I'm beginning to think that the odds on Ms Harris are looking attractive.
Been saying it for ages. Once the media turns on Trump, this becomes a trainwreck. He will be increasingly ridiculed.
The media turned on Trump in 2016, and it didn’t help them much.
Meanwhile, much of the alternative media is turning on Harris. Here’s Joe Rogan and Michael Malice taking the piss out of the mainstream media for their total u-turn on her. https://x.com/vigilantfox/status/1818354746526499090 ^^^ this interview will get tens of millions of views, more than all of the mainstream news combined, especially among the younger demographics.
I think you and Mister Bedfordshire seem to miss the obvious difference.
Even Fox News are ripping into Trump.
That would be the Fox who fired Tucker Carlson and are now seen to be as infected with the woke liberal virus as the rest of them?
I see your comment is rooted as in much reality as most of your other posts.
Seems to me that the one consistent feature of his posts is their being rooted in talking points coming out of Moscow.
One of the wonderful things about conversations here is that Putinbots are briefly toyed with then squashed like a bug. Makes a chap proud to be British.
Out there, they have been allowed to infest the internet. And none of us know how much shit we're swallowing. With the consequences we have seen across the Atlantic.
Yes, but I don't think MisterBedfordshire is a Putinbot? He's been here under various guises for years hasn't he? You can't just say someone who you think is a bit right wing is a Putinbot.
It feeds into the Liberal conceit that anyone right wing or socially conservative is stupid and can't think for themselves, so must be being manipulated by a bad actor.
Its a bit silly and the Ad-hom elements are pathetic and childish.
Sure I come out with Bollocks sometimes, usually from going from memory not detailed research (this is a web forum not a seminar at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers). However it is possible to criticise the issue not gratitously smear the person.
I wish they would stick to policy not people. This all feeds into the discussion about people like Carlotta and Cyclefree leaving.
Has Carlotta said she's not posting anymore? I hope not. I very much liked her style of posting. I think most people did and she was rarely criticised. She was a fairly mainstream Tory so I assumed she just found it less interesting posting when her Party weren't in power
I honestly think that the crossover is going to come very soon, possibly even today. The latest polls show Harris between 3 and 7(!) points ahead. Trump is imploding, his choice of VP has gone down very badly and Harris looks competent, comparatively young and sane.
I don't see the current odds lasting long.
Of course there is a long way to go but Trump is the unhinged old man of this contest now.
I would like to think so, but America is a weird place, so being weird is not a bar to support. The pussy grabbing, riot provoking bigot still has nearly half of America supporting him. Astonishing but true.
Whereas we elected a Prime Minister who had been sacked from multiple jobs for lying and doesn't know how many children he has. That ended well.
Thames Water is just one of many examples of pisspoor administration by the last government. So focused on Brexit, stoking Culture War and graft to bother with the mundanities of competent administration.
They deserve an eternity on the Opposition benches.
Why do you put the blame for Thames Water on politicians as opposed to Ofwat whose actual purpose is to regulate the water companies.
Because the politicians have let Ofwat do a piss (other words for effluent can be substituted) poor job...
So you want a minister for regulating regulators or perhaps a regulator for regulating regulators, Ofof.
And if there are disputes between the supply company, the regulator, the regulators regulator and the 'here today gone next year' politician who is supposed to be 'the expert' ?
Remember 'experts' ? Those people politicians are always condemned for not paying attention to.
You don't have to be an expert to note on a gross scale how badly regulators have got it wrong. The ministers with responsibility could very easily have noted how much cash was going out as dividends. compared to what was being spent on infrastructure. If they'd thought to ask.
We aren't arguing over minutiae.
So you want some 'here today gone next year' politician to overrule the regulator ?
The regulator being the expert and doing the job permanently the politician very unlikely to be an expert and having a few hours to look at the info.
Lets just say it would be a 'brave' decision by the politician.
And what would be the result - lots of aggravation whatever happens, especially so if the politician is mistaken and with likely no thanks if the politician turns out to be correct.
Of course there are sometimes 'brave' politicians:
Liz Truss is likely to give ministers the power to overturn some financial regulators’ decisions if she becomes UK prime minister, a potential move that could set up fresh tensions with the Bank of England.
Mr. Eagles, it's wrong to say Saudi Arabia are to build 11 stadiums. It's 11 stadia. And I'll believe the 'Neom' stadium when I see it.
It is stadia if you believe that stadium is still a Latin loan word. It is stadiums if you believe stadium has been adopted as an English word. The grammatical rule is that you conjugate according to the language the word belongs to. Should the word belong to two languages, conjugate according to the one you're speaking.
Pluralisation is an inflection not conjugation. Conjugation is the modification of a verb to indicate tense, mood and person. Inflection is the modification of any word, not just a verb, to indicate grammatical function; in this case plurality.
As controversial as pineapple on pizza, and topical this week - are there any circumstances under which the word ‘medal’ can properly be used as a verb?
Language has evolved throughout human history. It is inevitable, chill and embrace it.
Good morning one and all! Off topic I know but I've just had a look at my junk mail and there's a letter there from our local MP Priti Patel. Sorry Dame Priti Patel. She reports on, among other things, her objections to the Labour Governments proposal to release prisoners early. I thought it was originally proposed by Rishi Sunak's Conservative Government!
Remember you can fool some of the people (voters) all of the time and most people (voters) some of the time.
That lie probably works with people who haven't been paying much attention to the news so are not aware of when the idea was first suggested..
26% reduction in road casualities 23% in killed / seriously injured 55% drop in people killed 27% drop in slight injuries
And insurance claims down 20%.
The thing that convinced me that this speed reduction policy was a good idea was the stat that vehicles are getting heavier.
Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.
That is patently false and not represented by the data whatsoever.
Decades of technological and safety improvements, including crash test designs and iterations, mean you are far, far, far less likely to die today than decades ago. Which includes pedestrians.
That is true, but does not contradict the above point that "Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.".
Perhaps rather than having a speed limit we should have a momentum limit?
It does contradict it.
A lot of arguments being made still rely upon old data. Most claims made by "road safety campaigners" who want speed limits cut use obsolete data from the 1970s or 1990s to back up their claims . . . because the data today does not.
In 2004 there were 53.6 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average. In 2022 there were 26.5 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average.
Pedestrians, not drivers, are twice as safe as they were previously.
No it doesn't. Your point about cars being safer is about their ability to quickly decelerate. But TSE's point remains true - if you get hit at 20mph in a heavy car you will be worse off than if you get hit at 30mph in a light one. That's just physics.
Hang on.
If it was a square block running into a square block dead on, then that might well be true.
But the energy is not all dissipated in that way. In particular, a pedestrian is (typically) thrown up and onto the car. 30mph crashes are incredibly dangerous compared to 20mph one because you don't have time to get thrown upwards and the damage to your lower body - including severing of the spinal column - is extreme.
The construction of the car is more important than the mass. A modern car (a saloon car, not what the Americans call a light truck) will deform extensively in the bumper and bonnet when involved in a pedestrian impact - whereas an older one is designed much more for car-car collisions, and the pedestrian has his legs broken by the metal bumper and his head broken by the top of the engine underneath the bonnet.
As an aside on "Light Trucks" ie Tonka Tanks, they are simply exempt from many of the safety regs that apply to cars in the USA. That's been a scandal for a very long time, and manufacturers have used their influence to prevent suitable regulations being applied.
Indeed, this is something you and I can completely agree on. You are 100% correct.
This is something I would not want to see US rules introduced on, and they're not happening here.
Any use of US data instead instead of UK data is showing dishonesty or a lack of comprehension on this by the person doing so.
The popularity of SUVs vs cars is safety problem though, cars having lower bonnets, the pedestrian was more likely to be go over the bonnet than under it. Stats demonstrate that 20mph is safer than 30mph, no need to go into any physics and the relevance of the theoretical stopping distance is considerably reduced versus reckless or distracted driving, as demonstrated by the vehicular war on stationary objects such as lamposts.
UK SUVs are cars. They are not American
Look at the Nissan Qashqai or the Kia Sportage, they are popular UK SUVs and they have all the safety features of modern cars, including modern, safer bonnets.
Contrast with the Ford F150 which to the best of my knowledge is not sold in this country.
The Ford Ranger, a smaller truck built to car standards, is sold in the UK and Europe, but not the F-series.
If you see an F-series it will be a one-off import, left hand drive, and usually a work truck for something specific like towing heavy trailers. Plus maybe a few hanging around outside football club training grounds.
I go for simple people carriers.
I think my next vehicle will be a G-Wagen.
Ha, you’re turning into an old footballer getting one of those in the UK!
The new G is actually very nice to drive, much more of a car than the terrible-handling-but-cool-looking truck that was the previous model. Very popular in my neck of the woods.
That said, the GLS is a better vehicle in almost every way.
Best vehicle I’ve ever hard was the Porsche Cayenne Turbo.
That was basically a sports cars on a 4x4 floor plan.
They’re good fun. I drove the standard V8 one a few years back, and can’t say I ever thought it really needed another 150bhp though!
I'm beginning to think that the odds on Ms Harris are looking attractive.
Been saying it for ages. Once the media turns on Trump, this becomes a trainwreck. He will be increasingly ridiculed.
The media turned on Trump in 2016, and it didn’t help them much.
Meanwhile, much of the alternative media is turning on Harris. Here’s Joe Rogan and Michael Malice taking the piss out of the mainstream media for their total u-turn on her. https://x.com/vigilantfox/status/1818354746526499090 ^^^ this interview will get tens of millions of views, more than all of the mainstream news combined, especially among the younger demographics.
I remember the SNL sketch after Trump's first debate against Hillary in 2016 where they cut 'live' to 'Hillary's campaign HQ' with everybody dancing and partying.
I was at the time conducting focus groups in the US where the issue of Trump was being brought up unprompted again and again by America's equivalent of our own working class. The idea that he was for them, while the media was for the elites.
To me, Trump's rants come off a bit like the deranged ramblings of your drunken uncle at the family get-together. But they clearly resonate with a significant portion of US society. Whereas the Kamala ramping reminds me of Milifandom - attempting to make something pretty stodgy seem cool. 'Kamala is brat'. Really? ...Really?
I think Kamala will look clear, insightful and intellectual when placed against Trump. But it only takes one comment, say, Hilary's 'basket of deplorables' to completely alienate an entire segment of voters. Plus the RCS point that incumbent governments round the world are getting a kicking due to the last few years of economic malaise and inflation.
Kamala is a massive improvement on Biden and I would be voting for her if I lived in the US. I also think the odds of her winning are closer to 50/50, so the current odds on offer are value. But it is definitely not a slam dunk as some posters on here are making out.
Yes, the US is horribly divided at the moment, and there’s at least 40% of voters who are for one side or the other, and never going to change their minds between now and the election.
The media is even more divided, with most of the mainstream falling heavily for Harris and most of the alternative media behind Trump. Personally I try and watch both, to try and understand what each side is saying. Mostly they’re talking straight past each other.
Here’s an MSM article from when Harris was running for a DA job in California, describing herself as Asian with no mention of Black - which supports Trump’s position that she changed her identity at some point. https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1818719005089448294
I've pointed out a few times that this website is well inside the 'liberal mainstream' hive/bubble. If you switch to the other bubble, IE even just by reading Elon Musk's posts on Twitter, the world appears very different.
The main problem is that people have whipped themselves up in to total repulsion and disgust at Trump to such a degree that they give the liberals a total free pass over anything. So whatever the left does or tolerates (terrorism, rioting, discrimination, racism) it is all basically ok because there is a greater enemy to be defeated.
If given the choice I would probably vote for Harris as the 'less worse' option, not because I agree in any way with the dominant analysis (as set out above). The deal breaker is that Trump has proved to be an existential danger to democracy, whereas Harris is not.
Are you taking the absolute piss? With MrbEd, Leon, Pagan2, HYUFD, Max… I could go on. The site is full of right wing late middle aged blokes who think they are edgy and will create outrage when, in truth, their views are well aired in both the mainstream and alternative news. The liberal left is in a distinct minority on here. Rightist views dominate.
That isn't really true, 38% of UK voters voted Tory or Reform on 4th July, I would guess less than 38% of PBers did.
This site is largely liberal centrist and always has been, I would expect more PBers than the UK average vote LD in particular
Balderdash, to resurrect an underused phrase
OK, produce the evidence that over 38% of posters on here voted Tory or Reform? I suspect the percentage who voted Reform in particular is well below the 14% of UK voters overall who voted Reform
You made the assertion as to percentages. The burden is on you.
I certainly remember the last time we did a survey of how PBers voted which was some years ago the percentage who voted UKIP was below the UK average, I think Richard Tyndall was their main supporter on here and the percentage of LD supporters above the UK average. Although Tory and Labour supporters were about the same as nationally
I honestly think that the crossover is going to come very soon, possibly even today. The latest polls show Harris between 3 and 7(!) points ahead. Trump is imploding, his choice of VP has gone down very badly and Harris looks competent, comparatively young and sane.
I don't see the current odds lasting long.
Of course there is a long way to go but Trump is the unhinged old man of this contest now.
I would like to think so, but America is a weird place, so being weird is not a bar to support. The pussy grabbing, riot provoking bigot still has nearly half of America supporting him. Astonishing but true.
Whereas we elected a Prime Minister who had been sacked from multiple jobs for lying and doesn't know how many children he has. That ended well.
Thames Water is just one of many examples of pisspoor administration by the last government. So focused on Brexit, stoking Culture War and graft to bother with the mundanities of competent administration.
They deserve an eternity on the Opposition benches.
Why do you put the blame for Thames Water on politicians as opposed to Ofwat whose actual purpose is to regulate the water companies.
Because the politicians have let Ofwat do a piss (other words for effluent can be substituted) poor job...
So you want a minister for regulating regulators or perhaps a regulator for regulating regulators, Ofof.
And if there are disputes between the supply company, the regulator, the regulators regulator and the 'here today gone next year' politician who is supposed to be 'the expert' ?
Remember 'experts' ? Those people politicians are always condemned for not paying attention to.
You don't have to be an expert to note on a gross scale how badly regulators have got it wrong. The ministers with responsibility could very easily have noted how much cash was going out as dividends. compared to what was being spent on infrastructure. If they'd thought to ask.
We aren't arguing over minutiae.
Why is that the regulators responsibility?
The regulators responsibility is to ensure water is clean. That happened, in leaps and bounds, post-privatisation.
It is shareholders/bondholders responsibility to look after their interests. It is not the regulators responsibility to look after bondholders, it is the regulators responsibility to look after the public.
But the regulators are also responsible for deciding how much money a monopoly can charge, of course; the market can't do that. Macquarie completely hoodwinked them.
The other point is that we're not starting from scratch now. Thames has been loaded up with a huge amount of debt, and the owners are arguing the regulator should help them finance it by putting up prices. Parsing out what amount of debt is reasonable in terms of financing infrastructure work - and how much has been incurred simply as a means of extracting cash out of the company (which definitely happened under Macquarie) - is now as much a political as it is a regulatory issue.
The shareholders failed in their due diligence in that case. The taxpayer/bill payer shouldn't pay for that failure and the regulator needs to be stern here and tell them to get fucked.
It's time to let it go bankrupt along with all of the other water companies, have the bondholders take a hefty haircut and let them either take it over or sell the assets to the state for a nominal amount on the basis that the state takes on the remaining liability ~ 30-40% of what it is currently.
Water is one part of our infrastructure that should never have been privatised and Labour have an opportunity to bring it all back under state ownership over the next 5 years by working with the regulator to wipe out the shareholders.
Agreed. But I don't know if they have the bottle.
Well they don't have the cash to throw at share / bond holders so it's be ruthless or create a very simple of attack lines for the opposition at the next election.
Also Canadian Teachers don't have votes in the UK...
As someone whose pension is invested* in Thames Water, I agree we should let them go under.
*USS also has a big share, although I don't think it's a huge part of the overall fund. They, as other investors, should have been wiser.
Second thought of the day - consider it a BOGOF for the first day of the new month.
I've been interested to read the Police citing disinformation as a cause for some of the disturbances coming off the Southport murders. One example - there was a video showing a couple of groups of young men in Southen fighting at one end of the promenade with machetes and that inevitably went viral and caused all sort of comment.
Youngsters fighting in Southend is hardly news - it's been going on for at least 60 years if not longer. It might be machetes now rather than switchblades or baseball bats but let's not imagine this is some new horror vested on us. The change is it is filmed in real time, uploaded onto X and within minutes is seen by hundreds if not thousands helped by a nice attention grabbling title like "Big Machete Fight in Southend" or whatever.
The power of misinformation or disinformation has been exposed this week (if it wasn't known even back in 2011 for example when the disorder then was largely fanned if not orchestrated by a nascent Twitter). You can't put the genie back in the bottle unfortunately but as we know a growing number of people get their "news" from X or other social media how do we respond?
Those with a functioning brain cell might want to consider the wisdom of commenting on every X posting as soon as it happens or taking half a story and making it the full story (as we've seen with the Manchester Airport business). We're not Reuters or the PA - reading something from X doesn't make it true (a wise man once said the truth is out there, perhaps, but it's becoming a lot harder to find in the jungle of disinformation).
As an aside, we also know the impact of the combination of hot weather and easily available alcohol on some people. Somebody once spoke about personal responsibility - wither that?
We are ignoring some obvious solutions
i) Ban Twitter and its variants (Bluesky, Mastodon, Truth Social, Telegraph), or ii) Nationalise them
"You can't put the genie back in the bottle"...well, yes you can.
26% reduction in road casualities 23% in killed / seriously injured 55% drop in people killed 27% drop in slight injuries
And insurance claims down 20%.
The thing that convinced me that this speed reduction policy was a good idea was the stat that vehicles are getting heavier.
Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.
That is patently false and not represented by the data whatsoever.
Decades of technological and safety improvements, including crash test designs and iterations, mean you are far, far, far less likely to die today than decades ago. Which includes pedestrians.
That is true, but does not contradict the above point that "Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.".
Perhaps rather than having a speed limit we should have a momentum limit?
It does contradict it.
A lot of arguments being made still rely upon old data. Most claims made by "road safety campaigners" who want speed limits cut use obsolete data from the 1970s or 1990s to back up their claims . . . because the data today does not.
In 2004 there were 53.6 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average. In 2022 there were 26.5 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average.
Pedestrians, not drivers, are twice as safe as they were previously.
No it doesn't. Your point about cars being safer is about their ability to quickly decelerate. But TSE's point remains true - if you get hit at 20mph in a heavy car you will be worse off than if you get hit at 30mph in a light one. That's just physics.
Physics requires exact numbers. It depends on "heavy" versus "light". The damage depends on kinetic energy, which equals one half of the mass times the velocity squared.
So for a car hitting you at 20 mph, it would need to be 2.25 times (30/20 * 30/20) as heavy as a car hitting you at 30 mph to do the same damage?
I remember how I could predict imminent thunderstorms at middle school by the amount of lunchtime playground fights that broke out.
Like racist rioting increases the more the temperature goes above 30C?
Exactly.
Proposed - a function that takes the temperature and the time pre/post lager shed. The output is the aggression level on PB.
I'm old enough to remember the 'British Riots' (as the BBC called them, so persistently that the Scots, Welsh and even the Nirish complained about the damage to tourism) which unaccountably happened in a separate part of the UK in 2011. In July/August,. too. Maybe there's something in that function?
I honestly think that the crossover is going to come very soon, possibly even today. The latest polls show Harris between 3 and 7(!) points ahead. Trump is imploding, his choice of VP has gone down very badly and Harris looks competent, comparatively young and sane.
I don't see the current odds lasting long.
Of course there is a long way to go but Trump is the unhinged old man of this contest now.
I would like to think so, but America is a weird place, so being weird is not a bar to support. The pussy grabbing, riot provoking bigot still has nearly half of America supporting him. Astonishing but true.
Whereas we elected a Prime Minister who had been sacked from multiple jobs for lying and doesn't know how many children he has. That ended well.
Thames Water is just one of many examples of pisspoor administration by the last government. So focused on Brexit, stoking Culture War and graft to bother with the mundanities of competent administration.
They deserve an eternity on the Opposition benches.
Why do you put the blame for Thames Water on politicians as opposed to Ofwat whose actual purpose is to regulate the water companies.
Because the politicians have let Ofwat do a piss (other words for effluent can be substituted) poor job...
So you want a minister for regulating regulators or perhaps a regulator for regulating regulators, Ofof.
And if there are disputes between the supply company, the regulator, the regulators regulator and the 'here today gone next year' politician who is supposed to be 'the expert' ?
Remember 'experts' ? Those people politicians are always condemned for not paying attention to.
You don't have to be an expert to note on a gross scale how badly regulators have got it wrong. The ministers with responsibility could very easily have noted how much cash was going out as dividends. compared to what was being spent on infrastructure. If they'd thought to ask.
We aren't arguing over minutiae.
Why is that the regulators responsibility?
The regulators responsibility is to ensure water is clean. That happened, in leaps and bounds, post-privatisation.
It is shareholders/bondholders responsibility to look after their interests. It is not the regulators responsibility to look after bondholders, it is the regulators responsibility to look after the public.
But the regulators are also responsible for deciding how much money a monopoly can charge, of course; the market can't do that. Macquarie completely hoodwinked them.
The other point is that we're not starting from scratch now. Thames has been loaded up with a huge amount of debt, and the owners are arguing the regulator should help them finance it by putting up prices. Parsing out what amount of debt is reasonable in terms of financing infrastructure work - and how much has been incurred simply as a means of extracting cash out of the company (which definitely happened under Macquarie) - is now as much a political as it is a regulatory issue.
The shareholders failed in their due diligence in that case. The taxpayer/bill payer shouldn't pay for that failure and the regulator needs to be stern here and tell them to get fucked.
It's time to let it go bankrupt along with all of the other water companies, have the bondholders take a hefty haircut and let them either take it over or sell the assets to the state for a nominal amount on the basis that the state takes on the remaining liability ~ 30-40% of what it is currently.
Water is one part of our infrastructure that should never have been privatised and Labour have an opportunity to bring it all back under state ownership over the next 5 years by working with the regulator to wipe out the shareholders.
Agreed. But I don't know if they have the bottle.
Well they don't have the cash to throw at share / bond holders so it's be ruthless or create a very simple of attack lines for the opposition at the next election.
Also Canadian Teachers don't have votes in the UK...
I agree entirely with both you and Max on this. Let the shareholders go bust, and screw the bondholders. But it needs to be done in a manner which least spooks bond markets.
Someone mentioned upthread the supply chain that depends on Thames Water.
If Thames Water goes bust, the shareholders and bond holders get wiped out (or as much as required).
The "lightened" business, shorn of much of it's debt would be extremely profitable - and would be able to support temporarily higher prices from the suppliers without having to raise bills.
You'd want good managers to manage the supplier prices back down after the initial bump, though.
No, you'd want good managers to start insourcing those functions over time and building up those divisions again.
Well, I would. But nearly everyone else in "industry" hates the idea of vertical integration.
Mr. Eagles, it's wrong to say Saudi Arabia are to build 11 stadiums. It's 11 stadia. And I'll believe the 'Neom' stadium when I see it.
It is stadia if you believe that stadium is still a Latin loan word. It is stadiums if you believe stadium has been adopted as an English word. The grammatical rule is that you conjugate according to the language the word belongs to. Should the word belong to two languages, conjugate according to the one you're speaking.
Pluralisation is an inflection not conjugation. Conjugation is the modification of a verb to indicate tense, mood and person. Inflection is the modification of any word, not just a verb, to indicate grammatical function; in this case plurality.
As controversial as pineapple on pizza, and topical this week - are there any circumstances under which the word ‘medal’ can properly be used as a verb?
Language has evolved throughout human history. It is inevitable, chill and embrace it.
I remember how I could predict imminent thunderstorms at middle school by the amount of lunchtime playground fights that broke out.
Like racist rioting increases the more the temperature goes above 30C?
Exactly.
Proposed - a function that takes the temperature and the time pre/post lager shed. The output is the aggression level on PB.
I'm old enough to remember the 'British Riots' (as the BBC called them, so persistently that the Scots, Welsh and even the Nirish complained about the damage to tourism) which unaccountably happened in a separate part of the UK in 2011. In July/August,. too. Maybe there's something in that function?
Rioting seems correlated with summer, around the world, I think.
I honestly think that the crossover is going to come very soon, possibly even today. The latest polls show Harris between 3 and 7(!) points ahead. Trump is imploding, his choice of VP has gone down very badly and Harris looks competent, comparatively young and sane.
I don't see the current odds lasting long.
Of course there is a long way to go but Trump is the unhinged old man of this contest now.
I would like to think so, but America is a weird place, so being weird is not a bar to support. The pussy grabbing, riot provoking bigot still has nearly half of America supporting him. Astonishing but true.
Whereas we elected a Prime Minister who had been sacked from multiple jobs for lying and doesn't know how many children he has. That ended well.
Thames Water is just one of many examples of pisspoor administration by the last government. So focused on Brexit, stoking Culture War and graft to bother with the mundanities of competent administration.
They deserve an eternity on the Opposition benches.
Why do you put the blame for Thames Water on politicians as opposed to Ofwat whose actual purpose is to regulate the water companies.
Because the politicians have let Ofwat do a piss (other words for effluent can be substituted) poor job...
So you want a minister for regulating regulators or perhaps a regulator for regulating regulators, Ofof.
And if there are disputes between the supply company, the regulator, the regulators regulator and the 'here today gone next year' politician who is supposed to be 'the expert' ?
Remember 'experts' ? Those people politicians are always condemned for not paying attention to.
You don't have to be an expert to note on a gross scale how badly regulators have got it wrong. The ministers with responsibility could very easily have noted how much cash was going out as dividends. compared to what was being spent on infrastructure. If they'd thought to ask.
We aren't arguing over minutiae.
Why is that the regulators responsibility?
The regulators responsibility is to ensure water is clean. That happened, in leaps and bounds, post-privatisation.
It is shareholders/bondholders responsibility to look after their interests. It is not the regulators responsibility to look after bondholders, it is the regulators responsibility to look after the public.
But the regulators are also responsible for deciding how much money a monopoly can charge, of course; the market can't do that. Macquarie completely hoodwinked them.
The other point is that we're not starting from scratch now. Thames has been loaded up with a huge amount of debt, and the owners are arguing the regulator should help them finance it by putting up prices. Parsing out what amount of debt is reasonable in terms of financing infrastructure work - and how much has been incurred simply as a means of extracting cash out of the company (which definitely happened under Macquarie) - is now as much a political as it is a regulatory issue.
The shareholders failed in their due diligence in that case. The taxpayer/bill payer shouldn't pay for that failure and the regulator needs to be stern here and tell them to get fucked.
It's time to let it go bankrupt along with all of the other water companies, have the bondholders take a hefty haircut and let them either take it over or sell the assets to the state for a nominal amount on the basis that the state takes on the remaining liability ~ 30-40% of what it is currently.
Water is one part of our infrastructure that should never have been privatised and Labour have an opportunity to bring it all back under state ownership over the next 5 years by working with the regulator to wipe out the shareholders.
Agreed. But I don't know if they have the bottle.
Well they don't have the cash to throw at share / bond holders so it's be ruthless or create a very simple of attack lines for the opposition at the next election.
Also Canadian Teachers don't have votes in the UK...
I agree entirely with both you and Max on this. Let the shareholders go bust, and screw the bondholders. But it needs to be done in a manner which least spooks bond markets.
Spooking the bond markets for UK utilities would probably be a net benefit as companies will be forced to outline more detailed investment plans and how they intend to service/redeem the bonds from the increased cashflow generated by the investment. Management won't be able to write paper and pay out dividends any more which would be a good result for the UK economy.
Are you including the UK government in that ?
Because they could be the management in the near future.
26% reduction in road casualities 23% in killed / seriously injured 55% drop in people killed 27% drop in slight injuries
And insurance claims down 20%.
The thing that convinced me that this speed reduction policy was a good idea was the stat that vehicles are getting heavier.
Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.
That is patently false and not represented by the data whatsoever.
Decades of technological and safety improvements, including crash test designs and iterations, mean you are far, far, far less likely to die today than decades ago. Which includes pedestrians.
That is true, but does not contradict the above point that "Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.".
Perhaps rather than having a speed limit we should have a momentum limit?
It does contradict it.
A lot of arguments being made still rely upon old data. Most claims made by "road safety campaigners" who want speed limits cut use obsolete data from the 1970s or 1990s to back up their claims . . . because the data today does not.
In 2004 there were 53.6 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average. In 2022 there were 26.5 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average.
Pedestrians, not drivers, are twice as safe as they were previously.
No it doesn't. Your point about cars being safer is about their ability to quickly decelerate. But TSE's point remains true - if you get hit at 20mph in a heavy car you will be worse off than if you get hit at 30mph in a light one. That's just physics.
Physics requires exact numbers. It depends on "heavy" versus "light". The damage depends on kinetic energy, which equals one half of the mass times the velocity squared.
So for a car hitting you at 20 mph, it would need to be 2.25 times (30/20 * 30/20) as heavy as a car hitting you at 30 mph to do the same damage?
All else being equal, yes.
But all else is not equal, vehicles have changed in design dramatically to cause pedestrian casualties to collapse.
So we ought to be increasing speed limits since the roads are safer, not cut them.
26% reduction in road casualities 23% in killed / seriously injured 55% drop in people killed 27% drop in slight injuries
And insurance claims down 20%.
The thing that convinced me that this speed reduction policy was a good idea was the stat that vehicles are getting heavier.
Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.
That is patently false and not represented by the data whatsoever.
Decades of technological and safety improvements, including crash test designs and iterations, mean you are far, far, far less likely to die today than decades ago. Which includes pedestrians.
That is true, but does not contradict the above point that "Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.".
Perhaps rather than having a speed limit we should have a momentum limit?
It does contradict it.
A lot of arguments being made still rely upon old data. Most claims made by "road safety campaigners" who want speed limits cut use obsolete data from the 1970s or 1990s to back up their claims . . . because the data today does not.
In 2004 there were 53.6 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average. In 2022 there were 26.5 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average.
Pedestrians, not drivers, are twice as safe as they were previously.
No it doesn't. Your point about cars being safer is about their ability to quickly decelerate. But TSE's point remains true - if you get hit at 20mph in a heavy car you will be worse off than if you get hit at 30mph in a light one. That's just physics.
Hang on.
If it was a square block running into a square block dead on, then that might well be true.
But the energy is not all dissipated in that way. In particular, a pedestrian is (typically) thrown up and onto the car. 30mph crashes are incredibly dangerous compared to 20mph one because you don't have time to get thrown upwards and the damage to your lower body - including severing of the spinal column - is extreme.
The construction of the car is more important than the mass. A modern car (a saloon car, not what the Americans call a light truck) will deform extensively in the bumper and bonnet when involved in a pedestrian impact - whereas an older one is designed much more for car-car collisions, and the pedestrian has his legs broken by the metal bumper and his head broken by the top of the engine underneath the bonnet.
As an aside on "Light Trucks" ie Tonka Tanks, they are simply exempt from many of the safety regs that apply to cars in the USA. That's been a scandal for a very long time, and manufacturers have used their influence to prevent suitable regulations being applied.
Indeed, this is something you and I can completely agree on. You are 100% correct.
This is something I would not want to see US rules introduced on, and they're not happening here.
Any use of US data instead instead of UK data is showing dishonesty or a lack of comprehension on this by the person doing so.
The popularity of SUVs vs cars is safety problem though, cars having lower bonnets, the pedestrian was more likely to be go over the bonnet than under it. Stats demonstrate that 20mph is safer than 30mph, no need to go into any physics and the relevance of the theoretical stopping distance is considerably reduced versus reckless or distracted driving, as demonstrated by the vehicular war on stationary objects such as lamposts.
UK SUVs are cars. They are not American
Look at the Nissan Qashqai or the Kia Sportage, they are popular UK SUVs and they have all the safety features of modern cars, including modern, safer bonnets.
Contrast with the Ford F150 which to the best of my knowledge is not sold in this country.
The Ford Ranger, a smaller truck built to car standards, is sold in the UK and Europe, but not the F-series.
If you see an F-series it will be a one-off import, left hand drive, and usually a work truck for something specific like towing heavy trailers. Plus maybe a few hanging around outside football club training grounds.
I go for simple people carriers.
I think my next vehicle will be a G-Wagen.
Ha, you’re turning into an old footballer getting one of those in the UK!
The new G is actually very nice to drive, much more of a car than the terrible-handling-but-cool-looking truck that was the previous model. Very popular in my neck of the woods.
That said, the GLS is a better vehicle in almost every way.
Best vehicle I’ve ever hard was the Porsche Cayenne Turbo.
That was basically a sports cars on a 4x4 floor plan.
They’re good fun. I drove the standard V8 one a few years back, and can’t say I ever thought it really needed another 150bhp though!
There does come a point where a car has simply too much power that cannot be used. It was why I liked the JCW mini so much, enough power to have fun, not too much to scare you when you wanted to be silly...
Picking up "lidos with views of cathedrals", it's a bit of a challenge as cathedrals tend to be urban. Wild swimming with views may be a better option. The best option may be the seaside in the South, or pleasant churches which are not cathedrals next to rivers.
I can do you a castle, at St Andrews, and a tidal pool. But that's the North sea off Scotland, so it will freeze your balls off (1). Lots more castles (2). Hathersage Lido may have views of Peak District hills - @TSE can advise.
For cathedrals - Salisbury and the Avon, perhaps? Or use of Cathedral Schools pools in the summer - Salisbury school has an outdoor one.
The best would be the Minster Pool at Lichfield - they are running "Lichfield Beach" this summer, so that's a surprise. Local authority missed a trick.
I really can't see why urban open water swimming is so restricted.
My favourite would be Melbourne Poole, Derbyshire, near one of the top Norman Churches in the country, with Sheela-na-Gig. But Melbourne is a very Nimby sort of place; also the only place I have *ever* been asked not to inject insulin in a restaurant.
As things stand, try the Anchor Church, on the Rover Trent nr Ingleby. My photo for the day:
For more, I think there is a fighting chance that access legislation in England may get overhauled now the Landowners' Party are out, and that may include a universal-with-limitations right to navigate rivers as Scotland, including lake / reservoir access. Re-regulation of water companies may help.
THe sort of access right the Landowners' Party tried to extinguish completely on land and water in Scotland rather than allow the codification of the open access enjoyed immemorial?
That's a very interesting suggestion - good luck down there.
I hope there's been a sea change. Nulab did a lot, but got quite bogged down.
One notorious move was around the Right to Claim Rights of Way due to historic usage, where an agreement had been reached between NFU type bodies and Ramblers type bodies, and Theresa Coffey the Minister threw it out and just abolished it on her own say so at 5 days notice.
That was later reversed, but it's indicative of the basic assumptions - which have now changed to at least some degree. I'm not sure how far it goes.
But Theresa Coffey and friends are now largely reduced to a tinny wibbling noise emerging from the dustbin of history. That is, a sunk cost - and we start from here.
One thing we do have are that creating and upgrading footpaths etc are now in Sustainable Farming Payments, which is an opportunity. That is a Boris Johnson thing worked through this spring - so credit to the Tories for that. I'd like to see Ukraine style field margins with a national network of active travel routes through them.
Well, NuLab was responsible for the 2003 Scottish legislation, at least in being the major component of the governing coalition, though one would need to do some deep diving to be sure how far the LDs, their partner, drove or hindered the legislation (I suspect the former, if anything). But of course the original legal background was different, even if the landowners tried to argue that that should mean no presumption of legal access at all (ie no rights of way system).
England, and maybe Wales, have a strange system of "access land" (eg would be a SSSI or viewpoint and non-farmable part of a hill) which can be dedicated but do not require a Right of Way to get there.
Second thought of the day - consider it a BOGOF for the first day of the new month.
I've been interested to read the Police citing disinformation as a cause for some of the disturbances coming off the Southport murders. One example - there was a video showing a couple of groups of young men in Southen fighting at one end of the promenade with machetes and that inevitably went viral and caused all sort of comment.
Youngsters fighting in Southend is hardly news - it's been going on for at least 60 years if not longer. It might be machetes now rather than switchblades or baseball bats but let's not imagine this is some new horror vested on us. The change is it is filmed in real time, uploaded onto X and within minutes is seen by hundreds if not thousands helped by a nice attention grabbling title like "Big Machete Fight in Southend" or whatever.
The power of misinformation or disinformation has been exposed this week (if it wasn't known even back in 2011 for example when the disorder then was largely fanned if not orchestrated by a nascent Twitter). You can't put the genie back in the bottle unfortunately but as we know a growing number of people get their "news" from X or other social media how do we respond?
Those with a functioning brain cell might want to consider the wisdom of commenting on every X posting as soon as it happens or taking half a story and making it the full story (as we've seen with the Manchester Airport business). We're not Reuters or the PA - reading something from X doesn't make it true (a wise man once said the truth is out there, perhaps, but it's becoming a lot harder to find in the jungle of disinformation).
As an aside, we also know the impact of the combination of hot weather and easily available alcohol on some people. Somebody once spoke about personal responsibility - wither that?
We are ignoring some obvious solutions
i) Ban Twitter and its variants (Bluesky, Mastodon, Truth Social, Telegraph), or ii) Nationalise them
"You can't put the genie back in the bottle"...well, yes you can.
One way of quelling disturbances is the use of water cannons. Perhaps a heavy thunderstorm would have the same effect!
I remember how I could predict imminent thunderstorms at middle school by the amount of lunchtime playground fights that broke out.
Like racist rioting increases the more the temperature goes above 30C?
Exactly.
Proposed - a function that takes the temperature and the time pre/post lager shed. The output is the aggression level on PB.
I'm old enough to remember the 'British Riots' (as the BBC called them, so persistently that the Scots, Welsh and even the Nirish complained about the damage to tourism) which unaccountably happened in a separate part of the UK in 2011. In July/August,. too. Maybe there's something in that function?
Rioting seems correlated with summer, around the world, I think.
And inversely to rainfall, too, as the 'British Riots' suggest. Though there were other reasons in that case.
I remember how I could predict imminent thunderstorms at middle school by the amount of lunchtime playground fights that broke out.
Like racist rioting increases the more the temperature goes above 30C?
Exactly.
Proposed - a function that takes the temperature and the time pre/post lager shed. The output is the aggression level on PB.
I'm old enough to remember the 'British Riots' (as the BBC called them, so persistently that the Scots, Welsh and even the Nirish complained about the damage to tourism) which unaccountably happened in a separate part of the UK in 2011. In July/August,. too. Maybe there's something in that function?
Rioting seems correlated with summer, around the world, I think.
The question is do the disaster grifters (Farage, Tate, Robinson etc) have an eye on the thermometer when they churn out their ‘only asking questions’ bullshit.
Second thought of the day - consider it a BOGOF for the first day of the new month.
I've been interested to read the Police citing disinformation as a cause for some of the disturbances coming off the Southport murders. One example - there was a video showing a couple of groups of young men in Southen fighting at one end of the promenade with machetes and that inevitably went viral and caused all sort of comment.
Youngsters fighting in Southend is hardly news - it's been going on for at least 60 years if not longer. It might be machetes now rather than switchblades or baseball bats but let's not imagine this is some new horror vested on us. The change is it is filmed in real time, uploaded onto X and within minutes is seen by hundreds if not thousands helped by a nice attention grabbling title like "Big Machete Fight in Southend" or whatever.
The power of misinformation or disinformation has been exposed this week (if it wasn't known even back in 2011 for example when the disorder then was largely fanned if not orchestrated by a nascent Twitter). You can't put the genie back in the bottle unfortunately but as we know a growing number of people get their "news" from X or other social media how do we respond?
Those with a functioning brain cell might want to consider the wisdom of commenting on every X posting as soon as it happens or taking half a story and making it the full story (as we've seen with the Manchester Airport business). We're not Reuters or the PA - reading something from X doesn't make it true (a wise man once said the truth is out there, perhaps, but it's becoming a lot harder to find in the jungle of disinformation).
As an aside, we also know the impact of the combination of hot weather and easily available alcohol on some people. Somebody once spoke about personal responsibility - wither that?
We are ignoring some obvious solutions
i) Ban Twitter and its variants (Bluesky, Mastodon, Truth Social, Telegraph), or ii) Nationalise them
"You can't put the genie back in the bottle"...well, yes you can.
One way of quelling disturbances is the use of water cannons. Perhaps a heavy thunderstorm would have the same effect!
Well, London and the Home Counties look like getting a douche today.
26% reduction in road casualities 23% in killed / seriously injured 55% drop in people killed 27% drop in slight injuries
And insurance claims down 20%.
The thing that convinced me that this speed reduction policy was a good idea was the stat that vehicles are getting heavier.
Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.
That is patently false and not represented by the data whatsoever.
Decades of technological and safety improvements, including crash test designs and iterations, mean you are far, far, far less likely to die today than decades ago. Which includes pedestrians.
That is true, but does not contradict the above point that "Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.".
Perhaps rather than having a speed limit we should have a momentum limit?
It does contradict it.
A lot of arguments being made still rely upon old data. Most claims made by "road safety campaigners" who want speed limits cut use obsolete data from the 1970s or 1990s to back up their claims . . . because the data today does not.
In 2004 there were 53.6 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average. In 2022 there were 26.5 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average.
Pedestrians, not drivers, are twice as safe as they were previously.
No it doesn't. Your point about cars being safer is about their ability to quickly decelerate. But TSE's point remains true - if you get hit at 20mph in a heavy car you will be worse off than if you get hit at 30mph in a light one. That's just physics.
Hang on.
If it was a square block running into a square block dead on, then that might well be true.
But the energy is not all dissipated in that way. In particular, a pedestrian is (typically) thrown up and onto the car. 30mph crashes are incredibly dangerous compared to 20mph one because you don't have time to get thrown upwards and the damage to your lower body - including severing of the spinal column - is extreme.
The construction of the car is more important than the mass. A modern car (a saloon car, not what the Americans call a light truck) will deform extensively in the bumper and bonnet when involved in a pedestrian impact - whereas an older one is designed much more for car-car collisions, and the pedestrian has his legs broken by the metal bumper and his head broken by the top of the engine underneath the bonnet.
As an aside on "Light Trucks" ie Tonka Tanks, they are simply exempt from many of the safety regs that apply to cars in the USA. That's been a scandal for a very long time, and manufacturers have used their influence to prevent suitable regulations being applied.
Indeed, this is something you and I can completely agree on. You are 100% correct.
This is something I would not want to see US rules introduced on, and they're not happening here.
Any use of US data instead instead of UK data is showing dishonesty or a lack of comprehension on this by the person doing so.
The popularity of SUVs vs cars is safety problem though, cars having lower bonnets, the pedestrian was more likely to be go over the bonnet than under it. Stats demonstrate that 20mph is safer than 30mph, no need to go into any physics and the relevance of the theoretical stopping distance is considerably reduced versus reckless or distracted driving, as demonstrated by the vehicular war on stationary objects such as lamposts.
UK SUVs are cars. They are not American
Look at the Nissan Qashqai or the Kia Sportage, they are popular UK SUVs and they have all the safety features of modern cars, including modern, safer bonnets.
Contrast with the Ford F150 which to the best of my knowledge is not sold in this country.
The Ford Ranger, a smaller truck built to car standards, is sold in the UK and Europe, but not the F-series.
If you see an F-series it will be a one-off import, left hand drive, and usually a work truck for something specific like towing heavy trailers. Plus maybe a few hanging around outside football club training grounds.
I go for simple people carriers.
I think my next vehicle will be a G-Wagen.
Ha, you’re turning into an old footballer getting one of those in the UK!
The new G is actually very nice to drive, much more of a car than the terrible-handling-but-cool-looking truck that was the previous model. Very popular in my neck of the woods.
That said, the GLS is a better vehicle in almost every way.
Best vehicle I’ve ever hard was the Porsche Cayenne Turbo.
That was basically a sports cars on a 4x4 floor plan.
They’re good fun. I drove the standard V8 one a few years back, and can’t say I ever thought it really needed another 150bhp though!
The joys of a long distance relationship.
I lived in North Yorkshire, worked in Leeds, and she lived in Birkenhead.
She couldn’t drive so every bit of BHP helped.
Yeah, long distance relationships when one of you doesn’t drive isn’t fun.
Second thought of the day - consider it a BOGOF for the first day of the new month.
I've been interested to read the Police citing disinformation as a cause for some of the disturbances coming off the Southport murders. One example - there was a video showing a couple of groups of young men in Southen fighting at one end of the promenade with machetes and that inevitably went viral and caused all sort of comment.
Youngsters fighting in Southend is hardly news - it's been going on for at least 60 years if not longer. It might be machetes now rather than switchblades or baseball bats but let's not imagine this is some new horror vested on us. The change is it is filmed in real time, uploaded onto X and within minutes is seen by hundreds if not thousands helped by a nice attention grabbling title like "Big Machete Fight in Southend" or whatever.
The power of misinformation or disinformation has been exposed this week (if it wasn't known even back in 2011 for example when the disorder then was largely fanned if not orchestrated by a nascent Twitter). You can't put the genie back in the bottle unfortunately but as we know a growing number of people get their "news" from X or other social media how do we respond?
Those with a functioning brain cell might want to consider the wisdom of commenting on every X posting as soon as it happens or taking half a story and making it the full story (as we've seen with the Manchester Airport business). We're not Reuters or the PA - reading something from X doesn't make it true (a wise man once said the truth is out there, perhaps, but it's becoming a lot harder to find in the jungle of disinformation).
As an aside, we also know the impact of the combination of hot weather and easily available alcohol on some people. Somebody once spoke about personal responsibility - wither that?
We are ignoring some obvious solutions
i) Ban Twitter and its variants (Bluesky, Mastodon, Truth Social, Telegraph), or ii) Nationalise them
"You can't put the genie back in the bottle"...well, yes you can.
One way of quelling disturbances is the use of water cannons. Perhaps a heavy thunderstorm would have the same effect!
Well, London and the Home Counties look like getting a douche today.
Is Boris Johnson returning from one of his innumerable holidays?
Second thought of the day - consider it a BOGOF for the first day of the new month.
I've been interested to read the Police citing disinformation as a cause for some of the disturbances coming off the Southport murders. One example - there was a video showing a couple of groups of young men in Southen fighting at one end of the promenade with machetes and that inevitably went viral and caused all sort of comment.
Youngsters fighting in Southend is hardly news - it's been going on for at least 60 years if not longer. It might be machetes now rather than switchblades or baseball bats but let's not imagine this is some new horror vested on us. The change is it is filmed in real time, uploaded onto X and within minutes is seen by hundreds if not thousands helped by a nice attention grabbling title like "Big Machete Fight in Southend" or whatever.
The power of misinformation or disinformation has been exposed this week (if it wasn't known even back in 2011 for example when the disorder then was largely fanned if not orchestrated by a nascent Twitter). You can't put the genie back in the bottle unfortunately but as we know a growing number of people get their "news" from X or other social media how do we respond?
Those with a functioning brain cell might want to consider the wisdom of commenting on every X posting as soon as it happens or taking half a story and making it the full story (as we've seen with the Manchester Airport business). We're not Reuters or the PA - reading something from X doesn't make it true (a wise man once said the truth is out there, perhaps, but it's becoming a lot harder to find in the jungle of disinformation).
As an aside, we also know the impact of the combination of hot weather and easily available alcohol on some people. Somebody once spoke about personal responsibility - wither that?
We are ignoring some obvious solutions
i) Ban Twitter and its variants (Bluesky, Mastodon, Truth Social, Telegraph), or ii) Nationalise them
"You can't put the genie back in the bottle"...well, yes you can.
One way of quelling disturbances is the use of water cannons. Perhaps a heavy thunderstorm would have the same effect!
Well, London and the Home Counties look like getting a douche today.
Based on the news London and the Home Counties look like they've got many douches in recent days.
Picking up "lidos with views of cathedrals", it's a bit of a challenge as cathedrals tend to be urban. Wild swimming with views may be a better option. The best option may be the seaside in the South, or pleasant churches which are not cathedrals next to rivers.
I can do you a castle, at St Andrews, and a tidal pool. But that's the North sea off Scotland, so it will freeze your balls off (1). Lots more castles (2). Hathersage Lido may have views of Peak District hills - @TSE can advise.
For cathedrals - Salisbury and the Avon, perhaps? Or use of Cathedral Schools pools in the summer - Salisbury school has an outdoor one.
The best would be the Minster Pool at Lichfield - they are running "Lichfield Beach" this summer, so that's a surprise. Local authority missed a trick.
I really can't see why urban open water swimming is so restricted.
My favourite would be Melbourne Poole, Derbyshire, near one of the top Norman Churches in the country, with Sheela-na-Gig. But Melbourne is a very Nimby sort of place; also the only place I have *ever* been asked not to inject insulin in a restaurant.
As things stand, try the Anchor Church, on the Rover Trent nr Ingleby. My photo for the day:
For more, I think there is a fighting chance that access legislation in England may get overhauled now the Landowners' Party are out, and that may include a universal-with-limitations right to navigate rivers as Scotland, including lake / reservoir access. Re-regulation of water companies may help.
THe sort of access right the Landowners' Party tried to extinguish completely on land and water in Scotland rather than allow the codification of the open access enjoyed immemorial?
That's a very interesting suggestion - good luck down there.
I hope there's been a sea change. Nulab did a lot, but got quite bogged down.
One notorious move was around the Right to Claim Rights of Way due to historic usage, where an agreement had been reached between NFU type bodies and Ramblers type bodies, and Theresa Coffey the Minister threw it out and just abolished it on her own say so at 5 days notice.
That was later reversed, but it's indicative of the basic assumptions - which have now changed to at least some degree. I'm not sure how far it goes.
But Theresa Coffey and friends are now largely reduced to a tinny wibbling noise emerging from the dustbin of history. That is, a sunk cost - and we start from here.
One thing we do have are that creating and upgrading footpaths etc are now in Sustainable Farming Payments, which is an opportunity. That is a Boris Johnson thing worked through this spring - so credit to the Tories for that. I'd like to see Ukraine style field margins with a national network of active travel routes through them.
Well, NuLab was responsible for the 2003 Scottish legislation, at least in being the major component of the governing coalition, though one would need to do some deep diving to be sure how far the LDs, their partner, drove or hindered the legislation (I suspect the former, if anything). But of course the original legal background was different, even if the landowners tried to argue that that should mean no presumption of legal access at all (ie no rights of way system).
England, and maybe Wales, have a strange system of "access land" (eg would be a SSSI or viewpoint and non-farmable part of a hill) which can be dedicated but do not require a Right of Way to get there.
There was, it must be said, a time when it looked to some as if NuLab in Scotland was being persuaded by the Tories and the landowners to abolish the presumption of access to land. It still gars me grue* to think of it.
I note from Edinburgh Minute (great newsletter that gives you today's local news in a digest form) that Edinburgh bin men are going on strike from August 14th to the 22nd - i.e. right in the middle of the Edinburgh festival...
26% reduction in road casualities 23% in killed / seriously injured 55% drop in people killed 27% drop in slight injuries
And insurance claims down 20%.
The thing that convinced me that this speed reduction policy was a good idea was the stat that vehicles are getting heavier.
Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.
That is patently false and not represented by the data whatsoever.
Decades of technological and safety improvements, including crash test designs and iterations, mean you are far, far, far less likely to die today than decades ago. Which includes pedestrians.
That is true, but does not contradict the above point that "Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.".
Perhaps rather than having a speed limit we should have a momentum limit?
It does contradict it.
A lot of arguments being made still rely upon old data. Most claims made by "road safety campaigners" who want speed limits cut use obsolete data from the 1970s or 1990s to back up their claims . . . because the data today does not.
In 2004 there were 53.6 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average. In 2022 there were 26.5 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average.
Pedestrians, not drivers, are twice as safe as they were previously.
No it doesn't. Your point about cars being safer is about their ability to quickly decelerate. But TSE's point remains true - if you get hit at 20mph in a heavy car you will be worse off than if you get hit at 30mph in a light one. That's just physics.
Hang on.
If it was a square block running into a square block dead on, then that might well be true.
But the energy is not all dissipated in that way. In particular, a pedestrian is (typically) thrown up and onto the car. 30mph crashes are incredibly dangerous compared to 20mph one because you don't have time to get thrown upwards and the damage to your lower body - including severing of the spinal column - is extreme.
The construction of the car is more important than the mass. A modern car (a saloon car, not what the Americans call a light truck) will deform extensively in the bumper and bonnet when involved in a pedestrian impact - whereas an older one is designed much more for car-car collisions, and the pedestrian has his legs broken by the metal bumper and his head broken by the top of the engine underneath the bonnet.
As an aside on "Light Trucks" ie Tonka Tanks, they are simply exempt from many of the safety regs that apply to cars in the USA. That's been a scandal for a very long time, and manufacturers have used their influence to prevent suitable regulations being applied.
Indeed, this is something you and I can completely agree on. You are 100% correct.
This is something I would not want to see US rules introduced on, and they're not happening here.
Any use of US data instead instead of UK data is showing dishonesty or a lack of comprehension on this by the person doing so.
The popularity of SUVs vs cars is safety problem though, cars having lower bonnets, the pedestrian was more likely to be go over the bonnet than under it. Stats demonstrate that 20mph is safer than 30mph, no need to go into any physics and the relevance of the theoretical stopping distance is considerably reduced versus reckless or distracted driving, as demonstrated by the vehicular war on stationary objects such as lamposts.
UK SUVs are cars. They are not American
Look at the Nissan Qashqai or the Kia Sportage, they are popular UK SUVs and they have all the safety features of modern cars, including modern, safer bonnets.
Contrast with the Ford F150 which to the best of my knowledge is not sold in this country.
The Ford Ranger, a smaller truck built to car standards, is sold in the UK and Europe, but not the F-series.
If you see an F-series it will be a one-off import, left hand drive, and usually a work truck for something specific like towing heavy trailers. Plus maybe a few hanging around outside football club training grounds.
I go for simple people carriers.
I think my next vehicle will be a G-Wagen.
Ha, you’re turning into an old footballer getting one of those in the UK!
The new G is actually very nice to drive, much more of a car than the terrible-handling-but-cool-looking truck that was the previous model. Very popular in my neck of the woods.
That said, the GLS is a better vehicle in almost every way.
Best vehicle I’ve ever hard was the Porsche Cayenne Turbo.
That was basically a sports cars on a 4x4 floor plan.
They’re good fun. I drove the standard V8 one a few years back, and can’t say I ever thought it really needed another 150bhp though!
The joys of a long distance relationship.
I lived in North Yorkshire, worked in Leeds, and she lived in Birkenhead.
She couldn’t drive so every bit of BHP helped.
Yeah, long distance relationships when one of you doesn’t drive isn’t fun.
I quite like zero points on my driving licence and with it cheap car insurance.
26% reduction in road casualities 23% in killed / seriously injured 55% drop in people killed 27% drop in slight injuries
And insurance claims down 20%.
The thing that convinced me that this speed reduction policy was a good idea was the stat that vehicles are getting heavier.
Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.
That is patently false and not represented by the data whatsoever.
Decades of technological and safety improvements, including crash test designs and iterations, mean you are far, far, far less likely to die today than decades ago. Which includes pedestrians.
That is true, but does not contradict the above point that "Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.".
Perhaps rather than having a speed limit we should have a momentum limit?
It does contradict it.
A lot of arguments being made still rely upon old data. Most claims made by "road safety campaigners" who want speed limits cut use obsolete data from the 1970s or 1990s to back up their claims . . . because the data today does not.
In 2004 there were 53.6 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average. In 2022 there were 26.5 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average.
Pedestrians, not drivers, are twice as safe as they were previously.
No it doesn't. Your point about cars being safer is about their ability to quickly decelerate. But TSE's point remains true - if you get hit at 20mph in a heavy car you will be worse off than if you get hit at 30mph in a light one. That's just physics.
Hang on.
If it was a square block running into a square block dead on, then that might well be true.
But the energy is not all dissipated in that way. In particular, a pedestrian is (typically) thrown up and onto the car. 30mph crashes are incredibly dangerous compared to 20mph one because you don't have time to get thrown upwards and the damage to your lower body - including severing of the spinal column - is extreme.
Like everything else, it's complicated. But one explanation for the US figures is that getting hit by a tall SUV is a bit like colliding with a square block dead on - and is much more likely to result in a severe head injury.
I honestly think that the crossover is going to come very soon, possibly even today. The latest polls show Harris between 3 and 7(!) points ahead. Trump is imploding, his choice of VP has gone down very badly and Harris looks competent, comparatively young and sane.
I don't see the current odds lasting long.
Of course there is a long way to go but Trump is the unhinged old man of this contest now.
I would like to think so, but America is a weird place, so being weird is not a bar to support. The pussy grabbing, riot provoking bigot still has nearly half of America supporting him. Astonishing but true.
Whereas we elected a Prime Minister who had been sacked from multiple jobs for lying and doesn't know how many children he has. That ended well.
Thames Water is just one of many examples of pisspoor administration by the last government. So focused on Brexit, stoking Culture War and graft to bother with the mundanities of competent administration.
They deserve an eternity on the Opposition benches.
Why do you put the blame for Thames Water on politicians as opposed to Ofwat whose actual purpose is to regulate the water companies.
Because the politicians have let Ofwat do a piss (other words for effluent can be substituted) poor job...
So you want a minister for regulating regulators or perhaps a regulator for regulating regulators, Ofof.
And if there are disputes between the supply company, the regulator, the regulators regulator and the 'here today gone next year' politician who is supposed to be 'the expert' ?
Remember 'experts' ? Those people politicians are always condemned for not paying attention to.
You don't have to be an expert to note on a gross scale how badly regulators have got it wrong. The ministers with responsibility could very easily have noted how much cash was going out as dividends. compared to what was being spent on infrastructure. If they'd thought to ask.
We aren't arguing over minutiae.
Why is that the regulators responsibility?
The regulators responsibility is to ensure water is clean. That happened, in leaps and bounds, post-privatisation.
It is shareholders/bondholders responsibility to look after their interests. It is not the regulators responsibility to look after bondholders, it is the regulators responsibility to look after the public.
But the regulators are also responsible for deciding how much money a monopoly can charge, of course; the market can't do that. Macquarie completely hoodwinked them.
The other point is that we're not starting from scratch now. Thames has been loaded up with a huge amount of debt, and the owners are arguing the regulator should help them finance it by putting up prices. Parsing out what amount of debt is reasonable in terms of financing infrastructure work - and how much has been incurred simply as a means of extracting cash out of the company (which definitely happened under Macquarie) - is now as much a political as it is a regulatory issue.
The shareholders failed in their due diligence in that case. The taxpayer/bill payer shouldn't pay for that failure and the regulator needs to be stern here and tell them to get fucked.
It's time to let it go bankrupt along with all of the other water companies, have the bondholders take a hefty haircut and let them either take it over or sell the assets to the state for a nominal amount on the basis that the state takes on the remaining liability ~ 30-40% of what it is currently.
Water is one part of our infrastructure that should never have been privatised and Labour have an opportunity to bring it all back under state ownership over the next 5 years by working with the regulator to wipe out the shareholders.
Agreed. But I don't know if they have the bottle.
Well they don't have the cash to throw at share / bond holders so it's be ruthless or create a very simple of attack lines for the opposition at the next election.
Also Canadian Teachers don't have votes in the UK...
I agree entirely with both you and Max on this. Let the shareholders go bust, and screw the bondholders. But it needs to be done in a manner which least spooks bond markets.
Spooking the bond markets for UK utilities would probably be a net benefit as companies will be forced to outline more detailed investment plans and how they intend to service/redeem the bonds from the increased cashflow generated by the investment. Management won't be able to write paper and pay out dividends any more which would be a good result for the UK economy.
Are you including the UK government in that ?
Because they could be the management in the near future.
QAnd on energy we could have Ed Miliband versus Macquarrie.
I note from Edinburgh Minute (great newsletter that gives you today's local news in a digest form) that Edinburgh bin men are going on strike from August 14th to the 22nd - i.e. right in the middle of the Edinburgh festival...
They did the same in 2022. Almost a Festival tradition..
I'm beginning to think that the odds on Ms Harris are looking attractive.
Been saying it for ages. Once the media turns on Trump, this becomes a trainwreck. He will be increasingly ridiculed.
The media turned on Trump in 2016, and it didn’t help them much.
Meanwhile, much of the alternative media is turning on Harris. Here’s Joe Rogan and Michael Malice taking the piss out of the mainstream media for their total u-turn on her. https://x.com/vigilantfox/status/1818354746526499090 ^^^ this interview will get tens of millions of views, more than all of the mainstream news combined, especially among the younger demographics.
I think you and Mister Bedfordshire seem to miss the obvious difference.
Even Fox News are ripping into Trump.
That would be the Fox who fired Tucker Carlson and are now seen to be as infected with the woke liberal virus as the rest of them?
I see your comment is rooted as in much reality as most of your other posts.
Seems to me that the one consistent feature of his posts is their being rooted in talking points coming out of Moscow.
One of the wonderful things about conversations here is that Putinbots are briefly toyed with then squashed like a bug. Makes a chap proud to be British.
Out there, they have been allowed to infest the internet. And none of us know how much shit we're swallowing. With the consequences we have seen across the Atlantic.
Yes, but I don't think MisterBedfordshire is a Putinbot? He's been here under various guises for years hasn't he? You can't just say someone who you think is a bit right wing is a Putinbot.
Bless. I bet you took everything that Moonrabbit account was posting at face value too.
26% reduction in road casualities 23% in killed / seriously injured 55% drop in people killed 27% drop in slight injuries
And insurance claims down 20%.
The thing that convinced me that this speed reduction policy was a good idea was the stat that vehicles are getting heavier.
Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.
That is patently false and not represented by the data whatsoever.
Decades of technological and safety improvements, including crash test designs and iterations, mean you are far, far, far less likely to die today than decades ago. Which includes pedestrians.
That is true, but does not contradict the above point that "Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.".
Perhaps rather than having a speed limit we should have a momentum limit?
It does contradict it.
A lot of arguments being made still rely upon old data. Most claims made by "road safety campaigners" who want speed limits cut use obsolete data from the 1970s or 1990s to back up their claims . . . because the data today does not.
In 2004 there were 53.6 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average. In 2022 there were 26.5 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average.
Pedestrians, not drivers, are twice as safe as they were previously.
No it doesn't. Your point about cars being safer is about their ability to quickly decelerate. But TSE's point remains true - if you get hit at 20mph in a heavy car you will be worse off than if you get hit at 30mph in a light one. That's just physics.
Hang on.
If it was a square block running into a square block dead on, then that might well be true.
But the energy is not all dissipated in that way. In particular, a pedestrian is (typically) thrown up and onto the car. 30mph crashes are incredibly dangerous compared to 20mph one because you don't have time to get thrown upwards and the damage to your lower body - including severing of the spinal column - is extreme.
The construction of the car is more important than the mass. A modern car (a saloon car, not what the Americans call a light truck) will deform extensively in the bumper and bonnet when involved in a pedestrian impact - whereas an older one is designed much more for car-car collisions, and the pedestrian has his legs broken by the metal bumper and his head broken by the top of the engine underneath the bonnet.
As an aside on "Light Trucks" ie Tonka Tanks, they are simply exempt from many of the safety regs that apply to cars in the USA. That's been a scandal for a very long time, and manufacturers have used their influence to prevent suitable regulations being applied.
Indeed, this is something you and I can completely agree on. You are 100% correct.
This is something I would not want to see US rules introduced on, and they're not happening here.
Any use of US data instead instead of UK data is showing dishonesty or a lack of comprehension on this by the person doing so.
The popularity of SUVs vs cars is safety problem though, cars having lower bonnets, the pedestrian was more likely to be go over the bonnet than under it. Stats demonstrate that 20mph is safer than 30mph, no need to go into any physics and the relevance of the theoretical stopping distance is considerably reduced versus reckless or distracted driving, as demonstrated by the vehicular war on stationary objects such as lamposts.
UK SUVs are cars. They are not American
Look at the Nissan Qashqai or the Kia Sportage, they are popular UK SUVs and they have all the safety features of modern cars, including modern, safer bonnets.
Contrast with the Ford F150 which to the best of my knowledge is not sold in this country.
The Ford Ranger, a smaller truck built to car standards, is sold in the UK and Europe, but not the F-series.
If you see an F-series it will be a one-off import, left hand drive, and usually a work truck for something specific like towing heavy trailers. Plus maybe a few hanging around outside football club training grounds.
I go for simple people carriers.
I think my next vehicle will be a G-Wagen.
Ha, you’re turning into an old footballer getting one of those in the UK!
The new G is actually very nice to drive, much more of a car than the terrible-handling-but-cool-looking truck that was the previous model. Very popular in my neck of the woods.
That said, the GLS is a better vehicle in almost every way.
Best vehicle I’ve ever hard was the Porsche Cayenne Turbo.
That was basically a sports cars on a 4x4 floor plan.
They’re good fun. I drove the standard V8 one a few years back, and can’t say I ever thought it really needed another 150bhp though!
The joys of a long distance relationship.
I lived in North Yorkshire, worked in Leeds, and she lived in Birkenhead.
She couldn’t drive so every bit of BHP helped.
Yeah, long distance relationships when one of you doesn’t drive isn’t fun.
Perhaps if there was a set of reliable high-speed train links in the region that would have helped? 😎
Second thought of the day - consider it a BOGOF for the first day of the new month.
I've been interested to read the Police citing disinformation as a cause for some of the disturbances coming off the Southport murders. One example - there was a video showing a couple of groups of young men in Southen fighting at one end of the promenade with machetes and that inevitably went viral and caused all sort of comment.
Youngsters fighting in Southend is hardly news - it's been going on for at least 60 years if not longer. It might be machetes now rather than switchblades or baseball bats but let's not imagine this is some new horror vested on us. The change is it is filmed in real time, uploaded onto X and within minutes is seen by hundreds if not thousands helped by a nice attention grabbling title like "Big Machete Fight in Southend" or whatever.
The power of misinformation or disinformation has been exposed this week (if it wasn't known even back in 2011 for example when the disorder then was largely fanned if not orchestrated by a nascent Twitter). You can't put the genie back in the bottle unfortunately but as we know a growing number of people get their "news" from X or other social media how do we respond?
Those with a functioning brain cell might want to consider the wisdom of commenting on every X posting as soon as it happens or taking half a story and making it the full story (as we've seen with the Manchester Airport business). We're not Reuters or the PA - reading something from X doesn't make it true (a wise man once said the truth is out there, perhaps, but it's becoming a lot harder to find in the jungle of disinformation).
As an aside, we also know the impact of the combination of hot weather and easily available alcohol on some people. Somebody once spoke about personal responsibility - wither that?
We are ignoring some obvious solutions
i) Ban Twitter and its variants (Bluesky, Mastodon, Truth Social, Telegraph), or ii) Nationalise them
"You can't put the genie back in the bottle"...well, yes you can.
One way of quelling disturbances is the use of water cannons. Perhaps a heavy thunderstorm would have the same effect!
Well, London and the Home Counties look like getting a douche today.
Based on the news London and the Home Counties look like they've got many douches in recent days.
Didn’t Tommy Robinson leave the country to avoid going to court? There was also a story of some model woman doing exactly the same. How not to endear yourself to the judge.
I note from Edinburgh Minute (great newsletter that gives you today's local news in a digest form) that Edinburgh bin men are going on strike from August 14th to the 22nd - i.e. right in the middle of the Edinburgh festival...
How long can Thames Water hold out ? Yet another debt downgrade.
"Environment Secretary Steve Reed last week said the group remained “financially viable” and would not need to be nationalised.
Mr Reed added that there was “no need to have undue concerns at the moment”.
I cant help but think that will bite his arse in the coming months and Reeves will do he blame everyone but herself routine as she suddenly has to find a few billion more.
And while she does have a point on the behaviour the various owners, it does rather raise the question of why she's letting MaQuarie one of the villains of the piece take control of the nations gas grid. Clearly she hasnt been "learning the lessons"
Thames Water has looked doomed ever since interest rates went over about 1%. They were used as a source of capital and cheap debt by the owners as a way of monetising the income flow that came from their customers like they were gilts. The problem is that they got too greedy and the regulator was too stupid to spot the obvious risk, that that income flow was fixed by the margin they were allowed on their services, not by the rate of interest. As soon as the rate of interest increased the sustainable debt fell and the owners refused to pay it back, trying to blackmail the regulator into allowing additional charges instead.
It is a classic example of inept and incompetent regulation. Whether that is simply incompetence in the regulator or incompetence on the part of the people who set up the structure is a bit complicated but it is clear neither were fit for purpose.
Them and many many others.
The oil price is rocketing with the latest middle east goings on. You can forget interest rate cuts any time soon.
In fact with the Tory inflationary actions like double digit minimum wage rises and Ldbour inflationary actions like doctors 22% pensionsble pay rises, the next interest rate change may well be up.
The impact of rising oil prices on real inflation would be deflationary - a rising oil price would not call for the raising of interest rates, it would call for a fall in interest rates to counteract the risk of recession.
That's not what happened when the oil price rose following Russian invasion of Ukraine.
I note from Edinburgh Minute (great newsletter that gives you today's local news in a digest form) that Edinburgh bin men are going on strike from August 14th to the 22nd - i.e. right in the middle of the Edinburgh festival...
They did the same in 2022. Almost a Festival tradition..
Is it possible to tell the difference, given how much litter the Festival attendees like to scatter? Not to mention the flyposters, and the prats who hand oujt reams of handbills which just get dumped.
Mr. Eagles, it's wrong to say Saudi Arabia are to build 11 stadiums. It's 11 stadia. And I'll believe the 'Neom' stadium when I see it.
It is stadia if you believe that stadium is still a Latin loan word. It is stadiums if you believe stadium has been adopted as an English word. The grammatical rule is that you conjugate according to the language the word belongs to. Should the word belong to two languages, conjugate according to the one you're speaking.
Pluralisation is an inflection not conjugation. Conjugation is the modification of a verb to indicate tense, mood and person. Inflection is the modification of any word, not just a verb, to indicate grammatical function; in this case plurality.
As controversial as pineapple on pizza, and topical this week - are there any circumstances under which the word ‘medal’ can properly be used as a verb?
Language has evolved throughout human history. It is inevitable, chill and embrace it.
Any noun can be verbed.
Can verbs be nouned?*
Or would it be acceptable for anyone doing that to be given the lynch?
*Note my verbing of 'noun', although of course that's no more out there than verbing 'verb'. Give me shoot.
26% reduction in road casualities 23% in killed / seriously injured 55% drop in people killed 27% drop in slight injuries
And insurance claims down 20%.
The thing that convinced me that this speed reduction policy was a good idea was the stat that vehicles are getting heavier.
Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.
That is patently false and not represented by the data whatsoever.
Decades of technological and safety improvements, including crash test designs and iterations, mean you are far, far, far less likely to die today than decades ago. Which includes pedestrians.
That is true, but does not contradict the above point that "Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.".
Perhaps rather than having a speed limit we should have a momentum limit?
It does contradict it.
A lot of arguments being made still rely upon old data. Most claims made by "road safety campaigners" who want speed limits cut use obsolete data from the 1970s or 1990s to back up their claims . . . because the data today does not.
In 2004 there were 53.6 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average. In 2022 there were 26.5 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average.
Pedestrians, not drivers, are twice as safe as they were previously.
No it doesn't. Your point about cars being safer is about their ability to quickly decelerate. But TSE's point remains true - if you get hit at 20mph in a heavy car you will be worse off than if you get hit at 30mph in a light one. That's just physics.
Hang on.
If it was a square block running into a square block dead on, then that might well be true.
But the energy is not all dissipated in that way. In particular, a pedestrian is (typically) thrown up and onto the car. 30mph crashes are incredibly dangerous compared to 20mph one because you don't have time to get thrown upwards and the damage to your lower body - including severing of the spinal column - is extreme.
The construction of the car is more important than the mass. A modern car (a saloon car, not what the Americans call a light truck) will deform extensively in the bumper and bonnet when involved in a pedestrian impact - whereas an older one is designed much more for car-car collisions, and the pedestrian has his legs broken by the metal bumper and his head broken by the top of the engine underneath the bonnet.
As an aside on "Light Trucks" ie Tonka Tanks, they are simply exempt from many of the safety regs that apply to cars in the USA. That's been a scandal for a very long time, and manufacturers have used their influence to prevent suitable regulations being applied.
Indeed, this is something you and I can completely agree on. You are 100% correct.
This is something I would not want to see US rules introduced on, and they're not happening here.
Any use of US data instead instead of UK data is showing dishonesty or a lack of comprehension on this by the person doing so.
The popularity of SUVs vs cars is safety problem though, cars having lower bonnets, the pedestrian was more likely to be go over the bonnet than under it. Stats demonstrate that 20mph is safer than 30mph, no need to go into any physics and the relevance of the theoretical stopping distance is considerably reduced versus reckless or distracted driving, as demonstrated by the vehicular war on stationary objects such as lamposts.
UK SUVs are cars. They are not American
Look at the Nissan Qashqai or the Kia Sportage, they are popular UK SUVs and they have all the safety features of modern cars, including modern, safer bonnets.
Contrast with the Ford F150 which to the best of my knowledge is not sold in this country.
The Ford Ranger, a smaller truck built to car standards, is sold in the UK and Europe, but not the F-series.
If you see an F-series it will be a one-off import, left hand drive, and usually a work truck for something specific like towing heavy trailers. Plus maybe a few hanging around outside football club training grounds.
I go for simple people carriers.
I think my next vehicle will be a G-Wagen.
Ha, you’re turning into an old footballer getting one of those in the UK!
The new G is actually very nice to drive, much more of a car than the terrible-handling-but-cool-looking truck that was the previous model. Very popular in my neck of the woods.
That said, the GLS is a better vehicle in almost every way.
Best vehicle I’ve ever hard was the Porsche Cayenne Turbo.
That was basically a sports cars on a 4x4 floor plan.
They’re good fun. I drove the standard V8 one a few years back, and can’t say I ever thought it really needed another 150bhp though!
The joys of a long distance relationship.
I lived in North Yorkshire, worked in Leeds, and she lived in Birkenhead.
She couldn’t drive so every bit of BHP helped.
Yeah, long distance relationships when one of you doesn’t drive isn’t fun.
I quite like zero points on my driving licence and with it cheap car insurance.
I think there was a period when I was on nine points for four years.
One SP whatever would fall off and I’d get a new one.
Mr. Eagles, it's wrong to say Saudi Arabia are to build 11 stadiums. It's 11 stadia. And I'll believe the 'Neom' stadium when I see it.
It is stadia if you believe that stadium is still a Latin loan word. It is stadiums if you believe stadium has been adopted as an English word. The grammatical rule is that you conjugate according to the language the word belongs to. Should the word belong to two languages, conjugate according to the one you're speaking.
Pluralisation is an inflection not conjugation. Conjugation is the modification of a verb to indicate tense, mood and person. Inflection is the modification of any word, not just a verb, to indicate grammatical function; in this case plurality.
As controversial as pineapple on pizza, and topical this week - are there any circumstances under which the word ‘medal’ can properly be used as a verb?
Language has evolved throughout human history. It is inevitable, chill and embrace it.
Any noun can be verbed.
Can verbs be nouned?*
Or would it be acceptable for anyone doing that to be given the lynch?
*Note my verbing of 'noun', although of course that's no more out there than verbing 'verb'. Give me shoot.
Of course, when someone is described as "a fat f**k", that is an example of the nounisation of a verb.
Second thought of the day - consider it a BOGOF for the first day of the new month.
I've been interested to read the Police citing disinformation as a cause for some of the disturbances coming off the Southport murders. One example - there was a video showing a couple of groups of young men in Southen fighting at one end of the promenade with machetes and that inevitably went viral and caused all sort of comment.
Youngsters fighting in Southend is hardly news - it's been going on for at least 60 years if not longer. It might be machetes now rather than switchblades or baseball bats but let's not imagine this is some new horror vested on us. The change is it is filmed in real time, uploaded onto X and within minutes is seen by hundreds if not thousands helped by a nice attention grabbling title like "Big Machete Fight in Southend" or whatever.
The power of misinformation or disinformation has been exposed this week (if it wasn't known even back in 2011 for example when the disorder then was largely fanned if not orchestrated by a nascent Twitter). You can't put the genie back in the bottle unfortunately but as we know a growing number of people get their "news" from X or other social media how do we respond?
Those with a functioning brain cell might want to consider the wisdom of commenting on every X posting as soon as it happens or taking half a story and making it the full story (as we've seen with the Manchester Airport business). We're not Reuters or the PA - reading something from X doesn't make it true (a wise man once said the truth is out there, perhaps, but it's becoming a lot harder to find in the jungle of disinformation).
As an aside, we also know the impact of the combination of hot weather and easily available alcohol on some people. Somebody once spoke about personal responsibility - wither that?
We are ignoring some obvious solutions
i) Ban Twitter and its variants (Bluesky, Mastodon, Truth Social, Telegraph), or ii) Nationalise them
"You can't put the genie back in the bottle"...well, yes you can.
One way of quelling disturbances is the use of water cannons. Perhaps a heavy thunderstorm would have the same effect!
Well, London and the Home Counties look like getting a douche today.
Based on the news London and the Home Counties look like they've got many douches in recent days.
Didn’t Tommy Robinson leave the country to avoid going to court? There was also a story of some model woman doing exactly the same. How not to endear yourself to the judge.
Tommy Robinson didn't need to be in court on Monday - it was optional.
He does need to be in court in October at which point an arrest warrant would be issued if he doesn't turn up.
Took a fair bit of digging to find out what was actually going on given how biased the reporting has been.
I note from Edinburgh Minute (great newsletter that gives you today's local news in a digest form) that Edinburgh bin men are going on strike from August 14th to the 22nd - i.e. right in the middle of the Edinburgh festival...
They did the same in 2022. Almost a Festival tradition..
Is it possible to tell the difference, given how much litter the Festival attendees like to scatter? Not to mention the flyposters, and the prats who hand oujt reams of handbills which just get dumped.
Possibly, though I guess it’s the poor residents with back courts full of rotting rubbish that will bear the brunt. I’m sure the media will be holding SLab-led (with sotto voce support from Unionist parties) Edinburgh Council to account, lots of photos of John Swinney pointing at piles of bulging bin bags and scampering rats. Or perhaps not.
26% reduction in road casualities 23% in killed / seriously injured 55% drop in people killed 27% drop in slight injuries
And insurance claims down 20%.
The thing that convinced me that this speed reduction policy was a good idea was the stat that vehicles are getting heavier.
Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.
That is patently false and not represented by the data whatsoever.
Decades of technological and safety improvements, including crash test designs and iterations, mean you are far, far, far less likely to die today than decades ago. Which includes pedestrians.
That is true, but does not contradict the above point that "Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.".
Perhaps rather than having a speed limit we should have a momentum limit?
It does contradict it.
A lot of arguments being made still rely upon old data. Most claims made by "road safety campaigners" who want speed limits cut use obsolete data from the 1970s or 1990s to back up their claims . . . because the data today does not.
In 2004 there were 53.6 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average. In 2022 there were 26.5 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average.
Pedestrians, not drivers, are twice as safe as they were previously.
No it doesn't. Your point about cars being safer is about their ability to quickly decelerate. But TSE's point remains true - if you get hit at 20mph in a heavy car you will be worse off than if you get hit at 30mph in a light one. That's just physics.
Hang on.
If it was a square block running into a square block dead on, then that might well be true.
But the energy is not all dissipated in that way. In particular, a pedestrian is (typically) thrown up and onto the car. 30mph crashes are incredibly dangerous compared to 20mph one because you don't have time to get thrown upwards and the damage to your lower body - including severing of the spinal column - is extreme.
The construction of the car is more important than the mass. A modern car (a saloon car, not what the Americans call a light truck) will deform extensively in the bumper and bonnet when involved in a pedestrian impact - whereas an older one is designed much more for car-car collisions, and the pedestrian has his legs broken by the metal bumper and his head broken by the top of the engine underneath the bonnet.
As an aside on "Light Trucks" ie Tonka Tanks, they are simply exempt from many of the safety regs that apply to cars in the USA. That's been a scandal for a very long time, and manufacturers have used their influence to prevent suitable regulations being applied.
Indeed, this is something you and I can completely agree on. You are 100% correct.
This is something I would not want to see US rules introduced on, and they're not happening here.
Any use of US data instead instead of UK data is showing dishonesty or a lack of comprehension on this by the person doing so.
The popularity of SUVs vs cars is safety problem though, cars having lower bonnets, the pedestrian was more likely to be go over the bonnet than under it. Stats demonstrate that 20mph is safer than 30mph, no need to go into any physics and the relevance of the theoretical stopping distance is considerably reduced versus reckless or distracted driving, as demonstrated by the vehicular war on stationary objects such as lamposts.
UK SUVs are cars. They are not American
Look at the Nissan Qashqai or the Kia Sportage, they are popular UK SUVs and they have all the safety features of modern cars, including modern, safer bonnets.
Contrast with the Ford F150 which to the best of my knowledge is not sold in this country.
The Ford Ranger, a smaller truck built to car standards, is sold in the UK and Europe, but not the F-series.
If you see an F-series it will be a one-off import, left hand drive, and usually a work truck for something specific like towing heavy trailers. Plus maybe a few hanging around outside football club training grounds.
I go for simple people carriers.
I think my next vehicle will be a G-Wagen.
Ha, you’re turning into an old footballer getting one of those in the UK!
The new G is actually very nice to drive, much more of a car than the terrible-handling-but-cool-looking truck that was the previous model. Very popular in my neck of the woods.
That said, the GLS is a better vehicle in almost every way.
Best vehicle I’ve ever hard was the Porsche Cayenne Turbo.
That was basically a sports cars on a 4x4 floor plan.
They’re good fun. I drove the standard V8 one a few years back, and can’t say I ever thought it really needed another 150bhp though!
The joys of a long distance relationship.
I lived in North Yorkshire, worked in Leeds, and she lived in Birkenhead.
She couldn’t drive so every bit of BHP helped.
Yeah, long distance relationships when one of you doesn’t drive isn’t fun.
Perhaps if there was a set of reliable high-speed train links in the region that would have helped? 😎
Using trains on a Friday afternoon/rush hour is a bit like sex with an ex.
Fun for the first ten minutes then filled with immense regret thereafter as you question your judgment.
Mr. Eagles, it's wrong to say Saudi Arabia are to build 11 stadiums. It's 11 stadia. And I'll believe the 'Neom' stadium when I see it.
It is stadia if you believe that stadium is still a Latin loan word. It is stadiums if you believe stadium has been adopted as an English word. The grammatical rule is that you conjugate according to the language the word belongs to. Should the word belong to two languages, conjugate according to the one you're speaking.
Pluralisation is an inflection not conjugation. Conjugation is the modification of a verb to indicate tense, mood and person. Inflection is the modification of any word, not just a verb, to indicate grammatical function; in this case plurality.
As controversial as pineapple on pizza, and topical this week - are there any circumstances under which the word ‘medal’ can properly be used as a verb?
Language has evolved throughout human history. It is inevitable, chill and embrace it.
Any noun can be verbed.
Can verbs be nouned?*
Or would it be acceptable for anyone doing that to be given the lynch?
*Note my verbing of 'noun', although of course that's no more out there than verbing 'verb'. Give me shoot.
All verbs can be nouned. But some take new forms in so doing - contrast believe/belief with thought/thought, for example. Or indeed doing/doing...
Second thought of the day - consider it a BOGOF for the first day of the new month.
I've been interested to read the Police citing disinformation as a cause for some of the disturbances coming off the Southport murders. One example - there was a video showing a couple of groups of young men in Southen fighting at one end of the promenade with machetes and that inevitably went viral and caused all sort of comment.
Youngsters fighting in Southend is hardly news - it's been going on for at least 60 years if not longer. It might be machetes now rather than switchblades or baseball bats but let's not imagine this is some new horror vested on us. The change is it is filmed in real time, uploaded onto X and within minutes is seen by hundreds if not thousands helped by a nice attention grabbling title like "Big Machete Fight in Southend" or whatever.
The power of misinformation or disinformation has been exposed this week (if it wasn't known even back in 2011 for example when the disorder then was largely fanned if not orchestrated by a nascent Twitter). You can't put the genie back in the bottle unfortunately but as we know a growing number of people get their "news" from X or other social media how do we respond?
Those with a functioning brain cell might want to consider the wisdom of commenting on every X posting as soon as it happens or taking half a story and making it the full story (as we've seen with the Manchester Airport business). We're not Reuters or the PA - reading something from X doesn't make it true (a wise man once said the truth is out there, perhaps, but it's becoming a lot harder to find in the jungle of disinformation).
As an aside, we also know the impact of the combination of hot weather and easily available alcohol on some people. Somebody once spoke about personal responsibility - wither that?
We are ignoring some obvious solutions
i) Ban Twitter and its variants (Bluesky, Mastodon, Truth Social, Telegraph), or ii) Nationalise them
"You can't put the genie back in the bottle"...well, yes you can.
One way of quelling disturbances is the use of water cannons. Perhaps a heavy thunderstorm would have the same effect!
Well, London and the Home Counties look like getting a douche today.
Based on the news London and the Home Counties look like they've got many douches in recent days.
Didn’t Tommy Robinson leave the country to avoid going to court? There was also a story of some model woman doing exactly the same. How not to endear yourself to the judge.
Tommy Robinson didn't need to be in court on Monday - it was optional.
He does need to be in court in October at which point an arrest warrant would be issued if he doesn't turn up.
Took a fair bit of digging to find out what was actually going on given how biased the reporting has been.
26% reduction in road casualities 23% in killed / seriously injured 55% drop in people killed 27% drop in slight injuries
And insurance claims down 20%.
The thing that convinced me that this speed reduction policy was a good idea was the stat that vehicles are getting heavier.
Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.
That is patently false and not represented by the data whatsoever.
Decades of technological and safety improvements, including crash test designs and iterations, mean you are far, far, far less likely to die today than decades ago. Which includes pedestrians.
That is true, but does not contradict the above point that "Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.".
Perhaps rather than having a speed limit we should have a momentum limit?
It does contradict it.
A lot of arguments being made still rely upon old data. Most claims made by "road safety campaigners" who want speed limits cut use obsolete data from the 1970s or 1990s to back up their claims . . . because the data today does not.
In 2004 there were 53.6 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average. In 2022 there were 26.5 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average.
Pedestrians, not drivers, are twice as safe as they were previously.
No it doesn't. Your point about cars being safer is about their ability to quickly decelerate. But TSE's point remains true - if you get hit at 20mph in a heavy car you will be worse off than if you get hit at 30mph in a light one. That's just physics.
Hang on.
If it was a square block running into a square block dead on, then that might well be true.
But the energy is not all dissipated in that way. In particular, a pedestrian is (typically) thrown up and onto the car. 30mph crashes are incredibly dangerous compared to 20mph one because you don't have time to get thrown upwards and the damage to your lower body - including severing of the spinal column - is extreme.
The construction of the car is more important than the mass. A modern car (a saloon car, not what the Americans call a light truck) will deform extensively in the bumper and bonnet when involved in a pedestrian impact - whereas an older one is designed much more for car-car collisions, and the pedestrian has his legs broken by the metal bumper and his head broken by the top of the engine underneath the bonnet.
As an aside on "Light Trucks" ie Tonka Tanks, they are simply exempt from many of the safety regs that apply to cars in the USA. That's been a scandal for a very long time, and manufacturers have used their influence to prevent suitable regulations being applied.
Indeed, this is something you and I can completely agree on. You are 100% correct.
This is something I would not want to see US rules introduced on, and they're not happening here.
Any use of US data instead instead of UK data is showing dishonesty or a lack of comprehension on this by the person doing so.
The popularity of SUVs vs cars is safety problem though, cars having lower bonnets, the pedestrian was more likely to be go over the bonnet than under it. Stats demonstrate that 20mph is safer than 30mph, no need to go into any physics and the relevance of the theoretical stopping distance is considerably reduced versus reckless or distracted driving, as demonstrated by the vehicular war on stationary objects such as lamposts.
UK SUVs are cars. They are not American
Look at the Nissan Qashqai or the Kia Sportage, they are popular UK SUVs and they have all the safety features of modern cars, including modern, safer bonnets.
Contrast with the Ford F150 which to the best of my knowledge is not sold in this country.
The Ford Ranger, a smaller truck built to car standards, is sold in the UK and Europe, but not the F-series.
If you see an F-series it will be a one-off import, left hand drive, and usually a work truck for something specific like towing heavy trailers. Plus maybe a few hanging around outside football club training grounds.
I go for simple people carriers.
I think my next vehicle will be a G-Wagen.
Ha, you’re turning into an old footballer getting one of those in the UK!
The new G is actually very nice to drive, much more of a car than the terrible-handling-but-cool-looking truck that was the previous model. Very popular in my neck of the woods.
That said, the GLS is a better vehicle in almost every way.
It's a shame that it's (a) staggeringly ugly, and (b) usually driven by people I wouldn't want to hang out with.
I once asked my daughter why she always ordered pizzas for her friends from Domino's even though other options were available. 'Because if they don't like their Domino's pizza, they blame Domino's. If they don't like their Papa Johns pizza, they blame me for not choosing Domino's.
A trivial anecdote perhaps, except that, at scale, such 'accountability sinks' explains the outsize popularity of the big four consulting firms, the Horizon scandal, the overweening influence of HR, procurement and finance departments, the appalling decline in customer service and much more besides.
Mr. Eagles, it's wrong to say Saudi Arabia are to build 11 stadiums. It's 11 stadia. And I'll believe the 'Neom' stadium when I see it.
It is stadia if you believe that stadium is still a Latin loan word. It is stadiums if you believe stadium has been adopted as an English word. The grammatical rule is that you conjugate according to the language the word belongs to. Should the word belong to two languages, conjugate according to the one you're speaking.
Pluralisation is an inflection not conjugation. Conjugation is the modification of a verb to indicate tense, mood and person. Inflection is the modification of any word, not just a verb, to indicate grammatical function; in this case plurality.
As controversial as pineapple on pizza, and topical this week - are there any circumstances under which the word ‘medal’ can properly be used as a verb?
Language has evolved throughout human history. It is inevitable, chill and embrace it.
Any noun can be verbed.
Can verbs be nouned?*
Or would it be acceptable for anyone doing that to be given the lynch?
*Note my verbing of 'noun', although of course that's no more out there than verbing 'verb'. Give me shoot.
Adjective and verb can be adjectived but not noun afaict.
I once asked my daughter why she always ordered pizzas for her friends from Domino's even though other options were available. 'Because if they don't like their Domino's pizza, they blame Domino's. If they don't like their Papa Johns pizza, they blame me for not choosing Domino's.
A trivial anecdote perhaps, except that, at scale, such 'accountability sinks' explains the outsize popularity of the big four consulting firms, the Horizon scandal, the overweening influence of HR, procurement and finance departments, the appalling decline in customer service and much more besides.
26% reduction in road casualities 23% in killed / seriously injured 55% drop in people killed 27% drop in slight injuries
And insurance claims down 20%.
The thing that convinced me that this speed reduction policy was a good idea was the stat that vehicles are getting heavier.
Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.
That is patently false and not represented by the data whatsoever.
Decades of technological and safety improvements, including crash test designs and iterations, mean you are far, far, far less likely to die today than decades ago. Which includes pedestrians.
That is true, but does not contradict the above point that "Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.".
Perhaps rather than having a speed limit we should have a momentum limit?
It does contradict it.
A lot of arguments being made still rely upon old data. Most claims made by "road safety campaigners" who want speed limits cut use obsolete data from the 1970s or 1990s to back up their claims . . . because the data today does not.
In 2004 there were 53.6 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average. In 2022 there were 26.5 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average.
Pedestrians, not drivers, are twice as safe as they were previously.
No it doesn't. Your point about cars being safer is about their ability to quickly decelerate. But TSE's point remains true - if you get hit at 20mph in a heavy car you will be worse off than if you get hit at 30mph in a light one. That's just physics.
Hang on.
If it was a square block running into a square block dead on, then that might well be true.
But the energy is not all dissipated in that way. In particular, a pedestrian is (typically) thrown up and onto the car. 30mph crashes are incredibly dangerous compared to 20mph one because you don't have time to get thrown upwards and the damage to your lower body - including severing of the spinal column - is extreme.
The construction of the car is more important than the mass. A modern car (a saloon car, not what the Americans call a light truck) will deform extensively in the bumper and bonnet when involved in a pedestrian impact - whereas an older one is designed much more for car-car collisions, and the pedestrian has his legs broken by the metal bumper and his head broken by the top of the engine underneath the bonnet.
As an aside on "Light Trucks" ie Tonka Tanks, they are simply exempt from many of the safety regs that apply to cars in the USA. That's been a scandal for a very long time, and manufacturers have used their influence to prevent suitable regulations being applied.
Indeed, this is something you and I can completely agree on. You are 100% correct.
This is something I would not want to see US rules introduced on, and they're not happening here.
Any use of US data instead instead of UK data is showing dishonesty or a lack of comprehension on this by the person doing so.
The popularity of SUVs vs cars is safety problem though, cars having lower bonnets, the pedestrian was more likely to be go over the bonnet than under it. Stats demonstrate that 20mph is safer than 30mph, no need to go into any physics and the relevance of the theoretical stopping distance is considerably reduced versus reckless or distracted driving, as demonstrated by the vehicular war on stationary objects such as lamposts.
UK SUVs are cars. They are not American
Look at the Nissan Qashqai or the Kia Sportage, they are popular UK SUVs and they have all the safety features of modern cars, including modern, safer bonnets.
Contrast with the Ford F150 which to the best of my knowledge is not sold in this country.
The Ford Ranger, a smaller truck built to car standards, is sold in the UK and Europe, but not the F-series.
If you see an F-series it will be a one-off import, left hand drive, and usually a work truck for something specific like towing heavy trailers. Plus maybe a few hanging around outside football club training grounds.
I go for simple people carriers.
I think my next vehicle will be a G-Wagen.
Ha, you’re turning into an old footballer getting one of those in the UK!
The new G is actually very nice to drive, much more of a car than the terrible-handling-but-cool-looking truck that was the previous model. Very popular in my neck of the woods.
That said, the GLS is a better vehicle in almost every way.
Best vehicle I’ve ever hard was the Porsche Cayenne Turbo.
That was basically a sports cars on a 4x4 floor plan.
They’re good fun. I drove the standard V8 one a few years back, and can’t say I ever thought it really needed another 150bhp though!
The joys of a long distance relationship.
I lived in North Yorkshire, worked in Leeds, and she lived in Birkenhead.
She couldn’t drive so every bit of BHP helped.
Yeah, long distance relationships when one of you doesn’t drive isn’t fun.
Perhaps if there was a set of reliable high-speed train links in the region that would have helped? 😎
Using trains on a Friday afternoon/rush hour is a bit like sex with an ex.
Fun for the first ten minutes then filled with immense regret thereafter as you question your judgment.
Bit like driving North in Essex on the A12 on a Friday night in summer. Road filled with Londoners heading for their Suffolk coastal cottages.
I once asked my daughter why she always ordered pizzas for her friends from Domino's even though other options were available. 'Because if they don't like their Domino's pizza, they blame Domino's. If they don't like their Papa Johns pizza, they blame me for not choosing Domino's.
A trivial anecdote perhaps, except that, at scale, such 'accountability sinks' explains the outsize popularity of the big four consulting firms, the Horizon scandal, the overweening influence of HR, procurement and finance departments, the appalling decline in customer service and much more besides.
26% reduction in road casualities 23% in killed / seriously injured 55% drop in people killed 27% drop in slight injuries
And insurance claims down 20%.
The thing that convinced me that this speed reduction policy was a good idea was the stat that vehicles are getting heavier.
Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.
That is patently false and not represented by the data whatsoever.
Decades of technological and safety improvements, including crash test designs and iterations, mean you are far, far, far less likely to die today than decades ago. Which includes pedestrians.
That is true, but does not contradict the above point that "Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.".
Perhaps rather than having a speed limit we should have a momentum limit?
It does contradict it.
A lot of arguments being made still rely upon old data. Most claims made by "road safety campaigners" who want speed limits cut use obsolete data from the 1970s or 1990s to back up their claims . . . because the data today does not.
In 2004 there were 53.6 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average. In 2022 there were 26.5 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average.
Pedestrians, not drivers, are twice as safe as they were previously.
No it doesn't. Your point about cars being safer is about their ability to quickly decelerate. But TSE's point remains true - if you get hit at 20mph in a heavy car you will be worse off than if you get hit at 30mph in a light one. That's just physics.
Hang on.
If it was a square block running into a square block dead on, then that might well be true.
But the energy is not all dissipated in that way. In particular, a pedestrian is (typically) thrown up and onto the car. 30mph crashes are incredibly dangerous compared to 20mph one because you don't have time to get thrown upwards and the damage to your lower body - including severing of the spinal column - is extreme.
The construction of the car is more important than the mass. A modern car (a saloon car, not what the Americans call a light truck) will deform extensively in the bumper and bonnet when involved in a pedestrian impact - whereas an older one is designed much more for car-car collisions, and the pedestrian has his legs broken by the metal bumper and his head broken by the top of the engine underneath the bonnet.
As an aside on "Light Trucks" ie Tonka Tanks, they are simply exempt from many of the safety regs that apply to cars in the USA. That's been a scandal for a very long time, and manufacturers have used their influence to prevent suitable regulations being applied.
Indeed, this is something you and I can completely agree on. You are 100% correct.
This is something I would not want to see US rules introduced on, and they're not happening here.
Any use of US data instead instead of UK data is showing dishonesty or a lack of comprehension on this by the person doing so.
The popularity of SUVs vs cars is safety problem though, cars having lower bonnets, the pedestrian was more likely to be go over the bonnet than under it. Stats demonstrate that 20mph is safer than 30mph, no need to go into any physics and the relevance of the theoretical stopping distance is considerably reduced versus reckless or distracted driving, as demonstrated by the vehicular war on stationary objects such as lamposts.
UK SUVs are cars. They are not American
Look at the Nissan Qashqai or the Kia Sportage, they are popular UK SUVs and they have all the safety features of modern cars, including modern, safer bonnets.
Contrast with the Ford F150 which to the best of my knowledge is not sold in this country.
Softer but higher bonnets. Personal example, a 3 series edged out in front of me when I was on my bike, slammed the brakes on but came to a stop against the bumper having reprofiled his bonnet with the left drop. Completely oblivious to my having hit him and being in front of his car, he set off, thankfully I separated from the bike and ended up on the bonnet, the bike ended up underneath. All witnessed by the off-duty PC in a car behind me luckily. Even if it was a Qashqai I'd have gone under the car and been run over. Normal car, unharmed, SUV likely serious injuries. Stopping distance irrelevant as the car was initially stationary, all down to driver incompetence only mitigated by my being above rather than level with the bonnet.
Looks like Reeves will have to discover another big black hole.
Under the previous approach doctors I know were being offered 3k for a single shift. Paying them a bit more salary and reducing the absurd rates we have to regularly pay for emergency cover is going to to work out fine.
Mr. Eagles, it's wrong to say Saudi Arabia are to build 11 stadiums. It's 11 stadia. And I'll believe the 'Neom' stadium when I see it.
It is stadia if you believe that stadium is still a Latin loan word. It is stadiums if you believe stadium has been adopted as an English word. The grammatical rule is that you conjugate according to the language the word belongs to. Should the word belong to two languages, conjugate according to the one you're speaking.
Pluralisation is an inflection not conjugation. Conjugation is the modification of a verb to indicate tense, mood and person. Inflection is the modification of any word, not just a verb, to indicate grammatical function; in this case plurality.
As controversial as pineapple on pizza, and topical this week - are there any circumstances under which the word ‘medal’ can properly be used as a verb?
Language has evolved throughout human history. It is inevitable, chill and embrace it.
Any noun can be verbed.
Can verbs be nouned?*
Or would it be acceptable for anyone doing that to be given the lynch?
*Note my verbing of 'noun', although of course that's no more out there than verbing 'verb'. Give me shoot.
All verbs can be nouned. But some take new forms in so doing - contrast believe/belief with thought/thought, for example. Or indeed doing/doing...
My favourites in UK English are the ones that switch spelling in a US-kind of way, e.g. licence/license
I once asked my daughter why she always ordered pizzas for her friends from Domino's even though other options were available. 'Because if they don't like their Domino's pizza, they blame Domino's. If they don't like their Papa Johns pizza, they blame me for not choosing Domino's.
A trivial anecdote perhaps, except that, at scale, such 'accountability sinks' explains the outsize popularity of the big four consulting firms, the Horizon scandal, the overweening influence of HR, procurement and finance departments, the appalling decline in customer service and much more besides.
Second thought of the day - consider it a BOGOF for the first day of the new month.
I've been interested to read the Police citing disinformation as a cause for some of the disturbances coming off the Southport murders. One example - there was a video showing a couple of groups of young men in Southen fighting at one end of the promenade with machetes and that inevitably went viral and caused all sort of comment.
Youngsters fighting in Southend is hardly news - it's been going on for at least 60 years if not longer. It might be machetes now rather than switchblades or baseball bats but let's not imagine this is some new horror vested on us. The change is it is filmed in real time, uploaded onto X and within minutes is seen by hundreds if not thousands helped by a nice attention grabbling title like "Big Machete Fight in Southend" or whatever.
The power of misinformation or disinformation has been exposed this week (if it wasn't known even back in 2011 for example when the disorder then was largely fanned if not orchestrated by a nascent Twitter). You can't put the genie back in the bottle unfortunately but as we know a growing number of people get their "news" from X or other social media how do we respond?
Those with a functioning brain cell might want to consider the wisdom of commenting on every X posting as soon as it happens or taking half a story and making it the full story (as we've seen with the Manchester Airport business). We're not Reuters or the PA - reading something from X doesn't make it true (a wise man once said the truth is out there, perhaps, but it's becoming a lot harder to find in the jungle of disinformation).
As an aside, we also know the impact of the combination of hot weather and easily available alcohol on some people. Somebody once spoke about personal responsibility - wither that?
We are ignoring some obvious solutions
i) Ban Twitter and its variants (Bluesky, Mastodon, Truth Social, Telegraph), or ii) Nationalise them
"You can't put the genie back in the bottle"...well, yes you can.
One way of quelling disturbances is the use of water cannons. Perhaps a heavy thunderstorm would have the same effect!
Well, London and the Home Counties look like getting a douche today.
Based on the news London and the Home Counties look like they've got many douches in recent days.
Didn’t Tommy Robinson leave the country to avoid going to court? There was also a story of some model woman doing exactly the same. How not to endear yourself to the judge.
Tommy Robinson didn't need to be in court on Monday - it was optional.
He does need to be in court in October at which point an arrest warrant would be issued if he doesn't turn up.
Took a fair bit of digging to find out what was actually going on given how biased the reporting has been.
Shame - I had hoped in addition to fleeing the country he was going to end up claiming asylum somewhere too.
As an aside - on the riots point I am a great believer in a good bit of rain to stop the plonkers. I was in Bradford during 2001 riots and distinctly remember it ratting it down on the night the riots petered out. It also rained on the Wednesday of the London 2011 riots - I was having a nice pint on Lambs Conduit Street watching the “Hedlu” vans getting ready for a busy night in the big city. But rain stopped play.
26% reduction in road casualities 23% in killed / seriously injured 55% drop in people killed 27% drop in slight injuries
And insurance claims down 20%.
The thing that convinced me that this speed reduction policy was a good idea was the stat that vehicles are getting heavier.
Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.
That is patently false and not represented by the data whatsoever.
Decades of technological and safety improvements, including crash test designs and iterations, mean you are far, far, far less likely to die today than decades ago. Which includes pedestrians.
That is true, but does not contradict the above point that "Getting hit at 20mph now is likely to be worse than being hit at 30mph some twenty/thirty years ago.".
Perhaps rather than having a speed limit we should have a momentum limit?
It does contradict it.
A lot of arguments being made still rely upon old data. Most claims made by "road safety campaigners" who want speed limits cut use obsolete data from the 1970s or 1990s to back up their claims . . . because the data today does not.
In 2004 there were 53.6 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average. In 2022 there were 26.5 pedestrian casualties per billion miles walked on average.
Pedestrians, not drivers, are twice as safe as they were previously.
No it doesn't. Your point about cars being safer is about their ability to quickly decelerate. But TSE's point remains true - if you get hit at 20mph in a heavy car you will be worse off than if you get hit at 30mph in a light one. That's just physics.
Hang on.
If it was a square block running into a square block dead on, then that might well be true.
But the energy is not all dissipated in that way. In particular, a pedestrian is (typically) thrown up and onto the car. 30mph crashes are incredibly dangerous compared to 20mph one because you don't have time to get thrown upwards and the damage to your lower body - including severing of the spinal column - is extreme.
The construction of the car is more important than the mass. A modern car (a saloon car, not what the Americans call a light truck) will deform extensively in the bumper and bonnet when involved in a pedestrian impact - whereas an older one is designed much more for car-car collisions, and the pedestrian has his legs broken by the metal bumper and his head broken by the top of the engine underneath the bonnet.
As an aside on "Light Trucks" ie Tonka Tanks, they are simply exempt from many of the safety regs that apply to cars in the USA. That's been a scandal for a very long time, and manufacturers have used their influence to prevent suitable regulations being applied.
Indeed, this is something you and I can completely agree on. You are 100% correct.
This is something I would not want to see US rules introduced on, and they're not happening here.
Any use of US data instead instead of UK data is showing dishonesty or a lack of comprehension on this by the person doing so.
The popularity of SUVs vs cars is safety problem though, cars having lower bonnets, the pedestrian was more likely to be go over the bonnet than under it. Stats demonstrate that 20mph is safer than 30mph, no need to go into any physics and the relevance of the theoretical stopping distance is considerably reduced versus reckless or distracted driving, as demonstrated by the vehicular war on stationary objects such as lamposts.
UK SUVs are cars. They are not American
Look at the Nissan Qashqai or the Kia Sportage, they are popular UK SUVs and they have all the safety features of modern cars, including modern, safer bonnets.
Contrast with the Ford F150 which to the best of my knowledge is not sold in this country.
The Ford Ranger, a smaller truck built to car standards, is sold in the UK and Europe, but not the F-series.
If you see an F-series it will be a one-off import, left hand drive, and usually a work truck for something specific like towing heavy trailers. Plus maybe a few hanging around outside football club training grounds.
I go for simple people carriers.
I think my next vehicle will be a G-Wagen.
Ha, you’re turning into an old footballer getting one of those in the UK!
The new G is actually very nice to drive, much more of a car than the terrible-handling-but-cool-looking truck that was the previous model. Very popular in my neck of the woods.
That said, the GLS is a better vehicle in almost every way.
It's a shame that it's (a) staggeringly ugly, and (b) usually driven by people I wouldn't want to hang out with.
You mean you don’t hang out with rappers, drug dealers, and footballers?
An embarrassing confession. I unfortunately have a mannerism very similar to this. I try very very hard to repress it as it’s not ideal to invite comparisons with DJT.
Looks like Reeves will have to discover another big black hole.
Under the previous approach doctors I know were being offered 3k for a single shift. Paying them a bit more salary and reducing the absurd rates we have to regularly pay for emergency cover is going to to work out fine.
LOL what planet are you on. They will pocket the money and still charge massive shift Premiums. There will be no savings.
An embarrassing confession. I unfortunately have a mannerism very similar to this. I try very very hard to repress it as it’s not ideal to invite comparisons with DJT.
Looks like Reeves will have to discover another big black hole.
Under the previous approach doctors I know were being offered 3k for a single shift. Paying them a bit more salary and reducing the absurd rates we have to regularly pay for emergency cover is going to to work out fine.
LOL what planet are you on. They will pocket the money and still charge massive shift Premiums. There will be no savings.
Its all been working so well.....just amazed the previous lot didn't get re-elected.
Sean Ingle @seaningle The Italian Angela Carini is crying her eyes out in the ring.
She decides not to continue after being hit hard twice by the Algerian Imane Khelif. Fight lasted 46 seconds. First punched knocked her chin strap off and she was holding her nose.
I once asked my daughter why she always ordered pizzas for her friends from Domino's even though other options were available. 'Because if they don't like their Domino's pizza, they blame Domino's. If they don't like their Papa Johns pizza, they blame me for not choosing Domino's.
A trivial anecdote perhaps, except that, at scale, such 'accountability sinks' explains the outsize popularity of the big four consulting firms, the Horizon scandal, the overweening influence of HR, procurement and finance departments, the appalling decline in customer service and much more besides.
Yep - it's not at all new but the social bit is an anecdote. Twin A orders pizza from Domino even though other places are better locally...
Yeah. Socially the organiser will often go for the option that means no one will have a go at them, rather than the untried (by some in the group) possibly better option. See it all the time. Do it myself, probably (although many years ago I was one of the people running a postgrad curry club and we made a point of trying new places, some were meh, some were great, but everyone was signed up to that idea).
Looks like Reeves will have to discover another big black hole.
Under the previous approach doctors I know were being offered 3k for a single shift. Paying them a bit more salary and reducing the absurd rates we have to regularly pay for emergency cover is going to to work out fine.
LOL what planet are you on. They will pocket the money and still charge massive shift Premiums. There will be no savings.
Um the massive shift premiums come from the locum doctors. Pay a bit more and a lot of those locum doctors will take more permanent work
There are however a whole set of issues with GPs at the moment including some incentives that have resulted in some trained GPs being unable to find jobs. That really does need to be fixed first..
I once asked my daughter why she always ordered pizzas for her friends from Domino's even though other options were available. 'Because if they don't like their Domino's pizza, they blame Domino's. If they don't like their Papa Johns pizza, they blame me for not choosing Domino's.
A trivial anecdote perhaps, except that, at scale, such 'accountability sinks' explains the outsize popularity of the big four consulting firms, the Horizon scandal, the overweening influence of HR, procurement and finance departments, the appalling decline in customer service and much more besides.
"No one ever got fired for buying IBM"?
They probably did if their job was to order pizza.
Mr. Eagles, it's wrong to say Saudi Arabia are to build 11 stadiums. It's 11 stadia. And I'll believe the 'Neom' stadium when I see it.
It is stadia if you believe that stadium is still a Latin loan word. It is stadiums if you believe stadium has been adopted as an English word. The grammatical rule is that you conjugate according to the language the word belongs to. Should the word belong to two languages, conjugate according to the one you're speaking.
Pluralisation is an inflection not conjugation. Conjugation is the modification of a verb to indicate tense, mood and person. Inflection is the modification of any word, not just a verb, to indicate grammatical function; in this case plurality.
As controversial as pineapple on pizza, and topical this week - are there any circumstances under which the word ‘medal’ can properly be used as a verb?
Language has evolved throughout human history. It is inevitable, chill and embrace it.
Any noun can be verbed.
Can verbs be nouned?*
Or would it be acceptable for anyone doing that to be given the lynch?
*Note my verbing of 'noun', although of course that's no more out there than verbing 'verb'. Give me shoot.
All verbs can be nouned. But some take new forms in so doing - contrast believe/belief with thought/thought, for example. Or indeed doing/doing...
My favourites in UK English are the ones that switch spelling in a US-kind of way, e.g. licence/license
I hate that one. It has me looking over my shoulder for @Luckyguy1983 .
Looks like Reeves will have to discover another big black hole.
Under the previous approach doctors I know were being offered 3k for a single shift. Paying them a bit more salary and reducing the absurd rates we have to regularly pay for emergency cover is going to to work out fine.
LOL what planet are you on. They will pocket the money and still charge massive shift Premiums. There will be no savings.
Um the massive shift premiums come from the locum doctors. Pay a bit more and a lot of those locum doctors will take more permanent work
There are however a whole set of issues with GPs at the moment including some incentives that have resulted in some trained GPs being unable to find jobs. That really does need to be fixed first..
No they will still use the locums. Dont be naive, the NHS is a huge sludge of inefficiency.
Wes Streeting is in hock to these people and if he has any ideas for reform theyre dead in the water. Shame.
Sean Ingle @seaningle The Italian Angela Carini is crying her eyes out in the ring.
She decides not to continue after being hit hard twice by the Algerian Imane Khelif. Fight lasted 46 seconds. First punched knocked her chin strap off and she was holding her nose.
The most interesting thing about the boxing at this Olympics is that there is no boxing in 2028 unless a boxing organisation that the Olympics can approve gets a critical mass of membership. And watching the fights this week I'm seeing zero reason for it to continue in subsequent Olympics.
Second thought of the day - consider it a BOGOF for the first day of the new month.
I've been interested to read the Police citing disinformation as a cause for some of the disturbances coming off the Southport murders. One example - there was a video showing a couple of groups of young men in Southen fighting at one end of the promenade with machetes and that inevitably went viral and caused all sort of comment.
Youngsters fighting in Southend is hardly news - it's been going on for at least 60 years if not longer. It might be machetes now rather than switchblades or baseball bats but let's not imagine this is some new horror vested on us. The change is it is filmed in real time, uploaded onto X and within minutes is seen by hundreds if not thousands helped by a nice attention grabbling title like "Big Machete Fight in Southend" or whatever.
The power of misinformation or disinformation has been exposed this week (if it wasn't known even back in 2011 for example when the disorder then was largely fanned if not orchestrated by a nascent Twitter). You can't put the genie back in the bottle unfortunately but as we know a growing number of people get their "news" from X or other social media how do we respond?
Those with a functioning brain cell might want to consider the wisdom of commenting on every X posting as soon as it happens or taking half a story and making it the full story (as we've seen with the Manchester Airport business). We're not Reuters or the PA - reading something from X doesn't make it true (a wise man once said the truth is out there, perhaps, but it's becoming a lot harder to find in the jungle of disinformation).
As an aside, we also know the impact of the combination of hot weather and easily available alcohol on some people. Somebody once spoke about personal responsibility - wither that?
We are ignoring some obvious solutions
i) Ban Twitter and its variants (Bluesky, Mastodon, Truth Social, Telegraph), or ii) Nationalise them
"You can't put the genie back in the bottle"...well, yes you can.
One way of quelling disturbances is the use of water cannons. Perhaps a heavy thunderstorm would have the same effect!
Well, London and the Home Counties look like getting a douche today.
Based on the news London and the Home Counties look like they've got many douches in recent days.
Didn’t Tommy Robinson leave the country to avoid going to court? There was also a story of some model woman doing exactly the same. How not to endear yourself to the judge.
Tommy Robinson didn't need to be in court on Monday - it was optional.
He does need to be in court in October at which point an arrest warrant would be issued if he doesn't turn up.
Took a fair bit of digging to find out what was actually going on given how biased the reporting has been.
Shame - I had hoped in addition to fleeing the country he was going to end up claiming asylum somewhere too.
As an aside - on the riots point I am a great believer in a good bit of rain to stop the plonkers. I was in Bradford during 2001 riots and distinctly remember it ratting it down on the night the riots petered out. It also rained on the Wednesday of the London 2011 riots - I was having a nice pint on Lambs Conduit Street watching the “Hedlu” vans getting ready for a busy night in the big city. But rain stopped play.
This probably calls for more research on cloud seeding.
I remember how I could predict imminent thunderstorms at middle school by the amount of lunchtime playground fights that broke out.
Like racist rioting increases the more the temperature goes above 30C?
Exactly.
Proposed - a function that takes the temperature and the time pre/post lager shed. The output is the aggression level on PB.
I'm old enough to remember the 'British Riots' (as the BBC called them, so persistently that the Scots, Welsh and even the Nirish complained about the damage to tourism) which unaccountably happened in a separate part of the UK in 2011. In July/August,. too. Maybe there's something in that function?
Rioting seems correlated with summer, around the world, I think.
The question is do the disaster grifters (Farage, Tate, Robinson etc) have an eye on the thermometer when they churn out their ‘only asking questions’ bullshit.
A further question: What is Matt Goodwin's destination, and is it a good place. He is keeping interesting company, his lists are getting longer, and solutions getting further away. He is blissfully unaware that we have just had an election in which the moderate centre came first:
I once asked my daughter why she always ordered pizzas for her friends from Domino's even though other options were available. 'Because if they don't like their Domino's pizza, they blame Domino's. If they don't like their Papa Johns pizza, they blame me for not choosing Domino's.
A trivial anecdote perhaps, except that, at scale, such 'accountability sinks' explains the outsize popularity of the big four consulting firms, the Horizon scandal, the overweening influence of HR, procurement and finance departments, the appalling decline in customer service and much more besides.
"No one ever got fired for buying IBM"?
They probably did if their job was to order pizza.
An embarrassing confession. I unfortunately have a mannerism very similar to this. I try very very hard to repress it as it’s not ideal to invite comparisons with DJT.
I once asked my daughter why she always ordered pizzas for her friends from Domino's even though other options were available. 'Because if they don't like their Domino's pizza, they blame Domino's. If they don't like their Papa Johns pizza, they blame me for not choosing Domino's.
A trivial anecdote perhaps, except that, at scale, such 'accountability sinks' explains the outsize popularity of the big four consulting firms, the Horizon scandal, the overweening influence of HR, procurement and finance departments, the appalling decline in customer service and much more besides.
It's perhaps indicative of the comedy that the most prominent challenger to the orthodoxy of outsourcing everything is often stated to be mental.
If you do something every fucking day, it's part of your core business.
Sean Ingle @seaningle The Italian Angela Carini is crying her eyes out in the ring.
She decides not to continue after being hit hard twice by the Algerian Imane Khelif. Fight lasted 46 seconds. First punched knocked her chin strap off and she was holding her nose.
The most interesting thing about the boxing at this Olympics is that there is no boxing in 2028 unless a boxing organisation that the Olympics can approve gets a critical mass of membership. And watching the fights this week I'm seeing zero reason for it to continue in subsequent Olympics.
I've got to say good; I'm not a fan of boxing in general and women's in particular. I still recall the regular bouts in the school gym seventy or so years ago and how one couldn't concentrate in the next lesson.
That Turkish guy looked properly scary. He could just be walking round Istanbul with a handgun in his jogging bottoms, ready to take out his target at a moment’s notice with the precision of a sniper. How can he look so relaxed at such a high level competition, when everyone else turned up looking more like the Korean ‘Cyborg’ with various shooting aids?
Looks like Reeves will have to discover another big black hole.
Under the previous approach doctors I know were being offered 3k for a single shift. Paying them a bit more salary and reducing the absurd rates we have to regularly pay for emergency cover is going to to work out fine.
LOL what planet are you on. They will pocket the money and still charge massive shift Premiums. There will be no savings.
Um the massive shift premiums come from the locum doctors. Pay a bit more and a lot of those locum doctors will take more permanent work
There are however a whole set of issues with GPs at the moment including some incentives that have resulted in some trained GPs being unable to find jobs. That really does need to be fixed first..
News for you: most locum doctors are locum doctors because they like the flexibility. Not many GPs are out of work, and if they are they aren't trying very hard. Please don't fall for the BMA propaganda. The UK medical profession is the most entitled and featherbedded profession in the world
Sean Ingle @seaningle The Italian Angela Carini is crying her eyes out in the ring.
She decides not to continue after being hit hard twice by the Algerian Imane Khelif. Fight lasted 46 seconds. First punched knocked her chin strap off and she was holding her nose.
The most interesting thing about the boxing at this Olympics is that there is no boxing in 2028 unless a boxing organisation that the Olympics can approve gets a critical mass of membership. And watching the fights this week I'm seeing zero reason for it to continue in subsequent Olympics.
I've got to say good; I'm not a fan of boxing in general and women's in particular. I still recall the regular bouts in the school gym seventy or so years ago and how one couldn't concentrate in the next lesson.
I don’t think I could have concentrated as a teenager after watching women’s boxing in my school gym either. Remarkably liberal your alma mater, particularly for the 50s.
Mr. Eagles, it's wrong to say Saudi Arabia are to build 11 stadiums. It's 11 stadia. And I'll believe the 'Neom' stadium when I see it.
It is stadia if you believe that stadium is still a Latin loan word. It is stadiums if you believe stadium has been adopted as an English word. The grammatical rule is that you conjugate according to the language the word belongs to. Should the word belong to two languages, conjugate according to the one you're speaking.
Pluralisation is an inflection not conjugation. Conjugation is the modification of a verb to indicate tense, mood and person. Inflection is the modification of any word, not just a verb, to indicate grammatical function; in this case plurality.
As controversial as pineapple on pizza, and topical this week - are there any circumstances under which the word ‘medal’ can properly be used as a verb?
Language has evolved throughout human history. It is inevitable, chill and embrace it.
Any noun can be verbed.
Can verbs be nouned?*
Or would it be acceptable for anyone doing that to be given the lynch?
*Note my verbing of 'noun', although of course that's no more out there than verbing 'verb'. Give me shoot.
All verbs can be nouned. But some take new forms in so doing - contrast believe/belief with thought/thought, for example. Or indeed doing/doing...
My favourites in UK English are the ones that switch spelling in a US-kind of way, e.g. licence/license
My favo(u)rite US verb-noun is Burgle>Burglar>Burglarize, presumably leading to Burglarizer sooner or later.
Looks like Reeves will have to discover another big black hole.
Giving out a 22% pay increase was never going to go unnoticed by the rest of the public sector. Expect a lot of strikes over the next year and 10%+ pay settlements becoming the norm. The private sector is going to be hollowed out over the next 5 years until our economy looks like France.
Comments
He's been peddling the same bullshit for decades.
1993-In congressional testimony, Donald Trump said that Native casino owners didn't deserve special status because “they don’t look like Indians to me.”
https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1818777659629093361
That lie probably works with people who haven't been paying much attention to the news so are not aware of when the idea was first suggested..
Proposed - a function that takes the temperature and the time pre/post lager shed. The output is the aggression level on PB.
*USS also has a big share, although I don't think it's a huge part of the overall fund. They, as other investors, should have been wiser.
i) Ban Twitter and its variants (Bluesky, Mastodon, Truth Social, Telegraph), or
ii) Nationalise them
"You can't put the genie back in the bottle"...well, yes you can.
Because they could be the management in the near future.
But all else is not equal, vehicles have changed in design dramatically to cause pedestrian casualties to collapse.
So we ought to be increasing speed limits since the roads are safer, not cut them.
That needs reform, for a start.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZDWDb-TaMM
It has to be Shapiro.
A Harris-Walz ticket would be a disaster for proper usage of apostrophes in this country.
https://x.com/ryanbeckwith/status/1818652832477618672
I lived in North Yorkshire, worked in Leeds, and she lived in Birkenhead.
She couldn’t drive so every bit of BHP helped.
Yeah, long distance relationships when one of you doesn’t drive isn’t fun.
*makes me shiver
What could possibly go wrong ?
Or would it be acceptable for anyone doing that to be given the lynch?
*Note my verbing of 'noun', although of course that's no more out there than verbing 'verb'. Give me shoot.
Looks like Reeves will have to discover another big black hole.
One SP whatever would fall off and I’d get a new one.
He does need to be in court in October at which point an arrest warrant would be issued if he doesn't turn up.
Took a fair bit of digging to find out what was actually going on given how biased the reporting has been.
I’m sure the media will be holding SLab-led (with sotto voce support from Unionist parties) Edinburgh Council to account, lots of photos of John Swinney pointing at piles of bulging bin bags and scampering rats. Or perhaps not.
Fun for the first ten minutes then filled with immense regret thereafter as you question your judgment.
But some take new forms in so doing - contrast believe/belief with thought/thought, for example. Or indeed doing/doing...
https://x.com/ehdecker/status/1818784959504797962
I once asked my daughter why she always ordered pizzas for her friends from Domino's even though other options were available. 'Because if they don't like their Domino's pizza, they blame Domino's. If they don't like their Papa Johns pizza, they blame me for not choosing Domino's.
A trivial anecdote perhaps, except that, at scale, such 'accountability sinks' explains the outsize popularity of the big four consulting firms, the Horizon scandal, the overweening influence of HR, procurement and finance departments, the appalling decline in customer service and much more besides.
You can always tell when he loses his train of thought because he starts playing his invisible accordion
https://x.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1818779108576575775
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/activity-and-adventure/uk-best-wild-swimming-spots/
Edit: damn you @Selebian beat me to it!
Personal example, a 3 series edged out in front of me when I was on my bike, slammed the brakes on but came to a stop against the bumper having reprofiled his bonnet with the left drop. Completely oblivious to my having hit him and being in front of his car, he set off, thankfully I separated from the bike and ended up on the bonnet, the bike ended up underneath. All witnessed by the off-duty PC in a car behind me luckily.
Even if it was a Qashqai I'd have gone under the car and been run over.
Normal car, unharmed, SUV likely serious injuries. Stopping distance irrelevant as the car was initially stationary, all down to driver incompetence only mitigated by my being above rather than level with the bonnet.
Korea sent a Cyborg
https://x.com/ruemcclammyhand/status/1817722222330757346
Turkey sent a hitman
https://x.com/PicturesFoIder/status/1818740223511048552
As an aside - on the riots point I am a great believer in a good bit of rain to stop the plonkers. I was in Bradford during 2001 riots and distinctly remember it ratting it down on the night the riots petered out. It also rained on the Wednesday of the London 2011 riots - I was having a nice pint on Lambs Conduit Street watching the “Hedlu” vans getting ready for a busy night in the big city. But rain stopped play.
Not so keen on filling pot holes.
Maybe the BMA told her they want the money instead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7icMfsMjAk&t=15s
https://x.com/pkandelic/status/1818742621591998526
https://x.com/seaningle/status/1818957878033621174
Sean Ingle
@seaningle
The Italian Angela Carini is crying her eyes out in the ring.
She decides not to continue after being hit hard twice by the Algerian Imane Khelif. Fight lasted 46 seconds. First punched knocked her chin strap off and she was holding her nose.
There are however a whole set of issues with GPs at the moment including some incentives that have resulted in some trained GPs being unable to find jobs. That really does need to be fixed first..
It has me looking over my shoulder for @Luckyguy1983 .
Wes Streeting is in hock to these people and if he has any ideas for reform theyre dead in the water. Shame.
https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/what-did-you-expect-britains-protests?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=1mnpci&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
If you do something every fucking day, it's part of your core business.
The women's quad and women's four were especially good - both crews displayed enormous drive and tenacity.
White Man Tells Black Journalists His Black Opponent Is Not Black
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/07/trump-nabj-racist-harris-interview/