Just as the French bemoan the fact that their best contribution to the lexicon in the last century was the word "chauffeur" (if you don't count "Vichy" 😀 ), I think it's a bit sad that the best British contribution is the acronym NIMBY.
Or is there a better one I'm missing?
“Wanker” is becoming increasingly common in America?
Paywalled. Does she say, please, if (a) it's optional and (b) who decides? The council?
Labour’s shadow chancellor has opened the door to rent caps, arguing they could be beneficial if brought in for local areas.
Rachel Reeves insisted she was against a “blanket approach”, but said there may be a “case” for rent controls on a local level.
In an interview with BBC Radio Essex, she suggested councils should get a say on whether to bring in new restrictions, arguing that it “should be up to local areas to decide”.
Ms Reeves was speaking after a Labour-commissioned report found that rents should be capped for tenants who could not afford rising costs.
The rationale behind this is not complicated. In a significant housing shortage both rent controls and its opposite, no rent controls, are intolerable policies. So the trick is to transfer the decision to the local level where someone else decides it and takes the political heat. Simple.
Andy Burnham is asking for the powers to suspend right to buy whilst he builds loads of social housing to address the housing problems in Manchester.
I quite like the idea of locally elected politicians making such decisions rather than someone hundreds of miles away.
Depends what you mean by 'Such decisions'. Locally elected politicians are quite capable of all deciding that the millions of new homes we need will all be built somewhere else.
It was my third day back, but my first on my regular route which includes my street. The weather has been great, and I've been made to feel really valued by so many people
I think around thirty people have asked me directly about my holiday, and another twenty or so have asked where I've been for the last month
I've got rather good at giving the crucial details that impress, delight and amuse people: just under a marathon a day, just over an Everest and a half climbed, only beer drunk in the afternoons, and the story of my journey home, starting with my missed flight which I recounted here before
What I haven't told you about is my race across London to meet my parents, and their taxi home, on Drury Lane
My flight left about half an hour late, and landed fifteen minutes late at Stansted. I then just missed a Stansted Express train and had to sit on the next one for another fifteen minutes before it left
I planned to go to Tottenham Hale, where my return ticket was from, and get the Victoria Line to near the West End and march to the theatre. As the train pulled in the screen showed "Victoria Line - Closed"
WTF?!? I didn't have time to check, so stayed on the train to Liverpool Street and started looking at tube options from there
It turned out they were actually better, but the train was so slow through London compared to the Victoria Line..
When the train arrived it told me that all of the tube lines were closed. I had a brief internal panic, which may have included a bit of cursing out loud, and headed for the ticket barrier with my return ticket to Tottenham Hale
I asked the chap who took my ticket "Is the tube open?", he didn't look at my ticket. He looked at me like I was idiot and said "Yeah, it's right there", pointing at the entrance opposite
I didn't have time to explain my apparently stupid question and dashed for the Central Line. I had five stops to Holborn
When I got out Google maps told me ten minutes to the Theatre Royal, I sent a message to Mum saying the same. I made it in seven, and arrived at the front door thirty seconds before my parents emerged
They would have waited a few minutes for me, I'm sure, but I was so pleased not to delay them
We didn't get home until quarter past one, and I only got about four and a half hours sleep before I had to go back to work, but I made it and made it through that next day
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
While I completely agree that we should loosen up planning, I think you do need to accept that Japanese* homes are almost entirely made of wood, have limited lives, and are much quicker/cheaper to build.
So, I don't think you can simply extrapolate the number of Japanese housing starts to the UK.
* Like American ones
Question.
Why do we not build more houses out of wood?
It's hard to argue they would be less long-lasting than the rubbish currently being built. Insulation means they could be as warm. It would be both cheaper and quicker.
So what's the reason?
People won't buy them.
Can't get mortgages?
I have some sympathy for the wooden house movement, but I must admit I did start when I read about one which used pulped newspapers or recycled wool or something for insulation between the walls. No idea whether they protect against, foir instance, clothes moths ... but IANAE.
It all comes down to us seeing houses as an asset, a kind of glorified Patek Phillipe - "you don't own it, you merely pass it on to the next generation", like we're all lords in our own manor or something, rather than living in dilapidated flats or 1930s semis or jerry-built wimpey homes.
If instead we took the view that a house is something you can buy and self build and it lasts approximately 25 years, we could change how housing is seen. Consider the way kit houses were completely the norm in the interwar period in America.
That exists as a nascent movement in the shipping container refits and the tiny house movement people, but ultimately its a) looked down upon ("an englishman's home is his castle") and b) not supported by our current planning system or infrastructure.
And solar will be looking pretty grim by midnight.
Why the sarcastic reply?
Coz I think solar is a waste of time in the UK.
I was not intending anything against you, so apologies if it came across that way.
5% of our total generation last year, so it's some way from irrelevant.
It must have the worst return on energy generated per billion spent.
Remember when you and I were virtually the only people on PB willing to say “er, it quite likely came from the lab? The bat virus lab just down the road from the bat virus outbreak?”
Now read this:
“EcoHealth Alliance and Dr. Peter Daszak should never again receive a single penny from the U.S. taxpayer. Only two weeks after the Select Subcommittee released an extensive report detailing EcoHealth’s wrongdoing and recommending the formal debarment of EcoHealth and its president, HHS has begun efforts to cut off all U.S. funding to this corrupt organization. EcoHealth facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China without proper oversight, willingly violated multiple requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health grant, and apparently made false statements to the NIH. These actions are wholly abhorrent, indefensible, and must be addressed with swift action. EcoHealth’s immediate funding suspension and future debarment is not only a victory for the U.S. taxpayer, but also for American national security and the safety of citizens worldwide" - Chairman Wenstrup, Committee on Oversight and Accountability - COVID-19.
Indeed. Yet there's still some die hards even on here who want to cling to the idea that they weren't being lied to by the "good" side and the "bad" team were right about it all.
We had a uni mates reunion a couple of weekends ago that I was graciously allowed to attend for a few hours by my wife juggling a relative newborn and a toddler. The subject came up (unsurprising given that we all studied chemistry, biochemistry and/or medicine) and the consensus around the room was unanimous that it was a lab leak and that it was likely covered up by the Americans because senior people in their health regulatory infrastructure were implicated. They all work in research and know how easy it is for political pressure to change decisions by journals.
Quite so, quite so. And for a long time it was just you and me willing to say this on PB. And sometimes @Gardenwalker as well
Pitiful
Anyway we now need a reckoning. Science itself needs to be severely scrutinised - from the labs to the journals
Yes agreed, the corruption of science by political operators in healthcare regulation was awful and there does now need to be some measures put in place to insulate science from politicians who were more worried about their dirty dealings with WIV than stopping the virus from spreading.
Wenstrup believes Trump won the 2020 election.
It’s a bipartisan committee investigating Covid origins. Equal Dems and Reps. See here
And this is their conclusion on Ecohealth, who ran the gain of function bat coronovirus virology for Fauci at Wuhan
🚨BREAKING🚨
Today, based on evidence uncovered in @COVIDSelect's recent report, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services commenced formal debarment proceedings against EcoHealth Alliance.
EcoHealth will now face an immediate, government-wide suspension of taxpayer funds — including a hold on all active grants.
Its over. All the years of lies and gaslighting are over. It’s done
No doubt we’ll never get the full facts, given it happened in China, but at least the ridiculous taboo on Lab leak is now lifted.
What taboo? People have been going on about the “Lab leak” for years!
It’s a majority Republican committee, with one its members being Marjorie Taylor Greene, so I could barely rustle up the interest to look at what they said. But I did, and what they said doesn’t remotely prove there was a lab leak. It’s half a dozen steps from proving anything. It’s like when SeanT kept telling us how some US Committee proved UFOs exist: excitable nonsense.
Everything else we know — where the first cases were, the genetic variation in the early cases, the environmental samples from the wet market, etc. — all demonstrate that this was a zoonotic event, like every other pandemic.
Everyone who has suggested Lab leak, which given the genetic signature of the first cases as well as the shit security at the Wuhan labs and the long history of lab leaks including examples as recent as the foot and mouth plague, was always a perfectly rational option, was dismissed as a conspiracy theorist.
It became a culture war battle, which is ridiculous.
Not only that - “lab leak” was officially silenced on Twitter and Facebook for a year. You literally weren’t allowed to mention it and if you did your comments were deleted and if you persisted you could get banned
Utterly extraordinary, looking back
One day we will look back at it as the last golden moment of US/China cooperation.
They cooperated for good reason. It suited both. America paid for this research, China hosted it
Neither side wanted to face the hideous possibly they accidentally leaked it and killed 20 million
The scientists are on record saying this in FOIA’d emails!
Edinburgh university’s Andrew Rambaut: “Given the shitshow that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possibly distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content with ascribing it to natural processes,”
In other words, Fuck, it probably came from the lab, but that’s gonna annoy China and cause chaos, let’s just say we dunno and as we dunno it’s probably the market kthxbye
I must admit, I really struggle with all these arguments.
Yes, it probably came - accidentally - from a lab.
Yes, scientists should not have been scared of admitting this.
And yes, Facebook/Twitter should not have shut down discussion.
But... so what? If people had been more honest (or perhaps I should say brave), it would have been great, but it wouldn't have saved a single life.
It does matter somewhat. Because if the epidemic did start in a food market, as the evidence suggests it did, it means Chinese authorities allowed an entirely preventable epidemic to go on and kill millions of people for exactly the same reason for a second time in just fifteen years.
Which is actually more negligent than an accidental lab leak.
Root causes do matter. If this is right and we're not holding China accountable for its woeful food safety controls, we're just waiting for a third time.
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
While I completely agree that we should loosen up planning, I think you do need to accept that Japanese* homes are almost entirely made of wood, have limited lives, and are much quicker/cheaper to build.
So, I don't think you can simply extrapolate the number of Japanese housing starts to the UK.
* Like American ones
Question.
Why do we not build more houses out of wood?
It's hard to argue they would be less long-lasting than the rubbish currently being built. Insulation means they could be as warm. It would be both cheaper and quicker.
So what's the reason?
People won't buy them.
what about rent them?
Generally speaking people who are renting have fewer choices. So, yeah, I guess they could be a way to really rip off tenants even more. Have them pay sky-high rents for cheap wooden houses that'll rot in the damp British climate.
And solar will be looking pretty grim by midnight.
Why the sarcastic reply?
Coz I think solar is a waste of time in the UK.
I was not intending anything against you, so apologies if it came across that way.
5% of our total generation last year, so it's some way from irrelevant.
It must have the worst return on energy generated per billion spent.
Remember when you and I were virtually the only people on PB willing to say “er, it quite likely came from the lab? The bat virus lab just down the road from the bat virus outbreak?”
Now read this:
“EcoHealth Alliance and Dr. Peter Daszak should never again receive a single penny from the U.S. taxpayer. Only two weeks after the Select Subcommittee released an extensive report detailing EcoHealth’s wrongdoing and recommending the formal debarment of EcoHealth and its president, HHS has begun efforts to cut off all U.S. funding to this corrupt organization. EcoHealth facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China without proper oversight, willingly violated multiple requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health grant, and apparently made false statements to the NIH. These actions are wholly abhorrent, indefensible, and must be addressed with swift action. EcoHealth’s immediate funding suspension and future debarment is not only a victory for the U.S. taxpayer, but also for American national security and the safety of citizens worldwide" - Chairman Wenstrup, Committee on Oversight and Accountability - COVID-19.
Indeed. Yet there's still some die hards even on here who want to cling to the idea that they weren't being lied to by the "good" side and the "bad" team were right about it all.
We had a uni mates reunion a couple of weekends ago that I was graciously allowed to attend for a few hours by my wife juggling a relative newborn and a toddler. The subject came up (unsurprising given that we all studied chemistry, biochemistry and/or medicine) and the consensus around the room was unanimous that it was a lab leak and that it was likely covered up by the Americans because senior people in their health regulatory infrastructure were implicated. They all work in research and know how easy it is for political pressure to change decisions by journals.
Quite so, quite so. And for a long time it was just you and me willing to say this on PB. And sometimes @Gardenwalker as well
Pitiful
Anyway we now need a reckoning. Science itself needs to be severely scrutinised - from the labs to the journals
Yes agreed, the corruption of science by political operators in healthcare regulation was awful and there does now need to be some measures put in place to insulate science from politicians who were more worried about their dirty dealings with WIV than stopping the virus from spreading.
Wenstrup believes Trump won the 2020 election.
It’s a bipartisan committee investigating Covid origins. Equal Dems and Reps. See here
And this is their conclusion on Ecohealth, who ran the gain of function bat coronovirus virology for Fauci at Wuhan
🚨BREAKING🚨
Today, based on evidence uncovered in @COVIDSelect's recent report, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services commenced formal debarment proceedings against EcoHealth Alliance.
EcoHealth will now face an immediate, government-wide suspension of taxpayer funds — including a hold on all active grants.
Its over. All the years of lies and gaslighting are over. It’s done
No doubt we’ll never get the full facts, given it happened in China, but at least the ridiculous taboo on Lab leak is now lifted.
What taboo? People have been going on about the “Lab leak” for years!
It’s a majority Republican committee, with one its members being Marjorie Taylor Greene, so I could barely rustle up the interest to look at what they said. But I did, and what they said doesn’t remotely prove there was a lab leak. It’s half a dozen steps from proving anything. It’s like when SeanT kept telling us how some US Committee proved UFOs exist: excitable nonsense.
Everything else we know — where the first cases were, the genetic variation in the early cases, the environmental samples from the wet market, etc. — all demonstrate that this was a zoonotic event, like every other pandemic.
Everyone who has suggested Lab leak, which given the genetic signature of the first cases as well as the shit security at the Wuhan labs and the long history of lab leaks including examples as recent as the foot and mouth plague, was always a perfectly rational option, was dismissed as a conspiracy theorist.
It became a culture war battle, which is ridiculous.
Not only that - “lab leak” was officially silenced on Twitter and Facebook for a year. You literally weren’t allowed to mention it and if you did your comments were deleted and if you persisted you could get banned
Utterly extraordinary, looking back
One day we will look back at it as the last golden moment of US/China cooperation.
They cooperated for good reason. It suited both. America paid for this research, China hosted it
Neither side wanted to face the hideous possibly they accidentally leaked it and killed 20 million
The scientists are on record saying this in FOIA’d emails!
Edinburgh university’s Andrew Rambaut: “Given the shitshow that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possibly distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content with ascribing it to natural processes,”
In other words, Fuck, it probably came from the lab, but that’s gonna annoy China and cause chaos, let’s just say we dunno and as we dunno it’s probably the market kthxbye
I must admit, I really struggle with all these arguments.
Yes, it probably came - accidentally - from a lab.
Yes, scientists should not have been scared of admitting this.
And yes, Facebook/Twitter should not have shut down discussion.
But... so what? If people had been more honest (or perhaps I should say brave), it would have been great, but it wouldn't have saved a single life.
It does matter somewhat. Because if the epidemic did start in a food market, as the evidence suggests it did, it means Chinese authorities allowed an entirely preventable epidemic to go on and kill millions of people for a second time for exactly the same reason in just fifteen years.
Which is actually more negligent than an accidental lab leak.
Root causes do matter. If this is right and we're not holding China accountable for its woeful food safety controls, we're just waiting for a third time.
Blame the idiot ancestors who took up farming, rather than living free as hunter gatherers. They ended up living cheek by jowl with all those domesticated beasts and thus gave zoonosis a turbo burst.
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
While I completely agree that we should loosen up planning, I think you do need to accept that Japanese* homes are almost entirely made of wood, have limited lives, and are much quicker/cheaper to build.
So, I don't think you can simply extrapolate the number of Japanese housing starts to the UK.
* Like American ones
Get rid of the planning premium on land and people can quicker throw up wooden homes here too. Cheaper land and cheaper build, win/win.
Not a bad idea.
However, there are consequences.
For a start, the UK doesn't have much of the rapid growing wood that is used to build homes. So, we'll be importing. Not the end of the world, obviously. But it will have an impact.
Secondly, wood houses don't last as long. That means that banks will almost certainly lend at lower LTVs because the whole property will need to be replaced every 25 years or so.
Thirdly, labour does come into it somewhat. Our entire building trade is setup around brick houses.
None of these are deal breakers, obviously. And labour shortages naturally sort themselves out. Together, though, they would limit the supply of new wooden houses somewhat.
Still, not a good reason not to allow them.
(We would need to change some of the regulation, I suspect, around insulation. Because wooden houses probably aren't as well insulated. So there's probably a little hidden cost around additional energy usage too.)
Neil Henderson @hendopolis · 1h I WEEKEND EXCLUSIVE: Benefits system insiders reveal how targets are used to decide disability claims #TomorrowsPapersToday
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
While I completely agree that we should loosen up planning, I think you do need to accept that Japanese* homes are almost entirely made of wood, have limited lives, and are much quicker/cheaper to build.
So, I don't think you can simply extrapolate the number of Japanese housing starts to the UK.
* Like American ones
Get rid of the planning premium on land and people can quicker throw up wooden homes here too. Cheaper land and cheaper build, win/win.
Not a bad idea.
However, there are consequences.
For a start, the UK doesn't have much of the rapid growing wood that is used to build homes. So, we'll be importing. Not the end of the world, obviously. But it will have an impact.
Secondly, wood houses don't last as long. That means that banks will almost certainly lend at lower LTVs because the whole property will need to be replaced every 25 years or so.
Thirdly, labour does come into it somewhat. Our entire building trade is setup around brick houses.
None of these are deal breakers, obviously. And labour shortages naturally sort themselves out. Together, though, they would limit the supply of new wooden houses somewhat.
Still, not a good reason not to allow them.
(We would need to change some of the regulation, I suspect, around insulation. Because wooden houses probably aren't as well insulated. So there's probably a little hidden cost around additional energy usage too.)
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
Um, the reason why I'm saying that labour is a problem is because i'm currently working at a major UK housebuilder in a position that means I really do hear about issues..
When I say they can't get staff it's because that is what I'm hearing on an hourly basis - and paying more won't solve the issue, the issue is we don't have the skills and we aren't training people up...
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
While I completely agree that we should loosen up planning, I think you do need to accept that Japanese* homes are almost entirely made of wood, have limited lives, and are much quicker/cheaper to build.
So, I don't think you can simply extrapolate the number of Japanese housing starts to the UK.
* Like American ones
Question.
Why do we not build more houses out of wood?
It's hard to argue they would be less long-lasting than the rubbish currently being built. Insulation means they could be as warm. It would be both cheaper and quicker.
So what's the reason?
People won't buy them.
what about rent them?
Generally speaking people who are renting have fewer choices. So, yeah, I guess they could be a way to really rip off tenants even more. Have them pay sky-high rents for cheap wooden houses that'll rot in the damp British climate.
Canada is no dryer than we are, but they build wooden houses.
And if they are rented, not owned, where's the problem?
Neil Henderson @hendopolis · 1h I WEEKEND EXCLUSIVE: Benefits system insiders reveal how targets are used to decide disability claims #TomorrowsPapersToday
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
While I completely agree that we should loosen up planning, I think you do need to accept that Japanese* homes are almost entirely made of wood, have limited lives, and are much quicker/cheaper to build.
So, I don't think you can simply extrapolate the number of Japanese housing starts to the UK.
* Like American ones
Question.
Why do we not build more houses out of wood?
It's hard to argue they would be less long-lasting than the rubbish currently being built. Insulation means they could be as warm. It would be both cheaper and quicker.
So what's the reason?
People won't buy them.
what about rent them?
Generally speaking people who are renting have fewer choices. So, yeah, I guess they could be a way to really rip off tenants even more. Have them pay sky-high rents for cheap wooden houses that'll rot in the damp British climate.
Canada is no dryer than we are, but they build wooden houses.
And if they are rented, not owned, where's the problem?
More continental climate, lower humidity, I believe.
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
While I completely agree that we should loosen up planning, I think you do need to accept that Japanese* homes are almost entirely made of wood, have limited lives, and are much quicker/cheaper to build.
So, I don't think you can simply extrapolate the number of Japanese housing starts to the UK.
* Like American ones
Question.
Why do we not build more houses out of wood?
It's hard to argue they would be less long-lasting than the rubbish currently being built. Insulation means they could be as warm. It would be both cheaper and quicker.
So what's the reason?
People won't buy them.
Can't get mortgages?
I have some sympathy for the wooden house movement, but I must admit I did start when I read about one which used pulped newspapers or recycled wool or something for insulation between the walls. No idea whether they protect against, foir instance, clothes moths ... but IANAE.
It all comes down to us seeing houses as an asset, a kind of glorified Patek Phillipe - "you don't own it, you merely pass it on to the next generation", like we're all lords in our own manor or something, rather than living in dilapidated flats or 1930s semis or jerry-built wimpey homes.
If instead we took the view that a house is something you can buy and self build and it lasts approximately 25 years, we could change how housing is seen. Consider the way kit houses were completely the norm in the interwar period in America.
That exists as a nascent movement in the shipping container refits and the tiny house movement people, but ultimately its a) looked down upon ("an englishman's home is his castle") and b) not supported by our current planning system or infrastructure.
Or indeed the postwar prefabs - AIUI accepted as temporary houses but in some designs at least very successful.
And solar will be looking pretty grim by midnight.
Why the sarcastic reply?
Coz I think solar is a waste of time in the UK.
I was not intending anything against you, so apologies if it came across that way.
5% of our total generation last year, so it's some way from irrelevant.
It must have the worst return on energy generated per billion spent.
Remember when you and I were virtually the only people on PB willing to say “er, it quite likely came from the lab? The bat virus lab just down the road from the bat virus outbreak?”
Now read this:
“EcoHealth Alliance and Dr. Peter Daszak should never again receive a single penny from the U.S. taxpayer. Only two weeks after the Select Subcommittee released an extensive report detailing EcoHealth’s wrongdoing and recommending the formal debarment of EcoHealth and its president, HHS has begun efforts to cut off all U.S. funding to this corrupt organization. EcoHealth facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China without proper oversight, willingly violated multiple requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health grant, and apparently made false statements to the NIH. These actions are wholly abhorrent, indefensible, and must be addressed with swift action. EcoHealth’s immediate funding suspension and future debarment is not only a victory for the U.S. taxpayer, but also for American national security and the safety of citizens worldwide" - Chairman Wenstrup, Committee on Oversight and Accountability - COVID-19.
Indeed. Yet there's still some die hards even on here who want to cling to the idea that they weren't being lied to by the "good" side and the "bad" team were right about it all.
We had a uni mates reunion a couple of weekends ago that I was graciously allowed to attend for a few hours by my wife juggling a relative newborn and a toddler. The subject came up (unsurprising given that we all studied chemistry, biochemistry and/or medicine) and the consensus around the room was unanimous that it was a lab leak and that it was likely covered up by the Americans because senior people in their health regulatory infrastructure were implicated. They all work in research and know how easy it is for political pressure to change decisions by journals.
Quite so, quite so. And for a long time it was just you and me willing to say this on PB. And sometimes @Gardenwalker as well
Pitiful
Anyway we now need a reckoning. Science itself needs to be severely scrutinised - from the labs to the journals
Yes agreed, the corruption of science by political operators in healthcare regulation was awful and there does now need to be some measures put in place to insulate science from politicians who were more worried about their dirty dealings with WIV than stopping the virus from spreading.
Wenstrup believes Trump won the 2020 election.
It’s a bipartisan committee investigating Covid origins. Equal Dems and Reps. See here
And this is their conclusion on Ecohealth, who ran the gain of function bat coronovirus virology for Fauci at Wuhan
🚨BREAKING🚨
Today, based on evidence uncovered in @COVIDSelect's recent report, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services commenced formal debarment proceedings against EcoHealth Alliance.
EcoHealth will now face an immediate, government-wide suspension of taxpayer funds — including a hold on all active grants.
Its over. All the years of lies and gaslighting are over. It’s done
No doubt we’ll never get the full facts, given it happened in China, but at least the ridiculous taboo on Lab leak is now lifted.
What taboo? People have been going on about the “Lab leak” for years!
It’s a majority Republican committee, with one its members being Marjorie Taylor Greene, so I could barely rustle up the interest to look at what they said. But I did, and what they said doesn’t remotely prove there was a lab leak. It’s half a dozen steps from proving anything. It’s like when SeanT kept telling us how some US Committee proved UFOs exist: excitable nonsense.
Everything else we know — where the first cases were, the genetic variation in the early cases, the environmental samples from the wet market, etc. — all demonstrate that this was a zoonotic event, like every other pandemic.
Everyone who has suggested Lab leak, which given the genetic signature of the first cases as well as the shit security at the Wuhan labs and the long history of lab leaks including examples as recent as the foot and mouth plague, was always a perfectly rational option, was dismissed as a conspiracy theorist.
It became a culture war battle, which is ridiculous.
Not only that - “lab leak” was officially silenced on Twitter and Facebook for a year. You literally weren’t allowed to mention it and if you did your comments were deleted and if you persisted you could get banned
Utterly extraordinary, looking back
One day we will look back at it as the last golden moment of US/China cooperation.
They cooperated for good reason. It suited both. America paid for this research, China hosted it
Neither side wanted to face the hideous possibly they accidentally leaked it and killed 20 million
The scientists are on record saying this in FOIA’d emails!
Edinburgh university’s Andrew Rambaut: “Given the shitshow that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possibly distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content with ascribing it to natural processes,”
In other words, Fuck, it probably came from the lab, but that’s gonna annoy China and cause chaos, let’s just say we dunno and as we dunno it’s probably the market kthxbye
I must admit, I really struggle with all these arguments.
Yes, it probably came - accidentally - from a lab.
Yes, scientists should not have been scared of admitting this.
And yes, Facebook/Twitter should not have shut down discussion.
But... so what? If people had been more honest (or perhaps I should say brave), it would have been great, but it wouldn't have saved a single life.
It does matter somewhat. Because if the epidemic did start in a food market, as the evidence suggests it did, it means Chinese authorities allowed an entirely preventable epidemic to go on and kill millions of people for a second time for exactly the same reason in just fifteen years.
Which is actually more negligent than an accidental lab leak.
Root causes do matter. If this is right and we're not holding China accountable for its woeful food safety controls, we're just waiting for a third time.
Blame the idiot ancestors who took up farming, rather than living free as hunter gatherers. They ended up living cheek by jowl with all those domesticated beasts and thus gave zoonosis a turbo burst.
I think it's worked out in the long run for the species, despite that added risk. Wouldn't want to sentimentalise hunter gathering.
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
While I completely agree that we should loosen up planning, I think you do need to accept that Japanese* homes are almost entirely made of wood, have limited lives, and are much quicker/cheaper to build.
So, I don't think you can simply extrapolate the number of Japanese housing starts to the UK.
* Like American ones
Question.
Why do we not build more houses out of wood?
It's hard to argue they would be less long-lasting than the rubbish currently being built. Insulation means they could be as warm. It would be both cheaper and quicker.
So what's the reason?
People won't buy them.
what about rent them?
Generally speaking people who are renting have fewer choices. So, yeah, I guess they could be a way to really rip off tenants even more. Have them pay sky-high rents for cheap wooden houses that'll rot in the damp British climate.
Canada is no dryer than we are, but they build wooden houses.
And if they are rented, not owned, where's the problem?
They have lots of wood, which helps. (Same in the US )
Paywalled. Does she say, please, if (a) it's optional and (b) who decides? The council?
Labour’s shadow chancellor has opened the door to rent caps, arguing they could be beneficial if brought in for local areas.
Rachel Reeves insisted she was against a “blanket approach”, but said there may be a “case” for rent controls on a local level.
In an interview with BBC Radio Essex, she suggested councils should get a say on whether to bring in new restrictions, arguing that it “should be up to local areas to decide”.
Ms Reeves was speaking after a Labour-commissioned report found that rents should be capped for tenants who could not afford rising costs.
The rationale behind this is not complicated. In a significant housing shortage both rent controls and its opposite, no rent controls, are intolerable policies. So the trick is to transfer the decision to the local level where someone else decides it and takes the political heat. Simple.
Andy Burnham is asking for the powers to suspend right to buy whilst he builds loads of social housing to address the housing problems in Manchester.
I quite like the idea of locally elected politicians making such decisions rather than someone hundreds of miles away.
Depends what you mean by 'Such decisions'. Locally elected politicians are quite capable of all deciding that the millions of new homes we need will all be built somewhere else.
Exactly. What we have is a cultural problem, not a process problem - some people or areas will be more constructive, as it were, and others automatically obstructive even when it is not justified. The specific means of decision are largely irrelevant - local decisions get overturned by appeals, but national decisions can also just be delayed or scrapped, or rules put in place to make things harder.
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
While I completely agree that we should loosen up planning, I think you do need to accept that Japanese* homes are almost entirely made of wood, have limited lives, and are much quicker/cheaper to build.
So, I don't think you can simply extrapolate the number of Japanese housing starts to the UK.
* Like American ones
Get rid of the planning premium on land and people can quicker throw up wooden homes here too. Cheaper land and cheaper build, win/win.
Not a bad idea.
However, there are consequences.
For a start, the UK doesn't have much of the rapid growing wood that is used to build homes. So, we'll be importing. Not the end of the world, obviously. But it will have an impact.
Secondly, wood houses don't last as long. That means that banks will almost certainly lend at lower LTVs because the whole property will need to be replaced every 25 years or so.
Thirdly, labour does come into it somewhat. Our entire building trade is setup around brick houses.
None of these are deal breakers, obviously. And labour shortages naturally sort themselves out. Together, though, they would limit the supply of new wooden houses somewhat.
Still, not a good reason not to allow them.
(We would need to change some of the regulation, I suspect, around insulation. Because wooden houses probably aren't as well insulated. So there's probably a little hidden cost around additional energy usage too.)
Richard Holden's casual acquaintance with facts and the truth remains one of the constants of British politics.
However, he's not wrong in one or two aspects - Hall did better than the last polls suggested but whether she did well or Khan did badly is another question. Labour GLA candidates consistently outran Khan across the capital capturing seats in areas where he (Khan) lost to Hall while the LDs won the South West constituency
Taking Khan's unpopularity into account, however, Hall came up against the same problem the spider has trying to crawl out of a bowl. The more possible or even likely it seemed she had a chance of winning, the less likely that win became. Evidence - the LD and Green candidates were polling between them 15-17% in the pre-election polling but ended up on 11.6%. Reform were on 7-9% but ended up on 3%.
It's tempting to argue Hall squeezed the Reform vote and Khan squeezed the LD and Green vote but that's not right - Khan didn't squeeze the LD/Green vote, Hall did. As the (however remote) possibility of Hall winning gained currency (and this was played up in the last days by the pro-Khan Standard who kept on about how the race was closing or tightening like an ill-fitted suit after a good buffet), the more LD and Green voters went back to Khan.
Witness events in the South West Constituency - Khan won the Mayoral election by 8,000 with the LD 43,000 behind Hall. In the constituency, the LD won by 16,000 with the Conservative third so let's not forget the power of tactical voting
To be blunt - Khan is unpopular and disliked in many parts of the capital but that doesn't mean key voters were in any way attracted to Hall. She was a polarising figure who repelled moderate concesnsus voters - the more she looked like winning, the more she drove those voters back to Khan.
Could Hall have won? No, the anti-Conservative majority in London is just too large currently.
Is tactical voting a thing? Yes and that should worry Conservatives.
After three polls with 20+ leads for Labour and each of them showing near-extinction level events for the Conservatives, I suspect nerves will be clamed by the Opinium this weekend which should show a Labour lead below 20 points but we'll see.
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
While I completely agree that we should loosen up planning, I think you do need to accept that Japanese* homes are almost entirely made of wood, have limited lives, and are much quicker/cheaper to build.
So, I don't think you can simply extrapolate the number of Japanese housing starts to the UK.
* Like American ones
Question.
Why do we not build more houses out of wood?
It's hard to argue they would be less long-lasting than the rubbish currently being built. Insulation means they could be as warm. It would be both cheaper and quicker.
So what's the reason?
People won't buy them.
what about rent them?
Generally speaking people who are renting have fewer choices. So, yeah, I guess they could be a way to really rip off tenants even more. Have them pay sky-high rents for cheap wooden houses that'll rot in the damp British climate.
Canada is no dryer than we are, but they build wooden houses.
And if they are rented, not owned, where's the problem?
They have lots of wood, which helps. (Same in the US )
Drax are doing their best to change that situation.
Re wooden houses: just because there are reasons why they may not be a panacea, doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
The postwar prefabs mentioned by Carnyx gives a useful UK-based precedent. I imagine that a newly built prefab would be a damn sight better than what a lot of people are living in now.
And solar will be looking pretty grim by midnight.
Why the sarcastic reply?
Coz I think solar is a waste of time in the UK.
I was not intending anything against you, so apologies if it came across that way.
5% of our total generation last year, so it's some way from irrelevant.
It must have the worst return on energy generated per billion spent.
Remember when you and I were virtually the only people on PB willing to say “er, it quite likely came from the lab? The bat virus lab just down the road from the bat virus outbreak?”
Now read this:
“EcoHealth Alliance and Dr. Peter Daszak should never again receive a single penny from the U.S. taxpayer. Only two weeks after the Select Subcommittee released an extensive report detailing EcoHealth’s wrongdoing and recommending the formal debarment of EcoHealth and its president, HHS has begun efforts to cut off all U.S. funding to this corrupt organization. EcoHealth facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China without proper oversight, willingly violated multiple requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health grant, and apparently made false statements to the NIH. These actions are wholly abhorrent, indefensible, and must be addressed with swift action. EcoHealth’s immediate funding suspension and future debarment is not only a victory for the U.S. taxpayer, but also for American national security and the safety of citizens worldwide" - Chairman Wenstrup, Committee on Oversight and Accountability - COVID-19.
Indeed. Yet there's still some die hards even on here who want to cling to the idea that they weren't being lied to by the "good" side and the "bad" team were right about it all.
We had a uni mates reunion a couple of weekends ago that I was graciously allowed to attend for a few hours by my wife juggling a relative newborn and a toddler. The subject came up (unsurprising given that we all studied chemistry, biochemistry and/or medicine) and the consensus around the room was unanimous that it was a lab leak and that it was likely covered up by the Americans because senior people in their health regulatory infrastructure were implicated. They all work in research and know how easy it is for political pressure to change decisions by journals.
Quite so, quite so. And for a long time it was just you and me willing to say this on PB. And sometimes @Gardenwalker as well
Pitiful
Anyway we now need a reckoning. Science itself needs to be severely scrutinised - from the labs to the journals
Yes agreed, the corruption of science by political operators in healthcare regulation was awful and there does now need to be some measures put in place to insulate science from politicians who were more worried about their dirty dealings with WIV than stopping the virus from spreading.
Wenstrup believes Trump won the 2020 election.
It’s a bipartisan committee investigating Covid origins. Equal Dems and Reps. See here
And this is their conclusion on Ecohealth, who ran the gain of function bat coronovirus virology for Fauci at Wuhan
🚨BREAKING🚨
Today, based on evidence uncovered in @COVIDSelect's recent report, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services commenced formal debarment proceedings against EcoHealth Alliance.
EcoHealth will now face an immediate, government-wide suspension of taxpayer funds — including a hold on all active grants.
Its over. All the years of lies and gaslighting are over. It’s done
No doubt we’ll never get the full facts, given it happened in China, but at least the ridiculous taboo on Lab leak is now lifted.
What taboo? People have been going on about the “Lab leak” for years!
It’s a majority Republican committee, with one its members being Marjorie Taylor Greene, so I could barely rustle up the interest to look at what they said. But I did, and what they said doesn’t remotely prove there was a lab leak. It’s half a dozen steps from proving anything. It’s like when SeanT kept telling us how some US Committee proved UFOs exist: excitable nonsense.
Everything else we know — where the first cases were, the genetic variation in the early cases, the environmental samples from the wet market, etc. — all demonstrate that this was a zoonotic event, like every other pandemic.
Everyone who has suggested Lab leak, which given the genetic signature of the first cases as well as the shit security at the Wuhan labs and the long history of lab leaks including examples as recent as the foot and mouth plague, was always a perfectly rational option, was dismissed as a conspiracy theorist.
It became a culture war battle, which is ridiculous.
Not only that - “lab leak” was officially silenced on Twitter and Facebook for a year. You literally weren’t allowed to mention it and if you did your comments were deleted and if you persisted you could get banned
Utterly extraordinary, looking back
One day we will look back at it as the last golden moment of US/China cooperation.
They cooperated for good reason. It suited both. America paid for this research, China hosted it
Neither side wanted to face the hideous possibly they accidentally leaked it and killed 20 million
The scientists are on record saying this in FOIA’d emails!
Edinburgh university’s Andrew Rambaut: “Given the shitshow that would happen if anyone serious accused the Chinese of even accidental release, my feeling is we should say that given there is no evidence of a specifically engineered virus, we cannot possibly distinguish between natural evolution and escape so we are content with ascribing it to natural processes,”
In other words, Fuck, it probably came from the lab, but that’s gonna annoy China and cause chaos, let’s just say we dunno and as we dunno it’s probably the market kthxbye
I must admit, I really struggle with all these arguments.
Yes, it probably came - accidentally - from a lab.
Yes, scientists should not have been scared of admitting this.
And yes, Facebook/Twitter should not have shut down discussion.
But... so what? If people had been more honest (or perhaps I should say brave), it would have been great, but it wouldn't have saved a single life.
It does matter somewhat. Because if the epidemic did start in a food market, as the evidence suggests it did, it means Chinese authorities allowed an entirely preventable epidemic to go on and kill millions of people for a second time for exactly the same reason in just fifteen years.
Which is actually more negligent than an accidental lab leak.
Root causes do matter. If this is right and we're not holding China accountable for its woeful food safety controls, we're just waiting for a third time.
Blame the idiot ancestors who took up farming, rather than living free as hunter gatherers. They ended up living cheek by jowl with all those domesticated beasts and thus gave zoonosis a turbo burst.
Sure, but there's no point in being extra careless. Given the two recent Chinese pandemics in the first case certainly, and in the second case probably, originated in markets without basic food safety standards where if those controls had applied wouldn't have started that way.
FPT Careless cycling or dangerous cycling is NOT the same as careless cycling causing death or serious injury or dangerous cycling causing death or serious injury which the new law allows for. Death by dangerous driving is up to an 18 year sentence, wanton or furious cycling gives a maximum 2 year sentence
Going 9mph over the speed limit certainly could come under careless or even dangerous driving or cycling as the police website says and yes motorists DO get charged with going that much over the speed limit. The police in question would almost certainly take such actions further once the new law comes in
The cyclist in the Regents Park collision could not be charged with causing death because he did not cause it, as per the Coroner's "Accidental Death" finding. It's open and shut. The police in question would never take further action because there is no basis for them to do so, with or without IDS's new law.
The death in the Regents Park collision was not unlawful; that is the definition of "ACCIDENTAL DEATH" in a Coroner's Verdict.
On careless or dangerous, and recalling that the definitions are the same for "driving" or "cycling":
1 - It is a general principle that speeding alone is not sufficient to form the basis for a charge of dangerous driving. There have to be other factors. There is a (far more extensive than I would like) body of caselaw on this. https://roadlawbarristers.co.uk/serious-speeding-enough-for-a-charge-of-dangerous-driving/ (Scotland is similar and there are references if you search.)
2 - It is in CPS Guidelines that the result "causing death" has no impact on whether driving is assessed as Careless or Dangerous. It's a consequence which raises the charge to "causing death by ...", but the existence of a death is not relevant to the assessment of quality of driving.
3 - There's stuff in guidelines about speeding, but it is "inappropriate speeding" - and it is the "inappropriate" not the "speeding" that makes it careless or dangerous driving or cycling.
I'm no fan of our legal setup and interpretations, but it is what it is and for now we have to live with it.
What we are experiencing is knee jerking from politicians (and their supporting media) desperate to have a go at some people to please certain elements of their base. The reaction is out of proportion and misdirected, and the legislative time could be spent far more usefully on other aspects - some of which I have pointed out.
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
Um, the reason why I'm saying that labour is a problem is because i'm currently working at a major UK housebuilder in a position that means I really do hear about issues..
When I say they can't get staff it's because that is what I'm hearing on an hourly basis - and paying more won't solve the issue, the issue is we don't have the skills and we aren't training people up...
I've heard similar - we have an increasing under-employment problem. Put simply, if you have 20 people apply for 5 jobs you have an unemployment problem if 5 people apply for 5 jobs you have full employment, if 1 person applies for 5 jobs you have an under-employment problem.
I'm hearing this is serious in local Government with vacancies running at 20%+ in some areas.
It's not a skills problem - those with the skills have the work, there just aren't enough of them.
All I'm hearing is some who think cajoling the retired and pensioners into work by claiming some sort of civic obligation could be the answer - that's absurd. There is a pool of employees among carers who can only do limited hours but we need companies and organisations to think more flexibly. I'd also look at the unemployment rate among disabled people and ask if there's not more we can do to bring some of those individuals into work.
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
Um, the reason why I'm saying that labour is a problem is because i'm currently working at a major UK housebuilder in a position that means I really do hear about issues..
When I say they can't get staff it's because that is what I'm hearing on an hourly basis - and paying more won't solve the issue, the issue is we don't have the skills and we aren't training people up...
I've heard similar - we have an increasing under-employment problem. Put simply, if you have 20 people apply for 5 jobs you have an unemployment problem if 5 people apply for 5 jobs you have full employment, if 1 person applies for 5 jobs you have an under-employment problem.
I'm hearing this is serious in local Government with vacancies running at 20%+ in some areas.
It's not a skills problem - those with the skills have the work, there just aren't enough of them.
All I'm hearing is some who think cajoling the retired and pensioners into work by claiming some sort of civic obligation could be the answer - that's absurd. There is a pool of employees among carers who can only do limited hours but we need companies and organisations to think more flexibly. I'd also look at the unemployment rate among disabled people and ask if there's not more we can do to bring some of those individuals into work.
I would agree with that but the local Government issue is slightly different.
Let me give you an example Mrs Eek and her uni friend have spent the last 3 years working at the same place. Both are moving to different places, the Mrs is going to a different (nearer) council for £3x,000. Her friend to a private company earning £5x,000...
I will add that Mrs Eek does work for fun/interest as much as the money but even so....
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
Um, the reason why I'm saying that labour is a problem is because i'm currently working at a major UK housebuilder in a position that means I really do hear about issues..
When I say they can't get staff it's because that is what I'm hearing on an hourly basis - and paying more won't solve the issue, the issue is we don't have the skills and we aren't training people up...
Have the housebuilding companies considered training more themselves?
The floating of rent controls by Labour is clever (politically, at least).
The number renting their homes has increased by 28% under the Tories (2011 -2021). Housing in our cities is now seen as an asset with which to plunder the earnings of working people. Loads more renters = loads more Labour votes.
There is a lot of virtual signalling on here about bonfire of regulations etc etc. But the ugly fact is that housing has kept up with the population (indeed has grown more quickly), hence the lack of mass homelessness (though that has increased too, from a low base), and increase in second homes and spare bedrooms.
No one is talking about the changed distribution, either with houses left half empty, empty, or rented out either long term or short term. There is no evidence that a private housebuilding surge would create more owners - the evidence from the last decade is it would create more landlords.
I can't see any other option than some sort of regulation that new homes may not be rented out, or a highly punitive tax on landlords.
Re wooden houses: just because there are reasons why they may not be a panacea, doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
As I see it, the main barrier is that Brits, unlike Americans, can vote themselves a better house than a wooden shed or a caravan.
It's noticeable that whenever a US town is visited by a tornado or hurricane most of the houses are instantly reduced to matchsticks. ...and they're all made out of ticky-tacky and they all look just the same.
Re wooden houses: just because there are reasons why they may not be a panacea, doesn't mean we shouldn't try.
The postwar prefabs mentioned by Carnyx gives a useful UK-based precedent. I imagine that a newly built prefab would be a damn sight better than what a lot of people are living in now.
A brief intro to prefabs. Asbestos would be frowned on - but note the Swedish timber prefab.
FPT Careless cycling or dangerous cycling is NOT the same as careless cycling causing death or serious injury or dangerous cycling causing death or serious injury which the new law allows for. Death by dangerous driving is up to an 18 year sentence, wanton or furious cycling gives a maximum 2 year sentence
Going 9mph over the speed limit certainly could come under careless or even dangerous driving or cycling as the police website says and yes motorists DO get charged with going that much over the speed limit. The police in question would almost certainly take such actions further once the new law comes in
The cyclist in the Regents Park collision could not be charged with causing death because he did not cause it, as per the Coroner's "Accidental Death" finding. It's open and shut. The police in question would never take further action because there is no basis for them to do so, with or without IDS's new law.
The death in the Regents Park collision was not unlawful; that is the definition of "ACCIDENTAL DEATH" in a Coroner's Verdict.
On careless or dangerous, and recalling that the definitions are the same for "driving" or "cycling":
1 - It is a general principle that speeding alone is not sufficient to form the basis for a charge of dangerous driving. There have to be other factors. There is a (far more extensive than I would like) body of caselaw on this. https://roadlawbarristers.co.uk/serious-speeding-enough-for-a-charge-of-dangerous-driving/ (Scotland is similar and there are references if you search.)
2 - It is in CPS Guidelines that the result "causing death" has no impact on whether driving is assessed as Careless or Dangerous. It's a consequence which raises the charge to "causing death by ...", but the existence of a death is not relevant to the assessment of quality of driving.
3 - There's stuff in guidelines about speeding, but it is "inappropriate speeding" - and it is the "inappropriate" not the "speeding" that makes it careless or dangerous driving or cycling.
I'm no fan of our legal setup and interpretations, but it is what it is and for now we have to live with it.
What we are experiencing is knee jerking from politicians (and their supporting media) desperate to have a go at some people to please certain elements of their base. The reaction is out of proportion and misdirected, and the legislative time could be spent far more usefully on other aspects - some of which I have pointed out.
I should add
4 - Excessive or inappropriate speed is a factor in culpability in sentencing, which is then combined with degree of harm as part of the methodology, but that part of the process is not a factor in a charging decision for careless or dangerous driving.
They tie themselves in a complicated knot to try and make the definitions consistent because of wanting high speed emergency driving not to be automatically classified as "dangerous". R vs Milton in 2007 was a policemen who did 148mph on a motorway and 90mph on an A road and 60 mph in a residential area whilst "practising" and "familiarising" who got off a DD charge by claiming exceptional skills.
The floating of rent controls by Labour is clever (politically, at least).
The number renting their homes has increased by 28% under the Tories (2011 -2021). Housing in our cities is now seen as an asset with which to plunder the earnings of working people. Loads more renters = loads more Labour votes.
There is a lot of virtual signalling on here about bonfire of regulations etc etc. But the ugly fact is that housing has kept up with the population (indeed has grown more quickly), hence the lack of mass homelessness (though that has increased too, from a low base), and increase in second homes and spare bedrooms.
No one is talking about the changed distribution, either with houses left half empty, empty, or rented out either long term or short term. There is no evidence that a private housebuilding surge would create more owners - the evidence from the last decade is it would create more landlords.
I can't see any other option than some sort of regulation that new homes may not be rented out, or a highly punitive tax on landlords.
Rent controls are always a failure in the end. Because they actually make the ultimate problem worse.
No, property hasn’t kept up with population
We have a similar population to France. And 8 million fewer properties.
The rise in rentals is because higher prices put buying beyond many.
If a flat costs £200k, then you need £50k of income to make a pitch to buy. And a 10% deposit is £20k. Good luck saving £20k out of £50k of income while renting.
The problem is insufficient properties of all kinds. The most telling point is that any piece of crap can be sold/rented.
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
Um, the reason why I'm saying that labour is a problem is because i'm currently working at a major UK housebuilder in a position that means I really do hear about issues..
When I say they can't get staff it's because that is what I'm hearing on an hourly basis - and paying more won't solve the issue, the issue is we don't have the skills and we aren't training people up...
I've heard similar - we have an increasing under-employment problem. Put simply, if you have 20 people apply for 5 jobs you have an unemployment problem if 5 people apply for 5 jobs you have full employment, if 1 person applies for 5 jobs you have an under-employment problem.
I'm hearing this is serious in local Government with vacancies running at 20%+ in some areas.
It's not a skills problem - those with the skills have the work, there just aren't enough of them.
All I'm hearing is some who think cajoling the retired and pensioners into work by claiming some sort of civic obligation could be the answer - that's absurd. There is a pool of employees among carers who can only do limited hours but we need companies and organisations to think more flexibly. I'd also look at the unemployment rate among disabled people and ask if there's not more we can do to bring some of those individuals into work.
I'm going to say the same thing here. Employers, including the government, need to be more willing to sponsor the on-the-job training and upskilling of its workforce.
This becoming a more standard way of operating would help improve the productivity of our existing workforce, rather than every Tom, Dick and Harry demanding that they can recruit from overseas if there's a shortage of people fully trained.
Regarding house building and mortgages. It used to be that it had to be of the normal construction - bricks in walls, tiles on roof - more than 30sq metres, not above the xth floor in a block of flats (I think x was 6). But the rules keep changing (somebody said it's now legal to have a bathroom and a kitchen with a shared door, which apart from old houses used to be verboten), or worked around (i think some of the new builds are timber frame with plaster and brick slips over, so they look like brick built?).
But the problem with obvious timber frame builds, SIPS houses (not in Scotland), self-builds, etc is simple: you can't get high street mortgages on them, you have to get specialist mortgages.
The floating of rent controls by Labour is clever (politically, at least).
The number renting their homes has increased by 28% under the Tories (2011 -2021). Housing in our cities is now seen as an asset with which to plunder the earnings of working people. Loads more renters = loads more Labour votes.
There is a lot of virtual signalling on here about bonfire of regulations etc etc. But the ugly fact is that housing has kept up with the population (indeed has grown more quickly), hence the lack of mass homelessness (though that has increased too, from a low base), and increase in second homes and spare bedrooms.
No one is talking about the changed distribution, either with houses left half empty, empty, or rented out either long term or short term. There is no evidence that a private housebuilding surge would create more owners - the evidence from the last decade is it would create more landlords.
I can't see any other option than some sort of regulation that new homes may not be rented out, or a highly punitive tax on landlords.
It might be a good idea to start by working out why those 30 year olds at the margin prefer to rent rather than buy, at prevailing price levels.
The floating of rent controls by Labour is clever (politically, at least).
The number renting their homes has increased by 28% under the Tories (2011 -2021). Housing in our cities is now seen as an asset with which to plunder the earnings of working people. Loads more renters = loads more Labour votes.
There is a lot of virtual signalling on here about bonfire of regulations etc etc. But the ugly fact is that housing has kept up with the population (indeed has grown more quickly), hence the lack of mass homelessness (though that has increased too, from a low base), and increase in second homes and spare bedrooms.
No one is talking about the changed distribution, either with houses left half empty, empty, or rented out either long term or short term. There is no evidence that a private housebuilding surge would create more owners - the evidence from the last decade is it would create more landlords.
I can't see any other option than some sort of regulation that new homes may not be rented out, or a highly punitive tax on landlords.
Politically it's as clever as the tax on private education, i.e. it's red meat for the core vote but the sums don't add up.
Landlordism is an absolute stain on the country and the economy. But the demand elasticity of "a roof over your head" is basically zero, i.e. it will remain unchanged at any price. Unless you can move in with your parents or buy a camper van.
Therefore, in accordance with the laws of supply and demand and all those weird curve things we all drew in a-level economics, landlords get to pass all their costs on to tenants. Or worse, exit the market, thus reducing supply and again raising costs for tenants.
Landlord bashing is easy and popular. Doing something that actually fixes the problem - i.e. finding a way to build more houses - is hard.
Fairly and depressingly obvious which route Labour is going to take, tbh.
Jason Manford, "Keir Starmer, is he as right of a laugh as he seems?" #HIGNFY
Jess Phillips, "He's funnier than Rishi Sunak. He told me to f*ck off the other day"
Jason Manford, "Did he?"
Jess Phillips, "Yeah, because I was showing a level of sympathy for Rishi Sunak. I was like, I am starting to feel a bit sorry for him. And Keir was like: oh f*ck off Jess"
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
Um, the reason why I'm saying that labour is a problem is because i'm currently working at a major UK housebuilder in a position that means I really do hear about issues..
When I say they can't get staff it's because that is what I'm hearing on an hourly basis - and paying more won't solve the issue, the issue is we don't have the skills and we aren't training people up...
I've heard similar - we have an increasing under-employment problem. Put simply, if you have 20 people apply for 5 jobs you have an unemployment problem if 5 people apply for 5 jobs you have full employment, if 1 person applies for 5 jobs you have an under-employment problem.
I'm hearing this is serious in local Government with vacancies running at 20%+ in some areas.
It's not a skills problem - those with the skills have the work, there just aren't enough of them.
All I'm hearing is some who think cajoling the retired and pensioners into work by claiming some sort of civic obligation could be the answer - that's absurd. There is a pool of employees among carers who can only do limited hours but we need companies and organisations to think more flexibly. I'd also look at the unemployment rate among disabled people and ask if there's not more we can do to bring some of those individuals into work.
There is more we can do for disabled, but Government policy is punish and whip, not encourage and facilitate, and makes it much more difficult not easier.
When 40% of disabled adults do not have a driving license, destroying the public transport system, and deliberately making transport modes such as cycling or tricycling difficult or impossible to save thruppence of a litre of petrol for a few weeks, is not going help that goal.
For pensioners / retied we have I think a much higher number in employment than previously and it continues to increase - startlingly. But those are also a huge stock of our volunteer sector who staff things like charity shops, National Trust, food banks and so on - in their millions.
The floating of rent controls by Labour is clever (politically, at least).
The number renting their homes has increased by 28% under the Tories (2011 -2021). Housing in our cities is now seen as an asset with which to plunder the earnings of working people. Loads more renters = loads more Labour votes.
There is a lot of virtual signalling on here about bonfire of regulations etc etc. But the ugly fact is that housing has kept up with the population (indeed has grown more quickly), hence the lack of mass homelessness (though that has increased too, from a low base), and increase in second homes and spare bedrooms.
No one is talking about the changed distribution, either with houses left half empty, empty, or rented out either long term or short term. There is no evidence that a private housebuilding surge would create more owners - the evidence from the last decade is it would create more landlords.
I can't see any other option than some sort of regulation that new homes may not be rented out, or a highly punitive tax on landlords.
Rent controls are always a failure in the end. Because they actually make the ultimate problem worse.
No, property hasn’t kept up with population
We have a similar population to France. And 8 million fewer properties.
The rise in rentals is because higher prices put buying beyond many.
If a flat costs £200k, then you need £50k of income to make a pitch to buy. And a 10% deposit is £20k. Good luck saving £20k out of £50k of income while renting.
The problem is insufficient properties of all kinds. The most telling point is that any piece of crap can be sold/rented.
I agree on rent controls.
But the number of dwellings in E&W increased by 8.2% between 2011 and 2021. Total households increased by 6.1%
More houses might be part of the solution. But it won't work unless you make buying those homes less attractive to potential landlords. The reason my flat was so expensive was that I was constantly being outbid by cash buying landlords.
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
Um, the reason why I'm saying that labour is a problem is because i'm currently working at a major UK housebuilder in a position that means I really do hear about issues..
When I say they can't get staff it's because that is what I'm hearing on an hourly basis - and paying more won't solve the issue, the issue is we don't have the skills and we aren't training people up...
I've heard similar - we have an increasing under-employment problem. Put simply, if you have 20 people apply for 5 jobs you have an unemployment problem if 5 people apply for 5 jobs you have full employment, if 1 person applies for 5 jobs you have an under-employment problem.
I'm hearing this is serious in local Government with vacancies running at 20%+ in some areas.
It's not a skills problem - those with the skills have the work, there just aren't enough of them.
All I'm hearing is some who think cajoling the retired and pensioners into work by claiming some sort of civic obligation could be the answer - that's absurd. There is a pool of employees among carers who can only do limited hours but we need companies and organisations to think more flexibly. I'd also look at the unemployment rate among disabled people and ask if there's not more we can do to bring some of those individuals into work.
I'm going to say the same thing here. Employers, including the government, need to be more willing to sponsor the on-the-job training and upskilling of its workforce.
This becoming a more standard way of operating would help improve the productivity of our existing workforce, rather than every Tom, Dick and Harry demanding that they can recruit from overseas if there's a shortage of people fully trained.
But investment in operations is Evul!
Plus the workforce in the building trade has been badly treated for many years.
Getting them to pay for courses won’t work. And the usual scumbags have already turned the loans-for-training-paid-off-by-working into scams.
Since no one is directly employed and you can’t tie people to an employer in return for training, anyway, how should the training be structured?
I think it has to be tackled from the quality of provision side.
I find it very bizarre how Sunak ended up in politics. He’s a young guy who has made a fortune, he’s married extremely well, he’s ridiculously well educated. He could have skipped politics and possibly had more influence on the world than being UKPM.
He’s, purely on an insider view, the sort of wykehamist who was ragged at school mercilessly, shiort for sports maths geek, would have likely never played major team sports, not a Royal Marine CCF chap but done RAF geekery, a bit of a nice meh person who must have been a genuinely caring person to be made his Head of House - because he couldn’t have been joint head boy otherwise - because you had to be a bastard like I was to be a Co Prae or just seriously great. I’d been done at school for drugs and girls in rooms and so - unless Rishi is a dark horse - he’s a really caring, nice, intelligent, cooperative, organised chap.
He’s not ideological because most ideological Wykehamists are left wing so I would love to talk to him to understand what he wanted to do with being PM.
I find it very bizarre how Sunak ended up in politics. He’s a young guy who has made a fortune, he’s married extremely well, he’s ridiculously well educated. He could have skipped politics and possibly had more influence on the world than being UKPM.
He’s, purely on an insider view, the sort of wykehamist who was ragged at school mercilessly, shiort for sports maths geek, would have likely never played major team sports, not a Royal Marine CCF chap but done RAF geekery, a bit of a nice meh person who must have been a genuinely caring person to be made his Head of House - because he couldn’t have been joint head boy otherwise - because you had to be a bastard like I was to be a Co Prae or just seriously great. I’d been done at school for drugs and girls in rooms and so - unless Rishi is a dark horse - he’s a really caring, nice, intelligent, cooperative, organised chap.
He’s not ideological because most ideological Wykehamists are left wing so I would love to talk to him to understand what he wanted to do with being PM.
Maybe he just continually makes epically bad decisions?
It’s really quite weird, in the way where you realise you haven’t done all in life you could do, so when he was in his first year at school in the spring term he would have been taught Winchester Football. It was a grim compulsory thing on a Wednesday afternoon and unfortunately he was in the other half of school so I didn’t get to mold him into being a fine man like myself. I can see him though, tiny little scared chap being brutalised weekly and knowing that maths and hard work was the future rather than being a boozy complicated person on PB. He’s everyone from school I thought would be - lawyer/city not army, politics. I would just love to know what made him decide, I’m going for this. There are so many people I knew who would have been better PMs, more charismatic than him but equally intelligent. Alex Chalk, the soon to be lost Simon Boas who should have been PM.
Sorry but Simon’s articles on his upcoming death, google them, are fantastic.
Are you sure Sunak was C ladder? I'd have guessed B.
-1 for "mold", a foreign spelling. But saying "the other half of school" is worse. That's the other half of the 1860s+ part, the commoner part.
(Note for the uninitiated: Winchester Football is all about the conversion of behinds.)
Did you get firked for the drugs? Or stripped of Co Praeship, or what?
Certainly true that Sunak would not have been appointed Sen Co Prae without being generally viewed as a nice guy. Those who think it would have been because he was super-strong academically or in sports don't have a clue.
Regarding house building and mortgages. It used to be that it had to be of the normal construction - bricks in walls, tiles on roof - more than 30sq metres, not above the xth floor in a block of flats (I think x was 6). But the rules keep changing (somebody said it's now legal to have a bathroom and a kitchen with a shared door, which apart from old houses used to be verboten), or worked around (i think some of the new builds are timber frame with plaster and brick slips over, so they look like brick built?).
But the problem with obvious timber frame builds, SIPS houses (not in Scotland), self-builds, etc is simple: you can't get high street mortgages on them, you have to get specialist mortgages.
Nothing wrong with properly built timber frame houses.
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
Um, the reason why I'm saying that labour is a problem is because i'm currently working at a major UK housebuilder in a position that means I really do hear about issues..
When I say they can't get staff it's because that is what I'm hearing on an hourly basis - and paying more won't solve the issue, the issue is we don't have the skills and we aren't training people up...
I've heard similar - we have an increasing under-employment problem. Put simply, if you have 20 people apply for 5 jobs you have an unemployment problem if 5 people apply for 5 jobs you have full employment, if 1 person applies for 5 jobs you have an under-employment problem.
I'm hearing this is serious in local Government with vacancies running at 20%+ in some areas.
It's not a skills problem - those with the skills have the work, there just aren't enough of them.
All I'm hearing is some who think cajoling the retired and pensioners into work by claiming some sort of civic obligation could be the answer - that's absurd. There is a pool of employees among carers who can only do limited hours but we need companies and organisations to think more flexibly. I'd also look at the unemployment rate among disabled people and ask if there's not more we can do to bring some of those individuals into work.
I'm going to say the same thing here. Employers, including the government, need to be more willing to sponsor the on-the-job training and upskilling of its workforce.
This becoming a more standard way of operating would help improve the productivity of our existing workforce, rather than every Tom, Dick and Harry demanding that they can recruit from overseas if there's a shortage of people fully trained.
But investment in operations is Evul!
Plus the workforce in the building trade has been badly treated for many years.
Getting them to pay for courses won’t work. And the usual scumbags have already turned the loans-for-training-paid-off-by-working into scams.
Since no one is directly employed and you can’t tie people to an employer in return for training, anyway, how should the training be structured?
I think it has to be tackled from the quality of provision side.
I'm not an expert on the sector, but if
1) There's planning reform and investment to facilitate a bit increase in housebuilding opportunities over the long-term
2) There's the ability for homebuilders make an increase in profits by increasing the number of homes they build
... Then there must be a way to get homebuilders to train more people to do the work. If there's not, it's a sign of market failure and the government should either reform whatever labour market arbitrage is holding it back, or create a government-backed competitor that does the job for them to add to competition.
The floating of rent controls by Labour is clever (politically, at least).
The number renting their homes has increased by 28% under the Tories (2011 -2021). Housing in our cities is now seen as an asset with which to plunder the earnings of working people. Loads more renters = loads more Labour votes.
There is a lot of virtual signalling on here about bonfire of regulations etc etc. But the ugly fact is that housing has kept up with the population (indeed has grown more quickly), hence the lack of mass homelessness (though that has increased too, from a low base), and increase in second homes and spare bedrooms.
No one is talking about the changed distribution, either with houses left half empty, empty, or rented out either long term or short term. There is no evidence that a private housebuilding surge would create more owners - the evidence from the last decade is it would create more landlords.
I can't see any other option than some sort of regulation that new homes may not be rented out, or a highly punitive tax on landlords.
Rent controls are always a failure in the end. Because they actually make the ultimate problem worse.
No, property hasn’t kept up with population
We have a similar population to France. And 8 million fewer properties.
The rise in rentals is because higher prices put buying beyond many.
If a flat costs £200k, then you need £50k of income to make a pitch to buy. And a 10% deposit is £20k. Good luck saving £20k out of £50k of income while renting.
The problem is insufficient properties of all kinds. The most telling point is that any piece of crap can be sold/rented.
I agree on rent controls.
But the number of dwellings in E&W increased by 8.2% between 2011 and 2021. Total households increased by 6.1%
More houses might be part of the solution. But it won't work unless you make buying those homes less attractive to potential landlords. The reason my flat was so expensive was that I was constantly being outbid by cash buying landlords.
The back log is vast. Also “households” is a game - see the chronic issue of MHO. Often illegally but ignored. It is quite standard for builders to put serious locks on every bedroom door in new builds.
The reason that properties are attractive to landlords is quite simple. People who can’t get a mortgage can pay higher rent.
So, due to the shortage (99%+ occupancy) of housing puts prices up beyond the ability of many to buy. You can’t get a loan of 10x income.
But they can still stretch to vast rents.
So the landlord (increasingly companies) can buy on the basis of probable return.
If the terms on which banks can lend are relaxed - say high to 2008.
The floating of rent controls by Labour is clever (politically, at least).
The number renting their homes has increased by 28% under the Tories (2011 -2021). Housing in our cities is now seen as an asset with which to plunder the earnings of working people. Loads more renters = loads more Labour votes.
There is a lot of virtual signalling on here about bonfire of regulations etc etc. But the ugly fact is that housing has kept up with the population (indeed has grown more quickly), hence the lack of mass homelessness (though that has increased too, from a low base), and increase in second homes and spare bedrooms.
No one is talking about the changed distribution, either with houses left half empty, empty, or rented out either long term or short term. There is no evidence that a private housebuilding surge would create more owners - the evidence from the last decade is it would create more landlords.
I can't see any other option than some sort of regulation that new homes may not be rented out, or a highly punitive tax on landlords.
Rent controls are always a failure in the end. Because they actually make the ultimate problem worse.
No, property hasn’t kept up with population
We have a similar population to France. And 8 million fewer properties.
The rise in rentals is because higher prices put buying beyond many.
If a flat costs £200k, then you need £50k of income to make a pitch to buy. And a 10% deposit is £20k. Good luck saving £20k out of £50k of income while renting.
The problem is insufficient properties of all kinds. The most telling point is that any piece of crap can be sold/rented.
I agree on rent controls.
But the number of dwellings in E&W increased by 8.2% between 2011 and 2021. Total households increased by 6.1%
More houses might be part of the solution. But it won't work unless you make buying those homes less attractive to potential landlords. The reason my flat was so expensive was that I was constantly being outbid by cash buying landlords.
The back log is vast. Also “households” is a game - see the chronic issue of MHO. Often illegally but ignored. It is quite standard for builders to put serious locks on every bedroom door in new builds.
The reason that properties are attractive to landlords is quite simple. People who can’t get a mortgage can pay higher rent.
So, due to the shortage (99%+ occupancy) of housing puts prices up beyond the ability of many to buy. You can’t get a loan of 10x income.
But they can still stretch to vast rents.
So the landlord (increasingly companies) can buy on the basis of probable return.
If the terms on which banks can lend are relaxed - say high to 2008.
You can get a different job in a different area to bring that income multiple down - and eventually, most people in the hottest housing markets like central London end up doing so. But they rent for longer than their predecessors did, presumably because the hottest rental markets offer much better labour market conditions - or much better dating market conditions.
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
Um, the reason why I'm saying that labour is a problem is because i'm currently working at a major UK housebuilder in a position that means I really do hear about issues..
When I say they can't get staff it's because that is what I'm hearing on an hourly basis - and paying more won't solve the issue, the issue is we don't have the skills and we aren't training people up...
I've heard similar - we have an increasing under-employment problem. Put simply, if you have 20 people apply for 5 jobs you have an unemployment problem if 5 people apply for 5 jobs you have full employment, if 1 person applies for 5 jobs you have an under-employment problem.
I'm hearing this is serious in local Government with vacancies running at 20%+ in some areas.
It's not a skills problem - those with the skills have the work, there just aren't enough of them.
All I'm hearing is some who think cajoling the retired and pensioners into work by claiming some sort of civic obligation could be the answer - that's absurd. There is a pool of employees among carers who can only do limited hours but we need companies and organisations to think more flexibly. I'd also look at the unemployment rate among disabled people and ask if there's not more we can do to bring some of those individuals into work.
I'm going to say the same thing here. Employers, including the government, need to be more willing to sponsor the on-the-job training and upskilling of its workforce.
This becoming a more standard way of operating would help improve the productivity of our existing workforce, rather than every Tom, Dick and Harry demanding that they can recruit from overseas if there's a shortage of people fully trained.
But investment in operations is Evul!
Plus the workforce in the building trade has been badly treated for many years.
Getting them to pay for courses won’t work. And the usual scumbags have already turned the loans-for-training-paid-off-by-working into scams.
Since no one is directly employed and you can’t tie people to an employer in return for training, anyway, how should the training be structured?
I think it has to be tackled from the quality of provision side.
It's likely that everyone is acting rationally under the current environment, so the trick is to change the environment so that medium term healthier behaviours are rational.
Suspect the weak link is that nobody is directly employed, so there's not much incentive for firms to treat employees well or develop them.
And that makes sense right now because the pipeline of future work is so slow and spurty. If you want companies to take staff on long term, they need to be confident that they'll have work for them to do next year and the one after that.
Free market houses don't provide that, because it makes sense to dribble the houses out onto the market. Which can't be the best use of labour.
If someone (maybe the Duke of Cornwall, maybe councils) said to builders "just build them and keep going, we'll worry about getting them occupied", it feels like that would lead to non-trivial efficiency gains. Plus a lot of the "where are the facilities" questions become a lot easier.
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
Um, the reason why I'm saying that labour is a problem is because i'm currently working at a major UK housebuilder in a position that means I really do hear about issues..
When I say they can't get staff it's because that is what I'm hearing on an hourly basis - and paying more won't solve the issue, the issue is we don't have the skills and we aren't training people up...
I've heard similar - we have an increasing under-employment problem. Put simply, if you have 20 people apply for 5 jobs you have an unemployment problem if 5 people apply for 5 jobs you have full employment, if 1 person applies for 5 jobs you have an under-employment problem.
I'm hearing this is serious in local Government with vacancies running at 20%+ in some areas.
It's not a skills problem - those with the skills have the work, there just aren't enough of them.
All I'm hearing is some who think cajoling the retired and pensioners into work by claiming some sort of civic obligation could be the answer - that's absurd. There is a pool of employees among carers who can only do limited hours but we need companies and organisations to think more flexibly. I'd also look at the unemployment rate among disabled people and ask if there's not more we can do to bring some of those individuals into work.
I'm going to say the same thing here. Employers, including the government, need to be more willing to sponsor the on-the-job training and upskilling of its workforce.
This becoming a more standard way of operating would help improve the productivity of our existing workforce, rather than every Tom, Dick and Harry demanding that they can recruit from overseas if there's a shortage of people fully trained.
But investment in operations is Evul!
Plus the workforce in the building trade has been badly treated for many years.
Getting them to pay for courses won’t work. And the usual scumbags have already turned the loans-for-training-paid-off-by-working into scams.
Since no one is directly employed and you can’t tie people to an employer in return for training, anyway, how should the training be structured?
I think it has to be tackled from the quality of provision side.
I'm not an expert on the sector, but if
1) There's planning reform and investment to facilitate a bit increase in housebuilding opportunities over the long-term
2) There's the ability for homebuilders make an increase in profits by increasing the number of homes they build
... Then there must be a way to get homebuilders to train more people to do the work. If there's not, it's a sign of market failure and the government should either reform whatever labour market arbitrage is holding it back, or create a government-backed competitor that does the job for them to add to competition.
The entire economy has been trained to believe in a right to cheap, ready trained workers.
There are businesses betting that Labour will open the taps, and get rates for skilled workers back down to minimum wage.
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
Um, the reason why I'm saying that labour is a problem is because i'm currently working at a major UK housebuilder in a position that means I really do hear about issues..
When I say they can't get staff it's because that is what I'm hearing on an hourly basis - and paying more won't solve the issue, the issue is we don't have the skills and we aren't training people up...
I've heard similar - we have an increasing under-employment problem. Put simply, if you have 20 people apply for 5 jobs you have an unemployment problem if 5 people apply for 5 jobs you have full employment, if 1 person applies for 5 jobs you have an under-employment problem.
I'm hearing this is serious in local Government with vacancies running at 20%+ in some areas.
It's not a skills problem - those with the skills have the work, there just aren't enough of them.
All I'm hearing is some who think cajoling the retired and pensioners into work by claiming some sort of civic obligation could be the answer - that's absurd. There is a pool of employees among carers who can only do limited hours but we need companies and organisations to think more flexibly. I'd also look at the unemployment rate among disabled people and ask if there's not more we can do to bring some of those individuals into work.
I'm going to say the same thing here. Employers, including the government, need to be more willing to sponsor the on-the-job training and upskilling of its workforce.
This becoming a more standard way of operating would help improve the productivity of our existing workforce, rather than every Tom, Dick and Harry demanding that they can recruit from overseas if there's a shortage of people fully trained.
But investment in operations is Evul!
Plus the workforce in the building trade has been badly treated for many years.
Getting them to pay for courses won’t work. And the usual scumbags have already turned the loans-for-training-paid-off-by-working into scams.
Since no one is directly employed and you can’t tie people to an employer in return for training, anyway, how should the training be structured?
I think it has to be tackled from the quality of provision side.
I'm not an expert on the sector, but if
1) There's planning reform and investment to facilitate a bit increase in housebuilding opportunities over the long-term
2) There's the ability for homebuilders make an increase in profits by increasing the number of homes they build
... Then there must be a way to get homebuilders to train more people to do the work. If there's not, it's a sign of market failure and the government should either reform whatever labour market arbitrage is holding it back, or create a government-backed competitor that does the job for them to add to competition.
The entire economy has been trained to believe in a right to cheap, ready trained workers.
There are businesses betting that Labour will open the taps, and get rates for skilled workers back down to minimum wage.
The floating of rent controls by Labour is clever (politically, at least).
The number renting their homes has increased by 28% under the Tories (2011 -2021). Housing in our cities is now seen as an asset with which to plunder the earnings of working people. Loads more renters = loads more Labour votes.
There is a lot of virtual signalling on here about bonfire of regulations etc etc. But the ugly fact is that housing has kept up with the population (indeed has grown more quickly), hence the lack of mass homelessness (though that has increased too, from a low base), and increase in second homes and spare bedrooms.
No one is talking about the changed distribution, either with houses left half empty, empty, or rented out either long term or short term. There is no evidence that a private housebuilding surge would create more owners - the evidence from the last decade is it would create more landlords.
I can't see any other option than some sort of regulation that new homes may not be rented out, or a highly punitive tax on landlords.
Problem with a punitive tax on landlords is how do you implement it in a way that doesn't get passed on to tenants.
And solar will be looking pretty grim by midnight.
Why the sarcastic reply?
Coz I think solar is a waste of time in the UK.
I was not intending anything against you, so apologies if it came across that way.
5% of our total generation last year, so it's some way from irrelevant.
It must have the worst return on energy generated per billion spent.
Remember when you and I were virtually the only people on PB willing to say “er, it quite likely came from the lab? The bat virus lab just down the road from the bat virus outbreak?”
Now read this:
“EcoHealth Alliance and Dr. Peter Daszak should never again receive a single penny from the U.S. taxpayer. Only two weeks after the Select Subcommittee released an extensive report detailing EcoHealth’s wrongdoing and recommending the formal debarment of EcoHealth and its president, HHS has begun efforts to cut off all U.S. funding to this corrupt organization. EcoHealth facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China without proper oversight, willingly violated multiple requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health grant, and apparently made false statements to the NIH. These actions are wholly abhorrent, indefensible, and must be addressed with swift action. EcoHealth’s immediate funding suspension and future debarment is not only a victory for the U.S. taxpayer, but also for American national security and the safety of citizens worldwide" - Chairman Wenstrup, Committee on Oversight and Accountability - COVID-19.
Indeed. Yet there's still some die hards even on here who want to cling to the idea that they weren't being lied to by the "good" side and the "bad" team were right about it all.
We had a uni mates reunion a couple of weekends ago that I was graciously allowed to attend for a few hours by my wife juggling a relative newborn and a toddler. The subject came up (unsurprising given that we all studied chemistry, biochemistry and/or medicine) and the consensus around the room was unanimous that it was a lab leak and that it was likely covered up by the Americans because senior people in their health regulatory infrastructure were implicated. They all work in research and know how easy it is for political pressure to change decisions by journals.
Quite so, quite so. And for a long time it was just you and me willing to say this on PB. And sometimes @Gardenwalker as well
Pitiful
Anyway we now need a reckoning. Science itself needs to be severely scrutinised - from the labs to the journals
Yes agreed, the corruption of science by political operators in healthcare regulation was awful and there does now need to be some measures put in place to insulate science from politicians who were more worried about their dirty dealings with WIV than stopping the virus from spreading.
Wenstrup believes Trump won the 2020 election.
It’s a bipartisan committee investigating Covid origins. Equal Dems and Reps. See here
And this is their conclusion on Ecohealth, who ran the gain of function bat coronovirus virology for Fauci at Wuhan
🚨BREAKING🚨
Today, based on evidence uncovered in @COVIDSelect's recent report, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services commenced formal debarment proceedings against EcoHealth Alliance.
EcoHealth will now face an immediate, government-wide suspension of taxpayer funds — including a hold on all active grants.
Its over. All the years of lies and gaslighting are over. It’s done
No doubt we’ll never get the full facts, given it happened in China, but at least the ridiculous taboo on Lab leak is now lifted.
What taboo? People have been going on about the “Lab leak” for years!
It’s a majority Republican committee, with one its members being Marjorie Taylor Greene, so I could barely rustle up the interest to look at what they said. But I did, and what they said doesn’t remotely prove there was a lab leak. It’s half a dozen steps from proving anything. It’s like when SeanT kept telling us how some US Committee proved UFOs exist: excitable nonsense.
Everything else we know — where the first cases were, the genetic variation in the early cases, the environmental samples from the wet market, etc. — all demonstrate that this was a zoonotic event, like every other pandemic.
Hang on.
The first cases happened to be in the same city where there just happened to be the world's number one bat virus research facility.
That's a hell of a coincidence. Not impossible, sure. But a hell of a coincidence.
We've discussed this before. China set up a large number of "bat virus research facilities", i.e. coronavirus research labs, after SARS. Many Chinese cities have one. Wuhan is one of the more significant ones, but there are plenty of them.
Zhiming (2019): "As of December 31st 2013, 53 BSLs, including 42 BSL-3s, had been fully accredited in China and more laboratories have completed the accreditation in recent years. In addition, more than 1000 BSL-2 labs are currently being operated in universities, research institutions, hospitals and R&D entrepreneurship centers."
We know what viruses were bring studied in the Wuhan lab. None of them can be the ancestor to SARS-CoV-2.
Wuhan is a big city. The outbreak began with cases clustered around the wet market and were nowhere near the lab. Wet markets are exactly were it's been predicted a new pandemic would pop up.
The early viral diversity isn't consistent with a lab leak, but is consistent with a pool of infected animals in a market.
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
Um, the reason why I'm saying that labour is a problem is because i'm currently working at a major UK housebuilder in a position that means I really do hear about issues..
When I say they can't get staff it's because that is what I'm hearing on an hourly basis - and paying more won't solve the issue, the issue is we don't have the skills and we aren't training people up...
I've heard similar - we have an increasing under-employment problem. Put simply, if you have 20 people apply for 5 jobs you have an unemployment problem if 5 people apply for 5 jobs you have full employment, if 1 person applies for 5 jobs you have an under-employment problem.
I'm hearing this is serious in local Government with vacancies running at 20%+ in some areas.
It's not a skills problem - those with the skills have the work, there just aren't enough of them.
All I'm hearing is some who think cajoling the retired and pensioners into work by claiming some sort of civic obligation could be the answer - that's absurd. There is a pool of employees among carers who can only do limited hours but we need companies and organisations to think more flexibly. I'd also look at the unemployment rate among disabled people and ask if there's not more we can do to bring some of those individuals into work.
I'm going to say the same thing here. Employers, including the government, need to be more willing to sponsor the on-the-job training and upskilling of its workforce.
This becoming a more standard way of operating would help improve the productivity of our existing workforce, rather than every Tom, Dick and Harry demanding that they can recruit from overseas if there's a shortage of people fully trained.
But investment in operations is Evul!
Plus the workforce in the building trade has been badly treated for many years.
Getting them to pay for courses won’t work. And the usual scumbags have already turned the loans-for-training-paid-off-by-working into scams.
Since no one is directly employed and you can’t tie people to an employer in return for training, anyway, how should the training be structured?
I think it has to be tackled from the quality of provision side.
I'm not an expert on the sector, but if
1) There's planning reform and investment to facilitate a bit increase in housebuilding opportunities over the long-term
2) There's the ability for homebuilders make an increase in profits by increasing the number of homes they build
... Then there must be a way to get homebuilders to train more people to do the work. If there's not, it's a sign of market failure and the government should either reform whatever labour market arbitrage is holding it back, or create a government-backed competitor that does the job for them to add to competition.
The entire economy has been trained to believe in a right to cheap, ready trained workers.
There are businesses betting that Labour will open the taps, and get rates for skilled workers back down to minimum wage.
That’s the mentality.
It's not going to happen - I've had 2 conversations with Labour on a niche labour issue (a sideline project where strangely I'm regarded as an expert) and in both cases they have been ahead of me on the points I wanted to make...
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
Um, the reason why I'm saying that labour is a problem is because i'm currently working at a major UK housebuilder in a position that means I really do hear about issues..
When I say they can't get staff it's because that is what I'm hearing on an hourly basis - and paying more won't solve the issue, the issue is we don't have the skills and we aren't training people up...
I've heard similar - we have an increasing under-employment problem. Put simply, if you have 20 people apply for 5 jobs you have an unemployment problem if 5 people apply for 5 jobs you have full employment, if 1 person applies for 5 jobs you have an under-employment problem.
I'm hearing this is serious in local Government with vacancies running at 20%+ in some areas.
It's not a skills problem - those with the skills have the work, there just aren't enough of them.
All I'm hearing is some who think cajoling the retired and pensioners into work by claiming some sort of civic obligation could be the answer - that's absurd. There is a pool of employees among carers who can only do limited hours but we need companies and organisations to think more flexibly. I'd also look at the unemployment rate among disabled people and ask if there's not more we can do to bring some of those individuals into work.
I'm going to say the same thing here. Employers, including the government, need to be more willing to sponsor the on-the-job training and upskilling of its workforce.
This becoming a more standard way of operating would help improve the productivity of our existing workforce, rather than every Tom, Dick and Harry demanding that they can recruit from overseas if there's a shortage of people fully trained.
But investment in operations is Evul!
Plus the workforce in the building trade has been badly treated for many years.
Getting them to pay for courses won’t work. And the usual scumbags have already turned the loans-for-training-paid-off-by-working into scams.
Since no one is directly employed and you can’t tie people to an employer in return for training, anyway, how should the training be structured?
I think it has to be tackled from the quality of provision side.
I'm not an expert on the sector, but if
1) There's planning reform and investment to facilitate a bit increase in housebuilding opportunities over the long-term
2) There's the ability for homebuilders make an increase in profits by increasing the number of homes they build
... Then there must be a way to get homebuilders to train more people to do the work. If there's not, it's a sign of market failure and the government should either reform whatever labour market arbitrage is holding it back, or create a government-backed competitor that does the job for them to add to competition.
The entire economy has been trained to believe in a right to cheap, ready trained workers.
There are businesses betting that Labour will open the taps, and get rates for skilled workers back down to minimum wage.
That’s the mentality.
I agree. But Labour should resist. Improve the skills of the existing workforce. Support labour (small l). It can be one of Keir's many missions.
Migration will remain important, but it currently feels like it's a opioid on which many sectors of the economy are addicted. It is preventing us from being as productive or as rich a society as we would be if we invested in ourselves.
If you think the Tories are having a bad time spare a thought for the IDF. They're saying they've run out of Palestinians to shoot so they're turning on their own men.
Yes, it’s hilarious that a few young men have been killed by accident. As were British men, French men, Americans, pretty much everyone in war killed by their own side. I won’t ever know if my great uncle was shot down and killed by his own side in North Africa, frankly it doesn’t matter as it was all shit, but it’s an absolute blinder of a card to play for “my side v your side”. How Saddam’s supporters laughed at the UK/US blue on blue deaths.
This isn't a war.
It's a Genocide
“Hey guys, I’ve got a great idea, let’s go and kill loads of our neighbours in a really really horrific way. What could go wrong?”
Cue, everything going wrong.
“ oh that’s not fair”
You fucking idiot.
Proportionate response is acceptable a Genocide and bombing of civilians infrastructure is not.
I believe you are the aforesaid fucking idiot if you think 35000 civilians are Hamas
No, I’m just an admittedly horrible person who thinks that if you punch me in the face I will punch you many times, smash your wind pipe and smash your bollocks so you never reproduce. Everyone knows Israel are terrible like I am and yet they started the fight. What did they think the response would be?
No you are responding to my punching you in the face by shooting my whole extended family and carpet bombing the whole population of Chesterfield whilst turning off water and stopping food from entering Derbyshire just in case you missed anyone. You will especially target women and children because that is how bad Genocide supporters are. You caught me by surprise I expected to be punished but couldn't have forseen you were a genocidal maniac.
BTW you know you are one of the last few brainwashed don't you. Only 10% are in your category 58% and rising in mine (and that was a month ago will have risen further still now
I’m looking forward to being the 1/10 who didn’t want to support lunatics who hate Jews, gays, people who don’t follow an ideology. The funniest thing is that under the regime of those you support you would probably be a second class citizen at best or up against a wall at worst. You are supposedly a left wing, supporting everyone, minorities, the works but you support a regime that fucking hates all you stand for. Freedom for women, minorities, sexuality. You cannot see that the world you want is made worse by these fuckers and until everyone learns that they are not acting in your best interests they will be there terrifying you into electing them. As a left winger stand up and demand Hamas and all their ilk fuck off. Otherwise you are just a useful idiot.
How many of these dead women and children are "these fucker" or are all Muslims categorised by you in that manner. Islamophbia I think is the name for that.
It’s not remotely “islamaphobia” - Islam is a fine religion but as flawed as Christianity or any other religion. Hamas isn’t about Islam in its Koranic sense - it’s about control and a bunch of small dicked men who cannot handle women being free, men loving men, and power and money. Get me a secular gov in Gaza and I will die in a ditch against Israel suppressing it but you absolutely know that Hamas hate everything you stand for.
One of the Palestinian groups that took part in the October 7th attack is secularist: the PFLP. It doesn't doesn't recognise the legitimacy of either the Fatah government in the West Bank archipelago or the Hamas one in Gaza.
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
Um, the reason why I'm saying that labour is a problem is because i'm currently working at a major UK housebuilder in a position that means I really do hear about issues..
When I say they can't get staff it's because that is what I'm hearing on an hourly basis - and paying more won't solve the issue, the issue is we don't have the skills and we aren't training people up...
I've heard similar - we have an increasing under-employment problem. Put simply, if you have 20 people apply for 5 jobs you have an unemployment problem if 5 people apply for 5 jobs you have full employment, if 1 person applies for 5 jobs you have an under-employment problem.
I'm hearing this is serious in local Government with vacancies running at 20%+ in some areas.
It's not a skills problem - those with the skills have the work, there just aren't enough of them.
All I'm hearing is some who think cajoling the retired and pensioners into work by claiming some sort of civic obligation could be the answer - that's absurd. There is a pool of employees among carers who can only do limited hours but we need companies and organisations to think more flexibly. I'd also look at the unemployment rate among disabled people and ask if there's not more we can do to bring some of those individuals into work.
I'm going to say the same thing here. Employers, including the government, need to be more willing to sponsor the on-the-job training and upskilling of its workforce.
This becoming a more standard way of operating would help improve the productivity of our existing workforce, rather than every Tom, Dick and Harry demanding that they can recruit from overseas if there's a shortage of people fully trained.
But investment in operations is Evul!
Plus the workforce in the building trade has been badly treated for many years.
Getting them to pay for courses won’t work. And the usual scumbags have already turned the loans-for-training-paid-off-by-working into scams.
Since no one is directly employed and you can’t tie people to an employer in return for training, anyway, how should the training be structured?
I think it has to be tackled from the quality of provision side.
I'm not an expert on the sector, but if
1) There's planning reform and investment to facilitate a bit increase in housebuilding opportunities over the long-term
2) There's the ability for homebuilders make an increase in profits by increasing the number of homes they build
... Then there must be a way to get homebuilders to train more people to do the work. If there's not, it's a sign of market failure and the government should either reform whatever labour market arbitrage is holding it back, or create a government-backed competitor that does the job for them to add to competition.
The entire economy has been trained to believe in a right to cheap, ready trained workers.
There are businesses betting that Labour will open the taps, and get rates for skilled workers back down to minimum wage.
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
While I completely agree that we should loosen up planning, I think you do need to accept that Japanese* homes are almost entirely made of wood, have limited lives, and are much quicker/cheaper to build.
So, I don't think you can simply extrapolate the number of Japanese housing starts to the UK.
* Like American ones
Get rid of the planning premium on land and people can quicker throw up wooden homes here too. Cheaper land and cheaper build, win/win.
Not a bad idea.
However, there are consequences.
For a start, the UK doesn't have much of the rapid growing wood that is used to build homes. So, we'll be importing. Not the end of the world, obviously. But it will have an impact.
Secondly, wood houses don't last as long. That means that banks will almost certainly lend at lower LTVs because the whole property will need to be replaced every 25 years or so.
Thirdly, labour does come into it somewhat. Our entire building trade is setup around brick houses.
None of these are deal breakers, obviously. And labour shortages naturally sort themselves out. Together, though, they would limit the supply of new wooden houses somewhat.
Still, not a good reason not to allow them.
(We would need to change some of the regulation, I suspect, around insulation. Because wooden houses probably aren't as well insulated. So there's probably a little hidden cost around additional energy usage too.)
1 - Rent caps fuck tenants, not landlords, who they drive away. The current generation *may* benefit for a time, but all future tenants are fucked by the resulting wrecked renting and investing market. It's the sort of shoot-yourself-in-the-head thing I hope Labour will not do.
And, speaking from my background in Timber Industry Statistics
2 - I don't know where these statements about UK timber come from, but they are off. The best stats sources are TRADA, the Timber Trade Federation, and the Forestry Commission.
a - Wooden houses (timber frame etc) have a large newbuild market share - 80%+ in Scotland is the highest, 25% overall. Most of that is offsite construction, which arrives as panels such as SIPs on the back of a lorry.
If we need to flex the output, we can fairly easily. Off site house manufacture has been significant for 30 or more years. Somewhere down @Foxy 's way there's a house factory with a capacity to make 8k houses a year iirc, for example.
b - The standard life expectancy of TF in the UK is 60 years, like all the other construction methods. Usonians build their temporary houses comparatively out of glue and balsawood, which is where the 25 year number may come from.
We won't be building inhabited sheds here, because we have good regulations about quality, performance etc - though enforcement is an issue sometimes.
c - Mortgages for recognised construction method timber houses are not an issue in the UK.
All the base research work for that was done in the 1990s.
d - We have a lot of fast growing softwood. UK roundwood production is around 10 million tons a year - not that much by USA / Canada standards. but a big chunk of our market covering both softwood and hardwood. Beyond that we import from Scandinavia, Baltics and formerly Russia.
d - If we need to import more timber, I see no reason why we cannot do so. Assuming we face down Mad Vlad and do not get a general war.
One of the most interesting companies I ever visited was a JIT timber importer / distributor called Crown Timber (now Sodra Wood) based in Cirencester - amazing supply chain IT.
If you think the Tories are having a bad time spare a thought for the IDF. They're saying they've run out of Palestinians to shoot so they're turning on their own men.
Yes, it’s hilarious that a few young men have been killed by accident. As were British men, French men, Americans, pretty much everyone in war killed by their own side. I won’t ever know if my great uncle was shot down and killed by his own side in North Africa, frankly it doesn’t matter as it was all shit, but it’s an absolute blinder of a card to play for “my side v your side”. How Saddam’s supporters laughed at the UK/US blue on blue deaths.
This isn't a war.
It's a Genocide
“Hey guys, I’ve got a great idea, let’s go and kill loads of our neighbours in a really really horrific way. What could go wrong?”
Cue, everything going wrong.
“ oh that’s not fair”
You fucking idiot.
Proportionate response is acceptable a Genocide and bombing of civilians infrastructure is not.
I believe you are the aforesaid fucking idiot if you think 35000 civilians are Hamas
No, I’m just an admittedly horrible person who thinks that if you punch me in the face I will punch you many times, smash your wind pipe and smash your bollocks so you never reproduce. Everyone knows Israel are terrible like I am and yet they started the fight. What did they think the response would be?
No you are responding to my punching you in the face by shooting my whole extended family and carpet bombing the whole population of Chesterfield whilst turning off water and stopping food from entering Derbyshire just in case you missed anyone. You will especially target women and children because that is how bad Genocide supporters are. You caught me by surprise I expected to be punished but couldn't have forseen you were a genocidal maniac.
BTW you know you are one of the last few brainwashed don't you. Only 10% are in your category 58% and rising in mine (and that was a month ago will have risen further still now
I’m looking forward to being the 1/10 who didn’t want to support lunatics who hate Jews, gays, people who don’t follow an ideology. The funniest thing is that under the regime of those you support you would probably be a second class citizen at best or up against a wall at worst. You are supposedly a left wing, supporting everyone, minorities, the works but you support a regime that fucking hates all you stand for. Freedom for women, minorities, sexuality. You cannot see that the world you want is made worse by these fuckers and until everyone learns that they are not acting in your best interests they will be there terrifying you into electing them. As a left winger stand up and demand Hamas and all their ilk fuck off. Otherwise you are just a useful idiot.
How many of these dead women and children are "these fucker" or are all Muslims categorised by you in that manner. Islamophbia I think is the name for that.
It’s not remotely “islamaphobia” - Islam is a fine religion but as flawed as Christianity or any other religion. Hamas isn’t about Islam in its Koranic sense - it’s about control and a bunch of small dicked men who cannot handle women being free, men loving men, and power and money. Get me a secular gov in Gaza and I will die in a ditch against Israel suppressing it but you absolutely know that Hamas hate everything you stand for.
One of the Palestinian groups that took part in the October 7th attack is secularist: the PFLP. It doesn't doesn't recognise the legitimacy of either the Fatah government in the West Bank archipelago or the Hamas one in Gaza.
Alongside the PFLP, there's the DFLP as well. No Popular Front for the Liberation of Judea, though!
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
Um, the reason why I'm saying that labour is a problem is because i'm currently working at a major UK housebuilder in a position that means I really do hear about issues..
When I say they can't get staff it's because that is what I'm hearing on an hourly basis - and paying more won't solve the issue, the issue is we don't have the skills and we aren't training people up...
I've heard similar - we have an increasing under-employment problem. Put simply, if you have 20 people apply for 5 jobs you have an unemployment problem if 5 people apply for 5 jobs you have full employment, if 1 person applies for 5 jobs you have an under-employment problem.
I'm hearing this is serious in local Government with vacancies running at 20%+ in some areas.
It's not a skills problem - those with the skills have the work, there just aren't enough of them.
All I'm hearing is some who think cajoling the retired and pensioners into work by claiming some sort of civic obligation could be the answer - that's absurd. There is a pool of employees among carers who can only do limited hours but we need companies and organisations to think more flexibly. I'd also look at the unemployment rate among disabled people and ask if there's not more we can do to bring some of those individuals into work.
I'm going to say the same thing here. Employers, including the government, need to be more willing to sponsor the on-the-job training and upskilling of its workforce.
This becoming a more standard way of operating would help improve the productivity of our existing workforce, rather than every Tom, Dick and Harry demanding that they can recruit from overseas if there's a shortage of people fully trained.
But investment in operations is Evul!
Plus the workforce in the building trade has been badly treated for many years.
Getting them to pay for courses won’t work. And the usual scumbags have already turned the loans-for-training-paid-off-by-working into scams.
Since no one is directly employed and you can’t tie people to an employer in return for training, anyway, how should the training be structured?
I think it has to be tackled from the quality of provision side.
I'm not an expert on the sector, but if
1) There's planning reform and investment to facilitate a bit increase in housebuilding opportunities over the long-term
2) There's the ability for homebuilders make an increase in profits by increasing the number of homes they build
... Then there must be a way to get homebuilders to train more people to do the work. If there's not, it's a sign of market failure and the government should either reform whatever labour market arbitrage is holding it back, or create a government-backed competitor that does the job for them to add to competition.
The entire economy has been trained to believe in a right to cheap, ready trained workers.
There are businesses betting that Labour will open the taps, and get rates for skilled workers back down to minimum wage.
That’s the mentality.
Given that the current government keeps its own skilled* workers on minimum wage, what's your problem?
*TA's working with the very highest levels of special needs, complex PTSD and mental health children often with multiple conditions interacting and suffering abuse, violence, being spat and urinated on, are not considered skilled but are on the same grade as cleaners. I consider them not just skilled, but saints.
The floating of rent controls by Labour is clever (politically, at least).
The number renting their homes has increased by 28% under the Tories (2011 -2021). Housing in our cities is now seen as an asset with which to plunder the earnings of working people. Loads more renters = loads more Labour votes.
There is a lot of virtual signalling on here about bonfire of regulations etc etc. But the ugly fact is that housing has kept up with the population (indeed has grown more quickly), hence the lack of mass homelessness (though that has increased too, from a low base), and increase in second homes and spare bedrooms.
No one is talking about the changed distribution, either with houses left half empty, empty, or rented out either long term or short term. There is no evidence that a private housebuilding surge would create more owners - the evidence from the last decade is it would create more landlords.
I can't see any other option than some sort of regulation that new homes may not be rented out, or a highly punitive tax on landlords.
Problem with a punitive tax on landlords is how do you implement it in a way that doesn't get passed on to tenants.
You have to force the landlord to sell somehow. Then you have to force the new owner of the property not to sub-let and just create a new landlord situation, even if it is a 2000 sq ft property currently housing 3-5 tenants, in a neighbourhood with limited demand for long-term residencies due to school quality or whatever.
And solar will be looking pretty grim by midnight.
Why the sarcastic reply?
Coz I think solar is a waste of time in the UK.
I was not intending anything against you, so apologies if it came across that way.
5% of our total generation last year, so it's some way from irrelevant.
It must have the worst return on energy generated per billion spent.
Remember when you and I were virtually the only people on PB willing to say “er, it quite likely came from the lab? The bat virus lab just down the road from the bat virus outbreak?”
Now read this:
“EcoHealth Alliance and Dr. Peter Daszak should never again receive a single penny from the U.S. taxpayer. Only two weeks after the Select Subcommittee released an extensive report detailing EcoHealth’s wrongdoing and recommending the formal debarment of EcoHealth and its president, HHS has begun efforts to cut off all U.S. funding to this corrupt organization. EcoHealth facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China without proper oversight, willingly violated multiple requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health grant, and apparently made false statements to the NIH. These actions are wholly abhorrent, indefensible, and must be addressed with swift action. EcoHealth’s immediate funding suspension and future debarment is not only a victory for the U.S. taxpayer, but also for American national security and the safety of citizens worldwide" - Chairman Wenstrup, Committee on Oversight and Accountability - COVID-19.
Indeed. Yet there's still some die hards even on here who want to cling to the idea that they weren't being lied to by the "good" side and the "bad" team were right about it all.
We had a uni mates reunion a couple of weekends ago that I was graciously allowed to attend for a few hours by my wife juggling a relative newborn and a toddler. The subject came up (unsurprising given that we all studied chemistry, biochemistry and/or medicine) and the consensus around the room was unanimous that it was a lab leak and that it was likely covered up by the Americans because senior people in their health regulatory infrastructure were implicated. They all work in research and know how easy it is for political pressure to change decisions by journals.
Quite so, quite so. And for a long time it was just you and me willing to say this on PB. And sometimes @Gardenwalker as well
Pitiful
Anyway we now need a reckoning. Science itself needs to be severely scrutinised - from the labs to the journals
Yes agreed, the corruption of science by political operators in healthcare regulation was awful and there does now need to be some measures put in place to insulate science from politicians who were more worried about their dirty dealings with WIV than stopping the virus from spreading.
Wenstrup believes Trump won the 2020 election.
It’s a bipartisan committee investigating Covid origins. Equal Dems and Reps. See here
And this is their conclusion on Ecohealth, who ran the gain of function bat coronovirus virology for Fauci at Wuhan
🚨BREAKING🚨
Today, based on evidence uncovered in @COVIDSelect's recent report, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services commenced formal debarment proceedings against EcoHealth Alliance.
EcoHealth will now face an immediate, government-wide suspension of taxpayer funds — including a hold on all active grants.
Its over. All the years of lies and gaslighting are over. It’s done
No doubt we’ll never get the full facts, given it happened in China, but at least the ridiculous taboo on Lab leak is now lifted.
What taboo? People have been going on about the “Lab leak” for years!
It’s a majority Republican committee, with one its members being Marjorie Taylor Greene, so I could barely rustle up the interest to look at what they said. But I did, and what they said doesn’t remotely prove there was a lab leak. It’s half a dozen steps from proving anything. It’s like when SeanT kept telling us how some US Committee proved UFOs exist: excitable nonsense.
Everything else we know — where the first cases were, the genetic variation in the early cases, the environmental samples from the wet market, etc. — all demonstrate that this was a zoonotic event, like every other pandemic.
Hang on.
The first cases happened to be in the same city where there just happened to be the world's number one bat virus research facility.
That's a hell of a coincidence. Not impossible, sure. But a hell of a coincidence.
We've discussed this before. China set up a large number of "bat virus research facilities", i.e. coronavirus research labs, after SARS. Many Chinese cities have one. Wuhan is one of the more significant ones, but there are plenty of them.
Zhiming (2019): "As of December 31st 2013, 53 BSLs, including 42 BSL-3s, had been fully accredited in China and more laboratories have completed the accreditation in recent years. In addition, more than 1000 BSL-2 labs are currently being operated in universities, research institutions, hospitals and R&D entrepreneurship centers."
We know what viruses were bring studied in the Wuhan lab. None of them can be the ancestor to SARS-CoV-2.
Wuhan is a big city. The outbreak began with cases clustered around the wet market and were nowhere near the lab. Wet markets are exactly were it's been predicted a new pandemic would pop up.
The early viral diversity isn't consistent with a lab leak, but is consistent with a pool of infected animals in a market.
What are the assumptions about what had been going on in the lab? Unless lab leak means a single bat wriggled out of its cage and flew over the fence.
The floating of rent controls by Labour is clever (politically, at least).
The number renting their homes has increased by 28% under the Tories (2011 -2021). Housing in our cities is now seen as an asset with which to plunder the earnings of working people. Loads more renters = loads more Labour votes.
There is a lot of virtual signalling on here about bonfire of regulations etc etc. But the ugly fact is that housing has kept up with the population (indeed has grown more quickly), hence the lack of mass homelessness (though that has increased too, from a low base), and increase in second homes and spare bedrooms.
No one is talking about the changed distribution, either with houses left half empty, empty, or rented out either long term or short term. There is no evidence that a private housebuilding surge would create more owners - the evidence from the last decade is it would create more landlords.
I can't see any other option than some sort of regulation that new homes may not be rented out, or a highly punitive tax on landlords.
Problem with a punitive tax on landlords is how do you implement it in a way that doesn't get passed on to tenants.
George Osborne already did the highly punitive taxes on landlords, which is why so much investment into housing was choked off. He has since admitted that it was a mistake.
I suspect there is no low hanging fruit left.
What Labour desperately need to do is get beyond the self-serving gormless wibble served up by "tenants" groups, who know nothing and try to drive the entire market changes from their own perches, usually based in London and only representing one tiny segment.
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
Um, the reason why I'm saying that labour is a problem is because i'm currently working at a major UK housebuilder in a position that means I really do hear about issues..
When I say they can't get staff it's because that is what I'm hearing on an hourly basis - and paying more won't solve the issue, the issue is we don't have the skills and we aren't training people up...
I've heard similar - we have an increasing under-employment problem. Put simply, if you have 20 people apply for 5 jobs you have an unemployment problem if 5 people apply for 5 jobs you have full employment, if 1 person applies for 5 jobs you have an under-employment problem.
I'm hearing this is serious in local Government with vacancies running at 20%+ in some areas.
It's not a skills problem - those with the skills have the work, there just aren't enough of them.
All I'm hearing is some who think cajoling the retired and pensioners into work by claiming some sort of civic obligation could be the answer - that's absurd. There is a pool of employees among carers who can only do limited hours but we need companies and organisations to think more flexibly. I'd also look at the unemployment rate among disabled people and ask if there's not more we can do to bring some of those individuals into work.
I'm going to say the same thing here. Employers, including the government, need to be more willing to sponsor the on-the-job training and upskilling of its workforce.
This becoming a more standard way of operating would help improve the productivity of our existing workforce, rather than every Tom, Dick and Harry demanding that they can recruit from overseas if there's a shortage of people fully trained.
But investment in operations is Evul!
Plus the workforce in the building trade has been badly treated for many years.
Getting them to pay for courses won’t work. And the usual scumbags have already turned the loans-for-training-paid-off-by-working into scams.
Since no one is directly employed and you can’t tie people to an employer in return for training, anyway, how should the training be structured?
I think it has to be tackled from the quality of provision side.
I'm not an expert on the sector, but if
1) There's planning reform and investment to facilitate a bit increase in housebuilding opportunities over the long-term
2) There's the ability for homebuilders make an increase in profits by increasing the number of homes they build
... Then there must be a way to get homebuilders to train more people to do the work. If there's not, it's a sign of market failure and the government should either reform whatever labour market arbitrage is holding it back, or create a government-backed competitor that does the job for them to add to competition.
The entire economy has been trained to believe in a right to cheap, ready trained workers.
There are businesses betting that Labour will open the taps, and get rates for skilled workers back down to minimum wage.
That’s the mentality.
Given that the current government keeps its own skilled* workers on minimum wage, what's your problem?
*TA's working with the very highest levels of special needs, complex PTSD and mental health children often with multiple conditions interacting and suffering abuse, violence, being spat and urinated on, are not considered skilled but are on the same grade as cleaners. I consider them not just skilled, but saints.
Given the above, and the renting of garments of the effects of lockdown on kids up thread. Whilst simultaneously being told there is no money, to do anything whatsoever, and whatever keep your hands off my stash, then, yes, I 100% agree with the thread header. I worry about humanity
The floating of rent controls by Labour is clever (politically, at least).
The number renting their homes has increased by 28% under the Tories (2011 -2021). Housing in our cities is now seen as an asset with which to plunder the earnings of working people. Loads more renters = loads more Labour votes.
There is a lot of virtual signalling on here about bonfire of regulations etc etc. But the ugly fact is that housing has kept up with the population (indeed has grown more quickly), hence the lack of mass homelessness (though that has increased too, from a low base), and increase in second homes and spare bedrooms.
No one is talking about the changed distribution, either with houses left half empty, empty, or rented out either long term or short term. There is no evidence that a private housebuilding surge would create more owners - the evidence from the last decade is it would create more landlords.
I can't see any other option than some sort of regulation that new homes may not be rented out, or a highly punitive tax on landlords.
Problem with a punitive tax on landlords is how do you implement it in a way that doesn't get passed on to tenants.
You have to force the landlord to sell somehow. Then you have to force the new owner of the property not to sub-let and just create a new landlord situation, even if it is a 2000 sq ft property currently housing 3-5 tenants, in a neighbourhood with limited demand for long-term residencies due to school quality or whatever.
How does setting out to make people homeless help?
Richard Holden's casual acquaintance with facts and the truth remains one of the constants of British politics.
Holden is my constituency MP.
He was excellent. I mean that.
Within the last year he's given up. Couple of examples - the village I live in has a monthly magazine. It used to get monthly updates from him and publish them. Now it (I'm using 3rd person but am on the committee) publishes updates from the councillors instead because he can't be bothered. 18 months or so despite it not being his department he helped us out with a council thing. Now he doesn't meaningfully assist us with a governmental mattter.
It makes you wonder whether he ever really gave a shit.
FPT Careless cycling or dangerous cycling is NOT the same as careless cycling causing death or serious injury or dangerous cycling causing death or serious injury which the new law allows for. Death by dangerous driving is up to an 18 year sentence, wanton or furious cycling gives a maximum 2 year sentence
Going 9mph over the speed limit certainly could come under careless or even dangerous driving or cycling as the police website says and yes motorists DO get charged with going that much over the speed limit. The police in question would almost certainly take such actions further once the new law comes in
The cyclist in the Regents Park collision could not be charged with causing death because he did not cause it, as per the Coroner's "Accidental Death" finding. It's open and shut. The police in question would never take further action because there is no basis for them to do so, with or without IDS's new law.
The death in the Regents Park collision was not unlawful; that is the definition of "ACCIDENTAL DEATH" in a Coroner's Verdict.
On careless or dangerous, and recalling that the definitions are the same for "driving" or "cycling":
1 - It is a general principle that speeding alone is not sufficient to form the basis for a charge of dangerous driving. There have to be other factors. There is a (far more extensive than I would like) body of caselaw on this. https://roadlawbarristers.co.uk/serious-speeding-enough-for-a-charge-of-dangerous-driving/ (Scotland is similar and there are references if you search.)
2 - It is in CPS Guidelines that the result "causing death" has no impact on whether driving is assessed as Careless or Dangerous. It's a consequence which raises the charge to "causing death by ...", but the existence of a death is not relevant to the assessment of quality of driving.
3 - There's stuff in guidelines about speeding, but it is "inappropriate speeding" - and it is the "inappropriate" not the "speeding" that makes it careless or dangerous driving or cycling.
I'm no fan of our legal setup and interpretations, but it is what it is and for now we have to live with it.
What we are experiencing is knee jerking from politicians (and their supporting media) desperate to have a go at some people to please certain elements of their base. The reaction is out of proportion and misdirected, and the legislative time could be spent far more usefully on other aspects - some of which I have pointed out.
The cyclist in Regent's Park was doing NINE mph over the 20mph limit. Any driver doing that who killed would at least be charged with death by careless driving and facing up to 4 years in prison (even if most likely suspended if not using drink or drugs). A coroner is also not an accident investigator.
Speeding alone is sufficient to lead to a dangerous driving charge and indeed many have been convicted of it, see this case for example where a driver driving at 58mph in a 30mph was jailed for 3 years for killing a pedestrian. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-68714492
Drivers and motorcyclists and lorry drivers have faced years in prison if they kill or seriously injure even if just driving carelessly and potentially over a decade in prison if they kill or seriously injure having driven dangerously or under the influence of drink or drugs.
So finally as a result of this new law if more cyclists get sent to prison for killing if they were driving dangerously or even just carelessly, so be it. The law and speed limits apply to cyclists as much as drivers
Fuck landlords! That’s convinced me to vote Labour.
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Exactly as I predicted in a thread a few days ago. I *despise* landlords, but all this means is more pain for tenants. Simple supply and demand.
And before anyone comes back with the "good, more people can own their own place" argument, that's not much comfort to those who are geograpically mobile, or unable to afford their own place or a deposit to save up for one.
We have already seen that rent controls don't work - look at Scotland.
Problem is the only fix is to build x million new homes and as I pointed out on Twitter in a chat with Dave Herdson earlier - we only just about have the capacity to build the houses we currently build we definitely don't have the skillset to increase that by 10% let alone the 150-200% we require...
And if we want lower rents - we need an awful lot of houses built...
The barrier to housing construction isn't labour, its planning controls.
Japan is a country with a much tighter labour market than us and they manage more housing builds than we do. Because planning isn't a problem there.
Fix the problem, houses will be built. Whinging about labour is just an excuse by NIMBYs who don't want the real problem fixed.
Um, the reason why I'm saying that labour is a problem is because i'm currently working at a major UK housebuilder in a position that means I really do hear about issues..
When I say they can't get staff it's because that is what I'm hearing on an hourly basis - and paying more won't solve the issue, the issue is we don't have the skills and we aren't training people up...
I've heard similar - we have an increasing under-employment problem. Put simply, if you have 20 people apply for 5 jobs you have an unemployment problem if 5 people apply for 5 jobs you have full employment, if 1 person applies for 5 jobs you have an under-employment problem.
I'm hearing this is serious in local Government with vacancies running at 20%+ in some areas.
It's not a skills problem - those with the skills have the work, there just aren't enough of them.
All I'm hearing is some who think cajoling the retired and pensioners into work by claiming some sort of civic obligation could be the answer - that's absurd. There is a pool of employees among carers who can only do limited hours but we need companies and organisations to think more flexibly. I'd also look at the unemployment rate among disabled people and ask if there's not more we can do to bring some of those individuals into work.
I'm going to say the same thing here. Employers, including the government, need to be more willing to sponsor the on-the-job training and upskilling of its workforce.
This becoming a more standard way of operating would help improve the productivity of our existing workforce, rather than every Tom, Dick and Harry demanding that they can recruit from overseas if there's a shortage of people fully trained.
But investment in operations is Evul!
Plus the workforce in the building trade has been badly treated for many years.
Getting them to pay for courses won’t work. And the usual scumbags have already turned the loans-for-training-paid-off-by-working into scams.
Since no one is directly employed and you can’t tie people to an employer in return for training, anyway, how should the training be structured?
I think it has to be tackled from the quality of provision side.
I'm not an expert on the sector, but if
1) There's planning reform and investment to facilitate a bit increase in housebuilding opportunities over the long-term
2) There's the ability for homebuilders make an increase in profits by increasing the number of homes they build
... Then there must be a way to get homebuilders to train more people to do the work. If there's not, it's a sign of market failure and the government should either reform whatever labour market arbitrage is holding it back, or create a government-backed competitor that does the job for them to add to competition.
The entire economy has been trained to believe in a right to cheap, ready trained workers.
There are businesses betting that Labour will open the taps, and get rates for skilled workers back down to minimum wage.
That’s the mentality.
Given that the current government keeps its own skilled* workers on minimum wage, what's your problem?
*TA's working with the very highest levels of special needs, complex PTSD and mental health children often with multiple conditions interacting and suffering abuse, violence, being spat and urinated on, are not considered skilled but are on the same grade as cleaners. I consider them not just skilled, but saints.
Given the above, and the renting of garments of the effects of lockdown on kids up thread. Whilst simultaneously being told there is no money, to do anything whatsoever, and whatever keep your hands off my stash, then, yes, I 100% agree with the thread header. I worry about humanity
On wooden houses: In areas that are earthquake prone (like where I live), they have signficant advantages over brick houses. There is an older area of Seattle (Pioneer Square) that has many brick buildings. Earthquake experts seem to think that, when the next big one hits -- as it will -- the area will rain bricks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Square,_Seattle
These days, many wooden houses in the US are being built with steel frames, which should make them even more resistant to earthquakes.
The floating of rent controls by Labour is clever (politically, at least).
The number renting their homes has increased by 28% under the Tories (2011 -2021). Housing in our cities is now seen as an asset with which to plunder the earnings of working people. Loads more renters = loads more Labour votes.
There is a lot of virtual signalling on here about bonfire of regulations etc etc. But the ugly fact is that housing has kept up with the population (indeed has grown more quickly), hence the lack of mass homelessness (though that has increased too, from a low base), and increase in second homes and spare bedrooms.
No one is talking about the changed distribution, either with houses left half empty, empty, or rented out either long term or short term. There is no evidence that a private housebuilding surge would create more owners - the evidence from the last decade is it would create more landlords.
I can't see any other option than some sort of regulation that new homes may not be rented out, or a highly punitive tax on landlords.
Problem with a punitive tax on landlords is how do you implement it in a way that doesn't get passed on to tenants.
You have to force the landlord to sell somehow. Then you have to force the new owner of the property not to sub-let and just create a new landlord situation, even if it is a 2000 sq ft property currently housing 3-5 tenants, in a neighbourhood with limited demand for long-term residencies due to school quality or whatever.
How does setting out to make people homeless help?
Hopefully it is clear from the scenario that even achieving it is a stretch, let alone managing the consequences when slow learners realise that that HMO tenants can't all buy the house collectively.
FPT Careless cycling or dangerous cycling is NOT the same as careless cycling causing death or serious injury or dangerous cycling causing death or serious injury which the new law allows for. Death by dangerous driving is up to an 18 year sentence, wanton or furious cycling gives a maximum 2 year sentence
Going 9mph over the speed limit certainly could come under careless or even dangerous driving or cycling as the police website says and yes motorists DO get charged with going that much over the speed limit. The police in question would almost certainly take such actions further once the new law comes in
The cyclist in the Regents Park collision could not be charged with causing death because he did not cause it, as per the Coroner's "Accidental Death" finding. It's open and shut. The police in question would never take further action because there is no basis for them to do so, with or without IDS's new law.
The death in the Regents Park collision was not unlawful; that is the definition of "ACCIDENTAL DEATH" in a Coroner's Verdict.
On careless or dangerous, and recalling that the definitions are the same for "driving" or "cycling":
1 - It is a general principle that speeding alone is not sufficient to form the basis for a charge of dangerous driving. There have to be other factors. There is a (far more extensive than I would like) body of caselaw on this. https://roadlawbarristers.co.uk/serious-speeding-enough-for-a-charge-of-dangerous-driving/ (Scotland is similar and there are references if you search.)
2 - It is in CPS Guidelines that the result "causing death" has no impact on whether driving is assessed as Careless or Dangerous. It's a consequence which raises the charge to "causing death by ...", but the existence of a death is not relevant to the assessment of quality of driving.
3 - There's stuff in guidelines about speeding, but it is "inappropriate speeding" - and it is the "inappropriate" not the "speeding" that makes it careless or dangerous driving or cycling.
I'm no fan of our legal setup and interpretations, but it is what it is and for now we have to live with it.
What we are experiencing is knee jerking from politicians (and their supporting media) desperate to have a go at some people to please certain elements of their base. The reaction is out of proportion and misdirected, and the legislative time could be spent far more usefully on other aspects - some of which I have pointed out.
The cyclist in Regent's Park was doing NINE mph over the 20mph limit. Any driver doing that who killed would at least be charged with death by careless driving and facing up to 4 years in prison (even if most likely suspended if not using drink or drugs). A coroner is also not an accident investigator.
Speeding alone is sufficient to lead to a dangerous driving charge and indeed many have been convicted of it, see this case for example where a driver driving at 58mph in a 30mph was jailed for 3 years for killing a pedestrian. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-68714492
Drivers and motorcyclists and lorry drivers have faced years in prison if they kill or seriously injure even if just driving carelessly and potentially over a decade in prison if they kill or seriously injure having driven dangerously or under the influence of drink or drugs.
So finally as a result of this new law if more cyclists get sent to prison for killing if they were driving dangerously or even just carelessly, so be it. The law and speed limits apply to cyclists as much as drivers
Even under this new law speed limits won't apply to bicycles. So you're wrong there.
I don't mind a new "dangerous" law for cyclists it as long as the punishment is proportionate. For example, a car travelling at 30mph carries as much energy as a cyclist doing 130mph.
If a speed limit of 20mph is applied to bicycles, the equivalent for cars should be 5mph.
On wooden houses: In areas that are earthquake prone (like where I live), they have signficant advantages over brick houses. There is an older area of Seattle (Pioneer Square) that has many brick buildings. Earthquake experts seem to think that, when the next big one hits -- as it will -- the area will rain bricks. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Square,_Seattle
These days, many wooden houses in the US are being built with steel frames, which should make them even more resistant to earthquakes.
FPT Careless cycling or dangerous cycling is NOT the same as careless cycling causing death or serious injury or dangerous cycling causing death or serious injury which the new law allows for. Death by dangerous driving is up to an 18 year sentence, wanton or furious cycling gives a maximum 2 year sentence
Going 9mph over the speed limit certainly could come under careless or even dangerous driving or cycling as the police website says and yes motorists DO get charged with going that much over the speed limit. The police in question would almost certainly take such actions further once the new law comes in
The cyclist in the Regents Park collision could not be charged with causing death because he did not cause it, as per the Coroner's "Accidental Death" finding. It's open and shut. The police in question would never take further action because there is no basis for them to do so, with or without IDS's new law.
The death in the Regents Park collision was not unlawful; that is the definition of "ACCIDENTAL DEATH" in a Coroner's Verdict.
On careless or dangerous, and recalling that the definitions are the same for "driving" or "cycling":
1 - It is a general principle that speeding alone is not sufficient to form the basis for a charge of dangerous driving. There have to be other factors. There is a (far more extensive than I would like) body of caselaw on this. https://roadlawbarristers.co.uk/serious-speeding-enough-for-a-charge-of-dangerous-driving/ (Scotland is similar and there are references if you search.)
2 - It is in CPS Guidelines that the result "causing death" has no impact on whether driving is assessed as Careless or Dangerous. It's a consequence which raises the charge to "causing death by ...", but the existence of a death is not relevant to the assessment of quality of driving.
3 - There's stuff in guidelines about speeding, but it is "inappropriate speeding" - and it is the "inappropriate" not the "speeding" that makes it careless or dangerous driving or cycling.
I'm no fan of our legal setup and interpretations, but it is what it is and for now we have to live with it.
What we are experiencing is knee jerking from politicians (and their supporting media) desperate to have a go at some people to please certain elements of their base. The reaction is out of proportion and misdirected, and the legislative time could be spent far more usefully on other aspects - some of which I have pointed out.
The cyclist in Regent's Park was doing NINE mph over the 20mph limit. Any driver doing that who killed would at least be charged with death by careless driving and facing up to 4 years in prison (even if most likely suspended if not using drink or drugs). A coroner is also not an accident investigator.
Speeding alone is sufficient to lead to a dangerous driving charge and indeed many have been convicted of it, see this case for example where a driver driving at 58mph in a 30mph was jailed for 3 years for killing a pedestrian. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-68714492
Drivers and motorcyclists and lorry drivers have faced years in prison if they kill or seriously injure even if just driving carelessly and potentially over a decade in prison if they kill or seriously injure having driven dangerously or under the influence of drink or drugs.
So finally as a result of this new law if more cyclists get sent to prison for killing if they were driving dangerously or even just carelessly, so be it. The law and speed limits apply to cyclists as much as drivers
Even under this new law speed limits won't apply to bicycles. So you're wrong there.
I don't mind a new "dangerous" law for cyclists it as long as the punishment is proportionate. For example, a car travelling at 30mph carries as much energy as a cyclist doing 130mph.
If a speed limit of 20mph is applied to bicycles, the equivalent for cars should be 5mph.
I don't mind a new "dangerous" law for cyclists; it's an irrelevant waste of time and effort because it will achieve virtually nothing, because the problem it purports to fix hardly exists. And where a tiny problem may exist, it is far better addressed otherwise.
It is indicative that they have to go back 8 years to find a single relevant case, whilst drivers of motor vehicles of many types kill more than one pedestrian every day.
Every safety group in our country has been asking for the comprehensive review of road safety law and practice promised for a decade to be done in an evidence based, thoughtful, thorough manner.
Is it 6, or perhaps 7, Transport Ministers who have sat on their butts since then?
And we get this, and other measures that cut across the research, professional and policy practice of the DFT for years.
Because some oaf of an MP and conspiraloon of a Transport Minister want a cheap political hit.
It's a displacement activity. A dog chew for unthinking oafs.
I bitterly resent that time and effort are being wasted on this rather than used on things that will make a decent difference to safety.
The main thing it will do is provide a monument to IDS furiously knee jerking himself off.
FPT Careless cycling or dangerous cycling is NOT the same as careless cycling causing death or serious injury or dangerous cycling causing death or serious injury which the new law allows for. Death by dangerous driving is up to an 18 year sentence, wanton or furious cycling gives a maximum 2 year sentence
Going 9mph over the speed limit certainly could come under careless or even dangerous driving or cycling as the police website says and yes motorists DO get charged with going that much over the speed limit. The police in question would almost certainly take such actions further once the new law comes in
The cyclist in the Regents Park collision could not be charged with causing death because he did not cause it, as per the Coroner's "Accidental Death" finding. It's open and shut. The police in question would never take further action because there is no basis for them to do so, with or without IDS's new law.
The death in the Regents Park collision was not unlawful; that is the definition of "ACCIDENTAL DEATH" in a Coroner's Verdict.
On careless or dangerous, and recalling that the definitions are the same for "driving" or "cycling":
1 - It is a general principle that speeding alone is not sufficient to form the basis for a charge of dangerous driving. There have to be other factors. There is a (far more extensive than I would like) body of caselaw on this. https://roadlawbarristers.co.uk/serious-speeding-enough-for-a-charge-of-dangerous-driving/ (Scotland is similar and there are references if you search.)
2 - It is in CPS Guidelines that the result "causing death" has no impact on whether driving is assessed as Careless or Dangerous. It's a consequence which raises the charge to "causing death by ...", but the existence of a death is not relevant to the assessment of quality of driving.
3 - There's stuff in guidelines about speeding, but it is "inappropriate speeding" - and it is the "inappropriate" not the "speeding" that makes it careless or dangerous driving or cycling.
I'm no fan of our legal setup and interpretations, but it is what it is and for now we have to live with it.
What we are experiencing is knee jerking from politicians (and their supporting media) desperate to have a go at some people to please certain elements of their base. The reaction is out of proportion and misdirected, and the legislative time could be spent far more usefully on other aspects - some of which I have pointed out.
The cyclist in Regent's Park was doing NINE mph over the 20mph limit. Any driver doing that who killed would at least be charged with death by careless driving and facing up to 4 years in prison (even if most likely suspended if not using drink or drugs). A coroner is also not an accident investigator.
Speeding alone is sufficient to lead to a dangerous driving charge and indeed many have been convicted of it, see this case for example where a driver driving at 58mph in a 30mph was jailed for 3 years for killing a pedestrian. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-68714492
Drivers and motorcyclists and lorry drivers have faced years in prison if they kill or seriously injure even if just driving carelessly and potentially over a decade in prison if they kill or seriously injure having driven dangerously or under the influence of drink or drugs.
So finally as a result of this new law if more cyclists get sent to prison for killing if they were driving dangerously or even just carelessly, so be it. The law and speed limits apply to cyclists as much as drivers
Even under this new law speed limits won't apply to bicycles. So you're wrong there.
I don't mind a new "dangerous" law for cyclists it as long as the punishment is proportionate. For example, a car travelling at 30mph carries as much energy as a cyclist doing 130mph.
If a speed limit of 20mph is applied to bicycles, the equivalent for cars should be 5mph.
I don't mind a new "dangerous" law for cyclists; it's an irrelevant waste of time and effort because it will achieve virtually nothing, because the problem it purports to fix hardly exists.
It is indicative that they have to go back 8 years to find a single relevant case, whilst drivers of motor vehicles kill more than one pedestrian every day.
It's a displacement activity. A dog chew for unthinking bigots.
I bitterly resent that time and effort are being wasted on this rather than used on things that will make a decent difference to safety.
The main thing it will do is provide a monument to IDS furiously knee jerking himself off.
The same IDS advocating criminal damage to ULEZ cameras (which often knocks out traffic signals at pedestrian crossings too).
FPT Careless cycling or dangerous cycling is NOT the same as careless cycling causing death or serious injury or dangerous cycling causing death or serious injury which the new law allows for. Death by dangerous driving is up to an 18 year sentence, wanton or furious cycling gives a maximum 2 year sentence
Going 9mph over the speed limit certainly could come under careless or even dangerous driving or cycling as the police website says and yes motorists DO get charged with going that much over the speed limit. The police in question would almost certainly take such actions further once the new law comes in
The cyclist in the Regents Park collision could not be charged with causing death because he did not cause it, as per the Coroner's "Accidental Death" finding. It's open and shut. The police in question would never take further action because there is no basis for them to do so, with or without IDS's new law.
The death in the Regents Park collision was not unlawful; that is the definition of "ACCIDENTAL DEATH" in a Coroner's Verdict.
On careless or dangerous, and recalling that the definitions are the same for "driving" or "cycling":
1 - It is a general principle that speeding alone is not sufficient to form the basis for a charge of dangerous driving. There have to be other factors. There is a (far more extensive than I would like) body of caselaw on this. https://roadlawbarristers.co.uk/serious-speeding-enough-for-a-charge-of-dangerous-driving/ (Scotland is similar and there are references if you search.)
2 - It is in CPS Guidelines that the result "causing death" has no impact on whether driving is assessed as Careless or Dangerous. It's a consequence which raises the charge to "causing death by ...", but the existence of a death is not relevant to the assessment of quality of driving.
3 - There's stuff in guidelines about speeding, but it is "inappropriate speeding" - and it is the "inappropriate" not the "speeding" that makes it careless or dangerous driving or cycling.
I'm no fan of our legal setup and interpretations, but it is what it is and for now we have to live with it.
What we are experiencing is knee jerking from politicians (and their supporting media) desperate to have a go at some people to please certain elements of their base. The reaction is out of proportion and misdirected, and the legislative time could be spent far more usefully on other aspects - some of which I have pointed out.
The cyclist in Regent's Park was doing NINE mph over the 20mph limit. Any driver doing that who killed would at least be charged with death by careless driving and facing up to 4 years in prison (even if most likely suspended if not using drink or drugs). A coroner is also not an accident investigator.
Speeding alone is sufficient to lead to a dangerous driving charge and indeed many have been convicted of it, see this case for example where a driver driving at 58mph in a 30mph was jailed for 3 years for killing a pedestrian. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-68714492
Drivers and motorcyclists and lorry drivers have faced years in prison if they kill or seriously injure even if just driving carelessly and potentially over a decade in prison if they kill or seriously injure having driven dangerously or under the influence of drink or drugs.
So finally as a result of this new law if more cyclists get sent to prison for killing if they were driving dangerously or even just carelessly, so be it. The law and speed limits apply to cyclists as much as drivers
Even under this new law speed limits won't apply to bicycles. So you're wrong there.
I don't mind a new "dangerous" law for cyclists it as long as the punishment is proportionate. For example, a car travelling at 30mph carries as much energy as a cyclist doing 130mph.
If a speed limit of 20mph is applied to bicycles, the equivalent for cars should be 5mph.
Yes they will, a cyclist who is driving over a 20mph or 30mph limit who kills or seriously injuries a pedestrian will now face a death or serious injury by dangerous or careless driving charge and potentially go to prison
FPT Careless cycling or dangerous cycling is NOT the same as careless cycling causing death or serious injury or dangerous cycling causing death or serious injury which the new law allows for. Death by dangerous driving is up to an 18 year sentence, wanton or furious cycling gives a maximum 2 year sentence
Going 9mph over the speed limit certainly could come under careless or even dangerous driving or cycling as the police website says and yes motorists DO get charged with going that much over the speed limit. The police in question would almost certainly take such actions further once the new law comes in
The cyclist in the Regents Park collision could not be charged with causing death because he did not cause it, as per the Coroner's "Accidental Death" finding. It's open and shut. The police in question would never take further action because there is no basis for them to do so, with or without IDS's new law.
The death in the Regents Park collision was not unlawful; that is the definition of "ACCIDENTAL DEATH" in a Coroner's Verdict.
On careless or dangerous, and recalling that the definitions are the same for "driving" or "cycling":
1 - It is a general principle that speeding alone is not sufficient to form the basis for a charge of dangerous driving. There have to be other factors. There is a (far more extensive than I would like) body of caselaw on this. https://roadlawbarristers.co.uk/serious-speeding-enough-for-a-charge-of-dangerous-driving/ (Scotland is similar and there are references if you search.)
2 - It is in CPS Guidelines that the result "causing death" has no impact on whether driving is assessed as Careless or Dangerous. It's a consequence which raises the charge to "causing death by ...", but the existence of a death is not relevant to the assessment of quality of driving.
3 - There's stuff in guidelines about speeding, but it is "inappropriate speeding" - and it is the "inappropriate" not the "speeding" that makes it careless or dangerous driving or cycling.
I'm no fan of our legal setup and interpretations, but it is what it is and for now we have to live with it.
What we are experiencing is knee jerking from politicians (and their supporting media) desperate to have a go at some people to please certain elements of their base. The reaction is out of proportion and misdirected, and the legislative time could be spent far more usefully on other aspects - some of which I have pointed out.
The cyclist in Regent's Park was doing NINE mph over the 20mph limit. Any driver doing that who killed would at least be charged with death by careless driving and facing up to 4 years in prison (even if most likely suspended if not using drink or drugs). A coroner is also not an accident investigator.
Speeding alone is sufficient to lead to a dangerous driving charge and indeed many have been convicted of it, see this case for example where a driver driving at 58mph in a 30mph was jailed for 3 years for killing a pedestrian. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-68714492
Drivers and motorcyclists and lorry drivers have faced years in prison if they kill or seriously injure even if just driving carelessly and potentially over a decade in prison if they kill or seriously injure having driven dangerously or under the influence of drink or drugs.
So finally as a result of this new law if more cyclists get sent to prison for killing if they were driving dangerously or even just carelessly, so be it. The law and speed limits apply to cyclists as much as drivers
Even under this new law speed limits won't apply to bicycles. So you're wrong there.
I don't mind a new "dangerous" law for cyclists it as long as the punishment is proportionate. For example, a car travelling at 30mph carries as much energy as a cyclist doing 130mph.
If a speed limit of 20mph is applied to bicycles, the equivalent for cars should be 5mph.
Yes they will, a cyclist who is driving over a 20mph or 30mph limit who kills or seriously injuries will now face a death or serious injury by dangerous or careless driving charge and potentially go to prison
Will they? They would have to prove that it's dangerous, in the same way that you do for a car driver.
Any defence lawyer will point to *the laws of physics* and explain that the speed is equivalent to about 5mph for a car.
Unless you're suggesting that anyone driving around at over 5mph is a dangerous driver?
FPT Careless cycling or dangerous cycling is NOT the same as careless cycling causing death or serious injury or dangerous cycling causing death or serious injury which the new law allows for. Death by dangerous driving is up to an 18 year sentence, wanton or furious cycling gives a maximum 2 year sentence
Going 9mph over the speed limit certainly could come under careless or even dangerous driving or cycling as the police website says and yes motorists DO get charged with going that much over the speed limit. The police in question would almost certainly take such actions further once the new law comes in
The cyclist in the Regents Park collision could not be charged with causing death because he did not cause it, as per the Coroner's "Accidental Death" finding. It's open and shut. The police in question would never take further action because there is no basis for them to do so, with or without IDS's new law.
The death in the Regents Park collision was not unlawful; that is the definition of "ACCIDENTAL DEATH" in a Coroner's Verdict.
On careless or dangerous, and recalling that the definitions are the same for "driving" or "cycling":
1 - It is a general principle that speeding alone is not sufficient to form the basis for a charge of dangerous driving. There have to be other factors. There is a (far more extensive than I would like) body of caselaw on this. https://roadlawbarristers.co.uk/serious-speeding-enough-for-a-charge-of-dangerous-driving/ (Scotland is similar and there are references if you search.)
2 - It is in CPS Guidelines that the result "causing death" has no impact on whether driving is assessed as Careless or Dangerous. It's a consequence which raises the charge to "causing death by ...", but the existence of a death is not relevant to the assessment of quality of driving.
3 - There's stuff in guidelines about speeding, but it is "inappropriate speeding" - and it is the "inappropriate" not the "speeding" that makes it careless or dangerous driving or cycling.
I'm no fan of our legal setup and interpretations, but it is what it is and for now we have to live with it.
What we are experiencing is knee jerking from politicians (and their supporting media) desperate to have a go at some people to please certain elements of their base. The reaction is out of proportion and misdirected, and the legislative time could be spent far more usefully on other aspects - some of which I have pointed out.
The cyclist in Regent's Park was doing NINE mph over the 20mph limit. Any driver doing that who killed would at least be charged with death by careless driving and facing up to 4 years in prison (even if most likely suspended if not using drink or drugs). A coroner is also not an accident investigator.
Speeding alone is sufficient to lead to a dangerous driving charge and indeed many have been convicted of it, see this case for example where a driver driving at 58mph in a 30mph was jailed for 3 years for killing a pedestrian. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-68714492
Drivers and motorcyclists and lorry drivers have faced years in prison if they kill or seriously injure even if just driving carelessly and potentially over a decade in prison if they kill or seriously injure having driven dangerously or under the influence of drink or drugs.
So finally as a result of this new law if more cyclists get sent to prison for killing if they were driving dangerously or even just carelessly, so be it. The law and speed limits apply to cyclists as much as drivers
Even under this new law speed limits won't apply to bicycles. So you're wrong there.
I don't mind a new "dangerous" law for cyclists it as long as the punishment is proportionate. For example, a car travelling at 30mph carries as much energy as a cyclist doing 130mph.
If a speed limit of 20mph is applied to bicycles, the equivalent for cars should be 5mph.
I don't mind a new "dangerous" law for cyclists; it's an irrelevant waste of time and effort because it will achieve virtually nothing, because the problem it purports to fix hardly exists. And where a tiny problem may exist, it is far better addressed otherwise.
It is indicative that they have to go back 8 years to find a single relevant case, whilst drivers of motor vehicles of many types kill more than one pedestrian every day.
Every safety group in our country has been asking for the comprehensive review of road safety law and practice promised for a decade to be done in an evidence based, thoughtful, thorough manner.
Is it 6, or perhaps 7, Transport Ministers who have sat on their butts since then?
And we get this, and other measures that cut across the research, professional and policy practice of the DFT for years.
Because some oaf of an MP and conspiraloon of a Transport Minister want a cheap political hit.
It's a displacement activity. A dog chew for unthinking oafs.
I bitterly resent that time and effort are being wasted on this rather than used on things that will make a decent difference to safety.
The main thing it will do is provide a monument to IDS furiously knee jerking himself off.
It will hopefully make idiot speeding cyclists killing or seriously injuring elderly and vulnerable pedestrians without looking properly as in the recent media reported cases finally think again if they would face the same death by dangerous or serious injury by dangerous charges drivers and motorcyclists do. Potentially including jail time
FPT Careless cycling or dangerous cycling is NOT the same as careless cycling causing death or serious injury or dangerous cycling causing death or serious injury which the new law allows for. Death by dangerous driving is up to an 18 year sentence, wanton or furious cycling gives a maximum 2 year sentence
Going 9mph over the speed limit certainly could come under careless or even dangerous driving or cycling as the police website says and yes motorists DO get charged with going that much over the speed limit. The police in question would almost certainly take such actions further once the new law comes in
The cyclist in the Regents Park collision could not be charged with causing death because he did not cause it, as per the Coroner's "Accidental Death" finding. It's open and shut. The police in question would never take further action because there is no basis for them to do so, with or without IDS's new law.
The death in the Regents Park collision was not unlawful; that is the definition of "ACCIDENTAL DEATH" in a Coroner's Verdict.
On careless or dangerous, and recalling that the definitions are the same for "driving" or "cycling":
1 - It is a general principle that speeding alone is not sufficient to form the basis for a charge of dangerous driving. There have to be other factors. There is a (far more extensive than I would like) body of caselaw on this. https://roadlawbarristers.co.uk/serious-speeding-enough-for-a-charge-of-dangerous-driving/ (Scotland is similar and there are references if you search.)
2 - It is in CPS Guidelines that the result "causing death" has no impact on whether driving is assessed as Careless or Dangerous. It's a consequence which raises the charge to "causing death by ...", but the existence of a death is not relevant to the assessment of quality of driving.
3 - There's stuff in guidelines about speeding, but it is "inappropriate speeding" - and it is the "inappropriate" not the "speeding" that makes it careless or dangerous driving or cycling.
I'm no fan of our legal setup and interpretations, but it is what it is and for now we have to live with it.
What we are experiencing is knee jerking from politicians (and their supporting media) desperate to have a go at some people to please certain elements of their base. The reaction is out of proportion and misdirected, and the legislative time could be spent far more usefully on other aspects - some of which I have pointed out.
The cyclist in Regent's Park was doing NINE mph over the 20mph limit. Any driver doing that who killed would at least be charged with death by careless driving and facing up to 4 years in prison (even if most likely suspended if not using drink or drugs). A coroner is also not an accident investigator.
Speeding alone is sufficient to lead to a dangerous driving charge and indeed many have been convicted of it, see this case for example where a driver driving at 58mph in a 30mph was jailed for 3 years for killing a pedestrian. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-68714492
Drivers and motorcyclists and lorry drivers have faced years in prison if they kill or seriously injure even if just driving carelessly and potentially over a decade in prison if they kill or seriously injure having driven dangerously or under the influence of drink or drugs.
So finally as a result of this new law if more cyclists get sent to prison for killing if they were driving dangerously or even just carelessly, so be it. The law and speed limits apply to cyclists as much as drivers
Even under this new law speed limits won't apply to bicycles. So you're wrong there.
I don't mind a new "dangerous" law for cyclists it as long as the punishment is proportionate. For example, a car travelling at 30mph carries as much energy as a cyclist doing 130mph.
If a speed limit of 20mph is applied to bicycles, the equivalent for cars should be 5mph.
Yes they will, a cyclist who is driving over a 20mph or 30mph limit who kills or seriously injuries will now face a death or serious injury by dangerous or careless driving charge and potentially go to prison
Will they? They would have to prove that it's dangerous, in the same way that you do for a car driver.
Any defence lawyer will point to *the laws of physics* and explain that the speed is equivalent to about 5mph for a car.
Unless you're suggesting that anyone driving around at over 5mph is a dangerous driver?
Nope, even careless cycling leading to death or serious injury will have a jail sentence at the top end just as careless driving causing death or serious injury now has a jail sentence as the maximum penalty even if it was not dangerous driving
FPT Careless cycling or dangerous cycling is NOT the same as careless cycling causing death or serious injury or dangerous cycling causing death or serious injury which the new law allows for. Death by dangerous driving is up to an 18 year sentence, wanton or furious cycling gives a maximum 2 year sentence
Going 9mph over the speed limit certainly could come under careless or even dangerous driving or cycling as the police website says and yes motorists DO get charged with going that much over the speed limit. The police in question would almost certainly take such actions further once the new law comes in
The cyclist in the Regents Park collision could not be charged with causing death because he did not cause it, as per the Coroner's "Accidental Death" finding. It's open and shut. The police in question would never take further action because there is no basis for them to do so, with or without IDS's new law.
The death in the Regents Park collision was not unlawful; that is the definition of "ACCIDENTAL DEATH" in a Coroner's Verdict.
On careless or dangerous, and recalling that the definitions are the same for "driving" or "cycling":
1 - It is a general principle that speeding alone is not sufficient to form the basis for a charge of dangerous driving. There have to be other factors. There is a (far more extensive than I would like) body of caselaw on this. https://roadlawbarristers.co.uk/serious-speeding-enough-for-a-charge-of-dangerous-driving/ (Scotland is similar and there are references if you search.)
2 - It is in CPS Guidelines that the result "causing death" has no impact on whether driving is assessed as Careless or Dangerous. It's a consequence which raises the charge to "causing death by ...", but the existence of a death is not relevant to the assessment of quality of driving.
3 - There's stuff in guidelines about speeding, but it is "inappropriate speeding" - and it is the "inappropriate" not the "speeding" that makes it careless or dangerous driving or cycling.
I'm no fan of our legal setup and interpretations, but it is what it is and for now we have to live with it.
What we are experiencing is knee jerking from politicians (and their supporting media) desperate to have a go at some people to please certain elements of their base. The reaction is out of proportion and misdirected, and the legislative time could be spent far more usefully on other aspects - some of which I have pointed out.
The cyclist in Regent's Park was doing NINE mph over the 20mph limit. Any driver doing that who killed would at least be charged with death by careless driving and facing up to 4 years in prison (even if most likely suspended if not using drink or drugs). A coroner is also not an accident investigator.
Speeding alone is sufficient to lead to a dangerous driving charge and indeed many have been convicted of it, see this case for example where a driver driving at 58mph in a 30mph was jailed for 3 years for killing a pedestrian. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-68714492
Drivers and motorcyclists and lorry drivers have faced years in prison if they kill or seriously injure even if just driving carelessly and potentially over a decade in prison if they kill or seriously injure having driven dangerously or under the influence of drink or drugs.
So finally as a result of this new law if more cyclists get sent to prison for killing if they were driving dangerously or even just carelessly, so be it. The law and speed limits apply to cyclists as much as drivers
Even under this new law speed limits won't apply to bicycles. So you're wrong there.
I don't mind a new "dangerous" law for cyclists it as long as the punishment is proportionate. For example, a car travelling at 30mph carries as much energy as a cyclist doing 130mph.
If a speed limit of 20mph is applied to bicycles, the equivalent for cars should be 5mph.
I don't mind a new "dangerous" law for cyclists; it's an irrelevant waste of time and effort because it will achieve virtually nothing, because the problem it purports to fix hardly exists. And where a tiny problem may exist, it is far better addressed otherwise.
It is indicative that they have to go back 8 years to find a single relevant case, whilst drivers of motor vehicles of many types kill more than one pedestrian every day.
Every safety group in our country has been asking for the comprehensive review of road safety law and practice promised for a decade to be done in an evidence based, thoughtful, thorough manner.
Is it 6, or perhaps 7, Transport Ministers who have sat on their butts since then?
And we get this, and other measures that cut across the research, professional and policy practice of the DFT for years.
Because some oaf of an MP and conspiraloon of a Transport Minister want a cheap political hit.
It's a displacement activity. A dog chew for unthinking oafs.
I bitterly resent that time and effort are being wasted on this rather than used on things that will make a decent difference to safety.
The main thing it will do is provide a monument to IDS furiously knee jerking himself off.
It will hopefully make idiot speeding cyclists killing or seriously injuring elderly and vulnerable pedestrians without looking properly as in the recent media reported cases finally think again if they would face the same death by dangerous or serious injury by dangerous charges drivers and motorcyclists do. Potentially including jail time
Cyclists can't speed, so that cannot be a factor in the prosecution. The CPS would have to prove dangerous, and if they were to apply the same physics to drivers they would have to prosecute pretty much everyone.
FPT Careless cycling or dangerous cycling is NOT the same as careless cycling causing death or serious injury or dangerous cycling causing death or serious injury which the new law allows for. Death by dangerous driving is up to an 18 year sentence, wanton or furious cycling gives a maximum 2 year sentence
Going 9mph over the speed limit certainly could come under careless or even dangerous driving or cycling as the police website says and yes motorists DO get charged with going that much over the speed limit. The police in question would almost certainly take such actions further once the new law comes in
The cyclist in the Regents Park collision could not be charged with causing death because he did not cause it, as per the Coroner's "Accidental Death" finding. It's open and shut. The police in question would never take further action because there is no basis for them to do so, with or without IDS's new law.
The death in the Regents Park collision was not unlawful; that is the definition of "ACCIDENTAL DEATH" in a Coroner's Verdict.
On careless or dangerous, and recalling that the definitions are the same for "driving" or "cycling":
1 - It is a general principle that speeding alone is not sufficient to form the basis for a charge of dangerous driving. There have to be other factors. There is a (far more extensive than I would like) body of caselaw on this. https://roadlawbarristers.co.uk/serious-speeding-enough-for-a-charge-of-dangerous-driving/ (Scotland is similar and there are references if you search.)
2 - It is in CPS Guidelines that the result "causing death" has no impact on whether driving is assessed as Careless or Dangerous. It's a consequence which raises the charge to "causing death by ...", but the existence of a death is not relevant to the assessment of quality of driving.
3 - There's stuff in guidelines about speeding, but it is "inappropriate speeding" - and it is the "inappropriate" not the "speeding" that makes it careless or dangerous driving or cycling.
I'm no fan of our legal setup and interpretations, but it is what it is and for now we have to live with it.
What we are experiencing is knee jerking from politicians (and their supporting media) desperate to have a go at some people to please certain elements of their base. The reaction is out of proportion and misdirected, and the legislative time could be spent far more usefully on other aspects - some of which I have pointed out.
The cyclist in Regent's Park was doing NINE mph over the 20mph limit. Any driver doing that who killed would at least be charged with death by careless driving and facing up to 4 years in prison (even if most likely suspended if not using drink or drugs). A coroner is also not an accident investigator.
Speeding alone is sufficient to lead to a dangerous driving charge and indeed many have been convicted of it, see this case for example where a driver driving at 58mph in a 30mph was jailed for 3 years for killing a pedestrian. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-68714492
Drivers and motorcyclists and lorry drivers have faced years in prison if they kill or seriously injure even if just driving carelessly and potentially over a decade in prison if they kill or seriously injure having driven dangerously or under the influence of drink or drugs.
So finally as a result of this new law if more cyclists get sent to prison for killing if they were driving dangerously or even just carelessly, so be it. The law and speed limits apply to cyclists as much as drivers
Even under this new law speed limits won't apply to bicycles. So you're wrong there.
I don't mind a new "dangerous" law for cyclists it as long as the punishment is proportionate. For example, a car travelling at 30mph carries as much energy as a cyclist doing 130mph.
If a speed limit of 20mph is applied to bicycles, the equivalent for cars should be 5mph.
Yes they will, a cyclist who is driving over a 20mph or 30mph limit who kills or seriously injuries will now face a death or serious injury by dangerous or careless driving charge and potentially go to prison
Will they? They would have to prove that it's dangerous, in the same way that you do for a car driver.
Any defence lawyer will point to *the laws of physics* and explain that the speed is equivalent to about 5mph for a car.
Unless you're suggesting that anyone driving around at over 5mph is a dangerous driver?
Anyone driving over a 20mph or 30mph speed limit who kills a pedestrian is likely at least guilty of death by careless driving whether a driver or a cyclist
FPT Careless cycling or dangerous cycling is NOT the same as careless cycling causing death or serious injury or dangerous cycling causing death or serious injury which the new law allows for. Death by dangerous driving is up to an 18 year sentence, wanton or furious cycling gives a maximum 2 year sentence
Going 9mph over the speed limit certainly could come under careless or even dangerous driving or cycling as the police website says and yes motorists DO get charged with going that much over the speed limit. The police in question would almost certainly take such actions further once the new law comes in
The cyclist in the Regents Park collision could not be charged with causing death because he did not cause it, as per the Coroner's "Accidental Death" finding. It's open and shut. The police in question would never take further action because there is no basis for them to do so, with or without IDS's new law.
The death in the Regents Park collision was not unlawful; that is the definition of "ACCIDENTAL DEATH" in a Coroner's Verdict.
On careless or dangerous, and recalling that the definitions are the same for "driving" or "cycling":
1 - It is a general principle that speeding alone is not sufficient to form the basis for a charge of dangerous driving. There have to be other factors. There is a (far more extensive than I would like) body of caselaw on this. https://roadlawbarristers.co.uk/serious-speeding-enough-for-a-charge-of-dangerous-driving/ (Scotland is similar and there are references if you search.)
2 - It is in CPS Guidelines that the result "causing death" has no impact on whether driving is assessed as Careless or Dangerous. It's a consequence which raises the charge to "causing death by ...", but the existence of a death is not relevant to the assessment of quality of driving.
3 - There's stuff in guidelines about speeding, but it is "inappropriate speeding" - and it is the "inappropriate" not the "speeding" that makes it careless or dangerous driving or cycling.
I'm no fan of our legal setup and interpretations, but it is what it is and for now we have to live with it.
What we are experiencing is knee jerking from politicians (and their supporting media) desperate to have a go at some people to please certain elements of their base. The reaction is out of proportion and misdirected, and the legislative time could be spent far more usefully on other aspects - some of which I have pointed out.
The cyclist in Regent's Park was doing NINE mph over the 20mph limit. Any driver doing that who killed would at least be charged with death by careless driving and facing up to 4 years in prison (even if most likely suspended if not using drink or drugs). A coroner is also not an accident investigator.
Speeding alone is sufficient to lead to a dangerous driving charge and indeed many have been convicted of it, see this case for example where a driver driving at 58mph in a 30mph was jailed for 3 years for killing a pedestrian. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-68714492
Drivers and motorcyclists and lorry drivers have faced years in prison if they kill or seriously injure even if just driving carelessly and potentially over a decade in prison if they kill or seriously injure having driven dangerously or under the influence of drink or drugs.
So finally as a result of this new law if more cyclists get sent to prison for killing if they were driving dangerously or even just carelessly, so be it. The law and speed limits apply to cyclists as much as drivers
Even under this new law speed limits won't apply to bicycles. So you're wrong there.
I don't mind a new "dangerous" law for cyclists it as long as the punishment is proportionate. For example, a car travelling at 30mph carries as much energy as a cyclist doing 130mph.
If a speed limit of 20mph is applied to bicycles, the equivalent for cars should be 5mph.
I don't mind a new "dangerous" law for cyclists; it's an irrelevant waste of time and effort because it will achieve virtually nothing, because the problem it purports to fix hardly exists. And where a tiny problem may exist, it is far better addressed otherwise.
It is indicative that they have to go back 8 years to find a single relevant case, whilst drivers of motor vehicles of many types kill more than one pedestrian every day.
Every safety group in our country has been asking for the comprehensive review of road safety law and practice promised for a decade to be done in an evidence based, thoughtful, thorough manner.
Is it 6, or perhaps 7, Transport Ministers who have sat on their butts since then?
And we get this, and other measures that cut across the research, professional and policy practice of the DFT for years.
Because some oaf of an MP and conspiraloon of a Transport Minister want a cheap political hit.
It's a displacement activity. A dog chew for unthinking oafs.
I bitterly resent that time and effort are being wasted on this rather than used on things that will make a decent difference to safety.
The main thing it will do is provide a monument to IDS furiously knee jerking himself off.
It will hopefully make idiot speeding cyclists killing or seriously injuring elderly and vulnerable pedestrians without looking properly as in the recent media reported cases finally think again if they would face the same death by dangerous or serious injury by dangerous charges drivers and motorcyclists do. Potentially including jail time
Cyclists can't speed, so that cannot be a factor in the prosecution. The CPS would have to prove dangerous, and if they were to apply the same physics to drivers they would have to prosecute pretty much everyone.
Nope even just careless cycling which kills or seriously injures can include jail time under IDS' amendment
FPT Careless cycling or dangerous cycling is NOT the same as careless cycling causing death or serious injury or dangerous cycling causing death or serious injury which the new law allows for. Death by dangerous driving is up to an 18 year sentence, wanton or furious cycling gives a maximum 2 year sentence
Going 9mph over the speed limit certainly could come under careless or even dangerous driving or cycling as the police website says and yes motorists DO get charged with going that much over the speed limit. The police in question would almost certainly take such actions further once the new law comes in
The cyclist in the Regents Park collision could not be charged with causing death because he did not cause it, as per the Coroner's "Accidental Death" finding. It's open and shut. The police in question would never take further action because there is no basis for them to do so, with or without IDS's new law.
The death in the Regents Park collision was not unlawful; that is the definition of "ACCIDENTAL DEATH" in a Coroner's Verdict.
On careless or dangerous, and recalling that the definitions are the same for "driving" or "cycling":
1 - It is a general principle that speeding alone is not sufficient to form the basis for a charge of dangerous driving. There have to be other factors. There is a (far more extensive than I would like) body of caselaw on this. https://roadlawbarristers.co.uk/serious-speeding-enough-for-a-charge-of-dangerous-driving/ (Scotland is similar and there are references if you search.)
2 - It is in CPS Guidelines that the result "causing death" has no impact on whether driving is assessed as Careless or Dangerous. It's a consequence which raises the charge to "causing death by ...", but the existence of a death is not relevant to the assessment of quality of driving.
3 - There's stuff in guidelines about speeding, but it is "inappropriate speeding" - and it is the "inappropriate" not the "speeding" that makes it careless or dangerous driving or cycling.
I'm no fan of our legal setup and interpretations, but it is what it is and for now we have to live with it.
What we are experiencing is knee jerking from politicians (and their supporting media) desperate to have a go at some people to please certain elements of their base. The reaction is out of proportion and misdirected, and the legislative time could be spent far more usefully on other aspects - some of which I have pointed out.
The cyclist in Regent's Park was doing NINE mph over the 20mph limit. Any driver doing that who killed would at least be charged with death by careless driving and facing up to 4 years in prison (even if most likely suspended if not using drink or drugs). A coroner is also not an accident investigator.
Speeding alone is sufficient to lead to a dangerous driving charge and indeed many have been convicted of it, see this case for example where a driver driving at 58mph in a 30mph was jailed for 3 years for killing a pedestrian. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-68714492
Drivers and motorcyclists and lorry drivers have faced years in prison if they kill or seriously injure even if just driving carelessly and potentially over a decade in prison if they kill or seriously injure having driven dangerously or under the influence of drink or drugs.
So finally as a result of this new law if more cyclists get sent to prison for killing if they were driving dangerously or even just carelessly, so be it. The law and speed limits apply to cyclists as much as drivers
I'm not sure what you're trying to prove here.
It's simply a fact of law that speeding alone does not constitute dangerous or I think careless driving; it has to be "speed and something else".
And quoting a couple of "speed and something else" cases doesn't show that it is just speed.
We've dealt with the Regents Park accident, where no fault attaches to the cyclist because it was an accident when the pedestrian stepped out so immediately in front of him that avoidance was impossible.
For the other two, neither is speeding alone.
58mph in a 30mph was a driver who admitted that he did not even see the pedestrian he ran down. Far below the standard expected.
71mph had been driving his car dangerously round corners, almost losing control of it, and did a dangerous overtake when he hit someone turning right into a drive in front of him.
Drivers and motorcyclists and lorry drivers pose a far greater risk to vulnerable road users than do cyclists; that's why the time would be better spent on other matters. In this country we usually address road safety rationally as a Safe Systems approach - like H&S in the workplace, addressing the problems with larger consequences first.
Except when a stupid politician or two politicians put their personal predilections above reason. That's why this law is a misdirected waste of time.
Here's a piece from last month pointing out that 9 people were killed by mobility scooters in 2022. That is about 6-7 times higher than the average deaths per annum in pedestrian / cyclist collisions.
FPT Careless cycling or dangerous cycling is NOT the same as careless cycling causing death or serious injury or dangerous cycling causing death or serious injury which the new law allows for. Death by dangerous driving is up to an 18 year sentence, wanton or furious cycling gives a maximum 2 year sentence
Going 9mph over the speed limit certainly could come under careless or even dangerous driving or cycling as the police website says and yes motorists DO get charged with going that much over the speed limit. The police in question would almost certainly take such actions further once the new law comes in
The cyclist in the Regents Park collision could not be charged with causing death because he did not cause it, as per the Coroner's "Accidental Death" finding. It's open and shut. The police in question would never take further action because there is no basis for them to do so, with or without IDS's new law.
The death in the Regents Park collision was not unlawful; that is the definition of "ACCIDENTAL DEATH" in a Coroner's Verdict.
On careless or dangerous, and recalling that the definitions are the same for "driving" or "cycling":
1 - It is a general principle that speeding alone is not sufficient to form the basis for a charge of dangerous driving. There have to be other factors. There is a (far more extensive than I would like) body of caselaw on this. https://roadlawbarristers.co.uk/serious-speeding-enough-for-a-charge-of-dangerous-driving/ (Scotland is similar and there are references if you search.)
2 - It is in CPS Guidelines that the result "causing death" has no impact on whether driving is assessed as Careless or Dangerous. It's a consequence which raises the charge to "causing death by ...", but the existence of a death is not relevant to the assessment of quality of driving.
3 - There's stuff in guidelines about speeding, but it is "inappropriate speeding" - and it is the "inappropriate" not the "speeding" that makes it careless or dangerous driving or cycling.
I'm no fan of our legal setup and interpretations, but it is what it is and for now we have to live with it.
What we are experiencing is knee jerking from politicians (and their supporting media) desperate to have a go at some people to please certain elements of their base. The reaction is out of proportion and misdirected, and the legislative time could be spent far more usefully on other aspects - some of which I have pointed out.
The cyclist in Regent's Park was doing NINE mph over the 20mph limit. Any driver doing that who killed would at least be charged with death by careless driving and facing up to 4 years in prison (even if most likely suspended if not using drink or drugs). A coroner is also not an accident investigator.
Speeding alone is sufficient to lead to a dangerous driving charge and indeed many have been convicted of it, see this case for example where a driver driving at 58mph in a 30mph was jailed for 3 years for killing a pedestrian. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-68714492
Drivers and motorcyclists and lorry drivers have faced years in prison if they kill or seriously injure even if just driving carelessly and potentially over a decade in prison if they kill or seriously injure having driven dangerously or under the influence of drink or drugs.
So finally as a result of this new law if more cyclists get sent to prison for killing if they were driving dangerously or even just carelessly, so be it. The law and speed limits apply to cyclists as much as drivers
Even under this new law speed limits won't apply to bicycles. So you're wrong there.
I don't mind a new "dangerous" law for cyclists it as long as the punishment is proportionate. For example, a car travelling at 30mph carries as much energy as a cyclist doing 130mph.
If a speed limit of 20mph is applied to bicycles, the equivalent for cars should be 5mph.
Yes they will, a cyclist who is driving over a 20mph or 30mph limit who kills or seriously injuries will now face a death or serious injury by dangerous or careless driving charge and potentially go to prison
Will they? They would have to prove that it's dangerous, in the same way that you do for a car driver.
Any defence lawyer will point to *the laws of physics* and explain that the speed is equivalent to about 5mph for a car.
Unless you're suggesting that anyone driving around at over 5mph is a dangerous driver?
Anyone driving over a 20mph or 30mph speed limit who kills a pedestrian is likely at least guilty of death by careless driving whether a driver or a cyclist
No. A charging decision will be based on the circumstances of each case. If a pedestrian steps out in front of a speeding vehicle for no reason when sightlines were clear, charges will overwhelmingly not be laid.
Not that I think charging decisions are very good. It is routine for eg 'but I was dazzled by the sun (when I was driving at normal speed)' or similar nonsense to be an excuse which results in no charges or minor charges for putting someone in hospital or killing them.
When any careful or competent driver would slow down as far as necessary to be able to drive safely - to walking pace if necessary.
FPT Careless cycling or dangerous cycling is NOT the same as careless cycling causing death or serious injury or dangerous cycling causing death or serious injury which the new law allows for. Death by dangerous driving is up to an 18 year sentence, wanton or furious cycling gives a maximum 2 year sentence
Going 9mph over the speed limit certainly could come under careless or even dangerous driving or cycling as the police website says and yes motorists DO get charged with going that much over the speed limit. The police in question would almost certainly take such actions further once the new law comes in
The cyclist in the Regents Park collision could not be charged with causing death because he did not cause it, as per the Coroner's "Accidental Death" finding. It's open and shut. The police in question would never take further action because there is no basis for them to do so, with or without IDS's new law.
The death in the Regents Park collision was not unlawful; that is the definition of "ACCIDENTAL DEATH" in a Coroner's Verdict.
On careless or dangerous, and recalling that the definitions are the same for "driving" or "cycling":
1 - It is a general principle that speeding alone is not sufficient to form the basis for a charge of dangerous driving. There have to be other factors. There is a (far more extensive than I would like) body of caselaw on this. https://roadlawbarristers.co.uk/serious-speeding-enough-for-a-charge-of-dangerous-driving/ (Scotland is similar and there are references if you search.)
2 - It is in CPS Guidelines that the result "causing death" has no impact on whether driving is assessed as Careless or Dangerous. It's a consequence which raises the charge to "causing death by ...", but the existence of a death is not relevant to the assessment of quality of driving.
3 - There's stuff in guidelines about speeding, but it is "inappropriate speeding" - and it is the "inappropriate" not the "speeding" that makes it careless or dangerous driving or cycling.
I'm no fan of our legal setup and interpretations, but it is what it is and for now we have to live with it.
What we are experiencing is knee jerking from politicians (and their supporting media) desperate to have a go at some people to please certain elements of their base. The reaction is out of proportion and misdirected, and the legislative time could be spent far more usefully on other aspects - some of which I have pointed out.
The cyclist in Regent's Park was doing NINE mph over the 20mph limit. Any driver doing that who killed would at least be charged with death by careless driving and facing up to 4 years in prison (even if most likely suspended if not using drink or drugs). A coroner is also not an accident investigator.
Speeding alone is sufficient to lead to a dangerous driving charge and indeed many have been convicted of it, see this case for example where a driver driving at 58mph in a 30mph was jailed for 3 years for killing a pedestrian. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-68714492
Drivers and motorcyclists and lorry drivers have faced years in prison if they kill or seriously injure even if just driving carelessly and potentially over a decade in prison if they kill or seriously injure having driven dangerously or under the influence of drink or drugs.
So finally as a result of this new law if more cyclists get sent to prison for killing if they were driving dangerously or even just carelessly, so be it. The law and speed limits apply to cyclists as much as drivers
I'm not sure what you're trying to prove here.
It's simply a fact of law that speeding alone does not constitute dangerous or I think careless driving; it has to be "speed and something else".
And quoting a couple of "speed and something else" cases doesn't show that it is just speed.
We've dealt with the Regents Park accident, where no fault attaches to the cyclist because it was an accident when the pedestrian stepped out so immediately in front of him that avoidance was impossible.
For the other two, neither is speeding alone.
58mph in a 30mph was a driver who admitted that he did not even see the pedestrian he ran down. Far below the standard expected.
71mph had been driving his car dangerously round corners, almost losing control of it, and did a dangerous overtake when he hit someone turning right into a drive in front of him.
Drivers and motorcyclists and lorry drivers pose a far greater risk to vulnerable road users than do cyclists; that's why the time would be better spent on other matters. In this country we usually address road safety rationally as a Safe Systems approach - like H&S in the workplace, addressing the problems with larger consequences first.
Except when a stupid politician or two politicians put their personal predilections above reason. That's why this law is a misdirected waste of time.
Here's a piece from last month pointing out that 9 people were killed by mobility scooters in 2022. That is about 6-7 times higher than the average deaths per annum in pedestrian / cyclist collisions.
Yet so lazy and narrowminded is IDS that he couldn't even be bothered to include those, which could have been done very easily.
Missed a bit.
If IDS had actually wanted to help victims rather than have a pointless go at cyclists he would have used his imagination and done something like bring in presumed civil liability, which would help deliver compensation to almost all pedestrians hurt in such collisions from the Third Party Liability insurance carried by a vast majority of cyclists.
But that's not what he's trying to do, so he didn't do it.
After three polls with 20+ leads for Labour and each of them showing near-extinction level events for the Conservatives, I suspect nerves will be clamed by the Opinium this weekend which should show a Labour lead below 20 points but we'll see.
Last Opinium 24-40.
Peter Kelner revealed in a piece in Prospect how Opinium calculate the swingback, a straightforward -3 Labour +3 Conservative on what research told. At what point during proceedings is it deemed so close to election, historical Swingback has happened, in part at least?
The actual closing on the gap can be through Reform melting back to Con, something that is already happening since local election, but largely disguised by Labours recent uptick.
My guess is Lab 41-26 Con. The labour uptick + the Ref slide back into Con. and we will have to explain on PB yet again, its swing-back manipulated so not 15 but really 21 23-44.
Richard Holden's casual acquaintance with facts and the truth remains one of the constants of British politics.
However, he's not wrong in one or two aspects - Hall did better than the last polls suggested but whether she did well or Khan did badly is another question. Labour GLA candidates consistently outran Khan across the capital capturing seats in areas where he (Khan) lost to Hall while the LDs won the South West constituency
Taking Khan's unpopularity into account, however, Hall came up against the same problem the spider has trying to crawl out of a bowl. The more possible or even likely it seemed she had a chance of winning, the less likely that win became. Evidence - the LD and Green candidates were polling between them 15-17% in the pre-election polling but ended up on 11.6%. Reform were on 7-9% but ended up on 3%.
It's tempting to argue Hall squeezed the Reform vote and Khan squeezed the LD and Green vote but that's not right - Khan didn't squeeze the LD/Green vote, Hall did. As the (however remote) possibility of Hall winning gained currency (and this was played up in the last days by the pro-Khan Standard who kept on about how the race was closing or tightening like an ill-fitted suit after a good buffet), the more LD and Green voters went back to Khan.
Witness events in the South West Constituency - Khan won the Mayoral election by 8,000 with the LD 43,000 behind Hall. In the constituency, the LD won by 16,000 with the Conservative third so let's not forget the power of tactical voting
To be blunt - Khan is unpopular and disliked in many parts of the capital but that doesn't mean key voters were in any way attracted to Hall. She was a polarising figure who repelled moderate concesnsus voters - the more she looked like winning, the more she drove those voters back to Khan.
Could Hall have won? No, the anti-Conservative majority in London is just too large currently.
Is tactical voting a thing? Yes and that should worry Conservatives.
Quite a lot of 60+ LLG over the last week, Lab polling higher not obviously come from LG chums.
FPT Careless cycling or dangerous cycling is NOT the same as careless cycling causing death or serious injury or dangerous cycling causing death or serious injury which the new law allows for. Death by dangerous driving is up to an 18 year sentence, wanton or furious cycling gives a maximum 2 year sentence
Going 9mph over the speed limit certainly could come under careless or even dangerous driving or cycling as the police website says and yes motorists DO get charged with going that much over the speed limit. The police in question would almost certainly take such actions further once the new law comes in
The cyclist in the Regents Park collision could not be charged with causing death because he did not cause it, as per the Coroner's "Accidental Death" finding. It's open and shut. The police in question would never take further action because there is no basis for them to do so, with or without IDS's new law.
The death in the Regents Park collision was not unlawful; that is the definition of "ACCIDENTAL DEATH" in a Coroner's Verdict.
On careless or dangerous, and recalling that the definitions are the same for "driving" or "cycling":
1 - It is a general principle that speeding alone is not sufficient to form the basis for a charge of dangerous driving. There have to be other factors. There is a (far more extensive than I would like) body of caselaw on this. https://roadlawbarristers.co.uk/serious-speeding-enough-for-a-charge-of-dangerous-driving/ (Scotland is similar and there are references if you search.)
2 - It is in CPS Guidelines that the result "causing death" has no impact on whether driving is assessed as Careless or Dangerous. It's a consequence which raises the charge to "causing death by ...", but the existence of a death is not relevant to the assessment of quality of driving.
3 - There's stuff in guidelines about speeding, but it is "inappropriate speeding" - and it is the "inappropriate" not the "speeding" that makes it careless or dangerous driving or cycling.
I'm no fan of our legal setup and interpretations, but it is what it is and for now we have to live with it.
What we are experiencing is knee jerking from politicians (and their supporting media) desperate to have a go at some people to please certain elements of their base. The reaction is out of proportion and misdirected, and the legislative time could be spent far more usefully on other aspects - some of which I have pointed out.
The cyclist in Regent's Park was doing NINE mph over the 20mph limit. Any driver doing that who killed would at least be charged with death by careless driving and facing up to 4 years in prison (even if most likely suspended if not using drink or drugs). A coroner is also not an accident investigator.
Speeding alone is sufficient to lead to a dangerous driving charge and indeed many have been convicted of it, see this case for example where a driver driving at 58mph in a 30mph was jailed for 3 years for killing a pedestrian. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-68714492
Drivers and motorcyclists and lorry drivers have faced years in prison if they kill or seriously injure even if just driving carelessly and potentially over a decade in prison if they kill or seriously injure having driven dangerously or under the influence of drink or drugs.
So finally as a result of this new law if more cyclists get sent to prison for killing if they were driving dangerously or even just carelessly, so be it. The law and speed limits apply to cyclists as much as drivers
Even under this new law speed limits won't apply to bicycles. So you're wrong there.
I don't mind a new "dangerous" law for cyclists it as long as the punishment is proportionate. For example, a car travelling at 30mph carries as much energy as a cyclist doing 130mph.
If a speed limit of 20mph is applied to bicycles, the equivalent for cars should be 5mph.
Yes they will, a cyclist who is driving over a 20mph or 30mph limit who kills or seriously injuries will now face a death or serious injury by dangerous or careless driving charge and potentially go to prison
Will they? They would have to prove that it's dangerous, in the same way that you do for a car driver.
Any defence lawyer will point to *the laws of physics* and explain that the speed is equivalent to about 5mph for a car.
Unless you're suggesting that anyone driving around at over 5mph is a dangerous driver?
Anyone driving over a 20mph or 30mph speed limit who kills a pedestrian is likely at least guilty of death by careless driving whether a driver or a cyclist
Absolute rubbish.
Well, let me qualify that. If a driver has killed a pedestrian then it probably is likely they're guilty of death by careless driving.
But the speed being over the limit has nowt to do with that at all. It's well established in law that speeding per se isn't dangerous/careless. Just as well when we have such pathetically upper limits. I'd abolish them entirely if it were up to me. 400mph on the M74 at 5am? Awesome. I hope to see technology that allows it.
FPT Careless cycling or dangerous cycling is NOT the same as careless cycling causing death or serious injury or dangerous cycling causing death or serious injury which the new law allows for. Death by dangerous driving is up to an 18 year sentence, wanton or furious cycling gives a maximum 2 year sentence
Going 9mph over the speed limit certainly could come under careless or even dangerous driving or cycling as the police website says and yes motorists DO get charged with going that much over the speed limit. The police in question would almost certainly take such actions further once the new law comes in
The cyclist in the Regents Park collision could not be charged with causing death because he did not cause it, as per the Coroner's "Accidental Death" finding. It's open and shut. The police in question would never take further action because there is no basis for them to do so, with or without IDS's new law.
The death in the Regents Park collision was not unlawful; that is the definition of "ACCIDENTAL DEATH" in a Coroner's Verdict.
On careless or dangerous, and recalling that the definitions are the same for "driving" or "cycling":
1 - It is a general principle that speeding alone is not sufficient to form the basis for a charge of dangerous driving. There have to be other factors. There is a (far more extensive than I would like) body of caselaw on this. https://roadlawbarristers.co.uk/serious-speeding-enough-for-a-charge-of-dangerous-driving/ (Scotland is similar and there are references if you search.)
2 - It is in CPS Guidelines that the result "causing death" has no impact on whether driving is assessed as Careless or Dangerous. It's a consequence which raises the charge to "causing death by ...", but the existence of a death is not relevant to the assessment of quality of driving.
3 - There's stuff in guidelines about speeding, but it is "inappropriate speeding" - and it is the "inappropriate" not the "speeding" that makes it careless or dangerous driving or cycling.
I'm no fan of our legal setup and interpretations, but it is what it is and for now we have to live with it.
What we are experiencing is knee jerking from politicians (and their supporting media) desperate to have a go at some people to please certain elements of their base. The reaction is out of proportion and misdirected, and the legislative time could be spent far more usefully on other aspects - some of which I have pointed out.
The cyclist in Regent's Park was doing NINE mph over the 20mph limit. Any driver doing that who killed would at least be charged with death by careless driving and facing up to 4 years in prison (even if most likely suspended if not using drink or drugs). A coroner is also not an accident investigator.
Speeding alone is sufficient to lead to a dangerous driving charge and indeed many have been convicted of it, see this case for example where a driver driving at 58mph in a 30mph was jailed for 3 years for killing a pedestrian. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-68714492
Drivers and motorcyclists and lorry drivers have faced years in prison if they kill or seriously injure even if just driving carelessly and potentially over a decade in prison if they kill or seriously injure having driven dangerously or under the influence of drink or drugs.
So finally as a result of this new law if more cyclists get sent to prison for killing if they were driving dangerously or even just carelessly, so be it. The law and speed limits apply to cyclists as much as drivers
Even under this new law speed limits won't apply to bicycles. So you're wrong there.
I don't mind a new "dangerous" law for cyclists it as long as the punishment is proportionate. For example, a car travelling at 30mph carries as much energy as a cyclist doing 130mph.
If a speed limit of 20mph is applied to bicycles, the equivalent for cars should be 5mph.
Yes they will, a cyclist who is driving over a 20mph or 30mph limit who kills or seriously injuries will now face a death or serious injury by dangerous or careless driving charge and potentially go to prison
Will they? They would have to prove that it's dangerous, in the same way that you do for a car driver.
Any defence lawyer will point to *the laws of physics* and explain that the speed is equivalent to about 5mph for a car.
Unless you're suggesting that anyone driving around at over 5mph is a dangerous driver?
Anyone driving over a 20mph or 30mph speed limit who kills a pedestrian is likely at least guilty of death by careless driving whether a driver or a cyclist
No. A charging decision will be based on the circumstances of each case. If a pedestrian steps out in front of a speeding vehicle for no reason when sightlines were clear, charges will overwhelmingly not be laid.
Not that I think charging decisions are very good. It is routine for eg 'but I was dazzled by the sun (when I was driving at normal speed)' or similar nonsense to be an excuse which results in no charges or minor charges for putting someone in hospital or killing them.
When any careful or competent driver would slow down as far as necessary to be able to drive safely - to walking pace if necessary.
The other excuse is a "temporary blackout". Which should come with a life ban from driving on medical grounds.
Comments
'Rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city — except for bombing,'
Conans are Barbarians, no?So, Sir Arthur Barbarian Housekeeper.
It was my third day back, but my first on my regular route which includes my street. The weather has been great, and I've been made to feel really valued by so many people
I think around thirty people have asked me directly about my holiday, and another twenty or so have asked where I've been for the last month
I've got rather good at giving the crucial details that impress, delight and amuse people: just under a marathon a day, just over an Everest and a half climbed, only beer drunk in the afternoons, and the story of my journey home, starting with my missed flight which I recounted here before
What I haven't told you about is my race across London to meet my parents, and their taxi home, on Drury Lane
My flight left about half an hour late, and landed fifteen minutes late at Stansted. I then just missed a Stansted Express train and had to sit on the next one for another fifteen minutes before it left
I planned to go to Tottenham Hale, where my return ticket was from, and get the Victoria Line to near the West End and march to the theatre. As the train pulled in the screen showed "Victoria Line - Closed"
WTF?!? I didn't have time to check, so stayed on the train to Liverpool Street and started looking at tube options from there
It turned out they were actually better, but the train was so slow through London compared to the Victoria Line..
When the train arrived it told me that all of the tube lines were closed. I had a brief internal panic, which may have included a bit of cursing out loud, and headed for the ticket barrier with my return ticket to Tottenham Hale
I asked the chap who took my ticket "Is the tube open?", he didn't look at my ticket. He looked at me like I was idiot and said "Yeah, it's right there", pointing at the entrance opposite
I didn't have time to explain my apparently stupid question and dashed for the Central Line. I had five stops to Holborn
When I got out Google maps told me ten minutes to the Theatre Royal, I sent a message to Mum saying the same. I made it in seven, and arrived at the front door thirty seconds before my parents emerged
They would have waited a few minutes for me, I'm sure, but I was so pleased not to delay them
We didn't get home until quarter past one, and I only got about four and a half hours sleep before I had to go back to work, but I made it and made it through that next day
If instead we took the view that a house is something you can buy and self build and it lasts approximately 25 years, we could change how housing is seen. Consider the way kit houses were completely the norm in the interwar period in America.
That exists as a nascent movement in the shipping container refits and the tiny house movement people, but ultimately its a) looked down upon ("an englishman's home is his castle") and b) not supported by our current planning system or infrastructure.
Which is actually more negligent than an accidental lab leak.
Root causes do matter. If this is right and we're not holding China accountable for its woeful food safety controls, we're just waiting for a third time.
However, there are consequences.
For a start, the UK doesn't have much of the rapid growing wood that is used to build homes. So, we'll be importing. Not the end of the world, obviously. But it will have an impact.
Secondly, wood houses don't last as long. That means that banks will almost certainly lend at lower LTVs because the whole property will need to be replaced every 25 years or so.
Thirdly, labour does come into it somewhat. Our entire building trade is setup around brick houses.
None of these are deal breakers, obviously. And labour shortages naturally sort themselves out. Together, though, they would limit the supply of new wooden houses somewhat.
Still, not a good reason not to allow them.
(We would need to change some of the regulation, I suspect, around insulation. Because wooden houses probably aren't as well insulated. So there's probably a little hidden cost around additional energy usage too.)
Neil Henderson
@hendopolis
·
1h
I WEEKEND EXCLUSIVE: Benefits system insiders reveal how targets are used to decide disability claims #TomorrowsPapersToday
Is it great? No. Is it any worse than living in a 5 person houseshare? (no living room, that's the fifth bedroom).
Reviewed (and built) here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53vIAXNBc6g
It's cheap as chips so the value is the land it's built on. You should be able to 'mortgage' that separate from the property if costs are prohibitive.
It would break the current housing monopoly, all it would require is a reduction in planning laws and nimbys to be shot on sight (jk).
But radical solutions are probably what we need for the current housing crisis.
When I say they can't get staff it's because that is what I'm hearing on an hourly basis - and paying more won't solve the issue, the issue is we don't have the skills and we aren't training people up...
And if they are rented, not owned, where's the problem?
I think we're going to give Leeds a good game
https://www.homebuilding.co.uk/advice/how-to-build-a-sips-home#
Not sure if this has been mentioned:
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/susan-hall-richard-holden-conservative-tory-london-mayoral-election-sadiq-khan-chance-b1158313.html
Richard Holden's casual acquaintance with facts and the truth remains one of the constants of British politics.
However, he's not wrong in one or two aspects - Hall did better than the last polls suggested but whether she did well or Khan did badly is another question. Labour GLA candidates consistently outran Khan across the capital capturing seats in areas where he (Khan) lost to Hall while the LDs won the South West constituency
Taking Khan's unpopularity into account, however, Hall came up against the same problem the spider has trying to crawl out of a bowl. The more possible or even likely it seemed she had a chance of winning, the less likely that win became. Evidence - the LD and Green candidates were polling between them 15-17% in the pre-election polling but ended up on 11.6%. Reform were on 7-9% but ended up on 3%.
It's tempting to argue Hall squeezed the Reform vote and Khan squeezed the LD and Green vote but that's not right - Khan didn't squeeze the LD/Green vote, Hall did. As the (however remote) possibility of Hall winning gained currency (and this was played up in the last days by the pro-Khan Standard who kept on about how the race was closing or tightening like an ill-fitted suit after a good buffet), the more LD and Green voters went back to Khan.
Witness events in the South West Constituency - Khan won the Mayoral election by 8,000 with the LD 43,000 behind Hall. In the constituency, the LD won by 16,000 with the Conservative third so let's not forget the power of tactical voting
To be blunt - Khan is unpopular and disliked in many parts of the capital but that doesn't mean key voters were in any way attracted to Hall. She was a polarising figure who repelled moderate concesnsus voters - the more she looked like winning, the more she drove those voters back to Khan.
Could Hall have won? No, the anti-Conservative majority in London is just too large currently.
Is tactical voting a thing? Yes and that should worry Conservatives.
The cyclist in the Regents Park collision could not be charged with causing death because he did not cause it, as per the Coroner's "Accidental Death" finding. It's open and shut. The police in question would never take further action because there is no basis for them to do so, with or without IDS's new law.
The death in the Regents Park collision was not unlawful; that is the definition of "ACCIDENTAL DEATH" in a Coroner's Verdict.
On careless or dangerous, and recalling that the definitions are the same for "driving" or "cycling":
1 - It is a general principle that speeding alone is not sufficient to form the basis for a charge of dangerous driving. There have to be other factors. There is a (far more extensive than I would like) body of caselaw on this.
https://roadlawbarristers.co.uk/serious-speeding-enough-for-a-charge-of-dangerous-driving/
(Scotland is similar and there are references if you search.)
2 - It is in CPS Guidelines that the result "causing death" has no impact on whether driving is assessed as Careless or Dangerous. It's a consequence which raises the charge to "causing death by ...", but the existence of a death is not relevant to the assessment of quality of driving.
It is explicit:
"The injury or death of one or more persons involved in a road traffic collision" is included in the list of "Factors that are not relevant in deciding whether driving is dangerous or careless"
https://www.cps.gov.uk/legal-guidance/road-traffic-fatal-offences-and-bad-driving
3 - There's stuff in guidelines about speeding, but it is "inappropriate speeding" - and it is the "inappropriate" not the "speeding" that makes it careless or dangerous driving or cycling.
I'm no fan of our legal setup and interpretations, but it is what it is and for now we have to live with it.
What we are experiencing is knee jerking from politicians (and their supporting media) desperate to have a go at some people to please certain elements of their base. The reaction is out of proportion and misdirected, and the legislative time could be spent far more usefully on other aspects - some of which I have pointed out.
I'm hearing this is serious in local Government with vacancies running at 20%+ in some areas.
It's not a skills problem - those with the skills have the work, there just aren't enough of them.
All I'm hearing is some who think cajoling the retired and pensioners into work by claiming some sort of civic obligation could be the answer - that's absurd. There is a pool of employees among carers who can only do limited hours but we need companies and organisations to think more flexibly. I'd also look at the unemployment rate among disabled people and ask if there's not more we can do to bring some of those individuals into work.
Let me give you an example Mrs Eek and her uni friend have spent the last 3 years working at the same place. Both are moving to different places, the Mrs is going to a different (nearer) council for £3x,000. Her friend to a private company earning £5x,000...
I will add that Mrs Eek does work for fun/interest as much as the money but even so....
The number renting their homes has increased by 28% under the Tories (2011 -2021). Housing in our cities is now seen as an asset with which to plunder the earnings of working people. Loads more renters = loads more Labour votes.
There is a lot of virtual signalling on here about bonfire of regulations etc etc. But the ugly fact is that housing has kept up with the population (indeed has grown more quickly), hence the lack of mass homelessness (though that has increased too, from a low base), and increase in second homes and spare bedrooms.
No one is talking about the changed distribution, either with houses left half empty, empty, or rented out either long term or short term. There is no evidence that a private housebuilding surge would create more owners - the evidence from the last decade is it would create more landlords.
I can't see any other option than some sort of regulation that new homes may not be rented out, or a highly punitive tax on landlords.
https://heritagecalling.com/2022/08/04/a-brief-history-of-prefabs/
4 - Excessive or inappropriate speed is a factor in culpability in sentencing, which is then combined with degree of harm as part of the methodology, but that part of the process is not a factor in a charging decision for careless or dangerous driving.
They tie themselves in a complicated knot to try and make the definitions consistent because of wanting high speed emergency driving not to be automatically classified as "dangerous". R vs Milton in 2007 was a policemen who did 148mph on a motorway and 90mph on an A road and 60 mph in a residential area whilst "practising" and "familiarising" who got off a DD charge by claiming exceptional skills.
No, property hasn’t kept up with population
We have a similar population to France. And 8 million fewer properties.
The rise in rentals is because higher prices put buying beyond many.
If a flat costs £200k, then you need £50k of income to make a pitch to buy. And a 10% deposit is £20k. Good luck saving £20k out of £50k of income while renting.
The problem is insufficient properties of all kinds. The most telling point is that any piece of crap can be sold/rented.
This becoming a more standard way of operating would help improve the productivity of our existing workforce, rather than every Tom, Dick and Harry demanding that they can recruit from overseas if there's a shortage of people fully trained.
But the problem with obvious timber frame builds, SIPS houses (not in Scotland), self-builds, etc is simple: you can't get high street mortgages on them, you have to get specialist mortgages.
Not quite Squid Game, but satisfyingly twisted.
Slow first episode, but improves steadily.
Landlordism is an absolute stain on the country and the economy. But the demand elasticity of "a roof over your head" is basically zero, i.e. it will remain unchanged at any price. Unless you can move in with your parents or buy a camper van.
Therefore, in accordance with the laws of supply and demand and all those weird curve things we all drew in a-level economics, landlords get to pass all their costs on to tenants. Or worse, exit the market, thus reducing supply and again raising costs for tenants.
Landlord bashing is easy and popular. Doing something that actually fixes the problem - i.e. finding a way to build more houses - is hard.
Fairly and depressingly obvious which route Labour is going to take, tbh.
Jess Phillips, "He's funnier than Rishi Sunak. He told me to f*ck off the other day"
Jason Manford, "Did he?"
Jess Phillips, "Yeah, because I was showing a level of sympathy for Rishi Sunak. I was like, I am starting to feel a bit sorry for him. And Keir was like: oh f*ck off Jess"
https://twitter.com/implausibleblog/status/1791570618317426904?t=n7MseLl4CyqPOlkkZww_sg&s=19
When 40% of disabled adults do not have a driving license, destroying the public transport system, and deliberately making transport modes such as cycling or tricycling difficult or impossible to save thruppence of a litre of petrol for a few weeks, is not going help that goal.
For pensioners / retied we have I think a much higher number in employment than previously and it continues to increase - startlingly. But those are also a huge stock of our volunteer sector who staff things like charity shops, National Trust, food banks and so on - in their millions.
But the number of dwellings in E&W increased by 8.2% between 2011 and 2021. Total households increased by 6.1%
More houses might be part of the solution. But it won't work unless you make buying those homes less attractive to potential landlords. The reason my flat was so expensive was that I was constantly being outbid by cash buying landlords.
Plus the workforce in the building trade has been badly treated for many years.
Getting them to pay for courses won’t work. And the usual scumbags have already turned the loans-for-training-paid-off-by-working into scams.
Since no one is directly employed and you can’t tie people to an employer in return for training, anyway, how should the training be structured?
I think it has to be tackled from the quality of provision side.
-1 for "mold", a foreign spelling. But saying "the other half of school" is worse. That's the other half of the 1860s+ part, the commoner part.
(Note for the uninitiated: Winchester Football is all about the conversion of behinds.)
Did you get firked for the drugs? Or stripped of Co Praeship, or what?
Certainly true that Sunak would not have been appointed Sen Co Prae without being generally viewed as a nice guy. Those who think it would have been because he was super-strong academically or in sports don't have a clue.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/05/17/post-office-lawyer-who-oversaw-bates-case-wont-co-operate/
"Post Office lawyer who oversaw Alan Bates case refusing to co-operate with inquiry
It is understood that Jane MacLeod is living in New Zealand and the inquiry cannot compel her to give evidence while she is abroad"
1) There's planning reform and investment to facilitate a bit increase in housebuilding opportunities over the long-term
2) There's the ability for homebuilders make an increase in profits by increasing the number of homes they build
... Then there must be a way to get homebuilders to train more people to do the work. If there's not, it's a sign of market failure and the government should either reform whatever labour market arbitrage is holding it back, or create a government-backed competitor that does the job for them to add to competition.
The reason that properties are attractive to landlords is quite simple. People who can’t get a mortgage can pay higher rent.
So, due to the shortage (99%+ occupancy) of housing puts prices up beyond the ability of many to buy. You can’t get a loan of 10x income.
But they can still stretch to vast rents.
So the landlord (increasingly companies) can buy on the basis of probable return.
If the terms on which banks can lend are relaxed - say high to 2008.
Suspect the weak link is that nobody is directly employed, so there's not much incentive for firms to treat employees well or develop them.
And that makes sense right now because the pipeline of future work is so slow and spurty. If you want companies to take staff on long term, they need to be confident that they'll have work for them to do next year and the one after that.
Free market houses don't provide that, because it makes sense to dribble the houses out onto the market. Which can't be the best use of labour.
If someone (maybe the Duke of Cornwall, maybe councils) said to builders "just build them and keep going, we'll worry about getting them occupied", it feels like that would lead to non-trivial efficiency gains. Plus a lot of the "where are the facilities" questions become a lot easier.
There are businesses betting that Labour will open the taps, and get rates for skilled workers back down to minimum wage.
That’s the mentality.
Time that workers got more rights.
Zhiming (2019): "As of December 31st 2013, 53 BSLs, including 42 BSL-3s, had been fully accredited in China and more laboratories have completed the accreditation in recent years. In addition, more than 1000 BSL-2 labs are currently being operated in universities, research institutions, hospitals and R&D entrepreneurship centers."
We know what viruses were bring studied in the Wuhan lab. None of them can be the ancestor to SARS-CoV-2.
Wuhan is a big city. The outbreak began with cases clustered around the wet market and were nowhere near the lab. Wet markets are exactly were it's been predicted a new pandemic would pop up.
The early viral diversity isn't consistent with a lab leak, but is consistent with a pool of infected animals in a market.
Migration will remain important, but it currently feels like it's a opioid on which many sectors of the economy are addicted. It is preventing us from being as productive or as rich a society as we would be if we invested in ourselves.
1 - Rent caps fuck tenants, not landlords, who they drive away. The current generation *may* benefit for a time, but all future tenants are fucked by the resulting wrecked renting and investing market. It's the sort of shoot-yourself-in-the-head thing I hope Labour will not do.
And, speaking from my background in Timber Industry Statistics
2 - I don't know where these statements about UK timber come from, but they are off. The best stats sources are TRADA, the Timber Trade Federation, and the Forestry Commission.
a - Wooden houses (timber frame etc) have a large newbuild market share - 80%+ in Scotland is the highest, 25% overall. Most of that is offsite construction, which arrives as panels such as SIPs on the back of a lorry.
If we need to flex the output, we can fairly easily. Off site house manufacture has been significant for 30 or more years. Somewhere down @Foxy 's way there's a house factory with a capacity to make 8k houses a year iirc, for example.
b - The standard life expectancy of TF in the UK is 60 years, like all the other construction methods. Usonians build their temporary houses comparatively out of glue and balsawood, which is where the 25 year number may come from.
We won't be building inhabited sheds here, because we have good regulations about quality, performance etc - though enforcement is an issue sometimes.
c - Mortgages for recognised construction method timber houses are not an issue in the UK.
All the base research work for that was done in the 1990s.
d - We have a lot of fast growing softwood. UK roundwood production is around 10 million tons a year - not that much by USA / Canada standards. but a big chunk of our market covering both softwood and hardwood. Beyond that we import from Scandinavia, Baltics and formerly Russia.
d - If we need to import more timber, I see no reason why we cannot do so. Assuming we face down Mad Vlad and do not get a general war.
One of the most interesting companies I ever visited was a JIT timber importer / distributor called Crown Timber (now Sodra Wood) based in Cirencester - amazing supply chain IT.
*TA's working with the very highest levels of special needs, complex PTSD and mental health children often with multiple conditions interacting and suffering abuse, violence, being spat and urinated on, are not considered skilled but are on the same grade as cleaners.
I consider them not just skilled, but saints.
Unless lab leak means a single bat wriggled out of its cage and flew over the fence.
I suspect there is no low hanging fruit left.
What Labour desperately need to do is get beyond the self-serving gormless wibble served up by "tenants" groups, who know nothing and try to drive the entire market changes from their own perches, usually based in London and only representing one tiny segment.
I worry about humanity
He was excellent. I mean that.
Within the last year he's given up. Couple of examples - the village I live in has a monthly magazine. It used to get monthly updates from him and publish them. Now it (I'm using 3rd person but am on the committee) publishes updates from the councillors instead because he can't be bothered. 18 months or so despite it not being his department he helped us out with a council thing. Now he doesn't meaningfully assist us with a governmental mattter.
It makes you wonder whether he ever really gave a shit.
Speeding alone is sufficient to lead to a dangerous driving charge and indeed many have been convicted of it, see this case for example where a driver driving at 58mph in a 30mph was jailed for 3 years for killing a pedestrian. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-68714492
Or this one jailed for 18 months after killing another driver speeding at 71mph.
https://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/24297520.reckless-burnley-driver-killed-father-of-one-speeding/
Death by careless driving alone has a sentence range from a community order to 4 years in prison even if it was not dangerous.
https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/magistrates-court/item/causing-death-by-careless-or-inconsiderate-driving/
Even serious injury by careless driving now has a sentence range from a community order up to 2 years in prison.
https://www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/offences/magistrates-court/item/causing-serious-injury-by-careless-or-inconsiderate-driving/
Drivers and motorcyclists and lorry drivers have faced years in prison if they kill or seriously injure even if just driving carelessly and potentially over a decade in prison if they kill or seriously injure having driven dangerously or under the influence of drink or drugs.
So finally as a result of this new law if more cyclists get sent to prison for killing if they were driving dangerously or even just carelessly, so be it. The law and speed limits apply to cyclists as much as drivers
https://www.theguardian.com/business/article/2024/may/17/british-asylum-housing-tycoon-breaks-into-sunday-times-rich-list?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Square,_Seattle
These days, many wooden houses in the US are being built with steel frames, which should make them even more resistant to earthquakes.
(Not all US earthquakes are in the West, by the way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_Seismic_Zone )
I don't mind a new "dangerous" law for cyclists it as long as the punishment is proportionate. For example, a car travelling at 30mph carries as much energy as a cyclist doing 130mph.
If a speed limit of 20mph is applied to bicycles, the equivalent for cars should be 5mph.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_subduction_zone
It is indicative that they have to go back 8 years to find a single relevant case, whilst drivers of motor vehicles of many types kill more than one pedestrian every day.
Every safety group in our country has been asking for the comprehensive review of road safety law and practice promised for a decade to be done in an evidence based, thoughtful, thorough manner.
Is it 6, or perhaps 7, Transport Ministers who have sat on their butts since then?
And we get this, and other measures that cut across the research, professional and policy practice of the DFT for years.
Because some oaf of an MP and conspiraloon of a Transport Minister want
a cheap political hit.
It's a displacement activity. A dog chew for unthinking oafs.
I bitterly resent that time and effort are being wasted on this rather than used on things that will make a decent difference to safety.
The main thing it will do is provide a monument to IDS furiously knee jerking himself off.
driving over a 20mph or
30mph limit who kills or
seriously injuries a pedestrian will now face a death or serious injury by dangerous or careless driving charge and potentially go to prison
I should have remembered fopdoodles, numpties and wazzocks.
It's such a waste - a measure that could have been 0.1% of a good road safety package in 2016, and they do nothing then give us this.
Any defence lawyer will point to *the laws of physics* and explain that the speed is equivalent to about 5mph for a car.
Unless you're suggesting that anyone driving around at over 5mph is a dangerous driver?
It's simply a fact of law that speeding alone does not constitute dangerous or I think careless driving; it has to be "speed and something else".
And quoting a couple of "speed and something else" cases doesn't show that it is just speed.
We've dealt with the Regents Park accident, where no fault attaches to the cyclist because it was an accident when the pedestrian stepped out so immediately in front of him that avoidance was impossible.
For the other two, neither is speeding alone.
58mph in a 30mph was a driver who admitted that he did not even see the pedestrian he ran down. Far below the standard expected.
71mph had been driving his car dangerously round corners, almost losing control of it, and did a dangerous overtake when he hit someone turning right into a drive in front of him.
Drivers and motorcyclists and lorry drivers pose a far greater risk to vulnerable road users than do cyclists; that's why the time would be better spent on other matters. In this country we usually address road safety rationally as a Safe Systems approach - like H&S in the workplace, addressing the problems with larger consequences first.
Except when a stupid politician or two politicians put their personal predilections above reason. That's why this law is a misdirected waste of time.
Here's a piece from last month pointing out that 9 people were killed by mobility scooters in 2022. That is about 6-7 times higher than the average deaths per annum in pedestrian / cyclist collisions.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13147529/Mobility-scooters-involved-crashes-day-100-seriously-hurt-nine-killed-year-shocking-data-reveals.html
Yet so lazy and narrowminded is IDS that he couldn't even be bothered to include those, which could have been done very easily.
Not that I think charging decisions are very good. It is routine for eg 'but I was dazzled by the sun (when I was driving at normal speed)' or similar nonsense to be an excuse which results in no charges or minor charges for putting someone in hospital or killing them.
When any careful or competent driver would slow down as far as necessary to be able to drive safely - to walking pace if necessary.
If IDS had actually wanted to help victims rather than have a pointless go at cyclists he would have used his imagination and done something like bring in presumed civil liability, which would help deliver compensation to almost all pedestrians hurt in such collisions from the Third Party Liability insurance carried by a vast majority of cyclists.
But that's not what he's trying to do, so he didn't do it.
Peter Kelner revealed in a piece in Prospect how Opinium calculate the swingback, a straightforward -3 Labour +3 Conservative on what research told. At what point during proceedings is it deemed so close to election, historical Swingback has happened, in part at least?
The actual closing on the gap can be through Reform melting back to Con, something that is already happening since local election, but largely disguised by Labours recent uptick.
My guess is Lab 41-26 Con. The labour uptick + the Ref slide back into Con. and we will have to explain on PB yet again, its swing-back manipulated so not 15 but really 21 23-44.
There, I’ve done my explaining out the way.
Well, let me qualify that. If a driver has killed a pedestrian then it probably is likely they're guilty of death by careless driving.
But the speed being over the limit has nowt to do with that at all. It's well established in law that speeding per se isn't dangerous/careless. Just as well when we have such pathetically upper limits. I'd abolish them entirely if it were up to me. 400mph on the M74 at 5am? Awesome. I hope to see technology that allows it.