But there is still no swell of enthusiasm for Sir Keir, with 33 per cent satisfied with him as Labour leader, up two points, and 52 per cent dissatisfied, no change. So if he wins, it would mean he would go into Downing Street with a lower rating as Opposition Leader than Mr Cameron, Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher.
Ipsos.
I'm not sure that is bad for him. Low expectations should help rather than hinder.
Sadly I disagree. People are generally cynical, have little patience, and don't like Starmer enough to give him the benefit of the doubt for the many years it would take to turn things around even in the most optimistic of scenarios.
What we don't yet know is how Starmer will react to criticism and unpopularity when in office. Sunak panicked and flailed around from one thing to another ineffectually. We must hope that Starmer is made of sterner stuff.
Starmer is an eminent lawyer, they are made of stern stuff.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
"..., or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament."
I'd like to see a recent example of a bypass that's gone from conception to open in five years.
So would I, that's the problem.
It could be done within a Parliament, but they won't invest in it currently.
So which part of the process would you drop?
A new £1 billion road - Black Cat to Caxton - is being built about a mile away from where I sit. Proper work started late last year (after a six month delay due to green loons), and it is due to open in Spring 2027. That's three or four years of work. From what I recall, the final route was chosen in 2019, and there was a few years of route options, discussions and preliminary work before that.
It'll probably be over ten years from being seriously considered to opening.
But how would you speed it up?
Get someone to design it. The design is then made into a primary act of parliament including compulsory purchase and clauses that make clear that in the event of any conflict with other legislation, the other legislation is null and void. Pass Act.Build it.
Might need use the parliament act and withdraw from the ECHR as well.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
On the contrary. Elecvtdrification was enormously important in increasing speed *and* capacity. And surely your demand for a new motorway from X to Y is basically the existing A class road upgraded.
I am fairly convinced that electrification - in the sense of overhead lines - will not advance much more.
While battery powered trains are less efficient (carrying the weight of the batteries), the vastly lower capital costs and the maintenance issues will mean that for routes of increasing length, the batteries will win.
Done properly (i.e. as done in Scotland believe it or not) electrification is cheaper than the other options.
Plus how do you charge the trains up or deal with the extra weight if they break down.
Batteries in cars are the future, for trains its electrification, for lorries not a clue...
But there is still no swell of enthusiasm for Sir Keir, with 33 per cent satisfied with him as Labour leader, up two points, and 52 per cent dissatisfied, no change. So if he wins, it would mean he would go into Downing Street with a lower rating as Opposition Leader than Mr Cameron, Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher.
Ipsos.
I'm not sure that is bad for him. Low expectations should help rather than hinder.
Sadly I disagree. People are generally cynical, have little patience, and don't like Starmer enough to give him the benefit of the doubt for the many years it would take to turn things around even in the most optimistic of scenarios.
What we don't yet know is how Starmer will react to criticism and unpopularity when in office. Sunak panicked and flailed around from one thing to another ineffectually. We must hope that Starmer is made of sterner stuff.
Starmer is an eminent lawyer, they are made of stern stuff.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
On the contrary. Elecvtdrification was enormously important in increasing speed *and* capacity. And surely your demand for a new motorway from X to Y is basically the existing A class road upgraded.
I am fairly convinced that electrification - in the sense of overhead lines - will not advance much more.
While battery powered trains are less efficient (carrying the weight of the batteries), the vastly lower capital costs and the maintenance issues will mean that for routes of increasing length, the batteries will win.
The duty cycle of a train - especially long-distance ones - are long. As well as power density, charging times matter.
I agree, but only if.when we get *far* better battery chemistries.
But there is still no swell of enthusiasm for Sir Keir, with 33 per cent satisfied with him as Labour leader, up two points, and 52 per cent dissatisfied, no change. So if he wins, it would mean he would go into Downing Street with a lower rating as Opposition Leader than Mr Cameron, Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher.
Ipsos.
I'm not sure that is bad for him. Low expectations should help rather than hinder.
Sadly I disagree. People are generally cynical, have little patience, and don't like Starmer enough to give him the benefit of the doubt for the many years it would take to turn things around even in the most optimistic of scenarios.
What we don't yet know is how Starmer will react to criticism and unpopularity when in office. Sunak panicked and flailed around from one thing to another ineffectually. We must hope that Starmer is made of sterner stuff.
He has a bit of John Major about him, I don't see him panicking.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
Why do you think northern England needs 'levelling up' to London's levels of unaffordability and inequality ?
What people need are:
Employment Housing
And then opportunities to get better employment and better housing.
What the North now has are the best employment opportunities it has had since Ken Barlow was a lad.
Yet PBers still babble on about some cho-cho that sod all people would ever have used.
Roads are what brings new developments not trains.
Go to Okehampton, where levelling up was put into action and the line reopened rapidly as the infrastducture was deemed still in use so all the bureaucratic crap was able to be short circuited.
Passenger use blew all expectations out of the water, even more so than the waverley line and all sorts of things now going on in the area as a result. Total game changer.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
On the contrary. Elecvtdrification was enormously important in increasing speed *and* capacity. And surely your demand for a new motorway from X to Y is basically the existing A class road upgraded.
I am fairly convinced that electrification - in the sense of overhead lines - will not advance much more.
While battery powered trains are less efficient (carrying the weight of the batteries), the vastly lower capital costs and the maintenance issues will mean that for routes of increasing length, the batteries will win.
The duty cycle of a train - especially long-distance ones - are long. As well as power density, charging times matter.
I agree, but only if.when we get *far* better battery chemistries.
Allowing for gaps in the electrification makes a lot of sense, if it means not having to modify bridges, tunnels, cuttings, and other features that make it very difficult to install the infrastructure of overhead cabling. Would save an absolute fortune on an upgrade project.
Good. We do not need wannabe Quislings in our democracy.
This is where I think Leon notably misreads this country. We are not the same as mainland Europe and don’t necessarily follow ‘behind’ their trends, which is an odd thing to have to remind a so-called brexiteer.
A good case can be made for saying that we had our rightward surge in 2016 and again in 2019, especially since migration was a big factor in those votes on top of EU centralised control.
That we are now almost certainly about to elect a Centre-Left Government may buck the continental trend, or it may show that we are, in fact, 10 years ahead of them.
Either way, and you can ignore the last bit, the main point is that we are not a typical mainland European country. We are an island nation with both an inward and outward facing dynamic.
We don’t generally do extremism. Since 1945, which was exceptional, we have never elected an extreme government of Right or Left. And however much froth and bubble they produce, neither Marxists nor Fascists have succeeded in winning a majority here.
Thankfully. Long may that continue.
I'm sad to see people just buying into the narrative of there being a significant rightward surge in Europe in general. As I attempted to show shortly after the results, there were countervailing currents in Europe. But people focus selectively so they highlighted the countries that fitted the narrative and stayed quiet on the ones that flowed the other direction. And before anyone says, it's not just that some countries get inherently more focus. In the past few years, Sweden had a lot of focus when it was going towards the right. In this election the result was a kind of stasis so oops we don't analyse that result.
People invested in politics get sucked in my these narratives because they want to feel something is happening. It's easier to justify the investment of time and emotion when you can kid yourself that a great historical tide is flowing even if in reality it's just the waves on the shore.
And of course, for some it's wishful thinking. You see it a lot on here. The country's about to take a moderate turn to the left. But where does that leave my "EVERYTHING FLOWING TO THE RIGHT!" story? Oh, easy, this incoming government will fail fast and the people will quickly wake up to our Lord and Saviour, Sir Nigel of Faragistan. And so a future that is so obviously unwritten collapses, in their minds, to a single inevitable conclusion. The obvious wrongness of this sense of inevitability ought to lead us to question every step they've made to get there. Including the recent past. What happened in the European elections is not what these people say happened. The picture is considerably more mixed and nuanced. But one of two blaring cakeholes shout a lie and everyone sort of absorbs it as gospel without checking.
Spot on. The Nordic countries are very different to Germany and the Netherlands. Poland is very different to Slovakia and Hungary. Portugal and Spain are very different to Italy. Greece is different again, having what seems to be a pretty competent, genuinely centre-right, socially liberal, quite popular government currently. France is going through what looks to be quite a unique trauma. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Sinn Fein has lost almost all the support that had previously seen it surge in the polls. And so on.
One thing that may unite much of Europe, though, including the UK is that the far right has pushed the centre right further rightwards on issues like immigration, the environment, the rule of law and so on. The French left is also now heading leftwards. I wonder if other countries will follow.
It’s a bollocks analysis, you should talk to someone who constantly travels - often around Europe - rather than some berk in a bed sit in Aberdeen. But it consoles you to believe this, so you will believe it
Do you think your 'here today, gone tomorrow' trips around Europe's tourist attractions give you an in depth understanding ?
Its possible to drive around a district by one route and think it highly affluent and to do it a different way and think it highly deprived.
Now extend that to a whole region, a whole country, a whole continent.
I’ve now travelled so much around the world I’ve gained an insight into travelling itself. It really does broaden the mind, but not in ways most people understand, because they don’t travel
As for my “trips around Europe’s tourist attractions” it’s maybe skipped your attention that I just spent a week in Moldova, literally the least touristy country in Europe (as in: fewest tourists) and that was followed by two days in Transnistria (zero tourists) and two weeks in war torn Ukraine (war tourists and dead tourists)
But you were still a tourist.
A different thing to living or doing business in that country.
I was doing business - I was working. Writing about the war and Ukraine. And writing about Moldova too
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
Why do you think northern England needs 'levelling up' to London's levels of unaffordability and inequality ?
What people need are:
Employment Housing
And then opportunities to get better employment and better housing.
What the North now has are the best employment opportunities it has had since Ken Barlow was a lad.
Yet PBers still babble on about some cho-cho that sod all people would ever have used.
Roads are what brings new developments not trains.
Go to Okehampton, where levelling up was put into action and the line reopened rapidly as the infrastducture was deemed still in use so all the bureaucratic crap was able to be short circuited.
Passenger use blew all expectations out of the water, even more so than the waverley line and all sorts of things now going on in the area as a result. Total game changer.
It would be good to reopen on to Beer Alston ie reinstate the LSWR route via Tavistock closed by LAB in 1968. This would also provide a diversionary route if the GWR route via Dawlish is blocked as had happened in the past.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
On the contrary. Elecvtdrification was enormously important in increasing speed *and* capacity. And surely your demand for a new motorway from X to Y is basically the existing A class road upgraded.
I am fairly convinced that electrification - in the sense of overhead lines - will not advance much more.
While battery powered trains are less efficient (carrying the weight of the batteries), the vastly lower capital costs and the maintenance issues will mean that for routes of increasing length, the batteries will win.
I can well believe that for the branch lines and the rural lines.
It's already the go-to technology for trams. And a few trains are already using it.
Got the day off on the 5th and will be staying up as long as I can prop up my eyelids.
Whatever happens - whether the polls are right or wrong - it will be an epochal, fascinating election. It's the World Cup, Olympics and Eurovision rolled into one, with a small but significant dash of Wrestlemania. Can't wait.
Problem with staying up all night for the election is that it's like you know England are playing in the quarters at 5pm but you have a work drinks from 6-7pm so you studiously avoid any talk of the match and when you see people looking at their phones you walk away. On your way back you avoid looking at your phone as you plan to watch the whole match with a few beers when you get home. You might even order a Dominos.
You sit down and press "watch from start" on the tv and then a mate texts you as you open your first beer and it says "2-0 that'll do we face Moldova in the semis", thus ruining your evening although you might stay tuned to see Saka's brilliant solo run and then cross for a Harry tap in, which delights you.
Same with the GE and the Exit Poll. Once you've seen that the rest is details.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
On the contrary. Elecvtdrification was enormously important in increasing speed *and* capacity. And surely your demand for a new motorway from X to Y is basically the existing A class road upgraded.
I am fairly convinced that electrification - in the sense of overhead lines - will not advance much more.
While battery powered trains are less efficient (carrying the weight of the batteries), the vastly lower capital costs and the maintenance issues will mean that for routes of increasing length, the batteries will win.
Done properly (i.e. as done in Scotland believe it or not) electrification is cheaper than the other options.
Plus how do you charge the trains up or deal with the extra weight if they break down.
Batteries in cars are the future, for trains its electrification, for lorries not a clue...
The cost per mile of installing overhead wires, maintaining them etc is quite high.
Charging the trains would take place at the termini at either end, or using third rail arrangements for short distances - I think both have been used in existing implementations.
The weight of the batteries isn't an extra Pz1000 or something. You deal with break downs the same way you deal with trains when they break down now. There are, after all, battery trains in operation right now.
The main reason they will win, is that you have no planning issues and a reduced capital investment. There is nothing to protest.
Much like battery grid storage, it may not be the best option, but because it can be incremental and hasn't got a planning issue, it's unstoppable.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
On the contrary. Elecvtdrification was enormously important in increasing speed *and* capacity. And surely your demand for a new motorway from X to Y is basically the existing A class road upgraded.
I am fairly convinced that electrification - in the sense of overhead lines - will not advance much more.
While battery powered trains are less efficient (carrying the weight of the batteries), the vastly lower capital costs and the maintenance issues will mean that for routes of increasing length, the batteries will win.
Done properly (i.e. as done in Scotland believe it or not) electrification is cheaper than the other options.
Plus how do you charge the trains up or deal with the extra weight if they break down.
Batteries in cars are the future, for trains its electrification, for lorries not a clue...
Once they overthrew the crap from europe involving excessive clearance gaps between ovehead wires and bridges and excessive height of overhead wires in case someone wandered down the platform with a fishing rod, and so avoided having to rebuild every structure on the line.
What blew the English electrification projects out of the water was that British Rail Western Region, who still thought that they were Gods Wonderful Railway and so had to do everything differently, decided to bury their lineside signalling cables instead of putting them in concrete troughs and didn't think it necessary to make a note of where.
The result was that after a few sets of massive signal failures caused by pile driven signal cables, half the new electricication masts had to have hand dug foundations to avoid more, which was about as economic as the NHS covid tracker app.
Then the Midland Main line electrification was cancelled due to the GW scheme using up the budget to get half done (Chippenham, Bath, Bristol, Bristol Parkway, Didcot to Oxford and Cardiff to Swansea all got canned).
Since then the midland main line scheme has been reinstated as a stealth project and is reaching the outskirts of leicester every bit as cheaply as recent Scottish efforts.
I'd had high hopes for a change of weather pattern mid June that would take us through to a glorious high summer and warm election day. Sadly that now seems not to be the case. We've had a short period of summery weather but we're heading back into cool damp traditional British summer.
I'm on desktop so can't post a picture, but if I could I'd show you the ensemble model runs which all show a period of cooler than average, cloudy and moderately wet weather running from roughly tomorrow to mid July. Not great, not terrible. Things can only get meh-er.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
Why do you think northern England needs 'levelling up' to London's levels of unaffordability and inequality ?
What people need are:
Employment Housing
And then opportunities to get better employment and better housing.
What the North now has are the best employment opportunities it has had since Ken Barlow was a lad.
Yet PBers still babble on about some cho-cho that sod all people would ever have used.
Roads are what brings new developments not trains.
Go to Okehampton, where levelling up was put into action and the line reopened rapidly as the infrastducture was deemed still in use so all the bureaucratic crap was able to be short circuited.
Passenger use blew all expectations out of the water, even more so than the waverley line and all sorts of things now going on in the area as a result. Total game changer.
There is an institutional pessimism for public transport.
We are governed by older, richer, car driving people who associate motoring with aspiration. They simply cannot comprehend that most people would use the bus/tram/train to get around if it were available, even when they own a car.
We see this with cycling as well. Most cyclists have access to a car too. They just prefer to get around by bicycle. The car is a necessary but painful cost to living
It's not a coincidence that the areas of the UK with high housing demand and economic growth have great public transport provision.
German match commentary last night seemed very surprised that after Janza was given a yellow on 22 minutes that England didn't try to get the ball to Saka so he could take on Janza.
The German pundits' consensus was that Southgate is someone who doesn't give instructions to his players, doesn't know how to have a plan, or if he does he doesn't know how to change the plan when it isn't working, and is just way too passive. And that it's a travesty given the talent he's got to play with.
Mood stayed (mostly) good-natured in Cologne, despite the not so great football. But the city didn't fall in love with the England fans, like they did with the "Tartan Army" last week.
Next MRP updates will be interesting, can the Tories cling on to 100 seats?? And are the MRP VI figures dropping or still above the regular polling %s?
The key economic number is that the UK, alone of the G7 states, has a lower household income than before the pandemic. Employment levels are strong, productivity rather ho-hum, but set to improve, but real incomes have stagnated. Meanwhile the substantial real cuts across the public sector, especially in the NHS and local government, has left even middle income earners facing substantially increased real costs. The resulting squeeze has fallen disproportionately on middle and lower income earners, with the public sector pensions bill at £2,3 trillion now being larger than the total UK economy.
The Tory pensions bribe has sold the future for their own electoral advantage and left the UK living way beyond its means. The Tory version of austerity was burn everything except pensions. That cannot continue.
The country needs tro invest in infrastructure and substantially boost overall productivity, while reducing the national pensions burden. Its tricky political balance, and the clown car politics of the past 9 years have been little short of catastrophic. The Tories absolutely deserve the kicking they are going to get.
Labour will see some positive news, given inflation is stabilising and productivity can really only improve. However, restructuring UK public finances is a mammoth task, even to get to stability, let alone growth, Rachel Reeves has no magic wand, and it will be a tightrope walk to maintain growth while improving the long term productive capacity of the economy versus competition such as the US, or Germany, let alone China and India.
You are moving effortlessly from (questionable) estimates of future liabilities for occupational pensions in the public sector, to our state pension which at £200 a week is lower than our peer nations. This is separate from our need to invest in infrastructure and local government, and to increase economic growth.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
On the contrary. Elecvtdrification was enormously important in increasing speed *and* capacity. And surely your demand for a new motorway from X to Y is basically the existing A class road upgraded.
I am fairly convinced that electrification - in the sense of overhead lines - will not advance much more.
While battery powered trains are less efficient (carrying the weight of the batteries), the vastly lower capital costs and the maintenance issues will mean that for routes of increasing length, the batteries will win.
I agree, but only if.when we get *far* better battery chemistries.
That is the achillies heel at the root of all issues with renewables. But for it they would be in use by free market choice without any interference from politicians.
The combination of energy density of hydrocarbons and speed of conversion of that density into useful output is so much higher than any other alternative (other than a nuclear reactor which has all sorts of long term pollution issues).
Net zero isnt what they should be focussing on, they should be focusing on stable electricity storage as energy dense as hydrocarbons.
Sort that and Net Zero will be inevitable as it would be cheaper than fossil fuels.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
Why do you think northern England needs 'levelling up' to London's levels of unaffordability and inequality ?
What people need are:
Employment Housing
And then opportunities to get better employment and better housing.
What the North now has are the best employment opportunities it has had since Ken Barlow was a lad.
Yet PBers still babble on about some cho-cho that sod all people would ever have used.
Roads are what brings new developments not trains.
Go to Okehampton, where levelling up was put into action and the line reopened rapidly as the infrastducture was deemed still in use so all the bureaucratic crap was able to be short circuited.
Passenger use blew all expectations out of the water, even more so than the waverley line and all sorts of things now going on in the area as a result. Total game changer.
There is an institutional pessimism for public transport.
We are governed by older, richer, car driving people who associate motoring with aspiration. They simply cannot comprehend that most people would use the bus/tram/train to get around if it were available, even when they own a car.
We see this with cycling as well. Most cyclists have access to a car too. They just prefer to get around by bicycle. The car is a necessary but painful cost to living
It's not a coincidence that the areas of the UK with high housing demand and economic growth have great public transport provision.
Everywhere in the UK has high housing demand, so that's not really correct.
There is not a single county in the entire country with sufficient housing stock.
Other than that ...
There's a time and a place for public transport, I'm entirely pro-choice. I will choose to use it sometimes, and choose not to other times. We should respect people's choices, my objection is to those who vehemently oppose cars/roads and want to force people onto public transport or only invest in it. We should invest in both and let people choose freely.
Next MRP updates will be interesting, can the Tories cling on to 100 seats?? And are the MRP VI figures dropping or still above the regular polling %s?
Last MRP (Focaldata) implied Cons on 110 seats so yes will be interesting.
German match commentary last night seemed very surprised that after Janza was given a yellow on 22 minutes that England didn't try to get the ball to Saka so he could take on Janza.
The German pundits' consensus was that Southgate is someone who doesn't give instructions to his players, doesn't know how to have a plan, or if he does he doesn't know how to change the plan when it isn't working, and is just way too passive. And that it's a travesty given the talent he's got to play with.
Mood stayed (mostly) good-natured in Cologne, despite the not so great football. But the city didn't fall in love with the England fans, like they did with the "Tartan Army" last week.
Sounds to me like the German's have a good handle on Southgate and his failings. More so than most of our commentators who seem to just rely on 'oh he's crap'
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
On the contrary. Elecvtdrification was enormously important in increasing speed *and* capacity. And surely your demand for a new motorway from X to Y is basically the existing A class road upgraded.
I am fairly convinced that electrification - in the sense of overhead lines - will not advance much more.
While battery powered trains are less efficient (carrying the weight of the batteries), the vastly lower capital costs and the maintenance issues will mean that for routes of increasing length, the batteries will win.
I agree, but only if.when we get *far* better battery chemistries.
That is the achillies heel at the root of all issues with renewables. But for it they would be in use by free market choice without any interference from politicians.
The combination of energy density of hydrocarbons and speed of conversion of that density into useful output is so much higher than any other alternative (other than a nuclear reactor which has all sorts of long term pollution issues).
Net zero isnt what they should be focussing on, they should be focusing on stable electricity storage as energy dense as hydrocarbons.
Sort that and Net Zero will be inevitable as it would be cheaper than fossil fuels.
It already is being worked on, massively, though.
We have rapidly improving battery storage and production. Its already happening.
The US, Europe, China etc are building massive increases in battery storage and production.
You object that we should do that first, but we are already doing that. We need to do both simultaneously, both generate electricity cleanly and be able to store it, and both are happening already. Its not either/or.
Good morning. Stuck as I am with limited contact other than such as Pb, and occasional chats with friends, I can only say that I sense no great enthusiasm for Starmer’s Labour; it’s not like 1997. There’s disgust for the Conservatives, and a sense that, for them, whatever can go wrong, will. I don’t think a couple of good, or moderate, sports successes will make a difference, either.
My July 4th plan is to scooter down to vote, then keep yet another hospital appointment. At the end of the day Mrs C and I will watch the exit polls, then go to bed, and I’ll wake early in the morning on 5th to see what’s actually happened, rather than listen to political correspondents debating what might happen for a couple of hours, and then studying the entrails of the result in Sunderland for a further hour.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
On the contrary. Elecvtdrification was enormously important in increasing speed *and* capacity. And surely your demand for a new motorway from X to Y is basically the existing A class road upgraded.
I am fairly convinced that electrification - in the sense of overhead lines - will not advance much more.
While battery powered trains are less efficient (carrying the weight of the batteries), the vastly lower capital costs and the maintenance issues will mean that for routes of increasing length, the batteries will win.
I agree, but only if.when we get *far* better battery chemistries.
That is the achillies heel at the root of all issues with renewables. But for it they would be in use by free market choice without any interference from politicians.
The combination of energy density of hydrocarbons and speed of conversion of that density into useful output is so much higher than any other alternative (other than a nuclear reactor which has all sorts of long term pollution issues).
Net zero isnt what they should be focussing on, they should be focusing on stable electricity storage as energy dense as hydrocarbons.
Sort that and Net Zero will be inevitable as it would be cheaper than fossil fuels.
Batteries for trains are already viable - 10 minute charge to go 100 miles would cover many, many routes.
The investment in battery storage technology, globally, is many billions for pure research.
Meanwhile governments tried to sell hydrogen as the One True Answer, because of the politics of it.
“Do you think the current council tax bands and system are fair?
Liz Kendall: "... we're not going to be changing [them], & let me explain why... we've got to be honest about what our priorities are, and our priorities are not to be raising Income Tax, VAT or National Insurance”
Next MRP updates will be interesting, can the Tories cling on to 100 seats?? And are the MRP VI figures dropping or still above the regular polling %s?
Last MRP (Focaldata) implied Cons on 110 seats so yes will be interesting.
My own county of Norfolk absolutely fascinates me at the moment, Labour definitely win 2 in Norwich but of the other 8 (incl Waveney Valley) the Tories on current polling could realistically get anywhere from none to all 8 of them
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
Why do you think northern England needs 'levelling up' to London's levels of unaffordability and inequality ?
What people need are:
Employment Housing
And then opportunities to get better employment and better housing.
What the North now has are the best employment opportunities it has had since Ken Barlow was a lad.
Yet PBers still babble on about some cho-cho that sod all people would ever have used.
Roads are what brings new developments not trains.
Go to Okehampton, where levelling up was put into action and the line reopened rapidly as the infrastducture was deemed still in use so all the bureaucratic crap was able to be short circuited.
Passenger use blew all expectations out of the water, even more so than the waverley line and all sorts of things now going on in the area as a result. Total game changer.
There is an institutional pessimism for public transport.
We are governed by older, richer, car driving people who associate motoring with aspiration. They simply cannot comprehend that most people would use the bus/tram/train to get around if it were available, even when they own a car.
We see this with cycling as well. Most cyclists have access to a car too. They just prefer to get around by bicycle. The car is a necessary but painful cost to living
It's not a coincidence that the areas of the UK with high housing demand and economic growth have great public transport provision.
Everywhere in the UK has high housing demand, so that's not really correct.
There is not a single county in the entire country with sufficient housing stock.
Other than that ...
There's a time and a place for public transport, I'm entirely pro-choice. I will choose to use it sometimes, and choose not to other times. We should respect people's choices, my objection is to those who vehemently oppose cars/roads and want to force people onto public transport or only invest in it. We should invest in both and let people choose freely.
But its not a straight choice when public transport costs are charged on the individual journey and car costs are virtually all indirect sunk costs before you ever set off.
Replacment of VED and Fuel Duty with per mile tolling using trackers that insurance companies use and costs varying (cost more for better faster roads and in peak hours - just as with rail) is needed to level the playing field.
The key economic number is that the UK, alone of the G7 states, has a lower household income than before the pandemic. Employment levels are strong, productivity rather ho-hum, but set to improve, but real incomes have stagnated. Meanwhile the substantial real cuts across the public sector, especially in the NHS and local government, has left even middle income earners facing substantially increased real costs. The resulting squeeze has fallen disproportionately on middle and lower income earners, with the public sector pensions bill at £2,3 trillion now being larger than the total UK economy.
The Tory pensions bribe has sold the future for their own electoral advantage and left the UK living way beyond its means. The Tory version of austerity was burn everything except pensions. That cannot continue.
The country needs tro invest in infrastructure and substantially boost overall productivity, while reducing the national pensions burden. Its tricky political balance, and the clown car politics of the past 9 years have been little short of catastrophic. The Tories absolutely deserve the kicking they are going to get.
Labour will see some positive news, given inflation is stabilising and productivity can really only improve. However, restructuring UK public finances is a mammoth task, even to get to stability, let alone growth, Rachel Reeves has no magic wand, and it will be a tightrope walk to maintain growth while improving the long term productive capacity of the economy versus competition such as the US, or Germany, let alone China and India.
You are moving effortlessly from (questionable) estimates of future liabilities for occupational pensions in the public sector, to our state pension which at £200 a week is lower than our peer nations. This is separate from our need to invest in infrastructure and local government, and to increase economic growth.
Perhaps those on massive public sector pensions should be taxed to pay for a big increase in the state pension. An NHS doctor, when he/she retires will have a a monthly income more than double what the average person in this country earns. This is similar for many civil servants.
Tax the public sector fat cats! Will it happen under Labour? No chance. Fairness and increased taxes will mainly apply to people who generally don't vote for them.
Next MRP updates will be interesting, can the Tories cling on to 100 seats?? And are the MRP VI figures dropping or still above the regular polling %s?
Last MRP (Focaldata) implied Cons on 110 seats so yes will be interesting.
My own county of Norfolk absolutely fascinates me at the moment, Labour definitely win 2 in Norwich but of the other 8 (incl Waveney Valley) the Tories on current polling could realistically get anywhere from none to all 8 of them
Is James Bagge making any inroads into La Truss' chances.
I'd had high hopes for a change of weather pattern mid June that would take us through to a glorious high summer and warm election day. Sadly that now seems not to be the case. We've had a short period of summery weather but we're heading back into cool damp traditional British summer.
I'm on desktop so can't post a picture, but if I could I'd show you the ensemble model runs which all show a period of cooler than average, cloudy and moderately wet weather running from roughly tomorrow to mid July. Not great, not terrible. Things can only get meh-er.
Yes ive seen that too. Once this spell breaks the weather forecast well into july is pretty bad. Not what the country needs.
Next MRP updates will be interesting, can the Tories cling on to 100 seats?? And are the MRP VI figures dropping or still above the regular polling %s?
Last MRP (Focaldata) implied Cons on 110 seats so yes will be interesting.
My own county of Norfolk absolutely fascinates me at the moment, Labour definitely win 2 in Norwich but of the other 8 (incl Waveney Valley) the Tories on current polling could realistically get anywhere from none to all 8 of them
@robfordmancs This is absolutely brutal Cons - Sunak's PM approval rating is the worst *ever* on the eve of an election, by a 30 point margin. 75% disapprove of him - 16 points higher than the next highest figures (Major 97, Blair 05 and Brown 10 all tied)
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
On the contrary. Elecvtdrification was enormously important in increasing speed *and* capacity. And surely your demand for a new motorway from X to Y is basically the existing A class road upgraded.
I am fairly convinced that electrification - in the sense of overhead lines - will not advance much more.
While battery powered trains are less efficient (carrying the weight of the batteries), the vastly lower capital costs and the maintenance issues will mean that for routes of increasing length, the batteries will win.
I agree, but only if.when we get *far* better battery chemistries.
That is the achillies heel at the root of all issues with renewables. But for it they would be in use by free market choice without any interference from politicians.
The combination of energy density of hydrocarbons and speed of conversion of that density into useful output is so much higher than any other alternative (other than a nuclear reactor which has all sorts of long term pollution issues).
Net zero isnt what they should be focussing on, they should be focusing on stable electricity storage as energy dense as hydrocarbons.
Sort that and Net Zero will be inevitable as it would be cheaper than fossil fuels.
Batteries for trains are already viable - 10 minute charge to go 100 miles would cover many, many routes.
The investment in battery storage technology, globally, is many billions for pure research.
Meanwhile governments tried to sell hydrogen as the One True Answer, because of the politics of it.
Indeed.
There's a lot of research going in to solid state batteries too, as an alternative to the liquid electrolytes li-ion ones used currently. If those can be developed commercially it will be a gamechanger, but the research is already happening and a lot of manufacturers publicly state they intend to have solid state battery EVs available before the end of the decade.
Next MRP updates will be interesting, can the Tories cling on to 100 seats?? And are the MRP VI figures dropping or still above the regular polling %s?
Last MRP (Focaldata) implied Cons on 110 seats so yes will be interesting.
My own county of Norfolk absolutely fascinates me at the moment, Labour definitely win 2 in Norwich but of the other 8 (incl Waveney Valley) the Tories on current polling could realistically get anywhere from none to all 8 of them
Difficult to see the Tories losing Mid Norfolk. The notional figures are Con 64.4%, Lab 22.9%, LD 10.4%.
What is the Westminster honeytrap scandal? I had not heard anything about it until now.
The Tory government decided last year that the best way to win the election was to get the votes of pensioners who love immigrants but are fearfully scared of wasps
So they went to a friend of David Lord Cameron and said can you make 194 honey traps to catch wasps and we will give you 14 billion dollars. The guy thought about it for a while, and then said “Yes I can manage that”, but when the honey traps arrived at the Home Office Kemi Badenoch smashed them all up by mistake thinking they were ICBMs and then the prime minister smeared the honey all over his knees to distract media attention from the debacle, as that was the advice from campaign expert Isaac Levido
Got the day off on the 5th and will be staying up as long as I can prop up my eyelids.
Whatever happens - whether the polls are right or wrong - it will be an epochal, fascinating election. It's the World Cup, Olympics and Eurovision rolled into one, with a small but significant dash of Wrestlemania. Can't wait.
Yes so many things to watch for. Will the tories get less than 100 seats how will reform do and does Farage win Clacton etc.
Next MRP updates will be interesting, can the Tories cling on to 100 seats?? And are the MRP VI figures dropping or still above the regular polling %s?
Last MRP (Focaldata) implied Cons on 110 seats so yes will be interesting.
My own county of Norfolk absolutely fascinates me at the moment, Labour definitely win 2 in Norwich but of the other 8 (incl Waveney Valley) the Tories on current polling could realistically get anywhere from none to all 8 of them
LibDems back in North Norfolk?
It's neck and neck, LDs probably now narrow favourites but the new boundaries do include a slightly more favourable Con chunk than LD in normal times. I think LDs take it, but I wouldn't spit out my tea at a Con Hold
Good. We do not need wannabe Quislings in our democracy.
This is where I think Leon notably misreads this country. We are not the same as mainland Europe and don’t necessarily follow ‘behind’ their trends, which is an odd thing to have to remind a so-called brexiteer.
A good case can be made for saying that we had our rightward surge in 2016 and again in 2019, especially since migration was a big factor in those votes on top of EU centralised control.
That we are now almost certainly about to elect a Centre-Left Government may buck the continental trend, or it may show that we are, in fact, 10 years ahead of them.
Either way, and you can ignore the last bit, the main point is that we are not a typical mainland European country. We are an island nation with both an inward and outward facing dynamic.
We don’t generally do extremism. Since 1945, which was exceptional, we have never elected an extreme government of Right or Left. And however much froth and bubble they produce, neither Marxists nor Fascists have succeeded in winning a majority here.
Thankfully. Long may that continue.
I'm sad to see people just buying into the narrative of there being a significant rightward surge in Europe in general. As I attempted to show shortly after the results, there were countervailing currents in Europe. But people focus selectively so they highlighted the countries that fitted the narrative and stayed quiet on the ones that flowed the other direction. And before anyone says, it's not just that some countries get inherently more focus. In the past few years, Sweden had a lot of focus when it was going towards the right. In this election the result was a kind of stasis so oops we don't analyse that result.
People invested in politics get sucked in my these narratives because they want to feel something is happening. It's easier to justify the investment of time and emotion when you can kid yourself that a great historical tide is flowing even if in reality it's just the waves on the shore.
And of course, for some it's wishful thinking. You see it a lot on here. The country's about to take a moderate turn to the left. But where does that leave my "EVERYTHING FLOWING TO THE RIGHT!" story? Oh, easy, this incoming government will fail fast and the people will quickly wake up to our Lord and Saviour, Sir Nigel of Faragistan. And so a future that is so obviously unwritten collapses, in their minds, to a single inevitable conclusion. The obvious wrongness of this sense of inevitability ought to lead us to question every step they've made to get there. Including the recent past. What happened in the European elections is not what these people say happened. The picture is considerably more mixed and nuanced. But one of two blaring cakeholes shout a lie and everyone sort of absorbs it as gospel without checking.
Spot on. The Nordic countries are very different to Germany and the Netherlands. Poland is very different to Slovakia and Hungary. Portugal and Spain are very different to Italy. Greece is different again, having what seems to be a pretty competent, genuinely centre-right, socially liberal, quite popular government currently. France is going through what looks to be quite a unique trauma. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Sinn Fein has lost almost all the support that had previously seen it surge in the polls. And so on.
One thing that may unite much of Europe, though, including the UK is that the far right has pushed the centre right further rightwards on issues like immigration, the environment, the rule of law and so on. The French left is also now heading leftwards. I wonder if other countries will follow.
It’s a bollocks analysis, you should talk to someone who constantly travels - often around Europe - rather than some berk in a bed sit in Aberdeen. But it consoles you to believe this, so you will believe it
Do you think your 'here today, gone tomorrow' trips around Europe's tourist attractions give you an in depth understanding ?
Its possible to drive around a district by one route and think it highly affluent and to do it a different way and think it highly deprived.
Now extend that to a whole region, a whole country, a whole continent.
I’ve now travelled so much around the world I’ve gained an insight into travelling itself. It really does broaden the mind, but not in ways most people understand, because they don’t travel
As for my “trips around Europe’s tourist attractions” it’s maybe skipped your attention that I just spent a week in Moldova, literally the least touristy country in Europe (as in: fewest tourists) and that was followed by two days in Transnistria (zero tourists) and two weeks in war torn Ukraine (war tourists and dead tourists)
But you were still a tourist.
A different thing to living or doing business in that country.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
Why do you think northern England needs 'levelling up' to London's levels of unaffordability and inequality ?
What people need are:
Employment Housing
And then opportunities to get better employment and better housing.
What the North now has are the best employment opportunities it has had since Ken Barlow was a lad.
Yet PBers still babble on about some cho-cho that sod all people would ever have used.
Roads are what brings new developments not trains.
Go to Okehampton, where levelling up was put into action and the line reopened rapidly as the infrastducture was deemed still in use so all the bureaucratic crap was able to be short circuited.
Passenger use blew all expectations out of the water, even more so than the waverley line and all sorts of things now going on in the area as a result. Total game changer.
There is an institutional pessimism for public transport.
We are governed by older, richer, car driving people who associate motoring with aspiration. They simply cannot comprehend that most people would use the bus/tram/train to get around if it were available, even when they own a car.
We see this with cycling as well. Most cyclists have access to a car too. They just prefer to get around by bicycle. The car is a necessary but painful cost to living
It's not a coincidence that the areas of the UK with high housing demand and economic growth have great public transport provision.
Everywhere in the UK has high housing demand, so that's not really correct.
There is not a single county in the entire country with sufficient housing stock.
Other than that ...
There's a time and a place for public transport, I'm entirely pro-choice. I will choose to use it sometimes, and choose not to other times. We should respect people's choices, my objection is to those who vehemently oppose cars/roads and want to force people onto public transport or only invest in it. We should invest in both and let people choose freely.
But its not a straight choice when public transport costs are charged on the individual journey and car costs are virtually all indirect sunk costs before you ever set off.
Replacment of VED and Fuel Duty with per mile tolling using trackers that insurance companies use and costs varying (cost more for better faster roads and in peak hours - just as with rail) is needed to level the playing field.
Per mile costs, if just used to fund the road network and not general taxation, would be a hell of a lot cheaper for drivers than VED and Fuel Duty which are massively overtaxed though.
I'd had high hopes for a change of weather pattern mid June that would take us through to a glorious high summer and warm election day. Sadly that now seems not to be the case. We've had a short period of summery weather but we're heading back into cool damp traditional British summer.
I'm on desktop so can't post a picture, but if I could I'd show you the ensemble model runs which all show a period of cooler than average, cloudy and moderately wet weather running from roughly tomorrow to mid July. Not great, not terrible. Things can only get meh-er.
Good. We do not need wannabe Quislings in our democracy.
This is where I think Leon notably misreads this country. We are not the same as mainland Europe and don’t necessarily follow ‘behind’ their trends, which is an odd thing to have to remind a so-called brexiteer.
A good case can be made for saying that we had our rightward surge in 2016 and again in 2019, especially since migration was a big factor in those votes on top of EU centralised control.
That we are now almost certainly about to elect a Centre-Left Government may buck the continental trend, or it may show that we are, in fact, 10 years ahead of them.
Either way, and you can ignore the last bit, the main point is that we are not a typical mainland European country. We are an island nation with both an inward and outward facing dynamic.
We don’t generally do extremism. Since 1945, which was exceptional, we have never elected an extreme government of Right or Left. And however much froth and bubble they produce, neither Marxists nor Fascists have succeeded in winning a majority here.
Thankfully. Long may that continue.
I'm sad to see people just buying into the narrative of there being a significant rightward surge in Europe in general. As I attempted to show shortly after the results, there were countervailing currents in Europe. But people focus selectively so they highlighted the countries that fitted the narrative and stayed quiet on the ones that flowed the other direction. And before anyone says, it's not just that some countries get inherently more focus. In the past few years, Sweden had a lot of focus when it was going towards the right. In this election the result was a kind of stasis so oops we don't analyse that result.
People invested in politics get sucked in my these narratives because they want to feel something is happening. It's easier to justify the investment of time and emotion when you can kid yourself that a great historical tide is flowing even if in reality it's just the waves on the shore.
And of course, for some it's wishful thinking. You see it a lot on here. The country's about to take a moderate turn to the left. But where does that leave my "EVERYTHING FLOWING TO THE RIGHT!" story? Oh, easy, this incoming government will fail fast and the people will quickly wake up to our Lord and Saviour, Sir Nigel of Faragistan. And so a future that is so obviously unwritten collapses, in their minds, to a single inevitable conclusion. The obvious wrongness of this sense of inevitability ought to lead us to question every step they've made to get there. Including the recent past. What happened in the European elections is not what these people say happened. The picture is considerably more mixed and nuanced. But one of two blaring cakeholes shout a lie and everyone sort of absorbs it as gospel without checking.
Spot on. The Nordic countries are very different to Germany and the Netherlands. Poland is very different to Slovakia and Hungary. Portugal and Spain are very different to Italy. Greece is different again, having what seems to be a pretty competent, genuinely centre-right, socially liberal, quite popular government currently. France is going through what looks to be quite a unique trauma. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Sinn Fein has lost almost all the support that had previously seen it surge in the polls. And so on.
One thing that may unite much of Europe, though, including the UK is that the far right has pushed the centre right further rightwards on issues like immigration, the environment, the rule of law and so on. The French left is also now heading leftwards. I wonder if other countries will follow.
It’s a bollocks analysis, you should talk to someone who constantly travels - often around Europe - rather than some berk in a bed sit in Aberdeen. But it consoles you to believe this, so you will believe it
Do you think your 'here today, gone tomorrow' trips around Europe's tourist attractions give you an in depth understanding ?
Its possible to drive around a district by one route and think it highly affluent and to do it a different way and think it highly deprived.
Now extend that to a whole region, a whole country, a whole continent.
I’ve now travelled so much around the world I’ve gained an insight into travelling itself. It really does broaden the mind, but not in ways most people understand, because they don’t travel
As for my “trips around Europe’s tourist attractions” it’s maybe skipped your attention that I just spent a week in Moldova, literally the least touristy country in Europe (as in: fewest tourists) and that was followed by two days in Transnistria (zero tourists) and two weeks in war torn Ukraine (war tourists and dead tourists)
But you were still a tourist.
A different thing to living or doing business in that country.
I was doing business - I was working. Writing about the war and Ukraine. And writing about Moldova too
Why didn't you go to the front line if you were writing about the war? Just asking
Good. We do not need wannabe Quislings in our democracy.
This is where I think Leon notably misreads this country. We are not the same as mainland Europe and don’t necessarily follow ‘behind’ their trends, which is an odd thing to have to remind a so-called brexiteer.
A good case can be made for saying that we had our rightward surge in 2016 and again in 2019, especially since migration was a big factor in those votes on top of EU centralised control.
That we are now almost certainly about to elect a Centre-Left Government may buck the continental trend, or it may show that we are, in fact, 10 years ahead of them.
Either way, and you can ignore the last bit, the main point is that we are not a typical mainland European country. We are an island nation with both an inward and outward facing dynamic.
We don’t generally do extremism. Since 1945, which was exceptional, we have never elected an extreme government of Right or Left. And however much froth and bubble they produce, neither Marxists nor Fascists have succeeded in winning a majority here.
Thankfully. Long may that continue.
I'm sad to see people just buying into the narrative of there being a significant rightward surge in Europe in general. As I attempted to show shortly after the results, there were countervailing currents in Europe. But people focus selectively so they highlighted the countries that fitted the narrative and stayed quiet on the ones that flowed the other direction. And before anyone says, it's not just that some countries get inherently more focus. In the past few years, Sweden had a lot of focus when it was going towards the right. In this election the result was a kind of stasis so oops we don't analyse that result.
People invested in politics get sucked in my these narratives because they want to feel something is happening. It's easier to justify the investment of time and emotion when you can kid yourself that a great historical tide is flowing even if in reality it's just the waves on the shore.
And of course, for some it's wishful thinking. You see it a lot on here. The country's about to take a moderate turn to the left. But where does that leave my "EVERYTHING FLOWING TO THE RIGHT!" story? Oh, easy, this incoming government will fail fast and the people will quickly wake up to our Lord and Saviour, Sir Nigel of Faragistan. And so a future that is so obviously unwritten collapses, in their minds, to a single inevitable conclusion. The obvious wrongness of this sense of inevitability ought to lead us to question every step they've made to get there. Including the recent past. What happened in the European elections is not what these people say happened. The picture is considerably more mixed and nuanced. But one of two blaring cakeholes shout a lie and everyone sort of absorbs it as gospel without checking.
Spot on. The Nordic countries are very different to Germany and the Netherlands. Poland is very different to Slovakia and Hungary. Portugal and Spain are very different to Italy. Greece is different again, having what seems to be a pretty competent, genuinely centre-right, socially liberal, quite popular government currently. France is going through what looks to be quite a unique trauma. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Sinn Fein has lost almost all the support that had previously seen it surge in the polls. And so on.
One thing that may unite much of Europe, though, including the UK is that the far right has pushed the centre right further rightwards on issues like immigration, the environment, the rule of law and so on. The French left is also now heading leftwards. I wonder if other countries will follow.
It’s a bollocks analysis, you should talk to someone who constantly travels - often around Europe - rather than some berk in a bed sit in Aberdeen. But it consoles you to believe this, so you will believe it
Do you think your 'here today, gone tomorrow' trips around Europe's tourist attractions give you an in depth understanding ?
Its possible to drive around a district by one route and think it highly affluent and to do it a different way and think it highly deprived.
Now extend that to a whole region, a whole country, a whole continent.
I’ve now travelled so much around the world I’ve gained an insight into travelling itself. It really does broaden the mind, but not in ways most people understand, because they don’t travel
As for my “trips around Europe’s tourist attractions” it’s maybe skipped your attention that I just spent a week in Moldova, literally the least touristy country in Europe (as in: fewest tourists) and that was followed by two days in Transnistria (zero tourists) and two weeks in war torn Ukraine (war tourists and dead tourists)
But you were still a tourist.
A different thing to living or doing business in that country.
I was doing business - I was working. Writing about the war and Ukraine. And writing about Moldova too
Your work is fleeting visits to a myriad of places, followed by writing about the local wine and churches.
It can be an interesting read, it might stimulate others to travel, but its essentially superficial.
For almost everyone else work is doing the same thing in the same place day after day, year after year.
They give different perspectives and different depths of understanding on places.
This morning's Survation is yet another poll showing the Tories coming 3rd in seats:
Con 41 Lab 495 LD 63 Ref 3 Green 2 SNP 21 PC 4 Other 3 NI 18
Sunak's seat is due to declare at 4am. The polls suggest it's one worth staying up for.
These declaration times are often not very reliable. That's been the experience in the past. But it's better to have them than to have no estimates at all.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
On the contrary. Elecvtdrification was enormously important in increasing speed *and* capacity. And surely your demand for a new motorway from X to Y is basically the existing A class road upgraded.
I am fairly convinced that electrification - in the sense of overhead lines - will not advance much more.
While battery powered trains are less efficient (carrying the weight of the batteries), the vastly lower capital costs and the maintenance issues will mean that for routes of increasing length, the batteries will win.
Done properly (i.e. as done in Scotland believe it or not) electrification is cheaper than the other options.
Plus how do you charge the trains up or deal with the extra weight if they break down.
Batteries in cars are the future, for trains its electrification, for lorries not a clue...
The cost per mile of installing overhead wires, maintaining them etc is quite high.
Charging the trains would take place at the termini at either end, or using third rail arrangements for short distances - I think both have been used in existing implementations.
The weight of the batteries isn't an extra Pz1000 or something. You deal with break downs the same way you deal with trains when they break down now. There are, after all, battery trains in operation right now.
The main reason they will win, is that you have no planning issues and a reduced capital investment. There is nothing to protest.
Much like battery grid storage, it may not be the best option, but because it can be incremental and hasn't got a planning issue, it's unstoppable.
Gaps (as will be the case for a few years at Leicester to avoid them putting it up then doing it again when the area gets resignalled and track altered in a few years) have their place.
However, they have restrictions, most trains won't be battery fitted and those that do are much more expensive to maintain.
The reason that Southern Region is all third rail, despite the first electrification (on the Brighton Line) being high voltage overhead AC which was ripped out a few years after it went in, despite the cost of high voltage Overhead electrification being far cheaper than third rail due to a tenth of the substations being needed, was because the cost of on train transformer and rectifier equipment needed on the AC system to drive dc motors outweighed the savings on trackside substations etc due to the number of trains and the logistics of putting such equipment in the confined spaces on them.
AC traction motors have since made that problem go away but the principle remains. Putting complex bulky techology on trains is costly to install and maintain. And there are a lot of trains.
Got the day off on the 5th and will be staying up as long as I can prop up my eyelids.
Whatever happens - whether the polls are right or wrong - it will be an epochal, fascinating election. It's the World Cup, Olympics and Eurovision rolled into one, with a small but significant dash of Wrestlemania. Can't wait.
Yes so many things to watch for. Will the tories get less than 100 seats how will reform do and does Farage win Clacton etc.
A lot of side plots - I'm interested in Greens in Herts and Waveney, but also interested in stuff like what happens with the SNP, some quite interesting NI seats.
The key economic number is that the UK, alone of the G7 states, has a lower household income than before the pandemic. Employment levels are strong, productivity rather ho-hum, but set to improve, but real incomes have stagnated. Meanwhile the substantial real cuts across the public sector, especially in the NHS and local government, has left even middle income earners facing substantially increased real costs. The resulting squeeze has fallen disproportionately on middle and lower income earners, with the public sector pensions bill at £2,3 trillion now being larger than the total UK economy.
The Tory pensions bribe has sold the future for their own electoral advantage and left the UK living way beyond its means. The Tory version of austerity was burn everything except pensions. That cannot continue.
The country needs tro invest in infrastructure and substantially boost overall productivity, while reducing the national pensions burden. Its tricky political balance, and the clown car politics of the past 9 years have been little short of catastrophic. The Tories absolutely deserve the kicking they are going to get.
Labour will see some positive news, given inflation is stabilising and productivity can really only improve. However, restructuring UK public finances is a mammoth task, even to get to stability, let alone growth, Rachel Reeves has no magic wand, and it will be a tightrope walk to maintain growth while improving the long term productive capacity of the economy versus competition such as the US, or Germany, let alone China and India.
You are moving effortlessly from (questionable) estimates of future liabilities for occupational pensions in the public sector, to our state pension which at £200 a week is lower than our peer nations. This is separate from our need to invest in infrastructure and local government, and to increase economic growth.
Perhaps those on massive public sector pensions should be taxed to pay for a big increase in the state pension. An NHS doctor, when he/she retires will have a a monthly income more than double what the average person in this country earns. This is similar for many civil servants.
Tax the public sector fat cats! Will it happen under Labour? No chance. Fairness and increased taxes will mainly apply to people who generally don't vote for them.
Many civil servants? A small minority I think you'll find!
Not that the pension, even as it is now, isn't fairly generous. My defined benefit pension accumulates at about 2% of my salary per year.
I'd had high hopes for a change of weather pattern mid June that would take us through to a glorious high summer and warm election day. Sadly that now seems not to be the case. We've had a short period of summery weather but we're heading back into cool damp traditional British summer.
I'm on desktop so can't post a picture, but if I could I'd show you the ensemble model runs which all show a period of cooler than average, cloudy and moderately wet weather running from roughly tomorrow to mid July. Not great, not terrible. Things can only get meh-er.
Yes ive seen that too. Once this spell breaks the weather forecast well into july is pretty bad. Not what the country needs.
Next MRP updates will be interesting, can the Tories cling on to 100 seats?? And are the MRP VI figures dropping or still above the regular polling %s?
One of the curiosities is how far from the betting consensus a lot of the forecasts are. The Economist currently predicts 185 for the Tories for example.
Ah very useful, thanks. I will be up all night (obvs) but it'll be good to have the expected declarations schedule in order to plan my catnaps.
I will be waiting to see if Labour massively miss expectations. I am not holding my breath, but it would be a moment almost as amusing as seeing Johnson had to resign. I can but dream. Either way, as they are a bunch of middle-manager lightweights they will crash at some point and I will be waiting to laugh.
Instead, we've had: 2019 Cons get elected > 2019 Cons govern incompetently > state drifts leftwards > in reaction to which, various Conservatives both within and without government call for increasingly rightward things > but nothing actually happens > neither centrists not right wingers are happy > 2024 Cons get obliterated at polls
2019 fantasists offer the electorate the moon on a stick and get elected > moon not delivered, some element of stick > 2024 fantasists get obliterated
In defence of the 2019 Cons: 1) Almost anything was better than Corbyn, and 2) While Levelling Up was, er, a challenging aim, it was a worthwhile one and one I believed in and still do. But a challenging aim was rendered pretty much impossible by Covid and Ukraine, which have impoverished us in a way utterly unanticipated.
Still, at least the 2019 Cons purported to believe in Levelling Up. That pretty much died with the cancellation of HS2 (actually probably with the election of Rishi Sunak - ironically the first Northern MP we've had since Tony Blair).
It wasn't so much Covid and Ukraine that did for Levelling Up IMO, it was a complete lack of understanding in how to build infrastructure.
Big infra projects take time. Studies into the Northumberland Line - effectively just plonking down some stations on an existing freight-only line and doing the upgrades necessary for passenger trains to run - began in 2013. Ground investigation works began in 2020. Major construction began in 2022. The line will probably open later this year but half the stations will be delayed until 2025.
If the Conservatives were ever serious about Levelling Up they needed (a) to get spades in the ground within months (b) to be ready to railroad the projects through planning as Nationally Significant Infrastructure. They didn't do this. Instead they went through the usual charade of requiring councils to bid against each other for funds, staggering the funding in several rounds, all of that. Surprise, nothing has been done.
Eventually it gets to the point where you say "Well what can we do in time for the next election? Ah, I see, some chessboards in parks."
This is why, again, roads work so well - except the parties have been taken in by an agenda of opposing them.
New motorways don't need to be built all at once, new roads don't need to be built all at once.
HS2 takes decades to build, but won't be open until entire massive stages are done.
Whereas the motorways weren't built all in one go, they could be built piece by piece.
The M6 began its life as just the Preston bypass. It was operational as soon as it was done. Bits and pieces added over time until eventually they connected to make the motorways as we know them.
We can and should be doing the same today. Where there are major problems, or lack of connections, build new roads. Beginning with either bypasses, or especially bridges over rivers, which is what is most needed in most places. Then eventually over time connect them together to entirely new motorways.
Instead we just piss about with any investment if it does happen going into widening existing routes, which is facile. New routes allow people to take routes that don't exist currently, it makes journeys that can't happen currently entirely viable. That's what we need.
HS2 will be open and functioning in stages. Always was going to be, just not so many stages, thank you Mr Sunak.
Same with electrifications in the past and present. Always staged.
Indeed, but the stages are massive and take decades.
Whereas eg constructing a new bridge which means people can now drive over a river where they couldn't before, or there's a bypass where there wasn't before, etc can be done within a Parliament.
Electrification is like upgrades to the existing motorway network, it doesn't make any real new connections. Its new routes, new connections, that are most valuable not upgrades to existing routes.
On the contrary. Elecvtdrification was enormously important in increasing speed *and* capacity. And surely your demand for a new motorway from X to Y is basically the existing A class road upgraded.
I am fairly convinced that electrification - in the sense of overhead lines - will not advance much more.
While battery powered trains are less efficient (carrying the weight of the batteries), the vastly lower capital costs and the maintenance issues will mean that for routes of increasing length, the batteries will win.
I agree, but only if.when we get *far* better battery chemistries.
That is the achillies heel at the root of all issues with renewables. But for it they would be in use by free market choice without any interference from politicians.
The combination of energy density of hydrocarbons and speed of conversion of that density into useful output is so much higher than any other alternative (other than a nuclear reactor which has all sorts of long term pollution issues).
Net zero isnt what they should be focussing on, they should be focusing on stable electricity storage as energy dense as hydrocarbons.
Sort that and Net Zero will be inevitable as it would be cheaper than fossil fuels.
Batteries for trains are already viable - 10 minute charge to go 100 miles would cover many, many routes.
The investment in battery storage technology, globally, is many billions for pure research.
Meanwhile governments tried to sell hydrogen as the One True Answer, because of the politics of it.
Battery Trains have been viable for over sixty years. British Rail had a battery multiple unit in use on the 40 mile long and hilly Ballater Branch for several years after 1959.
Good. We do not need wannabe Quislings in our democracy.
This is where I think Leon notably misreads this country. We are not the same as mainland Europe and don’t necessarily follow ‘behind’ their trends, which is an odd thing to have to remind a so-called brexiteer.
A good case can be made for saying that we had our rightward surge in 2016 and again in 2019, especially since migration was a big factor in those votes on top of EU centralised control.
That we are now almost certainly about to elect a Centre-Left Government may buck the continental trend, or it may show that we are, in fact, 10 years ahead of them.
Either way, and you can ignore the last bit, the main point is that we are not a typical mainland European country. We are an island nation with both an inward and outward facing dynamic.
We don’t generally do extremism. Since 1945, which was exceptional, we have never elected an extreme government of Right or Left. And however much froth and bubble they produce, neither Marxists nor Fascists have succeeded in winning a majority here.
Thankfully. Long may that continue.
I'm sad to see people just buying into the narrative of there being a significant rightward surge in Europe in general. As I attempted to show shortly after the results, there were countervailing currents in Europe. But people focus selectively so they highlighted the countries that fitted the narrative and stayed quiet on the ones that flowed the other direction. And before anyone says, it's not just that some countries get inherently more focus. In the past few years, Sweden had a lot of focus when it was going towards the right. In this election the result was a kind of stasis so oops we don't analyse that result.
People invested in politics get sucked in my these narratives because they want to feel something is happening. It's easier to justify the investment of time and emotion when you can kid yourself that a great historical tide is flowing even if in reality it's just the waves on the shore.
And of course, for some it's wishful thinking. You see it a lot on here. The country's about to take a moderate turn to the left. But where does that leave my "EVERYTHING FLOWING TO THE RIGHT!" story? Oh, easy, this incoming government will fail fast and the people will quickly wake up to our Lord and Saviour, Sir Nigel of Faragistan. And so a future that is so obviously unwritten collapses, in their minds, to a single inevitable conclusion. The obvious wrongness of this sense of inevitability ought to lead us to question every step they've made to get there. Including the recent past. What happened in the European elections is not what these people say happened. The picture is considerably more mixed and nuanced. But one of two blaring cakeholes shout a lie and everyone sort of absorbs it as gospel without checking.
Spot on. The Nordic countries are very different to Germany and the Netherlands. Poland is very different to Slovakia and Hungary. Portugal and Spain are very different to Italy. Greece is different again, having what seems to be a pretty competent, genuinely centre-right, socially liberal, quite popular government currently. France is going through what looks to be quite a unique trauma. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Sinn Fein has lost almost all the support that had previously seen it surge in the polls. And so on.
One thing that may unite much of Europe, though, including the UK is that the far right has pushed the centre right further rightwards on issues like immigration, the environment, the rule of law and so on. The French left is also now heading leftwards. I wonder if other countries will follow.
It’s a bollocks analysis, you should talk to someone who constantly travels - often around Europe - rather than some berk in a bed sit in Aberdeen. But it consoles you to believe this, so you will believe it
Do you think your 'here today, gone tomorrow' trips around Europe's tourist attractions give you an in depth understanding ?
Its possible to drive around a district by one route and think it highly affluent and to do it a different way and think it highly deprived.
Now extend that to a whole region, a whole country, a whole continent.
I’ve now travelled so much around the world I’ve gained an insight into travelling itself. It really does broaden the mind, but not in ways most people understand, because they don’t travel
As for my “trips around Europe’s tourist attractions” it’s maybe skipped your attention that I just spent a week in Moldova, literally the least touristy country in Europe (as in: fewest tourists) and that was followed by two days in Transnistria (zero tourists) and two weeks in war torn Ukraine (war tourists and dead tourists)
But you were still a tourist.
A different thing to living or doing business in that country.
Journalism isn't work?
The Jeremy Bowen variety is, very much so, but others? Most are glorified narcissistic holiday makers with writing fetishes.
Good. We do not need wannabe Quislings in our democracy.
This is where I think Leon notably misreads this country. We are not the same as mainland Europe and don’t necessarily follow ‘behind’ their trends, which is an odd thing to have to remind a so-called brexiteer.
A good case can be made for saying that we had our rightward surge in 2016 and again in 2019, especially since migration was a big factor in those votes on top of EU centralised control.
That we are now almost certainly about to elect a Centre-Left Government may buck the continental trend, or it may show that we are, in fact, 10 years ahead of them.
Either way, and you can ignore the last bit, the main point is that we are not a typical mainland European country. We are an island nation with both an inward and outward facing dynamic.
We don’t generally do extremism. Since 1945, which was exceptional, we have never elected an extreme government of Right or Left. And however much froth and bubble they produce, neither Marxists nor Fascists have succeeded in winning a majority here.
Thankfully. Long may that continue.
I'm sad to see people just buying into the narrative of there being a significant rightward surge in Europe in general. As I attempted to show shortly after the results, there were countervailing currents in Europe. But people focus selectively so they highlighted the countries that fitted the narrative and stayed quiet on the ones that flowed the other direction. And before anyone says, it's not just that some countries get inherently more focus. In the past few years, Sweden had a lot of focus when it was going towards the right. In this election the result was a kind of stasis so oops we don't analyse that result.
People invested in politics get sucked in my these narratives because they want to feel something is happening. It's easier to justify the investment of time and emotion when you can kid yourself that a great historical tide is flowing even if in reality it's just the waves on the shore.
And of course, for some it's wishful thinking. You see it a lot on here. The country's about to take a moderate turn to the left. But where does that leave my "EVERYTHING FLOWING TO THE RIGHT!" story? Oh, easy, this incoming government will fail fast and the people will quickly wake up to our Lord and Saviour, Sir Nigel of Faragistan. And so a future that is so obviously unwritten collapses, in their minds, to a single inevitable conclusion. The obvious wrongness of this sense of inevitability ought to lead us to question every step they've made to get there. Including the recent past. What happened in the European elections is not what these people say happened. The picture is considerably more mixed and nuanced. But one of two blaring cakeholes shout a lie and everyone sort of absorbs it as gospel without checking.
Spot on. The Nordic countries are very different to Germany and the Netherlands. Poland is very different to Slovakia and Hungary. Portugal and Spain are very different to Italy. Greece is different again, having what seems to be a pretty competent, genuinely centre-right, socially liberal, quite popular government currently. France is going through what looks to be quite a unique trauma. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Sinn Fein has lost almost all the support that had previously seen it surge in the polls. And so on.
One thing that may unite much of Europe, though, including the UK is that the far right has pushed the centre right further rightwards on issues like immigration, the environment, the rule of law and so on. The French left is also now heading leftwards. I wonder if other countries will follow.
It’s a bollocks analysis, you should talk to someone who constantly travels - often around Europe - rather than some berk in a bed sit in Aberdeen. But it consoles you to believe this, so you will believe it
Do you think your 'here today, gone tomorrow' trips around Europe's tourist attractions give you an in depth understanding ?
Its possible to drive around a district by one route and think it highly affluent and to do it a different way and think it highly deprived.
Now extend that to a whole region, a whole country, a whole continent.
I’ve now travelled so much around the world I’ve gained an insight into travelling itself. It really does broaden the mind, but not in ways most people understand, because they don’t travel
As for my “trips around Europe’s tourist attractions” it’s maybe skipped your attention that I just spent a week in Moldova, literally the least touristy country in Europe (as in: fewest tourists) and that was followed by two days in Transnistria (zero tourists) and two weeks in war torn Ukraine (war tourists and dead tourists)
But you were still a tourist.
A different thing to living or doing business in that country.
I was doing business - I was working. Writing about the war and Ukraine. And writing about Moldova too
Your work is fleeting visits to a myriad of places, followed by writing about the local wine and churches.
It can be an interesting read, it might stimulate others to travel, but its essentially superficial.
For almost everyone else work is doing the same thing in the same place day after day, year after year.
They give different perspectives and different depths of understanding on places.
One of the golden rules of late stage capitalism the more useless your work the more you get paid.
What is the Westminster honeytrap scandal? I had not heard anything about it until now.
The Tory government decided last year that the best way to win the election was to get the votes of pensioners who love immigrants but are fearfully scared of wasps
So they went to a friend of David Lord Cameron and said can you make 194 honey traps to catch wasps and we will give you 14 billion dollars. The guy thought about it for a while, and then said “Yes I can manage that”, but when the honey traps arrived at the Home Office Kemi Badenoch smashed them all up by mistake thinking they were ICBMs and then the prime minister smeared the honey all over his knees to distract media attention from the debacle, as that was the advice from campaign expert Isaac Levido
Next MRP updates will be interesting, can the Tories cling on to 100 seats?? And are the MRP VI figures dropping or still above the regular polling %s?
One of the curiosities is how far from the betting consensus a lot of the forecasts are. The Economist currently predicts 185 for the Tories for example.
The key economic number is that the UK, alone of the G7 states, has a lower household income than before the pandemic. Employment levels are strong, productivity rather ho-hum, but set to improve, but real incomes have stagnated. Meanwhile the substantial real cuts across the public sector, especially in the NHS and local government, has left even middle income earners facing substantially increased real costs. The resulting squeeze has fallen disproportionately on middle and lower income earners, with the public sector pensions bill at £2,3 trillion now being larger than the total UK economy.
The Tory pensions bribe has sold the future for their own electoral advantage and left the UK living way beyond its means. The Tory version of austerity was burn everything except pensions. That cannot continue.
The country needs tro invest in infrastructure and substantially boost overall productivity, while reducing the national pensions burden. Its tricky political balance, and the clown car politics of the past 9 years have been little short of catastrophic. The Tories absolutely deserve the kicking they are going to get.
Labour will see some positive news, given inflation is stabilising and productivity can really only improve. However, restructuring UK public finances is a mammoth task, even to get to stability, let alone growth, Rachel Reeves has no magic wand, and it will be a tightrope walk to maintain growth while improving the long term productive capacity of the economy versus competition such as the US, or Germany, let alone China and India.
You are moving effortlessly from (questionable) estimates of future liabilities for occupational pensions in the public sector, to our state pension which at £200 a week is lower than our peer nations. This is separate from our need to invest in infrastructure and local government, and to increase economic growth.
Perhaps those on massive public sector pensions should be taxed to pay for a big increase in the state pension. An NHS doctor, when he/she retires will have a a monthly income more than double what the average person in this country earns. This is similar for many civil servants.
Tax the public sector fat cats! Will it happen under Labour? No chance. Fairness and increased taxes will mainly apply to people who generally don't vote for them.
A specific, additional tax for former doctors, nurses, police officers, firefighters?
I don't disagree with general higher taxation on pensions income. But picking on public servants in particular is in effect the same as what you're pre-complaining about Labour.
It's also why public sector pensions aren't as valuable as you might think. Vulnerable to the whim of government.
This morning's Survation is yet another poll showing the Tories coming 3rd in seats:
Con 41 Lab 495 LD 63 Ref 3 Green 2 SNP 21 PC 4 Other 3 NI 18
Sunak's seat is due to declare at 4am. The polls suggest it's one worth staying up for.
Delighted if they lose their seat: JRM, Jenrick, Truss, Shapps, McVey, IDS, Williamson Meh, bit funny they lost: Sunak, Cleveley Kinda hope they keep it: Hunt, Mordaunt, Davis
Rishi scores more on pity than dislike, which is probably worse......
Good. We do not need wannabe Quislings in our democracy.
This is where I think Leon notably misreads this country. We are not the same as mainland Europe and don’t necessarily follow ‘behind’ their trends, which is an odd thing to have to remind a so-called brexiteer.
A good case can be made for saying that we had our rightward surge in 2016 and again in 2019, especially since migration was a big factor in those votes on top of EU centralised control.
That we are now almost certainly about to elect a Centre-Left Government may buck the continental trend, or it may show that we are, in fact, 10 years ahead of them.
Either way, and you can ignore the last bit, the main point is that we are not a typical mainland European country. We are an island nation with both an inward and outward facing dynamic.
We don’t generally do extremism. Since 1945, which was exceptional, we have never elected an extreme government of Right or Left. And however much froth and bubble they produce, neither Marxists nor Fascists have succeeded in winning a majority here.
Thankfully. Long may that continue.
I'm sad to see people just buying into the narrative of there being a significant rightward surge in Europe in general. As I attempted to show shortly after the results, there were countervailing currents in Europe. But people focus selectively so they highlighted the countries that fitted the narrative and stayed quiet on the ones that flowed the other direction. And before anyone says, it's not just that some countries get inherently more focus. In the past few years, Sweden had a lot of focus when it was going towards the right. In this election the result was a kind of stasis so oops we don't analyse that result.
People invested in politics get sucked in my these narratives because they want to feel something is happening. It's easier to justify the investment of time and emotion when you can kid yourself that a great historical tide is flowing even if in reality it's just the waves on the shore.
And of course, for some it's wishful thinking. You see it a lot on here. The country's about to take a moderate turn to the left. But where does that leave my "EVERYTHING FLOWING TO THE RIGHT!" story? Oh, easy, this incoming government will fail fast and the people will quickly wake up to our Lord and Saviour, Sir Nigel of Faragistan. And so a future that is so obviously unwritten collapses, in their minds, to a single inevitable conclusion. The obvious wrongness of this sense of inevitability ought to lead us to question every step they've made to get there. Including the recent past. What happened in the European elections is not what these people say happened. The picture is considerably more mixed and nuanced. But one of two blaring cakeholes shout a lie and everyone sort of absorbs it as gospel without checking.
Spot on. The Nordic countries are very different to Germany and the Netherlands. Poland is very different to Slovakia and Hungary. Portugal and Spain are very different to Italy. Greece is different again, having what seems to be a pretty competent, genuinely centre-right, socially liberal, quite popular government currently. France is going through what looks to be quite a unique trauma. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Sinn Fein has lost almost all the support that had previously seen it surge in the polls. And so on.
One thing that may unite much of Europe, though, including the UK is that the far right has pushed the centre right further rightwards on issues like immigration, the environment, the rule of law and so on. The French left is also now heading leftwards. I wonder if other countries will follow.
It’s a bollocks analysis, you should talk to someone who constantly travels - often around Europe - rather than some berk in a bed sit in Aberdeen. But it consoles you to believe this, so you will believe it
Do you think your 'here today, gone tomorrow' trips around Europe's tourist attractions give you an in depth understanding ?
Its possible to drive around a district by one route and think it highly affluent and to do it a different way and think it highly deprived.
Now extend that to a whole region, a whole country, a whole continent.
I’ve now travelled so much around the world I’ve gained an insight into travelling itself. It really does broaden the mind, but not in ways most people understand, because they don’t travel
As for my “trips around Europe’s tourist attractions” it’s maybe skipped your attention that I just spent a week in Moldova, literally the least touristy country in Europe (as in: fewest tourists) and that was followed by two days in Transnistria (zero tourists) and two weeks in war torn Ukraine (war tourists and dead tourists)
But you were still a tourist.
A different thing to living or doing business in that country.
I was doing business - I was working. Writing about the war and Ukraine. And writing about Moldova too
Your work is fleeting visits to a myriad of places, followed by writing about the local wine and churches.
It can be an interesting read, it might stimulate others to travel, but its essentially superficial.
For almost everyone else work is doing the same thing in the same place day after day, year after year.
They give different perspectives and different depths of understanding on places.
One of the golden rules of late stage capitalism the more useless your work the more you get paid.
Whereas in Russia it is that the further you are up Putin's arse you are, the greater your chance of becoming either a billionaire or falling out of a hotel bedroom window.
Next MRP updates will be interesting, can the Tories cling on to 100 seats?? And are the MRP VI figures dropping or still above the regular polling %s?
One of the curiosities is how far from the betting consensus a lot of the forecasts are. The Economist currently predicts 185 for the Tories for example.
Good. We do not need wannabe Quislings in our democracy.
This is where I think Leon notably misreads this country. We are not the same as mainland Europe and don’t necessarily follow ‘behind’ their trends, which is an odd thing to have to remind a so-called brexiteer.
A good case can be made for saying that we had our rightward surge in 2016 and again in 2019, especially since migration was a big factor in those votes on top of EU centralised control.
That we are now almost certainly about to elect a Centre-Left Government may buck the continental trend, or it may show that we are, in fact, 10 years ahead of them.
Either way, and you can ignore the last bit, the main point is that we are not a typical mainland European country. We are an island nation with both an inward and outward facing dynamic.
We don’t generally do extremism. Since 1945, which was exceptional, we have never elected an extreme government of Right or Left. And however much froth and bubble they produce, neither Marxists nor Fascists have succeeded in winning a majority here.
Thankfully. Long may that continue.
I'm sad to see people just buying into the narrative of there being a significant rightward surge in Europe in general. As I attempted to show shortly after the results, there were countervailing currents in Europe. But people focus selectively so they highlighted the countries that fitted the narrative and stayed quiet on the ones that flowed the other direction. And before anyone says, it's not just that some countries get inherently more focus. In the past few years, Sweden had a lot of focus when it was going towards the right. In this election the result was a kind of stasis so oops we don't analyse that result.
People invested in politics get sucked in my these narratives because they want to feel something is happening. It's easier to justify the investment of time and emotion when you can kid yourself that a great historical tide is flowing even if in reality it's just the waves on the shore.
And of course, for some it's wishful thinking. You see it a lot on here. The country's about to take a moderate turn to the left. But where does that leave my "EVERYTHING FLOWING TO THE RIGHT!" story? Oh, easy, this incoming government will fail fast and the people will quickly wake up to our Lord and Saviour, Sir Nigel of Faragistan. And so a future that is so obviously unwritten collapses, in their minds, to a single inevitable conclusion. The obvious wrongness of this sense of inevitability ought to lead us to question every step they've made to get there. Including the recent past. What happened in the European elections is not what these people say happened. The picture is considerably more mixed and nuanced. But one of two blaring cakeholes shout a lie and everyone sort of absorbs it as gospel without checking.
Spot on. The Nordic countries are very different to Germany and the Netherlands. Poland is very different to Slovakia and Hungary. Portugal and Spain are very different to Italy. Greece is different again, having what seems to be a pretty competent, genuinely centre-right, socially liberal, quite popular government currently. France is going through what looks to be quite a unique trauma. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Sinn Fein has lost almost all the support that had previously seen it surge in the polls. And so on.
One thing that may unite much of Europe, though, including the UK is that the far right has pushed the centre right further rightwards on issues like immigration, the environment, the rule of law and so on. The French left is also now heading leftwards. I wonder if other countries will follow.
It’s a bollocks analysis, you should talk to someone who constantly travels - often around Europe - rather than some berk in a bed sit in Aberdeen. But it consoles you to believe this, so you will believe it
Do you think your 'here today, gone tomorrow' trips around Europe's tourist attractions give you an in depth understanding ?
Its possible to drive around a district by one route and think it highly affluent and to do it a different way and think it highly deprived.
Now extend that to a whole region, a whole country, a whole continent.
I’ve now travelled so much around the world I’ve gained an insight into travelling itself. It really does broaden the mind, but not in ways most people understand, because they don’t travel
As for my “trips around Europe’s tourist attractions” it’s maybe skipped your attention that I just spent a week in Moldova, literally the least touristy country in Europe (as in: fewest tourists) and that was followed by two days in Transnistria (zero tourists) and two weeks in war torn Ukraine (war tourists and dead tourists)
But you were still a tourist.
A different thing to living or doing business in that country.
I was doing business - I was working. Writing about the war and Ukraine. And writing about Moldova too
Why didn't you go to the front line if you were writing about the war? Just asking
Here’s a video I took from my hotel balcony in Odessa of drones slamming into Odessa as the Ukrainians desperately tried to shoot them down
You can just see tracer fire but it’s night so mostly invisible so you need to turn the audio up high
Good. We do not need wannabe Quislings in our democracy.
This is where I think Leon notably misreads this country. We are not the same as mainland Europe and don’t necessarily follow ‘behind’ their trends, which is an odd thing to have to remind a so-called brexiteer.
A good case can be made for saying that we had our rightward surge in 2016 and again in 2019, especially since migration was a big factor in those votes on top of EU centralised control.
That we are now almost certainly about to elect a Centre-Left Government may buck the continental trend, or it may show that we are, in fact, 10 years ahead of them.
Either way, and you can ignore the last bit, the main point is that we are not a typical mainland European country. We are an island nation with both an inward and outward facing dynamic.
We don’t generally do extremism. Since 1945, which was exceptional, we have never elected an extreme government of Right or Left. And however much froth and bubble they produce, neither Marxists nor Fascists have succeeded in winning a majority here.
Thankfully. Long may that continue.
I'm sad to see people just buying into the narrative of there being a significant rightward surge in Europe in general. As I attempted to show shortly after the results, there were countervailing currents in Europe. But people focus selectively so they highlighted the countries that fitted the narrative and stayed quiet on the ones that flowed the other direction. And before anyone says, it's not just that some countries get inherently more focus. In the past few years, Sweden had a lot of focus when it was going towards the right. In this election the result was a kind of stasis so oops we don't analyse that result.
People invested in politics get sucked in my these narratives because they want to feel something is happening. It's easier to justify the investment of time and emotion when you can kid yourself that a great historical tide is flowing even if in reality it's just the waves on the shore.
And of course, for some it's wishful thinking. You see it a lot on here. The country's about to take a moderate turn to the left. But where does that leave my "EVERYTHING FLOWING TO THE RIGHT!" story? Oh, easy, this incoming government will fail fast and the people will quickly wake up to our Lord and Saviour, Sir Nigel of Faragistan. And so a future that is so obviously unwritten collapses, in their minds, to a single inevitable conclusion. The obvious wrongness of this sense of inevitability ought to lead us to question every step they've made to get there. Including the recent past. What happened in the European elections is not what these people say happened. The picture is considerably more mixed and nuanced. But one of two blaring cakeholes shout a lie and everyone sort of absorbs it as gospel without checking.
Spot on. The Nordic countries are very different to Germany and the Netherlands. Poland is very different to Slovakia and Hungary. Portugal and Spain are very different to Italy. Greece is different again, having what seems to be a pretty competent, genuinely centre-right, socially liberal, quite popular government currently. France is going through what looks to be quite a unique trauma. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Sinn Fein has lost almost all the support that had previously seen it surge in the polls. And so on.
One thing that may unite much of Europe, though, including the UK is that the far right has pushed the centre right further rightwards on issues like immigration, the environment, the rule of law and so on. The French left is also now heading leftwards. I wonder if other countries will follow.
It’s a bollocks analysis, you should talk to someone who constantly travels - often around Europe - rather than some berk in a bed sit in Aberdeen. But it consoles you to believe this, so you will believe it
Do you think your 'here today, gone tomorrow' trips around Europe's tourist attractions give you an in depth understanding ?
Its possible to drive around a district by one route and think it highly affluent and to do it a different way and think it highly deprived.
Now extend that to a whole region, a whole country, a whole continent.
I’ve now travelled so much around the world I’ve gained an insight into travelling itself. It really does broaden the mind, but not in ways most people understand, because they don’t travel
As for my “trips around Europe’s tourist attractions” it’s maybe skipped your attention that I just spent a week in Moldova, literally the least touristy country in Europe (as in: fewest tourists) and that was followed by two days in Transnistria (zero tourists) and two weeks in war torn Ukraine (war tourists and dead tourists)
But you were still a tourist.
A different thing to living or doing business in that country.
I was doing business - I was working. Writing about the war and Ukraine. And writing about Moldova too
Your work is fleeting visits to a myriad of places, followed by writing about the local wine and churches.
It can be an interesting read, it might stimulate others to travel, but its essentially superficial.
For almost everyone else work is doing the same thing in the same place day after day, year after year.
They give different perspectives and different depths of understanding on places.
Yes, travel writing is work in the sense of being paid, but it isn't the same as working amongst locals.
I have worked in New Zealand, Australia, and briefly in India, Myanmar and Malawi. Working amongst the people there was very different to being a tourist. You get a very different perspective on a country.
German match commentary last night seemed very surprised that after Janza was given a yellow on 22 minutes that England didn't try to get the ball to Saka so he could take on Janza.
The German pundits' consensus was that Southgate is someone who doesn't give instructions to his players, doesn't know how to have a plan, or if he does he doesn't know how to change the plan when it isn't working, and is just way too passive. And that it's a travesty given the talent he's got to play with.
Mood stayed (mostly) good-natured in Cologne, despite the not so great football. But the city didn't fall in love with the England fans, like they did with the "Tartan Army" last week.
Sounds to me like the German's have a good handle on Southgate and his failings. More so than most of our commentators who seem to just rely on 'oh he's crap'
It's kind of interesting to hear outsiders' views. Normally England managers don't get the kind of criticism abroad that they get in England - everyone knows being a national manager is a tough job and you win some, you lose some. I think this time around there is more attention because England are (were) seen as the favourites, they have several really top players (especially looking at the attacking line-up), yet England seem to often end up playing this kind of fearful, indecisive football.
I like Southgate, and I think he's done a lot for the psychology of the team - England can actually win penalty shootouts now! But I also have the feeling when I watch them that if things aren't really working, Southgate seems powerless to make the changes to turn things around. He needs a Coach Beard to his Ted Lasso impersonation!
I also was wondering if Rashford would have been a useful substitute option in a game like last night's.
“Do you think the current council tax bands and system are fair?
Liz Kendall: "... we're not going to be changing [them], & let me explain why... we've got to be honest about what our priorities are, and our priorities are not to be raising Income Tax, VAT or National Insurance”
“Do you think the current council tax bands and system are fair?
Liz Kendall: "... we're not going to be changing [them], & let me explain why... we've got to be honest about what our priorities are, and our priorities are not to be raising Income Tax, VAT or National Insurance”
We have reached the situation where I am in more in favour of higher taxes on the rich and property owners than the Labour party is.
Only thing more boring than Leon banging on about aliens or AI is people telling Leon how well/badly/inconsequential/incurious he is in his activities.
Super boring. And bizarre, tbh. Says more about the people who discuss Leon than Leon.
Good. We do not need wannabe Quislings in our democracy.
This is where I think Leon notably misreads this country. We are not the same as mainland Europe and don’t necessarily follow ‘behind’ their trends, which is an odd thing to have to remind a so-called brexiteer.
A good case can be made for saying that we had our rightward surge in 2016 and again in 2019, especially since migration was a big factor in those votes on top of EU centralised control.
That we are now almost certainly about to elect a Centre-Left Government may buck the continental trend, or it may show that we are, in fact, 10 years ahead of them.
Either way, and you can ignore the last bit, the main point is that we are not a typical mainland European country. We are an island nation with both an inward and outward facing dynamic.
We don’t generally do extremism. Since 1945, which was exceptional, we have never elected an extreme government of Right or Left. And however much froth and bubble they produce, neither Marxists nor Fascists have succeeded in winning a majority here.
Thankfully. Long may that continue.
I'm sad to see people just buying into the narrative of there being a significant rightward surge in Europe in general. As I attempted to show shortly after the results, there were countervailing currents in Europe. But people focus selectively so they highlighted the countries that fitted the narrative and stayed quiet on the ones that flowed the other direction. And before anyone says, it's not just that some countries get inherently more focus. In the past few years, Sweden had a lot of focus when it was going towards the right. In this election the result was a kind of stasis so oops we don't analyse that result.
People invested in politics get sucked in my these narratives because they want to feel something is happening. It's easier to justify the investment of time and emotion when you can kid yourself that a great historical tide is flowing even if in reality it's just the waves on the shore.
And of course, for some it's wishful thinking. You see it a lot on here. The country's about to take a moderate turn to the left. But where does that leave my "EVERYTHING FLOWING TO THE RIGHT!" story? Oh, easy, this incoming government will fail fast and the people will quickly wake up to our Lord and Saviour, Sir Nigel of Faragistan. And so a future that is so obviously unwritten collapses, in their minds, to a single inevitable conclusion. The obvious wrongness of this sense of inevitability ought to lead us to question every step they've made to get there. Including the recent past. What happened in the European elections is not what these people say happened. The picture is considerably more mixed and nuanced. But one of two blaring cakeholes shout a lie and everyone sort of absorbs it as gospel without checking.
Spot on. The Nordic countries are very different to Germany and the Netherlands. Poland is very different to Slovakia and Hungary. Portugal and Spain are very different to Italy. Greece is different again, having what seems to be a pretty competent, genuinely centre-right, socially liberal, quite popular government currently. France is going through what looks to be quite a unique trauma. Meanwhile, in Ireland, Sinn Fein has lost almost all the support that had previously seen it surge in the polls. And so on.
One thing that may unite much of Europe, though, including the UK is that the far right has pushed the centre right further rightwards on issues like immigration, the environment, the rule of law and so on. The French left is also now heading leftwards. I wonder if other countries will follow.
It’s a bollocks analysis, you should talk to someone who constantly travels - often around Europe - rather than some berk in a bed sit in Aberdeen. But it consoles you to believe this, so you will believe it
Do you think your 'here today, gone tomorrow' trips around Europe's tourist attractions give you an in depth understanding ?
Its possible to drive around a district by one route and think it highly affluent and to do it a different way and think it highly deprived.
Now extend that to a whole region, a whole country, a whole continent.
I’ve now travelled so much around the world I’ve gained an insight into travelling itself. It really does broaden the mind, but not in ways most people understand, because they don’t travel
As for my “trips around Europe’s tourist attractions” it’s maybe skipped your attention that I just spent a week in Moldova, literally the least touristy country in Europe (as in: fewest tourists) and that was followed by two days in Transnistria (zero tourists) and two weeks in war torn Ukraine (war tourists and dead tourists)
But you were still a tourist.
A different thing to living or doing business in that country.
I was doing business - I was working. Writing about the war and Ukraine. And writing about Moldova too
Your work is fleeting visits to a myriad of places, followed by writing about the local wine and churches.
It can be an interesting read, it might stimulate others to travel, but its essentially superficial.
For almost everyone else work is doing the same thing in the same place day after day, year after year.
They give different perspectives and different depths of understanding on places.
I’ve read this argument before. Somehow you understand more about a place if you sit in an office in that place for months, as compared to someone who goes to that place and reads all about it and goes out and talks to people all over the country
I’ve got friends who lived abroad for years and learned nothing of their host nation. They were expats, they didn’t care, they got drunk, didn’t learn the language. Whereas someone skilled can go to a country for two weeks and fillet it expertly and learn far more
Also the more you travel the smarter you get and the smarter you get the more you can learn in a short time. Its a virtuous cycle
The key economic number is that the UK, alone of the G7 states, has a lower household income than before the pandemic. Employment levels are strong, productivity rather ho-hum, but set to improve, but real incomes have stagnated. Meanwhile the substantial real cuts across the public sector, especially in the NHS and local government, has left even middle income earners facing substantially increased real costs. The resulting squeeze has fallen disproportionately on middle and lower income earners, with the public sector pensions bill at £2,3 trillion now being larger than the total UK economy.
The Tory pensions bribe has sold the future for their own electoral advantage and left the UK living way beyond its means. The Tory version of austerity was burn everything except pensions. That cannot continue.
The country needs tro invest in infrastructure and substantially boost overall productivity, while reducing the national pensions burden. Its tricky political balance, and the clown car politics of the past 9 years have been little short of catastrophic. The Tories absolutely deserve the kicking they are going to get.
Labour will see some positive news, given inflation is stabilising and productivity can really only improve. However, restructuring UK public finances is a mammoth task, even to get to stability, let alone growth, Rachel Reeves has no magic wand, and it will be a tightrope walk to maintain growth while improving the long term productive capacity of the economy versus competition such as the US, or Germany, let alone China and India.
You are moving effortlessly from (questionable) estimates of future liabilities for occupational pensions in the public sector, to our state pension which at £200 a week is lower than our peer nations. This is separate from our need to invest in infrastructure and local government, and to increase economic growth.
Perhaps those on massive public sector pensions should be taxed to pay for a big increase in the state pension. An NHS doctor, when he/she retires will have a a monthly income more than double what the average person in this country earns. This is similar for many civil servants.
Tax the public sector fat cats! Will it happen under Labour? No chance. Fairness and increased taxes will mainly apply to people who generally don't vote for them.
Many civil servants? A small minority I think you'll find!
Not that the pension, even as it is now, isn't fairly generous. My defined benefit pension accumulates at about 2% of my salary per year.
It is a large enough minority that many are still able to retire early or have a security of income that equivalently paid private sector workers can only dream of. The scandal of it is that politicians never mention it because they too benefit from a system that is grossly unfair to the majority of their constituents. If the state can afford such huge contributions it should be putting it into the state pension equally, not giving huge pension bungs to people, many of whom are already very well off.
“Do you think the current council tax bands and system are fair?
Liz Kendall: "... we're not going to be changing [them], & let me explain why... we've got to be honest about what our priorities are, and our priorities are not to be raising Income Tax, VAT or National Insurance”
Council tax set for a big rise then.
Nope, hopefully council tax due to be replaced with sane be it land value tax or simply last sales price...
The key economic number is that the UK, alone of the G7 states, has a lower household income than before the pandemic. Employment levels are strong, productivity rather ho-hum, but set to improve, but real incomes have stagnated. Meanwhile the substantial real cuts across the public sector, especially in the NHS and local government, has left even middle income earners facing substantially increased real costs. The resulting squeeze has fallen disproportionately on middle and lower income earners, with the public sector pensions bill at £2,3 trillion now being larger than the total UK economy.
The Tory pensions bribe has sold the future for their own electoral advantage and left the UK living way beyond its means. The Tory version of austerity was burn everything except pensions. That cannot continue.
The country needs tro invest in infrastructure and substantially boost overall productivity, while reducing the national pensions burden. Its tricky political balance, and the clown car politics of the past 9 years have been little short of catastrophic. The Tories absolutely deserve the kicking they are going to get.
Labour will see some positive news, given inflation is stabilising and productivity can really only improve. However, restructuring UK public finances is a mammoth task, even to get to stability, let alone growth, Rachel Reeves has no magic wand, and it will be a tightrope walk to maintain growth while improving the long term productive capacity of the economy versus competition such as the US, or Germany, let alone China and India.
You are moving effortlessly from (questionable) estimates of future liabilities for occupational pensions in the public sector, to our state pension which at £200 a week is lower than our peer nations. This is separate from our need to invest in infrastructure and local government, and to increase economic growth.
Perhaps those on massive public sector pensions should be taxed to pay for a big increase in the state pension. An NHS doctor, when he/she retires will have a a monthly income more than double what the average person in this country earns. This is similar for many civil servants.
Tax the public sector fat cats! Will it happen under Labour? No chance. Fairness and increased taxes will mainly apply to people who generally don't vote for them.
A specific, additional tax for former doctors, nurses, police officers, firefighters?
I don't disagree with general higher taxation on pensions income. But picking on public servants in particular is in effect the same as what you're pre-complaining about Labour.
It's also why public sector pensions aren't as valuable as you might think. Vulnerable to the whim of government.
We currently have a specific, additional tax for people on PAYE who are working for a living rather that is not paid by those on golden pensions. So why not the inverse?
Or, a radical idea, how about everyone on the same income pays the same rate of tax, regardless of how they earned that income?
Only thing more boring than Leon banging on about aliens or AI is people telling Leon how well/badly/inconsequential/incurious he is in his activities.
Super boring. And bizarre, tbh. Says more about the people who discuss Leon than Leon.
And the next step of boredom is people complaining about people discussing Leon.
This morning's Survation is yet another poll showing the Tories coming 3rd in seats:
Con 41 Lab 495 LD 63 Ref 3 Green 2 SNP 21 PC 4 Other 3 NI 18
Sunak's seat is due to declare at 4am. The polls suggest it's one worth staying up for.
These declaration times are often not very reliable. That's been the experience in the past. But it's better to have them than to have no estimates at all.
There’s obviously boundary changes this time, which complicates things slightly, but probably the closest guide to what will happen on the morning of 5th July.
Next MRP updates will be interesting, can the Tories cling on to 100 seats?? And are the MRP VI figures dropping or still above the regular polling %s?
One of the curiosities is how far from the betting consensus a lot of the forecasts are. The Economist currently predicts 185 for the Tories for example.
I can't legally watch it live so I'll be tucked up in bed long before the first declaration. I guess a new dawn will be breaking when I wake up.
I'm pretty sure election results will be covered live, and legally, on the interwebs.
You can't watch the broadcast TV feeds, with their access to guests and quantity of reporters around the country but I agree, I'm sure the likes of Novara and other YouTube channels will be covering it. It's not the same as watching Jeremy Vine in a cowboy outfit, but it's better than nowt.
Comments
Might need use the parliament act and withdraw from the ECHR as well.
Expect much foaming in the Guardian.
Plus how do you charge the trains up or deal with the extra weight if they break down.
Batteries in cars are the future, for trains its electrification, for lorries not a clue...
I agree, but only if.when we get *far* better battery chemistries.
They are being looked into atm - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_electric_multiple_unit#United_Kingdom - but mostly as a way of making overhead electrification cheaper by allowing gaps in the knitting.
Passenger use blew all expectations out of the water, even more so than the waverley line and all sorts of things now going on in the area as a result. Total game changer.
Whatever happens - whether the polls are right or wrong - it will be an epochal, fascinating election. It's the World Cup, Olympics and Eurovision rolled into one, with a small but significant dash of Wrestlemania. Can't wait.
You sit down and press "watch from start" on the tv and then a mate texts you as you open your first beer and it says "2-0 that'll do we face Moldova in the semis", thus ruining your evening although you might stay tuned to see Saka's brilliant solo run and then cross for a Harry tap in, which delights you.
Same with the GE and the Exit Poll. Once you've seen that the rest is details.
Charging the trains would take place at the termini at either end, or using third rail arrangements for short distances - I think both have been used in existing implementations.
The weight of the batteries isn't an extra Pz1000 or something. You deal with break downs the same way you deal with trains when they break down now. There are, after all, battery trains in operation right now.
The main reason they will win, is that you have no planning issues and a reduced capital investment. There is nothing to protest.
Much like battery grid storage, it may not be the best option, but because it can be incremental and hasn't got a planning issue, it's unstoppable.
What blew the English electrification projects out of the water was that British Rail Western Region, who still thought that they were Gods Wonderful Railway and so had to do everything differently, decided to bury their lineside signalling cables instead of putting them in concrete troughs and didn't think it necessary to make a note of where.
The result was that after a few sets of massive signal failures caused by pile driven signal cables, half the new electricication masts had to have hand dug foundations to avoid more, which was about as economic as the NHS covid tracker app.
Then the Midland Main line electrification was cancelled due to the GW scheme using up the budget to get half done (Chippenham, Bath, Bristol, Bristol Parkway, Didcot to Oxford and Cardiff to Swansea all got canned).
Since then the midland main line scheme has been reinstated as a stealth project and is reaching the outskirts of leicester every bit as cheaply as recent Scottish efforts.
I'd had high hopes for a change of weather pattern mid June that would take us through to a glorious high summer and warm election day. Sadly that now seems not to be the case. We've had a short period of summery weather but we're heading back into cool damp traditional British summer.
I'm on desktop so can't post a picture, but if I could I'd show you the ensemble model runs which all show a period of cooler than average, cloudy and moderately wet weather running from roughly tomorrow to mid July. Not great, not terrible. Things can only get meh-er.
We are governed by older, richer, car driving people who associate motoring with aspiration. They simply cannot comprehend that most people would use the bus/tram/train to get around if it were available, even when they own a car.
We see this with cycling as well. Most cyclists have access to a car too. They just prefer to get around by bicycle. The car is a necessary but painful cost to living
It's not a coincidence that the areas of the UK with high housing demand and economic growth have great public transport provision.
The German pundits' consensus was that Southgate is someone who doesn't give instructions to his players, doesn't know how to have a plan, or if he does he doesn't know how to change the plan when it isn't working, and is just way too passive. And that it's a travesty given the talent he's got to play with.
Mood stayed (mostly) good-natured in Cologne, despite the not so great football. But the city didn't fall in love with the England fans, like they did with the "Tartan Army" last week.
The combination of energy density of hydrocarbons and speed of conversion of that density into useful output is so much higher than any other alternative (other than a nuclear reactor which has all sorts of long term pollution issues).
Net zero isnt what they should be focussing on, they should be focusing on stable electricity storage as energy dense as hydrocarbons.
Sort that and Net Zero will be inevitable as it would be cheaper than fossil fuels.
There is not a single county in the entire country with sufficient housing stock.
Other than that ...
There's a time and a place for public transport, I'm entirely pro-choice. I will choose to use it sometimes, and choose not to other times. We should respect people's choices, my objection is to those who vehemently oppose cars/roads and want to force people onto public transport or only invest in it. We should invest in both and let people choose freely.
We have rapidly improving battery storage and production. Its already happening.
The US, Europe, China etc are building massive increases in battery storage and production.
You object that we should do that first, but we are already doing that. We need to do both simultaneously, both generate electricity cleanly and be able to store it, and both are happening already. Its not either/or.
Stuck as I am with limited contact other than such as Pb, and occasional chats with friends, I can only say that I sense no great enthusiasm for Starmer’s Labour; it’s not like 1997. There’s disgust for the Conservatives, and a sense that, for them, whatever can go wrong, will.
I don’t think a couple of good, or moderate, sports successes will make a difference, either.
My July 4th plan is to scooter down to vote, then keep yet another hospital appointment. At the end of the day Mrs C and I will watch the exit polls, then go to bed, and I’ll wake early in the morning on 5th to see what’s actually happened, rather than listen to political correspondents debating what might happen for a couple of hours, and then studying the entrails of the result in Sunderland for a further hour.
The investment in battery storage technology, globally, is many billions for pure research.
Meanwhile governments tried to sell hydrogen as the One True Answer, because of the politics of it.
https://x.com/saulstaniforth/status/1805854520569679901
“Do you think the current council tax bands and system are fair?
Liz Kendall: "... we're not going to be changing [them], & let me explain why... we've got to be honest about what our priorities are, and our priorities are not to be raising Income Tax, VAT or National Insurance”
Replacment of VED and Fuel Duty with per mile tolling using trackers that insurance companies use and costs varying (cost more for better faster roads and in peak hours - just as with rail) is needed to level the playing field.
Tax the public sector fat cats! Will it happen under Labour? No chance. Fairness and increased taxes will mainly apply to people who generally don't vote for them.
This is absolutely brutal Cons - Sunak's PM approval rating is the worst *ever* on the eve of an election, by a 30 point margin. 75% disapprove of him - 16 points higher than the next highest figures (Major 97, Blair 05 and Brown 10 all tied)
https://x.com/robfordmancs/status/1805882344131207336
There's a lot of research going in to solid state batteries too, as an alternative to the liquid electrolytes li-ion ones used currently. If those can be developed commercially it will be a gamechanger, but the research is already happening and a lot of manufacturers publicly state they intend to have solid state battery EVs available before the end of the decade.
https://electionresults.parliament.uk/elections/2377
So they went to a friend of David Lord Cameron and said can you make 194 honey traps to catch wasps and we will give you 14 billion dollars. The guy thought about it for a while, and then said “Yes I can manage that”, but when the honey traps arrived at the Home Office Kemi Badenoch smashed them all up by mistake thinking they were ICBMs and then the prime minister smeared the honey all over his knees to distract media attention from the debacle, as that was the advice from campaign expert Isaac Levido
That’s the honey trap scandal
This is it from now on
I guess a new dawn will be breaking when I wake up.
It can be an interesting read, it might stimulate others to travel, but its essentially superficial.
For almost everyone else work is doing the same thing in the same place day after day, year after year.
They give different perspectives and different depths of understanding on places.
NEW Survation Telephone Tracker for
@GMB
- Poll 3/4
LAB 41% (-)
CON 18% (-2)
REF 14% (-1)
LD 12% (-)
GRE 5% (-1)
SNP 2% (nc)
OTH 7% (+2)
F/w 21st - 25th June. Changes vs. 19th June 2024.
https://x.com/Survation/status/1805856893602046259
However, they have restrictions, most trains won't be battery fitted and those that do are much more expensive to maintain.
The reason that Southern Region is all third rail, despite the first electrification (on the Brighton Line) being high voltage overhead AC which was ripped out a few years after it went in, despite the cost of high voltage Overhead electrification being far cheaper than third rail due to a tenth of the substations being needed, was because the cost of on train transformer and rectifier equipment needed on the AC system to drive dc motors outweighed the savings on trackside substations etc due to the number of trains and the logistics of putting such equipment in the confined spaces on them.
AC traction motors have since made that problem go away but the principle remains. Putting complex bulky techology on trains is costly to install and maintain. And there are a lot of trains.
Not that the pension, even as it is now, isn't fairly generous. My defined benefit pension accumulates at about 2% of my salary per year.
https://www.economist.com/interactive/uk-general-election/forecast?utm_medium=social-media.content.np&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=editorial-social&utm_content=discovery.content
I think Tories would actually be happy with that.
The first question is about a letter of 18th November 2005.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD5Jh1Sf8Go
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_BEMU
I don't disagree with general higher taxation on pensions income. But picking on public servants in particular is in effect the same as what you're pre-complaining about Labour.
It's also why public sector pensions aren't as valuable as you might think. Vulnerable to the whim of government.
Meh, bit funny they lost: Sunak, Cleveley
Kinda hope they keep it: Hunt, Mordaunt, Davis
Rishi scores more on pity than dislike, which is probably worse......
You can just see tracer fire but it’s night so mostly invisible so you need to turn the audio up high
https://imgur.com/gallery/OexI6bW
LAB: 38% (-1)
CON: 21% (=)
RFM: 16% (+3)
LDM: 12% (-1)
GRN: 8% (+1)
SNP: 3% (=)
Via @VerianGroup, 21-24 Jun.
Changes w/ 14-17 Jun.
https://x.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1805894182105497761?s=19
I have worked in New Zealand, Australia, and briefly in India, Myanmar and Malawi. Working amongst the people there was very different to being a tourist. You get a very different perspective on a country.
I like Southgate, and I think he's done a lot for the psychology of the team - England can actually win penalty shootouts now! But I also have the feeling when I watch them that if things aren't really working, Southgate seems powerless to make the changes to turn things around. He needs a Coach Beard to his Ted Lasso impersonation!
I also was wondering if Rashford would have been a useful substitute option in a game like last night's.
Super boring. And bizarre, tbh. Says more about the people who discuss Leon than Leon.
Could this be the big surprise of the election?
I’ve got friends who lived abroad for years and learned nothing of their host nation. They were expats, they didn’t care, they got drunk, didn’t learn the language. Whereas someone skilled can go to a country for two weeks and fillet it expertly and learn far more
Also the more you travel the smarter you get and the smarter you get the more you can learn in a short time. Its a virtuous cycle
Or, a radical idea, how about everyone on the same income pays the same rate of tax, regardless of how they earned that income?
https://electionresults.parliament.uk/general-elections/4/declaration-times
There’s obviously boundary changes this time, which complicates things slightly, but probably the closest guide to what will happen on the morning of 5th July.
Yes, you can access it from anywhere in the world.