About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
Talking of conspiracy theories, I hope everyone's surviving Friday the 13th okay so far.
I’m stuck in a desert valley in Canada that I was assured by a certain PBer is “a little bit of paradise” but is actually a big old desert grey desert valley with some nice wine and LOTS of walmarts. Paradise it ain’t
I am now scratching for something to write in the Gazette
The BBC report suggests the proposed replacement for HS2 northern leg might cost little more than a third of the cancelled project.
Won't be high speed rail, though.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1k3k87y497o ...Sir David called on the new government to support the proposal, which is predicted to cost between 60 and 75% less than the proposed HS2 northern leg. The savings would be delivered through lower design speeds, ballasted track, UK rather than European standard cross-sections and building on the existing rail network. Sir David said: “What we need now is for the new government to work together with the business community and Combined Authorities – take the practical steps to make a new rail link a reality." More than £2bn had been spent on HS2 phase 2 before it was scrapped, with the consortium proposing to use much of this land and infrastructure...
Point of order. The new proposal IS high speed - design speed of 186mph.
In practice I won't be that surprised to see the southern HS2 also restricted to such a slow speed. The extra energy used to go even faster is barely worth the bother.
That's largely semantics, though. This is going back to the original argument over HS2, that it was at the time absurdly and unnecessarily over-specced.
Had that not been the case, there have been more flexibility over the route; the engineering would have been far simpler and less costly; and the economic case far easier to make.
It would probably be half completed by now, and we'd be arguing about the Leeds leg.
But after her trial last year Cheshire Police revealed it was investigating the time she spent on two placements in Liverpool in 2012 and 2015.
He told the inquiry that some babies collapsed due to dislodgement of endotracheal [breathing] tubes.
"This is not something that is happening all the time", he said.
"It is unusual, and you will hear that it occurs generally in less than 1% of shifts."
The audit found that there were recorded incidents of the tubes being dislodged on 40% of the shifts Letby worked at Liverpool Womens' Hospital.
Mr Baker said: "In light of what we know now, we might wonder why.”
A number of the usual suspects (Davis, Hitchens et al) have hitched their wagon to the 'Free The Letby One' campaign. I think there is a reasonable chance that the overwhelming nature of the case against her and the utterly feeble nature of the criticisms will cause those in public life who have done so to stop this fairly soon, out of embarrassment and respect for the families.
Mr Baker KC noted that the victims' families are anxious to preserve anonymity because they fear personal abuse etc from conspiracy theorists.
To me this has something of the whole Carl Beech saga about it: a breathless media running with any old crap, showboating politicians stirring the pot, a big dollop of conspiracy theory, while all the time cooler heads are ignored or even derided. But I agree: as this inquiry goes on most of the truthers will probably creep away and never mention it again.
There are surely two separate questions. Did Letby kill at least some babies? Probably. Did she receive a fair trial? Probably not.
And a major flaw, as has happened in other cases, is that neither jurists nor jurors know the first thing about probability and statistics. The system is simply not set up to cope with this sort of evidence, and what we end up with is conviction on the basis of ‘no smoke without fire’ which might be correct but is hardly satisfactory.
Were statistics a big thing in this case? I read the Appeal Court's judgment and I don't recall them even being mentioned. What got a lot of play was babies turning weird colours and dying in a way no one had ever seen before, and every time Letby was the one supervising.
Yes - the classic chart of who was on shift when babies died (suspiciously).
That is not of itself statistics. The chart to show that LL was on duty at the relevant times is evidence of presence of the defendant and therefore opportunity, not of statistical likelihood of something. On its own it demonstrates nothing without a whole tranche of further evidence, but all the other evidence falls away if LL was not present.
The prosecution have to disclose their evidence, including unused evidence, to the defence. The defence are at liberty to adduce evidence that suspicious deaths occurred when LL was not on duty if they can find it.
A jury is entitled to use its common sense about the patterns they discern from the evidence. If (for example) they are sure, early in their deliberations, about LL's responsibility for the insulin cases, they can decide this gives weight to the idea that she is responsible for others where the evidence is less direct. The acquittals and failures to decide suggested that they were careful in how they did this.
"The chart to show that LL was on duty at the relevant times is evidence of presence of the defendant and therefore opportunity, not of statistical likelihood of something." This was USED as statistical evidence. As in, how likely is it that this was a coincidence.
As long as the jury accepts the evidence that the babies were murdered/attempt, then the regular presence of person X in each case presents itself to the common sense of the jury as a matter for consideration. In English law the jury considers the totality of evidence, using its collective wisdom as people of the world to decide by comon sense not by maths.
if of course the defence showed that similar things kept happening in LL's absence that would be a bit of an obstacle.
Unpopular opinion incoming. As told by Trump supporters.
When there’s a boxing match, the winner says “I won”, and the loser says “Can we have a rematch?”
Trump was all up for a series of debates, it was Team Harris that only wanted this one debate, in a carefully-controlled environment with a very friendly team of presenters.
Now that debate has happened, and Harris didn’t totally implode as they thought she might, they’re looking for another.
Trump will want the next debate on Fox, with an audience present and without the presenters “fact-checking” one side and not the other.
My personal view, is that there will be a week or two of back-and-forth, but they will eventually agree to another meeting. Both sides think they can win a second debate.
Dude you are getting about as credible as our Saturday morning visitors with your spinning.
Yes, it’s a shame as @Sandpit is an otherwise good poster
Do we want this site to be a one-way Harris propoganda machine?
Some of us are looking at the other side of American Twitter, so you don’t have to.
You post a load of stuff, with no links, and then claim to be 'looking at the other side'.
Twitter is a cesspit. If you're giving the other side, at the very least give links so we can see how *credible* the source is. Chances are it's BS.
I post a fair number of links, am genuinely trying to bring to this forum an idea of what American conservatives and Republicans are talking about, in an environment in which two sides are talking past each other and can agree on little more than today being Friday.
Video fact-checking Harris from the debate, by Dave Rubin. He’s a fairly mainstream conservative, former liberal and originally a DeSantis supporter.
You do realise that the Rubin Report is one of the channels that has just been shown to be Russia-funded?
You do realise that the creators of Tenet Media have ben called victims of the scam by the FBI?
Yeah, and I cry b/s on that. It's a very odd 'victim' who receives hundreds of thousands of dollars for nothing; they knew damn well they were being fed money to feed lines from their funders. Just look at Pool's anti-Ukraine rants, and his recent volte-face after he got caught out.
@turbotubbs - I've had a quick Google and this Reddit thread suggests Letby wasn't charged with two deaths that happened whilst she was present. In a situation like this, there's always going to be a fine line for what to go with, but the prosecution didn't simply charge her with all deaths that happened in her presence. Babies can, obviously, die of natural causes.
The case against Letby was much more than "what are the chances?"
But after her trial last year Cheshire Police revealed it was investigating the time she spent on two placements in Liverpool in 2012 and 2015.
He told the inquiry that some babies collapsed due to dislodgement of endotracheal [breathing] tubes.
"This is not something that is happening all the time", he said.
"It is unusual, and you will hear that it occurs generally in less than 1% of shifts."
The audit found that there were recorded incidents of the tubes being dislodged on 40% of the shifts Letby worked at Liverpool Womens' Hospital.
Mr Baker said: "In light of what we know now, we might wonder why.”
A number of the usual suspects (Davis, Hitchens et al) have hitched their wagon to the 'Free The Letby One' campaign. I think there is a reasonable chance that the overwhelming nature of the case against her and the utterly feeble nature of the criticisms will cause those in public life who have done so to stop this fairly soon, out of embarrassment and respect for the families.
Mr Baker KC noted that the victims' families are anxious to preserve anonymity because they fear personal abuse etc from conspiracy theorists.
To me this has something of the whole Carl Beech saga about it: a breathless media running with any old crap, showboating politicians stirring the pot, a big dollop of conspiracy theory, while all the time cooler heads are ignored or even derided. But I agree: as this inquiry goes on most of the truthers will probably creep away and never mention it again.
There are surely two separate questions. Did Letby kill at least some babies? Probably. Did she receive a fair trial? Probably not.
And a major flaw, as has happened in other cases, is that neither jurists nor jurors know the first thing about probability and statistics. The system is simply not set up to cope with this sort of evidence, and what we end up with is conviction on the basis of ‘no smoke without fire’ which might be correct but is hardly satisfactory.
Were statistics a big thing in this case? I read the Appeal Court's judgment and I don't recall them even being mentioned. What got a lot of play was babies turning weird colours and dying in a way no one had ever seen before, and every time Letby was the one supervising.
Yes - the classic chart of who was on shift when babies died (suspiciously).
That is not of itself statistics. The chart to show that LL was on duty at the relevant times is evidence of presence of the defendant and therefore opportunity, not of statistical likelihood of something. On its own it demonstrates nothing without a whole tranche of further evidence, but all the other evidence falls away if LL was not present.
The prosecution have to disclose their evidence, including unused evidence, to the defence. The defence are at liberty to adduce evidence that suspicious deaths occurred when LL was not on duty if they can find it.
A jury is entitled to use its common sense about the patterns they discern from the evidence. If (for example) they are sure, early in their deliberations, about LL's responsibility for the insulin cases, they can decide this gives weight to the idea that she is responsible for others where the evidence is less direct. The acquittals and failures to decide suggested that they were careful in how they did this.
I'm sorry but it IS statistics. It was used to show that she was the only one present on all the shifts that a suspicious death occurred. It is plausible that is has been cherry picked:
1) Staff become suspiscuous about Letby 2) Staff then look at deaths when she was on shift 3) These then become the murders. 4) Chart of who was on shift when the murders occurred is drawn up 5) Only Letby was on shift for all the murders.
Can you see the issue?
Now it has been asserted that the suspicious deaths were drawn up independent of knowing who was on shift, and done so on how ill the babies were etc. If that is the case then thats one issue cleared.
But you still need to be aware of the statistical chance of an event happening. If there are 100 baby units what are the odds that one member of staff would be present at all deaths (considered unusual)? Is it 0? No. You hope it is vanishingly small, but there would be a chance.
Unlikely things happen. Leicester won the premier league. People win the lottery.
Full analysis of this requires a level of detail I don't have - it will be in the transcripts almost no-one has read, including me.
However, I think your misunderstanding is this.
To prove murder/attempted murder it is central to prove that there was an unlawful killing/attempt. Without evidence of that nothing gets off the ground. The judge and court of appeal concluded that there was a case to answer WRT there being murders/attempted murders in each case. (The CA specifically considered this ground, of there being no case to answer),
The next question is who did it. The rotas provide evidence of presence of LL in each individual case.
This provides not a statistical but a factual set of claims about each case, each of which the defence is at liberty to challenge; eg by saying she wasn't there, there wasn't a killing/attempt, someone else did it and these people, X, Y and Z, are the possible candidates. or of course simply saying none of these and requiring proof beyond reasonable doubt in the mind of the jury.
There was of course an abundance of other corroborating evidence.
I think we are at cross purposes. Do you think it possible that say five deaths on a NICU could occur with only one member of staff present in every case by random chance alone? It clearly is a possibility. The Dutch case was based on believing it wasn't. The other argument is how were the deaths chosen to be part of the case? If they were chosen because people had started to suspect Letby and then looked at the cases where she was around, as is possible, then that would be cherry picking.
I am not saying that this happened but this is why I believe that the evidence presented (the chart) falls very much into the use of statistics. The point was "Look only Letby was here for ALL the deaths".
I see your point, and I doubt if, on what is currently known, we can go much further. You overlook the fact that the prosecution has to prove unlawful killing/attempt in each case. The fact that she was present for all the deaths is obvious: it falls under the nature of the allegation. How should and could the prosecution prove (and it is essential in each case, or it falls) that LL was present except by the evidence of the rota; which evidence is not about stats or probabilities, it is about presence in the room.
You have to start with remembering that this is NOT the case of the Bloody Knife (with thanks for Blackadder). Babies die in NICU units sadly. This unit was being asked to do things it probably shouldn't have been. Babies were dying. At some point someone started to wonder if they were not dying of natural causes (recalling that they were premature babies who are fundamentally fragile). It is possible that some, all or none of the babies were murdered. There is evidence in some of the cases for unnatural death, but not in all. In some cases they are deemed suspicious because they were over the worst and pulling though.
Put yourself in the eyes of the jury. You are shown *that chart*. You are going to use it as statistics. Which was the intention. Just as Meadows said it was a 1 in 73 million chance of having two cot deaths in one family.
No. In no case was the evidence just: 'A baby died, LL was present at the time'. In each case there was, and had to be, evidence that the baby died unlawfully. Read with care the court of appeal judgment.
Talking of conspiracy theories, I hope everyone's surviving Friday the 13th okay so far.
I’m stuck in a desert valley in Canada that I was assured by a certain PBer is “a little bit of paradise” but is actually a big old desert grey desert valley with some nice wine and LOTS of walmarts. Paradise it ain’t
I am now scratching for something to write in the Gazette
Write about how the soulless wasteland of the place was the worst recommendation you have had and and you have no words to say then spin it into an article about the recommendations or places that have surprised on the upside and the downside.
Talking of conspiracy theories, I hope everyone's surviving Friday the 13th okay so far.
Well, I just did a blooming fast 12k run around a reservoir in beautiful sunshine, then went to the pool and promptly smashed my skull into the wall whilst racing a lady in the next lane.
As a result, I have a massive headache. So a mix for me today.
(I did shower after the run and before the swim...)
Talking of conspiracy theories, I hope everyone's surviving Friday the 13th okay so far.
I’m stuck in a desert valley in Canada that I was assured by a certain PBer is “a little bit of paradise” but is actually a big old desert grey desert valley with some nice wine and LOTS of walmarts. Paradise it ain’t
I am now scratching for something to write in the Gazette
Canada has deserts?
That fact alone is worth a piece I would have thought. Who knew?
Talking of conspiracy theories, I hope everyone's surviving Friday the 13th okay so far.
I’m stuck in a desert valley in Canada that I was assured by a certain PBer is “a little bit of paradise” but is actually a big old desert grey desert valley with some nice wine and LOTS of walmarts. Paradise it ain’t
I am now scratching for something to write in the Gazette
Canada has deserts?
That fact alone is worth a piece I would have thought. Who knew?
Trouble is, it’s ugly
But maybe you’re right. I need to major on the “surprise” angle
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
But after her trial last year Cheshire Police revealed it was investigating the time she spent on two placements in Liverpool in 2012 and 2015.
He told the inquiry that some babies collapsed due to dislodgement of endotracheal [breathing] tubes.
"This is not something that is happening all the time", he said.
"It is unusual, and you will hear that it occurs generally in less than 1% of shifts."
The audit found that there were recorded incidents of the tubes being dislodged on 40% of the shifts Letby worked at Liverpool Womens' Hospital.
Mr Baker said: "In light of what we know now, we might wonder why.”
A number of the usual suspects (Davis, Hitchens et al) have hitched their wagon to the 'Free The Letby One' campaign. I think there is a reasonable chance that the overwhelming nature of the case against her and the utterly feeble nature of the criticisms will cause those in public life who have done so to stop this fairly soon, out of embarrassment and respect for the families.
Mr Baker KC noted that the victims' families are anxious to preserve anonymity because they fear personal abuse etc from conspiracy theorists.
To me this has something of the whole Carl Beech saga about it: a breathless media running with any old crap, showboating politicians stirring the pot, a big dollop of conspiracy theory, while all the time cooler heads are ignored or even derided. But I agree: as this inquiry goes on most of the truthers will probably creep away and never mention it again.
There are surely two separate questions. Did Letby kill at least some babies? Probably. Did she receive a fair trial? Probably not.
And a major flaw, as has happened in other cases, is that neither jurists nor jurors know the first thing about probability and statistics. The system is simply not set up to cope with this sort of evidence, and what we end up with is conviction on the basis of ‘no smoke without fire’ which might be correct but is hardly satisfactory.
Were statistics a big thing in this case? I read the Appeal Court's judgment and I don't recall them even being mentioned. What got a lot of play was babies turning weird colours and dying in a way no one had ever seen before, and every time Letby was the one supervising.
Yes - the classic chart of who was on shift when babies died (suspiciously).
But that isn't statistics. That's evidence of opportunity for her to have committed the crimes.
Not how it was used. It was used as "how likely was it that Letby was the only one there when all these babies died". Of course it also shows opportunity.
That is a perfectly reasonable jury point for the prosecution to make, appealing to their common sense, as long as the ground of unlawful killing/attempt is made out for each case.
The trouble is that jurors' intuition, or common sense, is not a good basis for handling this sort of evidence. Ditto lawyers.
The BBC report suggests the proposed replacement for HS2 northern leg might cost little more than a third of the cancelled project.
Won't be high speed rail, though.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1k3k87y497o ...Sir David called on the new government to support the proposal, which is predicted to cost between 60 and 75% less than the proposed HS2 northern leg. The savings would be delivered through lower design speeds, ballasted track, UK rather than European standard cross-sections and building on the existing rail network. Sir David said: “What we need now is for the new government to work together with the business community and Combined Authorities – take the practical steps to make a new rail link a reality." More than £2bn had been spent on HS2 phase 2 before it was scrapped, with the consortium proposing to use much of this land and infrastructure...
Point of order. The new proposal IS high speed - design speed of 186mph.
In practice I won't be that surprised to see the southern HS2 also restricted to such a slow speed. The extra energy used to go even faster is barely worth the bother.
I believe 'high speed' in rail terms is anything of 125MPH or above. For that reason, several of our existing Victorian-era lines are technically high-speed.
This new report is interesting, but it'll be good to read the Atkins report when it is released: the devil will be in the details.
One way to reduce the costs - including of the original plans - would be to have a saner approach to the contracts and risk allocation.
POLICE said it was not possible to “arrest our way out” of the King’s Cross drug crisis as officers told residents there was no simple solution that would give them back their quality of life.
... “I’m not going to sit here and lie,” said Inspector Lee Davies. “The Met, it is known, it is a shrinking organisation – it is not going to get any better soon. The Class A users … it is not an issue we can arrest out way out of. These people have historic and embedded lifestyle issues. Putting them before the justice system isn’t necessarily the right course of action. Targeting the drug dealers will have more of an impact. To get that, it takes a long time. I share the residents' pain about how long that takes.”
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Another one for @viewcode 's scrapbook. And a quite persuasive thesis.
The New Right Has a Blueprint for Seizing Power. Is JD Vance Executing It? There may be more to the alliance between MAGA and the New Right than political convenience. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/09/13/jd-vance-new-right-political-movement-00177203 ... In fact, Vance embodies an archetype that has been theorized about at length in New Right-adjacent books and podcasts (many of which Vance has read and listened to). By forging an alliance between the elite “New Right” and the MAGA masses, Vance, according to this reading, could serve as the leader of a new movement to institute an illiberal and explicitly reactionary political order. Though adopting the rhetoric of conservatism populism, this new order would be a fundamentally elitist one: It would expel America’s current ruling elite in order to replace it with a new, more conservative one, drawn from the ranks of the New Right.
The details of this plan differ between the various writers and thinkers that have influenced Vance — people like the Notre Dame political theorist Patrick Deneen, the internet philosopher Curtis Yarvin and the Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel. But taken together, their prescriptions amount to a kind of three-step plan for the New Right’s project: Identify a member of the New Right elite who can tap into the energies of an ascendant right-wing populist movement, ride those energies to political power, and then carry out a top-down transformation of American society along illiberal lines. It is, in effect, a plan to accomplish through elite rule what even the MAGA movement has failed to accomplish through democratic control: The creation of a social order built around conservative values, even if those values remain broadly unpopular with the American people...
It certainly rises above conspiracy theory, given they're fairly explicit in their aims. And Thiel has funded Vance's entire, brief political career.
Curtis Yarvin is a complete nut, who makes Trump look rational. That he's taken seriously in their circles is telling.
I wouldn't worry too much about that; it's another bit of House of Lords attention-seeking from Lord Hogan-Howe, who is as ignorant, as impractical and as ridiculous as always. There's plenty of data around his questions / issues; he just doesn't see to want to do any homework about what is effective or practical.
It's a better debate than might be expected because there are a range of contributions. Here is the link, but there are 2:15 hours of it.
Talking of conspiracy theories, I hope everyone's surviving Friday the 13th okay so far.
I’m stuck in a desert valley in Canada that I was assured by a certain PBer is “a little bit of paradise” but is actually a big old desert grey desert valley with some nice wine and LOTS of walmarts. Paradise it ain’t
I am now scratching for something to write in the Gazette
Much of it is tundra, so not that surprising. All the lakes and rivers suggests it isn’t that dry.
Meanwhile Colorado’s heatwave continues - yesterday topped 85F, against a normal average daily max of 65F
But after her trial last year Cheshire Police revealed it was investigating the time she spent on two placements in Liverpool in 2012 and 2015.
He told the inquiry that some babies collapsed due to dislodgement of endotracheal [breathing] tubes.
"This is not something that is happening all the time", he said.
"It is unusual, and you will hear that it occurs generally in less than 1% of shifts."
The audit found that there were recorded incidents of the tubes being dislodged on 40% of the shifts Letby worked at Liverpool Womens' Hospital.
Mr Baker said: "In light of what we know now, we might wonder why.”
A number of the usual suspects (Davis, Hitchens et al) have hitched their wagon to the 'Free The Letby One' campaign. I think there is a reasonable chance that the overwhelming nature of the case against her and the utterly feeble nature of the criticisms will cause those in public life who have done so to stop this fairly soon, out of embarrassment and respect for the families.
Mr Baker KC noted that the victims' families are anxious to preserve anonymity because they fear personal abuse etc from conspiracy theorists.
To me this has something of the whole Carl Beech saga about it: a breathless media running with any old crap, showboating politicians stirring the pot, a big dollop of conspiracy theory, while all the time cooler heads are ignored or even derided. But I agree: as this inquiry goes on most of the truthers will probably creep away and never mention it again.
There are surely two separate questions. Did Letby kill at least some babies? Probably. Did she receive a fair trial? Probably not.
And a major flaw, as has happened in other cases, is that neither jurists nor jurors know the first thing about probability and statistics. The system is simply not set up to cope with this sort of evidence, and what we end up with is conviction on the basis of ‘no smoke without fire’ which might be correct but is hardly satisfactory.
Were statistics a big thing in this case? I read the Appeal Court's judgment and I don't recall them even being mentioned. What got a lot of play was babies turning weird colours and dying in a way no one had ever seen before, and every time Letby was the one supervising.
Yes - the classic chart of who was on shift when babies died (suspiciously).
That is not of itself statistics. The chart to show that LL was on duty at the relevant times is evidence of presence of the defendant and therefore opportunity, not of statistical likelihood of something. On its own it demonstrates nothing without a whole tranche of further evidence, but all the other evidence falls away if LL was not present.
The prosecution have to disclose their evidence, including unused evidence, to the defence. The defence are at liberty to adduce evidence that suspicious deaths occurred when LL was not on duty if they can find it.
A jury is entitled to use its common sense about the patterns they discern from the evidence. If (for example) they are sure, early in their deliberations, about LL's responsibility for the insulin cases, they can decide this gives weight to the idea that she is responsible for others where the evidence is less direct. The acquittals and failures to decide suggested that they were careful in how they did this.
I'm sorry but it IS statistics. It was used to show that she was the only one present on all the shifts that a suspicious death occurred. It is plausible that is has been cherry picked:
1) Staff become suspiscuous about Letby 2) Staff then look at deaths when she was on shift 3) These then become the murders. 4) Chart of who was on shift when the murders occurred is drawn up 5) Only Letby was on shift for all the murders.
Can you see the issue?
Now it has been asserted that the suspicious deaths were drawn up independent of knowing who was on shift, and done so on how ill the babies were etc. If that is the case then thats one issue cleared.
But you still need to be aware of the statistical chance of an event happening. If there are 100 baby units what are the odds that one member of staff would be present at all deaths (considered unusual)? Is it 0? No. You hope it is vanishingly small, but there would be a chance.
Unlikely things happen. Leicester won the premier league. People win the lottery.
Full analysis of this requires a level of detail I don't have - it will be in the transcripts almost no-one has read, including me.
However, I think your misunderstanding is this.
To prove murder/attempted murder it is central to prove that there was an unlawful killing/attempt. Without evidence of that nothing gets off the ground. The judge and court of appeal concluded that there was a case to answer WRT there being murders/attempted murders in each case. (The CA specifically considered this ground, of there being no case to answer),
The next question is who did it. The rotas provide evidence of presence of LL in each individual case.
This provides not a statistical but a factual set of claims about each case, each of which the defence is at liberty to challenge; eg by saying she wasn't there, there wasn't a killing/attempt, someone else did it and these people, X, Y and Z, are the possible candidates. or of course simply saying none of these and requiring proof beyond reasonable doubt in the mind of the jury.
There was of course an abundance of other corroborating evidence.
I think we are at cross purposes. Do you think it possible that say five deaths on a NICU could occur with only one member of staff present in every case by random chance alone? It clearly is a possibility. The Dutch case was based on believing it wasn't. The other argument is how were the deaths chosen to be part of the case? If they were chosen because people had started to suspect Letby and then looked at the cases where she was around, as is possible, then that would be cherry picking.
I am not saying that this happened but this is why I believe that the evidence presented (the chart) falls very much into the use of statistics. The point was "Look only Letby was here for ALL the deaths".
I see your point, and I doubt if, on what is currently known, we can go much further. You overlook the fact that the prosecution has to prove unlawful killing/attempt in each case. The fact that she was present for all the deaths is obvious: it falls under the nature of the allegation. How should and could the prosecution prove (and it is essential in each case, or it falls) that LL was present except by the evidence of the rota; which evidence is not about stats or probabilities, it is about presence in the room.
You have to start with remembering that this is NOT the case of the Bloody Knife (with thanks for Blackadder). Babies die in NICU units sadly. This unit was being asked to do things it probably shouldn't have been. Babies were dying. At some point someone started to wonder if they were not dying of natural causes (recalling that they were premature babies who are fundamentally fragile). It is possible that some, all or none of the babies were murdered. There is evidence in some of the cases for unnatural death, but not in all. In some cases they are deemed suspicious because they were over the worst and pulling though.
Put yourself in the eyes of the jury. You are shown *that chart*. You are going to use it as statistics. Which was the intention. Just as Meadows said it was a 1 in 73 million chance of having two cot deaths in one family.
No. In no case was the evidence just: 'A baby died, LL was present at the time'. In each case there was, and had to be, evidence that the baby died unlawfully. Read with care the court of appeal judgment.
Perhaps I should have said conclusive evidence for unlawful death, to be more clear.
I honesty don't know why I care about this so much. I don't think she is innocent, I suspect she could be, and could be very unlucky. I find it interesting that intelligent people have very different opinions on this (and on so much else). Its also great that no-one is being rude to each other. PB is SO much better than most forums in this regard.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
POLICE said it was not possible to “arrest our way out” of the King’s Cross drug crisis as officers told residents there was no simple solution that would give them back their quality of life.
... “I’m not going to sit here and lie,” said Inspector Lee Davies. “The Met, it is known, it is a shrinking organisation – it is not going to get any better soon. The Class A users … it is not an issue we can arrest out way out of. These people have historic and embedded lifestyle issues. Putting them before the justice system isn’t necessarily the right course of action. Targeting the drug dealers will have more of an impact. To get that, it takes a long time. I share the residents' pain about how long that takes.”
POLICE said it was not possible to “arrest our way out” of the King’s Cross drug crisis as officers told residents there was no simple solution that would give them back their quality of life.
... “I’m not going to sit here and lie,” said Inspector Lee Davies. “The Met, it is known, it is a shrinking organisation – it is not going to get any better soon. The Class A users … it is not an issue we can arrest out way out of. These people have historic and embedded lifestyle issues. Putting them before the justice system isn’t necessarily the right course of action. Targeting the drug dealers will have more of an impact. To get that, it takes a long time. I share the residents' pain about how long that takes.”
This is why people lose hope, lose faith in the system and even turn to vigilantes who will later become protection racketeers.
The other part of Kings Cross was fixed, by brutal "ethnic cleansing" of the locals....
They could cleanse those numpties who sell overpriced sweets and factory fresh chocolate brownies on the forecourt (er, "piazza") now and the place would improve no end.
Interesting idea, but with the irony that, if getting enough points to be disqualified from driving, this could lead to bad cyclists being effectively forced to do more cycling.
As with most cyclist transgression issues, it would surely be let down by enforcement. We have laws and fines etc that can be used for all the annoying things cyclists do (jumping reds, speeding along pedestrian areas such as pavements) but at the low end it's damn hard to enforce it. I'm far from convinced that HYUFD's cycle licences is a solution - would only really be useful with plates unless we're going to have police routinely stopping cyclists and demanding to see their licence and plates that were readable would be big and bulky on a bike and very easily vandalised. And the necessity would put off the occasional cyclist with an old bike in the shed.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
The BBC report suggests the proposed replacement for HS2 northern leg might cost little more than a third of the cancelled project.
Won't be high speed rail, though.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1k3k87y497o ...Sir David called on the new government to support the proposal, which is predicted to cost between 60 and 75% less than the proposed HS2 northern leg. The savings would be delivered through lower design speeds, ballasted track, UK rather than European standard cross-sections and building on the existing rail network. Sir David said: “What we need now is for the new government to work together with the business community and Combined Authorities – take the practical steps to make a new rail link a reality." More than £2bn had been spent on HS2 phase 2 before it was scrapped, with the consortium proposing to use much of this land and infrastructure...
Point of order. The new proposal IS high speed - design speed of 186mph.
In practice I won't be that surprised to see the southern HS2 also restricted to such a slow speed. The extra energy used to go even faster is barely worth the bother.
I believe 'high speed' in rail terms is anything of 125MPH or above. For that reason, several of our existing Victorian-era lines are technically high-speed.
This new report is interesting, but it'll be good to read the Atkins report when it is released: the devil will be in the details.
One way to reduce the costs - including of the original plans - would be to have a saner approach to the contracts and risk allocation.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
I'd suggest that Cycling Proficiency (to use the pre-2007 term reflecting the old, less comprehensive programme) should be a basic requirement for anyone who wants a driving licence.
I wouldn't worry too much about that; it's another bit of House of Lords attention-seeking from Lord Hogan-Howe, who is as ignorant, as impractical and as ridiculous as always. There's plenty of data around his questions / issues; he just doesn't see to want to do any homework about what is effective or practical.
It's a better debate than might be expected because there are a range of contributions. Here is the link, but there are 2:15 hours of it.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Hang on, you're more concerned about A roads? How much trouble to cyclists cause there, except to themselves getting flattened by cars (often not their fault). I do get the concerns about shared path/city centre cycling of a minority, where pedestrians can be put at risk, but you're saying you wouldn't require a licence for that?
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
As you are neither a cyclist nor a driver I don't think you are qualified to participate in the various discussions around cycling or driving. I mean I bet you don't even know the comparative merits of an Aeroad CF SLX 8 Di2 Cosmic vs a Trek Madone SL 6 Gen 7 Smoke.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
It is because bikes do not weigh over a ton and travel at 60 mph and as a consequence deaths and serious injury is very rare on a bike. However the opposite is true for a car or truck hence a test and licence is needed.
Where do you want to draw the line? Do I need to take a test and get a licence for walking down the pavement because that is where you are going with this.
I guess his hallucinogenics are stronger than mine.
I'm no Trump fan, far from it, but this isn't his most nonsense comment. Self ID, and recognition of such, perhaps with parents who do not approve could see just this scenario occur.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Hang on, you're more concerned about A roads? How much trouble to cyclists cause there, except to themselves getting flattened by cars (often not their fault). I do get the concerns about shared path/city centre cycling of a minority, where pedestrians can be put at risk, but you're saying you wouldn't require a licence for that?
A road cyc;ists need to have enough training to ensure their own safety, passing a highway code theory test would also include looking out for pedestrians (who can also cross A roads)
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
I'd suggest that Cycling Proficiency (to use the pre-2007 term reflecting the old, less comprehensive programme) should be a basic requirement for anyone who wants a driving licence.
That's an excellent idea. There are some bus companies that have their staff cycle the routes before they can drive them too, which rather drives home how vulnerable you can feel on a bike.
POLICE said it was not possible to “arrest our way out” of the King’s Cross drug crisis as officers told residents there was no simple solution that would give them back their quality of life.
... “I’m not going to sit here and lie,” said Inspector Lee Davies. “The Met, it is known, it is a shrinking organisation – it is not going to get any better soon. The Class A users … it is not an issue we can arrest out way out of. These people have historic and embedded lifestyle issues. Putting them before the justice system isn’t necessarily the right course of action. Targeting the drug dealers will have more of an impact. To get that, it takes a long time. I share the residents' pain about how long that takes.”
This is why people lose hope, lose faith in the system and even turn to vigilantes who will later become protection racketeers.
There's never been a time in history in which we have had more police officers in the Met. Even the FTE officer per 100,000 isnt really that far out from its peak. The previous peak was during the deficit post crisis peak of 2010 with 33,697 officers it is now 34,899.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
It is because bikes do not weigh over a ton and travel at 60 mph and as a consequence deaths and serious injury is very rare on a bike. However the opposite is true for a car or truck hence a test and licence is needed.
Where do you want to draw the line? Do I need to take a test and get a licence for walking down the pavement because that is where you are going with this.
No as pedestrians don't walk on motorways or even A roads except at traffic islands
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
It is because bikes do not weigh over a ton and travel at 60 mph and as a consequence deaths and serious injury is very rare on a bike. However the opposite is true for a car or truck hence a test and licence is needed.
Where do you want to draw the line? Do I need to take a test and get a licence for walking down the pavement because that is where you are going with this.
A significant chunk of vehicle/pedestrian collisions are pedestrian error too. Even then, you should be driving that one tonne vehicle in anticipation of such errors, particularly around children and drunk people.
I suppose HYUFD would have the police breath testing pedestrians.
Another one for @viewcode 's scrapbook. And a quite persuasive thesis.
The New Right Has a Blueprint for Seizing Power. Is JD Vance Executing It? There may be more to the alliance between MAGA and the New Right than political convenience. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/09/13/jd-vance-new-right-political-movement-00177203 ... In fact, Vance embodies an archetype that has been theorized about at length in New Right-adjacent books and podcasts (many of which Vance has read and listened to). By forging an alliance between the elite “New Right” and the MAGA masses, Vance, according to this reading, could serve as the leader of a new movement to institute an illiberal and explicitly reactionary political order. Though adopting the rhetoric of conservatism populism, this new order would be a fundamentally elitist one: It would expel America’s current ruling elite in order to replace it with a new, more conservative one, drawn from the ranks of the New Right.
The details of this plan differ between the various writers and thinkers that have influenced Vance — people like the Notre Dame political theorist Patrick Deneen, the internet philosopher Curtis Yarvin and the Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel. But taken together, their prescriptions amount to a kind of three-step plan for the New Right’s project: Identify a member of the New Right elite who can tap into the energies of an ascendant right-wing populist movement, ride those energies to political power, and then carry out a top-down transformation of American society along illiberal lines. It is, in effect, a plan to accomplish through elite rule what even the MAGA movement has failed to accomplish through democratic control: The creation of a social order built around conservative values, even if those values remain broadly unpopular with the American people...
It certainly rises above conspiracy theory, given they're fairly explicit in their aims. And Thiel has funded Vance's entire, brief political career.
Curtis Yarvin is a complete nut, who makes Trump look rational. That he's taken seriously in their circles is telling.
Thank you for that @Nigelb. Believe it or not I do bookmark these (eg "PB-political-Christianity") but I'm not sure I can fit your article into that category: it's more a Project2025 thing.
As for ones I can get done by November, there's the Blob one, one on using a curve to assess predictions, and possibly another one. Then by Dec 31st there's a syntactic analysis of the Cass report, one on growth as a bad indicator. I'll try to get "Solarpunk II" done but I don't know when. Busy, busy, busy...
The BBC report suggests the proposed replacement for HS2 northern leg might cost little more than a third of the cancelled project.
Won't be high speed rail, though.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1k3k87y497o ...Sir David called on the new government to support the proposal, which is predicted to cost between 60 and 75% less than the proposed HS2 northern leg. The savings would be delivered through lower design speeds, ballasted track, UK rather than European standard cross-sections and building on the existing rail network. Sir David said: “What we need now is for the new government to work together with the business community and Combined Authorities – take the practical steps to make a new rail link a reality." More than £2bn had been spent on HS2 phase 2 before it was scrapped, with the consortium proposing to use much of this land and infrastructure...
Point of order. The new proposal IS high speed - design speed of 186mph.
In practice I won't be that surprised to see the southern HS2 also restricted to such a slow speed. The extra energy used to go even faster is barely worth the bother.
I believe 'high speed' in rail terms is anything of 125MPH or above. For that reason, several of our existing Victorian-era lines are technically high-speed.
This new report is interesting, but it'll be good to read the Atkins report when it is released: the devil will be in the details.
One way to reduce the costs - including of the original plans - would be to have a saner approach to the contracts and risk allocation.
TGV runs at 199mph (320 kmph)
Anything running at 93% of TGV speed....
TGVB (train à grande vitesse britannique). Like the 'British Sausage'
Trump - as I called - has totally lost his shit and will now sink his own campaign. Whilst the perception was that "45%" would vote for him whatever he said, that's already demonstrably not the case.
Republicans for Harris is a real thing, and its starting to gather momentum. The more that name conservatives declare for the conservative candidate, the more that conservative voters will follow.
Trump will be left with the radicals, the deranged, satan-following evangelicals and the remaining gas-breathing drones. The election is over. Only question now is how big she wins.
Blimey. Wish I had a tenth of your confidence on this one.
My confidence is built on 2 things: 1. Trust in Trump to completely fall apart. That is now happening before our eyes 2. Confidence that Harris will look like the sane choice, even for moderate republicans
There is this obsession with patriotism in America which boggles the mind. But it is a trip wire which makes it really hard for "patriots" who aren't mad to vote for the lunatic who will demolish the thing you are patriotic about.
Trump is falling apart, will only get worse (watch him fire the sane advisors and rely on the core of mentalists screaming that the debate was "rigged" because Harris was given the questions beforehand), and will actively propel more and more conservatives to vote for the conservative candidate - Harris.
Perhaps I will be proven wrong. But I'm feeling pretty good about coming out weeks ago proclaiming that Harris will win bigly.
Trump still on 45-49% in all but one post debate poll suggests it will still be very close, there is not going to be a Harris landslide even if she scrapes home.
Indeed every post debate poll still has Harris below the 51% Biden got in 2020
Unpopular opinion incoming. As told by Trump supporters.
When there’s a boxing match, the winner says “I won”, and the loser says “Can we have a rematch?”
Trump was all up for a series of debates, it was Team Harris that only wanted this one debate, in a carefully-controlled environment with a very friendly team of presenters.
Now that debate has happened, and Harris didn’t totally implode as they thought she might, they’re looking for another.
Trump will want the next debate on Fox, with an audience present and without the presenters “fact-checking” one side and not the other.
My personal view, is that there will be a week or two of back-and-forth, but they will eventually agree to another meeting. Both sides think they can win a second debate.
Dude you are getting about as credible as our Saturday morning visitors with your spinning.
Yes, it’s a shame as @Sandpit is an otherwise good poster
Do we want this site to be a one-way Harris propoganda machine?
Some of us are looking at the other side of American Twitter, so you don’t have to.
You post a load of stuff, with no links, and then claim to be 'looking at the other side'.
Twitter is a cesspit. If you're giving the other side, at the very least give links so we can see how *credible* the source is. Chances are it's BS.
I post a fair number of links, am genuinely trying to bring to this forum an idea of what American conservatives and Republicans are talking about, in an environment in which two sides are talking past each other and can agree on little more than today being Friday.
Video fact-checking Harris from the debate, by Dave Rubin. He’s a fairly mainstream conservative, former liberal and originally a DeSantis supporter.
You do realise that the Rubin Report is one of the channels that has just been shown to be Russia-funded?
So what. It is a view and Joe Blow in Arizona doesn't care who funded it he only cares whether it makes sense to him.
Sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting la la la at views from a pro-Trump perspective does an injustice to this site.
Go America Trump.
It was a sensible question to ask of someone who just posted ...Dave Rubin. He’s a fairly mainstream conservative...
That's not "sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting lalala".
Give some sense of proportion to your trademark "I'm above the fray" stance.
And show some respect to Joe Blow.
It's precisely because I am not above the fray that I take issue with those who dismiss views, from whomever, which don't confirm Trump as a narcissistic simpleton.
It is one of PB's collective rightthink moments. Anything which dares to contravene the orthodoxy is dismissed, in particular by those less able minds on here.
Let's think about it - PB is a pretty diverse crowd. Trump, meanwhile, received 46% of the vote in 2016 so nearly half of people supported him and his policies. But absolutely no one is willing to do so on PB which statistically can't be right. Not everyone on PB can dislike Trump and want Harris to win but that is what everyone says. Because they are victims of PB Rightthink.
Well bollocks to you all. I am a Trump supporter.
Bring it.
I think Trump is a narcissistic man-child, and I don't want him to win.
That does not mean he won't win. I'd rate Harris' chance of winning at no better than 11/9.
Too many people think that Trump's supporters are suddenly going to see the light, and vote Democratic.
I don't think that. Trumpers gonna Trump and there are loads of them. That's why despite everything he is bang in this election. I don't have it as a 50/50 but I understand why the market does. He's going to get his base plus GOP reliables plus a portion of floaters/independents and that adds up to a big vote.
But it won't be enough imo. He's a weaker older wilder madder candidate than he was in either of his previous runs. The small slice of voters in the middle, the ones who'll decide the election, are going to break against him. Not all of them but a critical mass. It's happening now and will pick up steam.
Come Nov 5th, I predict Harris wins the PV by at least 5 pts and the EC comfortably. I'm very confident of this. I could close out my Big Short on Trump at about flat now (a result given how underwater it was before Biden pulled out) but I'm not going to do that. I feel good about it.
I predict Trump wins the popular vote by 0.5% and Harris wins the EC by 273 to 265
According to wiki and Britannica, a Republican has never won the popular vote but lost the EC. In Rep vs Dem times, it's happened 4 times and always to a Democrat (1876, 1888, 2000 and 2016). So you should get good odds.
Anecdotal research, middle class Houston, "Republicans I know would crawl over broken glass to vote for Trump."
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
Proposing a new legal requirement that is massively disproportionate to the problem it purports to address and that is highly unlikely to have any actual effect on that problem seems like a classic piece of red tape to me...
Another road question; taxi service for people who use Guide Dogs. I think this is something we can expect the strengthening of guidance on, around Councils being required to take action.
AFAIK TFL are the only authority that act on this very seriously. The main issue is around Muslim drivers who do not follow the ruling of the UK 'sharia' authorities, who ruled years ago (pre-2010 iirc) that Guide Dogs are not Haram. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicestershire/7633623.stm
Video on tweet.
Yesterday, a driver was suceeefully prosecuted for refusing to take me and my guide dog Ava on 18th May 2024. He plead guilty and has 28 days to pay £550, which is £200 fine, £250 costs and £0 victim surcharge. Thank you to @TfL@TfLTPH for their ongoing support with refusals.1/2
I automated subtitles/captions don’t work please let me know and I’ll write out a transcript. It takes £20,000 to train and sustain one dog partnership for a blind person. Please consider donating if you can. Ava came from @seeing_dogs https://x.com/saj_anderson/status/1834191897826390082
SAJ Anderson has been responsible for getting on for 100 cases being taken to Court.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
It is because bikes do not weigh over a ton and travel at 60 mph and as a consequence deaths and serious injury is very rare on a bike. However the opposite is true for a car or truck hence a test and licence is needed.
Where do you want to draw the line? Do I need to take a test and get a licence for walking down the pavement because that is where you are going with this.
No as pedestrians don't walk on motorways or even A roads except at traffic islands
Another one for @viewcode 's scrapbook. And a quite persuasive thesis.
The New Right Has a Blueprint for Seizing Power. Is JD Vance Executing It? There may be more to the alliance between MAGA and the New Right than political convenience. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/09/13/jd-vance-new-right-political-movement-00177203 ... In fact, Vance embodies an archetype that has been theorized about at length in New Right-adjacent books and podcasts (many of which Vance has read and listened to). By forging an alliance between the elite “New Right” and the MAGA masses, Vance, according to this reading, could serve as the leader of a new movement to institute an illiberal and explicitly reactionary political order. Though adopting the rhetoric of conservatism populism, this new order would be a fundamentally elitist one: It would expel America’s current ruling elite in order to replace it with a new, more conservative one, drawn from the ranks of the New Right.
The details of this plan differ between the various writers and thinkers that have influenced Vance — people like the Notre Dame political theorist Patrick Deneen, the internet philosopher Curtis Yarvin and the Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel. But taken together, their prescriptions amount to a kind of three-step plan for the New Right’s project: Identify a member of the New Right elite who can tap into the energies of an ascendant right-wing populist movement, ride those energies to political power, and then carry out a top-down transformation of American society along illiberal lines. It is, in effect, a plan to accomplish through elite rule what even the MAGA movement has failed to accomplish through democratic control: The creation of a social order built around conservative values, even if those values remain broadly unpopular with the American people...
It certainly rises above conspiracy theory, given they're fairly explicit in their aims. And Thiel has funded Vance's entire, brief political career.
Curtis Yarvin is a complete nut, who makes Trump look rational. That he's taken seriously in their circles is telling.
Strange to think that Donald Trump is the moderate. There's a GOP tradition of hard men hiding behind jovial front men like Reagan, GW and Trump.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
It is because bikes do not weigh over a ton and travel at 60 mph and as a consequence deaths and serious injury is very rare on a bike. However the opposite is true for a car or truck hence a test and licence is needed.
Where do you want to draw the line? Do I need to take a test and get a licence for walking down the pavement because that is where you are going with this.
No as pedestrians don't walk on motorways or even A roads except at traffic islands
????
I've walked on A roads on no end of occasions (*). A roads vary massively, from dual carriageways to single-track roads with passing places in Yorkshire or the Highlands.
(*) with great care, and occasionally with a certain amount of trepidation. One of the worst was in South Devon, going around one of the rivers.
Interesting idea, but with the irony that, if getting enough points to be disqualified from driving, this could lead to bad cyclists being effectively forced to do more cycling.
As with most cyclist transgression issues, it would surely be let down by enforcement. We have laws and fines etc that can be used for all the annoying things cyclists do (jumping reds, speeding along pedestrian areas such as pavements) but at the low end it's damn hard to enforce it. I'm far from convinced that HYUFD's cycle licences is a solution - would only really be useful with plates unless we're going to have police routinely stopping cyclists and demanding to see their licence and plates that were readable would be big and bulky on a bike and very easily vandalised. And the necessity would put off the occasional cyclist with an old bike in the shed.
My feeling is that bad cyclists are likely to be bad drivers, but they're going to do a lot less damage at 20mph on a 15kg bicycle, than at 45mph in a 1500kg car.
I expect that you would make the roads a lot safer if you stopped the worst/most dangerous 5-10% of drivers from driving. If you can identify some of those drivers via their behaviour when cycling, then that's great.
Another one for @viewcode 's scrapbook. And a quite persuasive thesis.
The New Right Has a Blueprint for Seizing Power. Is JD Vance Executing It? There may be more to the alliance between MAGA and the New Right than political convenience. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/09/13/jd-vance-new-right-political-movement-00177203 ... In fact, Vance embodies an archetype that has been theorized about at length in New Right-adjacent books and podcasts (many of which Vance has read and listened to). By forging an alliance between the elite “New Right” and the MAGA masses, Vance, according to this reading, could serve as the leader of a new movement to institute an illiberal and explicitly reactionary political order. Though adopting the rhetoric of conservatism populism, this new order would be a fundamentally elitist one: It would expel America’s current ruling elite in order to replace it with a new, more conservative one, drawn from the ranks of the New Right.
The details of this plan differ between the various writers and thinkers that have influenced Vance — people like the Notre Dame political theorist Patrick Deneen, the internet philosopher Curtis Yarvin and the Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel. But taken together, their prescriptions amount to a kind of three-step plan for the New Right’s project: Identify a member of the New Right elite who can tap into the energies of an ascendant right-wing populist movement, ride those energies to political power, and then carry out a top-down transformation of American society along illiberal lines. It is, in effect, a plan to accomplish through elite rule what even the MAGA movement has failed to accomplish through democratic control: The creation of a social order built around conservative values, even if those values remain broadly unpopular with the American people...
It certainly rises above conspiracy theory, given they're fairly explicit in their aims. And Thiel has funded Vance's entire, brief political career.
Curtis Yarvin is a complete nut, who makes Trump look rational. That he's taken seriously in their circles is telling.
Thank you for that @Nigelb. Believe it or not I do bookmark these (eg "PB-political-Christianity") but I'm not sure I can fit your article into that category: it's more a Project2025 thing.
As for ones I can get done by November, there's the Blob one, one on using a curve to assess predictions, and possibly another one. Then by Dec 31st there's a syntactic analysis of the Cass report, one on growth as a bad indicator. I'll try to get "Solarpunk II" done but I don't know when. Busy, busy, busy...
If you're pressed for time, do not go down the Curtis Yarvin rabbit hole. A Cyclefree header would be a short blogpost from him; he makes Dominic Cummins appear a model of rationality and conciseness.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
It is because bikes do not weigh over a ton and travel at 60 mph and as a consequence deaths and serious injury is very rare on a bike. However the opposite is true for a car or truck hence a test and licence is needed.
Where do you want to draw the line? Do I need to take a test and get a licence for walking down the pavement because that is where you are going with this.
No as pedestrians don't walk on motorways or even A roads except at traffic islands
Cyclists don't cycle on motorways either.
The anti-LTN lot don't like it if you point out that pedestrians and cyclists are prohibited, on safety grounds, from far more of the road network than drivers are.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
It is because bikes do not weigh over a ton and travel at 60 mph and as a consequence deaths and serious injury is very rare on a bike. However the opposite is true for a car or truck hence a test and licence is needed.
Where do you want to draw the line? Do I need to take a test and get a licence for walking down the pavement because that is where you are going with this.
No as pedestrians don't walk on motorways or even A roads except at traffic islands
????
I've walked on A roads on no end of occasions (*). A roads vary massively, from dual carriageways to single-track roads with passing places in Yorkshire or the Highlands.
(*) with great care, and occasionally with a certain amount of trepidation. One of the worst was in South Devon, going around one of the rivers.
And you can tell the drivers who grew up in the countryside because they slow right down and give lots of space.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
Proposing a new legal requirement that is massively disproportionate to the problem it purports to address and that is highly unlikely to have any actual effect on that problem seems like a classic piece of red tape to me...
That seems to be the best reply so far.
Next we will be onto bikes having number plates and 5 year olds being pulled up by the police and breathalysed and being required to produce their driving licence and insurance at the police station within the next 7 days.
Karl Rove in today’s WStJ compared Trump’s catastrophic debate performance to a pig 🐷 that can’t be dressed up. He recalled Trump’s insult that Harris is “dumb as a rock” and asked: “What does that make him?” https://x.com/tribelaw/status/1834355770462535795
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
It is because bikes do not weigh over a ton and travel at 60 mph and as a consequence deaths and serious injury is very rare on a bike. However the opposite is true for a car or truck hence a test and licence is needed.
Where do you want to draw the line? Do I need to take a test and get a licence for walking down the pavement because that is where you are going with this.
No as pedestrians don't walk on motorways or even A roads except at traffic islands
????
I've walked on A roads on no end of occasions (*). A roads vary massively, from dual carriageways to single-track roads with passing places in Yorkshire or the Highlands.
(*) with great care, and occasionally with a certain amount of trepidation. One of the worst was in South Devon, going around one of the rivers.
And you can tell the drivers who grew up in the countryside because they slow right down and give lots of space.
Jay Blade of BBC repair shop has been charged with engaging in controlling and coercive behaviour and has appeared at Kidderminster Magistrates Court
My wife is a devotee of the program and as a Scot, typically repairs everything and throws away nothing
Oops. That's the last we will see of him then.
..He was reported to have split from his wife in May after 18 months of marriage. Shortly afterwards, filming on the new series of The Repair Shop began without him as he said he was taking a break to "take stock" following the murder of his uncle...
Spookily, someone was joking on PB the other day about him running a modern slavery operation at the Repair Shop.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
Proposing a new legal requirement that is massively disproportionate to the problem it purports to address and that is highly unlikely to have any actual effect on that problem seems like a classic piece of red tape to me...
That seems to be the best reply so far.
Next we will be onto bikes having number plates and 5 year olds being pulled up by the police and breathalysed and being required to produce their driving licence and insurance at the police station within the next 7 days.
They should have number plates, would make them easier to identify if they run over pedestrians
POLICE said it was not possible to “arrest our way out” of the King’s Cross drug crisis as officers told residents there was no simple solution that would give them back their quality of life.
... “I’m not going to sit here and lie,” said Inspector Lee Davies. “The Met, it is known, it is a shrinking organisation – it is not going to get any better soon. The Class A users … it is not an issue we can arrest out way out of. These people have historic and embedded lifestyle issues. Putting them before the justice system isn’t necessarily the right course of action. Targeting the drug dealers will have more of an impact. To get that, it takes a long time. I share the residents' pain about how long that takes.”
This is why people lose hope, lose faith in the system and even turn to vigilantes who will later become protection racketeers.
There's never been a time in history in which we have had more police officers in the Met. Even the FTE officer per 100,000 isnt really that far out from its peak. The previous peak was during the deficit post crisis peak of 2010 with 33,697 officers it is now 34,899.
It's more complex than that imo. The strength of the police was slashed by Mr Cameron, and that means expertise lost, experience lost, community familiarity lost, local intelligence lost, and low level criminality / ASBO not dealt with which then becomes an accepted culture.
Graph below. Note how this excludes Special Constables, for example, whose numbers have fallen precipitously from 20,000 in 2010 to about 7,000 by 2023. I don't have PCSO numbers, but locally afaik all ours vanished in ~2015 and we now have more hen's teeth.
Interesting idea, but with the irony that, if getting enough points to be disqualified from driving, this could lead to bad cyclists being effectively forced to do more cycling.
As with most cyclist transgression issues, it would surely be let down by enforcement. We have laws and fines etc that can be used for all the annoying things cyclists do (jumping reds, speeding along pedestrian areas such as pavements) but at the low end it's damn hard to enforce it. I'm far from convinced that HYUFD's cycle licences is a solution - would only really be useful with plates unless we're going to have police routinely stopping cyclists and demanding to see their licence and plates that were readable would be big and bulky on a bike and very easily vandalised. And the necessity would put off the occasional cyclist with an old bike in the shed.
My feeling is that bad cyclists are likely to be bad drivers, but they're going to do a lot less damage at 20mph on a 15kg bicycle, than at 45mph in a 1500kg car.
I expect that you would make the roads a lot safer if you stopped the worst/most dangerous 5-10% of drivers from driving. If you can identify some of those drivers via their behaviour when cycling, then that's great.
Why stop with cyclists though? Pedestrians who walk along glued to their phones should receive points on their driving licence too?
ETA: This may mean that most teenagers get banned before they've even got their full licence, but I guess that's all good for long term carbon emissions
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
Proposing a new legal requirement that is massively disproportionate to the problem it purports to address and that is highly unlikely to have any actual effect on that problem seems like a classic piece of red tape to me...
That seems to be the best reply so far.
Next we will be onto bikes having number plates and 5 year olds being pulled up by the police and breathalysed and being required to produce their driving licence and insurance at the police station within the next 7 days.
They should have number plates, would make them easier to identify if they run over pedestrians
Disproportionate. 99.99% of cyclists never run over pedestrians.
Now, Iowa is not going to go Blue. But the interactions I had with people made it very clear to me that Trump is still in the running. Here are two anecdotes:
(1) An Uber driver who told me all about the immigrant gang problem the US has, and repeated the (much debunked) story about a Venezuelan gang taking over an apartment complex in Colorado.
(2) A liberal business owner worrying about the Democrats introducing a tax on unrealized capital gains.
The first of these was probably always going to vote Trump. The second was - I suspect - liberal in social policy, but worried about taxes and the economy under the Democrats.
My view is that it remains very tight: Harris might have the slight edge, but it is ever so slight. If she wins, it will almost certainly be because of high turnout of women and younger voters due to Republicans implementing abortion policies off the charts of what most Americans believe in.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
It is because bikes do not weigh over a ton and travel at 60 mph and as a consequence deaths and serious injury is very rare on a bike. However the opposite is true for a car or truck hence a test and licence is needed.
Where do you want to draw the line? Do I need to take a test and get a licence for walking down the pavement because that is where you are going with this.
No as pedestrians don't walk on motorways or even A roads except at traffic islands
????
I've walked on A roads on no end of occasions (*). A roads vary massively, from dual carriageways to single-track roads with passing places in Yorkshire or the Highlands.
(*) with great care, and occasionally with a certain amount of trepidation. One of the worst was in South Devon, going around one of the rivers.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
It is because bikes do not weigh over a ton and travel at 60 mph and as a consequence deaths and serious injury is very rare on a bike. However the opposite is true for a car or truck hence a test and licence is needed.
Where do you want to draw the line? Do I need to take a test and get a licence for walking down the pavement because that is where you are going with this.
No as pedestrians don't walk on motorways or even A roads except at traffic islands
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
It is because bikes do not weigh over a ton and travel at 60 mph and as a consequence deaths and serious injury is very rare on a bike. However the opposite is true for a car or truck hence a test and licence is needed.
Where do you want to draw the line? Do I need to take a test and get a licence for walking down the pavement because that is where you are going with this.
No as pedestrians don't walk on motorways or even A roads except at traffic islands
????
I've walked on A roads on no end of occasions (*). A roads vary massively, from dual carriageways to single-track roads with passing places in Yorkshire or the Highlands.
(*) with great care, and occasionally with a certain amount of trepidation. One of the worst was in South Devon, going around one of the rivers.
And you can tell the drivers who grew up in the countryside because they slow right down and give lots of space.
That's me
More useful than making cyclists take tests would be to make every driver have a go at walking and cycling down a road.
a) I don't just give a cyclists the required berth when overtaking I give them all the road I can. I never get people overtaking a bike and not using all the road available.
b) Why do so many drivers fail to drive around puddles when passing a pedestrian?
That now brings me onto letterboxes. Every householder should be compelled by law to deliver 100 letters into their own letterbox and get a certificate from the local council signed by a registered tester that they have been observed doing so. Now that isn't unnecessary red tape.
Now, Iowa is not going to go Blue. But the interactions I had with people made it very clear to me that Trump is still in the running. Here are two anecdotes:
(1) An Uber driver who told me all about the immigrant gang problem the US has, and repeated the (much debunked) story about a Venezuelan gang taking over an apartment complex in Colorado.
(2) A liberal business owner worrying about the Democrats introducing a tax on unrealized capital gains.
The first of these was probably always going to vote Trump. The second was - I suspect - liberal in social policy, but worried about taxes and the economy under the Democrats.
My view is that it remains very tight: Harris might have the slight edge, but it is ever so slight. If she wins, it will almost certainly be because of high turnout of women and younger voters due to Republicans implementing abortion policies off the charts of what most Americans believe in.
If Haley had been the GOP candidate she would be measuring the Oval Office drapes now (provided she didn't leak too many Trump voters to RFK Jr). Trump and Vance are the main reason Harris could still win, narrowly.
I doubt she will be more than a 1 term President if she does though
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
It is because bikes do not weigh over a ton and travel at 60 mph and as a consequence deaths and serious injury is very rare on a bike. However the opposite is true for a car or truck hence a test and licence is needed.
Where do you want to draw the line? Do I need to take a test and get a licence for walking down the pavement because that is where you are going with this.
No as pedestrians don't walk on motorways or even A roads except at traffic islands
????
I've walked on A roads on no end of occasions (*). A roads vary massively, from dual carriageways to single-track roads with passing places in Yorkshire or the Highlands.
(*) with great care, and occasionally with a certain amount of trepidation. One of the worst was in South Devon, going around one of the rivers.
And you can tell the drivers who grew up in the countryside because they slow right down and give lots of space.
I actually came across someone walking on a B road on the way back from the pool. He was walking on the road, not the verge, with the traffic, and I came across him on the inside of a bend, with only (probably) 100 metres or so in which to view him. Fortunately it was in a 40MPH roadworks zone so I had plenty of time to brake.
His mistake: walking with the traffic, and on the inside of a bend with little vision for people coming from behind him.
Jay Blade of BBC repair shop has been charged with engaging in controlling and coercive behaviour and has appeared at Kidderminster Magistrates Court
My wife is a devotee of the program and as a Scot, typically repairs everything and throws away nothing
Oops. That's the last we will see of him then.
..He was reported to have split from his wife in May after 18 months of marriage. Shortly afterwards, filming on the new series of The Repair Shop began without him as he said he was taking a break to "take stock" following the murder of his uncle...
Spookily, someone was joking on PB the other day about him running a modern slavery operation at the Repair Shop.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
Proposing a new legal requirement that is massively disproportionate to the problem it purports to address and that is highly unlikely to have any actual effect on that problem seems like a classic piece of red tape to me...
That seems to be the best reply so far.
Next we will be onto bikes having number plates and 5 year olds being pulled up by the police and breathalysed and being required to produce their driving licence and insurance at the police station within the next 7 days.
They should have number plates, would make them easier to identify if they run over pedestrians
Last sportive I did I was given a tiny barcode sticker for my helmet which was enough for cameras at the start and finish to id me. It will be that or an RFID or some such. Legible size numberplates don't fit on a bike and are profoundly unaero.
Though for completeness and balance, and because it's bad to selectively quote,
Labour scores worsen too – but Labour still viewed more positively (36%) than Conservatives (24%). Public less negative about Labour (45%) than Conservatives too (57%).
A few more months like these and they'll start viewing Labour as badly as they viewed Thatcher in the early days months and years
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
It is because bikes do not weigh over a ton and travel at 60 mph and as a consequence deaths and serious injury is very rare on a bike. However the opposite is true for a car or truck hence a test and licence is needed.
Where do you want to draw the line? Do I need to take a test and get a licence for walking down the pavement because that is where you are going with this.
No as pedestrians don't walk on motorways or even A roads except at traffic islands
Cyclists don't cycle on motorways either.
They do on main road A roads
And pedestrians walk down them also. All the time.
You are going around in circles here. You made a distinction between cyclists and pedestrians on Motorways and A roads neither of which holds up. Neither use motorways and both use A roads. They are no different, so do pedestrians need a licence then?
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
Proposing a new legal requirement that is massively disproportionate to the problem it purports to address and that is highly unlikely to have any actual effect on that problem seems like a classic piece of red tape to me...
That seems to be the best reply so far.
Next we will be onto bikes having number plates and 5 year olds being pulled up by the police and breathalysed and being required to produce their driving licence and insurance at the police station within the next 7 days.
They should have number plates, would make them easier to identify if they run over pedestrians
To be honest you are way over the top on this
I do believe cyclists should obey the rules of the road including speed limits but you would have so much unworkable red tape it would be ludicrous and unworkable
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
It is because bikes do not weigh over a ton and travel at 60 mph and as a consequence deaths and serious injury is very rare on a bike. However the opposite is true for a car or truck hence a test and licence is needed.
Where do you want to draw the line? Do I need to take a test and get a licence for walking down the pavement because that is where you are going with this.
No as pedestrians don't walk on motorways or even A roads except at traffic islands
Cyclists don't cycle on motorways either.
They do on main road A roads
And pedestrians walk down them also. All the time.
You are going around in circles here. You made a distinction between cyclists and pedestrians on Motorways and A roads neither of which holds up. Neither use motorways and both use A roads.
"Going round in circles"? Careful, you'll get him on to roundabouts too!
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
Should you also need a license to cross a road as a pedestrian?
Though for completeness and balance, and because it's bad to selectively quote,
Labour scores worsen too – but Labour still viewed more positively (36%) than Conservatives (24%). Public less negative about Labour (45%) than Conservatives too (57%).
A few more months like these and they'll start viewing Labour as badly as they viewed Thatcher in the early days months and years
The sooner he does the decent thing and goes to the country the sooner the conservatives can get on with the job of filling the black hole caused by 11 weeks of labour misrule.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
Proposing a new legal requirement that is massively disproportionate to the problem it purports to address and that is highly unlikely to have any actual effect on that problem seems like a classic piece of red tape to me...
That seems to be the best reply so far.
Next we will be onto bikes having number plates and 5 year olds being pulled up by the police and breathalysed and being required to produce their driving licence and insurance at the police station within the next 7 days.
They should have number plates, would make them easier to identify if they run over pedestrians
Disproportionate. 99.99% of cyclists never run over pedestrians.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
It is because bikes do not weigh over a ton and travel at 60 mph and as a consequence deaths and serious injury is very rare on a bike. However the opposite is true for a car or truck hence a test and licence is needed.
Where do you want to draw the line? Do I need to take a test and get a licence for walking down the pavement because that is where you are going with this.
No as pedestrians don't walk on motorways or even A roads except at traffic islands
????
I've walked on A roads on no end of occasions (*). A roads vary massively, from dual carriageways to single-track roads with passing places in Yorkshire or the Highlands.
(*) with great care, and occasionally with a certain amount of trepidation. One of the worst was in South Devon, going around one of the rivers.
And you can tell the drivers who grew up in the countryside because they slow right down and give lots of space.
I actually came across someone walking on a B road on the way back from the pool. He was walking on the road, not the verge, with the traffic, and I came across him on the inside of a bend, with only (probably) 100 metres or so in which to view him. Fortunately it was in a 40MPH roadworks zone so I had plenty of time to brake.
His mistake: walking with the traffic, and on the inside of a bend with little vision for people coming from behind him.
How is one supposed to get around the countryside without walking on A and B roads?
Most of the footpaths, bridleways etc are unusable by cycles and mobility aids since they are a) mud baths and b) barriered off unless you are an able-bodied limbo dancer. I routinely cycle around declared "footpaths" and main roads (not nice, one has to be ridiculously assertive) because many of the cycle paths have been made unusable for even a standard cycle.
In practice we *force* people walking, wheeling or cycling onto roads. Even if it has a footway, that will be where the sawdust-brained twats have parked their motor vehicles, which again forces a lot of people onto the carriageway. Then the same sawdust-brained twats whinge about the people they forced onto the carriageway being on the carriageway.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
It is because bikes do not weigh over a ton and travel at 60 mph and as a consequence deaths and serious injury is very rare on a bike. However the opposite is true for a car or truck hence a test and licence is needed.
Where do you want to draw the line? Do I need to take a test and get a licence for walking down the pavement because that is where you are going with this.
No as pedestrians don't walk on motorways or even A roads except at traffic islands
????
I've walked on A roads on no end of occasions (*). A roads vary massively, from dual carriageways to single-track roads with passing places in Yorkshire or the Highlands.
(*) with great care, and occasionally with a certain amount of trepidation. One of the worst was in South Devon, going around one of the rivers.
And you can tell the drivers who grew up in the countryside because they slow right down and give lots of space.
That's me
More useful than making cyclists take tests would be to make every driver have a go at walking and cycling down a road.
a) I don't just give a cyclists the required berth when overtaking I give them all the road I can. I never get people overtaking a bike and not using all the road available.
b) Why do so many drivers fail to drive around puddles when passing a pedestrian?
That now brings me onto letterboxes. Every householder should be compelled by law to deliver 100 letters into their own letterbox and get a certificate from the local council signed by a registered tester that they have been observed doing so. Now that isn't unnecessary red tape.
I agree with that but my days of riding a bicycle are long time passed, though in the fifties I always ride to school and even home at lunchtime despite it being a couple of miles and hilly
But after her trial last year Cheshire Police revealed it was investigating the time she spent on two placements in Liverpool in 2012 and 2015.
He told the inquiry that some babies collapsed due to dislodgement of endotracheal [breathing] tubes.
"This is not something that is happening all the time", he said.
"It is unusual, and you will hear that it occurs generally in less than 1% of shifts."
The audit found that there were recorded incidents of the tubes being dislodged on 40% of the shifts Letby worked at Liverpool Womens' Hospital.
Mr Baker said: "In light of what we know now, we might wonder why.”
A number of the usual suspects (Davis, Hitchens et al) have hitched their wagon to the 'Free The Letby One' campaign. I think there is a reasonable chance that the overwhelming nature of the case against her and the utterly feeble nature of the criticisms will cause those in public life who have done so to stop this fairly soon, out of embarrassment and respect for the families.
Mr Baker KC noted that the victims' families are anxious to preserve anonymity because they fear personal abuse etc from conspiracy theorists.
To me this has something of the whole Carl Beech saga about it: a breathless media running with any old crap, showboating politicians stirring the pot, a big dollop of conspiracy theory, while all the time cooler heads are ignored or even derided. But I agree: as this inquiry goes on most of the truthers will probably creep away and never mention it again.
There are surely two separate questions. Did Letby kill at least some babies? Probably. Did she receive a fair trial? Probably not.
And a major flaw, as has happened in other cases, is that neither jurists nor jurors know the first thing about probability and statistics. The system is simply not set up to cope with this sort of evidence, and what we end up with is conviction on the basis of ‘no smoke without fire’ which might be correct but is hardly satisfactory.
Juries and jurists know nothing (or next to nothing) about pharmacology, neo natal paediatrics, and effectively almost all the mdeical evidence. They just have to weigh the evidence presented by experts.
Statistics is different, though. It goes directly to weight of evidence and the concept of "beyond a reasonable doubt". It's intertwined with all the layman thinking juries do once they are deliberating.
Does anyone know if a judge has to give a special warning about statistics evidence in the summing up? My Google skills have failed me.
I think in the media reporting the shift chart and the scribbled notes she wrote were given overdue prominence (which seems to continue to today). Probably because they are visual and relatively easy to understand by a Daily Mail reader.
As the trial went on for about 9 months, its fair to say they were just bricks in a whole wall (or house) of evidence.
As the failed appeal doesn't seem to have been based on either of these bits, and indeed they weren't really challenged at the original trial, I doubt if they alone were anyway persuasive alone.
Professor David Southall who pioneered (dubious ethically) camera surveillance on infants basically proved how prevalent it could be by parents or carers (33 out of 39 suspected cases involving poisoning, intentional suffocation and deliberate fracture).
He was hounded by these loonies for years (Mothers Against Munchausen syndrome by proxy Allegations).
For normal people it seems incomprehensible that a mother or nurse could harm infants in their care, but clearly it happens.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
Should you also need a license to cross a road as a pedestrian?
No as pedestrians if they hit a car, van, lorry or indeed a bike will always come off worst.
They would be advised to read the Highway Code though
Now, Iowa is not going to go Blue. But the interactions I had with people made it very clear to me that Trump is still in the running. Here are two anecdotes:
(1) An Uber driver who told me all about the immigrant gang problem the US has, and repeated the (much debunked) story about a Venezuelan gang taking over an apartment complex in Colorado.
(2) A liberal business owner worrying about the Democrats introducing a tax on unrealized capital gains.
The first of these was probably always going to vote Trump. The second was - I suspect - liberal in social policy, but worried about taxes and the economy under the Democrats.
My view is that it remains very tight: Harris might have the slight edge, but it is ever so slight. If she wins, it will almost certainly be because of high turnout of women and younger voters due to Republicans implementing abortion policies off the charts of what most Americans believe in.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
It is because bikes do not weigh over a ton and travel at 60 mph and as a consequence deaths and serious injury is very rare on a bike. However the opposite is true for a car or truck hence a test and licence is needed.
Where do you want to draw the line? Do I need to take a test and get a licence for walking down the pavement because that is where you are going with this.
No as pedestrians don't walk on motorways or even A roads except at traffic islands
Cyclists don't cycle on motorways either.
They do on main road A roads
And pedestrians walk down them also. All the time.
You are going around in circles here. You made a distinction between cyclists and pedestrians on Motorways and A roads neither of which holds up. Neither use motorways and both use A roads. They are no different, so do pedestrians need a licence then?
Pedestrians rarely walk on A roads, most of the time they walk on pavements, in residential streets or on rural B roads
Jay Blade of BBC repair shop has been charged with engaging in controlling and coercive behaviour and has appeared at Kidderminster Magistrates Court
My wife is a devotee of the program and as a Scot, typically repairs everything and throws away nothing
Oops. That's the last we will see of him then.
..He was reported to have split from his wife in May after 18 months of marriage. Shortly afterwards, filming on the new series of The Repair Shop began without him as he said he was taking a break to "take stock" following the murder of his uncle...
Spookily, someone was joking on PB the other day about him running a modern slavery operation at the Repair Shop.
(1) An Uber driver who told me all about the immigrant gang problem the US has, and repeated the (much debunked) story about a Venezuelan gang taking over an apartment complex in Colorado.
Venezuelan gangs infiltrating the US is a serious problem but the level of polarisation means that as soon as Trump refers to anything, there is a race to downplay and 'debunk' it.
About time, you should also need a cycling licence and pass a test to ride a bike on a main road as you do to drive a car or lorry or van or ride a motorbike
80% of cyclists already hold such a licence, in line with the population in general.
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
Not 100% and a driving licence is not the same as a cycle licence and cycling proficiency should really be for residential streets and country paths not A roads where a full cycling licence should be required and a test passed before going on
Tying the world up in red tape to sort a problem that by and large does not exist.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
it is hardly red tape to ensure cyclists must pass a theory test on the Highway Code and a practical test on the main road like drivers do before they are allowed on an A road and to ensure they respect pedestrians
It is because bikes do not weigh over a ton and travel at 60 mph and as a consequence deaths and serious injury is very rare on a bike. However the opposite is true for a car or truck hence a test and licence is needed.
Where do you want to draw the line? Do I need to take a test and get a licence for walking down the pavement because that is where you are going with this.
No as pedestrians don't walk on motorways or even A roads except at traffic islands
????
I've walked on A roads on no end of occasions (*). A roads vary massively, from dual carriageways to single-track roads with passing places in Yorkshire or the Highlands.
(*) with great care, and occasionally with a certain amount of trepidation. One of the worst was in South Devon, going around one of the rivers.
And you can tell the drivers who grew up in the countryside because they slow right down and give lots of space.
I actually came across someone walking on a B road on the way back from the pool. He was walking on the road, not the verge, with the traffic, and I came across him on the inside of a bend, with only (probably) 100 metres or so in which to view him. Fortunately it was in a 40MPH roadworks zone so I had plenty of time to brake.
His mistake: walking with the traffic, and on the inside of a bend with little vision for people coming from behind him.
How is one supposed to get around the countryside without walking on A and B roads?
Most of the footpaths, bridleways etc are unusable by cycles and mobility aids since they are a) mud baths and b) barriered off unless you are an able-bodied limbo dancer. I routinely cycle around declared "footpaths" and main roads (not nice, one has to be ridiculously assertive) because many of the cycle paths have been made unusable for even a standard cycle.
In practice we *force* people walking, wheeling or cycling onto roads. Even if it has a footway, that will be where the sawdust-brained twats have parked their motor vehicles, which again forces a lot of people onto the carriageway. Then the same sawdust-brained twats whinge about the people they forced onto the carriageway being on the carriageway.
I agree; my anecdote was someone (IMV) walking in a silly/dangerous manner on a B-road. If you are walking on them, there are some simple things you do to keep yourself safer. He wasn't.
Comments
I am now scratching for something to write in the Gazette
This is going back to the original argument over HS2, that it was at the time absurdly and unnecessarily over-specced.
Had that not been the case, there have been more flexibility over the route; the engineering would have been far simpler and less costly; and the economic case far easier to make.
It would probably be half completed by now, and we'd be arguing about the Leeds leg.
if of course the defence showed that similar things kept happening in LL's absence that would be a bit of an obstacle.
You are actively spreading Russian disinfo.
The case against Letby was much more than "what are the chances?"
https://www.reddit.com/r/lucyletby/comments/15zxyju/lucys_shifts_for_deaths_she_wasnt_charged_with/
As a result, I have a massive headache. So a mix for me today.
(I did shower after the run and before the swim...)
That fact alone is worth a piece I would have thought. Who knew?
But maybe you’re right. I need to major on the “surprise” angle
Bikeability for children (formerly cycle proficiency) was cut by the Conservatives, with only half of kids outside London getting the training.
This new report is interesting, but it'll be good to read the Atkins report when it is released: the devil will be in the details.
One way to reduce the costs - including of the original plans - would be to have a saner approach to the contracts and risk allocation.
This combines the two:
https://www.instagram.com/p/C_0kFJGIbZk/
(Don't try this on your local line. Particularly if it has overhead power lines...)
...
“I’m not going to sit here and lie,” said Inspector Lee Davies. “The Met, it is known, it is a shrinking organisation – it is not going to get any better soon. The Class A users … it is not an issue we can arrest out way out of. These people have historic and embedded lifestyle issues. Putting them before the justice system isn’t necessarily the right course of action. Targeting the drug dealers will have more of an impact. To get that, it takes a long time. I share the residents' pain about how long that takes.”
...
Community safety chief Labour councillor Pat Callaghan said: “We can only work with the resources we have got. There has been austerity all the way through. The police numbers are much less that there used to be. We will do our best but we have to work with the resources we have got.”
https://www.camdennewjournal.co.uk/article/we-dont-live-in-a-perfect-world-police-tell-residents-in-drug-deal-street
This is why people lose hope, lose faith in the system and even turn to vigilantes who will later become protection racketeers.
And a quite persuasive thesis.
The New Right Has a Blueprint for Seizing Power. Is JD Vance Executing It?
There may be more to the alliance between MAGA and the New Right than political convenience.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/09/13/jd-vance-new-right-political-movement-00177203
... In fact, Vance embodies an archetype that has been theorized about at length in New Right-adjacent books and podcasts (many of which Vance has read and listened to). By forging an alliance between the elite “New Right” and the MAGA masses, Vance, according to this reading, could serve as the leader of a new movement to institute an illiberal and explicitly reactionary political order. Though adopting the rhetoric of conservatism populism, this new order would be a fundamentally elitist one: It would expel America’s current ruling elite in order to replace it with a new, more conservative one, drawn from the ranks of the New Right.
The details of this plan differ between the various writers and thinkers that have influenced Vance — people like the Notre Dame political theorist Patrick Deneen, the internet philosopher Curtis Yarvin and the Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel. But taken together, their prescriptions amount to a kind of three-step plan for the New Right’s project: Identify a member of the New Right elite who can tap into the energies of an ascendant right-wing populist movement, ride those energies to political power, and then carry out a top-down transformation of American society along illiberal lines. It is, in effect, a plan to accomplish through elite rule what even the MAGA movement has failed to accomplish through democratic control: The creation of a social order built around conservative values, even if those values remain broadly unpopular with the American people...
It certainly rises above conspiracy theory, given they're fairly explicit in their aims.
And Thiel has funded Vance's entire, brief political career.
Curtis Yarvin is a complete nut, who makes Trump look rational. That he's taken seriously in their circles is telling.
It's a better debate than might be expected because there are a range of contributions. Here is the link, but there are 2:15 hours of it.
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2024-09-12/debates/0AE6E116-272B-4ECE-8B85-7BDA98675D52/PedalCycles
Video Link to start of debate:
https://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/60d3b5eb-1b06-4cd3-a528-40b0df50d182?in=12:47:50 .
(Link updated)
https://canadiangeographic.ca/articles/deserts-in-canada-a-look-at-some-of-the-countrys-most-desert-like-landscapes/
You're welcome.
Meanwhile Colorado’s heatwave continues - yesterday topped 85F, against a normal average daily max of 65F
I honesty don't know why I care about this so much. I don't think she is innocent, I suspect she could be, and could be very unlucky. I find it interesting that intelligent people have very different opinions on this (and on so much else). Its also great that no-one is being rude to each other. PB is SO much better than most forums in this regard.
Similarly with third party insurance which most people have under their contents or household cover.
As with most cyclist transgression issues, it would surely be let down by enforcement. We have laws and fines etc that can be used for all the annoying things cyclists do (jumping reds, speeding along pedestrian areas such as pavements) but at the low end it's damn hard to enforce it. I'm far from convinced that HYUFD's cycle licences is a solution - would only really be useful with plates unless we're going to have police routinely stopping cyclists and demanding to see their licence and plates that were readable would be big and bulky on a bike and very easily vandalised. And the necessity would put off the occasional cyclist with an old bike in the shed.
Anything running at 93% of TGV speed....
Where do you want to draw the line? Do I need to take a test and get a licence for walking down the pavement because that is where you are going with this.
Jay Blade of BBC repair shop has been charged with engaging in controlling and coercive behaviour and has appeared at Kidderminster Magistrates Court
My wife is a devotee of the program and as a Scot, typically repairs everything and throws away nothing
10% of 2024 Tories now back Reform. 9% of 2024 Reform voters now back the Tories
https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://www.moreincommon.org.uk/media/w50noqnp/mic-first-vi.xlsx&wdOrigin=BROWSELINK
I suppose HYUFD would have the police breath testing pedestrians.
As for ones I can get done by November, there's the Blob one, one on using a curve to assess predictions, and possibly another one. Then by Dec 31st there's a syntactic analysis of the Cass report, one on growth as a bad indicator. I'll try to get "Solarpunk II" done but I don't know when. Busy, busy, busy...
Anecdotal research, middle class Houston, "Republicans I know would crawl over broken glass to vote for Trump."
AFAIK TFL are the only authority that act on this very seriously. The main issue is around Muslim drivers who do not follow the ruling of the UK 'sharia' authorities, who ruled years ago (pre-2010 iirc) that Guide Dogs are not Haram.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/leicestershire/7633623.stm
Video on tweet.
Yesterday, a driver was suceeefully prosecuted for refusing to take me and my guide dog Ava on 18th May 2024.
He plead guilty and has 28 days to pay £550, which is £200 fine, £250 costs and £0 victim surcharge.
Thank you to @TfL @TfLTPH for their ongoing support with refusals.1/2
I automated subtitles/captions don’t work please let me know and I’ll write out a transcript.
It takes £20,000 to train and sustain one dog partnership for a blind person.
Please consider donating if you can. Ava came from @seeing_dogs
https://x.com/saj_anderson/status/1834191897826390082
SAJ Anderson has been responsible for getting on for 100 cases being taken to Court.
https://x.com/LuckyHeronSay/status/1834580959666036768
I've walked on A roads on no end of occasions (*). A roads vary massively, from dual carriageways to single-track roads with passing places in Yorkshire or the Highlands.
(*) with great care, and occasionally with a certain amount of trepidation. One of the worst was in South Devon, going around one of the rivers.
I expect that you would make the roads a lot safer if you stopped the worst/most dangerous 5-10% of drivers from driving. If you can identify some of those drivers via their behaviour when cycling, then that's great.
(Sure, it's hard for a dog to say anything, but they should have done some meaningful barking, at least, Lassie-style.)
https://x.com/LakeSuperior/status/1834274331616051395
Next we will be onto bikes having number plates and 5 year olds being pulled up by the police and breathalysed and being required to produce their driving licence and insurance at the police station within the next 7 days.
Karl Rove in today’s WStJ compared Trump’s catastrophic debate performance to a pig 🐷 that can’t be dressed up. He recalled Trump’s insult that Harris is “dumb as a rock” and asked: “What does that make him?”
https://x.com/tribelaw/status/1834355770462535795
Shortly afterwards, filming on the new series of The Repair Shop began without him as he said he was taking a break to "take stock" following the murder of his uncle...
Spookily, someone was joking on PB the other day about him running a modern slavery operation at the Repair Shop.
Favourable 32%
Unfavourable 46%
https://x.com/benatipsos/status/1834563013141016982
Graph below. Note how this excludes Special Constables, for example, whose numbers have fallen precipitously from 20,000 in 2010 to about 7,000 by 2023. I don't have PCSO numbers, but locally afaik all ours vanished in ~2015 and we now have more hen's teeth.
That cannot be recovered by throwing money at headline numbers since 2019 for about 4 years, followed by a bit of windy rhetoric. Recovering will be a 10-20 year process.
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN00634/SN00634.pdf
ETA: This may mean that most teenagers get banned before they've even got their full licence, but I guess that's all good for long term carbon emissions
Now, Iowa is not going to go Blue. But the interactions I had with people made it very clear to me that Trump is still in the running. Here are two anecdotes:
(1) An Uber driver who told me all about the immigrant gang problem the US has, and repeated the (much debunked) story about a Venezuelan gang taking over an apartment complex in Colorado.
(2) A liberal business owner worrying about the Democrats introducing a tax on unrealized capital gains.
The first of these was probably always going to vote Trump. The second was - I suspect - liberal in social policy, but worried about taxes and the economy under the Democrats.
My view is that it remains very tight: Harris might have the slight edge, but it is ever so slight. If she wins, it will almost certainly be because of high turnout of women and younger voters due to Republicans implementing abortion policies off the charts of what most Americans believe in.
a) I don't just give a cyclists the required berth when overtaking I give them all the road I can. I never get people overtaking a bike and not using all the road available.
b) Why do so many drivers fail to drive around puddles when passing a pedestrian?
That now brings me onto letterboxes. Every householder should be compelled by law to deliver 100 letters into their own letterbox and get a certificate from the local council signed by a registered tester that they have been observed doing so. Now that isn't unnecessary red tape.
I doubt she will be more than a 1 term President if she does though
https://news.sky.com/story/the-repair-shop-presenter-jay-blades-charged-with-controlling-and-coercive-behaviour-against-estranged-wife-13213783
His mistake: walking with the traffic, and on the inside of a bend with little vision for people coming from behind him.
You are going around in circles here. You made a distinction between cyclists and pedestrians on Motorways and A roads neither of which holds up. Neither use motorways and both use A roads. They are no different, so do pedestrians need a licence then?
I do believe cyclists should obey the rules of the road including speed limits but you would have so much unworkable red tape it would be ludicrous and unworkable
Most of the footpaths, bridleways etc are unusable by cycles and mobility aids since they are a) mud baths and b) barriered off unless you are an able-bodied limbo dancer. I routinely cycle around declared "footpaths" and main roads (not nice, one has to be ridiculously assertive) because many of the cycle paths have been made unusable for even a standard cycle.
In practice we *force* people walking, wheeling or cycling onto roads. Even if it has a footway, that will be where the sawdust-brained twats have parked their motor vehicles, which again forces a lot of people onto the carriageway. Then the same sawdust-brained twats whinge about the people they forced onto the carriageway being on the carriageway.
Probably because they are visual and relatively easy to understand by a Daily Mail reader.
As the trial went on for about 9 months, its fair to say they were just bricks in a whole wall (or house) of evidence.
As the failed appeal doesn't seem to have been based on either of these bits, and indeed they weren't really challenged at the original trial, I doubt if they alone were anyway persuasive alone.
Professor David Southall who pioneered (dubious ethically) camera surveillance on infants basically proved how prevalent it could be by parents or carers (33 out of 39 suspected cases involving poisoning, intentional suffocation and deliberate fracture).
He was hounded by these loonies for years (Mothers Against Munchausen syndrome by proxy Allegations).
For normal people it seems incomprehensible that a mother or nurse could harm infants in their care, but clearly it happens.
They would be advised to read the Highway Code though
Though I suspect he will be suspended until the court verdict
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/09/us/tren-de-aragua-venezuela-gang/index.html
https://x.com/papitrumpo/status/1834372286184570982