Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Sunak has committed to regular flights to Rwanda by the Autumn and clearly lays the blame for the delay on Labour peers
I reserve judgement on this scheme, but it had 48/35% support in November 23 you gov poll and until it is operational its success or otherwise remains an unknown
I would suggest however that today's announcement by Sunak with flights due by June/July that an election before November- December is unlikely and I expect it to be on the 14th November or 12th December
I certainly don't reserve judgement. It is a morally repugnant scheme that will be stain on our country.
The woman quoted couldn't remember signing a legal document as a witness for Rayner until presented with the document, but had a minute recollection of Rayner's movements at the time?
Do you remember every time you have witnessed a signature for someone?
Wouldn't the Somme without the Generals been an improvement?
Not my department, but isn't the WW1 trope that the generals generally did a pretty good job of staying away from the front line?
I may just be thinking of Blackadder here.
Current WW1 historians are frustrated by the Blackadder, Lions Led by Donkeys view of WW1 generals that has become the accepted norm amongst the wider population. The picture is nuanced. Some were good, some were bad, like anything.
I am torn in my view of the Battle of the Somme. On one hand it seems that the disaster of the first day and the ensuing campaign threw away lives needlessly for little gain. And it's hard to see beyond that.
The flip side of the coin is that the Somme - originally planned as a huge offensive jointly with the French, but the French contribution was dramatically curtailed due to the German attack at Verdun - was a vital attritional battle, helping the French at Verdun by tying up German manpower and logistics.
It was also vital for the British Army in 1916 - largely the first time the volunteers of 1914 went into action - to actually learn how to fight, though it was certainly a bloody lesson.
It also brought hard-won lessons - the amount and density of artillery needed to properly destroy barbed wire was much greater than that used at the Somme, for example. New tactics, such as bite and hold, developed.
As for staying away from the frontline, the generals were hamstrung by poor communications. They were commanding thousands of men over a wide area and they needed to be at the centre of a vast communications hub to be contactable, receive reports and issue commands accordingly, and this was something like a chateau ten miles behind the frontline. Though the communications hub was rudimentary in the extreme and very ineffective.
Having said all that, I think there was still a willingness by the generals, or maybe too many of them, to stomach gargantuan casualties all through the war. But it was ultimately, brutally, a war of attrition.
I swing from one view to the other. I think the Somme, particularly the first day, was waste. But many argue it was the blood price that had to be paid, the school of hard knocks that had to be endured, that paved the way for eventual victory.
Interesting thanks v much. I also think that people forget/overlook/choose not to appreciate how much much of WWI we were under command of the French.
Have you been to the Somme, btw? It is fascinating. Horribly so but fascinating. You look out over a vast plain of for all the world pretty normal looking French countryside and have to remind yourself that a million people died there, many of whose bodies were never recovered.
Thank you.
To my chagrin I have never been. But I will be - if not this year, then certainly next year.
My first stopover on my road trips is usually near a WWI battlefield, in what look like old farm buildings just north of the Chemin des Dames. On my first visit I made the mistake of asking when the building was constructed, and was told that there isn’t a single building anywhere for miles around that is older than about 1920.
Had WW1 been in the UK, vast areas of our country would now look like Ilford or Hounslow.
Vast areas of our country DO look like Ilford or Hounslow
While we're on about that sort of thing: I was in Chester yesterday. The city of Chester within the walls is an unsung star in our urban firmament. Admittedly it's not quite as brimming with tourist attractions as, say, York, but a beautiful and singular and admirably well-preserved city core nonetheless.
But good grief the approach from the West is ugly. You come off the motorway, through some very nice outer suburbs, some very nice inner suburbs, and then a 1960s/70s zone of ring roads and tower blocks and utter charmlessness that feels as if its perhaps been designed as a deliberate contrast to the niceness of the city centre itself. (My particular pet hate is council-built tower blocks which deliberately sit at an angle to the streets they should be addressing. It's bad enough that they're ugly; at least try to make them look as if they're a coherent part of the urban landscape.) This ugliness feels too stark to have happened by sheer carelessness; it's as if those responsible for shaping our cities in the 60s and 70s actively wanted to make the environment as unpleasant as possible. I say this not to single Chester out, but to make the point that not even our loveliest cities have been immune from Hounslowification. (But that aside, you should still definitely visit Chester.)
It was not an accident. The 1960s did this and did so knowingly. If you put together the forgetfulness of brutalism (the name is not an accident) + lack of talent + building on the cheap + the dominance of the car + greed + 'government knows best' you can see the result.
A list of the places not so terribly afflicted is short, but longer than the list of places people love because brutalism worked well. Most were too small to bother with wrecking; some places so large you could not wreck it all. Stamford is my personal favourite.
Brutalism is a French name - it comes from “brute” or raw & generally exposes the raw materials the building is constructed from. You can have a brutalist wooden building just as you can a concrete one.
The problem is not brutalism per se (although it can lead to something of a “one-note” texture to buildings which doesn’t always work) but the god-awful concrete monstrosities that were built & then (crucially) not maintained properly afterwards.
The Barbican is a brutalist building, but remains a well regarded, popular place that people are keen to live in. Other tower blocks built around the same time are ... not as popular as the Barbican.
The Barbican is a very interesting piece of urbanism - fascinating to visit, and I can understand why people like it there - it's well located, and from what I understand the flats are very nice* inside. It shows what brutalism is *supposed* to be. But even at its best, it can be rather bleak. I'm glad all of our cities don't look like this.
A facet of architecture which never really gets considered in enough detail is the albedo of the building. The taller the building, the more light it cuts out, so the more important it is to be reflective. This is why glass skyscrapers can add rather than detract to the urban landscape, whereas concrete ones tend to have the opposite effect.
*One thing flats like this got right is the amount of light they tended to let in. I remember staying the night on the 12th floor of a horrible building in inner East London - but inside, the light filled up the place and the views were amazing.
Defending brutalism on the basis that we're not spending enough on polishing the pebble dash is rather daft. The buildings are fundamentally not good to look at. The brutalists deliberately eschewed long-held notions of architectural beauty - and lo, their buildings were fuck ugly. None should remain on the planet. We have the ability to document them in great detail without having to live amongst them.
What do you think of those buildings I posted pics of in Manchester @Luckyguy1983 ? Sharston Baths for example - I think that qualifies as 'brutalism' yet was rather nice. I agree that where long-held notions of architectural beauty (like the buildings addressing the street) were eschewed then the results were awful. But I think beautiful - or at least non-ugly - brutalism does exist. It's certainly not my favourite architectural genre. But it's not uniformly awful. I'd say the problem is that too many architects used 'modern' to excuse them from the need to be any good.
On topic it doesn't seem like Trump will be locked up before the election? It seems like the charges in the business records case wouldn't normally produce a jail sentence even if he's convicted on all charges. Meanwhile the Georgia one isn't yet scheduled, the Florida one is in the hands of a loyal Trump hack and the DC case is stalled until such time as SCOTUS see fit to unstall it.
The banter heuristic would dictate that he win the election, then go to jail shortly afterwards.
It seems unlikely that any trials other than the present one are likely to be held before the election. Having delayed matters with numerous tactics, appeals, ridiculous arguments and the like Trump is now arguing the delay is so he cannot campaign. Like almost everything else he says this is nonsense.
The problem in the present one is that the actual charges are misdemeanours and therefore time barred unless they can be upgraded to felonies. The basis for doing so is that these false entries were crimes for some other purpose, also criminal. The bases for this are somewhat problematic with the possible exception of tax fraud because Trump appears to have claimed the reimbursements of Cohen as legitimate legal expenses for his businesses. I think proving these particular payments were in the legal expenses claimed is not going to be easy.
The other bases for claiming a criminal purpose do not seem to me to get off the ground. Trying to influence an election is not a crime: believe it or not that is what our politicians are trying to do every day, no matter how ineptly. Paying for silence is not a crime either.
So, I fear that Trump has a good chance with this trial. If he is acquitted there is a real risk that this boosts him which in a tight election could be extremely concerning.
I don’t see any chance of an acquittal but a hung jury .
That's an acquittal, or at least that is the way Trump will present it.
A hung jury allows for a new trial, yes? An acquittal does not.
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Sunak has committed to regular flights to Rwanda by the Autumn and clearly lays the blame for the delay on Labour peers
I reserve judgement on this scheme, but it had 48/35% support in November 23 you gov poll and until it is operational its success or otherwise remains an unknown
I would suggest however that today's announcement by Sunak with flights due by June/July that an election before November- December is unlikely and I expect it to be on the 14th November or 12th December
I certainly don't reserve judgement. It is a morally repugnant scheme that will be stain on our country.
Given that the first flight won’t leave until June / July and the rumor is that the People on it are being paid to get on the flight I can’t see if stopping the boats and Rishi has promised that the boats across the channel will stop.
So again he’s promising something that is outside his control
Mon dieu. The upper Loire is dull. I shall spare you photographs of endless flat and vasty fields
A lot of France is like that in my experience. A good 70% of the country is Lincolnshire.
(Not that there's anything inherently wrong with Lincolnshire, in moderation. But France offers just such a dizzyingly vast amount of it.)
I wouldn’t say 70%. More like 30-40%?
Anyway near the coast is usually but not always nice. They have far fewer hideous tacky resort towns, or they hide them better. And superior weather helps
Meanwhile all the alps and Pyrenees are impressive and sometimes spectacular. Corsica just edges the Isle of Wight. The Dordogne, the Basque Country, burgundy, Provence, languedoc, savoie, Jura, the Rhone valley - the majority of France is appealing
Fair enough. France is huge and I've been to relatively little of it. Obviously the nice bits of it like the Alps are spectacular. I was thinking for example of my trip from Toulouse Airport to Andorra: the Pyrenees were splendid, but the first hour and a half of flat, unspectacular landscape and small, dead, unremarkable towns was not. And my trip from La Rochelle airport to whatever Eurocamp it was two hours to the north: mile after mile of very slightly rolling agricultural landscape. Not in any way unpleasant. But like a massive Lincolnshire wolds. And the train from the tunnel to Paris: 170 miles of flat.
But I am far from well-travelled in France and will happily bow to the experience of kjh and TimS and Leon on this.
Don't think you should bow to my experiences, but for what it is worth I am not so keen on the French Alps. The skiing is good but the resorts are generally concrete jungles and you have to go above the tree line for decent skiing. I have mainly gone there because the people I have gone with choose to. The Dolomites in Italy are best in my opinion, as well Austria, provided you avoid small resorts in Austria if you are a decent skier. All much prettier and tree lined.
Sarlat is my favourite town in France. Haven't been there for a while, but it looks like Hogwarts.
On topic it doesn't seem like Trump will be locked up before the election? It seems like the charges in the business records case wouldn't normally produce a jail sentence even if he's convicted on all charges. Meanwhile the Georgia one isn't yet scheduled, the Florida one is in the hands of a loyal Trump hack and the DC case is stalled until such time as SCOTUS see fit to unstall it.
The banter heuristic would dictate that he win the election, then go to jail shortly afterwards.
It seems unlikely that any trials other than the present one are likely to be held before the election. Having delayed matters with numerous tactics, appeals, ridiculous arguments and the like Trump is now arguing the delay is so he cannot campaign. Like almost everything else he says this is nonsense.
The problem in the present one is that the actual charges are misdemeanours and therefore time barred unless they can be upgraded to felonies. The basis for doing so is that these false entries were crimes for some other purpose, also criminal. The bases for this are somewhat problematic with the possible exception of tax fraud because Trump appears to have claimed the reimbursements of Cohen as legitimate legal expenses for his businesses. I think proving these particular payments were in the legal expenses claimed is not going to be easy.
The other bases for claiming a criminal purpose do not seem to me to get off the ground. Trying to influence an election is not a crime: believe it or not that is what our politicians are trying to do every day, no matter how ineptly. Paying for silence is not a crime either.
So, I fear that Trump has a good chance with this trial. If he is acquitted there is a real risk that this boosts him which in a tight election could be extremely concerning.
I don’t see any chance of an acquittal but a hung jury .
That's an acquittal, or at least that is the way Trump will present it.
A hung jury allows for a new trial, yes? An acquittal does not.
Technically yes but retrials are rare and would play right into the witch hunt schtick. Would only benefit Trump.
An extremely well traveled friend has just emailed and said he had all the exact same thoughts as me when he went to Paris last weekend. So I’m REALLY not imagining it
If you want to see why Le Pen might win, go to Paris
My Albanian Uber driver said exactly the same - blamed it on all those damn woke AI aliens.
1) if he wasn’t a black cab driver, he doesn’t have anything to contribute. 2) it’s Trans Gay Woke Illegal Immigrant Alien AIs. Get it right.
Wouldn't the Somme without the Generals been an improvement?
Not my department, but isn't the WW1 trope that the generals generally did a pretty good job of staying away from the front line?
I may just be thinking of Blackadder here.
At the start of the war, generals were often on the front line. You see the following numbers quoted a fair bit - 76 British, 42 French, 2 Belgian, 2 Italian, and 2 Romanian generals killed on the Allied side.
The big problem was command and control. Without mobile radio, you are in command of those in earshot. Unless you are in a bunker, with wired telephones or telegraph.
And then you need a big space for the maps, whole rooms for the telephone and telegraph operators (who have to be on site). So running the war from the front lines couldn’t work.
Towards the end of the war, aircraft began to carry radio, which allowed a massive cut in the time for events on the battleground (as observed by recon aircraft) to be added to the “picture” on the map tables.
Yes, generals did need to be kept away from the front line but it did not help that they arrived in staff cars and uniforms that enemy snipers could easily identify, just like Nelson at Trafalgar.
Not just Trafalgar. There were reasons he arrived there with one eye, one arm and one leg.
Not to be pedantic but Nelson was bipedal. However it does conjure up a Pythonesque vision of him hopping about the Victory’s quarterdeck asking Hardy to kiss him.
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Sunak has committed to regular flights to Rwanda by the Autumn and clearly lays the blame for the delay on Labour peers
I reserve judgement on this scheme, but it had 48/35% support in November 23 you gov poll and until it is operational its success or otherwise remains an unknown
I would suggest however that today's announcement by Sunak with flights due by June/July that an election before November- December is unlikely and I expect it to be on the 14th November or 12th December
There are 173 Labour peers to 278 Conservative ones. The delay is not solely from Labour peers.
Wouldn't the Somme without the Generals been an improvement?
Not my department, but isn't the WW1 trope that the generals generally did a pretty good job of staying away from the front line?
I may just be thinking of Blackadder here.
At the start of the war, generals were often on the front line. You see the following numbers quoted a fair bit - 76 British, 42 French, 2 Belgian, 2 Italian, and 2 Romanian generals killed on the Allied side.
The big problem was command and control. Without mobile radio, you are in command of those in earshot. Unless you are in a bunker, with wired telephones or telegraph.
And then you need a big space for the maps, whole rooms for the telephone and telegraph operators (who have to be on site). So running the war from the front lines couldn’t work.
Towards the end of the war, aircraft began to carry radio, which allowed a massive cut in the time for events on the battleground (as observed by recon aircraft) to be added to the “picture” on the map tables.
The slaughter of officers in Austria-Hungarian army is astonishing in early part of war in eastern front. Not the most senior ranks but anything below.
When my father was serving in Northern Ireland some officers insisted on going on patrol with their pistols, presumably to give the IRA a clue who to shoot. My father always took a regulation rifle. He found their attitude bewildering but it is a long tradition of stupidity dressed up as bravery in all forces.
What was the life expectancy of an infantry 2nd Lt. in 1915 or so? Two weeks?
Six weeks, iirc. Yes, the subalterns straight from university or public school fared badly; Lieutenant George in Blackadder has a speech about how all his pals are now dead.
Trying to source this without success. Seldon & Walsh give six weeks as the life expectancy of a pilot (20 minutes in Blackadder). Now I must hasten to Sainsbury's. S&W give one reason for high officer death rates at the front: they were a lot taller than working class privates, and their heads would stick up above shallow trenches!
And also honour bound, though probably terrified, to lead the troop so first target. They had some officer training before going to France but automatically an officer because of background not aptitude
We had a Falklands platoon commander give a talk at Sandhurst. He said they were pinned down at some point and he shouted out (as per SOPS): "prepare to move...[soldiers check pouches, move back from last position, etc]...move..." Whereupon the soldiers are supposed to stand up and run forward.
And, unlike drills on Salisbury Plain, this time nobody moved.
The (second lieutenant, perhaps straight out of RMAS) realised that until and unless he stood up and moved forward first none of his platoon were going to move.
We think train prices are expensive because we compare them with the marginal cost of a car journey that doesn’t include the most expensive parts of owning a car (for most): depreciation, interest costs on borrowing & maintenance.
By comparison with the full cost of ownership, the train is cheap. The problem is that for people who already own a car, the comparison is with that marginal cost - they’ve already incurred the fixed costs & the train can’t compete.
Car clubs that make occasional car usage feasible really ram this home if you’re able to book a car ahead of time - so much cheaper than 24/7 car ownership.
It's not just the economics. A train is only useful if you don't need a car when you get there. Here in the Midlands, we use a train for a trip to London but that is it.
Mon dieu. The upper Loire is dull. I shall spare you photographs of endless flat and vasty fields
A lot of France is like that in my experience. A good 70% of the country is Lincolnshire.
(Not that there's anything inherently wrong with Lincolnshire, in moderation. But France offers just such a dizzyingly vast amount of it.)
I wouldn’t say 70%. More like 30-40%?
Anyway near the coast is usually but not always nice. They have far fewer hideous tacky resort towns, or they hide them better. And superior weather helps
Meanwhile all the alps and Pyrenees are impressive and sometimes spectacular. Corsica just edges the Isle of Wight. The Dordogne, the Basque Country, burgundy, Provence, languedoc, savoie, Jura, the Rhone valley - the majority of France is appealing
Fair enough. France is huge and I've been to relatively little of it. Obviously the nice bits of it like the Alps are spectacular. I was thinking for example of my trip from Toulouse Airport to Andorra: the Pyrenees were splendid, but the first hour and a half of flat, unspectacular landscape and small, dead, unremarkable towns was not. And my trip from La Rochelle airport to whatever Eurocamp it was two hours to the north: mile after mile of very slightly rolling agricultural landscape. Not in any way unpleasant. But like a massive Lincolnshire wolds. And the train from the tunnel to Paris: 170 miles of flat.
But I am far from well-travelled in France and will happily bow to the experience of kjh and TimS and Leon on this.
If you want staggering French loveliness, go to Corsica. It’s called the “Ile de beaute” for a reason - it’s a stunner. Also really good cheeses, many of them not exported
Paradoxically the people are some of the most unpleasant I’ve ever met. Phenomenally rude. Even the French (mainland) think corsicans are rude. Even the Parisians think corsicans are rude
Apparently it comes from centuries of vendettas and mistrust - Dorothy Carrington talks about Corsican rudeness in her travel classic “Granite Island”
In Paris I have always found people to be nice and helpful, but the reputation of Parisians is obviously a thing (maybe it is to other French people) because when house hunting around Pau I had guide and he recommended never hiring a car with a Paris number plate. Always get a local one.
We think train prices are expensive because we compare them with the marginal cost of a car journey that doesn’t include the most expensive parts of owning a car (for most): depreciation, interest costs on borrowing & maintenance.
By comparison with the full cost of ownership, the train is cheap. The problem is that for people who already own a car, the comparison is with that marginal cost - they’ve already incurred the fixed costs & the train can’t compete.
Car clubs that make occasional car usage feasible really ram this home if you’re able to book a car ahead of time - so much cheaper than 24/7 car ownership.
It's not just the economics. A train is only useful if you don't need a car when you get there. Here in the Midlands, we use a train for a trip to London but that is it.
Likewise. I will catch a train to Manchester tomorrow but when we go in June we also need to visit other people so that’s going to be by car
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Sunak has committed to regular flights to Rwanda by the Autumn and clearly lays the blame for the delay on Labour peers
I reserve judgement on this scheme, but it had 48/35% support in November 23 you gov poll and until it is operational its success or otherwise remains an unknown
I would suggest however that today's announcement by Sunak with flights due by June/July that an election before November- December is unlikely and I expect it to be on the 14th November or 12th December
I certainly don't reserve judgement. It is a morally repugnant scheme that will be stain on our country.
Effectively even if you have a genuine asylum case that will not be processed . Some try using a false equivalence with other countries who are thinking of processing claims abroad . The key difference is those people can still be granted asylum and return to those countries . I think some of the public are under the impression that genuine asylum seekers will still be returned to the UK .
Mon dieu. The upper Loire is dull. I shall spare you photographs of endless flat and vasty fields
A lot of France is like that in my experience. A good 70% of the country is Lincolnshire.
(Not that there's anything inherently wrong with Lincolnshire, in moderation. But France offers just such a dizzyingly vast amount of it.)
I wouldn’t say 70%. More like 30-40%?
Anyway near the coast is usually but not always nice. They have far fewer hideous tacky resort towns, or they hide them better. And superior weather helps
Meanwhile all the alps and Pyrenees are impressive and sometimes spectacular. Corsica just edges the Isle of Wight. The Dordogne, the Basque Country, burgundy, Provence, languedoc, savoie, Jura, the Rhone valley - the majority of France is appealing
Fair enough. France is huge and I've been to relatively little of it. Obviously the nice bits of it like the Alps are spectacular. I was thinking for example of my trip from Toulouse Airport to Andorra: the Pyrenees were splendid, but the first hour and a half of flat, unspectacular landscape and small, dead, unremarkable towns was not. And my trip from La Rochelle airport to whatever Eurocamp it was two hours to the north: mile after mile of very slightly rolling agricultural landscape. Not in any way unpleasant. But like a massive Lincolnshire wolds. And the train from the tunnel to Paris: 170 miles of flat.
But I am far from well-travelled in France and will happily bow to the experience of kjh and TimS and Leon on this.
Don't think you should bow to my experiences, but for what it is worth I am not so keen on the French Alps. The skiing is good but the resorts are generally concrete jungles and you have to go above the tree line for decent skiing. I have mainly gone there because the people I have gone with choose to. The Dolomites in Italy are best in my opinion, as well Austria, provided you avoid small resorts in Austria if you are a decent skier. All much prettier and tree lined.
Sarlat is my favourite town in France. Haven't been there for a while, but it looks like Hogwarts.
Sarlat is absurdly pretty but unfortunately overrun with tourists
However the really great thing about France is that it’s so big and varied you only have to explore - get off the tourist trail - and you will find an equally lovely town with zero tourists 10 or 20 or 40km away. Buried in the lush countryside like a truffle under a tree
eg How many people have heard of Tailloires, on Lake Annecy? I went there for the gazette. Looks like this
But it is ok for me to register in two different constituencies because I have two properties (I haven't done so but could) or my children to do so when they were students (both did) or Brits who have not lived in the UK for up to a decade, and now forever to have a vote, yet it is not ok for Rayner to pick which house she is registered in, in the same constituency (so the impact is zero).
Please explain what the issue is @squareroot2 . The answer isn't because the Times is running the story but actually requires you to use your brain.
I don’t know the details of electoral law - I think you were an agent in the past? - but if she did breach them it’s clearly a minor infringement.
The tax issue is rather more serious even if the amounts are small.
From the *current* HMRC website (don’t know if the rules are clear)
You qualify if you have not let part of it out - this does not include having a lodger
And
Married couples and civil partners can only count one property as their main home at any one time.
Presumably HMRC has the historical data on whether she claimed the relief and can clear it all up very easily. But the fact that circumstantial evidence puts her primary residence elsewhere plus she is (reportedly) self identifying as the landlady…
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Sunak has committed to regular flights to Rwanda by the Autumn and clearly lays the blame for the delay on Labour peers
I reserve judgement on this scheme, but it had 48/35% support in November 23 you gov poll and until it is operational its success or otherwise remains an unknown
I would suggest however that today's announcement by Sunak with flights due by June/July that an election before November- December is unlikely and I expect it to be on the 14th November or 12th December
Oh and Sunak blaming Labour Lords is dishonest. By amendment vote:
Safety of Rwanda Motion B: 122 Labour Peers out of 256 votes for the amendement Safety of Rwanda Motion B: 118 Labour Peers out of 243 votes for the amendement Safety of Rwanda Motion C: 119 Labour Peers out of 251 votes for the amendement Safety of Rwanda Motion 95 Labour Peers out of 245 votes for the amendement Safety of Rwanda Motion F: 118 Labour Peers out of 273 votes for the amendement
I can't be bothered to list all the amendment votes but it is exactly the same in all of them. In all cases Labour Peers formed the minority of those opposing the bill and voting for amendments. Except for a few Ulster Unionists and a very few non-affiliated peers, no one is supporting the Government except their own peers.
Wouldn't the Somme without the Generals been an improvement?
Not my department, but isn't the WW1 trope that the generals generally did a pretty good job of staying away from the front line?
I may just be thinking of Blackadder here.
At the start of the war, generals were often on the front line. You see the following numbers quoted a fair bit - 76 British, 42 French, 2 Belgian, 2 Italian, and 2 Romanian generals killed on the Allied side.
The big problem was command and control. Without mobile radio, you are in command of those in earshot. Unless you are in a bunker, with wired telephones or telegraph.
And then you need a big space for the maps, whole rooms for the telephone and telegraph operators (who have to be on site). So running the war from the front lines couldn’t work.
Towards the end of the war, aircraft began to carry radio, which allowed a massive cut in the time for events on the battleground (as observed by recon aircraft) to be added to the “picture” on the map tables.
Yes, generals did need to be kept away from the front line but it did not help that they arrived in staff cars and uniforms that enemy snipers could easily identify, just like Nelson at Trafalgar.
Not just Trafalgar. There were reasons he arrived there with one eye, one arm and one leg.
Not to be pedantic but Nelson was bipedal. However it does conjure up a Pythonesque vision of him hopping about the Victory’s quarterdeck asking Hardy to kiss him.
OTOH RN captains or admirals keeping their cars on the quarterdeck was a real thing in the 20th century, to have something to drive around in onshore. Also Landies and minibuses. Not just in aircraft carriers and assault carriers, but others - here there are examples of destroyers (Devonshire class guided missile) and frigates (Leander).
The funny thing about Rwanda is - even if the flights go - it won’t stop the boats at all. Will be funny if the numbers go up 😂
This is where election timing is tricky. Early autumn and Sunak may face the issue of having started flights but seen small boat numbers rebound after last year’s Albania-led decline. If the deterrent effect does exist (who knows) it will probably take months to filter through.
But go early and there’s no chance of it having achieved anything, and the economy won’t have had a chance to pick up either.
January 23rd works. Horrendous weather in the Channel through December and January will "prove" that Rwanda has "stopped" the boats. If Sunak is re-elected, that the numbers go up in March, April and May will matter not a jot.
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Sunak has committed to regular flights to Rwanda by the Autumn and clearly lays the blame for the delay on Labour peers
I reserve judgement on this scheme, but it had 48/35% support in November 23 you gov poll and until it is operational its success or otherwise remains an unknown
I would suggest however that today's announcement by Sunak with flights due by June/July that an election before November- December is unlikely and I expect it to be on the 14th November or 12th December
I certainly don't reserve judgement. It is a morally repugnant scheme that will be stain on our country.
Effectively even if you have a genuine asylum case that will not be processed . Some try using a false equivalence with other countries who are thinking of processing claims abroad . The key difference is those people can still be granted asylum and return to those countries . I think some of the public are under the impression that genuine asylum seekers will still be returned to the UK .
Exactly. Basically this is the UK saying we no longer want asylum seekers, genuine or otherwise.
Mon dieu. The upper Loire is dull. I shall spare you photographs of endless flat and vasty fields
A lot of France is like that in my experience. A good 70% of the country is Lincolnshire.
(Not that there's anything inherently wrong with Lincolnshire, in moderation. But France offers just such a dizzyingly vast amount of it.)
I wouldn’t say 70%. More like 30-40%?
Anyway near the coast is usually but not always nice. They have far fewer hideous tacky resort towns, or they hide them better. And superior weather helps
Meanwhile all the alps and Pyrenees are impressive and sometimes spectacular. Corsica just edges the Isle of Wight. The Dordogne, the Basque Country, burgundy, Provence, languedoc, savoie, Jura, the Rhone valley - the majority of France is appealing
Fair enough. France is huge and I've been to relatively little of it. Obviously the nice bits of it like the Alps are spectacular. I was thinking for example of my trip from Toulouse Airport to Andorra: the Pyrenees were splendid, but the first hour and a half of flat, unspectacular landscape and small, dead, unremarkable towns was not. And my trip from La Rochelle airport to whatever Eurocamp it was two hours to the north: mile after mile of very slightly rolling agricultural landscape. Not in any way unpleasant. But like a massive Lincolnshire wolds. And the train from the tunnel to Paris: 170 miles of flat.
But I am far from well-travelled in France and will happily bow to the experience of kjh and TimS and Leon on this.
If you want staggering French loveliness, go to Corsica. It’s called the “Ile de beaute” for a reason - it’s a stunner. Also really good cheeses, many of them not exported
Paradoxically the people are some of the most unpleasant I’ve ever met. Phenomenally rude. Even the French (mainland) think corsicans are rude. Even the Parisians think corsicans are rude
Apparently it comes from centuries of vendettas and mistrust - Dorothy Carrington talks about Corsican rudeness in her travel classic “Granite Island”
In Paris I have always found people to be nice and helpful, but the reputation of Parisians is obviously a thing (maybe it is to other French people) because when house hunting around Pau I had guide and he recommended never hiring a car with a Paris number plate. Always get a local one.
The attitude of non-Parisian French people, I’ve met, towards Paris is moderately startling. Frank hatred seems common. It makes @malcolmg sound like he is wearing an “I Love London” T-shirt, by comparison.
We think train prices are expensive because we compare them with the marginal cost of a car journey that doesn’t include the most expensive parts of owning a car (for most): depreciation, interest costs on borrowing & maintenance.
By comparison with the full cost of ownership, the train is cheap. The problem is that for people who already own a car, the comparison is with that marginal cost - they’ve already incurred the fixed costs & the train can’t compete.
Car clubs that make occasional car usage feasible really ram this home if you’re able to book a car ahead of time - so much cheaper than 24/7 car ownership.
The problem is that for most people (i.e. 90% of people who live outside of central london) car ownership - and hence the fixed costs that come with it - are a necessity. You can't take the East Coast Main Line to Sainsbury's, or drop the kids off at the local primary, or visit your nan with ease two towns across without a car.
So it's not an either/or equation. You already have the car, plus the fixed costs associated with it, which makes the marginal cost of using the train that much worse.
But if you live in, say, suburban South Manchester, and you could do 90% of your trips on public transport or a bike, it does make financial sense to hire a car (through a car club or otherwise) for the other 10%. We are a two car family and I'm sat here looking at both of them sat on my drive right now. Not a great use of resources. Part of the problem is that when in the past I briefly gave up car ownership, it was a right bugger to get affordable insurance again when I then acquired one again. Which is now a serious demotivator to ever give one up again. Which means that, as Phil says, because that fixed cost of ownership is paid, I now have an almost cost free way of making journeys I could just as easily make by bike. Let's say it costs roughly 50p a mile for a car journey, once you take into account the costs of ownership, maintainence and fuel. (This feels fairly conservative, obviously it varies wildly depending on which car you own and what your average mileage is). If I need to pop out to One Stop to buy a loaf of bread: if it genuinely cost me that 50p to get the mile round trip to One Stop and back, I would go by bike every time. There is no difference in time between driving half a mile and cycling it, once you take into account the faff of parking. But in reality it costs me most of that 50p whether I drive or not. And so often, I drive.
The woman quoted couldn't remember signing a legal document as a witness for Rayner until presented with the document, but had a minute recollection of Rayner's movements at the time?
Do you remember every time you have witnessed a signature for someone?
Definitely, yes. I'd say it's something I'm called upon to do about once every two years at most.
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Sunak has committed to regular flights to Rwanda by the Autumn and clearly lays the blame for the delay on Labour peers
I reserve judgement on this scheme, but it had 48/35% support in November 23 you gov poll and until it is operational its success or otherwise remains an unknown
I would suggest however that today's announcement by Sunak with flights due by June/July that an election before November- December is unlikely and I expect it to be on the 14th November or 12th December
I certainly don't reserve judgement. It is a morally repugnant scheme that will be stain on our country.
Effectively even if you have a genuine asylum case that will not be processed . Some try using a false equivalence with other countries who are thinking of processing claims abroad . The key difference is those people can still be granted asylum and return to those countries . I think some of the public are under the impression that genuine asylum seekers will still be returned to the UK .
Exactly. Basically this is the UK saying we no longer want asylum seekers, genuine or otherwise.
I feel for the otherwise impressive Andrew Mitchell, who two years ago wrote in ConHome what an utter folly the Rwanda scheme is, and here he is today having to promote this garbage.
Wouldn't the Somme without the Generals been an improvement?
Not my department, but isn't the WW1 trope that the generals generally did a pretty good job of staying away from the front line?
I may just be thinking of Blackadder here.
At the start of the war, generals were often on the front line. You see the following numbers quoted a fair bit - 76 British, 42 French, 2 Belgian, 2 Italian, and 2 Romanian generals killed on the Allied side.
The big problem was command and control. Without mobile radio, you are in command of those in earshot. Unless you are in a bunker, with wired telephones or telegraph.
And then you need a big space for the maps, whole rooms for the telephone and telegraph operators (who have to be on site). So running the war from the front lines couldn’t work.
Towards the end of the war, aircraft began to carry radio, which allowed a massive cut in the time for events on the battleground (as observed by recon aircraft) to be added to the “picture” on the map tables.
Yes, generals did need to be kept away from the front line but it did not help that they arrived in staff cars and uniforms that enemy snipers could easily identify, just like Nelson at Trafalgar.
Not just Trafalgar. There were reasons he arrived there with one eye, one arm and one leg.
Not to be pedantic but Nelson was bipedal. However it does conjure up a Pythonesque vision of him hopping about the Victory’s quarterdeck asking Hardy to kiss him.
OTOH RN captains or admirals keeping their cars on the quarterdeck was a real thing in the 20th century, to have something to drive around in onshore. Also Landies and minibuses. Not just in aircraft carriers and assault carriers, but others - here there are examples of destroyers (Devonshire class guided missile) and frigates (Leander).
Probably better when they carried their own. Wasn’t the captain of one of the 2 current carriers given the boot because of malfeasance with a shore based people carrier or similar?
But it is ok for me to register in two different constituencies because I have two properties (I haven't done so but could) or my children to do so when they were students (both did) or Brits who have not lived in the UK for up to a decade, and now forever to have a vote, yet it is not ok for Rayner to pick which house she is registered in, in the same constituency (so the impact is zero).
Please explain what the issue is @squareroot2 . The answer isn't because the Times is running the story but actually requires you to use your brain.
I don’t know the details of electoral law - I think you were an agent in the past? - but if she did breach them it’s clearly a minor infringement.
The tax issue is rather more serious even if the amounts are small.
From the *current* HMRC website (don’t know if the rules are clear)
You qualify if you have not let part of it out - this does not include having a lodger
And
Married couples and civil partners can only count one property as their main home at any one time.
Presumably HMRC has the historical data on whether she claimed the relief and can clear it all up very easily. But the fact that circumstantial evidence puts her primary residence elsewhere plus she is (reportedly) self identifying as the landlady…
How much CGT would she owe if she had sold some shares at a £10,000 loss? Is it 0? You don't know her tax affairs.
Either we make all MPs or senior MPs tax affairs transparent (I'm in favour) or we don't. We shouldn't make just those we don't like or don't have the right background do so.
But it is ok for me to register in two different constituencies because I have two properties (I haven't done so but could) or my children to do so when they were students (both did) or Brits who have not lived in the UK for up to a decade, and now forever to have a vote, yet it is not ok for Rayner to pick which house she is registered in, in the same constituency (so the impact is zero).
Please explain what the issue is @squareroot2 . The answer isn't because the Times is running the story but actually requires you to use your brain.
I don’t know the details of electoral law - I think you were an agent in the past? - but if she did breach them it’s clearly a minor infringement.
The tax issue is rather more serious even if the amounts are small.
From the *current* HMRC website (don’t know if the rules are clear)
You qualify if you have not let part of it out - this does not include having a lodger
And
Married couples and civil partners can only count one property as their main home at any one time.
Presumably HMRC has the historical data on whether she claimed the relief and can clear it all up very easily. But the fact that circumstantial evidence puts her primary residence elsewhere plus she is (reportedly) self identifying as the landlady…
I was yes. I am familiar with CGT rules (not least because I have two houses), but I don't know the details in Rayner's case. It is interesting to note though that the attack was flipped from CGT to voter registration. I'm assuming because one gave rise to an inconsistency in the other, but I am guessing that.
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Unfortunately, the Home Secretaries came back!
So would the asylum seekers if their claims for asylum were successful. It's an area where I think quite a few members of the general public misunderstand it. It is, ultimately, a temporary accommodation arrangement, whereas I think quite a few people see it as simply "No way - apply to Rwanda to stay there instead".
"Warner’s placard referred to the Bushel case, which is celebrated with a marble sign that is clearly visible in the central criminal court in London. It read: “Jurors, You have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience.”"
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Sunak has committed to regular flights to Rwanda by the Autumn and clearly lays the blame for the delay on Labour peers
I reserve judgement on this scheme, but it had 48/35% support in November 23 you gov poll and until it is operational its success or otherwise remains an unknown
I would suggest however that today's announcement by Sunak with flights due by June/July that an election before November- December is unlikely and I expect it to be on the 14th November or 12th December
I certainly don't reserve judgement. It is a morally repugnant scheme that will be stain on our country.
Effectively even if you have a genuine asylum case that will not be processed . Some try using a false equivalence with other countries who are thinking of processing claims abroad . The key difference is those people can still be granted asylum and return to those countries . I think some of the public are under the impression that genuine asylum seekers will still be returned to the UK .
Unfortunately I think there’s also some of the public that are happy with genuine asylum seekers being turned away without their cases being considered.
An extremely well traveled friend has just emailed and said he had all the exact same thoughts as me when he went to Paris last weekend. So I’m REALLY not imagining it
If you want to see why Le Pen might win, go to Paris
A guy i know said exactly the same as you about Paris that its a dump. And ive checked online and seen similar feedback. The 18th and 19th arrondissements are particularly bad apparently.
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Sunak has committed to regular flights to Rwanda by the Autumn and clearly lays the blame for the delay on Labour peers
I reserve judgement on this scheme, but it had 48/35% support in November 23 you gov poll and until it is operational its success or otherwise remains an unknown
I would suggest however that today's announcement by Sunak with flights due by June/July that an election before November- December is unlikely and I expect it to be on the 14th November or 12th December
I certainly don't reserve judgement. It is a morally repugnant scheme that will be stain on our country.
Effectively even if you have a genuine asylum case that will not be processed . Some try using a false equivalence with other countries who are thinking of processing claims abroad . The key difference is those people can still be granted asylum and return to those countries . I think some of the public are under the impression that genuine asylum seekers will still be returned to the UK .
Exactly. Basically this is the UK saying we no longer want asylum seekers, genuine or otherwise.
And the bottom line is that a significant number of people don't want Britain to have to deal with asylum seekers. Hence the "isn't France safe enough, hur hur" stuff.
The current Hunger Games survivalist model is a bad one. And I don't like the boat operators, nobody sane does. Trouble is that a humane, fair system (even if we mean all rich countries sharing the burden fairly) almost certainly leads to the UK doing more, not less, than now.
But it is ok for me to register in two different constituencies because I have two properties (I haven't done so but could) or my children to do so when they were students (both did) or Brits who have not lived in the UK for up to a decade, and now forever to have a vote, yet it is not ok for Rayner to pick which house she is registered in, in the same constituency (so the impact is zero).
Please explain what the issue is @squareroot2 . The answer isn't because the Times is running the story but actually requires you to use your brain.
I don’t know the details of electoral law - I think you were an agent in the past? - but if she did breach them it’s clearly a minor infringement.
The tax issue is rather more serious even if the amounts are small.
From the *current* HMRC website (don’t know if the rules are clear)
You qualify if you have not let part of it out - this does not include having a lodger
And
Married couples and civil partners can only count one property as their main home at any one time.
Presumably HMRC has the historical data on whether she claimed the relief and can clear it all up very easily. But the fact that circumstantial evidence puts her primary residence elsewhere plus she is (reportedly) self identifying as the landlady…
I was yes. I am familiar with CGT rules (not least because I have two houses), but I don't know the details in Rayner's case. It is interesting to note though that the attack was flipped from CGT to voter registration. I'm assuming because one gave rise to an inconsistency in the other, but I am guessing that.
In any case, the CGT rules today are *not* what the rules were at the relevant time. They have definitely changed - notably in the timing of the payment to be made (which has to be done in weeks: no longer to be left to the annual tax return).
The biggest irony about "Rayner-gate" is that the source of the story is Lord Ashcroft, a non dom sheltering hundreds of millions of pounds from UK taxes whilst sitting as a peer!
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Cycling? Some of the main streets in Paris have more cyclists than cars now, and on some metrics the city has overtaken Amsterdam.
This has made it much more pleasant city to drive around with fewer cars clogging up the streets.
Yes could be. You certainly notice the profusion of cycles
On the other hand, when married to all the shuttered shops (post covid?) it brings a certain deadness to the streets. Like a perpetual Sunday
If they are following Dutch (and now British in some places) practice they may be using the concept of separated networks by type of transport. This is usually called "unravelling the modes" in English, and something unpronounceable in Dutch. Paris is trying to do change at breakneck speed.
So you may just be off a particular modal network. In London for example they have "Cycle Superhighways" (ie normal separated cycle tracks) and Quietways, which are for example walking / wheeling / cycling routes through LTNs where the motorised rat runners have been put back on through routes for motor vehicles.
Here's a 4 minute video looking at the concept, by David Hembrow in 2012. This is broad, but the same concept applies in cities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zd5tKIdOyg
In Central London an example might be the difference in facilities along the E-W Tavistock Place corridor, and Theobalds Road.
Over the next 10-20 years I'd expect the same concept to come in on North-South routes more, so that perhaps a dozen bridges will be motor free, and another dozen to be motor with minimal mobility facilities. Rather than the type of expensive and unnecessary hybrid dog's breakfast being proposed for Hammersmith Bridge.
The biggest irony about "Rayner-gate" is that the source of the story is Lord Ashcroft, a non dom sheltering hundreds of millions of pounds from UK taxes whilst sitting as a peer!
The complainants do not care one iota about that!
I think the reason is this - Labour usually take the moral high ground and so we expect better of them. Everyone expects Tories to be shits who abuse power to enrich themselves. They expect Labour to have a better moral compass.
Personally I think that the expenses scandal showed that this was bunkum - they were all at it (no doubt because ALL had been encouraged to be at it to offset the perceived poor MP pay).
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Unfortunately, the Home Secretaries came back!
So would the asylum seekers if their claims for asylum were successful. It's an area where I think quite a few members of the general public misunderstand it. It is, ultimately, a temporary accommodation arrangement, whereas I think quite a few people see it as simply "No way - apply to Rwanda to stay there instead".
Erm... No.
The policy applies to people who have claimed asylum, regardless of whether or not they are refugees. It does not target people who have been refused asylum in the UK. People relocated to Rwanda would have their claims assessed there, and those who were recognised as refugees would not be eligible to return to the UK.
This is a key difference between what the UK plans and some other countries are exploring. It's not offshore processing, it's ping them abroad and forget about them.
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Unfortunately, the Home Secretaries came back!
So would the asylum seekers if their claims for asylum were successful. It's an area where I think quite a few members of the general public misunderstand it. It is, ultimately, a temporary accommodation arrangement, whereas I think quite a few people see it as simply "No way - apply to Rwanda to stay there instead".
That’s not the case . If you come on a boat you are disqualified from claiming asylum even if you have a genuine case .
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Unfortunately, the Home Secretaries came back!
So would the asylum seekers if their claims for asylum were successful. It's an area where I think quite a few members of the general public misunderstand it. It is, ultimately, a temporary accommodation arrangement, whereas I think quite a few people see it as simply "No way - apply to Rwanda to stay there instead".
Er, no, if their claim is successful they stay in Rwanda. I think you are the one misunderstanding it!
The biggest irony about "Rayner-gate" is that the source of the story is Lord Ashcroft, a non dom sheltering hundreds of millions of pounds from UK taxes whilst sitting as a peer!
The complainants do not care one iota about that!
I think the reason is this - Labour usually take the moral high ground and so we expect better of them. Everyone expects Tories to be shits who abuse power to enrich themselves. They expect Labour to have a better moral compass.
Personally I think that the expenses scandal showed that this was bunkum - they were all at it (no doubt because ALL had been encouraged to be at it to offset the perceived poor MP pay).
So the Tory fans complaining about Rayner expect of better of her than the people they vote for and cheerlead. It is a view.
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Sunak has committed to regular flights to Rwanda by the Autumn and clearly lays the blame for the delay on Labour peers
I reserve judgement on this scheme, but it had 48/35% support in November 23 you gov poll and until it is operational its success or otherwise remains an unknown
I would suggest however that today's announcement by Sunak with flights due by June/July that an election before November- December is unlikely and I expect it to be on the 14th November or 12th December
I certainly don't reserve judgement. It is a morally repugnant scheme that will be stain on our country.
Effectively even if you have a genuine asylum case that will not be processed . Some try using a false equivalence with other countries who are thinking of processing claims abroad . The key difference is those people can still be granted asylum and return to those countries . I think some of the public are under the impression that genuine asylum seekers will still be returned to the UK .
Exactly. Basically this is the UK saying we no longer want asylum seekers, genuine or otherwise.
I feel for the otherwise impressive Andrew Mitchell, who two years ago wrote in ConHome what an utter folly the Rwanda scheme is, and here he is today having to promote this garbage.
He isn’t impressive given that he is now promoting a scheme that he believes is a folly and won’t work.
All he’s done is confirm he has the personal self-respect of a jellyfish seeking promotion
Wouldn't the Somme without the Generals been an improvement?
Not my department, but isn't the WW1 trope that the generals generally did a pretty good job of staying away from the front line?
I may just be thinking of Blackadder here.
Current WW1 historians are frustrated by the Blackadder, Lions Led by Donkeys view of WW1 generals that has become the accepted norm amongst the wider population. The picture is nuanced. Some were good, some were bad, like anything.
I am torn in my view of the Battle of the Somme. On one hand it seems that the disaster of the first day and the ensuing campaign threw away lives needlessly for little gain. And it's hard to see beyond that.
The flip side of the coin is that the Somme - originally planned as a huge offensive jointly with the French, but the French contribution was dramatically curtailed due to the German attack at Verdun - was a vital attritional battle, helping the French at Verdun by tying up German manpower and logistics.
It was also vital for the British Army in 1916 - largely the first time the volunteers of 1914 went into action - to actually learn how to fight, though it was certainly a bloody lesson.
It also brought hard-won lessons - the amount and density of artillery needed to properly destroy barbed wire was much greater than that used at the Somme, for example. New tactics, such as bite and hold, developed.
As for staying away from the frontline, the generals were hamstrung by poor communications. They were commanding thousands of men over a wide area and they needed to be at the centre of a vast communications hub to be contactable, receive reports and issue commands accordingly, and this was something like a chateau ten miles behind the frontline. Though the communications hub was rudimentary in the extreme and very ineffective.
Having said all that, I think there was still a willingness by the generals, or maybe too many of them, to stomach gargantuan casualties all through the war. But it was ultimately, brutally, a war of attrition.
I swing from one view to the other. I think the Somme, particularly the first day, was waste. But many argue it was the blood price that had to be paid, the school of hard knocks that had to be endured, that paved the way for eventual victory.
Interesting thanks v much. I also think that people forget/overlook/choose not to appreciate how much much of WWI we were under command of the French.
Have you been to the Somme, btw? It is fascinating. Horribly so but fascinating. You look out over a vast plain of for all the world pretty normal looking French countryside and have to remind yourself that a million people died there, many of whose bodies were never recovered.
Thank you.
To my chagrin I have never been. But I will be - if not this year, then certainly next year.
My first stopover on my road trips is usually near a WWI battlefield, in what look like old farm buildings just north of the Chemin des Dames. On my first visit I made the mistake of asking when the building was constructed, and was told that there isn’t a single building anywhere for miles around that is older than about 1920.
Had WW1 been in the UK, vast areas of our country would now look like Ilford or Hounslow.
Vast areas of our country DO look like Ilford or Hounslow
While we're on about that sort of thing: I was in Chester yesterday. The city of Chester within the walls is an unsung star in our urban firmament. Admittedly it's not quite as brimming with tourist attractions as, say, York, but a beautiful and singular and admirably well-preserved city core nonetheless.
But good grief the approach from the West is ugly. You come off the motorway, through some very nice outer suburbs, some very nice inner suburbs, and then a 1960s/70s zone of ring roads and tower blocks and utter charmlessness that feels as if its perhaps been designed as a deliberate contrast to the niceness of the city centre itself. (My particular pet hate is council-built tower blocks which deliberately sit at an angle to the streets they should be addressing. It's bad enough that they're ugly; at least try to make them look as if they're a coherent part of the urban landscape.) This ugliness feels too stark to have happened by sheer carelessness; it's as if those responsible for shaping our cities in the 60s and 70s actively wanted to make the environment as unpleasant as possible. I say this not to single Chester out, but to make the point that not even our loveliest cities have been immune from Hounslowification. (But that aside, you should still definitely visit Chester.)
It was not an accident. The 1960s did this and did so knowingly. If you put together the forgetfulness of brutalism (the name is not an accident) + lack of talent + building on the cheap + the dominance of the car + greed + 'government knows best' you can see the result.
A list of the places not so terribly afflicted is short, but longer than the list of places people love because brutalism worked well. Most were too small to bother with wrecking; some places so large you could not wreck it all. Stamford is my personal favourite.
Brutalism is a French name - it comes from “brute” or raw & generally exposes the raw materials the building is constructed from. You can have a brutalist wooden building just as you can a concrete one.
The problem is not brutalism per se (although it can lead to something of a “one-note” texture to buildings which doesn’t always work) but the god-awful concrete monstrosities that were built & then (crucially) not maintained properly afterwards.
The Barbican is a brutalist building, but remains a well regarded, popular place that people are keen to live in. Other tower blocks built around the same time are ... not as popular as the Barbican.
The Barbican is a very interesting piece of urbanism - fascinating to visit, and I can understand why people like it there - it's well located, and from what I understand the flats are very nice* inside. It shows what brutalism is *supposed* to be. But even at its best, it can be rather bleak. I'm glad all of our cities don't look like this.
A facet of architecture which never really gets considered in enough detail is the albedo of the building. The taller the building, the more light it cuts out, so the more important it is to be reflective. This is why glass skyscrapers can add rather than detract to the urban landscape, whereas concrete ones tend to have the opposite effect.
*One thing flats like this got right is the amount of light they tended to let in. I remember staying the night on the 12th floor of a horrible building in inner East London - but inside, the light filled up the place and the views were amazing.
Wouldn't the Somme without the Generals been an improvement?
Not my department, but isn't the WW1 trope that the generals generally did a pretty good job of staying away from the front line?
I may just be thinking of Blackadder here.
Current WW1 historians are frustrated by the Blackadder, Lions Led by Donkeys view of WW1 generals that has become the accepted norm amongst the wider population. The picture is nuanced. Some were good, some were bad, like anything.
I am torn in my view of the Battle of the Somme. On one hand it seems that the disaster of the first day and the ensuing campaign threw away lives needlessly for little gain. And it's hard to see beyond that.
The flip side of the coin is that the Somme - originally planned as a huge offensive jointly with the French, but the French contribution was dramatically curtailed due to the German attack at Verdun - was a vital attritional battle, helping the French at Verdun by tying up German manpower and logistics.
It was also vital for the British Army in 1916 - largely the first time the volunteers of 1914 went into action - to actually learn how to fight, though it was certainly a bloody lesson.
It also brought hard-won lessons - the amount and density of artillery needed to properly destroy barbed wire was much greater than that used at the Somme, for example. New tactics, such as bite and hold, developed.
As for staying away from the frontline, the generals were hamstrung by poor communications. They were commanding thousands of men over a wide area and they needed to be at the centre of a vast communications hub to be contactable, receive reports and issue commands accordingly, and this was something like a chateau ten miles behind the frontline. Though the communications hub was rudimentary in the extreme and very ineffective.
Having said all that, I think there was still a willingness by the generals, or maybe too many of them, to stomach gargantuan casualties all through the war. But it was ultimately, brutally, a war of attrition.
I swing from one view to the other. I think the Somme, particularly the first day, was waste. But many argue it was the blood price that had to be paid, the school of hard knocks that had to be endured, that paved the way for eventual victory.
Interesting thanks v much. I also think that people forget/overlook/choose not to appreciate how much much of WWI we were under command of the French.
Have you been to the Somme, btw? It is fascinating. Horribly so but fascinating. You look out over a vast plain of for all the world pretty normal looking French countryside and have to remind yourself that a million people died there, many of whose bodies were never recovered.
Thank you.
To my chagrin I have never been. But I will be - if not this year, then certainly next year.
My first stopover on my road trips is usually near a WWI battlefield, in what look like old farm buildings just north of the Chemin des Dames. On my first visit I made the mistake of asking when the building was constructed, and was told that there isn’t a single building anywhere for miles around that is older than about 1920.
Had WW1 been in the UK, vast areas of our country would now look like Ilford or Hounslow.
Vast areas of our country DO look like Ilford or Hounslow
While we're on about that sort of thing: I was in Chester yesterday. The city of Chester within the walls is an unsung star in our urban firmament. Admittedly it's not quite as brimming with tourist attractions as, say, York, but a beautiful and singular and admirably well-preserved city core nonetheless.
But good grief the approach from the West is ugly. You come off the motorway, through some very nice outer suburbs, some very nice inner suburbs, and then a 1960s/70s zone of ring roads and tower blocks and utter charmlessness that feels as if its perhaps been designed as a deliberate contrast to the niceness of the city centre itself. (My particular pet hate is council-built tower blocks which deliberately sit at an angle to the streets they should be addressing. It's bad enough that they're ugly; at least try to make them look as if they're a coherent part of the urban landscape.) This ugliness feels too stark to have happened by sheer carelessness; it's as if those responsible for shaping our cities in the 60s and 70s actively wanted to make the environment as unpleasant as possible. I say this not to single Chester out, but to make the point that not even our loveliest cities have been immune from Hounslowification. (But that aside, you should still definitely visit Chester.)
It was not an accident. The 1960s did this and did so knowingly. If you put together the forgetfulness of brutalism (the name is not an accident) + lack of talent + building on the cheap + the dominance of the car + greed + 'government knows best' you can see the result.
A list of the places not so terribly afflicted is short, but longer than the list of places people love because brutalism worked well. Most were too small to bother with wrecking; some places so large you could not wreck it all. Stamford is my personal favourite.
Brutalism is a French name - it comes from “brute” or raw & generally exposes the raw materials the building is constructed from. You can have a brutalist wooden building just as you can a concrete one.
The problem is not brutalism per se (although it can lead to something of a “one-note” texture to buildings which doesn’t always work) but the god-awful concrete monstrosities that were built & then (crucially) not maintained properly afterwards.
The Barbican is a brutalist building, but remains a well regarded, popular place that people are keen to live in. Other tower blocks built around the same time are ... not as popular as the Barbican.
The Barbican is a very interesting piece of urbanism - fascinating to visit, and I can understand why people like it there - it's well located, and from what I understand the flats are very nice* inside. It shows what brutalism is *supposed* to be. But even at its best, it can be rather bleak. I'm glad all of our cities don't look like this.
A facet of architecture which never really gets considered in enough detail is the albedo of the building. The taller the building, the more light it cuts out, so the more important it is to be reflective. This is why glass skyscrapers can add rather than detract to the urban landscape, whereas concrete ones tend to have the opposite effect.
*One thing flats like this got right is the amount of light they tended to let in. I remember staying the night on the 12th floor of a horrible building in inner East London - but inside, the light filled up the place and the views were amazing.
Oddly, my news feed has just given me a related story about memories of Sharston Baths in Manchester, designed by the architect L.C. Howitt - a man who did brutalism well. As well as Sharston Baths, he gave us Manchester Crown Court, the Toast Rack in Fallowfield (not everyone's cup of tea, but I quite liked it) and Blackley Crematorium.
(pictures snipped.)
Now if the area outside the walls of Chester was typified by this sort of architecture - well, it would clash slightly with the Roman core, but it wouldn't be actively ugly. But most brutalism is just brutal.
The value of traditional educational architecture — along with aesthetic delight — is how it inculcates a sense of heritage, belonging, and responsibility in students.
The second broad category is what we might call Experimental.
Universities and schools are not just about learning things by rote — they are also about discovering new ideas, challenging old ones, and searching for novel approaches to old problems.
An extremely well traveled friend has just emailed and said he had all the exact same thoughts as me when he went to Paris last weekend. So I’m REALLY not imagining it
If you want to see why Le Pen might win, go to Paris
A guy i know said exactly the same as you about Paris that its a dump. And ive checked online and seen similar feedback. The 18th and 19th arrondissements are particularly bad apparently.
Not my experience unless I was particularly unobservant or things have gone seriously downhill since my last visit a year ago. There's stuff obviously but not worse than say London and neither city is that bad compared with others.
I do agree Paris lacks buzz. It's always been like that though.
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Cycling? Some of the main streets in Paris have more cyclists than cars now, and on some metrics the city has overtaken Amsterdam.
This has made it much more pleasant city to drive around with fewer cars clogging up the streets.
Yes could be. You certainly notice the profusion of cycles
Cyclists were a major hazard when I was walking around Paris in March last year. They cycle at huge speeds and don't slow down when they see pedestrians. Walking across a cycle path was a bit dicey. Their attitude seemed to be "We're entitled to be on this cycle path and we don't care about anyone else including pedestrians".
Sounds a bit like car drivers!
That sounds like the Paris Transport Habit.
I recall going through Paris counting how many wings were dented on each car. In quite a few the number was all four.
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Unfortunately, the Home Secretaries came back!
So would the asylum seekers if their claims for asylum were successful. It's an area where I think quite a few members of the general public misunderstand it. It is, ultimately, a temporary accommodation arrangement, whereas I think quite a few people see it as simply "No way - apply to Rwanda to stay there instead".
Er, no, if their claim is successful they stay in Rwanda. I think you are the one misunderstanding it!
Course if their claim is unsuccessful, they probably stay in Rwanda too - at least if they want. Not sure the Rwandans have a full slate of returns agreements with third countries.
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Sunak has committed to regular flights to Rwanda by the Autumn and clearly lays the blame for the delay on Labour peers
I reserve judgement on this scheme, but it had 48/35% support in November 23 you gov poll and until it is operational its success or otherwise remains an unknown
I would suggest however that today's announcement by Sunak with flights due by June/July that an election before November- December is unlikely and I expect it to be on the 14th November or 12th December
I certainly don't reserve judgement. It is a morally repugnant scheme that will be stain on our country.
Effectively even if you have a genuine asylum case that will not be processed . Some try using a false equivalence with other countries who are thinking of processing claims abroad . The key difference is those people can still be granted asylum and return to those countries . I think some of the public are under the impression that genuine asylum seekers will still be returned to the UK .
Exactly. Basically this is the UK saying we no longer want asylum seekers, genuine or otherwise.
And the bottom line is that a significant number of people don't want Britain to have to deal with asylum seekers. Hence the "isn't France safe enough, hur hur" stuff.
The current Hunger Games survivalist model is a bad one. And I don't like the boat operators, nobody sane does. Trouble is that a humane, fair system (even if we mean all rich countries sharing the burden fairly) almost certainly leads to the UK doing more, not less, than now.
I don't think that's a fair characterisation. People don't understand why people fleeing for their lives don't claim asylum in the first safe place they reach. They imagine themselves fleeing from being attacked in the street, and then thinking about knocking on a door for help. They can't imagine them saying 'no, not the door, they have a hydrangea out the front. no, not that one, they drive a Kia..' etc. To them, that's what a refugee is doing by travelling through lots of safe places to try to reach the UK
Now we all know that under the asylum rules there is no requirement to claim asylum in the first safe country. But the man in the street looks at France and thinks - surely safe enough?
We also have taken many people from certain sources (Ukraine, Hong Kong etc). Sadly I think there is a hint of racism about being open to blond, white Ukranians, but less so to refugees from South Sudan.
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Cycling? Some of the main streets in Paris have more cyclists than cars now, and on some metrics the city has overtaken Amsterdam.
This has made it much more pleasant city to drive around with fewer cars clogging up the streets.
Yes could be. You certainly notice the profusion of cycles
On the other hand, when married to all the shuttered shops (post covid?) it brings a certain deadness to the streets. Like a perpetual Sunday
If they are following Dutch (and now British in some places) practice they may be using the concept of separated networks by type of transport. This is usually called "unravelling the modes" in English, and something unpronounceable in Dutch. Paris is trying to do change at breakneck speed.
So you may just be off a particular modal network. In London for example they have "Cycle Superhighways" (ie normal separated cycle tracks) and Quietways, which are for example walking / wheeling / cycling routes through LTNs where the motorised rat runners have been put back on through routes for motor vehicles.
Here's a 4 minute video looking at the concept, by David Hembrow in 2012. This is broad, but the same concept applies in cities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zd5tKIdOyg
In Central London an example might be the difference in facilities along the E-W Tavistock Place corridor, and Theobalds Road.
Over the next 10-20 years I'd expect the same concept to come in on North-South routes more, so that perhaps a dozen bridges will be motor free, and another dozen to be motor with minimal mobility facilities. Rather than the type of expensive and unnecessary hybrid dog's breakfast being proposed for Hammersmith Bridge.
As discussed here sometime ago one of the rules they have in France that would work well here is that cycles can go the wrong way down a one way street (provided the road is below a certain speed limit, ie not motorways and dual carriageways).
This is brilliant for both cars and bikes. Cars aren't having to constantly overtake bikes, slowing them down and can see them coming. Cyclists aren't worried about cars overtaking and hitting them or constantly having to look over their shoulders.
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Unfortunately, the Home Secretaries came back!
So would the asylum seekers if their claims for asylum were successful. It's an area where I think quite a few members of the general public misunderstand it. It is, ultimately, a temporary accommodation arrangement, whereas I think quite a few people see it as simply "No way - apply to Rwanda to stay there instead".
Er, no, if their claim is successful they stay in Rwanda. I think you are the one misunderstanding it!
Incredible that people hold forth on things they don't understand at all.
"Warner’s placard referred to the Bushel case, which is celebrated with a marble sign that is clearly visible in the central criminal court in London. It read: “Jurors, You have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience.”"
When the Government is attempting to undermine such a fundemental principle of British justice just because someone annoyed them you know they are way past their sell-by date.
The biggest irony about "Rayner-gate" is that the source of the story is Lord Ashcroft, a non dom sheltering hundreds of millions of pounds from UK taxes whilst sitting as a peer!
The complainants do not care one iota about that!
I think the reason is this - Labour usually take the moral high ground and so we expect better of them. Everyone expects Tories to be shits who abuse power to enrich themselves. They expect Labour to have a better moral compass.
Personally I think that the expenses scandal showed that this was bunkum - they were all at it (no doubt because ALL had been encouraged to be at it to offset the perceived poor MP pay).
So the Tory fans complaining about Rayner expect of better of her than the people they vote for and cheerlead. It is a view.
No its Tory fans (are there any) playing party politics, for sure. Just as Labour, the Lib Dems, the SNP do all the time. But generally I think the public do expect Labour to be better - that's certainly what Labour members project. And the whole Tory Scum thing is not replicated in reverse.
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Sunak has committed to regular flights to Rwanda by the Autumn and clearly lays the blame for the delay on Labour peers
I reserve judgement on this scheme, but it had 48/35% support in November 23 you gov poll and until it is operational its success or otherwise remains an unknown
I would suggest however that today's announcement by Sunak with flights due by June/July that an election before November- December is unlikely and I expect it to be on the 14th November or 12th December
I certainly don't reserve judgement. It is a morally repugnant scheme that will be stain on our country.
Effectively even if you have a genuine asylum case that will not be processed . Some try using a false equivalence with other countries who are thinking of processing claims abroad . The key difference is those people can still be granted asylum and return to those countries . I think some of the public are under the impression that genuine asylum seekers will still be returned to the UK .
Exactly. Basically this is the UK saying we no longer want asylum seekers, genuine or otherwise.
I feel for the otherwise impressive Andrew Mitchell, who two years ago wrote in ConHome what an utter folly the Rwanda scheme is, and here he is today having to promote this garbage.
He isn’t impressive given that he is now promoting a scheme that he believes is a folly and won’t work.
All he’s done is confirm he has the personal self-respect of a jellyfish seeking promotion
Or behaved like Starmer trying to elect Corbyn as PM? Politics is about compromise. Our parties are complex assemblies of political thought, not all of whom agree with everything that party does. This isn't the USSR.
The biggest irony about "Rayner-gate" is that the source of the story is Lord Ashcroft, a non dom sheltering hundreds of millions of pounds from UK taxes whilst sitting as a peer!
The complainants do not care one iota about that!
I think the reason is this - Labour usually take the moral high ground and so we expect better of them. Everyone expects Tories to be shits who abuse power to enrich themselves. They expect Labour to have a better moral compass.
Personally I think that the expenses scandal showed that this was bunkum - they were all at it (no doubt because ALL had been encouraged to be at it to offset the perceived poor MP pay).
The expenses scandal was seen as an incumbency problem, and don't forget people like Denis McShane went to jail. Duck houses or otherwise it was essentially a problem for the Labour Party. Don't forget too, the Telegraph broke the story and viewed it through the prism of a corrupt Labour Party.
You are still of the opinion that poor old Boris Johnson was unfairly hounded despite being innocent of attending parties, they were work events! Whether Rayner is charged or not, I suspect it doesn't cleanse the Tories. Most people who aren't fully on board with this iteration of the Tory Party, I suspect, believe she is the subject of a smear, primarily because she is. Nonetheless you may yet get your win. Poor Boris!
An extremely well traveled friend has just emailed and said he had all the exact same thoughts as me when he went to Paris last weekend. So I’m REALLY not imagining it
If you want to see why Le Pen might win, go to Paris
A guy i know said exactly the same as you about Paris that its a dump. And ive checked online and seen similar feedback. The 18th and 19th arrondissements are particularly bad apparently.
Not my experience unless I was particularly unobservant or things have gone seriously downhill since my last visit a year ago. There's stuff obviously but not worse than say London and neither city is that bad compared with others.
I do agree Paris lacks buzz. It's always been like that though.
Yes Paris has always seemed small and quiet compared to London, and also quite grotty. The people are much better looking though.
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Unfortunately, the Home Secretaries came back!
So would the asylum seekers if their claims for asylum were successful. It's an area where I think quite a few members of the general public misunderstand it. It is, ultimately, a temporary accommodation arrangement, whereas I think quite a few people see it as simply "No way - apply to Rwanda to stay there instead".
Er, no, if their claim is successful they stay in Rwanda. I think you are the one misunderstanding it!
Incredible that people hold forth on things they don't understand at all.
Given the precedents which already exist - the War Crimes Bill -the Hunting Bill et al - I fail to understand Labour's reluctance to force the Government to rely on the 1949 Parliament Act provisions to get its way on the Rwanda Bill.
So unusually we have 9 separate polls from 9 different polling companies as the last VI polls on uk polling wiki.
Of course if i were Heathener I would cut and paste the most recent 3 and claim there is a "TREND" The aforesaid poster has done this twice when 5 successive polls had larger than average LAB leads. Having a wide range of pollsters is IMO the best way to see the current position
For the record i see no trend and LAB are currently circa 20 ahead SKS landslide on those numbers
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Cycling? Some of the main streets in Paris have more cyclists than cars now, and on some metrics the city has overtaken Amsterdam.
This has made it much more pleasant city to drive around with fewer cars clogging up the streets.
Yes could be. You certainly notice the profusion of cycles
Cyclists were a major hazard when I was walking around Paris in March last year. They cycle at huge speeds and don't slow down when they see pedestrians. Walking across a cycle path was a bit dicey. Their attitude seemed to be "We're entitled to be on this cycle path and we don't care about anyone else including pedestrians".
I mean have you ever driven through the Place de la Concorde. On principle people don't look.
That really has changed. And - on reflection - it must be the cycle revolution meaning fewer cars (and quieter because electric)
Eg when I arrived my cab approached the arc de triomphe in mid afternoon and I braced for that infernal chaos. Yet not. Just a number of cars politely going in circles - the whirling frenzy is a memory
2024 is the year when the aim is to ban through traffic from Central Paris. This is the pithiest quote I can find on the actual numbers. This is 2020 vs 1990.
The proportion of journeys by car in Paris has dropped about 45 percent since 1990, according to a paper published by the journal Les Cahiers Scientifiques du Transport. At the same time, the use of public transit has risen by 30 percent and the share of cyclists has increased tenfold.
I think compared to progress in London, Paris has more of an over-emphasis on the historic centre.
So unusually we have 9 separate polls from 9 different polling companies as the last VI polls on uk polling wiki.
Of course if i were Heathener I would cut and paste the most recent 3 and claim there is a "TREND" The aforesaid poster has done this twice when 5 successive polls had larger than average LAB leads. Having a wide range of pollsters is IMO the best way to see the current position
For the record i see no trend and LAB are currently circa 20 ahead SKS landslide on those numbers
^ This sounds much more interesting than the usual Oxfordian or Baconian guff. Perhaps I will have to reconsider my Stratfordianism?
Maybe Enoch Powell (Oxfordian) got one thing right, despite what seemed to be his obnoxious reasoning that amounted to "no son of a glovemaker could know so much about high politics"?
Stritmatter is famous (notorious) in Shakespearean scholastic circles for his absolute monomania about this. For some years I was a fairly passive participant in the SHAKSPER online forum, and he was always being called out for his bizarre assumptions and claims. Not only did he consistently misinterpret actual evidence to support his case when it clearly said the opposite, he was called out on numerous occasions for making stuff up when he couldn't find actual documents. As soon as you see the name Stritmatter in any discussion about Shakespeare authorship, just assume it's all bullsh*t.
So unusually we have 9 separate polls from 9 different polling companies as the last VI polls on uk polling wiki.
Of course if i were Heathener I would cut and paste the most recent 3 and claim there is a "TREND" The aforesaid poster has done this twice when 5 successive polls had larger than average LAB leads. Having a wide range of pollsters is IMO the best way to see the current position
For the record i see no trend and LAB are currently circa 20 ahead SKS landslide on those numbers
So unusually we have 9 separate polls from 9 different polling companies as the last VI polls on uk polling wiki.
Of course if i were Heathener I would cut and paste the most recent 3 and claim there is a "TREND" The aforesaid poster has done this twice when 5 successive polls had larger than average LAB leads. Having a wide range of pollsters is IMO the best way to see the current position
For the record i see no trend and LAB are currently circa 20 ahead SKS landslide on those numbers
So unusually we have 9 separate polls from 9 different polling companies as the last VI polls on uk polling wiki.
Of course if i were Heathener I would cut and paste the most recent 3 and claim there is a "TREND" The aforesaid poster has done this twice when 5 successive polls had larger than average LAB leads. Having a wide range of pollsters is IMO the best way to see the current position
For the record i see no trend and LAB are currently circa 20 ahead SKS landslide on those numbers
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Sunak has committed to regular flights to Rwanda by the Autumn and clearly lays the blame for the delay on Labour peers
I reserve judgement on this scheme, but it had 48/35% support in November 23 you gov poll and until it is operational its success or otherwise remains an unknown
I would suggest however that today's announcement by Sunak with flights due by June/July that an election before November- December is unlikely and I expect it to be on the 14th November or 12th December
I certainly don't reserve judgement. It is a morally repugnant scheme that will be stain on our country.
Effectively even if you have a genuine asylum case that will not be processed . Some try using a false equivalence with other countries who are thinking of processing claims abroad . The key difference is those people can still be granted asylum and return to those countries . I think some of the public are under the impression that genuine asylum seekers will still be returned to the UK .
Exactly. Basically this is the UK saying we no longer want asylum seekers, genuine or otherwise.
I feel for the otherwise impressive Andrew Mitchell, who two years ago wrote in ConHome what an utter folly the Rwanda scheme is, and here he is today having to promote this garbage.
He isn’t impressive given that he is now promoting a scheme that he believes is a folly and won’t work.
All he’s done is confirm he has the personal self-respect of a jellyfish seeking promotion
And for what? Another six months in a zombie government?
In years to come, this is going to be a fascinating but dismal psychological case study.
Given the precedents which already exist - the War Crimes Bill -the Hunting Bill et al - I fail to understand Labour's reluctance to force the Government to rely on the 1949 Parliament Act provisions to get its way on the Rwanda Bill.
I think it’s tactical. If Labour block it completely (Parliament Act cannot be invoked before the election) it gives the Tories a “they are blocking the will of the people” campaign message.
If they let it through, reluctantly, people will see it doesn’t really work, and they can backpedal on it after the GE.
So unusually we have 9 separate polls from 9 different polling companies as the last VI polls on uk polling wiki.
Of course if i were Heathener I would cut and paste the most recent 3 and claim there is a "TREND" The aforesaid poster has done this twice when 5 successive polls had larger than average LAB leads. Having a wide range of pollsters is IMO the best way to see the current position
For the record i see no trend and LAB are currently circa 20 ahead SKS landslide on those numbers
It's all a load of old expert bollocks, a "moron's paradise". I'd vote for the Workers Party if I could, but they obviously won't stand in my constituency so I'll abstain. How should I answer the question how "would" I vote if there were a GE tomorrow? Am I OTH, WV, or "WS unless you spell out a proper condition clause"?
Interestingly the WP candidate in Rochdale will be Craig Murray.
The biggest irony about "Rayner-gate" is that the source of the story is Lord Ashcroft, a non dom sheltering hundreds of millions of pounds from UK taxes whilst sitting as a peer!
The complainants do not care one iota about that!
I think the reason is this - Labour usually take the moral high ground and so we expect better of them. Everyone expects Tories to be shits who abuse power to enrich themselves. They expect Labour to have a better moral compass.
Personally I think that the expenses scandal showed that this was bunkum - they were all at it (no doubt because ALL had been encouraged to be at it to offset the perceived poor MP pay).
The expenses scandal was seen as an incumbency problem, and don't forget people like Denis McShane went to jail. Duck houses or otherwise it was essentially a problem for the Labour Party. Don't forget too, the Telegraph broke the story and viewed it through the prism of a corrupt Labour Party.
You are still of the opinion that poor old Boris Johnson was unfairly hounded despite being innocent of attending parties, they were work events! Whether Rayner is charged or not, I suspect it doesn't cleanse the Tories. Most people who aren't fully on board with this iteration of the Tory Party, I suspect, believe she is the subject of a smear, primarily because she is. Nonetheless you may yet get your win. Poor Boris!
Johnson was not the man for the crisis. Almost any leader would have been better. I genuinely believe that he was trying to follow the rules, (yes the rules from his government). I also believe that the worst of the excesses (the drinks fridge, the wild parties) were not with him in attendance.
None of which matters, as 99.9% of the people don't agree with me.
I don't want Rayner forced out over this, but I do think she has been either careless, or has been a very tiny bit naughty. Its sad that we have a media driven by such rubbish. I want to hear about policy. How will the NHS improve and how do we pay for it? How do we sort the crumbling schools across the nation? Hope do we help people to live their best life?
So unusually we have 9 separate polls from 9 different polling companies as the last VI polls on uk polling wiki.
Of course if i were Heathener I would cut and paste the most recent 3 and claim there is a "TREND" The aforesaid poster has done this twice when 5 successive polls had larger than average LAB leads. Having a wide range of pollsters is IMO the best way to see the current position
For the record i see no trend and LAB are currently circa 20 ahead SKS landslide on those numbers
So unusually we have 9 separate polls from 9 different polling companies as the last VI polls on uk polling wiki.
Of course if i were Heathener I would cut and paste the most recent 3 and claim there is a "TREND" The aforesaid poster has done this twice when 5 successive polls had larger than average LAB leads. Having a wide range of pollsters is IMO the best way to see the current position
For the record i see no trend and LAB are currently circa 20 ahead SKS landslide on those numbers
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Cycling? Some of the main streets in Paris have more cyclists than cars now, and on some metrics the city has overtaken Amsterdam.
This has made it much more pleasant city to drive around with fewer cars clogging up the streets.
Yes could be. You certainly notice the profusion of cycles
On the other hand, when married to all the shuttered shops (post covid?) it brings a certain deadness to the streets. Like a perpetual Sunday
If they are following Dutch (and now British in some places) practice they may be using the concept of separated networks by type of transport. This is usually called "unravelling the modes" in English, and something unpronounceable in Dutch. Paris is trying to do change at breakneck speed.
So you may just be off a particular modal network. In London for example they have "Cycle Superhighways" (ie normal separated cycle tracks) and Quietways, which are for example walking / wheeling / cycling routes through LTNs where the motorised rat runners have been put back on through routes for motor vehicles.
Here's a 4 minute video looking at the concept, by David Hembrow in 2012. This is broad, but the same concept applies in cities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zd5tKIdOyg
In Central London an example might be the difference in facilities along the E-W Tavistock Place corridor, and Theobalds Road.
Over the next 10-20 years I'd expect the same concept to come in on North-South routes more, so that perhaps a dozen bridges will be motor free, and another dozen to be motor with minimal mobility facilities. Rather than the type of expensive and unnecessary hybrid dog's breakfast being proposed for Hammersmith Bridge.
As discussed here sometime ago one of the rules they have in France that would work well here is that cycles can go the wrong way down a one way street (provided the road is below a certain speed limit, ie not motorways and dual carriageways).
This is brilliant for both cars and bikes. Cars aren't having to constantly overtake bikes, slowing them down and can see them coming. Cyclists aren't worried about cars overtaking and hitting them or constantly having to look over their shoulders.
It is a no brainer.
That has been the de facto status in Cambridge for some time iirc - they did their first cycle contraflow one-way street in the early 1990s.
There are a number of ways to do it in road marking / road signing regulations. But it does require a 20mph limit, which is the national standard for safe mixing of mobility and motorised traffic.
Yet familiarity and education, and detailed design, is important. Introducing a single contraflow cycling on a one-way route can cause emotional fits amongst some local councillor-types and poor behaviour from dozy drivers.
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Sunak has committed to regular flights to Rwanda by the Autumn and clearly lays the blame for the delay on Labour peers
I reserve judgement on this scheme, but it had 48/35% support in November 23 you gov poll and until it is operational its success or otherwise remains an unknown
I would suggest however that today's announcement by Sunak with flights due by June/July that an election before November- December is unlikely and I expect it to be on the 14th November or 12th December
Is that pre- or post-Election?
This is the current House of Lords.
Blaming "Labour Peers" is an interesting version of 'I can't persuade the HoL'.
(The persistence of Lib Dems in volume is interesting.)
The biggest irony about "Rayner-gate" is that the source of the story is Lord Ashcroft, a non dom sheltering hundreds of millions of pounds from UK taxes whilst sitting as a peer!
The complainants do not care one iota about that!
I think the reason is this - Labour usually take the moral high ground and so we expect better of them. Everyone expects Tories to be shits who abuse power to enrich themselves. They expect Labour to have a better moral compass.
Personally I think that the expenses scandal showed that this was bunkum - they were all at it (no doubt because ALL had been encouraged to be at it to offset the perceived poor MP pay).
The expenses scandal was seen as an incumbency problem, and don't forget people like Denis McShane went to jail. Duck houses or otherwise it was essentially a problem for the Labour Party. Don't forget too, the Telegraph broke the story and viewed it through the prism of a corrupt Labour Party.
You are still of the opinion that poor old Boris Johnson was unfairly hounded despite being innocent of attending parties, they were work events! Whether Rayner is charged or not, I suspect it doesn't cleanse the Tories. Most people who aren't fully on board with this iteration of the Tory Party, I suspect, believe she is the subject of a smear, primarily because she is. Nonetheless you may yet get your win. Poor Boris!
Johnson was not the man for the crisis. Almost any leader would have been better. I genuinely believe that he was trying to follow the rules, (yes the rules from his government). I also believe that the worst of the excesses (the drinks fridge, the wild parties) were not with him in attendance.
None of which matters, as 99.9% of the people don't agree with me.
I don't want Rayner forced out over this, but I do think she has been either careless, or has been a very tiny bit naughty. Its sad that we have a media driven by such rubbish. I want to hear about policy. How will the NHS improve and how do we pay for it? How do we sort the crumbling schools across the nation? Hope do we help people to live their best life?
As per Johnson you are right, I disagree that Partygate was a mere trifle and one that he didn't understand, and didn't attend.
Anyway a genuine thank you for the reply, or should that be "Thank you for the Music"?
The biggest irony about "Rayner-gate" is that the source of the story is Lord Ashcroft, a non dom sheltering hundreds of millions of pounds from UK taxes whilst sitting as a peer!
The complainants do not care one iota about that!
I think the reason is this - Labour usually take the moral high ground and so we expect better of them. Everyone expects Tories to be shits who abuse power to enrich themselves. They expect Labour to have a better moral compass.
Personally I think that the expenses scandal showed that this was bunkum - they were all at it (no doubt because ALL had been encouraged to be at it to offset the perceived poor MP pay).
The expenses scandal was seen as an incumbency problem, and don't forget people like Denis McShane went to jail. Duck houses or otherwise it was essentially a problem for the Labour Party. Don't forget too, the Telegraph broke the story and viewed it through the prism of a corrupt Labour Party.
You are still of the opinion that poor old Boris Johnson was unfairly hounded despite being innocent of attending parties, they were work events! Whether Rayner is charged or not, I suspect it doesn't cleanse the Tories. Most people who aren't fully on board with this iteration of the Tory Party, I suspect, believe she is the subject of a smear, primarily because she is. Nonetheless you may yet get your win. Poor Boris!
The expenses scandal was a problem across parties. As I recall, the Telegraph went after all sides, quite liberally.
It was the Guardian, that when offered the story, who made it clear they wanted to go after a selection of targets not just anyone.
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Things must have changed dramatically since last June.
When we arrived last year in late afternoon Paris was heaving which was a pain because people kept walking into the pavement based bike lanes which caused some serious braking not to hit people.
The next morning (can't remember what day) we cycled from near Gare du Nord to Gare Montparnesse and again it was heaving. We were grateful for the number of reverse one way streets to protect cyclists which were safe (it is a great safety idea discussed here before and doesn't impede drivers). Solid traffic and buzzing pavements, van drivers opening their doors onto you and drivers cutting you up and trying to kill you. At the Place de la Concorde there was really only a choice between death and walking.
On the return (an afternoon) Paris was at a stand still with traffic (with the mandatory leaning on horns) so it was quicker to walk on the pavement and pick up bike lanes where we could.
I must say though cycling through the countryside in France, particularly between 12 and 2 you could be forgiven for thinking you were the only humans left.
It is decidedly odd. I noticed it yesterday - away from the absolutely main tourist areas - a peculiar quietness. I ascribed it to Sunday but today it’s the same. Part of it is the replacement of ICE cars with electric. You can hear the same evolution in london. Its good. But in Paris it also a sheer lack of traffic
Maybe nothing
I'll be there in June again so it will be interesting to see. I will be cycling from Gare du Nord to the Latin Qtr for the night and then leaving from Gare d'Austerlitz the next day and returning to Gare Montparnesse and cycling to Gare du Nord a week and a bit later. 3 different workdays.
After your recent posts I was working out how much time I have spent in Paris and France and it is huge. It runs into many years, although never longer than 3 weeks at any one time. I wasn't taught French in school and have never been there long enough to pick it up to my real regret. I have spent the equivalent of a year skiing on French slopes, I have spent the equivalent of a year touring with my family when my children were young. I have worked on and off in Paris and Nice at times. I spent 3 weeks touring with a girlfriend in the 70s and I now cycle all over France every year. I have been to Disneyland 3 times which is 2 times more than I wanted to go, but kids eh.
That’s a language fail, though. I did the same sums for Italy and worked out I’d spent well over a year of my life here; my Italian is now passable.
So unusually we have 9 separate polls from 9 different polling companies as the last VI polls on uk polling wiki.
Of course if i were Heathener I would cut and paste the most recent 3 and claim there is a "TREND" The aforesaid poster has done this twice when 5 successive polls had larger than average LAB leads. Having a wide range of pollsters is IMO the best way to see the current position
For the record i see no trend and LAB are currently circa 20 ahead SKS landslide on those numbers
So unusually we have 9 separate polls from 9 different polling companies as the last VI polls on uk polling wiki.
Of course if i were Heathener I would cut and paste the most recent 3 and claim there is a "TREND" The aforesaid poster has done this twice when 5 successive polls had larger than average LAB leads. Having a wide range of pollsters is IMO the best way to see the current position
For the record i see no trend and LAB are currently circa 20 ahead SKS landslide on those numbers
My point being for information on a Political Betting site rather than trying to mislead like Heathener
My other point as i say in my post i see no trend and LAB are currently circa 20 ahead SKS landslide on those numbers
We are right months and a day from the GE. The polls will tighten. Plenty of opportunity for you to ask, "SKS fans please explain".
I suspect that we are now within 6 months of Polling Day - October 17th has been my favoured date for over a year now. Whilst it is reasonable to expect some tightening of the polls, that cannot be relied upon post - Dissolution in that most GE campaigns over the last 70 years have tended to favour the Opposition rather the incumbent - though the pattern has been a bit different when a party enjoys a massive polling lead. The lessons of GEs held in 1966 - 1983 - 1997 - 2001 were that megalandslides never quite play out on the scale predicted.
The biggest irony about "Rayner-gate" is that the source of the story is Lord Ashcroft, a non dom sheltering hundreds of millions of pounds from UK taxes whilst sitting as a peer!
The complainants do not care one iota about that!
I think the reason is this - Labour usually take the moral high ground and so we expect better of them. Everyone expects Tories to be shits who abuse power to enrich themselves. They expect Labour to have a better moral compass.
Personally I think that the expenses scandal showed that this was bunkum - they were all at it (no doubt because ALL had been encouraged to be at it to offset the perceived poor MP pay).
The expenses scandal was seen as an incumbency problem, and don't forget people like Denis McShane went to jail. Duck houses or otherwise it was essentially a problem for the Labour Party. Don't forget too, the Telegraph broke the story and viewed it through the prism of a corrupt Labour Party.
You are still of the opinion that poor old Boris Johnson was unfairly hounded despite being innocent of attending parties, they were work events! Whether Rayner is charged or not, I suspect it doesn't cleanse the Tories. Most people who aren't fully on board with this iteration of the Tory Party, I suspect, believe she is the subject of a smear, primarily because she is. Nonetheless you may yet get your win. Poor Boris!
The expenses scandal was a problem across parties. As I recall, the Telegraph went after all sides, quite liberally.
It was the Guardian, that when offered the story, who made it clear they wanted to go after a selection of targets not just anyone.
Check the sequence of release. It was rather clever, Labour first. Fair enough, they were the incumbent, and it stuck.
The biggest irony about "Rayner-gate" is that the source of the story is Lord Ashcroft, a non dom sheltering hundreds of millions of pounds from UK taxes whilst sitting as a peer!
The complainants do not care one iota about that!
I think the reason is this - Labour usually take the moral high ground and so we expect better of them. Everyone expects Tories to be shits who abuse power to enrich themselves. They expect Labour to have a better moral compass.
Personally I think that the expenses scandal showed that this was bunkum - they were all at it (no doubt because ALL had been encouraged to be at it to offset the perceived poor MP pay).
The expenses scandal was seen as an incumbency problem, and don't forget people like Denis McShane went to jail. Duck houses or otherwise it was essentially a problem for the Labour Party. Don't forget too, the Telegraph broke the story and viewed it through the prism of a corrupt Labour Party.
You are still of the opinion that poor old Boris Johnson was unfairly hounded despite being innocent of attending parties, they were work events! Whether Rayner is charged or not, I suspect it doesn't cleanse the Tories. Most people who aren't fully on board with this iteration of the Tory Party, I suspect, believe she is the subject of a smear, primarily because she is. Nonetheless you may yet get your win. Poor Boris!
Johnson was not the man for the crisis. Almost any leader would have been better. I genuinely believe that he was trying to follow the rules, (yes the rules from his government). I also believe that the worst of the excesses (the drinks fridge, the wild parties) were not with him in attendance.
None of which matters, as 99.9% of the people don't agree with me.
I don't want Rayner forced out over this, but I do think she has been either careless, or has been a very tiny bit naughty. Its sad that we have a media driven by such rubbish. I want to hear about policy. How will the NHS improve and how do we pay for it? How do we sort the crumbling schools across the nation? Hope do we help people to live their best life?
As per Johnson you are right, I disagree that Partygate was a mere trifle and one that he didn't understand, and didn't attend.
Anyway a genuine thank you for the reply, or should that be "Thank you for the Music"?
Thats not quite my take on partygate. I think there were lots of events that shouldn't have happened, and that the rest of the country didn't do. I just don't think Johnson was at them. He WAS at the awful online quiz and birthday party (between meetings with the same people). He didn't do enough to follow his own rules. I get that.
His bigger crime, to me, was not understanding the rage of the public about the whole thing and not being straight when asked. If he had come to parliament and given the gory details, with a genuine apology he might still be there. But probably not as the man is not fit for office.
Wouldn't the Somme without the Generals been an improvement?
Not my department, but isn't the WW1 trope that the generals generally did a pretty good job of staying away from the front line?
I may just be thinking of Blackadder here.
At the start of the war, generals were often on the front line. You see the following numbers quoted a fair bit - 76 British, 42 French, 2 Belgian, 2 Italian, and 2 Romanian generals killed on the Allied side.
The big problem was command and control. Without mobile radio, you are in command of those in earshot. Unless you are in a bunker, with wired telephones or telegraph.
And then you need a big space for the maps, whole rooms for the telephone and telegraph operators (who have to be on site). So running the war from the front lines couldn’t work.
Towards the end of the war, aircraft began to carry radio, which allowed a massive cut in the time for events on the battleground (as observed by recon aircraft) to be added to the “picture” on the map tables.
The slaughter of officers in Austria-Hungarian army is astonishing in early part of war in eastern front. Not the most senior ranks but anything below.
When my father was serving in Northern Ireland some officers insisted on going on patrol with their pistols, presumably to give the IRA a clue who to shoot. My father always took a regulation rifle. He found their attitude bewildering but it is a long tradition of stupidity dressed up as bravery in all forces.
What was the life expectancy of an infantry 2nd Lt. in 1915 or so? Two weeks?
Six weeks, iirc. Yes, the subalterns straight from university or public school fared badly; Lieutenant George in Blackadder has a speech about how all his pals are now dead.
Trying to source this without success. Seldon & Walsh give six weeks as the life expectancy of a pilot (20 minutes in Blackadder). Now I must hasten to Sainsbury's. S&W give one reason for high officer death rates at the front: they were a lot taller than working class privates, and their heads would stick up above shallow trenches!
And also honour bound, though probably terrified, to lead the troop so first target. They had some officer training before going to France but automatically an officer because of background not aptitude
We had a Falklands platoon commander give a talk at Sandhurst. He said they were pinned down at some point and he shouted out (as per SOPS): "prepare to move...[soldiers check pouches, move back from last position, etc]...move..." Whereupon the soldiers are supposed to stand up and run forward.
And, unlike drills on Salisbury Plain, this time nobody moved.
The (second lieutenant, perhaps straight out of RMAS) realised that until and unless he stood up and moved forward first none of his platoon were going to move.
Well, it was WW1 that shattered the Victorian upstairs-downstairs class structure, led to the breaking of the aristocracy, and began the long march away from deference and respect for those further up the hierarchy, after all.
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Things must have changed dramatically since last June.
When we arrived last year in late afternoon Paris was heaving which was a pain because people kept walking into the pavement based bike lanes which caused some serious braking not to hit people.
The next morning (can't remember what day) we cycled from near Gare du Nord to Gare Montparnesse and again it was heaving. We were grateful for the number of reverse one way streets to protect cyclists which were safe (it is a great safety idea discussed here before and doesn't impede drivers). Solid traffic and buzzing pavements, van drivers opening their doors onto you and drivers cutting you up and trying to kill you. At the Place de la Concorde there was really only a choice between death and walking.
On the return (an afternoon) Paris was at a stand still with traffic (with the mandatory leaning on horns) so it was quicker to walk on the pavement and pick up bike lanes where we could.
I must say though cycling through the countryside in France, particularly between 12 and 2 you could be forgiven for thinking you were the only humans left.
It is decidedly odd. I noticed it yesterday - away from the absolutely main tourist areas - a peculiar quietness. I ascribed it to Sunday but today it’s the same. Part of it is the replacement of ICE cars with electric. You can hear the same evolution in london. Its good. But in Paris it also a sheer lack of traffic
Maybe nothing
I'll be there in June again so it will be interesting to see. I will be cycling from Gare du Nord to the Latin Qtr for the night and then leaving from Gare d'Austerlitz the next day and returning to Gare Montparnesse and cycling to Gare du Nord a week and a bit later. 3 different workdays.
After your recent posts I was working out how much time I have spent in Paris and France and it is huge. It runs into many years, although never longer than 3 weeks at any one time. I wasn't taught French in school and have never been there long enough to pick it up to my real regret. I have spent the equivalent of a year skiing on French slopes, I have spent the equivalent of a year touring with my family when my children were young. I have worked on and off in Paris and Nice at times. I spent 3 weeks touring with a girlfriend in the 70s and I now cycle all over France every year. I have been to Disneyland 3 times which is 2 times more than I wanted to go, but kids eh.
Out of interest what type of cycles? And will you be carrying your luggage?
It seems to me that the German experience in both world wars was very similar in that their initial early successes were always ultimately going to prove futile thanks to their lack of resources and manpower once their enemies had got their shit together and their industrial might was simply too big to be defeated.
Very much a view of 20/20 hindsight, admittedly.
But the Schlieffen Plan failed. Ok, they got France and the rest in 1940, but Barbarossa failed too. And once they’d got themselves embroiled in trying to defend vast tracts of territory, despite their undoubted military skill and tenacious defence, they didn’t have the resources, logistics or manpower to win. Though the spring 1918 offensive caused some squeaky bums, it was a last roll of the dice and couldn’t realistically succeed. Same with the Battle of the Bulge too, for example.
A guy called Rob Thompson, who sadly died last year in his 50s of cancer, has done some fascinating work on Allied logistics in WW1 - the Germans had no chance ultimately in competing with that output. It’s mind boggling the resources the allied side had by 1917 and 1918. A similar tale by 1943 onwards. Fascinating stuff.
A bit late to the party, but re: World War II I always remember the quote that by December 1941 the Germans had decided it was a good idea to fight:
1. The largest empire in the world; and 2. The largest country in the world; and 3. The country with the largest industrial base in the world.
To do that, they decided that the two countries they'd get to help them would be Japan and Italy.
The biggest irony about "Rayner-gate" is that the source of the story is Lord Ashcroft, a non dom sheltering hundreds of millions of pounds from UK taxes whilst sitting as a peer!
The complainants do not care one iota about that!
I think the reason is this - Labour usually take the moral high ground and so we expect better of them. Everyone expects Tories to be shits who abuse power to enrich themselves. They expect Labour to have a better moral compass.
Personally I think that the expenses scandal showed that this was bunkum - they were all at it (no doubt because ALL had been encouraged to be at it to offset the perceived poor MP pay).
The expenses scandal was seen as an incumbency problem, and don't forget people like Denis McShane went to jail. Duck houses or otherwise it was essentially a problem for the Labour Party. Don't forget too, the Telegraph broke the story and viewed it through the prism of a corrupt Labour Party.
You are still of the opinion that poor old Boris Johnson was unfairly hounded despite being innocent of attending parties, they were work events! Whether Rayner is charged or not, I suspect it doesn't cleanse the Tories. Most people who aren't fully on board with this iteration of the Tory Party, I suspect, believe she is the subject of a smear, primarily because she is. Nonetheless you may yet get your win. Poor Boris!
Johnson was not the man for the crisis. Almost any leader would have been better. I genuinely believe that he was trying to follow the rules, (yes the rules from his government). I also believe that the worst of the excesses (the drinks fridge, the wild parties) were not with him in attendance.
None of which matters, as 99.9% of the people don't agree with me.
I don't want Rayner forced out over this, but I do think she has been either careless, or has been a very tiny bit naughty. Its sad that we have a media driven by such rubbish. I want to hear about policy. How will the NHS improve and how do we pay for it? How do we sort the crumbling schools across the nation? Hope do we help people to live their best life?
As per Johnson you are right, I disagree that Partygate was a mere trifle and one that he didn't understand, and didn't attend.
Anyway a genuine thank you for the reply, or should that be "Thank you for the Music"?
Thats not quite my take on partygate. I think there were lots of events that shouldn't have happened, and that the rest of the country didn't do. I just don't think Johnson was at them. He WAS at the awful online quiz and birthday party (between meetings with the same people). He didn't do enough to follow his own rules. I get that.
His bigger crime, to me, was not understanding the rage of the public about the whole thing and not being straight when asked. If he had come to parliament and given the gory details, with a genuine apology he might still be there. But probably not as the man is not fit for office.
That's " The Name of the Game" and "The Winner Takes it All".
Wouldn't the Somme without the Generals been an improvement?
Not my department, but isn't the WW1 trope that the generals generally did a pretty good job of staying away from the front line?
I may just be thinking of Blackadder here.
At the start of the war, generals were often on the front line. You see the following numbers quoted a fair bit - 76 British, 42 French, 2 Belgian, 2 Italian, and 2 Romanian generals killed on the Allied side.
The big problem was command and control. Without mobile radio, you are in command of those in earshot. Unless you are in a bunker, with wired telephones or telegraph.
And then you need a big space for the maps, whole rooms for the telephone and telegraph operators (who have to be on site). So running the war from the front lines couldn’t work.
Towards the end of the war, aircraft began to carry radio, which allowed a massive cut in the time for events on the battleground (as observed by recon aircraft) to be added to the “picture” on the map tables.
The slaughter of officers in Austria-Hungarian army is astonishing in early part of war in eastern front. Not the most senior ranks but anything below.
When my father was serving in Northern Ireland some officers insisted on going on patrol with their pistols, presumably to give the IRA a clue who to shoot. My father always took a regulation rifle. He found their attitude bewildering but it is a long tradition of stupidity dressed up as bravery in all forces.
What was the life expectancy of an infantry 2nd Lt. in 1915 or so? Two weeks?
Six weeks, iirc. Yes, the subalterns straight from university or public school fared badly; Lieutenant George in Blackadder has a speech about how all his pals are now dead.
Trying to source this without success. Seldon & Walsh give six weeks as the life expectancy of a pilot (20 minutes in Blackadder). Now I must hasten to Sainsbury's. S&W give one reason for high officer death rates at the front: they were a lot taller than working class privates, and their heads would stick up above shallow trenches!
And also honour bound, though probably terrified, to lead the troop so first target. They had some officer training before going to France but automatically an officer because of background not aptitude
We had a Falklands platoon commander give a talk at Sandhurst. He said they were pinned down at some point and he shouted out (as per SOPS): "prepare to move...[soldiers check pouches, move back from last position, etc]...move..." Whereupon the soldiers are supposed to stand up and run forward.
And, unlike drills on Salisbury Plain, this time nobody moved.
The (second lieutenant, perhaps straight out of RMAS) realised that until and unless he stood up and moved forward first none of his platoon were going to move.
Well, it was WW1 that shattered the Victorian upstairs-downstairs class structure, led to the breaking of the aristocracy, and began the long march away from deference and respect for those further up the hierarchy, after all.
Also the economics changed. The big estates were no longer making enough money to run the full Downton Abbey style lifestyle. What we see in Agatha Christie (mainly Poirot) - the country house gatherings etc is rather interesting. Many of the plots revolve around inheritance, and getting a certain income a year to life on (and thus not sully themselves with actual work). But the twenties and thirties were the last hurrah.
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Cycling? Some of the main streets in Paris have more cyclists than cars now, and on some metrics the city has overtaken Amsterdam.
This has made it much more pleasant city to drive around with fewer cars clogging up the streets.
Yes could be. You certainly notice the profusion of cycles
Cyclists were a major hazard when I was walking around Paris in March last year. They cycle at huge speeds and don't slow down when they see pedestrians. Walking across a cycle path was a bit dicey. Their attitude seemed to be "We're entitled to be on this cycle path and we don't care about anyone else including pedestrians".
I mean have you ever driven through the Place de la Concorde. On principle people don't look.
That really has changed. And - on reflection - it must be the cycle revolution meaning fewer cars (and quieter because electric)
Eg when I arrived my cab approached the arc de triomphe in mid afternoon and I braced for that infernal chaos. Yet not. Just a number of cars politely going in circles - the whirling frenzy is a memory
2024 is the year when the aim is to ban through traffic from Central Paris. This is the pithiest quote I can find on the actual numbers. This is 2020 vs 1990.
The proportion of journeys by car in Paris has dropped about 45 percent since 1990, according to a paper published by the journal Les Cahiers Scientifiques du Transport. At the same time, the use of public transit has risen by 30 percent and the share of cyclists has increased tenfold.
I think compared to progress in London, Paris has more of an over-emphasis on the historic centre.
Not surprising, as soon as you see what they’ve put around it.
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Sunak has committed to regular flights to Rwanda by the Autumn and clearly lays the blame for the delay on Labour peers
I reserve judgement on this scheme, but it had 48/35% support in November 23 you gov poll and until it is operational its success or otherwise remains an unknown
I would suggest however that today's announcement by Sunak with flights due by June/July that an election before November- December is unlikely and I expect it to be on the 14th November or 12th December
Is that pre- or post-Election?
This is the current House of Lords.
Blaming "Labour Peers" is an interesting version of 'I can't persuade the HoL'.
(The persistence of Lib Dems in volume is interesting.)
Anyone know the difference between the crossbenchers (dark grey), non-affiliated (mid grey) and independents (light grey)? I thought all non-party aligned were known as crossbenchers, but clearly not the case.
The Wikipedia article does not seem to enlighten on this.
It seems to me that the German experience in both world wars was very similar in that their initial early successes were always ultimately going to prove futile thanks to their lack of resources and manpower once their enemies had got their shit together and their industrial might was simply too big to be defeated.
Very much a view of 20/20 hindsight, admittedly.
But the Schlieffen Plan failed. Ok, they got France and the rest in 1940, but Barbarossa failed too. And once they’d got themselves embroiled in trying to defend vast tracts of territory, despite their undoubted military skill and tenacious defence, they didn’t have the resources, logistics or manpower to win. Though the spring 1918 offensive caused some squeaky bums, it was a last roll of the dice and couldn’t realistically succeed. Same with the Battle of the Bulge too, for example.
A guy called Rob Thompson, who sadly died last year in his 50s of cancer, has done some fascinating work on Allied logistics in WW1 - the Germans had no chance ultimately in competing with that output. It’s mind boggling the resources the allied side had by 1917 and 1918. A similar tale by 1943 onwards. Fascinating stuff.
A bit late to the party, but re: World War II I always remember the quote that by December 1941 the Germans had decided it was a good idea to fight:
1. The largest empire in the world; and 2. The largest country in the world; and 3. The country with the largest industrial base in the world.
To do that, they decided that the two countries they'd get to help them would be Japan and Italy.
One thing that I hadn't appreciated until recently (mainly via the We Have Ways podcasts, and James Hollands excellent books) was how much harder rationing was in Germany from the start of the war than in say the UK. Despite stripping occupied territories the rationing was huge in Nazi Germany and from an early time point too. They also make some very silly choices - rather than keeping French industry in place and using them to produce equipment for the war they stripped factories and destroyed the French industry.
I have had my eyes opened to the realisation that once Britain and Empire countries stayed in the war in 1940, Hitler had lost. The nature of the defeat was not certain, or the timing, but eventually Germany would have lost. Economics is everything. Being good fighters (and despite the mythologysing, not ALL German troops were amazing) is not enough when faced with huge industrial power.
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Sunak has committed to regular flights to Rwanda by the Autumn and clearly lays the blame for the delay on Labour peers
I reserve judgement on this scheme, but it had 48/35% support in November 23 you gov poll and until it is operational its success or otherwise remains an unknown
I would suggest however that today's announcement by Sunak with flights due by June/July that an election before November- December is unlikely and I expect it to be on the 14th November or 12th December
Is that pre- or post-Election?
This is the current House of Lords.
Blaming "Labour Peers" is an interesting version of 'I can't persuade the HoL'.
(The persistence of Lib Dems in volume is interesting.)
Anyone know the difference between the crossbenchers (dark grey), non-affiliated (mid grey) and independents (light grey)? I thought all non-party aligned were known as crossbenchers, but clearly not the case.
The Wikipedia article does not seem to enlighten on this.
Without checking the numbers - I assumed that the non-affiliated were Bishops.
I would guess that Independents are those who were appointed party politically, and have since left that party for some reason or other, whereas the 'Crossbenchers' are appointed (or elected from the hereditarys) as such.
Edit to add: Looking at the graphic, it appears that the non-affiliated is more than just the 26 Bishops. Presumably Law Lords or similar are also classed as 'non-affiliated'?
So unusually we have 9 separate polls from 9 different polling companies as the last VI polls on uk polling wiki.
Of course if i were Heathener I would cut and paste the most recent 3 and claim there is a "TREND" The aforesaid poster has done this twice when 5 successive polls had larger than average LAB leads. Having a wide range of pollsters is IMO the best way to see the current position
For the record i see no trend and LAB are currently circa 20 ahead SKS landslide on those numbers
It's all a load of old expert bollocks, a "moron's paradise". I'd vote for the Workers Party if I could, but they obviously won't stand in my constituency so I'll abstain. How should I answer the question how "would" I vote if there were a GE tomorrow? Am I OTH, WV, or "WS unless you spell out a proper condition clause"?
Interestingly the WP candidate in Rochdale will be Craig Murray.
On topic (I think): There is a famous historical precedent, in the career of one James Michael Curley: "James Michael Curley (November 20, 1874 – November 12, 1958) was an American Democratic politician from Boston, Massachusetts. He served four terms as mayor of Boston from 1914 to 1955. Curley ran for mayor in every election for which he was legally qualified. He was twice convicted of criminal behavior and notably served time in prison during his last term as mayor. He also served a single term as governor of Massachusetts. He is remembered as one of the most colorful figures in Massachusetts politics." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Michael_Curley
(The novel based on him, Edwin O'Connor's "The Last Hurrah", is, in my opinion, the best American novel on politics. You can learn a fair amount about big city machine politics from it.)
Mon dieu. The upper Loire is dull. I shall spare you photographs of endless flat and vasty fields
A lot of France is like that in my experience. A good 70% of the country is Lincolnshire.
(Not that there's anything inherently wrong with Lincolnshire, in moderation. But France offers just such a dizzyingly vast amount of it.)
I wouldn’t say 70%. More like 30-40%?
Anyway near the coast is usually but not always nice. They have far fewer hideous tacky resort towns, or they hide them better. And superior weather helps
Meanwhile all the alps and Pyrenees are impressive and sometimes spectacular. Corsica just edges the Isle of Wight. The Dordogne, the Basque Country, burgundy, Provence, languedoc, savoie, Jura, the Rhone valley - the majority of France is appealing
Yes, France is remarkably classy in its seaside resorts. Parts of the Breton coast are lovely, with manicured towns and vastly superior restaurants to the unalloyed garbage that pollutes many of our seaside resorts. You mention the Isle of Wight. This 'holiday resort' remains the only place I have known which has seafood restaurants where you MUST order the lobster in advance but CANNOT book a table in advance. The idea seemingly being that if you order the lobster and then can't get a table when you turn up to eat it they will feed it to the barman.
France: less backward than the Isle of Wight. That could be your standfirst.
Comments
It's certainly not my favourite architectural genre. But it's not uniformly awful.
I'd say the problem is that too many architects used 'modern' to excuse them from the need to be any good.
So again he’s promising something that is outside his control
Sarlat is my favourite town in France. Haven't been there for a while, but it looks like Hogwarts.
2) it’s Trans Gay Woke Illegal Immigrant Alien AIs. Get it right.
Harrowing but highly recommended viewing. Jessica Gunning deserves an award for her portrayal of a stalker.
And, unlike drills on Salisbury Plain, this time nobody moved.
The (second lieutenant, perhaps straight out of RMAS) realised that until and unless he stood up and moved forward first none of his platoon were going to move.
However the really great thing about France is that it’s so big and varied you only have to explore - get off the tourist trail - and you will find an equally lovely town with zero tourists 10 or 20 or 40km away. Buried in the lush countryside like a truffle under a tree
eg How many people have heard of Tailloires, on Lake Annecy? I went there for the gazette. Looks like this
The tax issue is rather more serious even if the amounts are small.
From the *current* HMRC website (don’t know if the rules are clear)
You qualify if you have not let part of it out - this does not include having a lodger
And
Married couples and civil partners can only count one property as their main home at any one time.
https://www.gov.uk/tax-sell-home
Presumably HMRC has the historical data on whether she claimed the relief and can clear it all up very easily. But the fact that circumstantial evidence puts her primary residence elsewhere plus she is (reportedly) self identifying as the landlady…
Safety of Rwanda Motion B: 122 Labour Peers out of 256 votes for the amendement
Safety of Rwanda Motion B: 118 Labour Peers out of 243 votes for the amendement
Safety of Rwanda Motion C: 119 Labour Peers out of 251 votes for the amendement
Safety of Rwanda Motion
Safety of Rwanda Motion F: 118 Labour Peers out of 273 votes for the amendement
I can't be bothered to list all the amendment votes but it is exactly the same in all of them. In all cases Labour Peers formed the minority of those opposing the bill and voting for amendments. Except for a few Ulster Unionists and a very few non-affiliated peers, no one is supporting the Government except their own peers.
https://www.navy-net.co.uk/community/threads/vehicles-on-aircraft-carriers-hms-hermes-and-invincible.54617/page-2
Have been looking at the tables for the West Midlands Mayoral polls to try and see why Savanta and Redfield have such different results.
It appears that Savanta have incorrectly weighted by West Midlands REGION, not the West Midlands COUNTY - which perhaps explains the gap.
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1782360305437147340
We are now two hours out of Paris and the countryside is only just beginning to get curvier and more interesting. Peut etre
We are a two car family and I'm sat here looking at both of them sat on my drive right now. Not a great use of resources.
Part of the problem is that when in the past I briefly gave up car ownership, it was a right bugger to get affordable insurance again when I then acquired one again. Which is now a serious demotivator to ever give one up again. Which means that, as Phil says, because that fixed cost of ownership is paid, I now have an almost cost free way of making journeys I could just as easily make by bike.
Let's say it costs roughly 50p a mile for a car journey, once you take into account the costs of ownership, maintainence and fuel. (This feels fairly conservative, obviously it varies wildly depending on which car you own and what your average mileage is). If I need to pop out to One Stop to buy a loaf of bread: if it genuinely cost me that 50p to get the mile round trip to One Stop and back, I would go by bike every time. There is no difference in time between driving half a mile and cycling it, once you take into account the faff of parking. But in reality it costs me most of that 50p whether I drive or not. And so often, I drive.
Either we make all MPs or senior MPs tax affairs transparent (I'm in favour) or we don't. We shouldn't make just those we don't like or don't have the right background do so.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/22/judge-throws-out-case-against-uk-climate-activist-trudi-warner-sign-jurors-rights
This bit was particularly funny:
"Warner’s placard referred to the Bushel case, which is celebrated with a marble sign that is clearly visible in the central criminal court in London. It read: “Jurors, You have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience.”"
The current Hunger Games survivalist model is a bad one. And I don't like the boat operators, nobody sane does. Trouble is that a humane, fair system (even if we mean all rich countries sharing the burden fairly) almost certainly leads to the UK doing more, not less, than now.
The complainants do not care one iota about that!
So you may just be off a particular modal network. In London for example they have "Cycle Superhighways" (ie normal separated cycle tracks) and Quietways, which are for example walking / wheeling / cycling routes through LTNs where the motorised rat runners have been put back on through routes for motor vehicles.
Here's a 4 minute video looking at the concept, by David Hembrow in 2012. This is broad, but the same concept applies in cities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zd5tKIdOyg
In Central London an example might be the difference in facilities along the E-W Tavistock Place corridor, and Theobalds Road.
Over the next 10-20 years I'd expect the same concept to come in on North-South routes more, so that perhaps a dozen bridges will be motor free, and another dozen to be motor with minimal mobility facilities. Rather than the type of expensive and unnecessary hybrid dog's breakfast being proposed for Hammersmith Bridge.
Personally I think that the expenses scandal showed that this was bunkum - they were all at it (no doubt because ALL had been encouraged to be at it to offset the perceived poor MP pay).
The policy applies to people who have claimed asylum, regardless of whether or not they are refugees. It does not target people who have been refused asylum in the UK. People relocated to Rwanda would have their claims assessed there, and those who were recognised as refugees would not be eligible to return to the UK.
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/commentaries/qa-the-uks-policy-to-send-asylum-seekers-to-rwanda/
This is a key difference between what the UK plans and some other countries are exploring. It's not offshore processing, it's ping them abroad and forget about them.
All he’s done is confirm he has the personal self-respect of a jellyfish seeking promotion
The first picture, of Kyung Hee University library and museum, is new to me.
They apparently have a very large collection of old Asian maps (with an emphasis on Korea, obvs). Might visit next time I'm over there.
I do agree Paris lacks buzz. It's always been like that though.
I recall going through Paris counting how many wings were dented on each car. In quite a few the number was all four.
Now we all know that under the asylum rules there is no requirement to claim asylum in the first safe country. But the man in the street looks at France and thinks - surely safe enough?
We also have taken many people from certain sources (Ukraine, Hong Kong etc). Sadly I think there is a hint of racism about being open to blond, white Ukranians, but less so to refugees from South Sudan.
This is brilliant for both cars and bikes. Cars aren't having to constantly overtake bikes, slowing them down and can see them coming. Cyclists aren't worried about cars overtaking and hitting them or constantly having to look over their shoulders.
It is a no brainer.
You are still of the opinion that poor old Boris Johnson was unfairly hounded despite being innocent of attending parties, they were work events! Whether Rayner is charged or not, I suspect it doesn't cleanse the Tories. Most people who aren't fully on board with this iteration of the Tory Party, I suspect, believe she is the subject of a smear, primarily because she is. Nonetheless you may yet get your win. Poor Boris!
Of course if i were Heathener I would cut and paste the most recent 3 and claim there is a "TREND" The aforesaid poster has done this twice when 5 successive polls had larger than average LAB leads. Having a wide range of pollsters is IMO the best way to see the current position
For the record i see no trend and LAB are currently circa 20 ahead SKS landslide on those numbers
18–19 Apr We Think N/A GB 1,266 26% 43% 9% 2% 7% 11% 17
17–19 Apr Opinium The Obs 1,431 25% 41% 10% 2% 7% 13% 16
17–18 Apr Survation N/A UK 1,010 26% 44% 11% 3% 4% 8% 18
17–18 Apr Techne N/A GB 1,640 22% 45% 9% 3% 5% 13% 23
16–17 Apr YouGov The Times GB 2,048 21% 44% 8% 3% 23
12–15 Apr Deltapoll N/A GB 2,072 25% 45% 9% 3% 5% 11% 20
3–15 Apr Ipsos N/A GB 1,072 19% 44% 9% 3% 9% 13% 25
14 Apr Redfield & Wilton GB 2,000 22% 44% 9% 3% 6% 22
12–14 Apr Savanta Teleg GB 2,221 25% 43% 10% 3% 6% 18
The proportion of journeys by car in Paris has dropped about 45 percent since 1990, according to a paper published by the journal Les Cahiers Scientifiques du Transport. At the same time, the use of public transit has risen by 30 percent and the share of cyclists has increased tenfold.
I think compared to progress in London, Paris has more of an over-emphasis on the historic centre.
Starmer fans please explain.
My other point as i say in my post i see no trend and LAB are currently circa 20 ahead SKS landslide on those numbers
In years to come, this is going to be a fascinating but dismal psychological case study.
If they let it through, reluctantly, people will see it doesn’t really work, and they can backpedal on it after the GE.
I'd vote for the Workers Party if I could, but they obviously won't stand in my constituency so I'll abstain. How should I answer the question how "would" I vote if there were a GE tomorrow? Am I OTH, WV, or "WS unless you spell out a proper condition clause"?
Interestingly the WP candidate in Rochdale will be Craig Murray.
None of which matters, as 99.9% of the people don't agree with me.
I don't want Rayner forced out over this, but I do think she has been either careless, or has been a very tiny bit naughty. Its sad that we have a media driven by such rubbish. I want to hear about policy. How will the NHS improve and how do we pay for it? How do we sort the crumbling schools across the nation? Hope do we help people to live their best life?
While the PM was giving his latest 'Stop the Boats' speech this morning, new figures were slipped out showing arrivals up by 24% so far this year...
@breeallegretti
Once more, with feeling…
The “stop the boats” slogan gets a rebrand.
@robfordmancs
Strong “rearranging deck chairs on the titanic” energy
There are a number of ways to do it in road marking / road signing regulations. But it does require a 20mph limit, which is the national standard for safe mixing of mobility and motorised traffic.
Yet familiarity and education, and detailed design, is important. Introducing a single contraflow cycling on a one-way route can cause emotional fits amongst some local councillor-types and poor behaviour from dozy drivers.
Death Trap ! Danger to My vehicle ! And all the usual stuff. Example:
https://road.cc/content/news/94477-deathtrap’-fears-over-new-york-contraflow-bike-lane
Population of 240-odd, and its own cathedral.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges
Dead quiet, apart from an archaeological dig, back in the late 90s.
MR James set a ghost story there.
This is the current House of Lords.
Blaming "Labour Peers" is an interesting version of 'I can't persuade the HoL'.
(The persistence of Lib Dems in volume is interesting.)
Anyway a genuine thank you for the reply, or should that be "Thank you for the Music"?
It was the Guardian, that when offered the story, who made it clear they wanted to go after a selection of targets not just anyone.
His bigger crime, to me, was not understanding the rage of the public about the whole thing and not being straight when asked. If he had come to parliament and given the gory details, with a genuine apology he might still be there. But probably not as the man is not fit for office.
iPhone says I took this photo at 5.14pm on the 5th October 2009
1. The largest empire in the world; and
2. The largest country in the world; and
3. The country with the largest industrial base in the world.
To do that, they decided that the two countries they'd get to help them would be Japan and Italy.
The Wikipedia article does not seem to enlighten on this.
I have had my eyes opened to the realisation that once Britain and Empire countries stayed in the war in 1940, Hitler had lost. The nature of the defeat was not certain, or the timing, but eventually Germany would have lost. Economics is everything. Being good fighters (and despite the mythologysing, not ALL German troops were amazing) is not enough when faced with huge industrial power.
I would guess that Independents are those who were appointed party politically, and have since left that party for some reason or other, whereas the 'Crossbenchers' are appointed (or elected from the hereditarys) as such.
Edit to add: Looking at the graphic, it appears that the non-affiliated is more than just the 26 Bishops. Presumably Law Lords or similar are also classed as 'non-affiliated'?
Is that not George Galloways Constituency?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Michael_Curley
(The novel based on him, Edwin O'Connor's "The Last Hurrah", is, in my opinion, the best American novel on politics. You can learn a fair amount about big city machine politics from it.)
(It's cheesy but quite amusing)
France: less backward than the Isle of Wight. That could be your standfirst.