The significance of the Priti Patel interview can’t be underestimated. The Tories have made a decision to defend their liberal record on immigration unapologetically, parking their tanks on Labour and the Lib Dems’ lawn.
Patel is doing what Starmer is unwilling to.
If that's the position of the Tories, I will be voting Reform.
I think to be fair, it's just a symptom of the Tory policy vacuum. Nobody knows what the Tories under Kemi actually want to do, so you have everyone freelancing - former Sunak Ministers like Mel Stride defending their records and acting as spokespeople for the ex-Government, Patel defending her own Ministerial record, Robert Jenrick pushing his more right wing agenda. Patel's intervention can't be seen as reflective of Kemi's policies because Kemi doesn't have any policies.
We will never Rejoin because it will never be worth any UK government expending the political capital required (and this is setting aside problems like the euro, Schenghen, a decade of negotiation, fisheries, migration, possible veto by any one of 27 EU nations)
Think about it. Why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing well and you're high in the polls? You wouldn't take the risk, referendums are horribly risky, pointless
But then, why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing badly and everyone hates you, again you are simply offering the voters a chance to give you a kicking and vote against anything you desire
The only way we might Rejoin is if we are literally starving to death and some national coalition proposes it as the only solution, but then the Europeans will surely veto us as a basket case that will drag down the EU economy
We are never going to Rejoin. It is not practical politics in the real world. Better to accept it
I think this looked to be true pre-Trump, and pre the time when Trumpism might shape the USA for the long term. I don't think it looks certain now.
Why? I know TRIP, the Rory and Campbell show, is not universally popular but the most recent discussion is pretty chilling on the evidence for the direction the USA is going in
Rory fucking Stewart is a fucking imbecile. Really. Alistair Campbell is a depressed alcoholic with a huge guilt trip about Iraq. Together they have the political acuity of a cheese toastie
However, I said 95% certain we won't rejoin and not 100% because, black swans
A massive world war, or the USA become a hostile dictatorship would indeed be a very black swan and easily enough to see us back in the EU (and there would probably be even greater sequelae)
But, I don't any of these as more than 5% possibilities, combined
Point taken, though it is possible to miss the wood for your ad hominem trees. (And Rory was my MP, and I wish he still was, and he is genuinely interesting. They are both, in TS Eliot's words 'wounded surgeons').
In probabilities, I think the chance of straight Rejoin EU is fairly small, but the chance (say in the next generation) of some sort of deal, the Switzerland or Norway sort, is more like 30%.
Additionally, the chances of America ceasing to be an active ally and turning its attention away from Europe and NATO are not negligible. Wait and see. We are only 10 days in to the new reality.
Their analysis of Trump (I just watched ten minutes of it) is on the level of a quite bright sixth former. I am regularly astonished by the way apparently clever people - such as you - buy this intellectual pap tricked out as powerful insight
Says the guy who voted for Starmer.
I'm watching more of it now, it's pure midwittery and entirely shite
Stewart has just said "Trump is calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza" which is such a ridiculous misreading it is either a deliberate lie OR more evidence that they really are quite dim
Trump thinks outside the box. He is saying "maybe the Gazans would be better off giving up on their shit lives in Gaza and having a much richer, more peaceful life elsewhere". And, of course, Trump has a very good point. Hamas wants the Palestinians trapped in Gaza forever, their misery endless, their suffering a constant source of grevance and militancy - because we all know Israel will never agree to a 2 state solution, not now
And yet Trump saying "Hey here's a better choice for Gazans than the endless pain that Hamas offers" is somehow Trump calling for ethnic cleansing?! According to Rory "wow who knew immigration was so high" Stewart?
Enuff. Only idiots are taken in by this pabulum. I am disappointed @algarkirk is one of them
I know two otherwise-sensible people who have paid actual money to see Stewart and Campbell in a theatre.
Destroying a region's infrastructure, blocking supplies and encouraging the inhabitants to seek refuge elsewhere so that other people (of a different ethnicity) can move in and build their own homes and infrastructure funded by government isn't ethnic cleansing? He may not be directly calling for it but he is tacitly supporting it.
Trump is offering a better future for Gazans than Hamas or the Palestinian Authority are offering. Its realpolitik
Also, it's not like this is some unprecedented evil; deliberate population movements - to solve intractable problems - happen all the time. Greeks and Turks after WW1, Muslims and Hindus at Partition, Germans after WW2, and many others
The alternative is that the Palestinians continue to squat there in perpetual misery because
1. Israel now won't ever yield to a two state solution
and
2. The Palestinians cannot defeat Israel, and nor can anyone else without nuking them (and getting nuked in return) and thereby rendering the entire Levant uninhabitable for 20,000 years
What wonderful examples of things that aren't 'ethnic cleansing'. Idiot.
Which is why I called it a “ridiculous misreading” of Trump
I mean, go ahead and call it “ethnic cleansing” if you want, that enables you to ignore the fact it’s actually an imaginative and humane solution to this hideous 70 year nightmare
In an ideal world Israelis would get over October 7 and ask for 2 states and Gazans would not be enraged anti Semites. But this is not an ideal world, and Trump has bruited the only possible solution that might make Palestinian lives a lot better and fast while giving Israel security
You and Trump may well be right, and this might be what happens. But as a thought experiment, post the same suggestion in reverse – that Israelis should abandon the Middle East and move en masse to set up a new state in America – and you will be cancelled for antisemitism. And that is what is wrong with Trump's idea.
The shoulder shrugging about Gaza and ideas like this from Trump rest on the belief that Palestinians are not 'proper people'.
Quite the opposite. It’s addressing them as human beings who want a life beyond eternal squalor poverty and martyrdom for Hamas
Yes it’s unideal for them. But it is the only idea out there that might radically improve their lives and in short order
Alternatively you can suggest your idea
I don't have anything new and wacky, I'm afraid. Boring old goal of a free and sovereign Palestine co-existing peacefully with Israel. It's never looked further off but it remains the only long-term sustainable outcome.
I doubt that a separate Palestinian state is viable - not geographically contiguous, the extreme Israelis and Palestinians would also constantly seek to undermine it and the Iranians would always to looking to cause trouble.
I think that the more sustainable outcome long term is for Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to coexist together in a Greater Israel/Palestine/Israeli-Palestinian Federation/whatever. Jews and Arabs coexisted in Palestine for centuries before Zionism (after the 8th century dispersals) and might be able to do so again. The 2 million Israeli Arabs whose ancestors survived ethnic cleansing in the 1940s show it is at least possible.
The extreme Israelis would have to give up the idea of Israeli as a Jewish state and move towards acceptance of multiculturalism and the extreme Palestinian juihadis would have to give up the idea of pushing the Jews out.
Would it be perfect or a panacea? No. Can I see an easy way to get there from here? Not really. But it would be a viable country with at least a chance of working.
I used to think this falls down on "they breed".
However Israel's birth rate is highest on OECD by a significant margin.
I think where it would fail is because of the 3 million or so Palestinian refugees who have been in Jordan (and Egypt and Lebanon) for 80 years and to whom the Israelis have always refused to grant a right of return. If there is a peaceful, multicultural federation, even the spurious pretexts the Israelis keep making for not allowing them their rights under international law would become untenable. Those refugees, added to the five million in the West Bank and Gaza and the two million Israeli Arabs would mean that the 7.2 million Jews would be in a minority in Israel and without some credible safeguards they would not be willing to accept that.
So I'm afraid my Utopian solution of a civilised, cosmopolitan state is unlikely and a continuation of the present situation of oppression punctuated by massacre is the most probable outcome.
Or, alternatively, the Donald J Trump solution. Which, however much you hate him, or Jews, or America, or Israel, is the only solution which offers anything to the Palestinians other than “more of the same, but probably worse”
Ethnic cleansing always looks deceptively simple and attractive to people sitting in armchairs in London or Washington with large scale maps, especially if they are basically ignorant of the region and its history, as Donald Trump clearly is.
Move people from Place A where they aren't having a good time to Place B where they can thrive. But I'm afraid when you have to inflict it on people who have lived in a place for generations, at the behest of a brutal occupying power, and force them to move to a much poorer place where they are not wanted and have no ancestral ties, it rather breaks down in practice. There are also lots of complicated questions about what do you do with people who are of mixed ancestry, or people who are too old or ill to move.
That is why it is rightly considered one of the four Mass Atrocity crimes, alongside genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And the alternative is…
Well, you posted it, The situation as now - extreme squalor and deprivation - punctuated by massacres
I submit that this is worse, you are free to disagree
Funny how the dim witted right are all for self determination when it comes to their favoured peoples.
Not for Palestinians it seems.
I'm sure tens of thousands would jump at the chance to emigrate, but how about we ask them ?
I’m suggesting that the world community clubs together and gives every single Palestinian £100k and a condo
Literally
It can be slowly paid back from the profits as Gaza is developed into a kind of Monte Carlo on med. a freezone governed not by Isreal or Hamas or anyone.
It’s not like the Palestinians are losing much. They’re not from Gaza they’re mainly from Isreal, they were displaced from Israel by the nakba. Their homeland is already gone and they will never return
So what they will be giving up is a refugee camp/open prison
I apologise for wondering if there might just be a better future for them than that
The "better future" is that the Israelis finally live up to their obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which they are a signatory, and allow the Palestinians to return to their ancestral homelands from which they ethnically cleansed them in the 1940s and learn to live side by side with them, as they do with the 2 million Israeli Arabs.
Better than ethnic cleansing anyway.
Takes two to tango, who would trust Hamas aka Gaza government to ever live peacefully with Israel. Until they agree to live peacefully and don't want to kill every Israeli then it will not improve. Both sides ar entrenched and it will not b esorted in the short term. Why are ZERO Arab nations offering Gazans a place to live.
Humanity’s dirty secret is that ethnic cleansing works. Never again will Greeks and Turks, Germans and Poles, Germans and Czechs, Poles and Ukrainians, quarrel over the same patches of land.
Not obviously the case. For us to know that this is good policy making we would need to know both costs and benefits. All we have here is benefits.
I dislike 20 mph zones, but reluctantly admit that they don't really add significantly to journey time, because they're limited to a village at a time, and the figures seem reasonably persuasive.
This provides the context and a fair review of the debate
Deaths and serious injuries on Welsh roads fall in first year of 20mph default
Having had a listen to the presentation I linked several days ago, and reading around, it seems that the North Wales Local Highways Authorities were more restrictive on their implementation originally than South Wales LTAs, and are making relatively more proposals for changes to defaults back to 30mph now.
The impression I get is that something like 5-8% of road mileage might be reverting back to a 30mph default.
Given my strong belief in 20mph on residential roads, but not all distributer / link roads, that seems quite reasonable to me.
Generally we are fairly well on the same page and 20mph zones do very much have their place but of the roads in North Wales that are reverting back to 30mph are ones I think you would agree are sensible
And yes, North Wales were very much stricter and it was noticeable to me as I drove extensively ( and went on the Great Little Trains of Wales) last summer that Gwynedd was very different in its application of the 20mph zones
I would just suggest Wales is an excellent example to England to introduce 20mph zones with care, and not tell everyone in England all 30mph will become 20mph virtually overnight
Absolutely on England - five of my key asks are 20mph national default limit for streets inside community boundaries, nationwide pavement parking ban, significant boost to traffic police (some offences cannot be caught on camera), Operation SNAP (again - pioneered in Wales) to be more widely used, and all anti-wheelchair barriers to go.
And another lot that are no-brainers, such as more nuanced licensing and testing for both under 21s and over-80s.
And then a lot that are more detailed or strategic, such as contraflow cycling on 20mph one way streets as default, a major reimagining of our road design methods to be inclusive, and rewriting the legal charge given to Local Highways Authorities.
And that's before I get onto the Fatal 5.
The long road to the fish and chip shop has three schools, a 20mph limit, and speed bumps (which are apparently no longer called sleeping policemen). For years I walked its length, there and back, and would say the 20mph limit is fine but was rarely exceeded anyway, but the speed bumps installed a couple of years ago are entirely pointless for the same reason (and probably it was a case of the department having to use or lose its budget). The schools benefit from zebra and pelican crossings, with also lollipop men or women for the primaries.
Perhaps more can be done with driver education and testing. Dropping the 3-point turn, for instance, means you now see drivers turning in main roads because they are no longer taught to use side roads. Mini roundabouts are too often driven over instead of round. There also seem to be more ‘bumper car’ drivers who prefer to swerve rather than slow.
It is the Waspi women problem. The government makes changes but tells no-one.
And whisper it, but some immigrants learned in very different conditions from ours.
As to your other proposals, ban pavement parking and you will block roads. Some roads and many pavements are just too narrow. Cyclists are overindulged. Operation Snap is widespread anyway but perhaps not under that name, if you mean uploading dash cam footage.
Can I jump in to have a go at lazy, modern, “speed bumps” which are 3ft tall and made out of some form of bricks which fall apart when weathered, damage cars, and break cyclists’ backs? What was wrong with the old design of a simple “sleeping policeman” bump?
Speedbumps are shit. I hate them from the bottom of my heart. I hate them almost as much as I hate feckin pyramids.
You want people to obey the speed limit? Just put up camera and do like the French - confiscate the car and licence of people caught speeding.
Speed bumps penalise those using the smallest vehicles.
Years ago, when I was living in Hampstead, they sparked a short period when idiots started buying Dodge Rams. FFS.
More recently, I watched as a lady with a disability tried to ride her tricycle over a speed bump. She made it, but it was an obvious struggle.
I have heard it said that the the signs showing your speed and giving you a smiley or a frown are very effective.
The significance of the Priti Patel interview can’t be underestimated. The Tories have made a decision to defend their liberal record on immigration unapologetically, parking their tanks on Labour and the Lib Dems’ lawn.
Patel is doing what Starmer is unwilling to.
If that's the position of the Tories, I will be voting Reform.
I think to be fair, it's just a symptom of the Tory policy vacuum. Nobody knows what the Tories under Kemi actually want to do, so you have everyone freelancing - former Sunak Ministers like Mel Stride defending their records and acting as spokespeople for the ex-Government, Patel defending her own Ministerial record, Robert Jenrick pushing his more right wing agenda. Patel's intervention can't be seen as reflective of Kemi's policies because Kemi doesn't have any policies.
While not great that's somewhat understandable, however, Kemi needs to give Patel a rebuke for defending her shit record on immigration.
The significance of the Priti Patel interview can’t be underestimated. The Tories have made a decision to defend their liberal record on immigration unapologetically, parking their tanks on Labour and the Lib Dems’ lawn.
Patel is doing what Starmer is unwilling to.
You would hardly expect Starmer to defend the Tory record on anything.
He accused them of an "open borders experiment" in an effort to out-Farage Farage. I'm afraid that anyone who wants to take a stand against that kind of politics will have no choice but to back Priti Patel and Kemi Badenoch's Conservatives. Politics makes strange bedfellows.
But he was referring specifically to the Boris Bulge. Everyone agrees that was out of control.
The hard right in social media call it the “Boris wave”.
We will never Rejoin because it will never be worth any UK government expending the political capital required (and this is setting aside problems like the euro, Schenghen, a decade of negotiation, fisheries, migration, possible veto by any one of 27 EU nations)
Think about it. Why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing well and you're high in the polls? You wouldn't take the risk, referendums are horribly risky, pointless
But then, why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing badly and everyone hates you, again you are simply offering the voters a chance to give you a kicking and vote against anything you desire
The only way we might Rejoin is if we are literally starving to death and some national coalition proposes it as the only solution, but then the Europeans will surely veto us as a basket case that will drag down the EU economy
We are never going to Rejoin. It is not practical politics in the real world. Better to accept it
I think this looked to be true pre-Trump, and pre the time when Trumpism might shape the USA for the long term. I don't think it looks certain now.
Why? I know TRIP, the Rory and Campbell show, is not universally popular but the most recent discussion is pretty chilling on the evidence for the direction the USA is going in
Rory fucking Stewart is a fucking imbecile. Really. Alistair Campbell is a depressed alcoholic with a huge guilt trip about Iraq. Together they have the political acuity of a cheese toastie
However, I said 95% certain we won't rejoin and not 100% because, black swans
A massive world war, or the USA become a hostile dictatorship would indeed be a very black swan and easily enough to see us back in the EU (and there would probably be even greater sequelae)
But, I don't any of these as more than 5% possibilities, combined
Point taken, though it is possible to miss the wood for your ad hominem trees. (And Rory was my MP, and I wish he still was, and he is genuinely interesting. They are both, in TS Eliot's words 'wounded surgeons').
In probabilities, I think the chance of straight Rejoin EU is fairly small, but the chance (say in the next generation) of some sort of deal, the Switzerland or Norway sort, is more like 30%.
Additionally, the chances of America ceasing to be an active ally and turning its attention away from Europe and NATO are not negligible. Wait and see. We are only 10 days in to the new reality.
Their analysis of Trump (I just watched ten minutes of it) is on the level of a quite bright sixth former. I am regularly astonished by the way apparently clever people - such as you - buy this intellectual pap tricked out as powerful insight
Says the guy who voted for Starmer.
I'm watching more of it now, it's pure midwittery and entirely shite
Stewart has just said "Trump is calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza" which is such a ridiculous misreading it is either a deliberate lie OR more evidence that they really are quite dim
Trump thinks outside the box. He is saying "maybe the Gazans would be better off giving up on their shit lives in Gaza and having a much richer, more peaceful life elsewhere". And, of course, Trump has a very good point. Hamas wants the Palestinians trapped in Gaza forever, their misery endless, their suffering a constant source of grevance and militancy - because we all know Israel will never agree to a 2 state solution, not now
And yet Trump saying "Hey here's a better choice for Gazans than the endless pain that Hamas offers" is somehow Trump calling for ethnic cleansing?! According to Rory "wow who knew immigration was so high" Stewart?
Enuff. Only idiots are taken in by this pabulum. I am disappointed @algarkirk is one of them
I know two otherwise-sensible people who have paid actual money to see Stewart and Campbell in a theatre.
Destroying a region's infrastructure, blocking supplies and encouraging the inhabitants to seek refuge elsewhere so that other people (of a different ethnicity) can move in and build their own homes and infrastructure funded by government isn't ethnic cleansing? He may not be directly calling for it but he is tacitly supporting it.
Trump is offering a better future for Gazans than Hamas or the Palestinian Authority are offering. Its realpolitik
Also, it's not like this is some unprecedented evil; deliberate population movements - to solve intractable problems - happen all the time. Greeks and Turks after WW1, Muslims and Hindus at Partition, Germans after WW2, and many others
The alternative is that the Palestinians continue to squat there in perpetual misery because
1. Israel now won't ever yield to a two state solution
and
2. The Palestinians cannot defeat Israel, and nor can anyone else without nuking them (and getting nuked in return) and thereby rendering the entire Levant uninhabitable for 20,000 years
What wonderful examples of things that aren't 'ethnic cleansing'. Idiot.
Which is why I called it a “ridiculous misreading” of Trump
I mean, go ahead and call it “ethnic cleansing” if you want, that enables you to ignore the fact it’s actually an imaginative and humane solution to this hideous 70 year nightmare
In an ideal world Israelis would get over October 7 and ask for 2 states and Gazans would not be enraged anti Semites. But this is not an ideal world, and Trump has bruited the only possible solution that might make Palestinian lives a lot better and fast while giving Israel security
You and Trump may well be right, and this might be what happens. But as a thought experiment, post the same suggestion in reverse – that Israelis should abandon the Middle East and move en masse to set up a new state in America – and you will be cancelled for antisemitism. And that is what is wrong with Trump's idea.
The shoulder shrugging about Gaza and ideas like this from Trump rest on the belief that Palestinians are not 'proper people'.
Quite the opposite. It’s addressing them as human beings who want a life beyond eternal squalor poverty and martyrdom for Hamas
Yes it’s unideal for them. But it is the only idea out there that might radically improve their lives and in short order
Alternatively you can suggest your idea
I don't have anything new and wacky, I'm afraid. Boring old goal of a free and sovereign Palestine co-existing peacefully with Israel. It's never looked further off but it remains the only long-term sustainable outcome.
I doubt that a separate Palestinian state is viable - not geographically contiguous, the extreme Israelis and Palestinians would also constantly seek to undermine it and the Iranians would always to looking to cause trouble.
I think that the more sustainable outcome long term is for Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to coexist together in a Greater Israel/Palestine/Israeli-Palestinian Federation/whatever. Jews and Arabs coexisted in Palestine for centuries before Zionism (after the 8th century dispersals) and might be able to do so again. The 2 million Israeli Arabs whose ancestors survived ethnic cleansing in the 1940s show it is at least possible.
The extreme Israelis would have to give up the idea of Israeli as a Jewish state and move towards acceptance of multiculturalism and the extreme Palestinian juihadis would have to give up the idea of pushing the Jews out.
Would it be perfect or a panacea? No. Can I see an easy way to get there from here? Not really. But it would be a viable country with at least a chance of working.
I used to think this falls down on "they breed".
However Israel's birth rate is highest on OECD by a significant margin.
I think where it would fail is because of the 3 million or so Palestinian refugees who have been in Jordan (and Egypt and Lebanon) for 80 years and to whom the Israelis have always refused to grant a right of return. If there is a peaceful, multicultural federation, even the spurious pretexts the Israelis keep making for not allowing them their rights under international law would become untenable. Those refugees, added to the five million in the West Bank and Gaza and the two million Israeli Arabs would mean that the 7.2 million Jews would be in a minority in Israel and without some credible safeguards they would not be willing to accept that.
So I'm afraid my Utopian solution of a civilised, cosmopolitan state is unlikely and a continuation of the present situation of oppression punctuated by massacre is the most probable outcome.
Or, alternatively, the Donald J Trump solution. Which, however much you hate him, or Jews, or America, or Israel, is the only solution which offers anything to the Palestinians other than “more of the same, but probably worse”
Ethnic cleansing always looks deceptively simple and attractive to people sitting in armchairs in London or Washington with large scale maps, especially if they are basically ignorant of the region and its history, as Donald Trump clearly is.
Move people from Place A where they aren't having a good time to Place B where they can thrive. But I'm afraid when you have to inflict it on people who have lived in a place for generations, at the behest of a brutal occupying power, and force them to move to a much poorer place where they are not wanted and have no ancestral ties, it rather breaks down in practice. There are also lots of complicated questions about what do you do with people who are of mixed ancestry, or people who are too old or ill to move.
That is why it is rightly considered one of the four Mass Atrocity crimes, alongside genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And the alternative is…
Well, you posted it, The situation as now - extreme squalor and deprivation - punctuated by massacres
I submit that this is worse, you are free to disagree
Funny how the dim witted right are all for self determination when it comes to their favoured peoples.
Not for Palestinians it seems.
I'm sure tens of thousands would jump at the chance to emigrate, but how about we ask them ?
I’m suggesting that the world community clubs together and gives every single Palestinian £100k and a condo
Literally
It can be slowly paid back from the profits as Gaza is developed into a kind of Monte Carlo on med. a freezone governed not by Isreal or Hamas or anyone.
It’s not like the Palestinians are losing much. They’re not from Gaza they’re mainly from Isreal, they were displaced from Israel by the nakba. Their homeland is already gone and they will never return
So what they will be giving up is a refugee camp/open prison
I apologise for wondering if there might just be a better future for them than that
The "better future" is that the Israelis finally live up to their obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which they are a signatory, and allow the Palestinians to return to their ancestral homelands from which they ethnically cleansed them in the 1940s and learn to live side by side with them, as they do with the 2 million Israeli Arabs.
Better than ethnic cleansing anyway.
Takes two to tango, who would trust Hamas aka Gaza government to ever live peacefully with Israel. Until they agree to live peacefully and don't want to kill every Israeli then it will not improve. Both sides ar entrenched and it will not b esorted in the short term. Why are ZERO Arab nations offering Gazans a place to live.
Humanity’s dirty secret is that ethnic cleansing works. Never again will Greeks and Turks, Germans and Poles, Germans and Czechs, Poles and Ukrainians, quarrel over the same patches of land.
That doesn’t stop it being a crime against humanity.
Also, the Greeks and Turks very much continue to quarrel. What’s stopped that turning into a hot war too often is NATO membership.
I have long been a supporter of the Palestinians but the pictures of the release of hostages in Gaza today have been shocking. It may be culturally inappropriate but they could not organise a piss-up in a brewery.
We will never Rejoin because it will never be worth any UK government expending the political capital required (and this is setting aside problems like the euro, Schenghen, a decade of negotiation, fisheries, migration, possible veto by any one of 27 EU nations)
Think about it. Why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing well and you're high in the polls? You wouldn't take the risk, referendums are horribly risky, pointless
But then, why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing badly and everyone hates you, again you are simply offering the voters a chance to give you a kicking and vote against anything you desire
The only way we might Rejoin is if we are literally starving to death and some national coalition proposes it as the only solution, but then the Europeans will surely veto us as a basket case that will drag down the EU economy
We are never going to Rejoin. It is not practical politics in the real world. Better to accept it
I think this looked to be true pre-Trump, and pre the time when Trumpism might shape the USA for the long term. I don't think it looks certain now.
Why? I know TRIP, the Rory and Campbell show, is not universally popular but the most recent discussion is pretty chilling on the evidence for the direction the USA is going in
Rory fucking Stewart is a fucking imbecile. Really. Alistair Campbell is a depressed alcoholic with a huge guilt trip about Iraq. Together they have the political acuity of a cheese toastie
However, I said 95% certain we won't rejoin and not 100% because, black swans
A massive world war, or the USA become a hostile dictatorship would indeed be a very black swan and easily enough to see us back in the EU (and there would probably be even greater sequelae)
But, I don't any of these as more than 5% possibilities, combined
Point taken, though it is possible to miss the wood for your ad hominem trees. (And Rory was my MP, and I wish he still was, and he is genuinely interesting. They are both, in TS Eliot's words 'wounded surgeons').
In probabilities, I think the chance of straight Rejoin EU is fairly small, but the chance (say in the next generation) of some sort of deal, the Switzerland or Norway sort, is more like 30%.
Additionally, the chances of America ceasing to be an active ally and turning its attention away from Europe and NATO are not negligible. Wait and see. We are only 10 days in to the new reality.
Their analysis of Trump (I just watched ten minutes of it) is on the level of a quite bright sixth former. I am regularly astonished by the way apparently clever people - such as you - buy this intellectual pap tricked out as powerful insight
Says the guy who voted for Starmer.
I'm watching more of it now, it's pure midwittery and entirely shite
Stewart has just said "Trump is calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza" which is such a ridiculous misreading it is either a deliberate lie OR more evidence that they really are quite dim
Trump thinks outside the box. He is saying "maybe the Gazans would be better off giving up on their shit lives in Gaza and having a much richer, more peaceful life elsewhere". And, of course, Trump has a very good point. Hamas wants the Palestinians trapped in Gaza forever, their misery endless, their suffering a constant source of grevance and militancy - because we all know Israel will never agree to a 2 state solution, not now
And yet Trump saying "Hey here's a better choice for Gazans than the endless pain that Hamas offers" is somehow Trump calling for ethnic cleansing?! According to Rory "wow who knew immigration was so high" Stewart?
Enuff. Only idiots are taken in by this pabulum. I am disappointed @algarkirk is one of them
I know two otherwise-sensible people who have paid actual money to see Stewart and Campbell in a theatre.
Destroying a region's infrastructure, blocking supplies and encouraging the inhabitants to seek refuge elsewhere so that other people (of a different ethnicity) can move in and build their own homes and infrastructure funded by government isn't ethnic cleansing? He may not be directly calling for it but he is tacitly supporting it.
Trump is offering a better future for Gazans than Hamas or the Palestinian Authority are offering. Its realpolitik
Also, it's not like this is some unprecedented evil; deliberate population movements - to solve intractable problems - happen all the time. Greeks and Turks after WW1, Muslims and Hindus at Partition, Germans after WW2, and many others
The alternative is that the Palestinians continue to squat there in perpetual misery because
1. Israel now won't ever yield to a two state solution
and
2. The Palestinians cannot defeat Israel, and nor can anyone else without nuking them (and getting nuked in return) and thereby rendering the entire Levant uninhabitable for 20,000 years
What wonderful examples of things that aren't 'ethnic cleansing'. Idiot.
Which is why I called it a “ridiculous misreading” of Trump
I mean, go ahead and call it “ethnic cleansing” if you want, that enables you to ignore the fact it’s actually an imaginative and humane solution to this hideous 70 year nightmare
In an ideal world Israelis would get over October 7 and ask for 2 states and Gazans would not be enraged anti Semites. But this is not an ideal world, and Trump has bruited the only possible solution that might make Palestinian lives a lot better and fast while giving Israel security
You and Trump may well be right, and this might be what happens. But as a thought experiment, post the same suggestion in reverse – that Israelis should abandon the Middle East and move en masse to set up a new state in America – and you will be cancelled for antisemitism. And that is what is wrong with Trump's idea.
The shoulder shrugging about Gaza and ideas like this from Trump rest on the belief that Palestinians are not 'proper people'.
Quite the opposite. It’s addressing them as human beings who want a life beyond eternal squalor poverty and martyrdom for Hamas
Yes it’s unideal for them. But it is the only idea out there that might radically improve their lives and in short order
Alternatively you can suggest your idea
I don't have anything new and wacky, I'm afraid. Boring old goal of a free and sovereign Palestine co-existing peacefully with Israel. It's never looked further off but it remains the only long-term sustainable outcome.
I doubt that a separate Palestinian state is viable - not geographically contiguous, the extreme Israelis and Palestinians would also constantly seek to undermine it and the Iranians would always to looking to cause trouble.
I think that the more sustainable outcome long term is for Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to coexist together in a Greater Israel/Palestine/Israeli-Palestinian Federation/whatever. Jews and Arabs coexisted in Palestine for centuries before Zionism (after the 8th century dispersals) and might be able to do so again. The 2 million Israeli Arabs whose ancestors survived ethnic cleansing in the 1940s show it is at least possible.
The extreme Israelis would have to give up the idea of Israeli as a Jewish state and move towards acceptance of multiculturalism and the extreme Palestinian juihadis would have to give up the idea of pushing the Jews out.
Would it be perfect or a panacea? No. Can I see an easy way to get there from here? Not really. But it would be a viable country with at least a chance of working.
I used to think this falls down on "they breed".
However Israel's birth rate is highest on OECD by a significant margin.
I think where it would fail is because of the 3 million or so Palestinian refugees who have been in Jordan (and Egypt and Lebanon) for 80 years and to whom the Israelis have always refused to grant a right of return. If there is a peaceful, multicultural federation, even the spurious pretexts the Israelis keep making for not allowing them their rights under international law would become untenable. Those refugees, added to the five million in the West Bank and Gaza and the two million Israeli Arabs would mean that the 7.2 million Jews would be in a minority in Israel and without some credible safeguards they would not be willing to accept that.
So I'm afraid my Utopian solution of a civilised, cosmopolitan state is unlikely and a continuation of the present situation of oppression punctuated by massacre is the most probable outcome.
Or, alternatively, the Donald J Trump solution. Which, however much you hate him, or Jews, or America, or Israel, is the only solution which offers anything to the Palestinians other than “more of the same, but probably worse”
Ethnic cleansing always looks deceptively simple and attractive to people sitting in armchairs in London or Washington with large scale maps, especially if they are basically ignorant of the region and its history, as Donald Trump clearly is.
Move people from Place A where they aren't having a good time to Place B where they can thrive. But I'm afraid when you have to inflict it on people who have lived in a place for generations, at the behest of a brutal occupying power, and force them to move to a much poorer place where they are not wanted and have no ancestral ties, it rather breaks down in practice. There are also lots of complicated questions about what do you do with people who are of mixed ancestry, or people who are too old or ill to move.
That is why it is rightly considered one of the four Mass Atrocity crimes, alongside genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And the alternative is…
Well, you posted it, The situation as now - extreme squalor and deprivation - punctuated by massacres
I submit that this is worse, you are free to disagree
Funny how the dim witted right are all for self determination when it comes to their favoured peoples.
Not for Palestinians it seems.
I'm sure tens of thousands would jump at the chance to emigrate, but how about we ask them ?
I’m suggesting that the world community clubs together and gives every single Palestinian £100k and a condo
Literally
It can be slowly paid back from the profits as Gaza is developed into a kind of Monte Carlo on med. a freezone governed not by Isreal or Hamas or anyone.
It’s not like the Palestinians are losing much. They’re not from Gaza they’re mainly from Isreal, they were displaced from Israel by the nakba. Their homeland is already gone and they will never return
So what they will be giving up is a refugee camp/open prison
I apologise for wondering if there might just be a better future for them than that
The "better future" is that the Israelis finally live up to their obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which they are a signatory, and allow the Palestinians to return to their ancestral homelands from which they ethnically cleansed them in the 1940s and learn to live side by side with them, as they do with the 2 million Israeli Arabs.
Better than ethnic cleansing anyway.
Takes two to tango, who would trust Hamas aka Gaza government to ever live peacefully with Israel. Until they agree to live peacefully and don't want to kill every Israeli then it will not improve. Both sides ar entrenched and it will not b esorted in the short term. Why are ZERO Arab nations offering Gazans a place to live.
Didn't have you down as an apologist for ethnic cleansing.
Khan has been a very poor mayor. Simply destructive of the spirit of London.
Weirdly Boris somehow brought the communities closer together.
I live in London. I have noticed zero deterioration in the “spirit of London” since Khan’s election.
I've noticed a complete absence of interest in the doings of Mayor Khan, among most of the inhabitants of London. Just the occasional snort of derision.
A few younger people seemed annoyed that he is presiding over a collapse in London late night venues. But in a shrug and "politicians are useless" kind of way.
We will never Rejoin because it will never be worth any UK government expending the political capital required (and this is setting aside problems like the euro, Schenghen, a decade of negotiation, fisheries, migration, possible veto by any one of 27 EU nations)
Think about it. Why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing well and you're high in the polls? You wouldn't take the risk, referendums are horribly risky, pointless
But then, why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing badly and everyone hates you, again you are simply offering the voters a chance to give you a kicking and vote against anything you desire
The only way we might Rejoin is if we are literally starving to death and some national coalition proposes it as the only solution, but then the Europeans will surely veto us as a basket case that will drag down the EU economy
We are never going to Rejoin. It is not practical politics in the real world. Better to accept it
I think this looked to be true pre-Trump, and pre the time when Trumpism might shape the USA for the long term. I don't think it looks certain now.
Why? I know TRIP, the Rory and Campbell show, is not universally popular but the most recent discussion is pretty chilling on the evidence for the direction the USA is going in
Rory fucking Stewart is a fucking imbecile. Really. Alistair Campbell is a depressed alcoholic with a huge guilt trip about Iraq. Together they have the political acuity of a cheese toastie
However, I said 95% certain we won't rejoin and not 100% because, black swans
A massive world war, or the USA become a hostile dictatorship would indeed be a very black swan and easily enough to see us back in the EU (and there would probably be even greater sequelae)
But, I don't any of these as more than 5% possibilities, combined
Point taken, though it is possible to miss the wood for your ad hominem trees. (And Rory was my MP, and I wish he still was, and he is genuinely interesting. They are both, in TS Eliot's words 'wounded surgeons').
In probabilities, I think the chance of straight Rejoin EU is fairly small, but the chance (say in the next generation) of some sort of deal, the Switzerland or Norway sort, is more like 30%.
Additionally, the chances of America ceasing to be an active ally and turning its attention away from Europe and NATO are not negligible. Wait and see. We are only 10 days in to the new reality.
Their analysis of Trump (I just watched ten minutes of it) is on the level of a quite bright sixth former. I am regularly astonished by the way apparently clever people - such as you - buy this intellectual pap tricked out as powerful insight
Says the guy who voted for Starmer.
I'm watching more of it now, it's pure midwittery and entirely shite
Stewart has just said "Trump is calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza" which is such a ridiculous misreading it is either a deliberate lie OR more evidence that they really are quite dim
Trump thinks outside the box. He is saying "maybe the Gazans would be better off giving up on their shit lives in Gaza and having a much richer, more peaceful life elsewhere". And, of course, Trump has a very good point. Hamas wants the Palestinians trapped in Gaza forever, their misery endless, their suffering a constant source of grevance and militancy - because we all know Israel will never agree to a 2 state solution, not now
And yet Trump saying "Hey here's a better choice for Gazans than the endless pain that Hamas offers" is somehow Trump calling for ethnic cleansing?! According to Rory "wow who knew immigration was so high" Stewart?
Enuff. Only idiots are taken in by this pabulum. I am disappointed @algarkirk is one of them
I know two otherwise-sensible people who have paid actual money to see Stewart and Campbell in a theatre.
Destroying a region's infrastructure, blocking supplies and encouraging the inhabitants to seek refuge elsewhere so that other people (of a different ethnicity) can move in and build their own homes and infrastructure funded by government isn't ethnic cleansing? He may not be directly calling for it but he is tacitly supporting it.
Trump is offering a better future for Gazans than Hamas or the Palestinian Authority are offering. Its realpolitik
Also, it's not like this is some unprecedented evil; deliberate population movements - to solve intractable problems - happen all the time. Greeks and Turks after WW1, Muslims and Hindus at Partition, Germans after WW2, and many others
The alternative is that the Palestinians continue to squat there in perpetual misery because
1. Israel now won't ever yield to a two state solution
and
2. The Palestinians cannot defeat Israel, and nor can anyone else without nuking them (and getting nuked in return) and thereby rendering the entire Levant uninhabitable for 20,000 years
What wonderful examples of things that aren't 'ethnic cleansing'. Idiot.
Which is why I called it a “ridiculous misreading” of Trump
I mean, go ahead and call it “ethnic cleansing” if you want, that enables you to ignore the fact it’s actually an imaginative and humane solution to this hideous 70 year nightmare
In an ideal world Israelis would get over October 7 and ask for 2 states and Gazans would not be enraged anti Semites. But this is not an ideal world, and Trump has bruited the only possible solution that might make Palestinian lives a lot better and fast while giving Israel security
You and Trump may well be right, and this might be what happens. But as a thought experiment, post the same suggestion in reverse – that Israelis should abandon the Middle East and move en masse to set up a new state in America – and you will be cancelled for antisemitism. And that is what is wrong with Trump's idea.
The shoulder shrugging about Gaza and ideas like this from Trump rest on the belief that Palestinians are not 'proper people'.
Quite the opposite. It’s addressing them as human beings who want a life beyond eternal squalor poverty and martyrdom for Hamas
Yes it’s unideal for them. But it is the only idea out there that might radically improve their lives and in short order
Alternatively you can suggest your idea
I don't have anything new and wacky, I'm afraid. Boring old goal of a free and sovereign Palestine co-existing peacefully with Israel. It's never looked further off but it remains the only long-term sustainable outcome.
I doubt that a separate Palestinian state is viable - not geographically contiguous, the extreme Israelis and Palestinians would also constantly seek to undermine it and the Iranians would always to looking to cause trouble.
I think that the more sustainable outcome long term is for Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to coexist together in a Greater Israel/Palestine/Israeli-Palestinian Federation/whatever. Jews and Arabs coexisted in Palestine for centuries before Zionism (after the 8th century dispersals) and might be able to do so again. The 2 million Israeli Arabs whose ancestors survived ethnic cleansing in the 1940s show it is at least possible.
The extreme Israelis would have to give up the idea of Israeli as a Jewish state and move towards acceptance of multiculturalism and the extreme Palestinian juihadis would have to give up the idea of pushing the Jews out.
Would it be perfect or a panacea? No. Can I see an easy way to get there from here? Not really. But it would be a viable country with at least a chance of working.
I used to think this falls down on "they breed".
However Israel's birth rate is highest on OECD by a significant margin.
I think where it would fail is because of the 3 million or so Palestinian refugees who have been in Jordan (and Egypt and Lebanon) for 80 years and to whom the Israelis have always refused to grant a right of return. If there is a peaceful, multicultural federation, even the spurious pretexts the Israelis keep making for not allowing them their rights under international law would become untenable. Those refugees, added to the five million in the West Bank and Gaza and the two million Israeli Arabs would mean that the 7.2 million Jews would be in a minority in Israel and without some credible safeguards they would not be willing to accept that.
So I'm afraid my Utopian solution of a civilised, cosmopolitan state is unlikely and a continuation of the present situation of oppression punctuated by massacre is the most probable outcome.
Or, alternatively, the Donald J Trump solution. Which, however much you hate him, or Jews, or America, or Israel, is the only solution which offers anything to the Palestinians other than “more of the same, but probably worse”
Ethnic cleansing always looks deceptively simple and attractive to people sitting in armchairs in London or Washington with large scale maps, especially if they are basically ignorant of the region and its history, as Donald Trump clearly is.
Move people from Place A where they aren't having a good time to Place B where they can thrive. But I'm afraid when you have to inflict it on people who have lived in a place for generations, at the behest of a brutal occupying power, and force them to move to a much poorer place where they are not wanted and have no ancestral ties, it rather breaks down in practice. There are also lots of complicated questions about what do you do with people who are of mixed ancestry, or people who are too old or ill to move.
That is why it is rightly considered one of the four Mass Atrocity crimes, alongside genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And the alternative is…
Well, you posted it, The situation as now - extreme squalor and deprivation - punctuated by massacres
I submit that this is worse, you are free to disagree
Funny how the dim witted right are all for self determination when it comes to their favoured peoples.
Not for Palestinians it seems.
I'm sure tens of thousands would jump at the chance to emigrate, but how about we ask them ?
I’m suggesting that the world community clubs together and gives every single Palestinian £100k and a condo
Literally
It can be slowly paid back from the profits as Gaza is developed into a kind of Monte Carlo on med. a freezone governed not by Isreal or Hamas or anyone.
It’s not like the Palestinians are losing much. They’re not from Gaza they’re mainly from Isreal, they were displaced from Israel by the nakba. Their homeland is already gone and they will never return
So what they will be giving up is a refugee camp/open prison
I apologise for wondering if there might just be a better future for them than that
The "better future" is that the Israelis finally live up to their obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which they are a signatory, and allow the Palestinians to return to their ancestral homelands from which they ethnically cleansed them in the 1940s and learn to live side by side with them, as they do with the 2 million Israeli Arabs.
Better than ethnic cleansing anyway.
Takes two to tango, who would trust Hamas aka Gaza government to ever live peacefully with Israel. Until they agree to live peacefully and don't want to kill every Israeli then it will not improve. Both sides ar entrenched and it will not b esorted in the short term. Why are ZERO Arab nations offering Gazans a place to live.
Humanity’s dirty secret is that ethnic cleansing works. Never again will Greeks and Turks, Germans and Poles, Germans and Czechs, Poles and Ukrainians, quarrel over the same patches of land.
German is an official language in the Polish regions (Voivodes) of Slask (Silesia) and Opole (Oppeln).
We will never Rejoin because it will never be worth any UK government expending the political capital required (and this is setting aside problems like the euro, Schenghen, a decade of negotiation, fisheries, migration, possible veto by any one of 27 EU nations)
Think about it. Why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing well and you're high in the polls? You wouldn't take the risk, referendums are horribly risky, pointless
But then, why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing badly and everyone hates you, again you are simply offering the voters a chance to give you a kicking and vote against anything you desire
The only way we might Rejoin is if we are literally starving to death and some national coalition proposes it as the only solution, but then the Europeans will surely veto us as a basket case that will drag down the EU economy
We are never going to Rejoin. It is not practical politics in the real world. Better to accept it
I think this looked to be true pre-Trump, and pre the time when Trumpism might shape the USA for the long term. I don't think it looks certain now.
Why? I know TRIP, the Rory and Campbell show, is not universally popular but the most recent discussion is pretty chilling on the evidence for the direction the USA is going in
Rory fucking Stewart is a fucking imbecile. Really. Alistair Campbell is a depressed alcoholic with a huge guilt trip about Iraq. Together they have the political acuity of a cheese toastie
However, I said 95% certain we won't rejoin and not 100% because, black swans
A massive world war, or the USA become a hostile dictatorship would indeed be a very black swan and easily enough to see us back in the EU (and there would probably be even greater sequelae)
But, I don't any of these as more than 5% possibilities, combined
Point taken, though it is possible to miss the wood for your ad hominem trees. (And Rory was my MP, and I wish he still was, and he is genuinely interesting. They are both, in TS Eliot's words 'wounded surgeons').
In probabilities, I think the chance of straight Rejoin EU is fairly small, but the chance (say in the next generation) of some sort of deal, the Switzerland or Norway sort, is more like 30%.
Additionally, the chances of America ceasing to be an active ally and turning its attention away from Europe and NATO are not negligible. Wait and see. We are only 10 days in to the new reality.
Their analysis of Trump (I just watched ten minutes of it) is on the level of a quite bright sixth former. I am regularly astonished by the way apparently clever people - such as you - buy this intellectual pap tricked out as powerful insight
Says the guy who voted for Starmer.
I'm watching more of it now, it's pure midwittery and entirely shite
Stewart has just said "Trump is calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza" which is such a ridiculous misreading it is either a deliberate lie OR more evidence that they really are quite dim
Trump thinks outside the box. He is saying "maybe the Gazans would be better off giving up on their shit lives in Gaza and having a much richer, more peaceful life elsewhere". And, of course, Trump has a very good point. Hamas wants the Palestinians trapped in Gaza forever, their misery endless, their suffering a constant source of grevance and militancy - because we all know Israel will never agree to a 2 state solution, not now
And yet Trump saying "Hey here's a better choice for Gazans than the endless pain that Hamas offers" is somehow Trump calling for ethnic cleansing?! According to Rory "wow who knew immigration was so high" Stewart?
Enuff. Only idiots are taken in by this pabulum. I am disappointed @algarkirk is one of them
I know two otherwise-sensible people who have paid actual money to see Stewart and Campbell in a theatre.
Destroying a region's infrastructure, blocking supplies and encouraging the inhabitants to seek refuge elsewhere so that other people (of a different ethnicity) can move in and build their own homes and infrastructure funded by government isn't ethnic cleansing? He may not be directly calling for it but he is tacitly supporting it.
Trump is offering a better future for Gazans than Hamas or the Palestinian Authority are offering. Its realpolitik
Also, it's not like this is some unprecedented evil; deliberate population movements - to solve intractable problems - happen all the time. Greeks and Turks after WW1, Muslims and Hindus at Partition, Germans after WW2, and many others
The alternative is that the Palestinians continue to squat there in perpetual misery because
1. Israel now won't ever yield to a two state solution
and
2. The Palestinians cannot defeat Israel, and nor can anyone else without nuking them (and getting nuked in return) and thereby rendering the entire Levant uninhabitable for 20,000 years
What wonderful examples of things that aren't 'ethnic cleansing'. Idiot.
Which is why I called it a “ridiculous misreading” of Trump
I mean, go ahead and call it “ethnic cleansing” if you want, that enables you to ignore the fact it’s actually an imaginative and humane solution to this hideous 70 year nightmare
In an ideal world Israelis would get over October 7 and ask for 2 states and Gazans would not be enraged anti Semites. But this is not an ideal world, and Trump has bruited the only possible solution that might make Palestinian lives a lot better and fast while giving Israel security
You and Trump may well be right, and this might be what happens. But as a thought experiment, post the same suggestion in reverse – that Israelis should abandon the Middle East and move en masse to set up a new state in America – and you will be cancelled for antisemitism. And that is what is wrong with Trump's idea.
The shoulder shrugging about Gaza and ideas like this from Trump rest on the belief that Palestinians are not 'proper people'.
Quite the opposite. It’s addressing them as human beings who want a life beyond eternal squalor poverty and martyrdom for Hamas
Yes it’s unideal for them. But it is the only idea out there that might radically improve their lives and in short order
Alternatively you can suggest your idea
I don't have anything new and wacky, I'm afraid. Boring old goal of a free and sovereign Palestine co-existing peacefully with Israel. It's never looked further off but it remains the only long-term sustainable outcome.
I doubt that a separate Palestinian state is viable - not geographically contiguous, the extreme Israelis and Palestinians would also constantly seek to undermine it and the Iranians would always to looking to cause trouble.
I think that the more sustainable outcome long term is for Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to coexist together in a Greater Israel/Palestine/Israeli-Palestinian Federation/whatever. Jews and Arabs coexisted in Palestine for centuries before Zionism (after the 8th century dispersals) and might be able to do so again. The 2 million Israeli Arabs whose ancestors survived ethnic cleansing in the 1940s show it is at least possible.
The extreme Israelis would have to give up the idea of Israeli as a Jewish state and move towards acceptance of multiculturalism and the extreme Palestinian juihadis would have to give up the idea of pushing the Jews out.
Would it be perfect or a panacea? No. Can I see an easy way to get there from here? Not really. But it would be a viable country with at least a chance of working.
I used to think this falls down on "they breed".
However Israel's birth rate is highest on OECD by a significant margin.
I think where it would fail is because of the 3 million or so Palestinian refugees who have been in Jordan (and Egypt and Lebanon) for 80 years and to whom the Israelis have always refused to grant a right of return. If there is a peaceful, multicultural federation, even the spurious pretexts the Israelis keep making for not allowing them their rights under international law would become untenable. Those refugees, added to the five million in the West Bank and Gaza and the two million Israeli Arabs would mean that the 7.2 million Jews would be in a minority in Israel and without some credible safeguards they would not be willing to accept that.
So I'm afraid my Utopian solution of a civilised, cosmopolitan state is unlikely and a continuation of the present situation of oppression punctuated by massacre is the most probable outcome.
Or, alternatively, the Donald J Trump solution. Which, however much you hate him, or Jews, or America, or Israel, is the only solution which offers anything to the Palestinians other than “more of the same, but probably worse”
Ethnic cleansing always looks deceptively simple and attractive to people sitting in armchairs in London or Washington with large scale maps, especially if they are basically ignorant of the region and its history, as Donald Trump clearly is.
Move people from Place A where they aren't having a good time to Place B where they can thrive. But I'm afraid when you have to inflict it on people who have lived in a place for generations, at the behest of a brutal occupying power, and force them to move to a much poorer place where they are not wanted and have no ancestral ties, it rather breaks down in practice. There are also lots of complicated questions about what do you do with people who are of mixed ancestry, or people who are too old or ill to move.
That is why it is rightly considered one of the four Mass Atrocity crimes, alongside genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And the alternative is…
Well, you posted it, The situation as now - extreme squalor and deprivation - punctuated by massacres
I submit that this is worse, you are free to disagree
Funny how the dim witted right are all for self determination when it comes to their favoured peoples.
Not for Palestinians it seems.
I'm sure tens of thousands would jump at the chance to emigrate, but how about we ask them ?
I’m suggesting that the world community clubs together and gives every single Palestinian £100k and a condo
Literally
It can be slowly paid back from the profits as Gaza is developed into a kind of Monte Carlo on med. a freezone governed not by Isreal or Hamas or anyone.
It’s not like the Palestinians are losing much. They’re not from Gaza they’re mainly from Isreal, they were displaced from Israel by the nakba. Their homeland is already gone and they will never return
So what they will be giving up is a refugee camp/open prison
I apologise for wondering if there might just be a better future for them than that
The "better future" is that the Israelis finally live up to their obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which they are a signatory, and allow the Palestinians to return to their ancestral homelands from which they ethnically cleansed them in the 1940s and learn to live side by side with them, as they do with the 2 million Israeli Arabs.
Better than ethnic cleansing anyway.
Takes two to tango, who would trust Hamas aka Gaza government to ever live peacefully with Israel. Until they agree to live peacefully and don't want to kill every Israeli then it will not improve. Both sides ar entrenched and it will not b esorted in the short term. Why are ZERO Arab nations offering Gazans a place to live.
Didn't have you down as an apologist for ethnic cleansing.
It's not an easy arean to enter when the status quo is unacceptable to everyone, and also every possible suggestion for changing the status quo can be mocked, distorted or traduced.
Maybe Mr Trump might like to try his hand at it. And perhps he will do better than most.
I have long been a supporter of the Palestinians but the pictures of the release of hostages in Gaza today have been shocking. It may be culturally inappropriate but they could not organise a piss-up in a brewery.
We will never Rejoin because it will never be worth any UK government expending the political capital required (and this is setting aside problems like the euro, Schenghen, a decade of negotiation, fisheries, migration, possible veto by any one of 27 EU nations)
Think about it. Why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing well and you're high in the polls? You wouldn't take the risk, referendums are horribly risky, pointless
But then, why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing badly and everyone hates you, again you are simply offering the voters a chance to give you a kicking and vote against anything you desire
The only way we might Rejoin is if we are literally starving to death and some national coalition proposes it as the only solution, but then the Europeans will surely veto us as a basket case that will drag down the EU economy
We are never going to Rejoin. It is not practical politics in the real world. Better to accept it
I think this looked to be true pre-Trump, and pre the time when Trumpism might shape the USA for the long term. I don't think it looks certain now.
Why? I know TRIP, the Rory and Campbell show, is not universally popular but the most recent discussion is pretty chilling on the evidence for the direction the USA is going in
Rory fucking Stewart is a fucking imbecile. Really. Alistair Campbell is a depressed alcoholic with a huge guilt trip about Iraq. Together they have the political acuity of a cheese toastie
However, I said 95% certain we won't rejoin and not 100% because, black swans
A massive world war, or the USA become a hostile dictatorship would indeed be a very black swan and easily enough to see us back in the EU (and there would probably be even greater sequelae)
But, I don't any of these as more than 5% possibilities, combined
Point taken, though it is possible to miss the wood for your ad hominem trees. (And Rory was my MP, and I wish he still was, and he is genuinely interesting. They are both, in TS Eliot's words 'wounded surgeons').
In probabilities, I think the chance of straight Rejoin EU is fairly small, but the chance (say in the next generation) of some sort of deal, the Switzerland or Norway sort, is more like 30%.
Additionally, the chances of America ceasing to be an active ally and turning its attention away from Europe and NATO are not negligible. Wait and see. We are only 10 days in to the new reality.
Their analysis of Trump (I just watched ten minutes of it) is on the level of a quite bright sixth former. I am regularly astonished by the way apparently clever people - such as you - buy this intellectual pap tricked out as powerful insight
Says the guy who voted for Starmer.
I'm watching more of it now, it's pure midwittery and entirely shite
Stewart has just said "Trump is calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza" which is such a ridiculous misreading it is either a deliberate lie OR more evidence that they really are quite dim
Trump thinks outside the box. He is saying "maybe the Gazans would be better off giving up on their shit lives in Gaza and having a much richer, more peaceful life elsewhere". And, of course, Trump has a very good point. Hamas wants the Palestinians trapped in Gaza forever, their misery endless, their suffering a constant source of grevance and militancy - because we all know Israel will never agree to a 2 state solution, not now
And yet Trump saying "Hey here's a better choice for Gazans than the endless pain that Hamas offers" is somehow Trump calling for ethnic cleansing?! According to Rory "wow who knew immigration was so high" Stewart?
Enuff. Only idiots are taken in by this pabulum. I am disappointed @algarkirk is one of them
I know two otherwise-sensible people who have paid actual money to see Stewart and Campbell in a theatre.
Destroying a region's infrastructure, blocking supplies and encouraging the inhabitants to seek refuge elsewhere so that other people (of a different ethnicity) can move in and build their own homes and infrastructure funded by government isn't ethnic cleansing? He may not be directly calling for it but he is tacitly supporting it.
Trump is offering a better future for Gazans than Hamas or the Palestinian Authority are offering. Its realpolitik
Also, it's not like this is some unprecedented evil; deliberate population movements - to solve intractable problems - happen all the time. Greeks and Turks after WW1, Muslims and Hindus at Partition, Germans after WW2, and many others
The alternative is that the Palestinians continue to squat there in perpetual misery because
1. Israel now won't ever yield to a two state solution
and
2. The Palestinians cannot defeat Israel, and nor can anyone else without nuking them (and getting nuked in return) and thereby rendering the entire Levant uninhabitable for 20,000 years
What wonderful examples of things that aren't 'ethnic cleansing'. Idiot.
Which is why I called it a “ridiculous misreading” of Trump
I mean, go ahead and call it “ethnic cleansing” if you want, that enables you to ignore the fact it’s actually an imaginative and humane solution to this hideous 70 year nightmare
In an ideal world Israelis would get over October 7 and ask for 2 states and Gazans would not be enraged anti Semites. But this is not an ideal world, and Trump has bruited the only possible solution that might make Palestinian lives a lot better and fast while giving Israel security
You and Trump may well be right, and this might be what happens. But as a thought experiment, post the same suggestion in reverse – that Israelis should abandon the Middle East and move en masse to set up a new state in America – and you will be cancelled for antisemitism. And that is what is wrong with Trump's idea.
The shoulder shrugging about Gaza and ideas like this from Trump rest on the belief that Palestinians are not 'proper people'.
Quite the opposite. It’s addressing them as human beings who want a life beyond eternal squalor poverty and martyrdom for Hamas
Yes it’s unideal for them. But it is the only idea out there that might radically improve their lives and in short order
Alternatively you can suggest your idea
I don't have anything new and wacky, I'm afraid. Boring old goal of a free and sovereign Palestine co-existing peacefully with Israel. It's never looked further off but it remains the only long-term sustainable outcome.
I doubt that a separate Palestinian state is viable - not geographically contiguous, the extreme Israelis and Palestinians would also constantly seek to undermine it and the Iranians would always to looking to cause trouble.
I think that the more sustainable outcome long term is for Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to coexist together in a Greater Israel/Palestine/Israeli-Palestinian Federation/whatever. Jews and Arabs coexisted in Palestine for centuries before Zionism (after the 8th century dispersals) and might be able to do so again. The 2 million Israeli Arabs whose ancestors survived ethnic cleansing in the 1940s show it is at least possible.
The extreme Israelis would have to give up the idea of Israeli as a Jewish state and move towards acceptance of multiculturalism and the extreme Palestinian juihadis would have to give up the idea of pushing the Jews out.
Would it be perfect or a panacea? No. Can I see an easy way to get there from here? Not really. But it would be a viable country with at least a chance of working.
I used to think this falls down on "they breed".
However Israel's birth rate is highest on OECD by a significant margin.
I think where it would fail is because of the 3 million or so Palestinian refugees who have been in Jordan (and Egypt and Lebanon) for 80 years and to whom the Israelis have always refused to grant a right of return. If there is a peaceful, multicultural federation, even the spurious pretexts the Israelis keep making for not allowing them their rights under international law would become untenable. Those refugees, added to the five million in the West Bank and Gaza and the two million Israeli Arabs would mean that the 7.2 million Jews would be in a minority in Israel and without some credible safeguards they would not be willing to accept that.
So I'm afraid my Utopian solution of a civilised, cosmopolitan state is unlikely and a continuation of the present situation of oppression punctuated by massacre is the most probable outcome.
Or, alternatively, the Donald J Trump solution. Which, however much you hate him, or Jews, or America, or Israel, is the only solution which offers anything to the Palestinians other than “more of the same, but probably worse”
Ethnic cleansing always looks deceptively simple and attractive to people sitting in armchairs in London or Washington with large scale maps, especially if they are basically ignorant of the region and its history, as Donald Trump clearly is.
Move people from Place A where they aren't having a good time to Place B where they can thrive. But I'm afraid when you have to inflict it on people who have lived in a place for generations, at the behest of a brutal occupying power, and force them to move to a much poorer place where they are not wanted and have no ancestral ties, it rather breaks down in practice. There are also lots of complicated questions about what do you do with people who are of mixed ancestry, or people who are too old or ill to move.
That is why it is rightly considered one of the four Mass Atrocity crimes, alongside genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And the alternative is…
Well, you posted it, The situation as now - extreme squalor and deprivation - punctuated by massacres
I submit that this is worse, you are free to disagree
Funny how the dim witted right are all for self determination when it comes to their favoured peoples.
Not for Palestinians it seems.
I'm sure tens of thousands would jump at the chance to emigrate, but how about we ask them ?
I’m suggesting that the world community clubs together and gives every single Palestinian £100k and a condo
Literally
It can be slowly paid back from the profits as Gaza is developed into a kind of Monte Carlo on med. a freezone governed not by Isreal or Hamas or anyone.
It’s not like the Palestinians are losing much. They’re not from Gaza they’re mainly from Isreal, they were displaced from Israel by the nakba. Their homeland is already gone and they will never return
So what they will be giving up is a refugee camp/open prison
I apologise for wondering if there might just be a better future for them than that
The "better future" is that the Israelis finally live up to their obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which they are a signatory, and allow the Palestinians to return to their ancestral homelands from which they ethnically cleansed them in the 1940s and learn to live side by side with them, as they do with the 2 million Israeli Arabs.
Better than ethnic cleansing anyway.
Takes two to tango, who would trust Hamas aka Gaza government to ever live peacefully with Israel. Until they agree to live peacefully and don't want to kill every Israeli then it will not improve. Both sides ar entrenched and it will not b esorted in the short term. Why are ZERO Arab nations offering Gazans a place to live.
Humanity’s dirty secret is that ethnic cleansing works. Never again will Greeks and Turks, Germans and Poles, Germans and Czechs, Poles and Ukrainians, quarrel over the same patches of land.
That doesn’t stop it being a crime against humanity.
Also, the Greeks and Turks very much continue to quarrel. What’s stopped that turning into a hot war too often is NATO membership.
We will never Rejoin because it will never be worth any UK government expending the political capital required (and this is setting aside problems like the euro, Schenghen, a decade of negotiation, fisheries, migration, possible veto by any one of 27 EU nations)
Think about it. Why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing well and you're high in the polls? You wouldn't take the risk, referendums are horribly risky, pointless
But then, why would you call a Rejoin referendum if you are doing badly and everyone hates you, again you are simply offering the voters a chance to give you a kicking and vote against anything you desire
The only way we might Rejoin is if we are literally starving to death and some national coalition proposes it as the only solution, but then the Europeans will surely veto us as a basket case that will drag down the EU economy
We are never going to Rejoin. It is not practical politics in the real world. Better to accept it
I think this looked to be true pre-Trump, and pre the time when Trumpism might shape the USA for the long term. I don't think it looks certain now.
Why? I know TRIP, the Rory and Campbell show, is not universally popular but the most recent discussion is pretty chilling on the evidence for the direction the USA is going in
Rory fucking Stewart is a fucking imbecile. Really. Alistair Campbell is a depressed alcoholic with a huge guilt trip about Iraq. Together they have the political acuity of a cheese toastie
However, I said 95% certain we won't rejoin and not 100% because, black swans
A massive world war, or the USA become a hostile dictatorship would indeed be a very black swan and easily enough to see us back in the EU (and there would probably be even greater sequelae)
But, I don't any of these as more than 5% possibilities, combined
Point taken, though it is possible to miss the wood for your ad hominem trees. (And Rory was my MP, and I wish he still was, and he is genuinely interesting. They are both, in TS Eliot's words 'wounded surgeons').
In probabilities, I think the chance of straight Rejoin EU is fairly small, but the chance (say in the next generation) of some sort of deal, the Switzerland or Norway sort, is more like 30%.
Additionally, the chances of America ceasing to be an active ally and turning its attention away from Europe and NATO are not negligible. Wait and see. We are only 10 days in to the new reality.
Their analysis of Trump (I just watched ten minutes of it) is on the level of a quite bright sixth former. I am regularly astonished by the way apparently clever people - such as you - buy this intellectual pap tricked out as powerful insight
Says the guy who voted for Starmer.
I'm watching more of it now, it's pure midwittery and entirely shite
Stewart has just said "Trump is calling for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza" which is such a ridiculous misreading it is either a deliberate lie OR more evidence that they really are quite dim
Trump thinks outside the box. He is saying "maybe the Gazans would be better off giving up on their shit lives in Gaza and having a much richer, more peaceful life elsewhere". And, of course, Trump has a very good point. Hamas wants the Palestinians trapped in Gaza forever, their misery endless, their suffering a constant source of grevance and militancy - because we all know Israel will never agree to a 2 state solution, not now
And yet Trump saying "Hey here's a better choice for Gazans than the endless pain that Hamas offers" is somehow Trump calling for ethnic cleansing?! According to Rory "wow who knew immigration was so high" Stewart?
Enuff. Only idiots are taken in by this pabulum. I am disappointed @algarkirk is one of them
I know two otherwise-sensible people who have paid actual money to see Stewart and Campbell in a theatre.
Destroying a region's infrastructure, blocking supplies and encouraging the inhabitants to seek refuge elsewhere so that other people (of a different ethnicity) can move in and build their own homes and infrastructure funded by government isn't ethnic cleansing? He may not be directly calling for it but he is tacitly supporting it.
Trump is offering a better future for Gazans than Hamas or the Palestinian Authority are offering. Its realpolitik
Also, it's not like this is some unprecedented evil; deliberate population movements - to solve intractable problems - happen all the time. Greeks and Turks after WW1, Muslims and Hindus at Partition, Germans after WW2, and many others
The alternative is that the Palestinians continue to squat there in perpetual misery because
1. Israel now won't ever yield to a two state solution
and
2. The Palestinians cannot defeat Israel, and nor can anyone else without nuking them (and getting nuked in return) and thereby rendering the entire Levant uninhabitable for 20,000 years
What wonderful examples of things that aren't 'ethnic cleansing'. Idiot.
Which is why I called it a “ridiculous misreading” of Trump
I mean, go ahead and call it “ethnic cleansing” if you want, that enables you to ignore the fact it’s actually an imaginative and humane solution to this hideous 70 year nightmare
In an ideal world Israelis would get over October 7 and ask for 2 states and Gazans would not be enraged anti Semites. But this is not an ideal world, and Trump has bruited the only possible solution that might make Palestinian lives a lot better and fast while giving Israel security
You and Trump may well be right, and this might be what happens. But as a thought experiment, post the same suggestion in reverse – that Israelis should abandon the Middle East and move en masse to set up a new state in America – and you will be cancelled for antisemitism. And that is what is wrong with Trump's idea.
The shoulder shrugging about Gaza and ideas like this from Trump rest on the belief that Palestinians are not 'proper people'.
Quite the opposite. It’s addressing them as human beings who want a life beyond eternal squalor poverty and martyrdom for Hamas
Yes it’s unideal for them. But it is the only idea out there that might radically improve their lives and in short order
Alternatively you can suggest your idea
I don't have anything new and wacky, I'm afraid. Boring old goal of a free and sovereign Palestine co-existing peacefully with Israel. It's never looked further off but it remains the only long-term sustainable outcome.
I doubt that a separate Palestinian state is viable - not geographically contiguous, the extreme Israelis and Palestinians would also constantly seek to undermine it and the Iranians would always to looking to cause trouble.
I think that the more sustainable outcome long term is for Israelis and Palestinian Arabs to coexist together in a Greater Israel/Palestine/Israeli-Palestinian Federation/whatever. Jews and Arabs coexisted in Palestine for centuries before Zionism (after the 8th century dispersals) and might be able to do so again. The 2 million Israeli Arabs whose ancestors survived ethnic cleansing in the 1940s show it is at least possible.
The extreme Israelis would have to give up the idea of Israeli as a Jewish state and move towards acceptance of multiculturalism and the extreme Palestinian juihadis would have to give up the idea of pushing the Jews out.
Would it be perfect or a panacea? No. Can I see an easy way to get there from here? Not really. But it would be a viable country with at least a chance of working.
I used to think this falls down on "they breed".
However Israel's birth rate is highest on OECD by a significant margin.
I think where it would fail is because of the 3 million or so Palestinian refugees who have been in Jordan (and Egypt and Lebanon) for 80 years and to whom the Israelis have always refused to grant a right of return. If there is a peaceful, multicultural federation, even the spurious pretexts the Israelis keep making for not allowing them their rights under international law would become untenable. Those refugees, added to the five million in the West Bank and Gaza and the two million Israeli Arabs would mean that the 7.2 million Jews would be in a minority in Israel and without some credible safeguards they would not be willing to accept that.
So I'm afraid my Utopian solution of a civilised, cosmopolitan state is unlikely and a continuation of the present situation of oppression punctuated by massacre is the most probable outcome.
Or, alternatively, the Donald J Trump solution. Which, however much you hate him, or Jews, or America, or Israel, is the only solution which offers anything to the Palestinians other than “more of the same, but probably worse”
Ethnic cleansing always looks deceptively simple and attractive to people sitting in armchairs in London or Washington with large scale maps, especially if they are basically ignorant of the region and its history, as Donald Trump clearly is.
Move people from Place A where they aren't having a good time to Place B where they can thrive. But I'm afraid when you have to inflict it on people who have lived in a place for generations, at the behest of a brutal occupying power, and force them to move to a much poorer place where they are not wanted and have no ancestral ties, it rather breaks down in practice. There are also lots of complicated questions about what do you do with people who are of mixed ancestry, or people who are too old or ill to move.
That is why it is rightly considered one of the four Mass Atrocity crimes, alongside genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
And the alternative is…
Well, you posted it, The situation as now - extreme squalor and deprivation - punctuated by massacres
I submit that this is worse, you are free to disagree
Funny how the dim witted right are all for self determination when it comes to their favoured peoples.
Not for Palestinians it seems.
I'm sure tens of thousands would jump at the chance to emigrate, but how about we ask them ?
I’m suggesting that the world community clubs together and gives every single Palestinian £100k and a condo
Literally
It can be slowly paid back from the profits as Gaza is developed into a kind of Monte Carlo on med. a freezone governed not by Isreal or Hamas or anyone.
It’s not like the Palestinians are losing much. They’re not from Gaza they’re mainly from Isreal, they were displaced from Israel by the nakba. Their homeland is already gone and they will never return
So what they will be giving up is a refugee camp/open prison
I apologise for wondering if there might just be a better future for them than that
The "better future" is that the Israelis finally live up to their obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which they are a signatory, and allow the Palestinians to return to their ancestral homelands from which they ethnically cleansed them in the 1940s and learn to live side by side with them, as they do with the 2 million Israeli Arabs.
Better than ethnic cleansing anyway.
Takes two to tango, who would trust Hamas aka Gaza government to ever live peacefully with Israel. Until they agree to live peacefully and don't want to kill every Israeli then it will not improve. Both sides ar entrenched and it will not b esorted in the short term. Why are ZERO Arab nations offering Gazans a place to live.
Humanity’s dirty secret is that ethnic cleansing works. Never again will Greeks and Turks, Germans and Poles, Germans and Czechs, Poles and Ukrainians, quarrel over the same patches of land.
That doesn’t stop it being a crime against humanity.
Also, the Greeks and Turks very much continue to quarrel. What’s stopped that turning into a hot war too often is NATO membership.
Not obviously the case. For us to know that this is good policy making we would need to know both costs and benefits. All we have here is benefits.
I dislike 20 mph zones, but reluctantly admit that they don't really add significantly to journey time, because they're limited to a village at a time, and the figures seem reasonably persuasive.
This provides the context and a fair review of the debate
Deaths and serious injuries on Welsh roads fall in first year of 20mph default
Having had a listen to the presentation I linked several days ago, and reading around, it seems that the North Wales Local Highways Authorities were more restrictive on their implementation originally than South Wales LTAs, and are making relatively more proposals for changes to defaults back to 30mph now.
The impression I get is that something like 5-8% of road mileage might be reverting back to a 30mph default.
Given my strong belief in 20mph on residential roads, but not all distributer / link roads, that seems quite reasonable to me.
Generally we are fairly well on the same page and 20mph zones do very much have their place but of the roads in North Wales that are reverting back to 30mph are ones I think you would agree are sensible
And yes, North Wales were very much stricter and it was noticeable to me as I drove extensively ( and went on the Great Little Trains of Wales) last summer that Gwynedd was very different in its application of the 20mph zones
I would just suggest Wales is an excellent example to England to introduce 20mph zones with care, and not tell everyone in England all 30mph will become 20mph virtually overnight
I am a convert to the 20 zones. It's much easier to pull out from side roads. Also whilst walking you can cross a lot easier without rushing. The only bugbear is when travelling through villages having to drop down from 40 or 50 to 20 without a tapering speed. Also the lack of reminder signs.
Virtually my entire village is a 20MPH zone now. It was annoying at first (and still can be when I need to go from one side of the village to the other), but on the whole I'm just used to it.
Interestingly, they tried to make the village a 19MPH zone when it was first created. Which slowly died out, as apparently it was not legally a speed limit.
Which makes me wonder what the speed limit is on all the unadopted roads?
With streetlights and no other rules, I'd say 30mph. Not sure if a Traffic Regulation Order would apply, though I don't actually see why not - there must ne unadopted estates with 20mph limits.
However, enforcement may be police only, as motoring law applies where something is "normally accessible to the public" - usually. Loads of case law, but it is usually sensible.
So, you can probably be done for drunk or careless driving in a supermarket car park (unless eg it is fenced off and the gates are closed).
Of course it's nothing new, but Trump is a fucking disgrace. Are any of his apologists going to defend what he said today?
Trump said variously that the helicopter pilot should have seen and avoided the plane, that the crash was caused by the FAA under Biden hiring psychiatrically unsuitable air traffic controllers in the name of diversity, and that controllers' warnings were too late.
And surely many Americans will also be wondering why the helicopter pilot did not look out the window.
Since then, there have also been reports of a late runway change, and an understaffed air traffic control meaning one person was doing two jobs.
So what's the complaint about what Trump said? Except that other presidents would have waited for the investigation before commenting.
The significance of the Priti Patel interview can’t be underestimated. The Tories have made a decision to defend their liberal record on immigration unapologetically, parking their tanks on Labour and the Lib Dems’ lawn.
Patel is doing what Starmer is unwilling to.
If that's the position of the Tories, I will be voting Reform.
I think to be fair, it's just a symptom of the Tory policy vacuum. Nobody knows what the Tories under Kemi actually want to do, so you have everyone freelancing - former Sunak Ministers like Mel Stride defending their records and acting as spokespeople for the ex-Government, Patel defending her own Ministerial record, Robert Jenrick pushing his more right wing agenda. Patel's intervention can't be seen as reflective of Kemi's policies because Kemi doesn't have any policies.
While not great that's somewhat understandable, however, Kemi needs to give Patel a rebuke for defending her shit record on immigration.
I saw another commentator say 'Kemi needs Truss to shut up for a while' (and I'm sure many here would agree), but I think the same about that as I do about this - 'unhelpful' interventions are filling a vacuum left by Kemi. She doesn't have to set out exact policies yet, but she does need to be clear about the basics and the direction of travel. Too many Tory MPs are just completely silent. And the ones talking don't really know what to say. Kemi needs to set the agenda.
Reeves says that LHR3 could be built in 10 years, which she thinks is a good estimate but it's fucking shite. We should have shovels in the ground within months, buyouts done by the end of the year and foundations being laid at the start of next year for a 2027/28 opening of the runway and 2030 for the new terminal building which will allow for T3 to be shut down and refurbed by 2033. The lack of ambition is what's going to kill the economy in the long term. 10 years to build one runway is a joke.
Always thought the solution to the 20mph debate was to compromise on 25.
Hilariously (or not), the new "express" bus route SL2 in outer east London is severely slowed down by a significant length of 20mph along Forest Road between the A406 and Walthamstow. I'm sure there must be others affecting other "Superloop" routes.
Reeves says that LHR3 could be built in 10 years, which she thinks is a good estimate but it's fucking shite. We should have shovels in the ground within months, buyouts done by the end of the year and foundations being laid at the start of next year for a 2027/28 opening of the runway and 2030 for the new terminal building which will allow for T3 to be shut down and refurbed by 2033. The lack of ambition is what's going to kill the economy in the long term. 10 years to build one runway is a joke.
SEVENTEEN years between Crossrail Bill first being put before Parliament (2005), and the Elizabeth Line finally opening in 2022.
"Staffing in the air traffic control tower at Washington, DC’s Ronald Reagan National Airport was abnormal at the time of a deadly crash, according to a report.
The Federal Aviation Administration found that staff levels were “not normal for the time of day and the volume of traffic”, in a preliminary report after 64 people were killed onboard a flight from Kansas which crashed into a military helicopter.
The controller who was directing helicopters was also instructing planes, even though these jobs are typically assigned to two people, The New York Times reported."
Not obviously the case. For us to know that this is good policy making we would need to know both costs and benefits. All we have here is benefits.
I dislike 20 mph zones, but reluctantly admit that they don't really add significantly to journey time, because they're limited to a village at a time, and the figures seem reasonably persuasive.
This provides the context and a fair review of the debate
Deaths and serious injuries on Welsh roads fall in first year of 20mph default
Having had a listen to the presentation I linked several days ago, and reading around, it seems that the North Wales Local Highways Authorities were more restrictive on their implementation originally than South Wales LTAs, and are making relatively more proposals for changes to defaults back to 30mph now.
The impression I get is that something like 5-8% of road mileage might be reverting back to a 30mph default.
Given my strong belief in 20mph on residential roads, but not all distributer / link roads, that seems quite reasonable to me.
Generally we are fairly well on the same page and 20mph zones do very much have their place but of the roads in North Wales that are reverting back to 30mph are ones I think you would agree are sensible
And yes, North Wales were very much stricter and it was noticeable to me as I drove extensively ( and went on the Great Little Trains of Wales) last summer that Gwynedd was very different in its application of the 20mph zones
I would just suggest Wales is an excellent example to England to introduce 20mph zones with care, and not tell everyone in England all 30mph will become 20mph virtually overnight
Absolutely on England - five of my key asks are 20mph national default limit for streets inside community boundaries, nationwide pavement parking ban, significant boost to traffic police (some offences cannot be caught on camera), Operation SNAP (again - pioneered in Wales) to be more widely used, and all anti-wheelchair barriers to go.
And another lot that are no-brainers, such as more nuanced licensing and testing for both under 21s and over-80s.
And then a lot that are more detailed or strategic, such as contraflow cycling on 20mph one way streets as default, a major reimagining of our road design methods to be inclusive, and rewriting the legal charge given to Local Highways Authorities.
And that's before I get onto the Fatal 5.
The long road to the fish and chip shop has three schools, a 20mph limit, and speed bumps (which are apparently no longer called sleeping policemen). For years I walked its length, there and back, and would say the 20mph limit is fine but was rarely exceeded anyway, but the speed bumps installed a couple of years ago are entirely pointless for the same reason (and probably it was a case of the department having to use or lose its budget). The schools benefit from zebra and pelican crossings, with also lollipop men or women for the primaries.
Perhaps more can be done with driver education and testing. Dropping the 3-point turn, for instance, means you now see drivers turning in main roads because they are no longer taught to use side roads. Mini roundabouts are too often driven over instead of round. There also seem to be more ‘bumper car’ drivers who prefer to swerve rather than slow.
It is the Waspi women problem. The government makes changes but tells no-one.
And whisper it, but some immigrants learned in very different conditions from ours.
As to your other proposals, ban pavement parking and you will block roads. Some roads and many pavements are just too narrow. Cyclists are overindulged. Operation Snap is widespread anyway but perhaps not under that name, if you mean uploading dash cam footage.
Can I jump in to have a go at lazy, modern, “speed bumps” which are 3ft tall and made out of some form of bricks which fall apart when weathered, damage cars, and break cyclists’ backs? What was wrong with the old design of a simple “sleeping policeman” bump?
Speedbumps are shit. I hate them from the bottom of my heart. I hate them almost as much as I hate feckin pyramids.
You want people to obey the speed limit? Just put up camera and do like the French - confiscate the car and licence of people caught speeding.
Speed bumps penalise those using the smallest vehicles.
Years ago, when I was living in Hampstead, they sparked a short period when idiots started buying Dodge Rams. FFS.
More recently, I watched as a lady with a disability tried to ride her tricycle over a speed bump. She made it, but it was an obvious struggle.
I have heard it said that the the signs showing your speed and giving you a smiley or a frown are very effective.
There are ways around that, such as providing 1-1.2m gaps spaced so motor vehicle wheels won't bridge the piece in the middle. 1-1.2m being too narrow for all motor vehicles, but OK for motorcycles, wheelchairs, cycles etc.
Reeves says that LHR3 could be built in 10 years, which she thinks is a good estimate but it's fucking shite. We should have shovels in the ground within months, buyouts done by the end of the year and foundations being laid at the start of next year for a 2027/28 opening of the runway and 2030 for the new terminal building which will allow for T3 to be shut down and refurbed by 2033. The lack of ambition is what's going to kill the economy in the long term. 10 years to build one runway is a joke.
SEVENTEEN years between Crossrail Bill first being put before Parliament (2005), and the Elizabeth Line finally opening in 2022.
That was a hugely complex train line built mostly underground in parts of London with huge underground developments already. I can forgive a long timeframe for Crossrail. This is mostly above ground, get the M25 tunnel started now so it's ready to go when the runway is being constructed in 2-3 years.
Reeves says that LHR3 could be built in 10 years, which she thinks is a good estimate but it's fucking shite. We should have shovels in the ground within months, buyouts done by the end of the year and foundations being laid at the start of next year for a 2027/28 opening of the runway and 2030 for the new terminal building which will allow for T3 to be shut down and refurbed by 2033. The lack of ambition is what's going to kill the economy in the long term. 10 years to build one runway is a joke.
Not obviously the case. For us to know that this is good policy making we would need to know both costs and benefits. All we have here is benefits.
I dislike 20 mph zones, but reluctantly admit that they don't really add significantly to journey time, because they're limited to a village at a time, and the figures seem reasonably persuasive.
This provides the context and a fair review of the debate
Deaths and serious injuries on Welsh roads fall in first year of 20mph default
Having had a listen to the presentation I linked several days ago, and reading around, it seems that the North Wales Local Highways Authorities were more restrictive on their implementation originally than South Wales LTAs, and are making relatively more proposals for changes to defaults back to 30mph now.
The impression I get is that something like 5-8% of road mileage might be reverting back to a 30mph default.
Given my strong belief in 20mph on residential roads, but not all distributer / link roads, that seems quite reasonable to me.
Generally we are fairly well on the same page and 20mph zones do very much have their place but of the roads in North Wales that are reverting back to 30mph are ones I think you would agree are sensible
And yes, North Wales were very much stricter and it was noticeable to me as I drove extensively ( and went on the Great Little Trains of Wales) last summer that Gwynedd was very different in its application of the 20mph zones
I would just suggest Wales is an excellent example to England to introduce 20mph zones with care, and not tell everyone in England all 30mph will become 20mph virtually overnight
Absolutely on England - five of my key asks are 20mph national default limit for streets inside community boundaries, nationwide pavement parking ban, significant boost to traffic police (some offences cannot be caught on camera), Operation SNAP (again - pioneered in Wales) to be more widely used, and all anti-wheelchair barriers to go.
And another lot that are no-brainers, such as more nuanced licensing and testing for both under 21s and over-80s.
And then a lot that are more detailed or strategic, such as contraflow cycling on 20mph one way streets as default, a major reimagining of our road design methods to be inclusive, and rewriting the legal charge given to Local Highways Authorities.
And that's before I get onto the Fatal 5.
The long road to the fish and chip shop has three schools, a 20mph limit, and speed bumps (which are apparently no longer called sleeping policemen). For years I walked its length, there and back, and would say the 20mph limit is fine but was rarely exceeded anyway, but the speed bumps installed a couple of years ago are entirely pointless for the same reason (and probably it was a case of the department having to use or lose its budget). The schools benefit from zebra and pelican crossings, with also lollipop men or women for the primaries.
Perhaps more can be done with driver education and testing. Dropping the 3-point turn, for instance, means you now see drivers turning in main roads because they are no longer taught to use side roads. Mini roundabouts are too often driven over instead of round. There also seem to be more ‘bumper car’ drivers who prefer to swerve rather than slow.
It is the Waspi women problem. The government makes changes but tells no-one.
And whisper it, but some immigrants learned in very different conditions from ours.
As to your other proposals, ban pavement parking and you will block roads. Some roads and many pavements are just too narrow. Cyclists are overindulged. Operation Snap is widespread anyway but perhaps not under that name, if you mean uploading dash cam footage.
Can I jump in to have a go at lazy, modern, “speed bumps” which are 3ft tall and made out of some form of bricks which fall apart when weathered, damage cars, and break cyclists’ backs? What was wrong with the old design of a simple “sleeping policeman” bump?
Speedbumps are shit. I hate them from the bottom of my heart. I hate them almost as much as I hate feckin pyramids.
You want people to obey the speed limit? Just put up camera and do like the French - confiscate the car and licence of people caught speeding.
Speed bumps penalise those using the smallest vehicles.
Years ago, when I was living in Hampstead, they sparked a short period when idiots started buying Dodge Rams. FFS.
More recently, I watched as a lady with a disability tried to ride her tricycle over a speed bump. She made it, but it was an obvious struggle.
I have heard it said that the the signs showing your speed and giving you a smiley or a frown are very effective.
There are ways around that, such as providing 1-1.2m gaps spaced so motor vehicle wheels won't bridge the piece in the middle. 1-1.2m being too narrow for all motor vehicles, but OK for motorcycles, wheelchairs, cycles etc.
That ends up encouraging drivers to try all kinds out of lane stuff to reduce the impacts on suspension.
Reeves says that LHR3 could be built in 10 years, which she thinks is a good estimate but it's fucking shite. We should have shovels in the ground within months, buyouts done by the end of the year and foundations being laid at the start of next year for a 2027/28 opening of the runway and 2030 for the new terminal building which will allow for T3 to be shut down and refurbed by 2033. The lack of ambition is what's going to kill the economy in the long term. 10 years to build one runway is a joke.
But by our standards it's speedy gonzales.
Isn't that the problem? People like you with low expectations happy to watch the economy stagnate.
Reeves says that LHR3 could be built in 10 years, which she thinks is a good estimate but it's fucking shite. We should have shovels in the ground within months, buyouts done by the end of the year and foundations being laid at the start of next year for a 2027/28 opening of the runway and 2030 for the new terminal building which will allow for T3 to be shut down and refurbed by 2033. The lack of ambition is what's going to kill the economy in the long term. 10 years to build one runway is a joke.
Of course it's nothing new, but Trump is a fucking disgrace. Are any of his apologists going to defend what he said today?
Trump said variously that the helicopter pilot should have seen and avoided the plane, that the crash was caused by the FAA under Biden hiring psychiatrically unsuitable air traffic controllers in the name of diversity, and that controllers' warnings were too late.
And surely many Americans will also be wondering why the helicopter pilot did not look out the window.
Since then, there have also been reports of a late runway change, and an understaffed air traffic control meaning one person was doing two jobs.
So what's the complaint about what Trump said? Except that other presidents would have waited for the investigation before commenting.
Reeves says that LHR3 could be built in 10 years, which she thinks is a good estimate but it's fucking shite. We should have shovels in the ground within months, buyouts done by the end of the year and foundations being laid at the start of next year for a 2027/28 opening of the runway and 2030 for the new terminal building which will allow for T3 to be shut down and refurbed by 2033. The lack of ambition is what's going to kill the economy in the long term. 10 years to build one runway is a joke.
SEVENTEEN years between Crossrail Bill first being put before Parliament (2005), and the Elizabeth Line finally opening in 2022.
That was a hugely complex train line built mostly underground in parts of London with huge underground developments already. I can forgive a long timeframe for Crossrail. This is mostly above ground, get the M25 tunnel started now so it's ready to go when the runway is being constructed in 2-3 years.
Yes: even if everything had been absolutely perfect and the budget had been unlimited, Crossrail would still have taken 10-12 years. I think I'd say Crossrail was a qualified success. (And has already become an absolute backbone of traffic across London.)
Reeves says that LHR3 could be built in 10 years, which she thinks is a good estimate but it's fucking shite. We should have shovels in the ground within months, buyouts done by the end of the year and foundations being laid at the start of next year for a 2027/28 opening of the runway and 2030 for the new terminal building which will allow for T3 to be shut down and refurbed by 2033. The lack of ambition is what's going to kill the economy in the long term. 10 years to build one runway is a joke.
SEVENTEEN years between Crossrail Bill first being put before Parliament (2005), and the Elizabeth Line finally opening in 2022.
That was a hugely complex train line built mostly underground in parts of London with huge underground developments already. I can forgive a long timeframe for Crossrail. This is mostly above ground, get the M25 tunnel started now so it's ready to go when the runway is being constructed in 2-3 years.
I would imagine the first decade will be spent on the extremely slow drafting of plans, followed by endless objections to those plans crawling through our slow and overburdened courts. It's going to end up like East West Rail: a glacially slow project, fought tooth and nail by determined NIMBY groups.
I live near Cambridge and find the idea of a day trip by train to Oxford that doesn't involve shelling out £60 a head, for the dubious delights of spending three hours in each direction slogging in and out of central London, to be rather appealing - but I don't expect this to become a reality in my lifetime. I am currently aged just under 50.
Reeves says that LHR3 could be built in 10 years, which she thinks is a good estimate but it's fucking shite. We should have shovels in the ground within months, buyouts done by the end of the year and foundations being laid at the start of next year for a 2027/28 opening of the runway and 2030 for the new terminal building which will allow for T3 to be shut down and refurbed by 2033. The lack of ambition is what's going to kill the economy in the long term. 10 years to build one runway is a joke.
Reeves says that LHR3 could be built in 10 years, which she thinks is a good estimate but it's fucking shite. We should have shovels in the ground within months, buyouts done by the end of the year and foundations being laid at the start of next year for a 2027/28 opening of the runway and 2030 for the new terminal building which will allow for T3 to be shut down and refurbed by 2033. The lack of ambition is what's going to kill the economy in the long term. 10 years to build one runway is a joke.
SEVENTEEN years between Crossrail Bill first being put before Parliament (2005), and the Elizabeth Line finally opening in 2022.
That was a hugely complex train line built mostly underground in parts of London with huge underground developments already. I can forgive a long timeframe for Crossrail. This is mostly above ground, get the M25 tunnel started now so it's ready to go when the runway is being constructed in 2-3 years.
I would imagine the first decade will be spent on the extremely slow drafting of plans, followed by endless objections to those plans crawling through our slow and overburdened courts. It's going to end up like East West Rail: a glacially slow project, fought tooth and nail by determined NIMBY groups.
I live near Cambridge and find the idea of a day trip by train to Oxford that doesn't involve shelling out £60 a head, for the dubious delights of spending three hours in each direction slogging in and out of central London, to be rather appealing - but I don't expect this to become a reality in my lifetime. I am currently aged just under 50.
Hopefully Bicester to Bletchley will open later this year!
Of course it's nothing new, but Trump is a fucking disgrace. Are any of his apologists going to defend what he said today?
Trump said variously that the helicopter pilot should have seen and avoided the plane, that the crash was caused by the FAA under Biden hiring psychiatrically unsuitable air traffic controllers in the name of diversity, and that controllers' warnings were too late.
And surely many Americans will also be wondering why the helicopter pilot did not look out the window.
Since then, there have also been reports of a late runway change, and an understaffed air traffic control meaning one person was doing two jobs.
So what's the complaint about what Trump said? Except that other presidents would have waited for the investigation before commenting.
You don't find anything wrong with that? Seriously????????????????????????????????????????????????
“As bodies are still being pulled from the Potomac, Donald Trump and his grossly incompetent administration are blaming this deadly crash on minorities and white women,” Rep. Ilhan Omar said. ... ... Trump then read from articles critical of diversity efforts at the Federal Aviation Administration.
He also highlighted language from the FAA’s website about the government placing special emphasis on hiring people with “targeted disabilities,” including partial paralysis, severe intellectual disability and psychiatric disability.
Of course it's nothing new, but Trump is a fucking disgrace. Are any of his apologists going to defend what he said today?
Trump said variously that the helicopter pilot should have seen and avoided the plane, that the crash was caused by the FAA under Biden hiring psychiatrically unsuitable air traffic controllers in the name of diversity, and that controllers' warnings were too late.
And surely many Americans will also be wondering why the helicopter pilot did not look out the window.
Since then, there have also been reports of a late runway change, and an understaffed air traffic control meaning one person was doing two jobs.
So what's the complaint about what Trump said? Except that other presidents would have waited for the investigation before commenting.
Reeves says that LHR3 could be built in 10 years, which she thinks is a good estimate but it's fucking shite. We should have shovels in the ground within months, buyouts done by the end of the year and foundations being laid at the start of next year for a 2027/28 opening of the runway and 2030 for the new terminal building which will allow for T3 to be shut down and refurbed by 2033. The lack of ambition is what's going to kill the economy in the long term. 10 years to build one runway is a joke.
SEVENTEEN years between Crossrail Bill first being put before Parliament (2005), and the Elizabeth Line finally opening in 2022.
That was a hugely complex train line built mostly underground in parts of London with huge underground developments already. I can forgive a long timeframe for Crossrail. This is mostly above ground, get the M25 tunnel started now so it's ready to go when the runway is being constructed in 2-3 years.
I would imagine the first decade will be spent on the extremely slow drafting of plans, followed by endless objections to those plans crawling through our slow and overburdened courts. It's going to end up like East West Rail: a glacially slow project, fought tooth and nail by determined NIMBY groups.
I live near Cambridge and find the idea of a day trip by train to Oxford that doesn't involve shelling out £60 a head, for the dubious delights of spending three hours in each direction slogging in and out of central London, to be rather appealing - but I don't expect this to become a reality in my lifetime. I am currently aged just under 50.
Hopefully Bicester to Bletchley will open later this year!
"We're getting there!"
Presumably the trains will start from Oxford rather than Bicester (or Reading or Southampton...)
Is the Bletchley flyover viable? Why don't they continue to Bedford?
Reeves says that LHR3 could be built in 10 years, which she thinks is a good estimate but it's fucking shite. We should have shovels in the ground within months, buyouts done by the end of the year and foundations being laid at the start of next year for a 2027/28 opening of the runway and 2030 for the new terminal building which will allow for T3 to be shut down and refurbed by 2033. The lack of ambition is what's going to kill the economy in the long term. 10 years to build one runway is a joke.
RAF Northolt is the obvious solution. Surely we could arrange a new nameplate in less than a decade.
Reeves says that LHR3 could be built in 10 years, which she thinks is a good estimate but it's fucking shite. We should have shovels in the ground within months, buyouts done by the end of the year and foundations being laid at the start of next year for a 2027/28 opening of the runway and 2030 for the new terminal building which will allow for T3 to be shut down and refurbed by 2033. The lack of ambition is what's going to kill the economy in the long term. 10 years to build one runway is a joke.
SEVENTEEN years between Crossrail Bill first being put before Parliament (2005), and the Elizabeth Line finally opening in 2022.
That was a hugely complex train line built mostly underground in parts of London with huge underground developments already. I can forgive a long timeframe for Crossrail. This is mostly above ground, get the M25 tunnel started now so it's ready to go when the runway is being constructed in 2-3 years.
I would imagine the first decade will be spent on the extremely slow drafting of plans, followed by endless objections to those plans crawling through our slow and overburdened courts. It's going to end up like East West Rail: a glacially slow project, fought tooth and nail by determined NIMBY groups.
I live near Cambridge and find the idea of a day trip by train to Oxford that doesn't involve shelling out £60 a head, for the dubious delights of spending three hours in each direction slogging in and out of central London, to be rather appealing - but I don't expect this to become a reality in my lifetime. I am currently aged just under 50.
Hopefully Bicester to Bletchley will open later this year!
"We're getting there!"
I've not been following it especially closely, but AIUI the project is causing severe ructions in Bedford and nobody can make up their minds where to build the remainder of the route into Cambridge (although I do know that there are already large placards along one of the likely routes near Cambridge, because I've seen them. The pitchforks are ready beside the front doors of all the posh houses. The torches are primed and waiting to be lit.)
Practically everyone, everywhere loathes development. I harbour serious doubts about whether the link between Bedford and Cambridge will ever be built.
Of course it's nothing new, but Trump is a fucking disgrace. Are any of his apologists going to defend what he said today?
Trump said variously that the helicopter pilot should have seen and avoided the plane, that the crash was caused by the FAA under Biden hiring psychiatrically unsuitable air traffic controllers in the name of diversity, and that controllers' warnings were too late.
And surely many Americans will also be wondering why the helicopter pilot did not look out the window.
Since then, there have also been reports of a late runway change, and an understaffed air traffic control meaning one person was doing two jobs.
So what's the complaint about what Trump said? Except that other presidents would have waited for the investigation before commenting.
Morning all from the sunny west coast of the South Island of Aotearoa
From the dining room window of brother-in-law Stodge’s enormous property, the Tasman can be seen lapping gently against the shore. I’m sure some dimwitted future Government in Canberra will try to rename it the Sea of Australia.
Meanwhile, Mrs Stodge is scoffing a vegemite sandwich for breakfast as civilisation teeters on the edge of the abyss….
On topic, as I’ve said before, Sadiq Khan made an enormous personal political misjudgment in early 2022. He believed at that point Labour could not win the next GE and rather than spend five to ten years impotently on the Opposition benches in the Commons, he would stay on as Mayor of London which gave him at least some national political profile and more power.
He no more reckoned on the spectacular implosion of the Conservative Party than the rest of us but he had said he would run again and couldn’t back out. He now finds himself an irrelevance with a huge Labour majority and no place in the Starmer Government. Even if he quit and tried to get in to Parliament via a by election, there’s every chance in the current climate he would fail.
Mrs Stodge and many of her friends loathe him - I’m fairly ambivalent. The London Mayoralty is all froth with very little substance. The transport network is effectively run by Rachel Reeves and beyond that much of the real power sits with the Boroughs or with Whitehall.
The 2026 local elections will be very informative as to the possible direction of travel for a future Mayoral contest in 2028 but there is a growing anti-Sadiq vote which could make his re-election problematic in a way it might not be for an alternative Labour candidate.
Of course it's nothing new, but Trump is a fucking disgrace. Are any of his apologists going to defend what he said today?
Trump said variously that the helicopter pilot should have seen and avoided the plane, that the crash was caused by the FAA under Biden hiring psychiatrically unsuitable air traffic controllers in the name of diversity, and that controllers' warnings were too late.
And surely many Americans will also be wondering why the helicopter pilot did not look out the window.
Since then, there have also been reports of a late runway change, and an understaffed air traffic control meaning one person was doing two jobs.
So what's the complaint about what Trump said? Except that other presidents would have waited for the investigation before commenting.
No surprise that YOU think it's fine for the US president to go off on an irrelevant lying rant about inviting disabled people to apply for jobs at press conference about a plane crash where a bunch of people died. Disgusting.
Of course it's nothing new, but Trump is a fucking disgrace. Are any of his apologists going to defend what he said today?
Trump said variously that the helicopter pilot should have seen and avoided the plane, that the crash was caused by the FAA under Biden hiring psychiatrically unsuitable air traffic controllers in the name of diversity, and that controllers' warnings were too late.
And surely many Americans will also be wondering why the helicopter pilot did not look out the window.
Since then, there have also been reports of a late runway change, and an understaffed air traffic control meaning one person was doing two jobs.
So what's the complaint about what Trump said? Except that other presidents would have waited for the investigation before commenting.
The New York Times this week reported that US intelligence had intercepted a phone call between two Hezbollah operatives who said that Gabbard had met with “the big guy” during a visit to Lebanon in 2017, indicating a senior Hezbollah official.
Reeves says that LHR3 could be built in 10 years, which she thinks is a good estimate but it's fucking shite. We should have shovels in the ground within months, buyouts done by the end of the year and foundations being laid at the start of next year for a 2027/28 opening of the runway and 2030 for the new terminal building which will allow for T3 to be shut down and refurbed by 2033. The lack of ambition is what's going to kill the economy in the long term. 10 years to build one runway is a joke.
But by our standards it's speedy gonzales.
Isn't that the problem? People like you with low expectations happy to watch the economy stagnate.
Reeves says that LHR3 could be built in 10 years, which she thinks is a good estimate but it's fucking shite. We should have shovels in the ground within months, buyouts done by the end of the year and foundations being laid at the start of next year for a 2027/28 opening of the runway and 2030 for the new terminal building which will allow for T3 to be shut down and refurbed by 2033. The lack of ambition is what's going to kill the economy in the long term. 10 years to build one runway is a joke.
SEVENTEEN years between Crossrail Bill first being put before Parliament (2005), and the Elizabeth Line finally opening in 2022.
That was a hugely complex train line built mostly underground in parts of London with huge underground developments already. I can forgive a long timeframe for Crossrail. This is mostly above ground, get the M25 tunnel started now so it's ready to go when the runway is being constructed in 2-3 years.
I would imagine the first decade will be spent on the extremely slow drafting of plans, followed by endless objections to those plans crawling through our slow and overburdened courts. It's going to end up like East West Rail: a glacially slow project, fought tooth and nail by determined NIMBY groups.
I live near Cambridge and find the idea of a day trip by train to Oxford that doesn't involve shelling out £60 a head, for the dubious delights of spending three hours in each direction slogging in and out of central London, to be rather appealing - but I don't expect this to become a reality in my lifetime. I am currently aged just under 50.
Hopefully Bicester to Bletchley will open later this year!
"We're getting there!"
Presumably the trains will start from Oxford rather than Bicester (or Reading or Southampton...)
Is the Bletchley flyover viable? Why don't they continue to Bedford?
The flyover is the only connection in to Bletchley (new platforms 7 and 8). Services are then supposed to head north to MK or east to Bedford. Apparently Chiltern Railways will be the operator.
Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed Samples from Bennu contain the chemical building blocks of life — but with a twist. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00264-3 … Not only does Bennu contain all 5 of the nucleobases that form DNA and RNA on Earth and 14 of the 20 amino acids found in known proteins, the asteroid’s amino acids hold a surprise. On Earth, amino acids in living organisms predominantly have a ‘left-handed’ chemical structure. Bennu, however, contains nearly equal amounts of these structures and their ‘right-handed’, mirror-image forms, calling into question scientists’ hypothesis that asteroids similar to this one might have seeded life on Earth...
The presence of amino acids wasn’t really unexpected - it’s long been theorised, and we’ve even detected the presence of simple organic chemistry beyond our galaxy. The different proportion of left/right chirality is notable, though.
Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed Samples from Bennu contain the chemical building blocks of life — but with a twist. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00264-3 … Not only does Bennu contain all 5 of the nucleobases that form DNA and RNA on Earth and 14 of the 20 amino acids found in known proteins, the asteroid’s amino acids hold a surprise. On Earth, amino acids in living organisms predominantly have a ‘left-handed’ chemical structure. Bennu, however, contains nearly equal amounts of these structures and their ‘right-handed’, mirror-image forms, calling into question scientists’ hypothesis that asteroids similar to this one might have seeded life on Earth...
The presence of amino acids wasn’t really unexpected - it’s long been theorised, and we’ve even detected the presence of simple organic chemistry beyond our galaxy. The different proportion of left/right chirality is notable, though.
Reeves says that LHR3 could be built in 10 years, which she thinks is a good estimate but it's fucking shite. We should have shovels in the ground within months, buyouts done by the end of the year and foundations being laid at the start of next year for a 2027/28 opening of the runway and 2030 for the new terminal building which will allow for T3 to be shut down and refurbed by 2033. The lack of ambition is what's going to kill the economy in the long term. 10 years to build one runway is a joke.
But by our standards it's speedy gonzales.
Isn't that the problem? People like you with low expectations happy to watch the economy stagnate.
Well no, I'm ready to applaud an improvement.
Me too - I am genuinely in favour of anyone of any political hinterland going for growth. I don’t think Starmer and Reeves' are suggesting any great pro-growth initiatives yet, but I welcome them entering the conversation.
Reeves says that LHR3 could be built in 10 years, which she thinks is a good estimate but it's fucking shite. We should have shovels in the ground within months, buyouts done by the end of the year and foundations being laid at the start of next year for a 2027/28 opening of the runway and 2030 for the new terminal building which will allow for T3 to be shut down and refurbed by 2033. The lack of ambition is what's going to kill the economy in the long term. 10 years to build one runway is a joke.
SEVENTEEN years between Crossrail Bill first being put before Parliament (2005), and the Elizabeth Line finally opening in 2022.
That was a hugely complex train line built mostly underground in parts of London with huge underground developments already. I can forgive a long timeframe for Crossrail. This is mostly above ground, get the M25 tunnel started now so it's ready to go when the runway is being constructed in 2-3 years.
I would imagine the first decade will be spent on the extremely slow drafting of plans, followed by endless objections to those plans crawling through our slow and overburdened courts. It's going to end up like East West Rail: a glacially slow project, fought tooth and nail by determined NIMBY groups.
I live near Cambridge and find the idea of a day trip by train to Oxford that doesn't involve shelling out £60 a head, for the dubious delights of spending three hours in each direction slogging in and out of central London, to be rather appealing - but I don't expect this to become a reality in my lifetime. I am currently aged just under 50.
Hopefully Bicester to Bletchley will open later this year!
"We're getting there!"
I've not been following it especially closely, but AIUI the project is causing severe ructions in Bedford and nobody can make up their minds where to build the remainder of the route into Cambridge (although I do know that there are already large placards along one of the likely routes near Cambridge, because I've seen them. The pitchforks are ready beside the front doors of all the posh houses. The torches are primed and waiting to be lit.)
Practically everyone, everywhere loathes development. I harbour serious doubts about whether the link between Bedford and Cambridge will ever be built.
A visit to the EWR website, specifically the latest update on the proposed station at Tempsford (which I believe was mentioned in the Chancellor's speech today) contains the following gem: "Under our current proposals, if consent is received, we would look to have the full East West Rail route open in the mid 2030s." So, this is a national infrastructure project that the Government has identified as a priority, which appears to be proud of the fact that it'll take somewhere around another decade to deliver a new railway line between Bedford and Cambridge. And that's assuming the job is done on time, which is an heroic assumption for anything to do with building stuff in Britain, let alone train stuff.
The distance between these two places by road is around 30 miles, so it's a reasonable assumption that the railway wouldn't be very much longer than that, certainly not more than 40 miles. What Brunel would make of a railway construction effort that crawls from A to B at an average of three or four miles per year can only be guessed at. We are useless at this stuff. Useless.
Morning all from the sunny west coast of the South Island of Aotearoa
From the dining room window of brother-in-law Stodge’s enormous property, the Tasman can be seen lapping gently against the shore. I’m sure some dimwitted future Government in Canberra will try to rename it the Sea of Australia.
Meanwhile, Mrs Stodge is scoffing a vegemite sandwich for breakfast as civilisation teeters on the edge of the abyss….
On topic, as I’ve said before, Sadiq Khan made an enormous personal political misjudgment in early 2022. He believed at that point Labour could not win the next GE and rather than spend five to ten years impotently on the Opposition benches in the Commons, he would stay on as Mayor of London which gave him at least some national political profile and more power.
He no more reckoned on the spectacular implosion of the Conservative Party than the rest of us but he had said he would run again and couldn’t back out. He now finds himself an irrelevance with a huge Labour majority and no place in the Starmer Government. Even if he quit and tried to get in to Parliament via a by election, there’s every chance in the current climate he would fail.
Mrs Stodge and many of her friends loathe him - I’m fairly ambivalent. The London Mayoralty is all froth with very little substance. The transport network is effectively run by Rachel Reeves and beyond that much of the real power sits with the Boroughs or with Whitehall.
The 2026 local elections will be very informative as to the possible direction of travel for a future Mayoral contest in 2028 but there is a growing anti-Sadiq vote which could make his re-election problematic in a way it might not be for an alternative Labour candidate.
I dunno, I think he quite enjoys being London Mayor over possibly a middling cabinet role. He gets to do the fun stuff and can speak his mind without worrying about diplomacy - which has been important when a large part of the international right is explicitly anti-Muslim. He's a lot more comfortable where he is than if he was, say, attorney general and having to field questions about Musk's ravings without causing an international incident
As for whether he can win in 2028 if he stands, well, I think it depends on two things - can the Tories select a high profile enough London-friendly candidate? Sadiq was unpopular last time but won handily because Susan Hall was a disaster and the Tories national messaging looked like it hated London. I wouldn't be optimistic the current Tory Party can find a good candidate given the state of them.
Secondly, does a Corbynite challenge materialise from the left? There's clearly space and Livingstone managed it. Corbyn is probably a bit too lazy and getting on to do it himself - plus would be a wrench to lose his constituency.
Burnham's the one who made a miscalculation IMV, if he hadn't run off to Manchester, a city he's not actually a native of, he might well be Prime Minister now and if not would be the heir apparent.
Morning all from the sunny west coast of the South Island of Aotearoa
From the dining room window of brother-in-law Stodge’s enormous property, the Tasman can be seen lapping gently against the shore. I’m sure some dimwitted future Government in Canberra will try to rename it the Sea of Australia.
Meanwhile, Mrs Stodge is scoffing a vegemite sandwich for breakfast as civilisation teeters on the edge of the abyss….
On topic, as I’ve said before, Sadiq Khan made an enormous personal political misjudgment in early 2022. He believed at that point Labour could not win the next GE and rather than spend five to ten years impotently on the Opposition benches in the Commons, he would stay on as Mayor of London which gave him at least some national political profile and more power.
He no more reckoned on the spectacular implosion of the Conservative Party than the rest of us but he had said he would run again and couldn’t back out. He now finds himself an irrelevance with a huge Labour majority and no place in the Starmer Government. Even if he quit and tried to get in to Parliament via a by election, there’s every chance in the current climate he would fail.
Mrs Stodge and many of her friends loathe him - I’m fairly ambivalent. The London Mayoralty is all froth with very little substance. The transport network is effectively run by Rachel Reeves and beyond that much of the real power sits with the Boroughs or with Whitehall.
The 2026 local elections will be very informative as to the possible direction of travel for a future Mayoral contest in 2028 but there is a growing anti-Sadiq vote which could make his re-election problematic in a way it might not be for an alternative Labour candidate.
I dunno, I think he quite enjoys being London Mayor over possibly a middling cabinet role. He gets to do the fun stuff and can speak his mind without worrying about diplomacy - which has been important when a large part of the international right is explicitly anti-Muslim. He's a lot more comfortable where he is than if he was, say, attorney general and having to field questions about Musk's ravings without causing an international incident
As for whether he can win in 2028 if he stands, well, I think it depends on two things - can the Tories select a high profile enough London-friendly candidate? Sadiq was unpopular last time but won handily because Susan Hall was a disaster and the Tories national messaging looked like it hated London. I wouldn't be optimistic the current Tory Party can find a good candidate given the state of them.
Secondly, does a Corbynite challenge materialise from the left? There's clearly space and Livingstone managed it. Corbyn is probably a bit too lazy and getting on to do it himself - plus would be a wrench to lose his constituency.
Burnham's the one who made a miscalculation IMV, if he hadn't run off to Manchester, a city he's not actually a native of, he might well be Prime Minister now and if not would be the heir apparent.
What would Corbyn's message be?
"Defeat the evil Sadiq Kahn. Because he is evil for being the blandest Mayor on the menu? errrrrr...."
Reeves says that LHR3 could be built in 10 years, which she thinks is a good estimate but it's fucking shite. We should have shovels in the ground within months, buyouts done by the end of the year and foundations being laid at the start of next year for a 2027/28 opening of the runway and 2030 for the new terminal building which will allow for T3 to be shut down and refurbed by 2033. The lack of ambition is what's going to kill the economy in the long term. 10 years to build one runway is a joke.
SEVENTEEN years between Crossrail Bill first being put before Parliament (2005), and the Elizabeth Line finally opening in 2022.
That was a hugely complex train line built mostly underground in parts of London with huge underground developments already. I can forgive a long timeframe for Crossrail. This is mostly above ground, get the M25 tunnel started now so it's ready to go when the runway is being constructed in 2-3 years.
I would imagine the first decade will be spent on the extremely slow drafting of plans, followed by endless objections to those plans crawling through our slow and overburdened courts. It's going to end up like East West Rail: a glacially slow project, fought tooth and nail by determined NIMBY groups.
I live near Cambridge and find the idea of a day trip by train to Oxford that doesn't involve shelling out £60 a head, for the dubious delights of spending three hours in each direction slogging in and out of central London, to be rather appealing - but I don't expect this to become a reality in my lifetime. I am currently aged just under 50.
Hopefully Bicester to Bletchley will open later this year!
"We're getting there!"
Presumably the trains will start from Oxford rather than Bicester (or Reading or Southampton...)
Is the Bletchley flyover viable? Why don't they continue to Bedford?
The flyover is the only connection in to Bletchley (new platforms 7 and 8). Services are then supposed to head north to MK or east to Bedford. Apparently Chiltern Railways will be the operator.
Thanks, Chiltern are good.
Obviously the track has been cobbled back together where it crosses the HS2 workings. The satellite view on OS Maps shows a muddy hole where it used to be. Historically it was maintained in reasonable working order (suitable for munitions) to serve the arms dumps at Arncott and Ambrosden. I think I can recall excursion specials occasionally starting from Winslow when I lived in the area in the 1980s.
There's an interesting branch track down to Quainton Road according to satellite view. I suspect it's currently being used as a haul route by HS2. It could connect to Aylesbury Parkway with a bit of effort.
Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed Samples from Bennu contain the chemical building blocks of life — but with a twist. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00264-3 … Not only does Bennu contain all 5 of the nucleobases that form DNA and RNA on Earth and 14 of the 20 amino acids found in known proteins, the asteroid’s amino acids hold a surprise. On Earth, amino acids in living organisms predominantly have a ‘left-handed’ chemical structure. Bennu, however, contains nearly equal amounts of these structures and their ‘right-handed’, mirror-image forms, calling into question scientists’ hypothesis that asteroids similar to this one might have seeded life on Earth...
The presence of amino acids wasn’t really unexpected - it’s long been theorised, and we’ve even detected the presence of simple organic chemistry beyond our galaxy. The different proportion of left/right chirality is notable, though.
US Journalists must now step up to the plate. Never has their country needed them more. They must keep asking the questions, refuse the bullshit, speak truth, do their fucking job.
Reeves says that LHR3 could be built in 10 years, which she thinks is a good estimate but it's fucking shite. We should have shovels in the ground within months, buyouts done by the end of the year and foundations being laid at the start of next year for a 2027/28 opening of the runway and 2030 for the new terminal building which will allow for T3 to be shut down and refurbed by 2033. The lack of ambition is what's going to kill the economy in the long term. 10 years to build one runway is a joke.
SEVENTEEN years between Crossrail Bill first being put before Parliament (2005), and the Elizabeth Line finally opening in 2022.
That was a hugely complex train line built mostly underground in parts of London with huge underground developments already. I can forgive a long timeframe for Crossrail. This is mostly above ground, get the M25 tunnel started now so it's ready to go when the runway is being constructed in 2-3 years.
I would imagine the first decade will be spent on the extremely slow drafting of plans, followed by endless objections to those plans crawling through our slow and overburdened courts. It's going to end up like East West Rail: a glacially slow project, fought tooth and nail by determined NIMBY groups.
I live near Cambridge and find the idea of a day trip by train to Oxford that doesn't involve shelling out £60 a head, for the dubious delights of spending three hours in each direction slogging in and out of central London, to be rather appealing - but I don't expect this to become a reality in my lifetime. I am currently aged just under 50.
Hopefully Bicester to Bletchley will open later this year!
"We're getting there!"
I've not been following it especially closely, but AIUI the project is causing severe ructions in Bedford and nobody can make up their minds where to build the remainder of the route into Cambridge (although I do know that there are already large placards along one of the likely routes near Cambridge, because I've seen them. The pitchforks are ready beside the front doors of all the posh houses. The torches are primed and waiting to be lit.)
Practically everyone, everywhere loathes development. I harbour serious doubts about whether the link between Bedford and Cambridge will ever be built.
Same here. It will take a lot of government will, time, and money, to overcome such a popular position as 'no development'. The longer it takes, the more chances to get cold feet as well. We saw with Boris's government that a big majority is no guarantee of not running scared either.
Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed Samples from Bennu contain the chemical building blocks of life — but with a twist. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00264-3 … Not only does Bennu contain all 5 of the nucleobases that form DNA and RNA on Earth and 14 of the 20 amino acids found in known proteins, the asteroid’s amino acids hold a surprise. On Earth, amino acids in living organisms predominantly have a ‘left-handed’ chemical structure. Bennu, however, contains nearly equal amounts of these structures and their ‘right-handed’, mirror-image forms, calling into question scientists’ hypothesis that asteroids similar to this one might have seeded life on Earth...
The presence of amino acids wasn’t really unexpected - it’s long been theorised, and we’ve even detected the presence of simple organic chemistry beyond our galaxy. The different proportion of left/right chirality is notable, though.
Sinister!
Recovered with some dexterity, though.
On the original point - I've never bought into the "asteroids seeded life" thing as an explanation. It may of happened, but it's only adding another step in the quest for "Where did life start?". It doesn't explain how it started.
Reeves says that LHR3 could be built in 10 years, which she thinks is a good estimate but it's fucking shite. We should have shovels in the ground within months, buyouts done by the end of the year and foundations being laid at the start of next year for a 2027/28 opening of the runway and 2030 for the new terminal building which will allow for T3 to be shut down and refurbed by 2033. The lack of ambition is what's going to kill the economy in the long term. 10 years to build one runway is a joke.
But by our standards it's speedy gonzales.
Isn't that the problem? People like you with low expectations happy to watch the economy stagnate.
Well no, I'm ready to applaud an improvement.
Me too - I am genuinely in favour of anyone of any political hinterland going for growth. I don’t think Starmer and Reeves' are suggesting any great pro-growth initiatives yet, but I welcome them entering the conversation.
Baby steps in the right direction is better than we've had for a long time. Hopefully the right kind of thinking can build momentum.
Of course it's nothing new, but Trump is a fucking disgrace. Are any of his apologists going to defend what he said today?
Trump said variously that the helicopter pilot should have seen and avoided the plane, that the crash was caused by the FAA under Biden hiring psychiatrically unsuitable air traffic controllers in the name of diversity, and that controllers' warnings were too late.
And surely many Americans will also be wondering why the helicopter pilot did not look out the window.
Since then, there have also been reports of a late runway change, and an understaffed air traffic control meaning one person was doing two jobs.
So what's the complaint about what Trump said? Except that other presidents would have waited for the investigation before commenting.
Reeves says that LHR3 could be built in 10 years, which she thinks is a good estimate but it's fucking shite. We should have shovels in the ground within months, buyouts done by the end of the year and foundations being laid at the start of next year for a 2027/28 opening of the runway and 2030 for the new terminal building which will allow for T3 to be shut down and refurbed by 2033. The lack of ambition is what's going to kill the economy in the long term. 10 years to build one runway is a joke.
SEVENTEEN years between Crossrail Bill first being put before Parliament (2005), and the Elizabeth Line finally opening in 2022.
That was a hugely complex train line built mostly underground in parts of London with huge underground developments already. I can forgive a long timeframe for Crossrail. This is mostly above ground, get the M25 tunnel started now so it's ready to go when the runway is being constructed in 2-3 years.
I would imagine the first decade will be spent on the extremely slow drafting of plans, followed by endless objections to those plans crawling through our slow and overburdened courts. It's going to end up like East West Rail: a glacially slow project, fought tooth and nail by determined NIMBY groups.
I live near Cambridge and find the idea of a day trip by train to Oxford that doesn't involve shelling out £60 a head, for the dubious delights of spending three hours in each direction slogging in and out of central London, to be rather appealing - but I don't expect this to become a reality in my lifetime. I am currently aged just under 50.
Hopefully Bicester to Bletchley will open later this year!
"We're getting there!"
I've not been following it especially closely, but AIUI the project is causing severe ructions in Bedford and nobody can make up their minds where to build the remainder of the route into Cambridge (although I do know that there are already large placards along one of the likely routes near Cambridge, because I've seen them. The pitchforks are ready beside the front doors of all the posh houses. The torches are primed and waiting to be lit.)
Practically everyone, everywhere loathes development. I harbour serious doubts about whether the link between Bedford and Cambridge will ever be built.
A visit to the EWR website, specifically the latest update on the proposed station at Tempsford (which I believe was mentioned in the Chancellor's speech today) contains the following gem: "Under our current proposals, if consent is received, we would look to have the full East West Rail route open in the mid 2030s." So, this is a national infrastructure project that the Government has identified as a priority, which appears to be proud of the fact that it'll take somewhere around another decade to deliver a new railway line between Bedford and Cambridge. And that's assuming the job is done on time, which is an heroic assumption for anything to do with building stuff in Britain, let alone train stuff.
The distance between these two places by road is around 30 miles, so it's a reasonable assumption that the railway wouldn't be very much longer than that, certainly not more than 40 miles. What Brunel would make of a railway construction effort that crawls from A to B at an average of three or four miles per year can only be guessed at. We are useless at this stuff. Useless.
That's really depressing stuff.
It's not that everything must be built at the speed and with the same rules in place as the Victorian age, but we can surely do it a lot better than we do.
@kristina_wong Spoke to someone who served in the same unit as the Army Black Hawk crew, knew them personally, and flew those routes. He made the following points:
1) That it was a training flight was not unusual at all. Those flights are flown everyday.
2) The co-pilot was going through her annual evaluation for night flying. Night vision goggles can magnify light, making it easier to confuse aircraft lights with ground lights.
3) Runway 33 -- where Air Traffic Control told the passenger jet (CRJ) to land -- is "rarely used." This person said in his four years, he saw it being used 10 times. It is a much shorter runway than the main one used, which is Runway 1.
4) The Black Hawk appeared to confuse the passenger jet with another plane landing at Runway 1 — which is why the pilot-in-command confirmed seeing the CRJ and requesting “visual separation,” or essentially saying he would avoid it.
5) The CRJ was circling to land and making a left turn at the time. The Black Hawk was in its blind spot.
6) The crew was experienced: The instructor pilot had just under 1,000 flying hours. He was former Navy. The co-pilot had around 500 hours, and the crew chief — who served on multiple combat tours — around 1,000 hours. They flew these same routes for at least three years.
7) It was not unusual to have three crew members on a Black Hawk. There’s only four for certain mission sets. Whether the crew chief saw the CRJ would have depended on which side he was sitting on.
8) It was a dark night, with no moon.
9) Air Traffic Control could have told the Black Hawk to hold north, or diverted it.
10) Potential changes could be to change the route, altitude, or hours during heavy air traffic.
“All these things, they all made for the perfect storm.”
Morning all from the sunny west coast of the South Island of Aotearoa
From the dining room window of brother-in-law Stodge’s enormous property, the Tasman can be seen lapping gently against the shore. I’m sure some dimwitted future Government in Canberra will try to rename it the Sea of Australia.
Meanwhile, Mrs Stodge is scoffing a vegemite sandwich for breakfast as civilisation teeters on the edge of the abyss….
On topic, as I’ve said before, Sadiq Khan made an enormous personal political misjudgment in early 2022. He believed at that point Labour could not win the next GE and rather than spend five to ten years impotently on the Opposition benches in the Commons, he would stay on as Mayor of London which gave him at least some national political profile and more power.
He no more reckoned on the spectacular implosion of the Conservative Party than the rest of us but he had said he would run again and couldn’t back out. He now finds himself an irrelevance with a huge Labour majority and no place in the Starmer Government. Even if he quit and tried to get in to Parliament via a by election, there’s every chance in the current climate he would fail.
Mrs Stodge and many of her friends loathe him - I’m fairly ambivalent. The London Mayoralty is all froth with very little substance. The transport network is effectively run by Rachel Reeves and beyond that much of the real power sits with the Boroughs or with Whitehall.
The 2026 local elections will be very informative as to the possible direction of travel for a future Mayoral contest in 2028 but there is a growing anti-Sadiq vote which could make his re-election problematic in a way it might not be for an alternative Labour candidate.
I dunno, I think he quite enjoys being London Mayor over possibly a middling cabinet role. He gets to do the fun stuff and can speak his mind without worrying about diplomacy - which has been important when a large part of the international right is explicitly anti-Muslim. He's a lot more comfortable where he is than if he was, say, attorney general and having to field questions about Musk's ravings without causing an international incident
As for whether he can win in 2028 if he stands, well, I think it depends on two things - can the Tories select a high profile enough London-friendly candidate? Sadiq was unpopular last time but won handily because Susan Hall was a disaster and the Tories national messaging looked like it hated London. I wouldn't be optimistic the current Tory Party can find a good candidate given the state of them.
Secondly, does a Corbynite challenge materialise from the left? There's clearly space and Livingstone managed it. Corbyn is probably a bit too lazy and getting on to do it himself - plus would be a wrench to lose his constituency.
Burnham's the one who made a miscalculation IMV, if he hadn't run off to Manchester, a city he's not actually a native of, he might well be Prime Minister now and if not would be the heir apparent.
What would Corbyn's message be?
"Defeat the evil Sadiq Kahn. Because he is evil for being the blandest Mayor on the menu? errrrrr...."
A Corbynite would run on the idea that London is a progressive city but needs a Mayor who isn't Labour because it's been captured by the dreaded centrists, and needs someone who will stand up to Labour on issues like the Gaza protests, relations with Trump, be more pro-immigration.
It'd be the same 'Red Tories' guff they always come out with but could prove effective in a climate where you have an unpopular mayor who may have outstayed his welcome and an unpopular Labour government trying to tailor its appeal to keep the majority of its red wall seats.
Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed Samples from Bennu contain the chemical building blocks of life — but with a twist. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00264-3 … Not only does Bennu contain all 5 of the nucleobases that form DNA and RNA on Earth and 14 of the 20 amino acids found in known proteins, the asteroid’s amino acids hold a surprise. On Earth, amino acids in living organisms predominantly have a ‘left-handed’ chemical structure. Bennu, however, contains nearly equal amounts of these structures and their ‘right-handed’, mirror-image forms, calling into question scientists’ hypothesis that asteroids similar to this one might have seeded life on Earth...
The presence of amino acids wasn’t really unexpected - it’s long been theorised, and we’ve even detected the presence of simple organic chemistry beyond our galaxy. The different proportion of left/right chirality is notable, though.
Sinister!
Recovered with some dexterity, though.
On the original point - I've never bought into the "asteroids seeded life" thing as an explanation. It may of happened, but it's only adding another step in the quest for "Where did life start?". It doesn't explain how it started.
Among the theories is that space actually can provide a pretty good environment for generating complex carbon chemistry, without life being involved at all. Smoosh some large lumps of such space junk into a planet in the temperate zone, containing lots of water, and it doesn’t seem silly.
Morning all from the sunny west coast of the South Island of Aotearoa
From the dining room window of brother-in-law Stodge’s enormous property, the Tasman can be seen lapping gently against the shore. I’m sure some dimwitted future Government in Canberra will try to rename it the Sea of Australia.
Meanwhile, Mrs Stodge is scoffing a vegemite sandwich for breakfast as civilisation teeters on the edge of the abyss….
On topic, as I’ve said before, Sadiq Khan made an enormous personal political misjudgment in early 2022. He believed at that point Labour could not win the next GE and rather than spend five to ten years impotently on the Opposition benches in the Commons, he would stay on as Mayor of London which gave him at least some national political profile and more power.
He no more reckoned on the spectacular implosion of the Conservative Party than the rest of us but he had said he would run again and couldn’t back out. He now finds himself an irrelevance with a huge Labour majority and no place in the Starmer Government. Even if he quit and tried to get in to Parliament via a by election, there’s every chance in the current climate he would fail.
Mrs Stodge and many of her friends loathe him - I’m fairly ambivalent. The London Mayoralty is all froth with very little substance. The transport network is effectively run by Rachel Reeves and beyond that much of the real power sits with the Boroughs or with Whitehall.
The 2026 local elections will be very informative as to the possible direction of travel for a future Mayoral contest in 2028 but there is a growing anti-Sadiq vote which could make his re-election problematic in a way it might not be for an alternative Labour candidate.
I dunno, I think he quite enjoys being London Mayor over possibly a middling cabinet role. He gets to do the fun stuff and can speak his mind without worrying about diplomacy - which has been important when a large part of the international right is explicitly anti-Muslim. He's a lot more comfortable where he is than if he was, say, attorney general and having to field questions about Musk's ravings without causing an international incident
As for whether he can win in 2028 if he stands, well, I think it depends on two things - can the Tories select a high profile enough London-friendly candidate? Sadiq was unpopular last time but won handily because Susan Hall was a disaster and the Tories national messaging looked like it hated London. I wouldn't be optimistic the current Tory Party can find a good candidate given the state of them.
Secondly, does a Corbynite challenge materialise from the left? There's clearly space and Livingstone managed it. Corbyn is probably a bit too lazy and getting on to do it himself - plus would be a wrench to lose his constituency.
Burnham's the one who made a miscalculation IMV, if he hadn't run off to Manchester, a city he's not actually a native of, he might well be Prime Minister now and if not would be the heir apparent.
What would Corbyn's message be?
"Defeat the evil Sadiq Kahn. Because he is evil for being the blandest Mayor on the menu? errrrrr...."
A Corbynite would run on the idea that London is a progressive city but needs a Mayor who isn't Labour because it's been captured by the dreaded centrists, and needs someone who will stand up to Labour on issues like the Gaza protests, relations with Trump, be more pro-immigration.
It'd be the same 'Red Tories' guff they always come out with but could prove effective in a climate where you have an unpopular mayor who may have outstayed his welcome and an unpopular Labour government trying to tailor its appeal to keep the majority of its red wall seats.
I just don't see Khan as that unpopular. He's too bland to be hated.
Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed Samples from Bennu contain the chemical building blocks of life — but with a twist. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00264-3 … Not only does Bennu contain all 5 of the nucleobases that form DNA and RNA on Earth and 14 of the 20 amino acids found in known proteins, the asteroid’s amino acids hold a surprise. On Earth, amino acids in living organisms predominantly have a ‘left-handed’ chemical structure. Bennu, however, contains nearly equal amounts of these structures and their ‘right-handed’, mirror-image forms, calling into question scientists’ hypothesis that asteroids similar to this one might have seeded life on Earth...
The presence of amino acids wasn’t really unexpected - it’s long been theorised, and we’ve even detected the presence of simple organic chemistry beyond our galaxy. The different proportion of left/right chirality is notable, though.
Sinister!
Recovered with some dexterity, though.
On the original point - I've never bought into the "asteroids seeded life" thing as an explanation. It may of happened, but it's only adding another step in the quest for "Where did life start?". It doesn't explain how it started.
Among the theories is that space actually can provide a pretty good environment for generating complex carbon chemistry, without life being involved at all. Smoosh some large lumps of such space junk into a planet in the temperate zone, containing lots of water, and it doesn’t seem silly.
It looks like you can generate the stuff in a "primodorial atmosphere" pretty easily, as well.
Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed Samples from Bennu contain the chemical building blocks of life — but with a twist. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00264-3 … Not only does Bennu contain all 5 of the nucleobases that form DNA and RNA on Earth and 14 of the 20 amino acids found in known proteins, the asteroid’s amino acids hold a surprise. On Earth, amino acids in living organisms predominantly have a ‘left-handed’ chemical structure. Bennu, however, contains nearly equal amounts of these structures and their ‘right-handed’, mirror-image forms, calling into question scientists’ hypothesis that asteroids similar to this one might have seeded life on Earth...
The presence of amino acids wasn’t really unexpected - it’s long been theorised, and we’ve even detected the presence of simple organic chemistry beyond our galaxy. The different proportion of left/right chirality is notable, though.
Sinister!
Recovered with some dexterity, though.
On the original point - I've never bought into the "asteroids seeded life" thing as an explanation. It may of happened, but it's only adding another step in the quest for "Where did life start?". It doesn't explain how it started.
Among the theories is that space actually can provide a pretty good environment for generating complex carbon chemistry, without life being involved at all. Smoosh some large lumps of such space junk into a planet in the temperate zone, containing lots of water, and it doesn’t seem silly.
But why is it a surprise that space amino acids are equally left and right handed? Isn't that what you would expect? The question ought to be why does life prefer left handed amino acids? (admittedly I don't know anything about it so probably stupid questions)
This looks as though it might be pretty good. I might listen to it tomorrow.
Third episode in the Paine trilogy is out!
Chinese history is full of warlords constantly challenging the capital. How could Mao not only stay in power for decades, but not even face any insurgency?*
And how did Mao go from military genius to peacetime disaster - the patriotic hero who inflicted history’s worst human catastrophe on China? How can someone shrewd enough to win a civil war outnumbered 5 to 1 decide "let's have peasants make iron in their backyards" and "let's kill all the birds"?
In this lecture and Q&A we cover things like: the first ever nationwide famine in Chinese history; Mao's lasting influence on insurgents elsewhere; broken promises to minorities and peasantry; and what Taiwan means.
Morning all from the sunny west coast of the South Island of Aotearoa
From the dining room window of brother-in-law Stodge’s enormous property, the Tasman can be seen lapping gently against the shore. I’m sure some dimwitted future Government in Canberra will try to rename it the Sea of Australia.
Meanwhile, Mrs Stodge is scoffing a vegemite sandwich for breakfast as civilisation teeters on the edge of the abyss….
On topic, as I’ve said before, Sadiq Khan made an enormous personal political misjudgment in early 2022. He believed at that point Labour could not win the next GE and rather than spend five to ten years impotently on the Opposition benches in the Commons, he would stay on as Mayor of London which gave him at least some national political profile and more power.
He no more reckoned on the spectacular implosion of the Conservative Party than the rest of us but he had said he would run again and couldn’t back out. He now finds himself an irrelevance with a huge Labour majority and no place in the Starmer Government. Even if he quit and tried to get in to Parliament via a by election, there’s every chance in the current climate he would fail.
Mrs Stodge and many of her friends loathe him - I’m fairly ambivalent. The London Mayoralty is all froth with very little substance. The transport network is effectively run by Rachel Reeves and beyond that much of the real power sits with the Boroughs or with Whitehall.
The 2026 local elections will be very informative as to the possible direction of travel for a future Mayoral contest in 2028 but there is a growing anti-Sadiq vote which could make his re-election problematic in a way it might not be for an alternative Labour candidate.
I dunno, I think he quite enjoys being London Mayor over possibly a middling cabinet role. He gets to do the fun stuff and can speak his mind without worrying about diplomacy - which has been important when a large part of the international right is explicitly anti-Muslim. He's a lot more comfortable where he is than if he was, say, attorney general and having to field questions about Musk's ravings without causing an international incident
As for whether he can win in 2028 if he stands, well, I think it depends on two things - can the Tories select a high profile enough London-friendly candidate? Sadiq was unpopular last time but won handily because Susan Hall was a disaster and the Tories national messaging looked like it hated London. I wouldn't be optimistic the current Tory Party can find a good candidate given the state of them.
Secondly, does a Corbynite challenge materialise from the left? There's clearly space and Livingstone managed it. Corbyn is probably a bit too lazy and getting on to do it himself - plus would be a wrench to lose his constituency.
Burnham's the one who made a miscalculation IMV, if he hadn't run off to Manchester, a city he's not actually a native of, he might well be Prime Minister now and if not would be the heir apparent.
What would Corbyn's message be?
"Defeat the evil Sadiq Kahn. Because he is evil for being the blandest Mayor on the menu? errrrrr...."
A Corbynite would run on the idea that London is a progressive city but needs a Mayor who isn't Labour because it's been captured by the dreaded centrists, and needs someone who will stand up to Labour on issues like the Gaza protests, relations with Trump, be more pro-immigration.
It'd be the same 'Red Tories' guff they always come out with but could prove effective in a climate where you have an unpopular mayor who may have outstayed his welcome and an unpopular Labour government trying to tailor its appeal to keep the majority of its red wall seats.
I just don't see Khan as that unpopular. He's too bland to be hated.
An inspiration to the charismatically challenged everywhere. One day, it will be OUR time.
Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed Samples from Bennu contain the chemical building blocks of life — but with a twist. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00264-3 … Not only does Bennu contain all 5 of the nucleobases that form DNA and RNA on Earth and 14 of the 20 amino acids found in known proteins, the asteroid’s amino acids hold a surprise. On Earth, amino acids in living organisms predominantly have a ‘left-handed’ chemical structure. Bennu, however, contains nearly equal amounts of these structures and their ‘right-handed’, mirror-image forms, calling into question scientists’ hypothesis that asteroids similar to this one might have seeded life on Earth...
The presence of amino acids wasn’t really unexpected - it’s long been theorised, and we’ve even detected the presence of simple organic chemistry beyond our galaxy. The different proportion of left/right chirality is notable, though.
Sinister!
Recovered with some dexterity, though.
On the original point - I've never bought into the "asteroids seeded life" thing as an explanation. It may of happened, but it's only adding another step in the quest for "Where did life start?". It doesn't explain how it started.
Among the theories is that space actually can provide a pretty good environment for generating complex carbon chemistry, without life being involved at all. Smoosh some large lumps of such space junk into a planet in the temperate zone, containing lots of water, and it doesn’t seem silly.
But why is it a surprise that space amino acids are equally left and right handed? Isn't that what you would expect? The question ought to be why does life prefer left handed amino acids? (admittedly I don't know anything about it so probably stupid questions)
Is it possible that somewhere "out there" is a form of life based on right-handed amino acids?
Just google “ordo amoris.” Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?
I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: the problem with Rory and people like him is that he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130. This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years.
Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed Samples from Bennu contain the chemical building blocks of life — but with a twist. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00264-3 … Not only does Bennu contain all 5 of the nucleobases that form DNA and RNA on Earth and 14 of the 20 amino acids found in known proteins, the asteroid’s amino acids hold a surprise. On Earth, amino acids in living organisms predominantly have a ‘left-handed’ chemical structure. Bennu, however, contains nearly equal amounts of these structures and their ‘right-handed’, mirror-image forms, calling into question scientists’ hypothesis that asteroids similar to this one might have seeded life on Earth...
The presence of amino acids wasn’t really unexpected - it’s long been theorised, and we’ve even detected the presence of simple organic chemistry beyond our galaxy. The different proportion of left/right chirality is notable, though.
Sinister!
Recovered with some dexterity, though.
On the original point - I've never bought into the "asteroids seeded life" thing as an explanation. It may of happened, but it's only adding another step in the quest for "Where did life start?". It doesn't explain how it started.
Among the theories is that space actually can provide a pretty good environment for generating complex carbon chemistry, without life being involved at all. Smoosh some large lumps of such space junk into a planet in the temperate zone, containing lots of water, and it doesn’t seem silly.
But why is it a surprise that space amino acids are equally left and right handed? Isn't that what you would expect? The question ought to be why does life prefer left handed amino acids? (admittedly I don't know anything about it so probably stupid questions)
Is it possible that somewhere "out there" is a form of life based on right-handed amino acids?
Scientists are divided on the idea that either it was a coin flip which one became the selected chirality vs some kind of effect that made one slightly more likely to be selected.
Just google “ordo amoris.” Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?
I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: the problem with Rory and people like him is that he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130. This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years.
Fairly pathetic situation to have the Vice President arguing with a podcaster.
Asteroid fragments upend theory of how life on Earth bloomed Samples from Bennu contain the chemical building blocks of life — but with a twist. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00264-3 … Not only does Bennu contain all 5 of the nucleobases that form DNA and RNA on Earth and 14 of the 20 amino acids found in known proteins, the asteroid’s amino acids hold a surprise. On Earth, amino acids in living organisms predominantly have a ‘left-handed’ chemical structure. Bennu, however, contains nearly equal amounts of these structures and their ‘right-handed’, mirror-image forms, calling into question scientists’ hypothesis that asteroids similar to this one might have seeded life on Earth...
The presence of amino acids wasn’t really unexpected - it’s long been theorised, and we’ve even detected the presence of simple organic chemistry beyond our galaxy. The different proportion of left/right chirality is notable, though.
Sinister!
Recovered with some dexterity, though.
On the original point - I've never bought into the "asteroids seeded life" thing as an explanation. It may of happened, but it's only adding another step in the quest for "Where did life start?". It doesn't explain how it started.
Among the theories is that space actually can provide a pretty good environment for generating complex carbon chemistry, without life being involved at all. Smoosh some large lumps of such space junk into a planet in the temperate zone, containing lots of water, and it doesn’t seem silly.
But why is it a surprise that space amino acids are equally left and right handed? Isn't that what you would expect? The question ought to be why does life prefer left handed amino acids? (admittedly I don't know anything about it so probably stupid questions)
Just chance. Doesn't work with a mixture. The first form of life to evolve cleaned up. One might as well ask why tdhe marketers of non-Whitworth nuts and bolts of the wrong handedness went out of business (or signed up to the dominant kind pdq).
The interesitng question is whether there is symmetry breaking in nature to give L-gly and L-ala and so on a very, very small thermodynamic advantage.
Just google “ordo amoris.” Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?
I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: the problem with Rory and people like him is that he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130. This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years.
Just google “ordo amoris.” Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?
I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: the problem with Rory and people like him is that he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130. This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years.
Fairly pathetic situation to have the Vice President arguing with a podcaster.
Such are these modern times. The next President might well be a podcaster!
Just google “ordo amoris.” Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?
I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: the problem with Rory and people like him is that he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130. This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years.
FFS. You're the Vice=President of the most powerful state on Earth and you're arguing with a podcaster? And based on that tweet his grasp of the basic tenets of the religion he purports to follow are lacking. A perusal of Luke 10:25-37 might be in order. Augustine's Ordo Amoris in De Trinitate means that all things should be loved. Love attracts through partial knowing. We never love anything entirely unknown. We love things we have some understanding of. Proper love comes, then, in order or knowledge and understanding. So if you understand the suffering of someone 1000s of miles away then yes you should love them and yes you have duties to them.
Just google “ordo amoris.” Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?
I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: the problem with Rory and people like him is that he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130. This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years.
FFS. You're the Vice=President of the most powerful state on Earth and you're arguing with a podcaster? And based on that tweet his grasp of the basic tenets of the religion he purports to follow are lacking. A perusal of Luke 10:25-37 might be in order.
I was left almost wondering if the Veep was going to start using Hamilton's Rule like a good neoDarwinian. But I misread.
Which reminds me, are there any odds on the Scopes monkey business being reversed? They've been a bit quiet on evolution of late, unless I have missed something.
Comments
We won.
Years ago, when I was living in Hampstead, they sparked a short period when idiots started buying Dodge Rams. FFS.
More recently, I watched as a lady with a disability tried to ride her tricycle over a speed bump. She made it, but it was an obvious struggle.
I have heard it said that the the signs showing your speed and giving you a smiley or a frown are very effective.
Berlusconi was a fucking disgrace. Trump is way, way beyond that.
Also, the Greeks and Turks very much continue to quarrel. What’s stopped that turning into a hot war too often is NATO membership.
A few younger people seemed annoyed that he is presiding over a collapse in London late night venues. But in a shrug and "politicians are useless" kind of way.
There's no vehemence in it.
Bigot.
Maybe Mr Trump might like to try his hand at it. And perhps he will do better than most.
Whoever wins, we lose.
However, enforcement may be police only, as motoring law applies where something is "normally accessible to the public" - usually. Loads of case law, but it is usually sensible.
So, you can probably be done for drunk or careless driving in a supermarket car park (unless eg it is fenced off and the gates are closed).
And surely many Americans will also be wondering why the helicopter pilot did not look out the window.
Since then, there have also been reports of a late runway change, and an understaffed air traffic control meaning one person was doing two jobs.
So what's the complaint about what Trump said? Except that other presidents would have waited for the investigation before commenting.
The Federal Aviation Administration found that staff levels were “not normal for the time of day and the volume of traffic”, in a preliminary report after 64 people were killed onboard a flight from Kansas which crashed into a military helicopter.
The controller who was directing helicopters was also instructing planes, even though these jobs are typically assigned to two people, The New York Times reported."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/01/30/washington-plane-helicopter-crash/
Marianne Faithfull
Michael Caine
Mary Quant
David Bailey
Dusty Springfield
Ray Davies
Cathy McGowan
Vidal Sassoon
Jean Shrimpton
If my comments are a bit one-eyed (and spelling worse than ever), that’s because I will be for the next few days.
Until the eyeball fills up with fluid again.
Buttigieg fires back at Trump after remarks on midair collision: ‘Despicable’
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5116541-trump-buttigieg-air-travel-safety/
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/30/trump-lashes-out-at-biden-dei-efforts-after-dc-plane-crash.html
You don't find anything wrong with that? Seriously????????????????????????????????????????????????
I live near Cambridge and find the idea of a day trip by train to Oxford that doesn't involve shelling out £60 a head, for the dubious delights of spending three hours in each direction slogging in and out of central London, to be rather appealing - but I don't expect this to become a reality in my lifetime. I am currently aged just under 50.
They'd have the M25 tunnel done before lunch.
https://x.com/itsJeffTiedrich/status/1885030927388029059
"We're getting there!"
“As bodies are still being pulled from the Potomac, Donald Trump and his grossly incompetent administration are blaming this deadly crash on minorities and white women,” Rep. Ilhan Omar said.
...
...
Trump then read from articles critical of diversity efforts at the Federal Aviation Administration.
He also highlighted language from the FAA’s website about the government placing special emphasis on hiring people with “targeted disabilities,” including partial paralysis, severe intellectual disability and psychiatric disability.
But that language has been on the website since at least 2013 — a time period that includes Trump’s entire first White House term — according to the internet archive website the Wayback Machine.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/30/trump-lashes-out-at-biden-dei-efforts-after-dc-plane-crash.html
https://x.com/rapidresponse47/status/1885007515986919790
Is the Bletchley flyover viable? Why don't they continue to Bedford?
Practically everyone, everywhere loathes development. I harbour serious doubts about whether the link between Bedford and Cambridge will ever be built.
From the dining room window of brother-in-law Stodge’s enormous property, the Tasman can be seen lapping gently against the shore. I’m sure some dimwitted future Government in Canberra will try to rename it the Sea of Australia.
Meanwhile, Mrs Stodge is scoffing a vegemite sandwich for breakfast as civilisation teeters on the edge of the abyss….
On topic, as I’ve said before, Sadiq Khan made an enormous personal political misjudgment in early 2022. He believed at that point Labour could not win the next GE and rather than spend five to ten years impotently on the Opposition benches in the Commons, he would stay on as Mayor of London which gave him at least some national political profile and more power.
He no more reckoned on the spectacular implosion of the Conservative Party than the rest of us but he had said he would run again and couldn’t back out. He now finds himself an irrelevance with a huge Labour majority and no place in the Starmer Government. Even if he quit and tried to get in to Parliament via a by election, there’s every chance in the current climate he would fail.
Mrs Stodge and many of her friends loathe him - I’m fairly ambivalent. The London Mayoralty is all froth with very little substance. The transport network is effectively run by Rachel Reeves and beyond that much of the real power sits with the Boroughs or with Whitehall.
The 2026 local elections will be very informative as to the possible direction of travel for a future Mayoral contest in 2028 but there is a growing anti-Sadiq vote which could make his re-election problematic in a way it might not be for an alternative Labour candidate.
With 47% approval rating Republican is only president to have sub-50% reading at start of term, Gallup poll indicates
oops
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/30/tulsi-gabbard-confirmation-hearing
Trump: “We don’t know anything at all but we know that black people and women are to blame."
It's not just the spectacular stupidity or the abject incompetence. It's the performance cruelty that is so utterly despicable.
The image of Trump and the tech Bros will become the very archetype of hubris.
Wait for the the quantum computing announcements in the coming months. It will make the DeepSense project seem very small beer.
Samples from Bennu contain the chemical building blocks of life — but with a twist.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00264-3
… Not only does Bennu contain all 5 of the nucleobases that form DNA and RNA on Earth and 14 of the 20 amino acids found in known proteins, the asteroid’s amino acids hold a surprise. On Earth, amino acids in living organisms predominantly have a ‘left-handed’ chemical structure. Bennu, however, contains nearly equal amounts of these structures and their ‘right-handed’, mirror-image forms, calling into question scientists’ hypothesis that asteroids similar to this one might have seeded life on Earth...
The presence of amino acids wasn’t really unexpected - it’s long been theorised, and we’ve even detected the presence of simple organic chemistry beyond our galaxy. The different proportion of left/right chirality is notable, though.
In case you didn't already think she was a disaster.
The distance between these two places by road is around 30 miles, so it's a reasonable assumption that the railway wouldn't be very much longer than that, certainly not more than 40 miles. What Brunel would make of a railway construction effort that crawls from A to B at an average of three or four miles per year can only be guessed at. We are useless at this stuff. Useless.
As for whether he can win in 2028 if he stands, well, I think it depends on two things - can the Tories select a high profile enough London-friendly candidate? Sadiq was unpopular last time but won handily because Susan Hall was a disaster and the Tories national messaging looked like it hated London. I wouldn't be optimistic the current Tory Party can find a good candidate given the state of them.
Secondly, does a Corbynite challenge materialise from the left? There's clearly space and Livingstone managed it. Corbyn is probably a bit too lazy and getting on to do it himself - plus would be a wrench to lose his constituency.
Burnham's the one who made a miscalculation IMV, if he hadn't run off to Manchester, a city he's not actually a native of, he might well be Prime Minister now and if not would be the heir apparent.
"Defeat the evil Sadiq Kahn. Because he is evil for being the blandest Mayor on the menu? errrrrr...."
Obviously the track has been cobbled back together where it crosses the HS2 workings. The satellite view on OS Maps shows a muddy hole where it used to be. Historically it was maintained in reasonable working order (suitable for munitions) to serve the arms dumps at Arncott and Ambrosden. I think I can recall excursion specials occasionally starting from Winslow when I lived in the area in the 1980s.
There's an interesting branch track down to Quainton Road according to satellite view. I suspect it's currently being used as a haul route by HS2. It could connect to Aylesbury Parkway with a bit of effort.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller–Urey_experiment comes to mind....
It's not that everything must be built at the speed and with the same rules in place as the Victorian age, but we can surely do it a lot better than we do.
Spoke to someone who served in the same unit as the Army Black Hawk crew, knew them personally, and flew those routes. He made the following points:
1) That it was a training flight was not unusual at all. Those flights are flown everyday.
2) The co-pilot was going through her annual evaluation for night flying. Night vision goggles can magnify light, making it easier to confuse aircraft lights with ground lights.
3) Runway 33 -- where Air Traffic Control told the passenger jet (CRJ) to land -- is "rarely used." This person said in his four years, he saw it being used 10 times. It is a much shorter runway than the main one used, which is Runway 1.
4) The Black Hawk appeared to confuse the passenger jet with another plane landing at Runway 1 — which is why the pilot-in-command confirmed seeing the CRJ and requesting “visual separation,” or essentially saying he would avoid it.
5) The CRJ was circling to land and making a left turn at the time. The Black Hawk was in its blind spot.
6) The crew was experienced: The instructor pilot had just under 1,000 flying hours. He was former Navy. The co-pilot had around 500 hours, and the crew chief — who served on multiple combat tours — around 1,000 hours. They flew these same routes for at least three years.
7) It was not unusual to have three crew members on a Black Hawk. There’s only four for certain mission sets. Whether the crew chief saw the CRJ would have depended on which side he was sitting on.
8) It was a dark night, with no moon.
9) Air Traffic Control could have told the Black Hawk to hold north, or diverted it.
10) Potential changes could be to change the route, altitude, or hours during heavy air traffic.
“All these things, they all made for the perfect storm.”
https://x.com/kristina_wong/status/1885059823844405367
The ONLY thing Donny would take from that is "she"
It'd be the same 'Red Tories' guff they always come out with but could prove effective in a climate where you have an unpopular mayor who may have outstayed his welcome and an unpopular Labour government trying to tailor its appeal to keep the majority of its red wall seats.
Smoosh some large lumps of such space junk into a planet in the temperate zone, containing lots of water, and it doesn’t seem silly.
So we have lots of building blocks. Then what?
I might listen to it tomorrow.
Third episode in the Paine trilogy is out!
Chinese history is full of warlords constantly challenging the capital. How could Mao not only stay in power for decades, but not even face any insurgency?*
And how did Mao go from military genius to peacetime disaster - the patriotic hero who inflicted history’s worst human catastrophe on China? How can someone shrewd enough to win a civil war outnumbered 5 to 1 decide "let's have peasants make iron in their backyards" and "let's kill all the birds"?
In this lecture and Q&A we cover things like: the first ever nationwide famine in Chinese history; Mao's lasting influence on insurgents elsewhere; broken promises to minorities and peasantry; and what Taiwan means.
Note also that Sarah is doing an AMA over the next couple days on Youtube; see the pinned comment…
https://x.com/dwarkesh_sp/status/1885003351571439736
It really is a real-time rolling tragedy.
https://x.com/jdvance/status/1885073046400012538
Just google “ordo amoris.” Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense. Does Rory really think his moral duties to his own children are the same as his duties to a stranger who lives thousands of miles away? Does anyone?
I’ve said before and I’ll say it again: the problem with Rory and people like him is that he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130. This false arrogance drives so much elite failure over the last 40 years.
The interesitng question is whether there is symmetry breaking in nature to give L-gly and L-ala and so on a very, very small thermodynamic advantage.
It’s interesting that @jdvance thinks this gap is a predictor of failure. What IQ does Donald Trump think he has? And what IQ does he actually have?
Which reminds me, are there any odds on the Scopes monkey business being reversed? They've been a bit quiet on evolution of late, unless I have missed something.