Posts in a Telegram channel called Southport Wake Up, which has over 12,000 members — up from around 150 on Friday night — list immigration lawyers and advice centres telling members to attack them at 8pm.
It's interesting that the organisation of these shenanigans is moving to Telegram. In the probably correct expectation that Durov will not co-operate with UK law enforcement to the slightest degree.
Is there any suggestion that those who posted on line suggesting there was Moslem involvement in the Southport tragedy will have their collars felt? Especially those who named names?
It's not clear what law they have broken. The name that circulated wasn't that of a real person, so no libel was committed.
There’s a proposal on TwiX that all those outraged.by southport/asylum/boats should stop going into work. A kind of general strike of the downtrodden
Its an interesting idea and vastly preferable to smashing up your own town, beating up foreign types and attempting murder in hotels
But would it work?! Depends on the numbers
If it’s just 1000 people no. If they can get 10,000 people maybe. 100,000 (highly doubtful) would probably have a significant impact especially if it’s in particular industries
I’m wondering if it would be legal. Ironically starmer is looking at loosening the laws on strikes because of course he is
The rioters will all be dole scroungers anyway (would anyone want to employ these people?) so a completely silly notion.
It's not so much the rioters, as those who feel some support for them, but won't actually do anything violent. That could be a sizeable number. I remember during the Troubles (there's that comparison again) it was estimated that at any one time the IRA only had about 2000 or so fighters. BUT, crucially, they had the tacit support of at least 200,000 Catholics in Norn, people prepared to donate, or to look away at the right time, etc
If 500,000 people agree with the sentiments of the rioters, but decry the violence, and they all decided to stop work, that would be big (and way cleverer and less repulsive than actual violence)
This is all becoming increasingly ridiculous.
Agree. This all started because of posts like leon's, but on twitter and such like, after the young girls were stabbed and which had nothing whatsoever to do with asylum seekers or muslims. That is the cause of this. Not a single muslim was involved in anything at that point. This was a concocted movement by right wing thugs spurred on by extreme right wing posters on social media.
There were no riots before this. No tension building up. It was all just an excuse for a riot by the types always looking for an excuse.
Now I am sure Leon will tell us that it really was all building up behind the scenes and this was just the catalyst for it and there is nothing any of us will be able to do to convince him otherwise.
Labour and Conservative governments accelerated mass migration for decades - against the wishes of the British public. They forced mass migration on us and said it was racist to object. The society this created was always going to be a powder-keg. Anything could have set it off. The murder of three young girls in Southport seems to have done it. But it could have been anything. Labour and the Conservatives were warned and didn’t just ignore the warnings. They ploughed onwards.
That's an appalling smear against the British public - that we're all seething racist skinheads waiting for any excuse to bash the nig nogs.
My oldest friend from college is from an Indian immigrant family. I would be beside myself if they were hurt by these shitheads & it grieves me enormously that they might feel even the slightest twinge of fear that they might be assaulted in the street by a bunch of racist yobs whipped up by right-wing quasi-fash shitheads spouting off safe behind their phones in surburbia (or Spain, or France). Egging these people on & telling them that their desire to burn out asylum seekers & smash the shop windows of any shop that looks like it might be owned by foreigners is somehow justified because of things that other people have done in the past that are completely out of their control is just feeding the fire & wildly irresponsible. A ludicrous self-aggrandising set of justifications for the desire to commit violence on others without consequence.
Fuckers, the lot of them & those with them on this site pretending they have any reason to do any of this shit. I completely understand TSE wondering whether to throw in the towel on running this site altogether frankly.
This rioting is being very heavily reported in the European press. It is making the UK look pretty disgusting. We're heading back to the days when we were the football hooligans no one wanted visiting their country.
The Welsh and the Scottish Tourist Boards will have to start complainingf all over again.
Posts in a Telegram channel called Southport Wake Up, which has over 12,000 members — up from around 150 on Friday night — list immigration lawyers and advice centres telling members to attack them at 8pm.
It's interesting that the organisation of these shenanigans is moving to Telegram. In the probably correct expectation that Durov will not co-operate with UK law enforcement to the slightest degree.
I seen to remember reading thar a considerable proportion of both the international and domestic security sevice's budget is devoted to cracking Telegram, so they probably will have factored that in already.
Twitter is for the slightly more visible and foolish, like Tommy Robinson, or Lawrence Fox.
Former GOP Lt. Of Georgia GeoffDuncanGA on Donald Trump:
“He is a felon thug who walks down the street and throws sucker punches at people like Brian Kemp, like African American journalists, Like John McCain…The Republican party is content sitting across the street watching it happen not calling him out not jumping into that fight saying you are wrong for us ." https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1820129273946009641
Interesting that he's making the same point I did about how far gone the Republicans are and how difficult it will be to pull them back into the mainstream.
Could the man with terrible hair see them go the way of the Whigs?
Trump is a grifting narcissist with no real beliefs, but the party he has created behind him is looking increasingly like a religious movement which is pushing for state integralism.
That's completely antithetical to the US constitutional and political tradition, but it's undeniably a central element of current GOP doctrine. And epitomised by the selection of Vance as VP.
Bookmarking the above for @viewcode , as he's keen on broad political theories, and I don't think he's done this one ?
Noted, thank you. My to-do list for PB looks like this:
Monitory Democracy and the Blob, looking at the institutions involved and how the NatCons and PopCons are forming arguments against it. It basically boils down to John Keane vs David Starkey..
On that one, you might also consider this argument.
https://slate.com/business/2023/02/subway-costs-us-europe-public-transit-funds.html ..A mammoth report from New York University’s Transit Costs Project makes a good case that the numbers are indeed astronomical, and there’s something we can do about it. Not just because bringing American transit construction into line with international best practices will make it possible for America to build big again—but also because what’s true for transit is true for the moribund public sector in general, and transit might be an object lesson.
According to authors Eric Goldwyn, Alon Levy, Elif Ensari, and Marco Chitti, there’s a lot going wrong with American transit projects—more on this in a moment—but many of the problems can be traced to a larger philosophy: outsourcing government expertise to a retainer of consultants. “What I’ve heard from consultants, which is surprising because they make so much money off this stuff, is, ‘Agencies don’t know what they want, and we have to figure it out,’ ” Goldwyn said.
For example, when the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority got to work on the Green Line Extension, the agency only had a half-dozen full-time employees managing the largest capital project the MBTA had ever undertaken. On New York’s Second Avenue subway, the most expensive mile of subway ever built, consultant contracts were more than 20 percent of construction costs—more than double what’s standard in France or Italy. By 2011, the MTA had trimmed its in-house capital projects management group of 1,600 full-time employees (circa 1990) to just 124, tasked with steering $20 billion in investment.
Perhaps the most notorious case in this business is the debacle of the California High-Speed Rail project, which in its early years had a tiny full-time staff managing hundreds of millions of dollars in consulting contracts. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has tried to right the balance more recently: “I’m getting rid of a lot of consultants,” he said in 2018. “How did we get away with this?”
There are certainly advantages to hiring highly specialized experts who can come in, complete a task, and go on their way. Subway construction is not a regular government function in most of the United States, so you can see why small agencies are reluctant to staff up—especially since federal funding is unreliable. But that excuse does not apply to organizations in cities like Seattle or Los Angeles with multi-decade pipelines and voter approval to spend tens of billions of dollars.
There’s another, bigger drawback to being so reliant on outside help. The second megaproject is easier than the first, and resurrecting lost expertise is always challenging...
I'd really like to use that, but my proposed article has a British bias. Do you have a British example?
Not really suitable for your proposed article I'm afraid but it is interesting talking to former RAF officers, particularly those in specialist roles like comms.
Whilst they were serving they would go to their senior officers with proposals, fixes or ideas for improving operational standards and basically be told to get back in their box. The proposals would end up in the dustbin.
Some time later they would retire from the RAF, join one of the many consultancy firms made up of senior officers and go back into the RAF as a contractor with exactly the same proposals for which they would be paid very large day rates and which would be accepted as the second coming. Sometimes by the very same senior officer who rejected the ideas a year earlier.
Far-right organisers on social media have listed 39 immigration centres as targets for a coordinated attack on Wednesday night (Joey D’Urso and Tom Witherow write).
Posts in a Telegram channel called Southport Wake Up, which has over 12,000 members — up from around 150 on Friday night — list immigration lawyers and advice centres telling members to attack them at 8pm.
The locations cover the length and breadth of England, from big cities to smaller cities and towns.
The post suggests far-right extremists are trying to escalate the violence again once more after rioters tried to burn down two migrant hotels on Sunday
If this carries on until next weekend Starmer/Cooper are in trouble.
The problem is they keep popping up all over the place, so the police can't join forces as they would normally. 500 riot cops for quick deployment by bus/Chinook or something?
‘Zero asylum seekers’: Denmark forces refugees to return to Syria
An article which is 2 years old. And says nothing about Danish policy other than they have the right to refuse asylum claims. Which is exactly what I posted above.
An article more than 4 years old. Did you read past the headline? They are bulldozing ghettoes to rebuild and encourage integration. We do the exact same thing here when money is available- bulldoze tatty and deprived neighbourhoods and build new houses. Where I used to live in Stockton was exactly that. The new build homes being smashed over the weekend another example.
As I asked William, what is the point you are making? You said “Denmark”. This is Denmark. Do you support their policies of letting asylum seekers work and investing to integrate them into society?
Or was “Denmark” code for “Rwanda”. Which isn’t something they do. As you have had pointed out endlessly when you were the last person left supporting the Tory Rwanda crayon drawing.
As @williamglenn correctly notes, you haven't got a clue what you're talking about and now you're just flailing. Embarrassing
I grew up in a town which had ethnic ghettoisation as policy. Did you? I’ve advocated taking down these kinds of policies to integrate for decades - have you? I’ve seen what it’s like when different ethnic groups attack each other in my own town - have you?
Integration- as Denmark are doing and we do patchily - is the solution. Bulldozing tired unwanted housing stock for redevelopment is what the UK already does. Just not enough of it because social housing hasn’t been popular since the 80s.
You can sit there in France taking a pop and thats up to you. But it is embarrassing that you think I don’t have a clue about this issue and am “flailing” because I disagree with your “ship them all to Rwanda it’s the only solution” plan. Which is no solution.
It isn’t Camden that gets town apart by this. It’s Rochdale. Where I grew up. Rotherham. Where I lived. Sunderland. Where I lived. Oldham - where I went to college and went through a spell of different ethnic groups coming out of their council policy ghettoes attacking each other back in c1994. Been there, done that. Racists attacking people in the town centre? Been there.
You don’t know shit about this in practical terms.
What about Stamford Hill?
It is, after all, probably the largest concentration of a minority ethnic community in Europe (depending on how exactly you class Plovdiv's Stolipinovo), and the schools, libraries, shops, and doctors are kept largely separate from those in the surrounding areas. There's even a separate community police service. And plenty of the residents there have no particular interest in integrating further - they'd rather just be left alone to get on with their own lives.
Leon must surely be familiar with it, because it's only a couple of miles up the road from him. So is it not rather more probable that he does realise the implications of what he's saying but doesn't care? He does, after all, have form for being a wee bit fash-curious...
Shit. you hand things over to Labour and within a months there are riots on the street, the stock market collapses and pensioners get mugged.
It'll be the NHS next
I know (hope?) you are not entirely serious here but I do have to point out that Starmer's much vaunted good luck that was being discussed only a couple of weeks ago seems to have abandoned him.
For the record, with the exception of the pensioner mugging, which I actually agree with Starmer and Reeves on, I don't put the blame for any of the rest of it at Starmer's feet.
Far-right organisers on social media have listed 39 immigration centres as targets for a coordinated attack on Wednesday night (Joey D’Urso and Tom Witherow write).
Posts in a Telegram channel called Southport Wake Up, which has over 12,000 members — up from around 150 on Friday night — list immigration lawyers and advice centres telling members to attack them at 8pm.
The locations cover the length and breadth of England, from big cities to smaller cities and towns.
The post suggests far-right extremists are trying to escalate the violence again once more after rioters tried to burn down two migrant hotels on Sunday
Not an insignificant part of that might well be Russian accounts trying to spread chaos. There are large documented Twitter botnets which have doing the same.
No doubt a fair amount of this crap is our own domestic problems, but some of it isn't.
Remember those words scrawled on the wall – "FUCK PAKIS" – whenever a pundit or a journalist tries to make out that this is all a misguided expression of legitimate concerns about immigration.
Shit. you hand things over to Labour and within a months there are riots on the street, the stock market collapses and pensioners get mugged.
It'll be the NHS next
It is curious how these hoodlums were completely quiet all the time Boris 'Mr Immigration' Johnson was doing his thing. Yet the moment Labour come to power it's suddenly the issue to end all issues. Were they just not informed?
Former GOP Lt. Of Georgia GeoffDuncanGA on Donald Trump:
“He is a felon thug who walks down the street and throws sucker punches at people like Brian Kemp, like African American journalists, Like John McCain…The Republican party is content sitting across the street watching it happen not calling him out not jumping into that fight saying you are wrong for us ." https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1820129273946009641
Interesting that he's making the same point I did about how far gone the Republicans are and how difficult it will be to pull them back into the mainstream.
Could the man with terrible hair see them go the way of the Whigs?
Trump is a grifting narcissist with no real beliefs, but the party he has created behind him is looking increasingly like a religious movement which is pushing for state integralism.
That's completely antithetical to the US constitutional and political tradition, but it's undeniably a central element of current GOP doctrine. And epitomised by the selection of Vance as VP.
Bookmarking the above for @viewcode , as he's keen on broad political theories, and I don't think he's done this one ?
Noted, thank you. My to-do list for PB looks like this:
Monitory Democracy and the Blob, looking at the institutions involved and how the NatCons and PopCons are forming arguments against it. It basically boils down to John Keane vs David Starkey..
On that one, you might also consider this argument.
https://slate.com/business/2023/02/subway-costs-us-europe-public-transit-funds.html ..A mammoth report from New York University’s Transit Costs Project makes a good case that the numbers are indeed astronomical, and there’s something we can do about it. Not just because bringing American transit construction into line with international best practices will make it possible for America to build big again—but also because what’s true for transit is true for the moribund public sector in general, and transit might be an object lesson.
According to authors Eric Goldwyn, Alon Levy, Elif Ensari, and Marco Chitti, there’s a lot going wrong with American transit projects—more on this in a moment—but many of the problems can be traced to a larger philosophy: outsourcing government expertise to a retainer of consultants. “What I’ve heard from consultants, which is surprising because they make so much money off this stuff, is, ‘Agencies don’t know what they want, and we have to figure it out,’ ” Goldwyn said.
For example, when the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority got to work on the Green Line Extension, the agency only had a half-dozen full-time employees managing the largest capital project the MBTA had ever undertaken. On New York’s Second Avenue subway, the most expensive mile of subway ever built, consultant contracts were more than 20 percent of construction costs—more than double what’s standard in France or Italy. By 2011, the MTA had trimmed its in-house capital projects management group of 1,600 full-time employees (circa 1990) to just 124, tasked with steering $20 billion in investment.
Perhaps the most notorious case in this business is the debacle of the California High-Speed Rail project, which in its early years had a tiny full-time staff managing hundreds of millions of dollars in consulting contracts. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has tried to right the balance more recently: “I’m getting rid of a lot of consultants,” he said in 2018. “How did we get away with this?”
There are certainly advantages to hiring highly specialized experts who can come in, complete a task, and go on their way. Subway construction is not a regular government function in most of the United States, so you can see why small agencies are reluctant to staff up—especially since federal funding is unreliable. But that excuse does not apply to organizations in cities like Seattle or Los Angeles with multi-decade pipelines and voter approval to spend tens of billions of dollars.
There’s another, bigger drawback to being so reliant on outside help. The second megaproject is easier than the first, and resurrecting lost expertise is always challenging...
I'd really like to use that, but my proposed article has a British bias. Do you have a British example?
Not off hand I don't, but it echoes similar comments on PB over the last couple of years. I'll see what I can turn up, but would be grateful for the input of those more knowledgeable than I am.
I'd be very interested in (eg) Casino's take on this one.
Posts in a Telegram channel called Southport Wake Up, which has over 12,000 members — up from around 150 on Friday night — list immigration lawyers and advice centres telling members to attack them at 8pm.
It's interesting that the organisation of these shenanigans is moving to Telegram. In the probably correct expectation that Durov will not co-operate with UK law enforcement to the slightest degree.
I seen to remember reading thar a considerable proportion of both the international and domestic security sevice's budget is devoted to cracking Telegram, so they probably will have factored that in already.
Twitter is for the slightly more visible and foolish, like Tommy Robinson, or Lawrence Fox.
It's not obvious anyone needs to crack anything? Getting hold of the device of someone in the group is enough to see all the messages, and that's if they don't just invite you to the group. They shouldn't be too hard to infiltrate: Traditionally law enforcement have not had a hard time passing as violent racists.
Can people not post locations of future riots on here.
Talk about them in the abstract but not post the actual locations.
I don’t a visit from the Rozzers asking why PB was allowing those comments.
And of course, ignoring the obvious legal issues, we don't want any idiot lurking on here to see the list and decide to go along and join in. Many of the morons won't be on Telegram so the last thing we want to do is make it easier for them.
Can people not post locations of future riots on here.
Talk about them in the abstract but not post the actual locations.
I don’t a visit from the Rozzers asking why PB was allowing those comments.
And of course, ignoring the obvious legal issues, we don't want any idiot lurking on here to see the list and decide to go along and join in. Many of the morons won't be on Telegram so the last thing we want to do is make it easier for them.
Whatever one thinks of Nige he's an absolutely first class political operator, his two tier policing meme has now become a national issue and the Mer commissioner has amplified it by being an idiot to the press.
Riots. Going back decades UK elites have said two things about riots: Firstly that they are wrong and must be condemned and stopped with all the forces of law and order possible. Secondly, that riots are the voice of the unheard/dispossessed/etc. (Remember Scarman and all that after the Brixton riots in 1981).
While it is obvious to me that there are people who should be getting life sentences for attempted murder and so on for setting fire to hotels and hostels, I think the current political elites will be making a historic mistake if they forget the second aspect and the meaning of riots.
They are not very nice people. But I have never seen a rioter who seemed very nice. But the second issue remains. Starmer will have a problem if he fails this one.
Can people not post locations of future riots on here.
Talk about them in the abstract but not post the actual locations.
I don’t a visit from the Rozzers asking why PB was allowing those comments.
And of course, ignoring the obvious legal issues, we don't want any idiot lurking on here to see the list and decide to go along and join in. Many of the morons won't be on Telegram so the last thing we want to do is make it easier for them.
Leon’s getting on a bit, wouldn’t want him to do himself or anyone else a mischief.
Can people not post locations of future riots on here.
Talk about them in the abstract but not post the actual locations.
I don’t a visit from the Rozzers asking why PB was allowing those comments.
And of course, ignoring the obvious legal issues, we don't want any idiot lurking on here to see the list and decide to go along and join in. Many of the morons won't be on Telegram so the last thing we want to do is make it easier for them.
Leon’s getting on a bit, wouldn’t want him to do himself or anyone else a mischief.
I don't think the latter's terribly likely unless he brained them with his laptop sample bag.
Interesting that Priti Patel has come out strongly against Farage
She's not white and she's sane. She might want a reduction in immigration and to stop asylum seekers etc... like many of the people rioting but violence and burning down buildings isn't the way to do that and it puts everyone in danger.
Far-right organisers on social media have listed 39 immigration centres as targets for a coordinated attack on Wednesday night (Joey D’Urso and Tom Witherow write).
Posts in a Telegram channel called Southport Wake Up, which has over 12,000 members — up from around 150 on Friday night — list immigration lawyers and advice centres telling members to attack them at 8pm.
The locations cover the length and breadth of England, from big cities to smaller cities and towns.
The post suggests far-right extremists are trying to escalate the violence again once more after rioters tried to burn down two migrant hotels on Sunday
Can people not post locations of future riots on here.
Talk about them in the abstract but not post the actual locations.
I don’t a visit from the Rozzers asking why PB was allowing those comments.
And of course, ignoring the obvious legal issues, we don't want any idiot lurking on here to see the list and decide to go along and join in. Many of the morons won't be on Telegram so the last thing we want to do is make it easier for them.
Leon’s getting on a bit, wouldn’t want him to do himself or anyone else a mischief.
I don't think the latter's terribly likely unless he brained them with his laptop sample bag.
Hmm. How much damage can you do with a hand carved soapstone comforter?
Far-right organisers on social media have listed 39 immigration centres as targets for a coordinated attack on Wednesday night (Joey D’Urso and Tom Witherow write).
Posts in a Telegram channel called Southport Wake Up, which has over 12,000 members — up from around 150 on Friday night — list immigration lawyers and advice centres telling members to attack them at 8pm.
The locations cover the length and breadth of England, from big cities to smaller cities and towns.
The post suggests far-right extremists are trying to escalate the violence again once more after rioters tried to burn down two migrant hotels on Sunday
If this carries on until next weekend Starmer/Cooper are in trouble.
The problem is they keep popping up all over the place, so the police can't join forces as they would normally. 500 riot cops for quick deployment by bus/Chinook or something?
The anti-nazis are already planning a day of action on Saturday in "every town".
Can people not post locations of future riots on here.
Talk about them in the abstract but not post the actual locations.
I don’t a visit from the Rozzers asking why PB was allowing those comments.
And of course, ignoring the obvious legal issues, we don't want any idiot lurking on here to see the list and decide to go along and join in. Many of the morons won't be on Telegram so the last thing we want to do is make it easier for them.
Leon’s getting on a bit, wouldn’t want him to do himself or anyone else a mischief.
I don't think the latter's terribly likely unless he brained them with his laptop sample bag.
Hmm. How much damage can you do with a hand carved soapstone comforter?
Is there any suggestion that those who posted on line suggesting there was Moslem involvement in the Southport tragedy will have their collars felt? Especially those who named names?
It's not clear what law they have broken. The name that circulated wasn't that of a real person, so no libel was committed.
Incitement to violence seems to work.
Saying the Southport attacker was a Muslim or that the Stirling attacker was are false and inflammatory, but they are not direct incitement to violence. Some posts may come under that, but lots won’t.
Can people not post locations of future riots on here.
Talk about them in the abstract but not post the actual locations.
I don’t a visit from the Rozzers asking why PB was allowing those comments.
And of course, ignoring the obvious legal issues, we don't want any idiot lurking on here to see the list and decide to go along and join in. Many of the morons won't be on Telegram so the last thing we want to do is make it easier for them.
Leon’s getting on a bit, wouldn’t want him to do himself or anyone else a mischief.
I don't think the latter's terribly likely unless he brained them with his laptop sample bag.
Hmm. How much damage can you do with a hand carved soapstone comforter?
It’s called ‘The Punisher’ in Leon’s product catalogue.
Shit. you hand things over to Labour and within a months there are riots on the street, the stock market collapses and pensioners get mugged.
It'll be the NHS next
I know (hope?) you are not entirely serious here but I do have to point out that Starmer's much vaunted good luck that was being discussed only a couple of weeks ago seems to have abandoned him.
For the record, with the exception of the pensioner mugging, which I actually agree with Starmer and Reeves on, I don't put the blame for any of the rest of it at Starmer's feet.
If it's about the economy stupid why actively close down the North Sea for no benefit ?
Former GOP Lt. Of Georgia GeoffDuncanGA on Donald Trump:
“He is a felon thug who walks down the street and throws sucker punches at people like Brian Kemp, like African American journalists, Like John McCain…The Republican party is content sitting across the street watching it happen not calling him out not jumping into that fight saying you are wrong for us ." https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1820129273946009641
Interesting that he's making the same point I did about how far gone the Republicans are and how difficult it will be to pull them back into the mainstream.
Could the man with terrible hair see them go the way of the Whigs?
Trump is a grifting narcissist with no real beliefs, but the party he has created behind him is looking increasingly like a religious movement which is pushing for state integralism.
That's completely antithetical to the US constitutional and political tradition, but it's undeniably a central element of current GOP doctrine. And epitomised by the selection of Vance as VP.
Bookmarking the above for @viewcode , as he's keen on broad political theories, and I don't think he's done this one ?
Noted, thank you. My to-do list for PB looks like this:
Monitory Democracy and the Blob, looking at the institutions involved and how the NatCons and PopCons are forming arguments against it. It basically boils down to John Keane vs David Starkey..
On that one, you might also consider this argument.
https://slate.com/business/2023/02/subway-costs-us-europe-public-transit-funds.html ..A mammoth report from New York University’s Transit Costs Project makes a good case that the numbers are indeed astronomical, and there’s something we can do about it. Not just because bringing American transit construction into line with international best practices will make it possible for America to build big again—but also because what’s true for transit is true for the moribund public sector in general, and transit might be an object lesson.
According to authors Eric Goldwyn, Alon Levy, Elif Ensari, and Marco Chitti, there’s a lot going wrong with American transit projects—more on this in a moment—but many of the problems can be traced to a larger philosophy: outsourcing government expertise to a retainer of consultants. “What I’ve heard from consultants, which is surprising because they make so much money off this stuff, is, ‘Agencies don’t know what they want, and we have to figure it out,’ ” Goldwyn said.
For example, when the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority got to work on the Green Line Extension, the agency only had a half-dozen full-time employees managing the largest capital project the MBTA had ever undertaken. On New York’s Second Avenue subway, the most expensive mile of subway ever built, consultant contracts were more than 20 percent of construction costs—more than double what’s standard in France or Italy. By 2011, the MTA had trimmed its in-house capital projects management group of 1,600 full-time employees (circa 1990) to just 124, tasked with steering $20 billion in investment.
Perhaps the most notorious case in this business is the debacle of the California High-Speed Rail project, which in its early years had a tiny full-time staff managing hundreds of millions of dollars in consulting contracts. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has tried to right the balance more recently: “I’m getting rid of a lot of consultants,” he said in 2018. “How did we get away with this?”
There are certainly advantages to hiring highly specialized experts who can come in, complete a task, and go on their way. Subway construction is not a regular government function in most of the United States, so you can see why small agencies are reluctant to staff up—especially since federal funding is unreliable. But that excuse does not apply to organizations in cities like Seattle or Los Angeles with multi-decade pipelines and voter approval to spend tens of billions of dollars.
There’s another, bigger drawback to being so reliant on outside help. The second megaproject is easier than the first, and resurrecting lost expertise is always challenging...
I'd really like to use that, but my proposed article has a British bias. Do you have a British example?
Not really suitable for your proposed article I'm afraid but it is interesting talking to former RAF officers, particularly those in specialist roles like comms.
Whilst they were serving they would go to their senior officers with proposals, fixes or ideas for improving operational standards and basically be told to get back in their box. The proposals would end up in the dustbin.
Some time later they would retire from the RAF, join one of the many consultancy firms made up of senior officers and go back into the RAF as a contractor with exactly the same proposals for which they would be paid very large day rates and which would be accepted as the second coming. Sometimes by the very same senior officer who rejected the ideas a year earlier.
I can 100% believe that and the RAF is the most meritocratic and egalitarian of the forces. When I first joined the Navy one couldn't even speak at the wardroom table unless spoken to by a senior officer first. Never mind having "ideas".
The Miramar of the Fens (Coningsby) now has many of these "Blue Suit" civvy contractors doing flyng jobs that they were getting paid a third of the salary to do as a "Green Suit" aircrew officer only a short time previously.
Former GOP Lt. Of Georgia GeoffDuncanGA on Donald Trump:
“He is a felon thug who walks down the street and throws sucker punches at people like Brian Kemp, like African American journalists, Like John McCain…The Republican party is content sitting across the street watching it happen not calling him out not jumping into that fight saying you are wrong for us ." https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1820129273946009641
Interesting that he's making the same point I did about how far gone the Republicans are and how difficult it will be to pull them back into the mainstream.
Could the man with terrible hair see them go the way of the Whigs?
Trump is a grifting narcissist with no real beliefs, but the party he has created behind him is looking increasingly like a religious movement which is pushing for state integralism.
That's completely antithetical to the US constitutional and political tradition, but it's undeniably a central element of current GOP doctrine. And epitomised by the selection of Vance as VP.
Bookmarking the above for @viewcode , as he's keen on broad political theories, and I don't think he's done this one ?
Noted, thank you. My to-do list for PB looks like this:
Monitory Democracy and the Blob, looking at the institutions involved and how the NatCons and PopCons are forming arguments against it. It basically boils down to John Keane vs David Starkey..
On that one, you might also consider this argument.
https://slate.com/business/2023/02/subway-costs-us-europe-public-transit-funds.html ..A mammoth report from New York University’s Transit Costs Project makes a good case that the numbers are indeed astronomical, and there’s something we can do about it. Not just because bringing American transit construction into line with international best practices will make it possible for America to build big again—but also because what’s true for transit is true for the moribund public sector in general, and transit might be an object lesson.
According to authors Eric Goldwyn, Alon Levy, Elif Ensari, and Marco Chitti, there’s a lot going wrong with American transit projects—more on this in a moment—but many of the problems can be traced to a larger philosophy: outsourcing government expertise to a retainer of consultants. “What I’ve heard from consultants, which is surprising because they make so much money off this stuff, is, ‘Agencies don’t know what they want, and we have to figure it out,’ ” Goldwyn said.
For example, when the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority got to work on the Green Line Extension, the agency only had a half-dozen full-time employees managing the largest capital project the MBTA had ever undertaken. On New York’s Second Avenue subway, the most expensive mile of subway ever built, consultant contracts were more than 20 percent of construction costs—more than double what’s standard in France or Italy. By 2011, the MTA had trimmed its in-house capital projects management group of 1,600 full-time employees (circa 1990) to just 124, tasked with steering $20 billion in investment.
Perhaps the most notorious case in this business is the debacle of the California High-Speed Rail project, which in its early years had a tiny full-time staff managing hundreds of millions of dollars in consulting contracts. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has tried to right the balance more recently: “I’m getting rid of a lot of consultants,” he said in 2018. “How did we get away with this?”
There are certainly advantages to hiring highly specialized experts who can come in, complete a task, and go on their way. Subway construction is not a regular government function in most of the United States, so you can see why small agencies are reluctant to staff up—especially since federal funding is unreliable. But that excuse does not apply to organizations in cities like Seattle or Los Angeles with multi-decade pipelines and voter approval to spend tens of billions of dollars.
There’s another, bigger drawback to being so reliant on outside help. The second megaproject is easier than the first, and resurrecting lost expertise is always challenging...
I'd really like to use that, but my proposed article has a British bias. Do you have a British example?
Not off hand I don't, but it echoes similar comments on PB over the last couple of years. I'll see what I can turn up, but would be grateful for the input of those more knowledgeable than I am.
I'd be very interested in (eg) Casino's take on this one.
This decision falls squarely under the failure of leadership heading, though.
To re-open 3 miles of track to Portishead, the local council had to complete a 79,187 page long planning application. If printed out, that's 14.6 miles of paper (4 1/2 times the line itself!). Then they had to wait 3 years for approval.
I hope nobody minds if I promote a friend's work here
I was hanging out with him yesterday afternoon, as I do about once a month at a mutual friend's place. It occurred to me this morning that I've never mentioned Knati, as we know him, on here even though he is a rather remarkable chap
His real name is Clifton Powell and he's a quite exceptional artist from Jamaica, now living in Wiltshire. He was one of the artists chosen to paint for the Windrush exhibition last year
Three years ago he was one of the artists commissioned by English Heritage to paint figures from Black British history; he painted Abbot Hadrian (or Adrian of Canterbury)
Former GOP Lt. Of Georgia GeoffDuncanGA on Donald Trump:
“He is a felon thug who walks down the street and throws sucker punches at people like Brian Kemp, like African American journalists, Like John McCain…The Republican party is content sitting across the street watching it happen not calling him out not jumping into that fight saying you are wrong for us ." https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1820129273946009641
Interesting that he's making the same point I did about how far gone the Republicans are and how difficult it will be to pull them back into the mainstream.
Could the man with terrible hair see them go the way of the Whigs?
Trump is a grifting narcissist with no real beliefs, but the party he has created behind him is looking increasingly like a religious movement which is pushing for state integralism.
That's completely antithetical to the US constitutional and political tradition, but it's undeniably a central element of current GOP doctrine. And epitomised by the selection of Vance as VP.
Bookmarking the above for @viewcode , as he's keen on broad political theories, and I don't think he's done this one ?
Noted, thank you. My to-do list for PB looks like this:
Monitory Democracy and the Blob, looking at the institutions involved and how the NatCons and PopCons are forming arguments against it. It basically boils down to John Keane vs David Starkey..
On that one, you might also consider this argument.
https://slate.com/business/2023/02/subway-costs-us-europe-public-transit-funds.html ..A mammoth report from New York University’s Transit Costs Project makes a good case that the numbers are indeed astronomical, and there’s something we can do about it. Not just because bringing American transit construction into line with international best practices will make it possible for America to build big again—but also because what’s true for transit is true for the moribund public sector in general, and transit might be an object lesson.
According to authors Eric Goldwyn, Alon Levy, Elif Ensari, and Marco Chitti, there’s a lot going wrong with American transit projects—more on this in a moment—but many of the problems can be traced to a larger philosophy: outsourcing government expertise to a retainer of consultants. “What I’ve heard from consultants, which is surprising because they make so much money off this stuff, is, ‘Agencies don’t know what they want, and we have to figure it out,’ ” Goldwyn said.
For example, when the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority got to work on the Green Line Extension, the agency only had a half-dozen full-time employees managing the largest capital project the MBTA had ever undertaken. On New York’s Second Avenue subway, the most expensive mile of subway ever built, consultant contracts were more than 20 percent of construction costs—more than double what’s standard in France or Italy. By 2011, the MTA had trimmed its in-house capital projects management group of 1,600 full-time employees (circa 1990) to just 124, tasked with steering $20 billion in investment.
Perhaps the most notorious case in this business is the debacle of the California High-Speed Rail project, which in its early years had a tiny full-time staff managing hundreds of millions of dollars in consulting contracts. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has tried to right the balance more recently: “I’m getting rid of a lot of consultants,” he said in 2018. “How did we get away with this?”
There are certainly advantages to hiring highly specialized experts who can come in, complete a task, and go on their way. Subway construction is not a regular government function in most of the United States, so you can see why small agencies are reluctant to staff up—especially since federal funding is unreliable. But that excuse does not apply to organizations in cities like Seattle or Los Angeles with multi-decade pipelines and voter approval to spend tens of billions of dollars.
There’s another, bigger drawback to being so reliant on outside help. The second megaproject is easier than the first, and resurrecting lost expertise is always challenging...
I'd really like to use that, but my proposed article has a British bias. Do you have a British example?
Not off hand I don't, but it echoes similar comments on PB over the last couple of years. I'll see what I can turn up, but would be grateful for the input of those more knowledgeable than I am.
I'd be very interested in (eg) Casino's take on this one.
This decision falls squarely under the failure of leadership heading, though.
To re-open 3 miles of track to Portishead, the local council had to complete a 79,187 page long planning application. If printed out, that's 14.6 miles of paper (4 1/2 times the line itself!). Then they had to wait 3 years for approval.
One problem with everything being electronic nowadays is that reports are way longer than they ever used to be when the typing pool could only do x pages a day each...
Hmm, some suggestions that the riots have spread to Ireland as well now with people there planning the same kind of acts as here. There were of course pretty bad riots in Ireland a few months ago around immigration so this isn't a surprise. I wonder whether this will become a summer of unrest for all of Northern Europe.
Shit. you hand things over to Labour and within a months there are riots on the street, the stock market collapses and pensioners get mugged.
It'll be the NHS next
I know (hope?) you are not entirely serious here but I do have to point out that Starmer's much vaunted good luck that was being discussed only a couple of weeks ago seems to have abandoned him.
For the record, with the exception of the pensioner mugging, which I actually agree with Starmer and Reeves on, I don't put the blame for any of the rest of it at Starmer's feet.
If it's about the economy stupid why actively close down the North Sea for no benefit ?
Oh I agree. There are masses of things that Starmer is planning that I oppose vehemently. I wasa only referring to the two examples you mentioned, neither of which is his fault. As you are well aware, if you want your criticisms to be taken seriously you also have to be fair in your appraisals.
I think Starmer is going to be ver bad for me perosnally and for the country as a whole. But I will not attack him for things that are clearly not his fault. What I will be very interested in is his response both to any recession and, more immediately to the morons burning our towns.
I hope nobody minds if I promote a friend's work here
I was hanging out with him yesterday afternoon, as I do about once a month at a mutual friend's place. It occurred to me this morning that I've never mentioned Knati, as we know him, on here even though he is a rather remarkable chap
His real name is Clifton Powell and he's a quite exceptional artist from Jamaica, now living in Wiltshire. He was one of the artists chosen to paint for the Windrush exhibition last year
Three years ago he was one of the artists commissioned by English Heritage to paint figures from Black British history; he painted Abbot Hadrian (or Adrian of Canterbury)
Former GOP Lt. Of Georgia GeoffDuncanGA on Donald Trump:
“He is a felon thug who walks down the street and throws sucker punches at people like Brian Kemp, like African American journalists, Like John McCain…The Republican party is content sitting across the street watching it happen not calling him out not jumping into that fight saying you are wrong for us ." https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1820129273946009641
Interesting that he's making the same point I did about how far gone the Republicans are and how difficult it will be to pull them back into the mainstream.
Could the man with terrible hair see them go the way of the Whigs?
Trump is a grifting narcissist with no real beliefs, but the party he has created behind him is looking increasingly like a religious movement which is pushing for state integralism.
That's completely antithetical to the US constitutional and political tradition, but it's undeniably a central element of current GOP doctrine. And epitomised by the selection of Vance as VP.
Bookmarking the above for @viewcode , as he's keen on broad political theories, and I don't think he's done this one ?
Noted, thank you. My to-do list for PB looks like this:
Monitory Democracy and the Blob, looking at the institutions involved and how the NatCons and PopCons are forming arguments against it. It basically boils down to John Keane vs David Starkey..
On that one, you might also consider this argument.
https://slate.com/business/2023/02/subway-costs-us-europe-public-transit-funds.html ..A mammoth report from New York University’s Transit Costs Project makes a good case that the numbers are indeed astronomical, and there’s something we can do about it. Not just because bringing American transit construction into line with international best practices will make it possible for America to build big again—but also because what’s true for transit is true for the moribund public sector in general, and transit might be an object lesson.
According to authors Eric Goldwyn, Alon Levy, Elif Ensari, and Marco Chitti, there’s a lot going wrong with American transit projects—more on this in a moment—but many of the problems can be traced to a larger philosophy: outsourcing government expertise to a retainer of consultants. “What I’ve heard from consultants, which is surprising because they make so much money off this stuff, is, ‘Agencies don’t know what they want, and we have to figure it out,’ ” Goldwyn said.
For example, when the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority got to work on the Green Line Extension, the agency only had a half-dozen full-time employees managing the largest capital project the MBTA had ever undertaken. On New York’s Second Avenue subway, the most expensive mile of subway ever built, consultant contracts were more than 20 percent of construction costs—more than double what’s standard in France or Italy. By 2011, the MTA had trimmed its in-house capital projects management group of 1,600 full-time employees (circa 1990) to just 124, tasked with steering $20 billion in investment.
Perhaps the most notorious case in this business is the debacle of the California High-Speed Rail project, which in its early years had a tiny full-time staff managing hundreds of millions of dollars in consulting contracts. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has tried to right the balance more recently: “I’m getting rid of a lot of consultants,” he said in 2018. “How did we get away with this?”
There are certainly advantages to hiring highly specialized experts who can come in, complete a task, and go on their way. Subway construction is not a regular government function in most of the United States, so you can see why small agencies are reluctant to staff up—especially since federal funding is unreliable. But that excuse does not apply to organizations in cities like Seattle or Los Angeles with multi-decade pipelines and voter approval to spend tens of billions of dollars.
There’s another, bigger drawback to being so reliant on outside help. The second megaproject is easier than the first, and resurrecting lost expertise is always challenging...
I'd really like to use that, but my proposed article has a British bias. Do you have a British example?
Not off hand I don't, but it echoes similar comments on PB over the last couple of years. I'll see what I can turn up, but would be grateful for the input of those more knowledgeable than I am.
I'd be very interested in (eg) Casino's take on this one.
This decision falls squarely under the failure of leadership heading, though.
To re-open 3 miles of track to Portishead, the local council had to complete a 79,187 page long planning application. If printed out, that's 14.6 miles of paper (4 1/2 times the line itself!). Then they had to wait 3 years for approval.
This is an excellent suggestion - and something along these lines, on a larger scale, would probably fund the long mooted Oxford/Cambridge link and provide a load of new housing: ..The Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government should modify its 2017 guidance on the 2016 Housing and Planning Act, which limited the number of homes that could be jointly consented with a Development Consent Order to 500. The Victorians funded many of the railways that we still rely on today by building new homes, towns, and industries alongside new tracks. We should do the same, and link up future rail projects with the building of new homes. This helps capture the value uplift that new railway lines bring, while easing Britain’s housing shortage and providing vital new transport links...
David Yelland @davidyelland · 1h One of the most repulsive, inaccurate and frankly embarrassing headlines in the history of the Daily Telegraph. It has appalled many of its own journalists. It is beneath contempt.
Interesting that Priti Patel has come out strongly against Farage
Yes, it is - and very welcome.
I think Patel would be the worst choice of all the current Tory leadership candidates, from her own party's perspective at least. Virtually all the negatives of Braverman, to which can be added a lower intelligence and, allegedly, a lower temper.
However, she is not only morally right to criticise Farage's comments, but also politically sensible. Any 'legitimate concerns' you might perceive yourself to have have are deligitimised the moment you assault civilians, set fire to hotels, smash windows and loot shops.
If the Conservatives want to be a big party in the long term they need to ensure that there is distance between them and Reform on this point most of all. Reform could yet be useful to them as a repository for any and all dingbats who are mealy-mouthed on those riots.
I hope nobody minds if I promote a friend's work here
I was hanging out with him yesterday afternoon, as I do about once a month at a mutual friend's place. It occurred to me this morning that I've never mentioned Knati, as we know him, on here even though he is a rather remarkable chap
His real name is Clifton Powell and he's a quite exceptional artist from Jamaica, now living in Wiltshire. He was one of the artists chosen to paint for the Windrush exhibition last year
Three years ago he was one of the artists commissioned by English Heritage to paint figures from Black British history; he painted Abbot Hadrian (or Adrian of Canterbury)
Hmm, some suggestions that the riots have spread to Ireland as well now with people there planning the same kind of acts as here. There were of course pretty bad riots in Ireland a few months ago around immigration so this isn't a surprise. I wonder whether this will become a summer of unrest for all of Northern Europe.
Yes. I noticed @kamski said the British riots are barely mentioned in German media. That might not be German disinterest - it might be because Germany fears copycat riots over there. It’s not like they don’t have their own ethnic/asylum tensions
Shit. you hand things over to Labour and within a months there are riots on the street, the stock market collapses and pensioners get mugged.
It'll be the NHS next
I know (hope?) you are not entirely serious here but I do have to point out that Starmer's much vaunted good luck that was being discussed only a couple of weeks ago seems to have abandoned him.
For the record, with the exception of the pensioner mugging, which I actually agree with Starmer and Reeves on, I don't put the blame for any of the rest of it at Starmer's feet.
If it's about the economy stupid why actively close down the North Sea for no benefit ?
Oh I agree. There are masses of things that Starmer is planning that I oppose vehemently. I wasa only referring to the two examples you mentioned, neither of which is his fault. As you are well aware, if you want your criticisms to be taken seriously you also have to be fair in your appraisals.
I think Starmer is going to be ver bad for me perosnally and for the country as a whole. But I will not attack him for things that are clearly not his fault. What I will be very interested in is his response both to any recession and, more immediately to the morons burning our towns.
I support removing the heating allowance it was bad politics introduced by Brown. I was more surprised they chose that to do. It had shades of the 10p pension rise.
Im coming to the view that Sunaks political machine which took the brunt of the elction, hid just how bad the Labour one is. There are no Blairite vibes coming though just Brownite clumsiness.
David Yelland @davidyelland · 1h One of the most repulsive, inaccurate and frankly embarrassing headlines in the history of the Daily Telegraph. It has appalled many of its own journalists. It is beneath contempt.
Hmm, some suggestions that the riots have spread to Ireland as well now with people there planning the same kind of acts as here. There were of course pretty bad riots in Ireland a few months ago around immigration so this isn't a surprise. I wonder whether this will become a summer of unrest for all of Northern Europe.
That would be very sad to see but would take some pressure off Starmer and co. as then not so clear this is a UK problem.
David Yelland @davidyelland · 1h One of the most repulsive, inaccurate and frankly embarrassing headlines in the history of the Daily Telegraph. It has appalled many of its own journalists. It is beneath contempt.
It is always a mistake to reveal your fears and emotions so openly in such an iimportant job
The normal thing to do at a time like this would be to invite the Commissioner round for a biscuit and solicit his advice. Looks like Yvette didn't read the script.
Interesting that Priti Patel has come out strongly against Farage
Yes, it is - and very welcome.
I think Patel would be the worst choice of all the current Tory leadership candidates, from her own party's perspective at least. Virtually all the negatives of Braverman, to which can be added a lower intelligence and, allegedly, a lower temper.
However, she is not only morally right to criticise Farage's comments, but also politically sensible. Any 'legitimate concerns' you might perceive yourself to have have are deligitimised the moment you assault civilians, set fire to hotels, smash windows and loot shops.
If the Conservatives want to be a big party in the long term they need to ensure that there is distance between them and Reform on this point most of all. Reform could yet be useful to them as a repository for any and all dingbats who are mealy-mouthed on those riots.
Badenoch earlier was doing the legitimate concerns thing. Will that go against her as the rioting gets worse? Hopefully.
David Yelland @davidyelland · 1h One of the most repulsive, inaccurate and frankly embarrassing headlines in the history of the Daily Telegraph. It has appalled many of its own journalists. It is beneath contempt.
David Yelland @davidyelland · 1h One of the most repulsive, inaccurate and frankly embarrassing headlines in the history of the Daily Telegraph. It has appalled many of its own journalists. It is beneath contempt.
Not seen the headline. What is it referring to?
“Far-Right clash with Muslims in rioting” was the headline in question
In more cheering news, for fans of schadenfreude, can I point that the TGV I am on is hideously overcrowded, a bit smelly, overbooked, with people forced to stand and not enough room for bags etc
David Yelland @davidyelland · 1h One of the most repulsive, inaccurate and frankly embarrassing headlines in the history of the Daily Telegraph. It has appalled many of its own journalists. It is beneath contempt.
Which one does he mean, the one about "Met chief grabs microphone in response to question over two-tier policing", or the highly dubious "far right and Muslims face off in batties" , as if there haven't been many other groups, other than Muslims also targeted, and these haven't had the character more of attacks, than "battles", so far.
The idea on its page also that the Gaza disorder is an example of two-tier policing is pretty odd. There were definitely examples of intimidation and anti-semitic rhetoric on those marches, but i don't recall any examples of multiple hotels being set fire to. This "two-tier" meme seems ti have very little actual, tangible and concrete basis, so tar.
It has been suggested she is going to give in to ASLEF pay demands as well which indicates the public sector and unions are heading for a considerable largesse that require billions of extra taxes
AIUI the Portishead Line is a slightly more complex project than the Northumberland Line, but I think there's one big difference: a JFDI attitude. The same thing could be seen at the reopening of the Okehampton Line a couple of years ago.
Whereas Portishead has been talked about for a decade - actually, i think decades - and everyone seems happy just spending money on studies rather than actually doing it. Lots of people in the councils and other organisation claim to really want it, but there's little practical action. It's almost as though they prefer the headlines of "Study launched into rail reopening!" ...
It has been suggested she is going to give in to ASLEF pay demands as well which indicates the public sector and unions are heading for a considerable largesse that require billions of extra taxes
As I said yesterday this will be good news for Politcemen.
How is she going to turn down a big pay rise after this week ?
It is always a mistake to reveal your fears and emotions so openly in such an iimportant job
The normal thing to do at a time like this would be to invite the Commissioner round for a biscuit and solicit his advice. Looks like Yvette didn't read the script.
As a matter of interest was Sunak invited to Cobra as inviting opposition leaders is quite common in times of crisis
“The Nigerian government has issued a travel alert for its citizens planning to visit the United Kingdom, citing increased risks of violence and disorder following recent riots.”
Interesting that Priti Patel has come out strongly against Farage
Yes, it is - and very welcome.
I think Patel would be the worst choice of all the current Tory leadership candidates, from her own party's perspective at least. Virtually all the negatives of Braverman, to which can be added a lower intelligence and, allegedly, a lower temper.
However, she is not only morally right to criticise Farage's comments, but also politically sensible. Any 'legitimate concerns' you might perceive yourself to have have are deligitimised the moment you assault civilians, set fire to hotels, smash windows and loot shops.
If the Conservatives want to be a big party in the long term they need to ensure that there is distance between them and Reform on this point most of all. Reform could yet be useful to them as a repository for any and all dingbats who are mealy-mouthed on those riots.
The riots provide an opening for a law and order type Conservative. The Lib Dems can't fill that hole and neither can Reform. Note that the Daily Mail (both online and in print) is not joining in with some of the far-right memes.
Despite his background, Starmer just doesn't come across as a hard-nosed prosecutor (contrast with Harris who you can imagine being tough). I think he is at far more risk from being perceived as weak on the rioters than anything else.
“The Nigerian government has issued a travel alert for its citizens planning to visit the United Kingdom, citing increased risks of violence and disorder following recent riots.”
Could they send it to the guys running the small boats ?
“The Nigerian government has issued a travel alert for its citizens planning to visit the United Kingdom, citing increased risks of violence and disorder following recent riots.”
'Come tae Bonnie Scotland, we may be a shithole but we urnae doin' the rioting at the moment.'
Former GOP Lt. Of Georgia GeoffDuncanGA on Donald Trump:
“He is a felon thug who walks down the street and throws sucker punches at people like Brian Kemp, like African American journalists, Like John McCain…The Republican party is content sitting across the street watching it happen not calling him out not jumping into that fight saying you are wrong for us ." https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1820129273946009641
Interesting that he's making the same point I did about how far gone the Republicans are and how difficult it will be to pull them back into the mainstream.
Could the man with terrible hair see them go the way of the Whigs?
Trump is a grifting narcissist with no real beliefs, but the party he has created behind him is looking increasingly like a religious movement which is pushing for state integralism.
That's completely antithetical to the US constitutional and political tradition, but it's undeniably a central element of current GOP doctrine. And epitomised by the selection of Vance as VP.
Bookmarking the above for @viewcode , as he's keen on broad political theories, and I don't think he's done this one ?
Noted, thank you. My to-do list for PB looks like this:
Monitory Democracy and the Blob, looking at the institutions involved and how the NatCons and PopCons are forming arguments against it. It basically boils down to John Keane vs David Starkey..
On that one, you might also consider this argument.
https://slate.com/business/2023/02/subway-costs-us-europe-public-transit-funds.html ..A mammoth report from New York University’s Transit Costs Project makes a good case that the numbers are indeed astronomical, and there’s something we can do about it. Not just because bringing American transit construction into line with international best practices will make it possible for America to build big again—but also because what’s true for transit is true for the moribund public sector in general, and transit might be an object lesson.
According to authors Eric Goldwyn, Alon Levy, Elif Ensari, and Marco Chitti, there’s a lot going wrong with American transit projects—more on this in a moment—but many of the problems can be traced to a larger philosophy: outsourcing government expertise to a retainer of consultants. “What I’ve heard from consultants, which is surprising because they make so much money off this stuff, is, ‘Agencies don’t know what they want, and we have to figure it out,’ ” Goldwyn said.
For example, when the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority got to work on the Green Line Extension, the agency only had a half-dozen full-time employees managing the largest capital project the MBTA had ever undertaken. On New York’s Second Avenue subway, the most expensive mile of subway ever built, consultant contracts were more than 20 percent of construction costs—more than double what’s standard in France or Italy. By 2011, the MTA had trimmed its in-house capital projects management group of 1,600 full-time employees (circa 1990) to just 124, tasked with steering $20 billion in investment.
Perhaps the most notorious case in this business is the debacle of the California High-Speed Rail project, which in its early years had a tiny full-time staff managing hundreds of millions of dollars in consulting contracts. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has tried to right the balance more recently: “I’m getting rid of a lot of consultants,” he said in 2018. “How did we get away with this?”
There are certainly advantages to hiring highly specialized experts who can come in, complete a task, and go on their way. Subway construction is not a regular government function in most of the United States, so you can see why small agencies are reluctant to staff up—especially since federal funding is unreliable. But that excuse does not apply to organizations in cities like Seattle or Los Angeles with multi-decade pipelines and voter approval to spend tens of billions of dollars.
There’s another, bigger drawback to being so reliant on outside help. The second megaproject is easier than the first, and resurrecting lost expertise is always challenging...
I'd really like to use that, but my proposed article has a British bias. Do you have a British example?
Reading the US report, it does contain this: ..Moreover, we believe that, unlike some of the other problems in this report (see below on labor), the procurement problems are not purely American. The globalized system is rife in the English-speaking world; we note that London Underground construction costs were in line with Italian levels and only diverged in the 1990s, when there were massive changes in British procurement reducing the role and expertise of the civil service and (after cost overruns on the Jubilee line extension) replacing it with private consultants. Indeed, the London cost premium over Italy and Sweden is not a factor of about 10 as in New York, but a factor of about 3...
AIUI the Portishead Line is a slightly more complex project than the Northumberland Line, but I think there's one big difference: a JFDI attitude. The same thing could be seen at the reopening of the Okehampton Line a couple of years ago.
Whereas Portishead has been talked about for a decade - actually, i think decades - and everyone seems happy just spending money on studies rather than actually doing it. Lots of people in the councils and other organisation claim to really want it, but there's little practical action. It's almost as though they prefer the headlines of "Study launched into rail reopening!" ...
Indeed and that will also feed into the rather misleading headlines about huge planning documents. Every time they commission a study it will be added to the planning application document. Keep commissioing studies and you keep adding to the document even if they are not necessary. Local councils can't get civil service enquiries or studies to help them kick the can down the road so they commission private studies from consultants instead. I have been asked for several of these in my time and on a uber of occasions have been asked to do additional studies with effectively no new criteria. In each of those cases I have told the councils involved that they have all the information already and a new study is pointless.
AIUI the Portishead Line is a slightly more complex project than the Northumberland Line, but I think there's one big difference: a JFDI attitude. The same thing could be seen at the reopening of the Okehampton Line a couple of years ago.
Whereas Portishead has been talked about for a decade - actually, i think decades - and everyone seems happy just spending money on studies rather than actually doing it. Lots of people in the councils and other organisation claim to really want it, but there's little practical action. It's almost as though they prefer the headlines of "Study launched into rail reopening!" ...
Indeed and that will also feed into the rather misleading headlines about huge planning documents. Every time they commission a study it will be added to the planning application document. Keep commissioing studies and you keep adding to the document even if they are not necessary. Local councils can't get civil service enquiries or studies to help them kick the can down the road so they commission private studies from consultants instead. I have been asked for several of these in my time and on a uber of occasions have been asked to do additional studies with effectively no new criteria. In each of those cases I have told the councils involved that they have all the information already and a new study is pointless.
Are these studies commissioned due to a (justifiable) fear of judicial review and some judge saying you haven't considered the effect of X on group Y ?
“The Nigerian government has issued a travel alert for its citizens planning to visit the United Kingdom, citing increased risks of violence and disorder following recent riots.”
'Come tae Bonnie Scotland, we may be a shithole but we urnae doin' the rioting at the moment.'
David Yelland @davidyelland · 1h One of the most repulsive, inaccurate and frankly embarrassing headlines in the history of the Daily Telegraph. It has appalled many of its own journalists. It is beneath contempt.
Which one does he mean, the one about "Met chief grabs microphone in response to question over two-tier policing", or the highly dubious "far right and Muslims face off in batties" , as if there haven't been many other groups, other than Muslims also targeted, and these haven't had the character more of attacks, than "battles", so far.
The idea on its page also that the Gaza disorder is an example of two-tier policing is pretty odd. There were definitely examples of intimidation and anti-semitic rhetoric on those marches, but i don't recall any examples of multiple hotels being set fire to. This "two-tier" meme seems ti have very little actual, tangible and concrete basis, so tar.
Having a basis in truth isn’t really a requirement for what the rioters or rioter-apologists here believe.
David Yelland @davidyelland · 1h One of the most repulsive, inaccurate and frankly embarrassing headlines in the history of the Daily Telegraph. It has appalled many of its own journalists. It is beneath contempt.
‘Zero asylum seekers’: Denmark forces refugees to return to Syria
An article which is 2 years old. And says nothing about Danish policy other than they have the right to refuse asylum claims. Which is exactly what I posted above.
An article more than 4 years old. Did you read past the headline? They are bulldozing ghettoes to rebuild and encourage integration. We do the exact same thing here when money is available- bulldoze tatty and deprived neighbourhoods and build new houses. Where I used to live in Stockton was exactly that. The new build homes being smashed over the weekend another example.
As I asked William, what is the point you are making? You said “Denmark”. This is Denmark. Do you support their policies of letting asylum seekers work and investing to integrate them into society?
Or was “Denmark” code for “Rwanda”. Which isn’t something they do. As you have had pointed out endlessly when you were the last person left supporting the Tory Rwanda crayon drawing.
As @williamglenn correctly notes, you haven't got a clue what you're talking about and now you're just flailing. Embarrassing
I grew up in a town which had ethnic ghettoisation as policy. Did you? I’ve advocated taking down these kinds of policies to integrate for decades - have you? I’ve seen what it’s like when different ethnic groups attack each other in my own town - have you?
Integration- as Denmark are doing and we do patchily - is the solution. Bulldozing tired unwanted housing stock for redevelopment is what the UK already does. Just not enough of it because social housing hasn’t been popular since the 80s.
You can sit there in France taking a pop and thats up to you. But it is embarrassing that you think I don’t have a clue about this issue and am “flailing” because I disagree with your “ship them all to Rwanda it’s the only solution” plan. Which is no solution.
It isn’t Camden that gets town apart by this. It’s Rochdale. Where I grew up. Rotherham. Where I lived. Sunderland. Where I lived. Oldham - where I went to college and went through a spell of different ethnic groups coming out of their council policy ghettoes attacking each other back in c1994. Been there, done that. Racists attacking people in the town centre? Been there.
You don’t know shit about this in practical terms.
When Kings Cross was redeveloped, most of the existing inhabitants were expelled. This was under New Labour.
One charming technique was as they got some tenants out, they moved in workmen from the King’s Cross project(s). Who were told to push the rest of the tenants out by smashing up the common areas, lots of noise, and it is rumoured, a bit of intimidation.
Former GOP Lt. Of Georgia GeoffDuncanGA on Donald Trump:
“He is a felon thug who walks down the street and throws sucker punches at people like Brian Kemp, like African American journalists, Like John McCain…The Republican party is content sitting across the street watching it happen not calling him out not jumping into that fight saying you are wrong for us ." https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1820129273946009641
Interesting that he's making the same point I did about how far gone the Republicans are and how difficult it will be to pull them back into the mainstream.
Could the man with terrible hair see them go the way of the Whigs?
Trump is a grifting narcissist with no real beliefs, but the party he has created behind him is looking increasingly like a religious movement which is pushing for state integralism.
That's completely antithetical to the US constitutional and political tradition, but it's undeniably a central element of current GOP doctrine. And epitomised by the selection of Vance as VP.
Bookmarking the above for @viewcode , as he's keen on broad political theories, and I don't think he's done this one ?
Noted, thank you. My to-do list for PB looks like this:
Monitory Democracy and the Blob, looking at the institutions involved and how the NatCons and PopCons are forming arguments against it. It basically boils down to John Keane vs David Starkey..
On that one, you might also consider this argument.
https://slate.com/business/2023/02/subway-costs-us-europe-public-transit-funds.html ..A mammoth report from New York University’s Transit Costs Project makes a good case that the numbers are indeed astronomical, and there’s something we can do about it. Not just because bringing American transit construction into line with international best practices will make it possible for America to build big again—but also because what’s true for transit is true for the moribund public sector in general, and transit might be an object lesson.
According to authors Eric Goldwyn, Alon Levy, Elif Ensari, and Marco Chitti, there’s a lot going wrong with American transit projects—more on this in a moment—but many of the problems can be traced to a larger philosophy: outsourcing government expertise to a retainer of consultants. “What I’ve heard from consultants, which is surprising because they make so much money off this stuff, is, ‘Agencies don’t know what they want, and we have to figure it out,’ ” Goldwyn said.
For example, when the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority got to work on the Green Line Extension, the agency only had a half-dozen full-time employees managing the largest capital project the MBTA had ever undertaken. On New York’s Second Avenue subway, the most expensive mile of subway ever built, consultant contracts were more than 20 percent of construction costs—more than double what’s standard in France or Italy. By 2011, the MTA had trimmed its in-house capital projects management group of 1,600 full-time employees (circa 1990) to just 124, tasked with steering $20 billion in investment.
Perhaps the most notorious case in this business is the debacle of the California High-Speed Rail project, which in its early years had a tiny full-time staff managing hundreds of millions of dollars in consulting contracts. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has tried to right the balance more recently: “I’m getting rid of a lot of consultants,” he said in 2018. “How did we get away with this?”
There are certainly advantages to hiring highly specialized experts who can come in, complete a task, and go on their way. Subway construction is not a regular government function in most of the United States, so you can see why small agencies are reluctant to staff up—especially since federal funding is unreliable. But that excuse does not apply to organizations in cities like Seattle or Los Angeles with multi-decade pipelines and voter approval to spend tens of billions of dollars.
There’s another, bigger drawback to being so reliant on outside help. The second megaproject is easier than the first, and resurrecting lost expertise is always challenging...
I'd really like to use that, but my proposed article has a British bias. Do you have a British example?
Not off hand I don't, but it echoes similar comments on PB over the last couple of years. I'll see what I can turn up, but would be grateful for the input of those more knowledgeable than I am.
I'd be very interested in (eg) Casino's take on this one.
This decision falls squarely under the failure of leadership heading, though.
To re-open 3 miles of track to Portishead, the local council had to complete a 79,187 page long planning application. If printed out, that's 14.6 miles of paper (4 1/2 times the line itself!). Then they had to wait 3 years for approval.
Mrs Flatlander was asked to do a site assessment / management plan for council X and they wanted to use DEFRA's suggested format which amounts to several hundred pages of boilerplate text for each site in a docx file that absolutely nobody will read.
It doesn't take 100 pages to say "manage the scrub in this area by cutting it every 5 years" even if DEFRA seem to think it does.
She is suggesting they might not find it useful so we'll see if they agree.
I think this is becoming more common in the field - nobody wants to produce pages and pages of guff that aren't read. It is a total waste of human effort. Small consultancies who have plenty of other work are just refusing to bid for this kind of crap.
Most ecologists don't get into the job because they want to spend 6 hours in the field followed by 6 weeks writing it up in legalese.
The only people who can be arsed writing these big reports are large consultancies who can assign the tedious stuff to some just-out-of-college minion who doesn't know any better. They of course charge ££££.
In more cheering news, for fans of schadenfreude, can I point that the TGV I am on is hideously overcrowded, a bit smelly, overbooked, with people forced to stand and not enough room for bags etc
I am genuinely surprised. In all the time I have travelled around France on the TGV the one, seemingly unbreakable, rule is they won't sell more tickets than there are seats. I wonder if they have lifted that rule specifically for the Olympics?
1) Clearly this is led by racism and escalated through misinformation. The riot sympathisers link it to real world concerns about migration levels because that's the only lens in which tacit support can be given without sounding racist. Because immigration has nothing to do with the render tragic murder of children. But the accused isn't white, so through the eyes of a racist...
2) Various shortcomings of our justice system are being exposed as a part of this. The police stretched to their limits. Asylum seeker hotels because we stopped bothering to process applications. Those charges with crimes may not take a court for years due to a huge backlog. Those convicted may have shorter sentences due to overflowing prisons. There's a whole load of areas that have been cut penny wise and pound foolish that Labour should remember when setting out their budget in the Autumn.
In more cheering news, for fans of schadenfreude, can I point that the TGV I am on is hideously overcrowded, a bit smelly, overbooked, with people forced to stand and not enough room for bags etc
This rioting is being very heavily reported in the European press. It is making the UK look pretty disgusting. We're heading back to the days when we were the football hooligans no one wanted visiting their country.
Former GOP Lt. Of Georgia GeoffDuncanGA on Donald Trump:
“He is a felon thug who walks down the street and throws sucker punches at people like Brian Kemp, like African American journalists, Like John McCain…The Republican party is content sitting across the street watching it happen not calling him out not jumping into that fight saying you are wrong for us ." https://x.com/RpsAgainstTrump/status/1820129273946009641
Interesting that he's making the same point I did about how far gone the Republicans are and how difficult it will be to pull them back into the mainstream.
Could the man with terrible hair see them go the way of the Whigs?
Trump is a grifting narcissist with no real beliefs, but the party he has created behind him is looking increasingly like a religious movement which is pushing for state integralism.
That's completely antithetical to the US constitutional and political tradition, but it's undeniably a central element of current GOP doctrine. And epitomised by the selection of Vance as VP.
Bookmarking the above for @viewcode , as he's keen on broad political theories, and I don't think he's done this one ?
Noted, thank you. My to-do list for PB looks like this:
Monitory Democracy and the Blob, looking at the institutions involved and how the NatCons and PopCons are forming arguments against it. It basically boils down to John Keane vs David Starkey..
On that one, you might also consider this argument.
https://slate.com/business/2023/02/subway-costs-us-europe-public-transit-funds.html ..A mammoth report from New York University’s Transit Costs Project makes a good case that the numbers are indeed astronomical, and there’s something we can do about it. Not just because bringing American transit construction into line with international best practices will make it possible for America to build big again—but also because what’s true for transit is true for the moribund public sector in general, and transit might be an object lesson.
According to authors Eric Goldwyn, Alon Levy, Elif Ensari, and Marco Chitti, there’s a lot going wrong with American transit projects—more on this in a moment—but many of the problems can be traced to a larger philosophy: outsourcing government expertise to a retainer of consultants. “What I’ve heard from consultants, which is surprising because they make so much money off this stuff, is, ‘Agencies don’t know what they want, and we have to figure it out,’ ” Goldwyn said.
For example, when the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority got to work on the Green Line Extension, the agency only had a half-dozen full-time employees managing the largest capital project the MBTA had ever undertaken. On New York’s Second Avenue subway, the most expensive mile of subway ever built, consultant contracts were more than 20 percent of construction costs—more than double what’s standard in France or Italy. By 2011, the MTA had trimmed its in-house capital projects management group of 1,600 full-time employees (circa 1990) to just 124, tasked with steering $20 billion in investment.
Perhaps the most notorious case in this business is the debacle of the California High-Speed Rail project, which in its early years had a tiny full-time staff managing hundreds of millions of dollars in consulting contracts. California Gov. Gavin Newsom has tried to right the balance more recently: “I’m getting rid of a lot of consultants,” he said in 2018. “How did we get away with this?”
There are certainly advantages to hiring highly specialized experts who can come in, complete a task, and go on their way. Subway construction is not a regular government function in most of the United States, so you can see why small agencies are reluctant to staff up—especially since federal funding is unreliable. But that excuse does not apply to organizations in cities like Seattle or Los Angeles with multi-decade pipelines and voter approval to spend tens of billions of dollars.
There’s another, bigger drawback to being so reliant on outside help. The second megaproject is easier than the first, and resurrecting lost expertise is always challenging...
I'd really like to use that, but my proposed article has a British bias. Do you have a British example?
Not off hand I don't, but it echoes similar comments on PB over the last couple of years. I'll see what I can turn up, but would be grateful for the input of those more knowledgeable than I am.
I'd be very interested in (eg) Casino's take on this one.
This decision falls squarely under the failure of leadership heading, though.
To re-open 3 miles of track to Portishead, the local council had to complete a 79,187 page long planning application. If printed out, that's 14.6 miles of paper (4 1/2 times the line itself!). Then they had to wait 3 years for approval.
Mrs Flatlander was asked to do a site assessment / management plan for council X and they wanted to use DEFRA's suggested format which amounts to several hundred pages of boilerplate text for each site in a docx file that absolutely nobody will read.
It doesn't take 100 pages to say "manage the scrub in this area by cutting it every 5 years" even if DEFRA seem to think it does.
She is suggesting they might not find it useful so we'll see if they agree.
I think this is becoming more common in the field - nobody wants to produce pages and pages of guff that aren't read. It is a total waste of human effort. Small consultancies who have plenty of other work are just refusing to bid for this kind of crap.
Most ecologists don't get into the job because they want to spend 6 hours in the field followed by 6 weeks writing it up in legalese.
The only people who can be arsed writing these big reports are large consultancies who can assign the tedious stuff to some just-out-of-college minion who doesn't know any better. They of course charge ££££.
“The Nigerian government has issued a travel alert for its citizens planning to visit the United Kingdom, citing increased risks of violence and disorder following recent riots.”
'Come tae Bonnie Scotland, we may be a shithole but we urnae doin' the rioting at the moment.'
No riots in Birmingham or Sheffield either.
I'm sure the tourist trade in both fine cities should make a killing (if you'll pardon the unfortunate metaphor).
Comments
Fuckers, the lot of them & those with them on this site pretending they have any reason to do any of this shit. I completely understand TSE wondering whether to throw in the towel on running this site altogether frankly.
Twitter is for the slightly more visible and foolish, like Tommy Robinson, or Lawrence Fox.
Whilst they were serving they would go to their senior officers with proposals, fixes or ideas for improving operational standards and basically be told to get back in their box. The proposals would end up in the dustbin.
Some time later they would retire from the RAF, join one of the many consultancy firms made up of senior officers and go back into the RAF as a contractor with exactly the same proposals for which they would be paid very large day rates and which would be accepted as the second coming. Sometimes by the very same senior officer who rejected the ideas a year earlier.
The problem is they keep popping up all over the place, so the police can't join forces as they would normally. 500 riot cops for quick deployment by bus/Chinook or something?
BREAKING: Commissioner of the Met Police Sir Mark Rowley has been seen leaving the Cabinet Office in Westminster.
As he left, he was asked a question about two-tier policing, but Sir Mark grabbed the journalist's microphone and dropped it to the ground.
https://trib.al/VOn7Fc9
That's a bit of a dumb thing to do....
It is, after all, probably the largest concentration of a minority ethnic community in Europe (depending on how exactly you class Plovdiv's Stolipinovo), and the schools, libraries, shops, and doctors are kept largely separate from those in the surrounding areas. There's even a separate community police service. And plenty of the residents there have no particular interest in integrating further - they'd rather just be left alone to get on with their own lives.
Leon must surely be familiar with it, because it's only a couple of miles up the road from him. So is it not rather more probable that he does realise the implications of what he's saying but doesn't care? He does, after all, have form for being a wee bit fash-curious...
For the record, with the exception of the pensioner mugging, which I actually agree with Starmer and Reeves on, I don't put the blame for any of the rest of it at Starmer's feet.
There are large documented Twitter botnets which have doing the same.
No doubt a fair amount of this crap is our own domestic problems, but some of it isn't.
Remember those words scrawled on the wall – "FUCK PAKIS" – whenever a pundit or a journalist tries to make out that this is all a misguided expression of legitimate concerns about immigration.
https://x.com/AyoCaesar/status/1820378001290224065
Talk about them in the abstract but not post the actual locations.
I don’t a visit from the Rozzers asking why PB was allowing those comments.
I'd be very interested in (eg) Casino's take on this one.
Can't be *ruled* out, that should ofcourse also have said, below.
If only Nige wasn't such a massive ****.
While it is obvious to me that there are people who should be getting life sentences for attempted murder and so on for setting fire to hotels and hostels, I think the current political elites will be making a historic mistake if they forget the second aspect and the meaning of riots.
They are not very nice people. But I have never seen a rioter who seemed very nice. But the second issue remains. Starmer will have a problem if he fails this one.
laptopsample bag.Edit - Tulip Siddiq's aunt of course.
Unless I'm widely mistaken, she was also perceived as being supported by Modi.
The Miramar of the Fens (Coningsby) now has many of these "Blue Suit" civvy contractors doing flyng jobs that they were getting paid a third of the salary to do as a "Green Suit" aircrew officer only a short time previously.
To re-open 3 miles of track to Portishead, the local council had to complete a 79,187 page long planning application. If printed out, that's 14.6 miles of paper (4 1/2 times the line itself!). Then they had to wait 3 years for approval.
Yet now this project may be scrapped.
https://x.com/Ben_A_Hopkinson/status/1820409315234082831
Benefit to cost ratio calculated at 4.85.
I was hanging out with him yesterday afternoon, as I do about once a month at a mutual friend's place. It occurred to me this morning that I've never mentioned Knati, as we know him, on here even though he is a rather remarkable chap
His real name is Clifton Powell and he's a quite exceptional artist from Jamaica, now living in Wiltshire. He was one of the artists chosen to paint for the Windrush exhibition last year
https://www.rct.uk/collection/exhibitions/windrush-portraits-of-a-pioneering-generation/royal-west-of-england-academy/portrait-of-gilda-oliver
Three years ago he was one of the artists commissioned by English Heritage to paint figures from Black British history; he painted Abbot Hadrian (or Adrian of Canterbury)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-57397584
Despite these high profile gigs, the poor old (mid-60s) guy hasn't managed to muster even a thousand followers on his Instagram
Please give him a follow if you have an account, and encourage others to do likewise
https://www.instagram.com/clifton.powell_/
This is him meeting the King last year
I think Starmer is going to be ver bad for me perosnally and for the country as a whole. But I will not attack him for things that are clearly not his fault. What I will be very interested in is his response both to any recession and, more immediately to the morons burning our towns.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/08/04/labour-drops-tory-plans-to-cut-civil-service-numbers/
https://benhopkinson.substack.com/p/a-train-to-nowhere
This is an excellent suggestion - and something along these lines, on a larger scale, would probably fund the long mooted Oxford/Cambridge link and provide a load of new housing:
..The Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government should modify its 2017 guidance on the 2016 Housing and Planning Act, which limited the number of homes that could be jointly consented with a Development Consent Order to 500. The Victorians funded many of the railways that we still rely on today by building new homes, towns, and industries alongside new tracks. We should do the same, and link up future rail projects with the building of new homes. This helps capture the value uplift that new railway lines bring, while easing Britain’s housing shortage and providing vital new transport links...
Interested to hear.
@davidyelland
·
1h
One of the most repulsive, inaccurate and frankly embarrassing headlines in the history of the Daily Telegraph. It has appalled many of its own journalists. It is beneath contempt.
I think Patel would be the worst choice of all the current Tory leadership candidates, from her own party's perspective at least. Virtually all the negatives of Braverman, to which can be added a lower intelligence and, allegedly, a lower temper.
However, she is not only morally right to criticise Farage's comments, but also politically sensible. Any 'legitimate concerns' you might perceive yourself to have have are deligitimised the moment you assault civilians, set fire to hotels, smash windows and loot shops.
If the Conservatives want to be a big party in the long term they need to ensure that there is distance between them and Reform on this point most of all. Reform could yet be useful to them as a repository for any and all dingbats who are mealy-mouthed on those riots.
It is always a mistake to reveal your fears and emotions so openly in such an iimportant job
https://www.northumberlandline.uk/
Though a test train did do the line today.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/neil-blagburn-b3541956_train-travels-from-newcastle-to-ashington-activity-7226148063248089088-CUoR?trk=public_profile
Im coming to the view that Sunaks political machine which took the brunt of the elction, hid just how bad the Labour one is. There are no Blairite vibes coming though just Brownite clumsiness.
Means Reeves can borrow cheaper if it lasts.
https://www.tomorrowspapers.co.uk/
The idea on its page also that the Gaza disorder is an example of two-tier policing is pretty odd. There were definitely examples of intimidation and anti-semitic rhetoric on those marches, but i don't recall any examples of multiple hotels being set fire to. This "two-tier" meme seems ti have very little actual, tangible and
concrete basis, so tar.
Whereas Portishead has been talked about for a decade - actually, i think decades - and everyone seems happy just spending money on studies rather than actually doing it. Lots of people in the councils and other organisation claim to really want it, but there's little practical action. It's almost as though they prefer the headlines of "Study launched into rail reopening!" ...
How is she going to turn down a big pay rise after this week ?
“The Nigerian government has issued a travel alert for its citizens planning to visit the United Kingdom, citing increased risks of violence and disorder following recent riots.”
2 year yields down around 0.75% since the election in May. Almost all of which in the last 2 weeks.
That will translate into lower mortgage borrowing costs when people come off existing fixed rate deals.
Despite his background, Starmer just doesn't come across as a hard-nosed prosecutor (contrast with Harris who you can imagine being tough). I think he is at far more risk from being perceived as weak on the rioters than anything else.
I saw that post over on RF!
..Moreover, we believe that, unlike some of the other problems in this report (see below on labor), the procurement problems are not purely American. The globalized system is rife in the English-speaking world; we note that London Underground construction costs were in line with Italian levels and only diverged in the 1990s, when there were massive changes in British procurement reducing the role and expertise of the civil service and (after cost overruns on the Jubilee line extension) replacing it with private consultants. Indeed, the London cost premium over Italy and Sweden is not a factor of about 10 as in New York, but a factor of about 3...
Elon when entire Wagner PMC marches on Moscow: crickets
Elon when 50 IQ bloke called something like Johnny Cockwomble loots a Tesco in Wolverhampton:
https://x.com/DrewPavlou/status/1820344638651486369
I cannot believe anything it says on Twitter about this as there is so much disinformation around.
One charming technique was as they got some tenants out, they moved in workmen from the King’s Cross project(s). Who were told to push the rest of the tenants out by smashing up the common areas, lots of noise, and it is rumoured, a bit of intimidation.
Mrs Flatlander was asked to do a site assessment / management plan for council X and they wanted to use DEFRA's suggested format which amounts to several hundred pages of boilerplate text for each site in a docx file that absolutely nobody will read.
It doesn't take 100 pages to say "manage the scrub in this area by cutting it every 5 years" even if DEFRA seem to think it does.
She is suggesting they might not find it useful so we'll see if they agree.
I think this is becoming more common in the field - nobody wants to produce pages and pages of guff that aren't read. It is a total waste of human effort. Small consultancies who have plenty of other work are just refusing to bid for this kind of crap.
Most ecologists don't get into the job because they want to spend 6 hours in the field followed by 6 weeks writing it up in legalese.
The only people who can be arsed writing these big reports are large consultancies who can assign the tedious stuff to some just-out-of-college minion who doesn't know any better. They of course charge ££££.
1) Clearly this is led by racism and escalated through misinformation. The riot sympathisers link it to real world concerns about migration levels because that's the only lens in which tacit support can be given without sounding racist. Because immigration has nothing to do with the render tragic murder of children. But the accused isn't white, so through the eyes of a racist...
2) Various shortcomings of our justice system are being exposed as a part of this. The police stretched to their limits. Asylum seeker hotels because we stopped bothering to process applications. Those charges with crimes may not take a court for years due to a huge backlog. Those convicted may have shorter sentences due to overflowing prisons. There's a whole load of areas that have been cut penny wise and pound foolish that Labour should remember when setting out their budget in the Autumn.
Perhaps they need a coffee.