Prof John Ashton, a former public health director, became exercised about Letby’s trial before it was finished. He had blown the whistle on a cluster of baby and maternal deaths at the Morecambe Bay hospitals when he was regional director of public health for the north-west of England. His direct experience, with the Morecambe Bay scandal, is that human instinct drives people to look for someone or something to blame, but the root causes are often more complicated and numerous.
It's almost been forgotten that the complete opposite happened in this case. That's not to say that proves Letby is guilty, but I think we can discount the possibility that she was scapegoated.
Sorry, but this is rubbish. Hospital upper management may have denied the possibility that Letby was responsible, but the consultants in the ward became convinced that she was responsible in preference to blaming the (unacceptably poor - we have the reports!) standard of care being meted out by their own department.
Prof Ashton is (rightly imo) pointing out that consultants have a record of leaping to blaming individuals rather than systemic issues that are ultimately their responsibility.
Air embolism is not caused by lackadaisical medical care, and seems to have been the cause of the collapse of several of these infants under Letby's care.
The Guardian claims to have spoken to eight clinicians, seven of them specialising in neonatology who described Evans claims that an air embolism could be introduced in the way claimed during the trials as (I quote the article) nonsensical, “rubbish”, “ridiculous”, “implausible” and “fantastical” in half the cases & the other half relied on a research paper that the /authors/ of that paper said was completely inapplicable.
I am not an expert, but this seems ... concerning to me.
Can't say I particularly trust a newspaper journalist to give a sober, non-oversimplified account of such complex medical matters. I mean, remember Covid.
Has an angry politician ever won high office in Britain? By high office I mean PM, CoE, FS or Health. I can’t think of one.
Certainly all PMs in my lifetime have been either avuncular, or bland but serious. Even Truss didn’t do angry. Brown might have got cross with his colleagues but he didn’t project anger to the electorate.
There have been a few moderately angry LOTOs, most recently Corbyn, but they never won.
Bonar Law might qualify - he made his name through the harshness of his rhetoric, at a time when politics was becoming much rougher than it had been before.
On the other hand, he was already ill when he became leader and had begun to noticeably slow down - Violet Bonham Carter famously described him as "a man with sleeping sickness", when compared to "a man with St Vitus' Dance" (Lloyd-George).
Funnily enough I was pondering David Lloyd George, but concluded he was more "passionate" than angry. Kinnock was also on that spectrum.
The vast majority of these incidents are minor and/or maintenance-related. But once the media have got it in for you, you get dragged through the mud every time.
It happens to the most professional operators and the RAF.
That ASRAAM is a war shot with a a live warhead and seeker just to add to the gaiety of the occasion.
Whoops, someone had a bad day.
If I were to guess, a small remote-controlled truck with an airbag on top, driven in somewhere under the fus just inboard of the broken wheel, that could lift it clear of the ground by inflating the bag?
Or five big lads full of pies and Mars Bars.
After WWII, the Americans were curious as to how the Japanese defueled their liquid oxygen torpedos.
In those days LOX was a poorly understood nightmare that caused explosions at random.
The Japanese were a bit puzzled - they simply did the obvious. Put the torpedo on a beach or convenient sand bank. Then sent the most junior rating over with a spanner.
"Senior White House advisers for more than a year have aggressively stage-managed President Biden’s schedule, movements and personal interactions, as they sought to minimize signs of how age has taken a toll on the oldest president in U.S. history.”
Wall Street Journal.
The idea that this is all going to go away and it will be business as usual if Biden makes a few speeches without freezing up or trailing off is absolutely ridiculous.
The Democrats are starting to really damage their own brand.
I've long been confident there'll be no return to the WH for Donald Trump but I am now starting to worry. I'll be 100% for Biden if he (wrong-headedly imo) insists on staying in (that remains a no-brainer) but I don't have a vote, I only have a betting position which loses a packet if the (to me) unthinkable were to happen. Sadly it becomes less unthinkable if the Dem candidate is too frail to campaign properly. With that gift, plus a poll lead, plus having both the GOP and SC in his pocket, you have to say Trump has a big chance in November. Eg on the betting, if you compare WH prices and Nominee prices, it implies Biden at over 4 vs Trump if that is the match-up. With the election only 4 months away that's not great.
I'm definitely worried. Biden made sense to me as a candidate because he beat Trump before and has imo been a good president, with an economic record to be envied.
But there's no way his age can't be a big drag now on his campaign.
So reluctantly, I think he should step down, and pass on to Harris. Democrats should unite around the person they agreed should be backup president.
I also think it would give Harris a boost if Biden stepped graciously down and gave her his backing. All the ‘come at me if you think your tough enough’ stuff is just strategising West Wing bollocks.
Keeping Biden at top of the ticket is now madness.
It will not only give Trump 2.0 an easy win but quite probably hammer further down the ballot.
But looks like that is what is going to happen although the ragin' cajun thinks Biden will step down.
Trump wants Biden to step down, he knows Harris is very unpopular in the rustbelt and would give him a Reagan like landslide.
Whereas he knows Biden beat him there last time and the Dems would probably have to nominate Harris if Biden stepped down unless Michelle Obama could be persuaded, who is the only Dem candidate he really fears
Trump beats Biden after the disastrous debate.
Anyone is now better equipped than Biden to beat Trump. Biden should be over already.
Sometimes I think you might be a secret Trump fanboi.
Yes, quite. No way does Trump want Biden to stand down, now
Trump is 99.5% likely to beat Demented Joe. If the Dems get a grip and choose someone else, maybe someone sane and under 90 years old, then it is all up in the air again
The Dems have fucked themselves royally, but it is not terminal. They can still rescue things - maybe - if they kick Joe out
They can still win with Biden, with a bigger post convention poll bounce than the GOP and of course Trump could still be jailed in September.
This is delusional. Look at the polls. And Biden's dementia isn't going away, it is going to get worse - literally, medically and electorally - as the media obsesses about everything he does or says
Swing Vote Americans will think - which is worse, the asshole Trump who nonetheless doesn't start wars, or an actually mad president who might? Leading a party which conspired to hide his madness for a year? And then kept him as their candidate, despite his being mad?
They will vote Trump, and they would be right to do so. Biden has to go: he is certain to lose
If you went with polls in July of election year it would have been President Hillary, President Romney, President Kerry, President Perot, President Dukakis etc. Presidential election polls don't really mean much until after the conventions and subsequent poll bounces and any economic or foreign policy events in the autumn like the 2008 crash
The polls this year have been pretty stable. Even Trump getting convicted or Biden showing the world he's well past his sell-by-date didn't shift the polls very much.
Obviously we've got 2 very well-known quantities, who have been presumptive nominees for months already, and especially in Trump a candidate who a lot of people are definitely going to vote for or against come what may. I don't see the polls having any dramatic shifts with these 2 candidates between now and November, but every chance that Trump will slowly increase his current lead due to Biden looking increasingly like he's not up to the job.
A tape of Trump complaining about "f**king n****rs" surfacing might help Biden a bit.
The Dems will be helped enormously by their convention being last however. Since 2000 every party whose convention was last got a bounce which gave them the lead going into September. For example Gore in 2000 led in September having trailed Bush throughout the summer, Bush led in September 2004 after his convention, McCain led in September 2008 until the Lehmans crash put Obama ahead again, Obama led in September 2012 after his convention and Hillary led after her convention in September 2016.
2020 didn't make much difference admittedly but only as the conventions were largely online or with a tiny audience
I am giving serious consideration on the afternoon thread saying
Suella Braverman is a [moderated] raging homophobe, she's an [word that gets you banned from PB]
Her speech has to be the most homophobic speech from a Brit politician since the 1980s.
She can get in the fucking sea.
Before the gender-critical PB contributors respond, it needs to be pointed out that Ms Braverman was objecting to the Progress Pride flag (the one with the stripes and triangles) specifically, not the Pride flag (the one with the stripes) generally, and doing so because of its trans association. She is critical of both the theory and practice of trans and this would be consistent with her past remarks. Since PB is - how can I put this - a teensy bit split on this issue, you may prefer to lay off the speech for the moment.
There are at least two outright lies in her speech.
Firstly, no "mutilation of children" takes place in any UK hospital. Under 18s can't undergo surgical gender reassignment.
Secondly, as @sundersays has pointed out, it was the traditional six-stripe Pride flag that could not be removed, not the enhanced version that includes trans colours.
I am giving serious consideration on the afternoon thread saying
Suella Braverman is a [moderated] raging homophobe, she's an [word that gets you banned from PB]
Her speech has to be the most homophobic speech from a Brit politician since the 1980s.
She can get in the fucking sea.
Wonder if she's trying to get kicked out of the Tory Party so she can head off to REF?
or she is targeting a particular sector of the Tory party membership (old, racist, homophobic)... Wouldn't surprise me if that covers 60%+ of the remaining membership...
Not necessarily, a lot of such Tory members left when Boris resigned and many of the rest went when Sunak became Tory leader.
I am giving serious consideration on the afternoon thread saying
Suella Braverman is a [moderated] raging homophobe, she's an [word that gets you banned from PB]
Her speech has to be the most homophobic speech from a Brit politician since the 1980s.
She can get in the fucking sea.
Wonder if she's trying to get kicked out of the Tory Party so she can head off to REF?
or she is targeting a particular sector of the Tory party membership (old, racist, homophobic)... Wouldn't surprise me if that covers 60%+ of the remaining membership...
Not necessarily, a lot of such Tory members left when Boris resigned and many of the rest went when Sunak became Tory leader.
Do you think there will be a hustings roadshow this time round? I was thinking £39 was not bad value if it gets you a seat at that plus a vote against Braverman.
I am giving serious consideration on the afternoon thread saying
Suella Braverman is a [moderated] raging homophobe, she's an [word that gets you banned from PB]
Her speech has to be the most homophobic speech from a Brit politician since the 1980s.
She can get in the fucking sea.
Before the gender-critical PB contributors respond, it needs to be pointed out that Ms Braverman was objecting to the Progress Pride flag (the one with the stripes and triangles) specifically, not the Pride flag (the one with the stripes) generally, and doing so because of its trans association. She is critical of both the theory and practice of trans and this would be consistent with her past remarks. Since PB is - how can I put this - a teensy bit split on this issue, you may prefer to lay off the speech for the moment.
There are at least two outright lies in her speech.
Firstly, no "mutilation of children" takes place in any UK hospital. Under 18s can't undergo surgical gender reassignment.
Secondly, as @sundersays has pointed out, it was the traditional six-stripe Pride flag that could not be removed, not the enhanced version that includes trans colours.
Your remark about UK regulations is indicative, as is the fact that the Conference is taking place in Washington. There's something I call the "Anglosphere patriot": somebody who gets all their facts from their phone and doesn't on a fundamental level realise that the world is divided into nations which are geographically divided with different policies. So we have Katie Hopkins concerning herself with the politics of Italy, an issue she cannot fix. We have become untethered from the ground and float in cyberspace, to our detriment.
I am giving serious consideration on the afternoon thread saying
Suella Braverman is a [moderated] raging homophobe, she's an [word that gets you banned from PB]
Her speech has to be the most homophobic speech from a Brit politician since the 1980s.
She can get in the fucking sea.
Wonder if she's trying to get kicked out of the Tory Party so she can head off to REF?
or she is targeting a particular sector of the Tory party membership (old, racist, homophobic)... Wouldn't surprise me if that covers 60%+ of the remaining membership...
Not necessarily, a lot of such Tory members left when Boris resigned and many of the rest went when Sunak became Tory leader.
Do you think there will be a hustings roadshow this time round? I was thinking £39 was not bad value if it gets you a seat at that plus a vote against Braverman.
You need to have been a member for 3 months by ballot day though to vote for the next Tory leader
"Senior White House advisers for more than a year have aggressively stage-managed President Biden’s schedule, movements and personal interactions, as they sought to minimize signs of how age has taken a toll on the oldest president in U.S. history.”
Wall Street Journal.
The idea that this is all going to go away and it will be business as usual if Biden makes a few speeches without freezing up or trailing off is absolutely ridiculous.
The Democrats are starting to really damage their own brand.
I've long been confident there'll be no return to the WH for Donald Trump but I am now starting to worry. I'll be 100% for Biden if he (wrong-headedly imo) insists on staying in (that remains a no-brainer) but I don't have a vote, I only have a betting position which loses a packet if the (to me) unthinkable were to happen. Sadly it becomes less unthinkable if the Dem candidate is too frail to campaign properly. With that gift, plus a poll lead, plus having both the GOP and SC in his pocket, you have to say Trump has a big chance in November. Eg on the betting, if you compare WH prices and Nominee prices, it implies Biden at over 4 vs Trump if that is the match-up. With the election only 4 months away that's not great.
I'm definitely worried. Biden made sense to me as a candidate because he beat Trump before and has imo been a good president, with an economic record to be envied.
But there's no way his age can't be a big drag now on his campaign.
So reluctantly, I think he should step down, and pass on to Harris. Democrats should unite around the person they agreed should be backup president.
I also think it would give Harris a boost if Biden stepped graciously down and gave her his backing. All the ‘come at me if you think your tough enough’ stuff is just strategising West Wing bollocks.
Keeping Biden at top of the ticket is now madness.
It will not only give Trump 2.0 an easy win but quite probably hammer further down the ballot.
But looks like that is what is going to happen although the ragin' cajun thinks Biden will step down.
Trump wants Biden to step down, he knows Harris is very unpopular in the rustbelt and would give him a Reagan like landslide.
Whereas he knows Biden beat him there last time and the Dems would probably have to nominate Harris if Biden stepped down unless Michelle Obama could be persuaded, who is the only Dem candidate he really fears
Trump beats Biden after the disastrous debate.
Anyone is now better equipped than Biden to beat Trump. Biden should be over already.
Sometimes I think you might be a secret Trump fanboi.
Yes, quite. No way does Trump want Biden to stand down, now
Trump is 99.5% likely to beat Demented Joe. If the Dems get a grip and choose someone else, maybe someone sane and under 90 years old, then it is all up in the air again
The Dems have fucked themselves royally, but it is not terminal. They can still rescue things - maybe - if they kick Joe out
They can still win with Biden, with a bigger post convention poll bounce than the GOP and of course Trump could still be jailed in September.
This is delusional. Look at the polls. And Biden's dementia isn't going away, it is going to get worse - literally, medically and electorally - as the media obsesses about everything he does or says
Swing Vote Americans will think - which is worse, the asshole Trump who nonetheless doesn't start wars, or an actually mad president who might? Leading a party which conspired to hide his madness for a year? And then kept him as their candidate, despite his being mad?
They will vote Trump, and they would be right to do so. Biden has to go: he is certain to lose
You think Biden’s not up to it any more? Why didn’t you say? You could have mentioned it earlier.
You can't expect Joe B to know it, but one does expect those around him to be able to say whether he's compos mentis. It's up to Jill B and his close associates to persuade him to throw in the towel. Imo her role in this drawn-out car crash is now transparent.
Seems no way his family or long-time aides are going to do this. Too much to lose themselves.
The Dems big beasts have to steel themselves and do this deed.
He has to be told, as Carville says, 'the jig is up'.
I am giving serious consideration on the afternoon thread saying
Suella Braverman is a [moderated] raging homophobe, she's an [word that gets you banned from PB]
Her speech has to be the most homophobic speech from a Brit politician since the 1980s.
She can get in the fucking sea.
Wonder if she's trying to get kicked out of the Tory Party so she can head off to REF?
or she is targeting a particular sector of the Tory party membership (old, racist, homophobic)... Wouldn't surprise me if that covers 60%+ of the remaining membership...
Not necessarily, a lot of such Tory members left when Boris resigned and many of the rest went when Sunak became Tory leader.
Do you think there will be a hustings roadshow this time round? I was thinking £39 was not bad value if it gets you a seat at that plus a vote against Braverman.
You need to have been a member for 3 months by ballot day though to vote for the next Tory leader
I am giving serious consideration on the afternoon thread saying
Suella Braverman is a [moderated] raging homophobe, she's an [word that gets you banned from PB]
Her speech has to be the most homophobic speech from a Brit politician since the 1980s.
She can get in the fucking sea.
Before the gender-critical PB contributors respond, it needs to be pointed out that Ms Braverman was objecting to the Progress Pride flag (the one with the stripes and triangles) specifically, not the Pride flag (the one with the stripes) generally, and doing so because of its trans association. She is critical of both the theory and practice of trans and this would be consistent with her past remarks. Since PB is - how can I put this - a teensy bit split on this issue, you may prefer to lay off the speech for the moment.
Terrible, at least IDS was re elected and can now reintroduce his death by dangerous cycling bill into Parliament as a private member's bill
What everyone I know is looking for is in the first 12 months of this Govt the comprehensive review of all aspects of law addressing Road (technically Public Highway) Safety promised by Justice Secretary Chris Grayling in May 2014:
Picking at bits and pieces is not the way - I'll be interested to see if IDS tries given everything going on on Planet Tory; there's 15 years of inaction to catch up on.
Of course he will, his party is not in government, he has got plenty of time on his hands on the opposition backbenches, it is a cause he cares about and even many Labour Ministers and MPs would back his proposal
It will be interesting to see. I'm not especially concerned, as it is a very fringe measure which would based on existing KSI stats be in play less than once a year. IDS had to go back 10 years to find the list of 6 "killer cyclists" he read out to Parliament, and of those only 2 were clearly at fault.
What would you expect - 10 minute rule bill as recently used by a Kim Leadbetter MP for Graduated Driving Licences advised by iirc the Road Danger Reduction Forum, or a Private Members Bill, or Amendments?
I'd expect it to be in a Road Safety Review, which I am advocating for, and as a part of that - given that Mr Starmer has made roughly that commitment.
If he wants a separate whatever, IDS will have to sharpen up his ideas and find an evidence base not a bandwagon.
Ironically, I think the main impact may be to improve standards of prosecution of dangerous drivers for parity of chargig standard (eg prevent plea-bargaining down to Careless), as it will be much more difficult to charge people riding cycles. That's the argument made by retired Detective Superintendent Andy Cox.
IDS may not need to do anything as the Labour party already committed pre-election to introducing a dangerous cycling law if they won.
My point was more that Labour have committed specifically to an IDS-style dangerous cycling law, not to a wider review of road safety laws along the lines of what Grayling had committed to in 2014. Unless I've missed something, in which case I'd be interested in seeing what they've actually said on the matter.
It's worth a note that the 'dangerous cycling' commitment is not in the Manifesto, unless I missed it.
From the Labour Manifesto:
“Labour will maintain and renew our road network, to ensure it serves drivers, cyclists and other road users, remains safe, and tackles congestion.”
I don't see how that is achievable without a full review, especially given current trends in road deaths.
New Labour set a target to halve road deaths in 10 years, and achieved it in 9. That's where we need to be.
Also I have seen this reported, which I cannot see in the Manifesto; perhaps it is somewhere else. We already have an RSIB established in 2022, but I'm not sure what it has been doing given that Mark Harper has pursued policies which undermine safety.
The Labour manifesto also calls for:
Establishing a Road Safety Investigation Branch – An independent body modelled on existing transportation safety branches (for rail and air travel) to analyse road incidents and provide actionable insights to help prevent future tragedies.
Adopting advanced vehicle safety regulations – Immediate implementation of the world-leading vehicle safety standards, mandating critical technologies such as automatic emergency braking (AEB) and intelligent speed assistance (ISA).
You can't expect Joe B to know it, but one does expect those around him to be able to say whether he's compos mentis. It's up to Jill B and his close associates to persuade him to throw in the towel. Imo her role in this drawn-out car crash is now transparent.
Seems no way his family or long-time aides are going to do this. Too much to lose themselves.
The Dems big beasts have to steel themselves and do this deed.
He has to be told, as Carville says, 'the jig is up'.
NO he does not. Any other Dem nominee except Michelle Obama likely ensures Trump's return to office, as most polls show
Prof John Ashton, a former public health director, became exercised about Letby’s trial before it was finished. He had blown the whistle on a cluster of baby and maternal deaths at the Morecambe Bay hospitals when he was regional director of public health for the north-west of England. His direct experience, with the Morecambe Bay scandal, is that human instinct drives people to look for someone or something to blame, but the root causes are often more complicated and numerous.
It's almost been forgotten that the complete opposite happened in this case. That's not to say that proves Letby is guilty, but I think we can discount the possibility that she was scapegoated.
Sorry, but this is rubbish. Hospital upper management may have denied the possibility that Letby was responsible, but the consultants in the ward became convinced that she was responsible in preference to blaming the (unacceptably poor - we have the reports!) standard of care being meted out by their own department.
Prof Ashton is (rightly imo) pointing out that consultants have a record of leaping to blaming individuals rather than systemic issues that are ultimately their responsibility.
Air embolism is not caused by lackadaisical medical care, and seems to have been the cause of the collapse of several of these infants under Letby's care.
The Guardian claims to have spoken to eight clinicians, seven of them specialising in neonatology who described Evans claims that an air embolism could be introduced in the way claimed during the trials as (I quote the article) nonsensical, “rubbish”, “ridiculous”, “implausible” and “fantastical” in half the cases & the other half relied on a research paper that the /authors/ of that paper said was completely inapplicable.
I am not an expert, but this seems ... concerning to me.
Then why did Letbys lawyers not call expert witnesses to that effect?
They could hardly be ignorant of the stories in the US press.
While rare, there has been at least one prior case of murder by deliberate air embolism.
They did try to call witnesses to cast doubt on the air embolism theory during the appeal & were told that the evidence was inadmissible because the witness should have been called during the original trial if they wanted to challenge that evidence.
That suggests they were unaware of said witness at the time of the original trial to me.
As to why? Incompetence? Lack of time? Public defenders aren’t exactly the most well paid lawyers out there. You’d have to ask them for the real answer.
Krugman joins the torrent of Dem people saying Biden can't win and must step aside.
Yes Krugman really knows how to win having strongly endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016 when Biden probably would have beaten Trump as incumbent VP
Clinton could have won if she hadn't run such a god awful campaign that ignored Dem rust belt voters.
But the more important point is all these opinion writers and commentators are now saying what voters have been saying for months: he's too old. And now Biden has shown he is too old by failing the test he literally set himself with an early debate.
"Senior White House advisers for more than a year have aggressively stage-managed President Biden’s schedule, movements and personal interactions, as they sought to minimize signs of how age has taken a toll on the oldest president in U.S. history.”
Wall Street Journal.
The idea that this is all going to go away and it will be business as usual if Biden makes a few speeches without freezing up or trailing off is absolutely ridiculous.
The Democrats are starting to really damage their own brand.
I've long been confident there'll be no return to the WH for Donald Trump but I am now starting to worry. I'll be 100% for Biden if he (wrong-headedly imo) insists on staying in (that remains a no-brainer) but I don't have a vote, I only have a betting position which loses a packet if the (to me) unthinkable were to happen. Sadly it becomes less unthinkable if the Dem candidate is too frail to campaign properly. With that gift, plus a poll lead, plus having both the GOP and SC in his pocket, you have to say Trump has a big chance in November. Eg on the betting, if you compare WH prices and Nominee prices, it implies Biden at over 4 vs Trump if that is the match-up. With the election only 4 months away that's not great.
I'm definitely worried. Biden made sense to me as a candidate because he beat Trump before and has imo been a good president, with an economic record to be envied.
But there's no way his age can't be a big drag now on his campaign.
So reluctantly, I think he should step down, and pass on to Harris. Democrats should unite around the person they agreed should be backup president.
I also think it would give Harris a boost if Biden stepped graciously down and gave her his backing. All the ‘come at me if you think your tough enough’ stuff is just strategising West Wing bollocks.
Keeping Biden at top of the ticket is now madness.
It will not only give Trump 2.0 an easy win but quite probably hammer further down the ballot.
But looks like that is what is going to happen although the ragin' cajun thinks Biden will step down.
Trump wants Biden to step down, he knows Harris is very unpopular in the rustbelt and would give him a Reagan like landslide.
Whereas he knows Biden beat him there last time and the Dems would probably have to nominate Harris if Biden stepped down unless Michelle Obama could be persuaded, who is the only Dem candidate he really fears
Trump beats Biden after the disastrous debate.
Anyone is now better equipped than Biden to beat Trump. Biden should be over already.
Sometimes I think you might be a secret Trump fanboi.
Yes, quite. No way does Trump want Biden to stand down, now
Trump is 99.5% likely to beat Demented Joe. If the Dems get a grip and choose someone else, maybe someone sane and under 90 years old, then it is all up in the air again
The Dems have fucked themselves royally, but it is not terminal. They can still rescue things - maybe - if they kick Joe out
They can still win with Biden, with a bigger post convention poll bounce than the GOP and of course Trump could still be jailed in September.
This is delusional. Look at the polls. And Biden's dementia isn't going away, it is going to get worse - literally, medically and electorally - as the media obsesses about everything he does or says
Swing Vote Americans will think - which is worse, the asshole Trump who nonetheless doesn't start wars, or an actually mad president who might? Leading a party which conspired to hide his madness for a year? And then kept him as their candidate, despite his being mad?
They will vote Trump, and they would be right to do so. Biden has to go: he is certain to lose
You think Biden’s not up to it any more? Why didn’t you say? You could have mentioned it earlier.
Terrible, at least IDS was re elected and can now reintroduce his death by dangerous cycling bill into Parliament as a private member's bill
I’ve cycled along many tow paths. I just can’t imagine doing the speed that would catapult someone you hit into the air. They are all mixed use.
I'd be interested in the physics that could send someone airborne from a cycling collision. What speed? How would you generate upwards force given your high centre if gravity?
I can imagine if the cyclist swerves to avoid, they are no longer vertical, and the bottom of their wheel takes out the pedestrian's legs, catapulting them. P'haps.
Reading it, it sounds like a typical inelastic collision so a simple momentum transfer gives some indication.
Assuming the mass of the bike is 10kg = 100N, the rider is 100kg = 1000N, the woman 55kg = 550n and that he was riding reasonably quickly (say 15mph = 7½ m/s) then the velocity of the woman after the collision would be
(100 + 1000) / 550 * 7.5 = 15m/s or approx 30 mph
She might as well have been hit by a car.
Hold on, this maths is complete bullshit. You don’t convert mass to force & then do a calculation based on Newtons! But that’s a side issue - the real problem is that you have assumed that all of his momentum is transferred to her, which is physically extremely unlikely - people do not rebound off each other in this way.
A more physically plausible outcome is that the two people roughly move as one after the collision, so assuming an inelastic collision where the two people move together after the collision with no elastic rebound - given your numbers the momentum beforehand is 110kg * 7.5m/s + 55*0 = 825 N m / s. Afterwards the mass is 165kg, momentum is conserved so the velocity of the two people would be 5 m / s or about 11 mph.
Although obviously a real world collision would be different because of the complexity of two bodies colliding, but a joint post impact velocity of 11mph is far more plausible than 30mph!
(your approach would also imply that the heavier the object that is moving beforehand, the fast the hit person will be moving afterwards which is clearly physically implausible - people hit by lorries do not sproing off into the distance at 100s of mph.)
That would be because hitting the pedestrian does NOT result in a complete (or near complete) transfer of momentum from the lorry. The lorry barely slows at all. It is the lorry's brakes being pressed by its panicking driver that brings it to a halt.
For an impact where one body is very much more massive than the other, impulse is more important. You can safely assume with a pedestrian and truck that, if the driver does not hit the brakes, then the pedestrian will be accelerated up to the velocity of the truck in a very short time before sliding off in whichever direction any resultant forces work.
It is unlikely that a cyclist would pin the pedestrian to the front of the bike unless it was in an AI generated Youtube Short.
Look, I’m sorry but you’re wrong. Physics says you’re wrong. Why are you wrong? Because your collision numbers don’t conserve energy. There is no hope for you if you think a collision generates kinetic energy:
Before KE: 110kg * (7.5 m/s)^2 = 6182 J After KE: 55 kg * (15 m/s)^2 = 12375 J
You cannot generate energy from a collision between two people. There is no hope for you, please desist with this ludicrous argument.
At high enough impact speeds, you could achieve fusion, and maybe even more interesting reactions.
I am giving serious consideration on the afternoon thread saying
Suella Braverman is a [moderated] raging homophobe, she's an [word that gets you banned from PB]
Her speech has to be the most homophobic speech from a Brit politician since the 1980s.
She can get in the fucking sea.
Wonder if she's trying to get kicked out of the Tory Party so she can head off to REF?
or she is targeting a particular sector of the Tory party membership (old, racist, homophobic)... Wouldn't surprise me if that covers 60%+ of the remaining membership...
Not necessarily, a lot of such Tory members left when Boris resigned and many of the rest went when Sunak became Tory leader.
Do you think there will be a hustings roadshow this time round? I was thinking £39 was not bad value if it gets you a seat at that plus a vote against Braverman.
You need to have been a member for 3 months by ballot day though to vote for the next Tory leader
I suspect rather more members are on their way out, right now, than are coming in.
A lot of Home Counties members, particular from private sector and smaller businesses, join their conservative association not for the politics but for the chance to meet and hobnob with and lobby their MP. Across hundreds of seats, that attraction has now disappeared.
I am giving serious consideration on the afternoon thread saying
Suella Braverman is a [moderated] raging homophobe, she's an [word that gets you banned from PB]
Her speech has to be the most homophobic speech from a Brit politician since the 1980s.
She can get in the fucking sea.
Before the gender-critical PB contributors respond, it needs to be pointed out that Ms Braverman was objecting to the Progress Pride flag (the one with the stripes and triangles) specifically, not the Pride flag (the one with the stripes) generally, and doing so because of its trans association. She is critical of both the theory and practice of trans and this would be consistent with her past remarks. Since PB is - how can I put this - a teensy bit split on this issue, you may prefer to lay off the speech for the moment.
There are at least two outright lies in her speech.
Firstly, no "mutilation of children" takes place in any UK hospital. Under 18s can't undergo surgical gender reassignment.
Secondly, as @sundersays has pointed out, it was the traditional six-stripe Pride flag that could not be removed, not the enhanced version that includes trans colours.
I have no idea what Braverman said, but the fact is young British kids - well under 18 - have been given puberty blocking drugs and things like "breast suppressing clothes" that alter the body. Is that mutilation?
I dunno. It's all so depressing. But I know this happened because it happened to the 13 year old child of one of my best friends, courtesy of the Tavistock Clinic
The former deals with the threshold at which a child becomes an adult, which has IMHO become unnecessarily blurred in England to its detriment. It really should be a bright line, not a fuzzy blur, but pensionerism rules and we have adultised children and infantilized adults.
But it is the latter that I wish to speak of. You spoke of them before, some years back IIRC. What happened to them?
I am giving serious consideration on the afternoon thread saying
Suella Braverman is a [moderated] raging homophobe, she's an [word that gets you banned from PB]
Her speech has to be the most homophobic speech from a Brit politician since the 1980s.
She can get in the fucking sea.
Before the gender-critical PB contributors respond, it needs to be pointed out that Ms Braverman was objecting to the Progress Pride flag (the one with the stripes and triangles) specifically, not the Pride flag (the one with the stripes) generally, and doing so because of its trans association. She is critical of both the theory and practice of trans and this would be consistent with her past remarks. Since PB is - how can I put this - a teensy bit split on this issue, you may prefer to lay off the speech for the moment.
There are at least two outright lies in her speech.
Firstly, no "mutilation of children" takes place in any UK hospital. Under 18s can't undergo surgical gender reassignment.
Secondly, as @sundersays has pointed out, it was the traditional six-stripe Pride flag that could not be removed, not the enhanced version that includes trans colours.
Your remark about UK regulations is indicative, as is the fact that the Conference is taking place in Washington. There's something I call the "Anglosphere patriot": somebody who gets all their facts from their phone and doesn't on a fundamental level realise that the world is divided into nations which are geographically divided with different policies. So we have Katie Hopkins concerning herself with the politics of Italy, an issue she cannot fix. We have become untethered from the ground and float in cyberspace, to our detriment.
It happens on the left too. I see it from my son when he's been spending too much time on TikTok. They take things happening in America as if they are our issue. Their understanding of racial politics in particular seems to be informed by US race relations more than those in the UK. Thankfully the global influence of US climate denialism appears to be on the wane now, and US MAGA attitudes to Russia and Ukraine have struggled to take hold.
On the other hand we do have our own home grown culture wars that we have been exporting. The trans kerfuffle is arguably one of them. And others that are purely domestic and not exported, like the debate over private schools.
Well not really because they called the result correctly they just got the mechanics of it wrong. In 1992 they said it would be a hung parliament and it was actually a Tory win.
If the polls had shown the result as it was, I am minded to say they'd have predicted a hung parliament this time around too.
Prof John Ashton, a former public health director, became exercised about Letby’s trial before it was finished. He had blown the whistle on a cluster of baby and maternal deaths at the Morecambe Bay hospitals when he was regional director of public health for the north-west of England. His direct experience, with the Morecambe Bay scandal, is that human instinct drives people to look for someone or something to blame, but the root causes are often more complicated and numerous.
It's almost been forgotten that the complete opposite happened in this case. That's not to say that proves Letby is guilty, but I think we can discount the possibility that she was scapegoated.
For all the expertise coming out of the corner now to cast doubt, the reality is that we have had two trials and not a single one of them was called to give evidence for the defence; from the tactical point of view the fact that the defence had no experts they believed could assist them is a most compelling feature. Only one conclusion can be drawn. Note from para 5 of the Court of Appeal judgment:
"Two points may be noted at the outset. First, though the defence instructed a number of expert witnesses of their own, and many reports were served from them before and during the trial, no expert evidence was called on the applicant's behalf."
The principle that every part of the justice system is functionally innumerate and incapable of dealing with statistical evidence appropriately applies. That her defence didn’t understand the flaws in the prosecution, nor listen to their own experts on the matter is entirely consistent with this reality sadly.
Women convicted of heinous crimes on the basis of statistical evidence & dubious expert testimony has a defence that doesn’t understand the problems with the prosecution case is, again, not exactly unknown in recent times.
I really do fail to understand why people like you continue to insist on this level of faith in the justice system: It’s been proven to be flawed over and over again in cases just like this one. Those people were also found guilty in long court cases that “looked at all the evidence in more detail than anyone else”. Sadly the legal system often mistakes effort & expense for quality of outcome & refuses to examine it’s own blunders, treating them as individual failures rather than evidence of systemic issues in the system itself.
Prof John Ashton, a former public health director, became exercised about Letby’s trial before it was finished. He had blown the whistle on a cluster of baby and maternal deaths at the Morecambe Bay hospitals when he was regional director of public health for the north-west of England. His direct experience, with the Morecambe Bay scandal, is that human instinct drives people to look for someone or something to blame, but the root causes are often more complicated and numerous.
It's almost been forgotten that the complete opposite happened in this case. That's not to say that proves Letby is guilty, but I think we can discount the possibility that she was scapegoated.
For all the expertise coming out of the corner now to cast doubt, the reality is that we have had two trials and not a single one of them was called to give evidence for the defence; from the tactical point of view the fact that the defence had no experts they believed could assist them is a most compelling feature. Only one conclusion can be drawn. Note from para 5 of the Court of Appeal judgment:
"Two points may be noted at the outset. First, though the defence instructed a number of expert witnesses of their own, and many reports were served from them before and during the trial, no expert evidence was called on the applicant's behalf."
The principle that every part of the justice system is functionally innumerate and incapable of dealing with statistical evidence appropriately applies. That her defence didn’t understand the flaws in the prosecution, nor listen to their own experts on the matter is entirely consistent with this reality sadly.
Women convicted of heinous crimes on the basis of statistical evidence & dubious expert testimony has a defence that doesn’t understand the problems with the prosecution case is, again, not exactly unknown in recent times.
I really do fail to understand why people like you continue to insist on this level of faith in the justice system: It’s been proven to be flawed over and over again in cases just like this one. Those people were also found guilty in long court cases that “looked at all the evidence in more detail than anyone else”. Sadly the legal system often mistakes effort & expense for quality of outcome & refuses to examine it’s own blunders, treating them as individual failures rather than evidence of systemic issues in the system itself.
I agree with you about the serious problems there are (the Post Offices cases are notable, but others too) but that does not mean this case is one of them. Lots of people are found guilty because they are. At the moment a serious analysis would be needed covering the totality of the evidence, of which there are numerous strands. Note that on the second trial Letby chose to use the same lawyers. She did not have to.
The thought that her lawyers had expert exculpatory evidence which they didn't use because they were dim is to say the least in this case unlikely.
Of course this case could run and run. Maybe a new set of lawyers will be instructed and bring stuff to the attention of the CCRC. Until we are well into that process I think the matter stands where it did.
Well not really because they called the result correctly they just got the mechanics of it wrong. In 1992 they said it would be a hung parliament and it was actually a Tory win.
If the polls had shown the result as it was, I am minded to say they'd have predicted a hung parliament this time around too.
It's interesting that the errors were more marked for some parties than others. They got Lib Dem and SNP broadly right, and weren't that far out on Tories. But they overstated both Labour and Reform significantly.
Well not really because they called the result correctly they just got the mechanics of it wrong. In 1992 they said it would be a hung parliament and it was actually a Tory win.
If the polls had shown the result as it was, I am minded to say they'd have predicted a hung parliament this time around too.
It's interesting that the errors were more marked for some parties than others. They got Lib Dem and SNP broadly right, and weren't that far out on Tories. But they overstated both Labour and Reform significantly.
It does feel like they got the result by accident. They called a Labour landslide based on UNS and a large gap between the two parties, with Labour above and around 40%.
But if they'd had Labour on 34% as in reality it would have been a small majority.
So this all goes back to my point that Morgan McSweeney must have anticipated a narrower lead based on where he put the campaign resources.
The MRPs again actually got the makeup broadly right although over-estimated the Labour shares and the size of the majority, although YouGov was close-ish.
Bottom line is that at campaign start, half of voters had decided to vote Labour; those who made up their mind during the campaign broke a quarter for Labour, leaving them with a third. Very many of these latter only made up their mind on the day, too late to be polled at all.
Thus how pollsters deal with the DKs in their sample is absolutely critical. Ignoring them, assuming they break the same as everyone else, doesn’t work. Referring back to their previous voting habit doesn’t work, either, as many of the DKs this time were former Tories, yet those deciding at the last minute swung things mostly toward the LibDems and Greens.
It’s a dilemma without an obvious answer. The best you can do, I’d suggest, is look at the difference between an early campaign poll and a mid to late campaign poll - ideally of the same voters (hence advantage YouGov), and project the changes you see between the two polls forward. This time, such an approach would have done quite well.
In a couple of recent elections (2017 and 2024) the pollsters have been poleaxed at least partly by late swing. Just as in cricket, you can have your eye on the ball right to the end but still edge to the keeper because it swerves a tad at the last minute.
I'm not convinced that Labour were on 34% over the weekend before the election. It's quite possible they were set for 37-38% at that point, which at least some pollsters were showing.
How do you model late swing? Difficult because you only really pick it up a day or two before the election. Or if it starts early it can then accelerate. I wonder if there's some sort of machine learning solution here that takes a measure of momentum seen in polls in the last week, and calculates whether there is acceleration in that momentum, and then projects forwards.
Then there's Reform. There was not much consistent sign of late swing there. The signals were mixed. This was a simple case of overstatement. My theory is that this was a matter of familiarity and ground game. I'm not sure if anyone's quantified the GOTV effect but it must count for something. Notably the Lib Dems slightly outperformed polling, and the GOTV efforts were pretty energetic.
Perhaps over time our polls will become less and less based on actual responses and more on models. This would be another example.
Not surprised you've already noticed the improvement. The grown-ups are back in charge now.
I thought the whole point of getting Starmer in was to get rid of the criminals and sociopaths.
Tony is neither a criminal nor a sociopath. What he is, is highly experienced, having run the best government of the last many decades.
Hahahahaha. I am sure you believe that as you have shown a similar level of naivity in the past. Blair was just as crooked and sociopathic as the Johnson. The only difference is he was better at it.
Do you want your sociopaths to be stupid or clever. I would suggest that the clever sociopath is far more dangerous than the stupid one.
Not surprised you've already noticed the improvement. The grown-ups are back in charge now.
I thought the whole point of getting Starmer in was to get rid of the criminals and sociopaths.
Tony is neither a criminal nor a sociopath. What he is, is highly experienced, having run the best government of the last many decades.
Hahahahaha. I am sure you believe that as you have shown a similar level of naivity in the past. Blair was just as crooked and sociopathic as the Johnson. The only difference is he was better at it.
Do you want your sociopaths to be stupid or clever. I would suggest that the clever sociopath is far more dangerous than the stupid one.
I do believe Tony was a much better PM than Johnson yes, just based on outcomes.
Lowest NHS waiting times in history and highest NHS satisfaction, Johnson partied through COVID.
I am giving serious consideration on the afternoon thread saying
Suella Braverman is a [moderated] raging homophobe, she's an [word that gets you banned from PB]
Her speech has to be the most homophobic speech from a Brit politician since the 1980s.
She can get in the fucking sea.
Wonder if she's trying to get kicked out of the Tory Party so she can head off to REF?
or she is targeting a particular sector of the Tory party membership (old, racist, homophobic)... Wouldn't surprise me if that covers 60%+ of the remaining membership...
Not necessarily, a lot of such Tory members left when Boris resigned and many of the rest went when Sunak became Tory leader.
As far as I can see, the most recent Tory membership figures were published in 2022.
I am not sure whether that is technically before or after I left.
I am giving serious consideration on the afternoon thread saying
Suella Braverman is a [moderated] raging homophobe, she's an [word that gets you banned from PB]
Her speech has to be the most homophobic speech from a Brit politician since the 1980s.
She can get in the fucking sea.
Wonder if she's trying to get kicked out of the Tory Party so she can head off to REF?
or she is targeting a particular sector of the Tory party membership (old, racist, homophobic)... Wouldn't surprise me if that covers 60%+ of the remaining membership...
Not necessarily, a lot of such Tory members left when Boris resigned and many of the rest went when Sunak became Tory leader.
Do you think there will be a hustings roadshow this time round? I was thinking £39 was not bad value if it gets you a seat at that plus a vote against Braverman.
Cruella won't make it to the members' ballot so save your money.
For all those of you who are fans of retro government-organised rocketry (we need a word for this), the Ariane 6 is about to launch for the first time.
This is GCSE Physics in fact. Apologies for being so blunt @Beibheirli_C but this really is fundamental stuff & checking your numbers against hard constraints like conservation of energy & momentum is really essential if you want to avoid conceptual errors like this.
I am giving serious consideration on the afternoon thread saying
Suella Braverman is a [moderated] raging homophobe, she's an [word that gets you banned from PB]
Her speech has to be the most homophobic speech from a Brit politician since the 1980s.
She can get in the fucking sea.
Wonder if she's trying to get kicked out of the Tory Party so she can head off to REF?
or she is targeting a particular sector of the Tory party membership (old, racist, homophobic)... Wouldn't surprise me if that covers 60%+ of the remaining membership...
Not necessarily, a lot of such Tory members left when Boris resigned and many of the rest went when Sunak became Tory leader.
Do you think there will be a hustings roadshow this time round? I was thinking £39 was not bad value if it gets you a seat at that plus a vote against Braverman.
Cruella won't make it to the members' ballot so save your money.
Her prospects are shot already, which is probably why we see her flailing about in the media, trying to capture a headline. Known to the rest of us as keeping on digging.
Well not really because they called the result correctly they just got the mechanics of it wrong. In 1992 they said it would be a hung parliament and it was actually a Tory win.
If the polls had shown the result as it was, I am minded to say they'd have predicted a hung parliament this time around too.
Judging the Local regression lines on wiki by eye and a bit of paint line measurement I get
2024 Labour 39 - Actual 34.7 (-4.3) Conservatives 21.7 - Actual 24.4 (+2.7) Reform 15.8 Actual 14.4 (-1.4) Lib Dems 10.8 Actual 12.5 (+1.7) Green spot on
1992 Lab 40 Actual 35.2 (-4.8) Con 39 Actual 42.8 (+3.8) Lib Dems look spot on
So the polls were slightly better than 1992 but not by much. I think you're referring to the exit poll which most definitely isn't a poll.
For all those of you who are fans of retro government-organised rocketry (we need a word for this), the Ariane 6 is about to launch for the first time.
I am giving serious consideration on the afternoon thread saying
Suella Braverman is a [moderated] raging homophobe, she's an [word that gets you banned from PB]
Her speech has to be the most homophobic speech from a Brit politician since the 1980s.
She can get in the fucking sea.
Wonder if she's trying to get kicked out of the Tory Party so she can head off to REF?
or she is targeting a particular sector of the Tory party membership (old, racist, homophobic)... Wouldn't surprise me if that covers 60%+ of the remaining membership...
Not necessarily, a lot of such Tory members left when Boris resigned and many of the rest went when Sunak became Tory leader.
Do you think there will be a hustings roadshow this time round? I was thinking £39 was not bad value if it gets you a seat at that plus a vote against Braverman.
Cruella won't make it to the members' ballot so save your money.
Her prospects are shot already, which is probably why we see her flailing about in the media, trying to capture a headline. Known to the rest of us as keeping on digging.
Yet we're still talking about her. It's going to take a while to shake off the muscle memory of having to pay attention to Tory right blowhards back when they had an influence on policy.
What is still baffling me is that across all pollsters, including YouGov, SKS showed a consistent improving of his ratings across the election. How does this sit with the massive polling miss?
What is still baffling me is that across all pollsters, including YouGov, SKS showed a consistent improving of his ratings across the election. How does this sit with the massive polling miss?
Maybe it was conservative voters becoming less scared of him (but voting tory or abstaining anyway).
Michelle Obama is never, will never and has never wanted or is going to run this electoral cycle. She is one of those that needs to have been deepest red in anyone's book.
For all those of you who are fans of retro government-organised rocketry (we need a word for this), the Ariane 6 is about to launch for the first time.
Surely you mean for those who are fans of waterfall rather than agile project management methodologies....
Yes, but I wanted something like dieselpunk. Would "NASA-era" do? Big Dumb Rockets we could have built in the 60s? Apart from the computing tech there's nothing on Ariane 6 that Armstrong wouldn't have recognised. Big tubes of fuel with an engine at one end and some solid boosters. Rocket go up, doesn't come down. Wheeeeeee....
Michelle Obama is never, will never and has never wanted or is going to run this electoral cycle. She is one of those that needs to have been deepest red in anyone's book.
But preferably at 20 not 120.
Michelle Obama 33.12 £33.32
Btw If anyone fancies a humungous payout with a black swan event & has the liquidity (And isn't premium charged) you could lay Trump at 1.61 for the presidency and back the GOP at the same price.
Terrible, at least IDS was re elected and can now reintroduce his death by dangerous cycling bill into Parliament as a private member's bill
I’ve cycled along many tow paths. I just can’t imagine doing the speed that would catapult someone you hit into the air. They are all mixed use.
I'd be interested in the physics that could send someone airborne from a cycling collision. What speed? How would you generate upwards force given your high centre if gravity?
I can imagine if the cyclist swerves to avoid, they are no longer vertical, and the bottom of their wheel takes out the pedestrian's legs, catapulting them. P'haps.
Reading it, it sounds like a typical inelastic collision so a simple momentum transfer gives some indication.
Assuming the mass of the bike is 10kg = 100N, the rider is 100kg = 1000N, the woman 55kg = 550n and that he was riding reasonably quickly (say 15mph = 7½ m/s) then the velocity of the woman after the collision would be
(100 + 1000) / 550 * 7.5 = 15m/s or approx 30 mph
She might as well have been hit by a car.
Hold on, this maths is complete bullshit. You don’t convert mass to force & then do a calculation based on Newtons! But that’s a side issue - the real problem is that you have assumed that all of his momentum is transferred to her, which is physically extremely unlikely - people do not rebound off each other in this way.
A more physically plausible outcome is that the two people roughly move as one after the collision, so assuming an inelastic collision where the two people move together after the collision with no elastic rebound - given your numbers the momentum beforehand is 110kg * 7.5m/s + 55*0 = 825 N m / s. Afterwards the mass is 165kg, momentum is conserved so the velocity of the two people would be 5 m / s or about 11 mph.
Although obviously a real world collision would be different because of the complexity of two bodies colliding, but a joint post impact velocity of 11mph is far more plausible than 30mph!
(your approach would also imply that the heavier the object that is moving beforehand, the fast the hit person will be moving afterwards which is clearly physically implausible - people hit by lorries do not sproing off into the distance at 100s of mph.)
That would be because hitting the pedestrian does NOT result in a complete (or near complete) transfer of momentum from the lorry. The lorry barely slows at all. It is the lorry's brakes being pressed by its panicking driver that brings it to a halt.
For an impact where one body is very much more massive than the other, impulse is more important. You can safely assume with a pedestrian and truck that, if the driver does not hit the brakes, then the pedestrian will be accelerated up to the velocity of the truck in a very short time before sliding off in whichever direction any resultant forces work.
It is unlikely that a cyclist would pin the pedestrian to the front of the bike unless it was in an AI generated Youtube Short.
Look, I’m sorry but you’re wrong. Physics says you’re wrong. Why are you wrong? Because your collision numbers don’t conserve energy. There is no hope for you if you think a collision generates kinetic energy:
Before KE: 110kg * (7.5 m/s)^2 = 6182 J After KE: 55 kg * (15 m/s)^2 = 12375 J
You cannot generate energy from a collision between two people. There is no hope for you, please desist with this ludicrous argument.
True. But going back to the original story, it's surely just a turn of phrase? We talk about people going flying after a tackle in football for example. Someone hit fairly square by someone on a bike doing 10-15mph and not braced for it is going to go mostly forwards and down. Whether or not feet actually leave the floor (and they may do with leg bucking etc) many people would say 'sent flying' or similar. Being catapulted into the air seems like a turn of phrase to accentuate the point and - if the companion was similarly unaware of the approaching bike - then the surprise will have added to the sensation of the unfortunate lady being sent flying.
On the substantive point, I ring my bell and slow down substantially for children, dogs, elderly people. For runners I ring but tend not to ease off much if they're well on one side (i.e. I can get ~1m or more of clearance) or have clearly heard/seen me. Basically how much I slow depends on age, apparent infirmity and my judgement of unpredictability and whether they've heard me. Also, I'm talking on paths with run-off on each side, so if something unexpected happens I'm likely to end up in the undergrowth rather than take someone out. In restricted space situations I'm down to close to walking pace.
I think the faster person, whether car, bike, runner etc (or faster versus slower cyclist) has responsibility to look after the situation in general.
What is still baffling me is that across all pollsters, including YouGov, SKS showed a consistent improving of his ratings across the election. How does this sit with the massive polling miss?
His ratings probably improved with Con->Lab voters but not so much with 2019 Lab voters.
For all those of you who are fans of retro government-organised rocketry (we need a word for this), the Ariane 6 is about to launch for the first time.
For all those of you who are fans of retro government-organised rocketry (we need a word for this), the Ariane 6 is about to launch for the first time.
What is still baffling me is that across all pollsters, including YouGov, SKS showed a consistent improving of his ratings across the election. How does this sit with the massive polling miss?
He was probably improving but not as much as the polls were saying. Those polls were likely also wrong!
For all those of you who are fans of retro government-organised rocketry (we need a word for this), the Ariane 6 is about to launch for the first time.
Terrible, at least IDS was re elected and can now reintroduce his death by dangerous cycling bill into Parliament as a private member's bill
I’ve cycled along many tow paths. I just can’t imagine doing the speed that would catapult someone you hit into the air. They are all mixed use.
I'd be interested in the physics that could send someone airborne from a cycling collision. What speed? How would you generate upwards force given your high centre if gravity?
I can imagine if the cyclist swerves to avoid, they are no longer vertical, and the bottom of their wheel takes out the pedestrian's legs, catapulting them. P'haps.
Reading it, it sounds like a typical inelastic collision so a simple momentum transfer gives some indication.
Assuming the mass of the bike is 10kg = 100N, the rider is 100kg = 1000N, the woman 55kg = 550n and that he was riding reasonably quickly (say 15mph = 7½ m/s) then the velocity of the woman after the collision would be
(100 + 1000) / 550 * 7.5 = 15m/s or approx 30 mph
She might as well have been hit by a car.
15mph is v. fast for someone cycling on a towpath. That’s the maximum legal speed for e-bike assistance.
It would be unlikely they were going that quickly. I have seen the occasional eejit on the Oxford towpath going far too fast so I wouldn’t put it beyond the bounds of possibility but those individuals make up a tiny minority of towpath cyclists in my experience.
Mmm, 15mph seemed like a very high figure to me too. On the other hand the number of cyclists who actually knock somebody over, let alone kill them, is also a tiny minority. If it was 15mph then I would expect that to feature in the prosecution case as clearly excessive, but the Mail doesn't mention speed. Might just be crap reporting, of course..
Thankfully the roads in the UK are pretty safe and the number of drivers and the number of cyclists who actually knock anyone over, let alone kill them, is a tiny minority either way.
Interestingly, proportionately per vehicle/bike per mile, it seems that cycles and cars are about exactly as dangerous as each other to pedestrians. I'm not sure why that is considering vehicles are heavier you'd think they'd be more dangerous but they're not? Perhaps because cyclists are more likely to ride on the pavement so increasing the risk to pedestrians.
Citation? Maybe you are including roads where neither pedestrians nor cyclists are allowed?
1% of pedestrian fatalities are by cyclists.
However cyclists make up less than 1% of the miles travelled that cars do.
So per mile, they're roughly equivalent to each other.
But there are obviously lots of miles driven by cars on roads with few to zero pedestrians AND few to zero cyclists. If you limited it to the kinds of journeys typically made on bicycles I suspect you'd find that cars are much more dangerous than cycles to pedestrians.
And its not 1% more like ~.6-.7%. Even then he's not counting the vehicle vs cycle deaths which is heavily skewed ~100 to 0. Nor vehicle vs vehicle collisions...
Drivers kill ~1700 a year, cyclists ~2.5.
Even the pavement stuff is wrong. 548 pedestrians on pavements were killed by vehicles in between 2005 and 2018. 6 of those were killed by cyclists.
6 is more than 1% of 548. Happy to round it to 1% though.
Cyclists miles travelled are less than 1% of driver miles travelled. Happy to round it to 1% though.
So on a per mile basis then, using your own data, cyclists are as deadly as drivers. And that's with rounding working in favour of cyclists both times.
For all those of you who are fans of retro government-organised rocketry (we need a word for this), the Ariane 6 is about to launch for the first time.
Michelle Obama is never, will never and has never wanted or is going to run this electoral cycle. She is one of those that needs to have been deepest red in anyone's book.
But preferably at 20 not 120.
She's taken over from Hillary Clinton as the David Miliband of the market - doubtless she'll shorten up next presidential cycle too.
Terrible, at least IDS was re elected and can now reintroduce his death by dangerous cycling bill into Parliament as a private member's bill
I’ve cycled along many tow paths. I just can’t imagine doing the speed that would catapult someone you hit into the air. They are all mixed use.
I'd be interested in the physics that could send someone airborne from a cycling collision. What speed? How would you generate upwards force given your high centre if gravity?
I can imagine if the cyclist swerves to avoid, they are no longer vertical, and the bottom of their wheel takes out the pedestrian's legs, catapulting them. P'haps.
Reading it, it sounds like a typical inelastic collision so a simple momentum transfer gives some indication.
Assuming the mass of the bike is 10kg = 100N, the rider is 100kg = 1000N, the woman 55kg = 550n and that he was riding reasonably quickly (say 15mph = 7½ m/s) then the velocity of the woman after the collision would be
(100 + 1000) / 550 * 7.5 = 15m/s or approx 30 mph
She might as well have been hit by a car.
Hold on, this maths is complete bullshit. You don’t convert mass to force & then do a calculation based on Newtons! But that’s a side issue - the real problem is that you have assumed that all of his momentum is transferred to her, which is physically extremely unlikely - people do not rebound off each other in this way.
A more physically plausible outcome is that the two people roughly move as one after the collision, so assuming an inelastic collision where the two people move together after the collision with no elastic rebound - given your numbers the momentum beforehand is 110kg * 7.5m/s + 55*0 = 825 N m / s. Afterwards the mass is 165kg, momentum is conserved so the velocity of the two people would be 5 m / s or about 11 mph.
Although obviously a real world collision would be different because of the complexity of two bodies colliding, but a joint post impact velocity of 11mph is far more plausible than 30mph!
(your approach would also imply that the heavier the object that is moving beforehand, the fast the hit person will be moving afterwards which is clearly physically implausible - people hit by lorries do not sproing off into the distance at 100s of mph.)
That would be because hitting the pedestrian does NOT result in a complete (or near complete) transfer of momentum from the lorry. The lorry barely slows at all. It is the lorry's brakes being pressed by its panicking driver that brings it to a halt.
For an impact where one body is very much more massive than the other, impulse is more important. You can safely assume with a pedestrian and truck that, if the driver does not hit the brakes, then the pedestrian will be accelerated up to the velocity of the truck in a very short time before sliding off in whichever direction any resultant forces work.
It is unlikely that a cyclist would pin the pedestrian to the front of the bike unless it was in an AI generated Youtube Short.
Look, I’m sorry but you’re wrong. Physics says you’re wrong. Why are you wrong? Because your collision numbers don’t conserve energy. There is no hope for you if you think a collision generates kinetic energy:
Before KE: 110kg * (7.5 m/s)^2 = 6182 J After KE: 55 kg * (15 m/s)^2 = 12375 J
You cannot generate energy from a collision between two people. There is no hope for you, please desist with this ludicrous argument.
True. But going back to the original story, it's surely just a turn of phrase? We talk about people going flying after a tackle in football for example. Someone hit fairly square by someone on a bike doing 10-15mph and not braced for it is going to go mostly forwards and down. Whether or not feet actually leave the floor (and they may do with leg bucking etc) many people would say 'sent flying' or similar. Being catapulted into the air seems like a turn of phrase to accentuate the point and - if the companion was similarly unaware of the approaching bike - then the surprise will have added to the sensation of the unfortunate lady being sent flying.
On the substantive point, I ring my bell and slow down substantially for children, dogs, elderly people. For runners I ring but tend not to ease off much if they're well on one side (i.e. I can get ~1m or more of clearance) or have clearly heard/seen me. Basically how much I slow depends on age, apparent infirmity and my judgement of unpredictability and whether they've heard me. Also, I'm talking on paths with run-off on each side, so if something unexpected happens I'm likely to end up in the undergrowth rather than take someone out. In restricted space situations I'm down to close to walking pace.
I think the faster person, whether car, bike, runner etc (or faster versus slower cyclist) has responsibility to look after the situation in general.
And the younger person: an 81 y.o. pedestrian is usually recognisably old.
This conversation assumes that catapulting invariably has a vertical component. I think this is wrong.
This interesting article - we shall see plenty more - gives no account of why, in two trials, the defence called no expert evidence either medical or statistical. Until this is addressed all the other speculation falls away.
The assumption must be that the obvious explanation is, sadly, the correct one.
Maths upset her lawyers, because numbers are silly/weird?
The same could be asked about the defence in the infamous twin cot death case, could it not? And look what happened there.
I am giving serious consideration on the afternoon thread saying
Suella Braverman is a [moderated] raging homophobe, she's an [word that gets you banned from PB]
Her speech has to be the most homophobic speech from a Brit politician since the 1980s.
She can get in the fucking sea.
Before the gender-critical PB contributors respond, it needs to be pointed out that Ms Braverman was objecting to the Progress Pride flag (the one with the stripes and triangles) specifically, not the Pride flag (the one with the stripes) generally, and doing so because of its trans association. She is critical of both the theory and practice of trans and this would be consistent with her past remarks. Since PB is - how can I put this - a teensy bit split on this issue, you may prefer to lay off the speech for the moment.
There are at least two outright lies in her speech.
Firstly, no "mutilation of children" takes place in any UK hospital. Under 18s can't undergo surgical gender reassignment.
Secondly, as @sundersays has pointed out, it was the traditional six-stripe Pride flag that could not be removed, not the enhanced version that includes trans colours.
I have no idea what Braverman said, but the fact is young British kids - well under 18 - have been given puberty blocking drugs and things like "breast suppressing clothes" that alter the body. Is that mutilation?
I dunno. It's all so depressing. But I know this happened because it happened to the 13 year old child of one of my best friends, courtesy of the Tavistock Clinic
The former deals with the threshold at which a child becomes an adult, which has IMHO become unnecessarily blurred in England to its detriment. It really should be a bright line, not a fuzzy blur, but pensionerism rules and we have adultised children and infantilized adults.
But it is the latter that I wish to speak of. You spoke of them before, some years back IIRC. What happened to them?
I won't talk in any detail because OBVS
I do know back then that the whole thing shattered the family, and it has not recovered
I am giving serious consideration on the afternoon thread saying
Suella Braverman is a [moderated] raging homophobe, she's an [word that gets you banned from PB]
Her speech has to be the most homophobic speech from a Brit politician since the 1980s.
She can get in the fucking sea.
Wonder if she's trying to get kicked out of the Tory Party so she can head off to REF?
or she is targeting a particular sector of the Tory party membership (old, racist, homophobic)... Wouldn't surprise me if that covers 60%+ of the remaining membership...
Not necessarily, a lot of such Tory members left when Boris resigned and many of the rest went when Sunak became Tory leader.
Do you think there will be a hustings roadshow this time round? I was thinking £39 was not bad value if it gets you a seat at that plus a vote against Braverman.
You need to have been a member for 3 months by ballot day though to vote for the next Tory leader
I suspect rather more members are on their way out, right now, than are coming in.
A lot of Home Counties members, particular from private sector and smaller businesses, join their conservative association not for the politics but for the chance to meet and hobnob with and lobby their MP. Across hundreds of seats, that attraction has now disappeared.
For now, until Labour starts taxing and regulating their businesses more
Not surprised you've already noticed the improvement. The grown-ups are back in charge now.
I thought the whole point of getting Starmer in was to get rid of the criminals and sociopaths.
Tony is neither a criminal nor a sociopath. What he is, is highly experienced, having run the best government of the last many decades.
What was your favoured part of Tony's Government?
The explosion of house prices?
The introduction of tuition fees?
The increase in national insurance?
If you're a pensioner who wanted to not pay tax and were free to call at 8am to get an NHS appointment whenever you wanted then Tony's government was great. If you were a young adult, or a child who'd grow into a young adult subsequently, then his legacy was utterly toxic.
Almost everything (besides masts) that you regularly complain about can be traced back to his government.
Why are you having a go at my posting on masts? It's an area I have experience and knowledge of, it's no more boring than listening to you talk about housing say.
The Sunderland story was a none story
The Blackpool story was the wrong place for the mast (as decided by both the planners at the council, the council itself and the planning inspectorate at appeal).
It wasn't the "wrong place" though. The location was chosen because it provided the coverage the MNO needed. That is the baseline for why it was there.
They couldn't choose another location as it did not provide sufficient coverage. This is exactly the point I am making, objecting to these masts should be a thing of the past.
So you need to build 2 masts rather than 1 - tough get on with both applications.
I have zero sympathy for the issue - given the way your industry has been trying to improve reception on the M6 by putting a mast up that would be visible from 20 miles away on a prime part of the Yorkshire Dales. Being blunt all I see is people who are lazy and don't want to spend money doing things appropriately...
And in any case, an industry which places masts in the middle of a cycle path as already discussed ...
What I don't understand is how they can credibly insist that it's essential to put the mast in the middle of the path rather than 2m to either side.
If cyclists can't see or steer round stationary phone masts, it is no wonder they keep having inelastic collisions with pedestrians.
For all those of you who are fans of retro government-organised rocketry (we need a word for this), the Ariane 6 is about to launch for the first time.
Surely you mean for those who are fans of waterfall rather than agile project management methodologies....
Wasserfall, Shirley?
rather annoyingly the french for waterfall is cascade - which is actually a better name for the methodology than waterfall.
Went on a coach trip in Sri Lanka once where the guide insisted on differentiating between waterfalls and falling water. The former were permanent, the latter temporary.
I agree with you about the serious problems there are (the Post Offices cases are notable, but others too) but that does not mean this case is one of them. Lots of people are found guilty because they are. At the moment a serious analysis would be needed covering the totality of the evidence, of which there are numerous strands. Note that on the second trial Letby chose to use the same lawyers. She did not have to.
The thought that her lawyers had expert exculpatory evidence which they didn't use because they were dim is to say the least in this case unlikely.
Of course this case could run and run. Maybe a new set of lawyers will be instructed and bring stuff to the attention of the CCRC. Until we are well into that process I think the matter stands where it did.
I’m sure the lawyers are very intelligent people. But that doesn’t prevent them being ignorant of statistics.
How many lawyers did A-level mathematics? Almost none & even that course contains only the barest introduction to a very complex topic.
If you are unaware that there’s a problem with the prosecution case, you won’t even conceive of challenging it in the first place. Or you may (reasonably) believe that you will be unable to communicate those problems to a jury that is instructed to see things through a lens of “expert vs expert”.
This is a problem with the expert witness system as a whole, not with individual lawyers.
& it’s not surprising that Letby used the original lawyers for her appeal. Who else could she possible choose? How would she know that they were any better than the original ones if she did try and change her legal team? (Would she even be permitted to do so given that the country is paying for her legal representation?)
Again, Letby may well be guilty (I hope she confesses in prison if so - it would be an act of kindness to everyone involved) but the case against her bears much in common with past miscarriages of justice. It’s not surprising that people are sceptical about it.
I am giving serious consideration on the afternoon thread saying
Suella Braverman is a [moderated] raging homophobe, she's an [word that gets you banned from PB]
Her speech has to be the most homophobic speech from a Brit politician since the 1980s.
She can get in the fucking sea.
Wonder if she's trying to get kicked out of the Tory Party so she can head off to REF?
or she is targeting a particular sector of the Tory party membership (old, racist, homophobic)... Wouldn't surprise me if that covers 60%+ of the remaining membership...
Not necessarily, a lot of such Tory members left when Boris resigned and many of the rest went when Sunak became Tory leader.
Do you think there will be a hustings roadshow this time round? I was thinking £39 was not bad value if it gets you a seat at that plus a vote against Braverman.
You need to have been a member for 3 months by ballot day though to vote for the next Tory leader
I suspect rather more members are on their way out, right now, than are coming in.
A lot of Home Counties members, particular from private sector and smaller businesses, join their conservative association not for the politics but for the chance to meet and hobnob with and lobby their MP. Across hundreds of seats, that attraction has now disappeared.
For now, until Labour starts taxing and regulating their businesses more
But surely in that case they will cancel their CC subs even more promptly as being as useful as a subscription for a monthly chocolate teapot, and join the local working mens' club, or invite the MP to the local business association.
For all those of you who are fans of retro government-organised rocketry (we need a word for this), the Ariane 6 is about to launch for the first time.
Surely you mean for those who are fans of waterfall rather than agile project management methodologies....
Yes, but I wanted something like dieselpunk. Would "NASA-era" do? Big Dumb Rockets we could have built in the 60s? Apart from the computing tech there's nothing on Ariane 6 that Armstrong wouldn't have recognised. Big tubes of fuel with an engine at one end and some solid boosters. Rocket go up, doesn't come down. Wheeeeeee....
The New Wave of rockets contain very little exotic methodologies. The implementations are sometimes exotic….
F9 - 2 stage, LOX/Kero, pintle injector. Retro propulsion on the first stage, and a suicide burn landing might well have been possible in the 1960s. Certainly conceivable.
Stoke - transpiration plug nozzle cooling was being talked about back in the 60s. FFSC was considered, but was beyond engineering art at the time.
Starship - 2 stage, LOX/CH4. Again, FFSC was considered beyond state if the art in the 1960s. Ceramic TPS was in trial then.
Terrible, at least IDS was re elected and can now reintroduce his death by dangerous cycling bill into Parliament as a private member's bill
I’ve cycled along many tow paths. I just can’t imagine doing the speed that would catapult someone you hit into the air. They are all mixed use.
I'd be interested in the physics that could send someone airborne from a cycling collision. What speed? How would you generate upwards force given your high centre if gravity?
I can imagine if the cyclist swerves to avoid, they are no longer vertical, and the bottom of their wheel takes out the pedestrian's legs, catapulting them. P'haps.
Reading it, it sounds like a typical inelastic collision so a simple momentum transfer gives some indication.
Assuming the mass of the bike is 10kg = 100N, the rider is 100kg = 1000N, the woman 55kg = 550n and that he was riding reasonably quickly (say 15mph = 7½ m/s) then the velocity of the woman after the collision would be
(100 + 1000) / 550 * 7.5 = 15m/s or approx 30 mph
She might as well have been hit by a car.
Hold on, this maths is complete bullshit. You don’t convert mass to force & then do a calculation based on Newtons! But that’s a side issue - the real problem is that you have assumed that all of his momentum is transferred to her, which is physically extremely unlikely - people do not rebound off each other in this way.
A more physically plausible outcome is that the two people roughly move as one after the collision, so assuming an inelastic collision where the two people move together after the collision with no elastic rebound - given your numbers the momentum beforehand is 110kg * 7.5m/s + 55*0 = 825 N m / s. Afterwards the mass is 165kg, momentum is conserved so the velocity of the two people would be 5 m / s or about 11 mph.
Although obviously a real world collision would be different because of the complexity of two bodies colliding, but a joint post impact velocity of 11mph is far more plausible than 30mph!
(your approach would also imply that the heavier the object that is moving beforehand, the fast the hit person will be moving afterwards which is clearly physically implausible - people hit by lorries do not sproing off into the distance at 100s of mph.)
That would be because hitting the pedestrian does NOT result in a complete (or near complete) transfer of momentum from the lorry. The lorry barely slows at all. It is the lorry's brakes being pressed by its panicking driver that brings it to a halt.
For an impact where one body is very much more massive than the other, impulse is more important. You can safely assume with a pedestrian and truck that, if the driver does not hit the brakes, then the pedestrian will be accelerated up to the velocity of the truck in a very short time before sliding off in whichever direction any resultant forces work.
It is unlikely that a cyclist would pin the pedestrian to the front of the bike unless it was in an AI generated Youtube Short.
Look, I’m sorry but you’re wrong. Physics says you’re wrong. Why are you wrong? Because your collision numbers don’t conserve energy. There is no hope for you if you think a collision generates kinetic energy:
Before KE: 110kg * (7.5 m/s)^2 = 6182 J After KE: 55 kg * (15 m/s)^2 = 12375 J
You cannot generate energy from a collision between two people. There is no hope for you, please desist with this ludicrous argument.
True. But going back to the original story, it's surely just a turn of phrase? We talk about people going flying after a tackle in football for example. Someone hit fairly square by someone on a bike doing 10-15mph and not braced for it is going to go mostly forwards and down. Whether or not feet actually leave the floor (and they may do with leg bucking etc) many people would say 'sent flying' or similar. Being catapulted into the air seems like a turn of phrase to accentuate the point and - if the companion was similarly unaware of the approaching bike - then the surprise will have added to the sensation of the unfortunate lady being sent flying.
On the substantive point, I ring my bell and slow down substantially for children, dogs, elderly people. For runners I ring but tend not to ease off much if they're well on one side (i.e. I can get ~1m or more of clearance) or have clearly heard/seen me. Basically how much I slow depends on age, apparent infirmity and my judgement of unpredictability and whether they've heard me. Also, I'm talking on paths with run-off on each side, so if something unexpected happens I'm likely to end up in the undergrowth rather than take someone out. In restricted space situations I'm down to close to walking pace.
I think the faster person, whether car, bike, runner etc (or faster versus slower cyclist) has responsibility to look after the situation in general.
And the younger person: an 81 y.o. pedestrian is usually recognisably old.
This conversation assumes that catapulting invariably has a vertical component. I think this is wrong.
Younger meaning fitter/stronger yes - though in most cases that lines up with speed. The 25 year old on a bike should be taking responsibility for the situation when passing a 5 year old kid, too.
Terrible, at least IDS was re elected and can now reintroduce his death by dangerous cycling bill into Parliament as a private member's bill
I’ve cycled along many tow paths. I just can’t imagine doing the speed that would catapult someone you hit into the air. They are all mixed use.
I'd be interested in the physics that could send someone airborne from a cycling collision. What speed? How would you generate upwards force given your high centre if gravity?
I can imagine if the cyclist swerves to avoid, they are no longer vertical, and the bottom of their wheel takes out the pedestrian's legs, catapulting them. P'haps.
Reading it, it sounds like a typical inelastic collision so a simple momentum transfer gives some indication.
Assuming the mass of the bike is 10kg = 100N, the rider is 100kg = 1000N, the woman 55kg = 550n and that he was riding reasonably quickly (say 15mph = 7½ m/s) then the velocity of the woman after the collision would be
(100 + 1000) / 550 * 7.5 = 15m/s or approx 30 mph
She might as well have been hit by a car.
15mph is v. fast for someone cycling on a towpath. That’s the maximum legal speed for e-bike assistance.
It would be unlikely they were going that quickly. I have seen the occasional eejit on the Oxford towpath going far too fast so I wouldn’t put it beyond the bounds of possibility but those individuals make up a tiny minority of towpath cyclists in my experience.
Mmm, 15mph seemed like a very high figure to me too. On the other hand the number of cyclists who actually knock somebody over, let alone kill them, is also a tiny minority. If it was 15mph then I would expect that to feature in the prosecution case as clearly excessive, but the Mail doesn't mention speed. Might just be crap reporting, of course..
Thankfully the roads in the UK are pretty safe and the number of drivers and the number of cyclists who actually knock anyone over, let alone kill them, is a tiny minority either way.
Interestingly, proportionately per vehicle/bike per mile, it seems that cycles and cars are about exactly as dangerous as each other to pedestrians. I'm not sure why that is considering vehicles are heavier you'd think they'd be more dangerous but they're not? Perhaps because cyclists are more likely to ride on the pavement so increasing the risk to pedestrians.
Citation? Maybe you are including roads where neither pedestrians nor cyclists are allowed?
1% of pedestrian fatalities are by cyclists.
However cyclists make up less than 1% of the miles travelled that cars do.
So per mile, they're roughly equivalent to each other.
But there are obviously lots of miles driven by cars on roads with few to zero pedestrians AND few to zero cyclists. If you limited it to the kinds of journeys typically made on bicycles I suspect you'd find that cars are much more dangerous than cycles to pedestrians.
And its not 1% more like ~.6-.7%. Even then he's not counting the vehicle vs cycle deaths which is heavily skewed ~100 to 0. Nor vehicle vs vehicle collisions...
Drivers kill ~1700 a year, cyclists ~2.5.
Comparing against pedestrians is comparing like-for-like because pedestrians aren't protected against anyone. And on a per-mile travelled basis there is no difference between cycling and driving in the risk to pedestrians.
As for cycles vs vehicles, yes you're confirming the fact that cycles are far more dangerous to their user than vehicles are to theirs. Unsurprisingly since vehicles come with an array of safety features such as air bags, seat belts and nowadays automatic braking and more. Whereas many Darwin Award winners ride a bike without even bothering to put a helmet on.
Vehicle to vehicle, again considering vehicles represent 100x more transportation than cycling, is incredibly safe as your own data shows too.
If you want to lower road casualties then getting people off their bikes and into vehicles would reduce casualties as we'd be replacing bikes without any safety features (even a helmet most of the time) and gain all the benefits of seat belts, air bags, braking etc as well as a protective shell that exceeds even a helmet.
However I respect free choice and if people want to choose a more dangerous activity, such as cycling, then that is their choice which should be respected. At least put a helmet on though if you don't want to be a Darwin Award winner.
Commons and Lords sitting again for the first time this afternoon. Government benches packed to bursting with Labour MPs unsurprisingly. Father of the House Sir Edward Leigh asks Lindsay Choyle to confirm he wishes to return as Speaker, he affirms he does
Terrible, at least IDS was re elected and can now reintroduce his death by dangerous cycling bill into Parliament as a private member's bill
I’ve cycled along many tow paths. I just can’t imagine doing the speed that would catapult someone you hit into the air. They are all mixed use.
I'd be interested in the physics that could send someone airborne from a cycling collision. What speed? How would you generate upwards force given your high centre if gravity?
I can imagine if the cyclist swerves to avoid, they are no longer vertical, and the bottom of their wheel takes out the pedestrian's legs, catapulting them. P'haps.
Reading it, it sounds like a typical inelastic collision so a simple momentum transfer gives some indication.
Assuming the mass of the bike is 10kg = 100N, the rider is 100kg = 1000N, the woman 55kg = 550n and that he was riding reasonably quickly (say 15mph = 7½ m/s) then the velocity of the woman after the collision would be
(100 + 1000) / 550 * 7.5 = 15m/s or approx 30 mph
She might as well have been hit by a car.
15mph is v. fast for someone cycling on a towpath. That’s the maximum legal speed for e-bike assistance.
It would be unlikely they were going that quickly. I have seen the occasional eejit on the Oxford towpath going far too fast so I wouldn’t put it beyond the bounds of possibility but those individuals make up a tiny minority of towpath cyclists in my experience.
Mmm, 15mph seemed like a very high figure to me too. On the other hand the number of cyclists who actually knock somebody over, let alone kill them, is also a tiny minority. If it was 15mph then I would expect that to feature in the prosecution case as clearly excessive, but the Mail doesn't mention speed. Might just be crap reporting, of course..
Thankfully the roads in the UK are pretty safe and the number of drivers and the number of cyclists who actually knock anyone over, let alone kill them, is a tiny minority either way.
Interestingly, proportionately per vehicle/bike per mile, it seems that cycles and cars are about exactly as dangerous as each other to pedestrians. I'm not sure why that is considering vehicles are heavier you'd think they'd be more dangerous but they're not? Perhaps because cyclists are more likely to ride on the pavement so increasing the risk to pedestrians.
Citation? Maybe you are including roads where neither pedestrians nor cyclists are allowed?
1% of pedestrian fatalities are by cyclists.
However cyclists make up less than 1% of the miles travelled that cars do.
So per mile, they're roughly equivalent to each other.
But there are obviously lots of miles driven by cars on roads with few to zero pedestrians AND few to zero cyclists. If you limited it to the kinds of journeys typically made on bicycles I suspect you'd find that cars are much more dangerous than cycles to pedestrians.
And its not 1% more like ~.6-.7%. Even then he's not counting the vehicle vs cycle deaths which is heavily skewed ~100 to 0. Nor vehicle vs vehicle collisions...
Drivers kill ~1700 a year, cyclists ~2.5.
Even the pavement stuff is wrong. 548 pedestrians on pavements were killed by vehicles in between 2005 and 2018. 6 of those were killed by cyclists.
6 is more than 1% of 548. Happy to round it to 1% though.
Cyclists miles travelled are less than 1% of driver miles travelled. Happy to round it to 1% though.
So on a per mile basis then, using your own data, cyclists are as deadly as drivers. And that's with rounding working in favour of cyclists both times.
For the umpteenth time, you don't have cyclists travelling hundreds of miles along the M74. You absolutely love the per mile comparisons because it's the only way you can claim that drivers of 1.5 tonne vehicles pose less of a risk to pedestrians than those on 10kg push bikes.
The RefUKkers arrived too late to get seats in the HoC
I’m guessing they were too busy doing their photo stunts around Parliament after their embarrassing idea of walking in like the chaps from Reservoir Dogs.
What is still baffling me is that across all pollsters, including YouGov, SKS showed a consistent improving of his ratings across the election. How does this sit with the massive polling miss?
Much of Labour’s support is tactical - effectively answering the forced choice of Labour or Tory - and as the campaign went on and it became obvious Starmer was heading for an easy win, many voters felt happy voting for their actual first preference.
On 16 June 1983 MPs queued up to take the oath of allegiance. Newly-elected Tory MP Edward Leigh was a few places ahead of new Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn.
Didn't matter until today. But that's why Leigh - and not Corbyn - is now Father of the House, with all the ceremonial roles.
I am giving serious consideration on the afternoon thread saying
Suella Braverman is a [moderated] raging homophobe, she's an [word that gets you banned from PB]
Her speech has to be the most homophobic speech from a Brit politician since the 1980s.
She can get in the fucking sea.
Wonder if she's trying to get kicked out of the Tory Party so she can head off to REF?
or she is targeting a particular sector of the Tory party membership (old, racist, homophobic)... Wouldn't surprise me if that covers 60%+ of the remaining membership...
Not necessarily, a lot of such Tory members left when Boris resigned and many of the rest went when Sunak became Tory leader.
Do you think there will be a hustings roadshow this time round? I was thinking £39 was not bad value if it gets you a seat at that plus a vote against Braverman.
You need to have been a member for 3 months by ballot day though to vote for the next Tory leader
I suspect rather more members are on their way out, right now, than are coming in.
A lot of Home Counties members, particular from private sector and smaller businesses, join their conservative association not for the politics but for the chance to meet and hobnob with and lobby their MP. Across hundreds of seats, that attraction has now disappeared.
For now, until Labour starts taxing and regulating their businesses more
Terrible, at least IDS was re elected and can now reintroduce his death by dangerous cycling bill into Parliament as a private member's bill
I’ve cycled along many tow paths. I just can’t imagine doing the speed that would catapult someone you hit into the air. They are all mixed use.
I'd be interested in the physics that could send someone airborne from a cycling collision. What speed? How would you generate upwards force given your high centre if gravity?
I can imagine if the cyclist swerves to avoid, they are no longer vertical, and the bottom of their wheel takes out the pedestrian's legs, catapulting them. P'haps.
Reading it, it sounds like a typical inelastic collision so a simple momentum transfer gives some indication.
Assuming the mass of the bike is 10kg = 100N, the rider is 100kg = 1000N, the woman 55kg = 550n and that he was riding reasonably quickly (say 15mph = 7½ m/s) then the velocity of the woman after the collision would be
(100 + 1000) / 550 * 7.5 = 15m/s or approx 30 mph
She might as well have been hit by a car.
15mph is v. fast for someone cycling on a towpath. That’s the maximum legal speed for e-bike assistance.
It would be unlikely they were going that quickly. I have seen the occasional eejit on the Oxford towpath going far too fast so I wouldn’t put it beyond the bounds of possibility but those individuals make up a tiny minority of towpath cyclists in my experience.
Mmm, 15mph seemed like a very high figure to me too. On the other hand the number of cyclists who actually knock somebody over, let alone kill them, is also a tiny minority. If it was 15mph then I would expect that to feature in the prosecution case as clearly excessive, but the Mail doesn't mention speed. Might just be crap reporting, of course..
Thankfully the roads in the UK are pretty safe and the number of drivers and the number of cyclists who actually knock anyone over, let alone kill them, is a tiny minority either way.
Interestingly, proportionately per vehicle/bike per mile, it seems that cycles and cars are about exactly as dangerous as each other to pedestrians. I'm not sure why that is considering vehicles are heavier you'd think they'd be more dangerous but they're not? Perhaps because cyclists are more likely to ride on the pavement so increasing the risk to pedestrians.
Citation? Maybe you are including roads where neither pedestrians nor cyclists are allowed?
1% of pedestrian fatalities are by cyclists.
However cyclists make up less than 1% of the miles travelled that cars do.
So per mile, they're roughly equivalent to each other.
But there are obviously lots of miles driven by cars on roads with few to zero pedestrians AND few to zero cyclists. If you limited it to the kinds of journeys typically made on bicycles I suspect you'd find that cars are much more dangerous than cycles to pedestrians.
And its not 1% more like ~.6-.7%. Even then he's not counting the vehicle vs cycle deaths which is heavily skewed ~100 to 0. Nor vehicle vs vehicle collisions...
Drivers kill ~1700 a year, cyclists ~2.5.
Even the pavement stuff is wrong. 548 pedestrians on pavements were killed by vehicles in between 2005 and 2018. 6 of those were killed by cyclists.
6 is more than 1% of 548. Happy to round it to 1% though.
Cyclists miles travelled are less than 1% of driver miles travelled. Happy to round it to 1% though.
So on a per mile basis then, using your own data, cyclists are as deadly as drivers. And that's with rounding working in favour of cyclists both times.
For the umpteenth time, you don't have cyclists travelling hundreds of miles along the M74. You absolutely love the per mile comparisons because it's the only way you can claim that drivers of 1.5 tonne vehicles pose less of a risk to pedestrians than those on 10kg push bikes.
Those miles are miles travelled, but anyway even if you totally exclude the motorways, it doesn't significantly alter the figures. Still be rounding errors away from being the same.
My guess is because cyclists ride on pavements and cars don't normally, so that cancels out the weight issue, but either way saying that cyclists represent only 1% of fatalities when they represent less than 1% of transportation isn't exactly shocking.
Commons and Lords sitting again for the first time this afternoon. Government benches packed to bursting with Labour MPs unsurprisingly. Father of the House Sir Edward Leigh asks Lindsay Choyle to confirm he wishes to return as Speaker, he affirms he does
I couldn't read the whole (paywalled) article but reading what I could see on on the front page image, the headline seems to be typically atrocious reporting from the Telegraph. AIUI it's the economist Tony Smith saying this not Blair and the message is 'unless growth and productivity improve'.
Again, none of this is very insightful - that we face a major demographic challenge is hardly new news.
The report is by Tom Smith, published by the Blair Institute, and Blair is making a speech today about it.
Agree that it’s hardly news that the next few years will be difficult.
We desperately need to find growth - which means building things and creating infrastructure -things that have been blocked for the past decade due to the previous Tory Governments unwillingness to do things..
The unwillingness to do things is as a result of the Process State. When in doubt, add more process. Because it is free* and sounds morally correct.
So, on house building, Labour will come up with a plan. Sounds like new towns are on the agenda. Then they will hit a wall of requirements in law to consider emissions, runoff etc etc. All very vague and poorly thought out.
These will be used to tie up any progress. A large number of lawyers will be happy and the Supreme Court will end up hearing some cases.
*No it isn’t.
Nigel Farage will also be happy when nothing much gets done other than the government getting tied up in procedures, legal disputes snd court cases.
In fact I would go so far as to say that his stragegy for the 2029 election has this as it's key dependency.
Terrible, at least IDS was re elected and can now reintroduce his death by dangerous cycling bill into Parliament as a private member's bill
I’ve cycled along many tow paths. I just can’t imagine doing the speed that would catapult someone you hit into the air. They are all mixed use.
I'd be interested in the physics that could send someone airborne from a cycling collision. What speed? How would you generate upwards force given your high centre if gravity?
I can imagine if the cyclist swerves to avoid, they are no longer vertical, and the bottom of their wheel takes out the pedestrian's legs, catapulting them. P'haps.
Reading it, it sounds like a typical inelastic collision so a simple momentum transfer gives some indication.
Assuming the mass of the bike is 10kg = 100N, the rider is 100kg = 1000N, the woman 55kg = 550n and that he was riding reasonably quickly (say 15mph = 7½ m/s) then the velocity of the woman after the collision would be
(100 + 1000) / 550 * 7.5 = 15m/s or approx 30 mph
She might as well have been hit by a car.
15mph is v. fast for someone cycling on a towpath. That’s the maximum legal speed for e-bike assistance.
It would be unlikely they were going that quickly. I have seen the occasional eejit on the Oxford towpath going far too fast so I wouldn’t put it beyond the bounds of possibility but those individuals make up a tiny minority of towpath cyclists in my experience.
Mmm, 15mph seemed like a very high figure to me too. On the other hand the number of cyclists who actually knock somebody over, let alone kill them, is also a tiny minority. If it was 15mph then I would expect that to feature in the prosecution case as clearly excessive, but the Mail doesn't mention speed. Might just be crap reporting, of course..
Thankfully the roads in the UK are pretty safe and the number of drivers and the number of cyclists who actually knock anyone over, let alone kill them, is a tiny minority either way.
Interestingly, proportionately per vehicle/bike per mile, it seems that cycles and cars are about exactly as dangerous as each other to pedestrians. I'm not sure why that is considering vehicles are heavier you'd think they'd be more dangerous but they're not? Perhaps because cyclists are more likely to ride on the pavement so increasing the risk to pedestrians.
Citation? Maybe you are including roads where neither pedestrians nor cyclists are allowed?
1% of pedestrian fatalities are by cyclists.
However cyclists make up less than 1% of the miles travelled that cars do.
So per mile, they're roughly equivalent to each other.
But there are obviously lots of miles driven by cars on roads with few to zero pedestrians AND few to zero cyclists. If you limited it to the kinds of journeys typically made on bicycles I suspect you'd find that cars are much more dangerous than cycles to pedestrians.
And its not 1% more like ~.6-.7%. Even then he's not counting the vehicle vs cycle deaths which is heavily skewed ~100 to 0. Nor vehicle vs vehicle collisions...
Drivers kill ~1700 a year, cyclists ~2.5.
Even the pavement stuff is wrong. 548 pedestrians on pavements were killed by vehicles in between 2005 and 2018. 6 of those were killed by cyclists.
6 is more than 1% of 548. Happy to round it to 1% though.
Cyclists miles travelled are less than 1% of driver miles travelled. Happy to round it to 1% though.
So on a per mile basis then, using your own data, cyclists are as deadly as drivers. And that's with rounding working in favour of cyclists both times.
You really need to remove the motorway miles from this data, since there are (to a first approximation) no pedestrians on motorways.!
Total vehicular miles in 2023 was ~330billion, of which 70billion was on motorways.
Cyclists make up 3.6 billion of that 330 billion, so the potion of cycle miles on roads that might have pedestrians on is 3.6 / (330 - 70 - 3.6) = 1.4%
If cyclists kill pedestrians at a rate of 6/548 that’s 1.1% of the rate.
Ergo, cyclists kill pedestrians at about 2/3 the rate that motorised vehicles do on the raw numbers.
One could reasonably argue that there aren’t very many pedestrians on A-roads either, but given that some A-roads are also ordinary roads in towns I don’t think we can justify dropping A-roads from this comparison.
(We should probably add up the estimates of driving distance for the last twenty years, since we’ve taken pedestrian deaths over such a long period. Feel free to run the numbers )
Terrible, at least IDS was re elected and can now reintroduce his death by dangerous cycling bill into Parliament as a private member's bill
I’ve cycled along many tow paths. I just can’t imagine doing the speed that would catapult someone you hit into the air. They are all mixed use.
I'd be interested in the physics that could send someone airborne from a cycling collision. What speed? How would you generate upwards force given your high centre if gravity?
I can imagine if the cyclist swerves to avoid, they are no longer vertical, and the bottom of their wheel takes out the pedestrian's legs, catapulting them. P'haps.
Reading it, it sounds like a typical inelastic collision so a simple momentum transfer gives some indication.
Assuming the mass of the bike is 10kg = 100N, the rider is 100kg = 1000N, the woman 55kg = 550n and that he was riding reasonably quickly (say 15mph = 7½ m/s) then the velocity of the woman after the collision would be
(100 + 1000) / 550 * 7.5 = 15m/s or approx 30 mph
She might as well have been hit by a car.
15mph is v. fast for someone cycling on a towpath. That’s the maximum legal speed for e-bike assistance.
It would be unlikely they were going that quickly. I have seen the occasional eejit on the Oxford towpath going far too fast so I wouldn’t put it beyond the bounds of possibility but those individuals make up a tiny minority of towpath cyclists in my experience.
Mmm, 15mph seemed like a very high figure to me too. On the other hand the number of cyclists who actually knock somebody over, let alone kill them, is also a tiny minority. If it was 15mph then I would expect that to feature in the prosecution case as clearly excessive, but the Mail doesn't mention speed. Might just be crap reporting, of course..
Thankfully the roads in the UK are pretty safe and the number of drivers and the number of cyclists who actually knock anyone over, let alone kill them, is a tiny minority either way.
Interestingly, proportionately per vehicle/bike per mile, it seems that cycles and cars are about exactly as dangerous as each other to pedestrians. I'm not sure why that is considering vehicles are heavier you'd think they'd be more dangerous but they're not? Perhaps because cyclists are more likely to ride on the pavement so increasing the risk to pedestrians.
Citation? Maybe you are including roads where neither pedestrians nor cyclists are allowed?
1% of pedestrian fatalities are by cyclists.
However cyclists make up less than 1% of the miles travelled that cars do.
So per mile, they're roughly equivalent to each other.
But there are obviously lots of miles driven by cars on roads with few to zero pedestrians AND few to zero cyclists. If you limited it to the kinds of journeys typically made on bicycles I suspect you'd find that cars are much more dangerous than cycles to pedestrians.
And its not 1% more like ~.6-.7%. Even then he's not counting the vehicle vs cycle deaths which is heavily skewed ~100 to 0. Nor vehicle vs vehicle collisions...
Drivers kill ~1700 a year, cyclists ~2.5.
Comparing against pedestrians is comparing like-for-like because pedestrians aren't protected against anyone. And on a per-mile travelled basis there is no difference between cycling and driving in the risk to pedestrians.
As for cycles vs vehicles, yes you're confirming the fact that cycles are far more dangerous to their user than vehicles are to theirs. Unsurprisingly since vehicles come with an array of safety features such as air bags, seat belts and nowadays automatic braking and more. Whereas many Darwin Award winners ride a bike without even bothering to put a helmet on.
Vehicle to vehicle, again considering vehicles represent 100x more transportation than cycling, is incredibly safe as your own data shows too.
If you want to lower road casualties then getting people off their bikes and into vehicles would reduce casualties as we'd be replacing bikes without any safety features (even a helmet most of the time) and gain all the benefits of seat belts, air bags, braking etc as well as a protective shell that exceeds even a helmet.
However I respect free choice and if people want to choose a more dangerous activity, such as cycling, then that is their choice which should be respected. At least put a helmet on though if you don't want to be a Darwin Award winner.
"Darwin Award' is questionable. There could be sexual selection at work here, unhelmeted riders pull more easily and pass on their genes more often than the helmeted. Bareheadedness is not obviously a bigger danger for cyclists than a tail is to a peacock.
Commons and Lords sitting again for the first time this afternoon. Government benches packed to bursting with Labour MPs unsurprisingly. Father of the House Sir Edward Leigh asks Lindsay Choyle to confirm he wishes to return as Speaker, he affirms he does
Lindsay Hoyle makes a great speech.
Is Lindsay Hoyle the first disabled Speaker of the House? If so, that is worthy of remark.
For all those of you who are fans of retro government-organised rocketry (we need a word for this), the Ariane 6 is about to launch for the first time.
Surely you mean for those who are fans of waterfall rather than agile project management methodologies....
Yes, but I wanted something like dieselpunk. Would "NASA-era" do? Big Dumb Rockets we could have built in the 60s? Apart from the computing tech there's nothing on Ariane 6 that Armstrong wouldn't have recognised. Big tubes of fuel with an engine at one end and some solid boosters. Rocket go up, doesn't come down. Wheeeeeee....
The New Wave of rockets contain very little exotic methodologies. The implementations are sometimes exotic….
F9 - 2 stage, LOX/Kero, pintle injector. Retro propulsion on the first stage, and a suicide burn landing might well have been possible in the 1960s. Certainly conceivable.
Stoke - transpiration plug nozzle cooling was being talked about back in the 60s. FFSC was considered, but was beyond engineering art at the time.
Starship - 2 stage, LOX/CH4. Again, FFSC was considered beyond state if the art in the 1960s. Ceramic TPS was in trial then.
Etc
I got most of that, but I did have to look up FFSC (full flow staged combustion) but I think the Everyday Astronaut did a lengthy video(s) on engine types some while back, so thank you.
Terrible, at least IDS was re elected and can now reintroduce his death by dangerous cycling bill into Parliament as a private member's bill
I’ve cycled along many tow paths. I just can’t imagine doing the speed that would catapult someone you hit into the air. They are all mixed use.
I'd be interested in the physics that could send someone airborne from a cycling collision. What speed? How would you generate upwards force given your high centre if gravity?
I can imagine if the cyclist swerves to avoid, they are no longer vertical, and the bottom of their wheel takes out the pedestrian's legs, catapulting them. P'haps.
Reading it, it sounds like a typical inelastic collision so a simple momentum transfer gives some indication.
Assuming the mass of the bike is 10kg = 100N, the rider is 100kg = 1000N, the woman 55kg = 550n and that he was riding reasonably quickly (say 15mph = 7½ m/s) then the velocity of the woman after the collision would be
(100 + 1000) / 550 * 7.5 = 15m/s or approx 30 mph
She might as well have been hit by a car.
15mph is v. fast for someone cycling on a towpath. That’s the maximum legal speed for e-bike assistance.
It would be unlikely they were going that quickly. I have seen the occasional eejit on the Oxford towpath going far too fast so I wouldn’t put it beyond the bounds of possibility but those individuals make up a tiny minority of towpath cyclists in my experience.
Mmm, 15mph seemed like a very high figure to me too. On the other hand the number of cyclists who actually knock somebody over, let alone kill them, is also a tiny minority. If it was 15mph then I would expect that to feature in the prosecution case as clearly excessive, but the Mail doesn't mention speed. Might just be crap reporting, of course..
Thankfully the roads in the UK are pretty safe and the number of drivers and the number of cyclists who actually knock anyone over, let alone kill them, is a tiny minority either way.
Interestingly, proportionately per vehicle/bike per mile, it seems that cycles and cars are about exactly as dangerous as each other to pedestrians. I'm not sure why that is considering vehicles are heavier you'd think they'd be more dangerous but they're not? Perhaps because cyclists are more likely to ride on the pavement so increasing the risk to pedestrians.
Citation? Maybe you are including roads where neither pedestrians nor cyclists are allowed?
1% of pedestrian fatalities are by cyclists.
However cyclists make up less than 1% of the miles travelled that cars do.
So per mile, they're roughly equivalent to each other.
But there are obviously lots of miles driven by cars on roads with few to zero pedestrians AND few to zero cyclists. If you limited it to the kinds of journeys typically made on bicycles I suspect you'd find that cars are much more dangerous than cycles to pedestrians.
And its not 1% more like ~.6-.7%. Even then he's not counting the vehicle vs cycle deaths which is heavily skewed ~100 to 0. Nor vehicle vs vehicle collisions...
Drivers kill ~1700 a year, cyclists ~2.5.
Even the pavement stuff is wrong. 548 pedestrians on pavements were killed by vehicles in between 2005 and 2018. 6 of those were killed by cyclists.
6 is more than 1% of 548. Happy to round it to 1% though.
Cyclists miles travelled are less than 1% of driver miles travelled. Happy to round it to 1% though.
So on a per mile basis then, using your own data, cyclists are as deadly as drivers. And that's with rounding working in favour of cyclists both times.
You really need to remove the motorway miles from this data, since there are (to a first approximation) no pedestrians on motorways.!
Total vehicular miles in 2023 was ~330billion, of which 70billion was on motorways.
Cyclists make up 3.6 billion of that 330 billion, so the potion of cycle miles on roads that might have pedestrians on is 3.6 / (330 - 70 - 3.6) = 1.4%
If cyclists kill pedestrians at a rate of 6/548 that’s 1.1% of the rate.
Ergo, cyclists kill pedestrians at about 2/3 the rate that motorised vehicles do on the raw numbers.
One could reasonably argue that there aren’t very many pedestrians on A-roads either, but given that some A-roads are also ordinary roads in towns I don’t think we can justify dropping A-roads from this comparison.
(We should probably add up the estimates of driving distance for the last twenty years, since we’ve taken pedestrian deaths over such a long period. Feel free to run the numbers )
So yeah, excluding the motorways then cyclists represent 1% of fatalities and 1% of total mileage, to the nearest percentage point.
Hardly hundreds to one as implied by Eabhal's misuse of the figures.
I am giving serious consideration on the afternoon thread saying
Suella Braverman is a [moderated] raging homophobe, she's an [word that gets you banned from PB]
Her speech has to be the most homophobic speech from a Brit politician since the 1980s.
She can get in the fucking sea.
Before the gender-critical PB contributors respond, it needs to be pointed out that Ms Braverman was objecting to the Progress Pride flag (the one with the stripes and triangles) specifically, not the Pride flag (the one with the stripes) generally, and doing so because of its trans association. She is critical of both the theory and practice of trans and this would be consistent with her past remarks. Since PB is - how can I put this - a teensy bit split on this issue, you may prefer to lay off the speech for the moment.
There are at least two outright lies in her speech.
Firstly, no "mutilation of children" takes place in any UK hospital. Under 18s can't undergo surgical gender reassignment.
Secondly, as @sundersays has pointed out, it was the traditional six-stripe Pride flag that could not be removed, not the enhanced version that includes trans colours.
I have no idea what Braverman said, but the fact is young British kids - well under 18 - have been given puberty blocking drugs and things like "breast suppressing clothes" that alter the body. Is that mutilation?
I dunno. It's all so depressing. But I know this happened because it happened to the 13 year old child of one of my best friends, courtesy of the Tavistock Clinic
The former deals with the threshold at which a child becomes an adult, which has IMHO become unnecessarily blurred in England to its detriment. It really should be a bright line, not a fuzzy blur, but pensionerism rules and we have adultised children and infantilized adults.
But it is the latter that I wish to speak of. You spoke of them before, some years back IIRC. What happened to them?
I won't talk in any detail because OBVS
I do know back then that the whole thing shattered the family, and it has not recovered
The reason why I asked is, apart from my curiosity on the subject, I found out around a recent family funeral that one of the outer family branches is doing something similar. The family reaction is morbid curiosity and tentative approval (and me with a list of questions as per), but if I understand the timeline correctly they would have been in their late teens when they started., which is conceptually different from your thirteen-year old. In the event they did not turn up (their mother was estranged from their grandad due to arguments about the divorce) so questions were not asked.
You may have noted my concern for the older members of our happy PB band. This is because the boomer generation of my family is dropping like flies. It's a big family (none of this middle-class 2-3 kids max nonsense) so when they go, it's like dominoes. The next ten-fifteen years will be rough.
"A senior Tory MP has suggested Nigel Farage should join the Conservative party. Sir Edward Leigh told BBC Look North his party had been "completely trashed in this election because the right wing vote is divided". Sir Edward retained his Gainsborough seat, but with a reduced majority."
Comments
In those days LOX was a poorly understood nightmare that caused explosions at random.
The Japanese were a bit puzzled - they simply did the obvious. Put the torpedo on a beach or convenient sand bank. Then sent the most junior rating over with a spanner.
2020 didn't make much difference admittedly but only as the conventions were largely online or with a tiny audience
To loud applause.
And a few of you may share my weird sense of humor.
https://xkcd.com/
Your remark about UK regulations is indicative, as is the fact that the Conference is taking place in Washington. There's something I call the "Anglosphere patriot": somebody who gets all their facts from their phone and doesn't on a fundamental level realise that the world is divided into nations which are geographically divided with different policies. So we have Katie Hopkins concerning herself with the politics of Italy, an issue she cannot fix. We have become untethered from the ground and float in cyberspace, to our detriment.
The Dems big beasts have to steel themselves and do this deed.
He has to be told, as Carville says, 'the jig is up'.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c6p2660ldn2o
From the Labour Manifesto:
“Labour will maintain and renew our road network, to ensure it serves drivers, cyclists and other road users, remains safe, and tackles congestion.”
I don't see how that is achievable without a full review, especially given current trends in road deaths.
New Labour set a target to halve road deaths in 10 years, and achieved it in 9. That's where we need to be.
Also I have seen this reported, which I cannot see in the Manifesto; perhaps it is somewhere else. We already have an RSIB established in 2022, but I'm not sure what it has been doing given that Mark Harper has pursued policies which undermine safety.
The Labour manifesto also calls for:
Establishing a Road Safety Investigation Branch – An independent body modelled on existing transportation safety branches (for rail and air travel) to analyse road incidents and provide actionable insights to help prevent future tragedies.
Adopting advanced vehicle safety regulations – Immediate implementation of the world-leading vehicle safety standards, mandating critical technologies such as automatic emergency braking (AEB) and intelligent speed assistance (ISA).
https://roadsafetygb.org.uk/news/labour-sets-out-to-deliver-modern-transport-network/
That suggests they were unaware of said witness at the time of the original trial to me.
As to why? Incompetence? Lack of time? Public defenders aren’t exactly the most well paid lawyers out there. You’d have to ask them for the real answer.
But the more important point is all these opinion writers and commentators are now saying what voters have been saying for months: he's too old. And now Biden has shown he is too old by failing the test he literally set himself with an early debate.
Pretty much everything this idiot says will be greeted with relief
https://x.com/BestForBritain/status/1810655958613262725
https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/
A lot of Home Counties members, particular from private sector and smaller businesses, join their conservative association not for the politics but for the chance to meet and hobnob with and lobby their MP. Across hundreds of seats, that attraction has now disappeared.
But it is the latter that I wish to speak of. You spoke of them before, some years back IIRC. What happened to them?
The biggest miss since 1992"
https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/07/08/how-did-pollsters-do-in-predicting-the-british-election
On the other hand we do have our own home grown culture wars that we have been exporting. The trans kerfuffle is arguably one of them. And others that are purely domestic and not exported, like the debate over private schools.
If the polls had shown the result as it was, I am minded to say they'd have predicted a hung parliament this time around too.
The thought that her lawyers had expert exculpatory evidence which they didn't use because they were dim is to say the least in this case unlikely.
Of course this case could run and run. Maybe a new set of lawyers will be instructed and bring stuff to the attention of the CCRC. Until we are well into that process I think the matter stands where it did.
But if they'd had Labour on 34% as in reality it would have been a small majority.
So this all goes back to my point that Morgan McSweeney must have anticipated a narrower lead based on where he put the campaign resources.
The MRPs again actually got the makeup broadly right although over-estimated the Labour shares and the size of the majority, although YouGov was close-ish.
Thus how pollsters deal with the DKs in their sample is absolutely critical. Ignoring them, assuming they break the same as everyone else, doesn’t work. Referring back to their previous voting habit doesn’t work, either, as many of the DKs this time were former Tories, yet those deciding at the last minute swung things mostly toward the LibDems and Greens.
It’s a dilemma without an obvious answer. The best you can do, I’d suggest, is look at the difference between an early campaign poll and a mid to late campaign poll - ideally of the same voters (hence advantage YouGov), and project the changes you see between the two polls forward. This time, such an approach would have done quite well.
Its woes illustrate the excesses of a lean-and-mean era in corporate America"
https://www.economist.com/business/2024/07/08/once-high-flying-boeing-is-now-a-corporate-criminal
I'm not convinced that Labour were on 34% over the weekend before the election. It's quite possible they were set for 37-38% at that point, which at least some pollsters were showing.
How do you model late swing? Difficult because you only really pick it up a day or two before the election. Or if it starts early it can then accelerate. I wonder if there's some sort of machine learning solution here that takes a measure of momentum seen in polls in the last week, and calculates whether there is acceleration in that momentum, and then projects forwards.
Then there's Reform. There was not much consistent sign of late swing there. The signals were mixed. This was a simple case of overstatement. My theory is that this was a matter of familiarity and ground game. I'm not sure if anyone's quantified the GOTV effect but it must count for something. Notably the Lib Dems slightly outperformed polling, and the GOTV efforts were pretty energetic.
Perhaps over time our polls will become less and less based on actual responses and more on models. This would be another example.
Do you want your sociopaths to be stupid or clever. I would suggest that the clever sociopath is far more dangerous than the stupid one.
Lowest NHS waiting times in history and highest NHS satisfaction, Johnson partied through COVID.
Please don't condescend me.
I am not sure whether that is technically before or after I left.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0oFpOJaIYc
2024
Labour 39 - Actual 34.7 (-4.3)
Conservatives 21.7 - Actual 24.4 (+2.7)
Reform 15.8 Actual 14.4 (-1.4)
Lib Dems 10.8 Actual 12.5 (+1.7)
Green spot on
1992
Lab 40 Actual 35.2 (-4.8)
Con 39 Actual 42.8 (+3.8)
Lib Dems look spot on
So the polls were slightly better than 1992 but not by much. I think you're referring to the exit poll which most definitely isn't a poll.
https://x.com/billkristol/status/1810664744111775846?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
https://www.parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/e6d0653f-760e-4b77-8563-475fe9cc43f3?_gl=1*1rb479x*_ga*NzM5NDEyMjM3LjE3MjA0ODE4MTc.*_ga_L0NJWDWMGN*MTcyMDUzMDAxNi4yLjAuMTcyMDUzMDAxNi42MC4wLjA.
33.12
£33.32
Btw If anyone fancies a humungous payout with a black swan event & has the liquidity (And isn't premium charged) you could lay Trump at 1.61 for the presidency and back the GOP at the same price.
On the substantive point, I ring my bell and slow down substantially for children, dogs, elderly people. For runners I ring but tend not to ease off much if they're well on one side (i.e. I can get ~1m or more of clearance) or have clearly heard/seen me. Basically how much I slow depends on age, apparent infirmity and my judgement of unpredictability and whether they've heard me. Also, I'm talking on paths with run-off on each side, so if something unexpected happens I'm likely to end up in the undergrowth rather than take someone out. In restricted space situations I'm down to close to walking pace.
I think the faster person, whether car, bike, runner etc (or faster versus slower cyclist) has responsibility to look after the situation in general.
*That is what should happen in a conservative party learning lessons
Cyclists miles travelled are less than 1% of driver miles travelled. Happy to round it to 1% though.
So on a per mile basis then, using your own data, cyclists are as deadly as drivers. And that's with rounding working in favour of cyclists both times.
This conversation assumes that catapulting invariably has a vertical component. I think this is wrong.
I do know back then that the whole thing shattered the family, and it has not recovered
How many lawyers did A-level mathematics? Almost none & even that course contains only the barest introduction to a very complex topic.
If you are unaware that there’s a problem with the prosecution case, you won’t even conceive of challenging it in the first place. Or you may (reasonably) believe that you will be unable to communicate those problems to a jury that is instructed to see things through a lens of “expert vs expert”.
This is a problem with the expert witness system as a whole, not with individual lawyers.
& it’s not surprising that Letby used the original lawyers for her appeal. Who else could she possible choose? How would she know that they were any better than the original ones if she did try and change her legal team? (Would she even be permitted to do so given that the country is paying for her legal representation?)
Again, Letby may well be guilty (I hope she confesses in prison if so - it would be an act of kindness to everyone involved) but the case against her bears much in common with past miscarriages of justice. It’s not surprising that people are sceptical about it.
F9 - 2 stage, LOX/Kero, pintle injector. Retro propulsion on the first stage, and a suicide burn landing might well have been possible in the 1960s. Certainly conceivable.
Stoke - transpiration plug nozzle cooling was being talked about back in the 60s. FFSC was considered, but was beyond engineering art at the time.
Starship - 2 stage, LOX/CH4. Again, FFSC was considered beyond state if the art in the 1960s. Ceramic TPS was in trial then.
Etc
As for cycles vs vehicles, yes you're confirming the fact that cycles are far more dangerous to their user than vehicles are to theirs. Unsurprisingly since vehicles come with an array of safety features such as air bags, seat belts and nowadays automatic braking and more. Whereas many Darwin Award winners ride a bike without even bothering to put a helmet on.
Vehicle to vehicle, again considering vehicles represent 100x more transportation than cycling, is incredibly safe as your own data shows too.
If you want to lower road casualties then getting people off their bikes and into vehicles would reduce casualties as we'd be replacing bikes without any safety features (even a helmet most of the time) and gain all the benefits of seat belts, air bags, braking etc as well as a protective shell that exceeds even a helmet.
However I respect free choice and if people want to choose a more dangerous activity, such as cycling, then that is their choice which should be respected. At least put a helmet on though if you don't want to be a Darwin Award winner.
Look, it’s the Lads.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13615041/The-Reform-Five-arrives-Nigel-Farage-FINALLY-enters-Parliament.html
https://x.com/thedailyshow/status/1810511442430316780?s=61&t=LYVEHh2mqFy1oUJAdCfe-Q
On 16 June 1983 MPs queued up to take the oath of allegiance. Newly-elected Tory MP Edward Leigh was a few places ahead of new Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn.
Didn't matter until today. But that's why Leigh - and not Corbyn - is now Father of the House, with all the ceremonial roles.
https://x.com/jimwaterson/status/1809176279528141059
My guess is because cyclists ride on pavements and cars don't normally, so that cancels out the weight issue, but either way saying that cyclists represent only 1% of fatalities when they represent less than 1% of transportation isn't exactly shocking.
In fact I would go so far as to say that his stragegy for the 2029 election has this as it's key dependency.
Total vehicular miles in 2023 was ~330billion, of which 70billion was on motorways.
Cyclists make up 3.6 billion of that 330 billion, so the potion of cycle miles on roads that might have pedestrians on is 3.6 / (330 - 70 - 3.6) = 1.4%
If cyclists kill pedestrians at a rate of 6/548 that’s 1.1% of the rate.
Ergo, cyclists kill pedestrians at about 2/3 the rate that motorised vehicles do on the raw numbers.
One could reasonably argue that there aren’t very many pedestrians on A-roads either, but given that some A-roads are also ordinary roads in towns I don’t think we can justify dropping A-roads from this comparison.
(We should probably add up the estimates of driving distance for the last twenty years, since we’ve taken pedestrian deaths over such a long period. Feel free to run the numbers
Hardly hundreds to one as implied by Eabhal's misuse of the figures.
You may have noted my concern for the older members of our happy PB band. This is because the boomer generation of my family is dropping like flies. It's a big family (none of this middle-class 2-3 kids max nonsense) so when they go, it's like dominoes. The next ten-fifteen years will be rough.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c720w4pze28o