, but it’s a hostage to fortune if the Lionesses do bugger all else for decades and the men have a golden age.
It really was just a bit of silly pandering - if you have the chance to decide the name of something in the country’s capital maybe give it a bit of thought and think if it will stand up to future scrutiny.
Why wasn’t one of the lines named after, for example, Nicholas Winton, a Londoner nicknamed “Britain’s Schindler”. Surely Sadiq could see this saviour of child refugees as more deserving than a football team?
I think you're overthinking it a bit. But I agree (in fact is it unanimous?) that the Lioness Line isn't a good name. I think it's because it's an animal and that just doesn't work for a train line. The Rabbit Line. The Kangaroo Line. The Bear Line. The Donkey Line. The Rhinoceros Line. See what I mean? It isn't right.
Sure. You can’t use animal names. That would sound ridiculous. Here are some more examples of how ridiculous animals names would sound attached to Tube stops:
I don't know if you class me as a 'rightwinger', but I'm not 'furious' about them. They're just not very good, and may well say more about our times than anything about the lines themselves.
Always was the case, though. Nothing new.
Indeed. Jubilee was very of its time! And it doesn’t matter. I don’t use the Jubilee line thinking, “Gosh, this name is a dated reference.” I just know that line is called that name. If I was in charge, I might not have chosen Lioness, but I don’t think it fails to work as a name.
Isn’t the Lioness line going to look a little silly if the men’s team win the Euros and/or next World Cup? Not only isn’t there a line named after the men’s team that won the World Cup, as opposed to the Euros, but it’s a hostage to fortune if the Lionesses do bugger all else for decades and the men have a golden age.
It really was just a bit of silly pandering - if you have the chance to decide the name of something in the country’s capital maybe give it a bit of thought and think if it will stand up to future scrutiny.
Why wasn’t one of the lines named after, for example, Nicholas Winton, a Londoner nicknamed “Britain’s Schindler”. Surely Sadiq could see this saviour of child refugees as more deserving than a football team?
I think you're overthinking it a bit. But I agree (in fact is it unanimous?) that the Lioness Line isn't a good name. I think it's because it's an animal and that just doesn't work for a train line. The Rabbit Line. The Kangaroo Line. The Bear Line. The Donkey Line. The Rhinoceros Line. See what I mean? It isn't right.
Sure. You can’t use animal names. That would sound ridiculous. Here are some more examples of how ridiculous animals names would sound attached to Tube stops:
TSE isn't about is he? Anyway I don't know if anyone can advise me. I'm sorting out my new mortgage but I'm a bit concerned because they want to know where the cash I'm paying down is coming from and have asked for a load of bank statements.
What bothers me is that it's all in a current account and I wonder if that might look a bit odd? I've steadily been accumulating £300-400 a month so now there is about £26k in total.
The other thing is that they need a local solicitor to verify my address. I don't have one and wondering how I get that done. Presumably I'll have to somehow prove to them that I live where I live so that they can verify me for the mortgage?
Anti-Money Laundering rules are becoming absurd.
An eighty-something aunt of Mrs Foxy was giving £20,000 to her grandsons as a house deposit, which she did by selling some ISA, but had to prove how she honestly came by the money twenty years previously. She struggled to prove it as no records left.
Similarly as Trustee of my Church, it takes more than six months to open a new bank account, so we can better invest assets, some of which goes back to donations and bequests decades ago. Quite obviously this too wouldn't be a very good way of laundering money.
There are many ways we could cut the hassle of being British, without harming anything. This needless red tape just creates friction to investment, trade and growth.
FPT point of order it's the Lioness line not the Lionesses line.
Which is slightly (but not much) better.
Unless you're trying to pronounce it after a skinful. Come to think of it "I'm just jumping on a Suffragette" is probably going to get some traction amongst the lairy friday night out crowd.
All in all the names have a vague "if Dave Spart ran a competition for the under 8s to name the lines, then miraculously picked the worst names out of a hat" feel to them.
The London plan comes across as typical Sadiq being Sadiq, and looking for the sort of names that will offend people who don’t like him, further cementing societal division.
If you’re going to give out random names then auction them off. Loads of cities, including mine, do this, the big money is for the destination and interchange stations, or companies buying the station nearest their own business.
I don’t think Khan goes out of his way to cause division. I just think he’s a bit of a twit. His instincts are just off. Kind of a leftist Sunak.
Perhaps, but, as someone who does disgreee with him on almost everything, it comes across as needlessly antagonistic. There’s plenty of London history that can be seen as positive for the city, rather than dwelling on negative history.
What's negative about the new names? Unless yhou think votes for women are bad, and you can't possibly mean that. Liberty is nice and historical, so are some of the others.
“Windrush” recalls when Amber Rudd resigned over a scandal, “Sufragettes” recalls a load of protestors, “Lioness” is for a *women’s* football team, rather than the 1966 squad.
I stand by my original comment that it’s deliberately antagonistic. Stick with “Elizabeth Line” and similar, that have no political connotations.
Also, it will date very badly.
All of those really reflect the contemporary politics of the last few years.
Lioness reflects the contemporary politics of the last few years, but how do the others? Suffragette and Windrush are referencing events many decades ago, which have been cultural touchstones for decades. Weaver and Liberty have even longer historical roots. Mildmay goes back to the ‘80s, not quite as far as Suffragettes, but hardly “last few years”, and the name/hospital actually go back to the 19th century.
Windrush, as a cultural event, has only been a really big totemic thing in the last few years and the Suffragette stuff really took off with the 100 year anniversary of women getting the vote.
This is a play on the five year period 2018-2023, which is what will age it.
Mildmay is in there because they needed someone LGBT+ and they would have picked something more contemporary (probably without realising it) if they could have.
The arrival of the Windrush was a big deal at the time and a significant part of the history of this country. I learnt about the Windrush generation at school 40 years ago. It’s long been a big totemic thing.
The Suffragettes were a huge issue at the time. They were rather forgotten about, but there’s been a focus on them since the 1960s. Again, something I learnt about at school 40 years ago.
I don’t know what bubble you’ve been living in where Windrush and Suffragettes weren’t big parts of modern British history.
Absolute nonsense. They've been in big and in vogue in particular the last five years and that's when the volume on both has been dialled up to 11 on them.
Its associated with the Windrush "scandal" under the May administration and Amber Rudd, and all the noise over the 100 year anniversary of women getting the vote which generated months of coverage and documentaries about the Suffragettes.
Comments
10 people chasing 10 jobs - full employment, but also as every employer gets an employee, little upward pressure on wages, or incentive to improve productivity.
5 people chasing 10 jobs - full employment, tight labour market so half the employers go without an extra employee. Wages rise to reflect the value extracted from the labour by the 5 most profitable jobs. To get the same work done, that means lots of investment in productivity growth - which means people produce more and are worth their higher wages, and we all get richer.
The problem has been that instead of making employers invest to improve productivity growth, for the last 20 years we've just imported immigrants to stop the labour market getting tight and shut up the squeals from employers who are too tight to invest. Result - flat wages, flat productivity, zero real growth (indeed negative gdp/capita growth), and an eternal need for more and more immigration to keep the ponzi scheme going.
I'm a small business owner - I currently employ 5 people. I've increased wages by around 50% since I bought the business two and a half years ago, and also taken it from making a loss to turning a reasonable profit. How? A simple mixture of cutting wasteful spending, focusing on profitable work streams, and investing in stuff that increases productivity; none of it is rocket science.
"Presumably it’s called the Lioness Line because it isn’t a Mane Line."
The Sweeney was very good: https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo?q=the+sweeney+theme+tune&mid=9C5EBE9CD182B960FE249C5EBE9CD182B960FE24&FORM=VIRE
The Suffragettes were a huge issue at the time. They were rather forgotten about, but there’s been a focus on them since the 1960s. Again, something I learnt about at school 40 years ago.
I don’t know what bubble you’ve been living in where Windrush and Suffragettes weren’t big parts of modern British history.
Back in 1996-97, the general mood of enthusiasm for Blair was predicated on the fact he wouldn't change things too much. There would be no turning of the clock back to 1979, the overall economic situation was pretty good and the problem was simply the Conservative Party which, riven by sleaze and division, looked tired and out of touch. Blair represented "new management" but in accepting the Conservative spending plans for the first two years, had effectively said "no change" and the mood of the time was content with that.
27 years later, we are in a very different place. If anything, the sense of pessimism (for want of a better word), discontent and sheer anger is much more palpable than it was in 1997. There's an unfocused desire for change, more akin to 1979 when we had all realised the post-war Butskellite concensus had failed after a disastrous decade and the desire to try something new and different was palpable.
Starmer is caught between a rock and a hard place (as is Sunak, who, let's not forget, has no more answers). The country probably can't afford the changes the country would like to see.
Resulting in high levels of vacancies, appalling training, recruitment and retention, and a none too surprising collapsing standard of service.
As for investing...
Anyway, Blair and Brown could get away with a dose of fiscal rectitude because the economy was doing reasonably well. Fast forward to 2024 and we are in the shit, with stagflation and no plan to repair collapsing public services, nor any intention to do so. Most of the nation's remaining wealth is in the hands of elderly homeowners with fat final salary pensions, and downright plutocrats. These are also the two groups in society who must always be handled with kid gloves. The only people that Labour really care about now. Their points of differentiation from the Tories are now wafer thin and consist of a couple of token tax raising measures, which either won't meaningfully affect the rich or can easily be dodged by creative accountancy, and which don't affect the grey vote at all, and perhaps some symbolic culture wars posturing on refugees.
That's it. They will follow Tory budgets because they are Tory politicians representing Tory interests.
Indeed Sky report on a donation to Rachel Reeves this evening
https://news.sky.com/story/rachel-reeves-accepted-donation-from-lord-donoughue-linked-to-climate-sceptic-group-gwpf-13072147
There's also the wider issue that so many of our problems are linked.
Lab want to improve the economy
This requires improving productivity
Which means dealing with the issue of long-term sickness
Which means bringing down the NHS waiting lists
Which means getting the strikes resolved
Which means paying the unions at least some of what they want (whilst not so much that the other unions strike again)
Which means finding more money
The other ones are fine and will only wind up the kind of people who will never vote for Khan anyway.
Prince George - "Your Highness, Your Highness."
Blackadder - No, just "Your Highness", Your Highness.
Prince George - That's what I said, "Your Highness, Your Highness", Your Highness, Your Highness.
Blackadder - Yes, let's just leave that for now, shall we? Complicated stuff obviously.
Canary Wharf
Elephant & Castle
Catford
Cockfosters
Heron Quays
Or, even madder, imagine naming a train after an animal! Like calling something the LNER Class A4 4468 Mallard: how silly would that be?
This is not sustainable, but it seems all parties are set on confirming the triple lock
70 plus retirement age looms if this cannot be addressed
A couple of years before that Gospel Oak was my local *Silverlink* station, when I was living in South Hampstead. It was good for getting around to the ends of London avoiding the hoi-polloi who lived in or went to the centre all the time.
I left pre-rebrand, and it's interesting how memory gets foreshortened like an image in a telephoto lens.
Canary Wharf
East India
West India Quay
Cyprus
Why bother to lose sleep on a foregone conclusion
Bruce Grove is served by the Enfield and Cheshunt services.
I hadn't read that but Sky did feature it today
The point is that the scrutiny on Labour will intensify with some non stories but others that will be more problematic
You have to wonder how high the percentage of the working population that spends nearly all of its income renting and trying to heat a mouldy hovel, and therefore relies on food banks to eat, will have to rise before the entire edifice collapses? The outbreak of rioting in 2011 shows that the possibility of large scale civil disorder exists. It's happened before, it can happen again.
NEW THREAD
You can also write off any lies they tell you about getting decent numbers of homes built. Quite besides the fact that newly elected Labour MPs in suburban areas will prove every bit as Nimby as those from any other party, the grey vote won't tolerate policies that affect their peace, their views, or that put a lid on house price inflation by hiking supply.
Labour will provide government by the rich, of the rich and for the rich. Watch.
What bothers me is that it's all in a current account and I wonder if that might look a bit odd? I've steadily been accumulating £300-400 a month so now there is about £26k in total.
The other thing is that they need a local solicitor to verify my address. I don't have one and wondering how I get that done. Presumably I'll have to somehow prove to them that I live where I live so that they can verify me for the mortgage?
But anyway, all good. This has kept us busy the whole day. Great topic.
I cycled down the former Strawberry Line from Bristol into Somerset. And back.
Silver Darling Line? Turkey Twizzler Line from Norwich? The possibilities are endless.
Pink Elephant Line? Here's footage of one visiting London Zoo in 1926. It's in black and white - 1960s snooker style.
https://www.britishpathe.com/asset/52082/
Does anyone consider why Picadilly is called Picadilly? Or Tooting Bec called Tooting Bec? Or Mornington Crescent Mornington Crescent?
An eighty-something aunt of Mrs Foxy was giving £20,000 to her grandsons as a house deposit, which she did by selling some ISA, but had to prove how she honestly came by the money twenty years previously. She struggled to prove it as no records left.
Similarly as Trustee of my Church, it takes more than six months to open a new bank account, so we can better invest assets, some of which goes back to donations and bequests decades ago. Quite obviously this too wouldn't be a very good way of laundering money.
There are many ways we could cut the hassle of being British, without harming anything. This needless red tape just creates friction to investment, trade and growth.
Its associated with the Windrush "scandal" under the May administration and Amber Rudd, and all the noise over the 100 year anniversary of women getting the vote which generated months of coverage and documentaries about the Suffragettes.
Otherwise it's just been general history.
None as blind as those who can't see.