@SeanT - People who think Camden Town is a dump haven't spent that much time there; neither can they have seen it when it really was a dump. The change over the last 20 years has been phenomenal.
The road next to Sainsburys, opposite the Stables Market, toward the Chalk Farm end is where crack dealers openly sell their product.
I lived in College Lane, Kentish Town for a couple of years with a mate who was an alcoholic crack smoker, and that's where he bought his Cilla from
The area around College Lane, Kentish Town is becoming quite gentrified with new apartments being offered nearby from about 700k .
I thought it was a lovely area. Five mins from the Heath, a beautiful walk to Hampstead or Highgate. Rough pubs to watch the football in Tufnell Park, almost perfect!
All the pubs in Tufnell Park are pretty upmarket now. Except the Boston Arms. That will never change.
The Boston was the one I used to go to... I loved it in there.. rough as arseholes!
What other pubs are there? The Junction was at the top of my road, bit of a foody place.. don't think I ever drunk anywhere else in Tufnell Pk...
You have to wonder how relevant Ed's cost of living crisis stuff will look this time next year.
When Osborne was forced to blame the snow for a reversal of economic fortunes less than a year into the job it began to look as though he would be an unlucky Chancellor, but his luck has been on the turn for a while, with one year still to come.
Osborne can't influence the weather. Snow is bad luck.
He can influence the level of inflation. Good economic management is a big part of his success story, not just luck.
Motor fuel prices, for example, are at a three-year low. Part of this is because of the policy decision not to increase fuel duty, but part of this is luck that the oil price has not driven higher.
Similarly food prices have stabilised - something that was said to be out of George's control when prices were rising quickly.
He has been lucky recently. I don't say this to denigrate him - I'd much rather the country had a lucky Chancellor than otherwise.
Fascinating discussion re Camden (where a good friend of mine lives). But please don't be so dismissive about having to trek several hundred yards in central London with luggage, perhaps in the rain. Every year I have the problem of trying to sort out travel arrangements for an elderly relative from Scotland to France without going through Heathrow (out of the question, as it is so confusing/distressing) as he refuses to go in the summer, when there are direct flights. A direct train perhaps with cross-platform change (with Customs if needed) would be an absolute blessing, as well as saving hours off the journey.
I won't bore people with the list of reasons why the proposed link was highly non-optimal, but I'll just say that we were promised North of London trains when the Chunnel opened, and the trains were even purchased. Aside from trials, no services were ever run. The logistics were complex, and the demand apparently wasn't there.
AIUI, the proposed link had no south-facing spurs, meaning that trains could run through between the lines, but not stop at either St Pancras or Euston. ISTR this was the same with the original NoL proposal, at Eurostars behest.
@SeanT - People who think Camden Town is a dump haven't spent that much time there; neither can they have seen it when it really was a dump. The change over the last 20 years has been phenomenal.
I go through it weekly - Sean is right north of the tube station. The High Street, however, is a disgrace. I now actually expect to be pestered by someone begging for drink when I change buses there, typically at a quarter past nine in the morning.
I suppose pound shops have to go somewhere but surely we don't need betting shops any more? There's this thing called the Internet...
Camden is where those who aspire to reside in Primrose Hill or Regents Park, but cannot afford to, live. The bits around Gloucester Crescent are OK, but as for the rest of it. Nein Danke.
I've worked there off and on since the late Eighties. It was grottier, but felt much safer then. I'd walk through Somers Town late at night, and not see a soul.
Daft. NO ONE can afford to live in Primrose Hill, it's one of the most expensive urban districts in the world. Nice new two bed flat? That'll be 3.7 million quid. For a two bed flat.
@dyedwoolie - Kudos for putting your head above the parapet. I agree with a lot of what you say, although I'd go the other way on a few.
Thanks. I'm particularly interested in Scotland because I could see a NO and the Lib Dem problems north of the border making for some oddball gains (like Salmonds old seat) and even a YES could still see some Tory gains in the borders on the back of the Lib Dem vote decline. Ed M is not Gordon Brown, I.e. Not a Scot and there will be a limited move from the 2010 Labour vote on that (perhaps not enough to stem an anti govt vote In raw numbers though, hence D and G not being value at anything under 4s, maybe 6s) Norfolk and Lincolnshire are ripe territories for a UKIP surge and might pose some problems for the Tories in their recent gains. Cornwall is moving away from the Lib Dems at a pace IMO. If the Tories want a majority, they need 38% and severe movement in the Midlands and NW as well as a decent haul in Scotland (can't see a Tory majority with out 5 or 6, which I can't see them getting, read into that my current thoughts on the result overall)
It's going to be very close. In order of probability, I'd go for:
1. Labour most seats in a hung Parliament Very close 2. Tories most seats in a hung Parliament Distant 3. Labour overall majority Very distant 4. Tory overall majority
A year ago I'd have had the Labour majority in second place, but it's very hard to see that happening now. Though not as hard as it is to see a Tory majority.
If the most seats calculation is "very close", then I'd have thought that (3) and (4) ought to be very close (together) too. Obviously the distribution of seats isn't exactly symmetrical but I'd have thought that Lab Maj & Con Maj would trade at approximately the same price [3.5, perhaps] if Most Seats were to be evens the pair. We may find out soon.
For all that the Tory Maj price doesn't make much appeal yet, and NOM looks to be the bet yet again.
And re the thread header, the bet isn't on crossover but on contact. On at 4/1, with 4 shots left, I reckon I'm in front, though I still expect to lose. Good value losers don't pay the bills (but then, at PP limits, winners don't pay the bills either).
The point about gentrification and money perhaps affecting the London electoral scene is interesting. As prices drive ever higher the electorate will indeed become less Labour friendly. Lord, imagine a London without its Loony Left!
The point about gentrification and money perhaps affecting the London electoral scene is interesting. As prices drive ever higher the electorate will indeed become less Labour friendly. Lord, imagine a London without its Loony Left!
I wonder if that will happen though? The council estates remain with larger families squished into the same space, as the gulf between rich and poor widens with little left in the middle.
If you want a long shot, Tory and Lab on almost equal seats with no one able to form a coalition with the Lib Dems on numbers. What price Cameron to offer a National Government and Ed to fall into the trap of rejecting it and pay the price in 6 months. Or, accept and reap the rewards in a year?
Current plan is a covered travelator. Not as convenient for your relative, but not a bad alternative and £700m cheaper.
Wouldn't an underground subway with travelators from station to station be the best solution? The walk from Terminal 1,2,3 tube station to terminal 1 is longer and plenty of people do that.
Sign post it as "transfers to KX/StP" have a few lifts and a couple of escalators and hey presto, £700m saved for about 5 minutes of walking or 10 minutes of standing.
Fascinating discussion re Camden (where a good friend of mine lives). But please don't be so dismissive about having to trek several hundred yards in central London with luggage, perhaps in the rain. Every year I have the problem of trying to sort out travel arrangements for an elderly relative from Scotland to France without going through Heathrow (out of the question, as it is so confusing/distressing) as he refuses to go in the summer, when there are direct flights. A direct train perhaps with cross-platform change (with Customs if needed) would be an absolute blessing, as well as saving hours off the journey.
Current plan is a covered travelator. Not as convenient for your relative, but not a bad alternative and £700m cheaper.
Not a through train, but indeed better than nothing.
And that's the trade off. A lot of money and a lot of disruption to a small group of people vs a marginal/infrequent benefit (rather more of a benefit for a small sub-set of travellers like your relative) to a large number of people.
This feels like a reasonable compromise. Not perfect for you, but a good improvement on the current situation and one that it bearable for the residents and the taxpayers.
It's going to be very close. In order of probability, I'd go for:
1. Labour most seats in a hung Parliament Very close 2. Tories most seats in a hung Parliament Distant 3. Labour overall majority Very distant 4. Tory overall majority
A year ago I'd have had the Labour majority in second place, but it's very hard to see that happening now. Though not as hard as it is to see a Tory majority.
If the most seats calculation is "very close", then I'd have thought that (3) and (4) ought to be very close (together) too. Obviously the distribution of seats isn't exactly symmetrical but I'd have thought that Lab Maj & Con Maj would trade at approximately the same price [3.5, perhaps] if Most Seats were to be evens the pair. We may find out soon.
For all that the Tory Maj price doesn't make much appeal yet, and NOM looks to be the bet yet again.
And re the thread header, the bet isn't on crossover but on contact. On at 4/1, with 4 shots left, I reckon I'm in front, though I still expect to lose. Good value losers don't pay the bills (but then, at PP limits, winners don't pay the bills either).
For me the bet has at all points since May 2010 been on NOM. I don't see that changing either.
Current plan is a covered travelator. Not as convenient for your relative, but not a bad alternative and £700m cheaper.
Wouldn't an underground subway with travelators from station to station be the best solution? The walk from Terminal 1,2,3 tube station to terminal 1 is longer and plenty of people do that.
Sign post it as "transfers to KX/StP" have a few lifts and a couple of escalators and hey presto, £700m saved for about 5 minutes of walking or 10 minutes of standing.
I'm guessing that may be very expensive. The subsurface in that area is massively busy with services and the various underground lines.
As the trains will be 200 metres long, if you have a seat at the far end, you could nearly spend as long walking along the platforms as you do between the stations...
The point about gentrification and money perhaps affecting the London electoral scene is interesting. As prices drive ever higher the electorate will indeed become less Labour friendly. Lord, imagine a London without its Loony Left!
London being London I don't think you can count on gentrification leading to a less Labour friendly electorate. Only the very wealthy and those reliant on benefits can now afford to live in inner London and of the former there will always be a high number of champaign socialists (they have to live somewhere and tend to congregate).
In a kind of role reversal from the 18th century, when people would amuse themselves by watching inmates at Bedlam, the hoi polloi can now visit Primrose Hill etc and goggle at the denizens there. Or...is it a reversal?
The point about gentrification and money perhaps affecting the London electoral scene is interesting. As prices drive ever higher the electorate will indeed become less Labour friendly. Lord, imagine a London without its Loony Left!
I wonder if that will happen though? The council estates remain with larger families squished into the same space, as the gulf between rich and poor widens with little left in the middle.
Recalling @SouthamObserver s's comments about the gap between richest and poorest, & the effect it has on society earlier, I think that the gentrification/council estate divide in places like Hackney, and to an extent when I was living there, Camden/K Town is more stark.
College Lane has only pavement, no road outside, with a council estate 25 yard away, and many was the time that kids from that estate (I assume) used to run down the road and kick our front door in.. prob just for a laugh, but the girls we lived with were pretty scared
You have to wonder how relevant Ed's cost of living crisis stuff will look this time next year.
When Osborne was forced to blame the snow for a reversal of economic fortunes less than a year into the job it began to look as though he would be an unlucky Chancellor, but his luck has been on the turn for a while, with one year still to come.
Osborne can't influence the weather. Snow is bad luck.
He can influence the level of inflation. Good economic management is a big part of his success story, not just luck.
I think you may find that snow is generally part of Winter weather and not bad luck or are you saying Osborne was the only chancellor to have been unlucky enough to get snow during the Winter. It is quite funny really as when GDP was on the floor there were plenty of excuses made. Soon as it rises, it is all thanks to Gideon.....strange eh.
It's timing, location and quantity. January before last (or was it the year before that?) was an uncommonly heavy fall, at an important time of year and in a location (the South) that is rarely affected to such an extent.
Last time the Tories had a majority they had 12 seats in Scotland. To make up that deficit in England they don't just need majority voting in England, they need more like healthy majority voting. Or a dramatic reversal in Scotland.
You have to wonder how relevant Ed's cost of living crisis stuff will look this time next year.
When Osborne was forced to blame the snow for a reversal of economic fortunes less than a year into the job it began to look as though he would be an unlucky Chancellor, but his luck has been on the turn for a while, with one year still to come.
Osborne can't influence the weather. Snow is bad luck.
He can influence the level of inflation. Good economic management is a big part of his success story, not just luck.
Motor fuel prices, for example, are at a three-year low. Part of this is because of the policy decision not to increase fuel duty, but part of this is luck that the oil price has not driven higher.
Similarly food prices have stabilised - something that was said to be out of George's control when prices were rising quickly.
He has been lucky recently. I don't say this to denigrate him - I'd much rather the country had a lucky Chancellor than otherwise.
Although a lot of the advantage in oil prices and food/other commodities comes from the strength of sterling (or the weakness of the dollar)...which results from the speed of the recovery and the view interest rates will rise.
Now, of course, with lower inflation, perhaps there is the view that interest rates won't rise as quickly and hence cable will reverse...
You have to wonder how relevant Ed's cost of living crisis stuff will look this time next year.
When Osborne was forced to blame the snow for a reversal of economic fortunes less than a year into the job it began to look as though he would be an unlucky Chancellor, but his luck has been on the turn for a while, with one year still to come.
Osborne can't influence the weather. Snow is bad luck.
He can influence the level of inflation. Good economic management is a big part of his success story, not just luck.
I think you may find that snow is generally part of Winter weather and not bad luck or are you saying Osborne was the only chancellor to have been unlucky enough to get snow during the Winter. It is quite funny really as when GDP was on the floor there were plenty of excuses made. Soon as it rises, it is all thanks to Gideon.....strange eh.
It's timing, location and quantity. January before last (or was it the year before that?) was an uncommonly heavy fall, at an important time of year and in a location (the South) that is rarely affected to such an extent.
So yes, bad luck.
And of course the ONS apply seasonal adjustment to the GDP figures, so a certain level of bad weather is allowed for, its only exceptional weather that will have a noticeable impact.
I love Cottons in Chalk Farm Road which does the best rum cocktails I have ever had. Stables is interesting in a touristy kind of way although I have never bought anything there. The area around Camden Lock is lively and bouncing and good for a drink especially on a summer's day. But I am gob smacked at the prices being quoted for housing in the area as a whole.
Where are all the people in London doing the routine jobs going to live? I see those huge souless brick blocks on the way to City Airport. Living like that must be truly horrible. This is going to cause problems if it goes on like this.
Current plan is a covered travelator. Not as convenient for your relative, but not a bad alternative and £700m cheaper.
Wouldn't an underground subway with travelators from station to station be the best solution? The walk from Terminal 1,2,3 tube station to terminal 1 is longer and plenty of people do that.
Sign post it as "transfers to KX/StP" have a few lifts and a couple of escalators and hey presto, £700m saved for about 5 minutes of walking or 10 minutes of standing.
I'm guessing that may be very expensive. The subsurface in that area is massively busy with services and the various underground lines.
As the trains will be 200 metres long, if you have a seat at the far end, you could nearly spend as long walking along the platforms as you do between the stations...
It wouldn't be £700m expensive.
Terminal 5 is around 400m long, people don't complain about that amount of walking, the rest would have travelators anyway.
Fascinating discussion re Camden (where a good friend of mine lives). But please don't be so dismissive about having to trek several hundred yards in central London with luggage, perhaps in the rain. Every year I have the problem of trying to sort out travel arrangements for an elderly relative from Scotland to France without going through Heathrow (out of the question, as it is so confusing/distressing) as he refuses to go in the summer, when there are direct flights. A direct train perhaps with cross-platform change (with Customs if needed) would be an absolute blessing, as well as saving hours off the journey.
Current plan is a covered travelator. Not as convenient for your relative, but not a bad alternative and £700m cheaper.
Not a through train, but indeed better than nothing.
And that's the trade off. A lot of money and a lot of disruption to a small group of people vs a marginal/infrequent benefit (rather more of a benefit for a small sub-set of travellers like your relative) to a large number of people.
This feels like a reasonable compromise. Not perfect for you, but a good improvement on the current situation and one that it bearable for the residents and the taxpayers.
Quite so, if one is concentrating on project costs. Perhaps the question is really whether trains from the north to the rest of Europe should bypass London. At the moment it looks as if everyone must still go to/change in London just because the Victorians bungled it and because it is the centre of the universe/black hole at the core of the galaxy (select which you prefer). Get drawn into the gravity well, change, and then trek out again at added cost in time and hassle. Apart from anything else, I would have thought that the added couple of hours is going to damage competitiveness with airlines at the sort of timing involved in, say, Newcastle - Lyons trips. But we will have to wait and see what is done in the long run about bypassing Euston/St P further out, and about maintaining KX-East Coast services of course.
Re Mr Jessop: on the northern Chunnel trains of yore, I seem to recall that they did run, but briefly, and that there was only one train from Edinburgh a day and that it left at an absurdly early hour - even before the booking office opened. I may be wrong on this, but it seemed so odd that it stuck in my memory ever since.
In a kind of role reversal from the 18th century, when people would amuse themselves by watching inmates at Bedlam, the hoi polloi can now visit Primrose Hill etc and goggle at the denizens there. Or...is it a reversal?
That actually happens. Go to Primrose Hill on a weekend in the summer and you will see outer Londoners wandering around staring at the locals who sit outside their gastropubs on Regent's Park Road looking self-consciously but ostentatiously boho-rich, while the yummy mummies theatrically kiss their multiple babies (underlining the point that they can afford lots of kids, unlike everyone else (apart from the underclass on benefits)).
The York & Albany - 50 yards from my flat - is another fantastic place to witness this strange and faintly nauseating social interaction.
Current plan is a covered travelator. Not as convenient for your relative, but not a bad alternative and £700m cheaper.
Wouldn't an underground subway with travelators from station to station be the best solution? The walk from Terminal 1,2,3 tube station to terminal 1 is longer and plenty of people do that.
Sign post it as "transfers to KX/StP" have a few lifts and a couple of escalators and hey presto, £700m saved for about 5 minutes of walking or 10 minutes of standing.
I haven't checked the detail, but I'd assume that doing it as a subway is what they meant by a "covered travelator" (I only saw a secondary source)
Who is going to want to go from, say Edinburgh, to France by train? The business people can fly and flying is and, even with HS2, will be quicker and cheaper. So its down to tourists. How many of them will there be and how many will be put off by having to change trains? Enough to make a business case? I doubt it.
The row about the possible abandonment of the link seems more generated by a northern chauvinism than any economic logic. At a time when we are running £100bn a year deficit a nice to have rail link makes no sense.
You have to wonder how relevant Ed's cost of living crisis stuff will look this time next year.
When Osborne was forced to blame the snow for a reversal of economic fortunes less than a year into the job it began to look as though he would be an unlucky Chancellor, but his luck has been on the turn for a while, with one year still to come.
Osborne can't influence the weather. Snow is bad luck.
He can influence the level of inflation. Good economic management is a big part of his success story, not just luck.
I think you may find that snow is generally part of Winter weather and not bad luck or are you saying Osborne was the only chancellor to have been unlucky enough to get snow during the Winter. It is quite funny really as when GDP was on the floor there were plenty of excuses made. Soon as it rises, it is all thanks to Gideon.....strange eh.
Rather a weak point for two quite separate reasons. a. is it astonishing that the tories should talk up their own side? Wouldn't it be a bit more astonishing if they didn't? and b. in any field of human endeavour you generally need both luck and skill, and it's usual even when no partisan considerations are involved at all to focus on skill in the successes and bad luck in the failures. Most people would say that Mallory was unlucky in 1924, and that Hillary demonstrated his supreme skill as a mountaineer in 1953.
Current plan is a covered travelator. Not as convenient for your relative, but not a bad alternative and £700m cheaper.
Wouldn't an underground subway with travelators from station to station be the best solution? The walk from Terminal 1,2,3 tube station to terminal 1 is longer and plenty of people do that.
Sign post it as "transfers to KX/StP" have a few lifts and a couple of escalators and hey presto, £700m saved for about 5 minutes of walking or 10 minutes of standing.
I'm guessing that may be very expensive. The subsurface in that area is massively busy with services and the various underground lines.
As the trains will be 200 metres long, if you have a seat at the far end, you could nearly spend as long walking along the platforms as you do between the stations...
It wouldn't be £700m expensive.
Terminal 5 is around 400m long, people don't complain about that amount of walking, the rest would have travelators anyway.
I look forward to you drawing a 3D map showing how the travelator will negotiate the services, buildings and underground lines in the area, especially taking into account future items such as Crossrail 2. You might find the costs stack up considerably.
A covered travellator at grade alongside the Euston Road might be cheaper, and much more useful for people using the mainline stations as well. But I've got no idea how that'd work, given the roads that lead into Euston Road.
Current plan is a covered travelator. Not as convenient for your relative, but not a bad alternative and £700m cheaper.
Wouldn't an underground subway with travelators from station to station be the best solution? The walk from Terminal 1,2,3 tube station to terminal 1 is longer and plenty of people do that.
Sign post it as "transfers to KX/StP" have a few lifts and a couple of escalators and hey presto, £700m saved for about 5 minutes of walking or 10 minutes of standing.
I'm guessing that may be very expensive. The subsurface in that area is massively busy with services and the various underground lines.
As the trains will be 200 metres long, if you have a seat at the far end, you could nearly spend as long walking along the platforms as you do between the stations...
It wouldn't be £700m expensive.
Terminal 5 is around 400m long, people don't complain about that amount of walking, the rest would have travelators anyway.
I go through T5 on average 6x per week (3 times each way).
And yes, I notice the walking. The weaving through the shop displays irritates me more, but there's a lot of walking involved (the walk to the lounge where you have to go 50 metres in the wrong direction to get there is the most annoying).
Fascinating discussion re Camden (where a good friend of mine lives). But please don't be so dismissive about having to trek several hundred yards in central London with luggage, perhaps in the rain. Every year I have the problem of trying to sort out travel arrangements for an elderly relative from Scotland to France without going through Heathrow (out of the question, as it is so confusing/distressing) as he refuses to go in the summer, when there are direct flights. A direct train perhaps with cross-platform change (with Customs if needed) would be an absolute blessing, as well as saving hours off the journey.
Current plan is a covered travelator. Not as convenient for your relative, but not a bad alternative and £700m cheaper.
Not a through train, but indeed better than nothing.
And that's the trade off. A lot of money and a lot of disruption to a small group of people vs a marginal/infrequent benefit (rather more of a benefit for a small sub-set of travellers like your relative) to a large number of people.
This feels like a reasonable compromise. Not perfect for you, but a good improvement on the current situation and one that it bearable for the residents and the taxpayers.
Quite so, if one is concentrating on project costs. Perhaps the question is really whether trains from the north to the rest of Europe should bypass London. At the moment it looks as if everyone must still go to/change in London just because the Victorians bungled it and because it is the centre of the universe/black hole at the core of the galaxy (select which you prefer). Get drawn into the gravity well, change, and then trek out again at added cost in time and hassle. Apart from anything else, I would have thought that the added couple of hours is going to damage competitiveness with airlines at the sort of timing involved in, say, Newcastle - Lyons trips. But we will have to wait and see what is done in the long run about bypassing Euston/St P further out, and about maintaining KX-East Coast services of course.
Re Mr Jessop: on the northern Chunnel trains of yore, I seem to recall that they did run, but briefly, and that there was only one train from Edinburgh a day and that it left at an absurdly early hour - even before the booking office opened. I may be wrong on this, but it seemed so odd that it stuck in my memory ever since.
Likewise, IIRC there was, OUAT, a train from Harwich to Liverpool and one from Harwich to Glasgow. Don’t think either still run.
Can’t the relative be got/get himself to Stansted? There’s also a direct service Edinburgh to Southend. No services (yet) to France, but there is one to Geneva
Presently my ARSE has you back but just outside the TCTC range. Best get PtP back just in case.
How do you see the seat presently ?
He certainly did!
I'm reasonably hopeful. It's difficult to say this without fitalass telling me off, but there is not a detectable incumbency bonus here, rather the reverse. There is vastly more Labour doorstep work going on - e.g. I had 20 people out at the weekend, while the Tory Association appears to be very elderly and inactive - so our GOTV should be more accurate. Against that, my personal vote will have eroded as people move, die, forget, etc., and the Tories are better-funded and working hard on postal appeals and attempts to get people to take postal votes.
I'd expect to win by a few thousand if the election was tomorrow or if Labour has any national lead at all. Too early to say about a year from now, obviously, but our vote seems pretty solid, so Tory hopes must rest on a big squeeze on UKIP and even former abstainers.
I'm reasonably hopeful. It's difficult to say this without fitalass telling me off, but there is not a detectable incumbency bonus here, rather the reverse. There is vastly more Labour doorstep work going on - e.g. I had 20 people out at the weekend, while the Tory Association appears to be very elderly and inactive - so our GOTV should be more accurate. Against that, my personal vote will have eroded as people move, die, forget, etc., and the Tories are better-funded and working hard on postal appeals and attempts to get people to take postal votes.
I'd expect to win by a few thousand if the election was tomorrow or if Labour has any national lead at all. Too early to say about a year from now, obviously, but our vote seems pretty solid, so Tory hopes must rest on a big squeeze on UKIP and even former abstainers.
What did you win by in 2005, a couple of thousand? I'd say if you get this back it would be with a majority half of that or lower and Lab would be largest party. If you get a 2005 majority, Lab are in govt alone. You'll get some of the yellows for sure, you might inherit some BNP (as might Anna) but you'll both lose some to the kippers in all likelihood, but not to a Norfolk/Lincs level or anywhere near.
Here's a few transport improvements for northern England:
1) Straighten and widen to three lanes the A1 in Yorkshire - a crowded and dangerous road.
2) Improved road and rail communications between Sheffield and Manchester - if there's merit in the combined northern city idea then a Manchester-Leeds-Sheffield triangle would be the best basis
3) Put the prefix 'London' in the names of northern and midland airports, improve communications to them and reduce the taxes on them, would bring in huge amounts of foreign investors and tourists if anything connected with 'London' is the magnet we're told it is
4) Go to each northern county and town and ask the people which transport improvements would be beneficial and then implement them
5) Repeat (4)
6) Buy Josias Jessop a super duper new Horny railway with all the accessories so that you can play at trains
I would estimate the cost to be much less than HS2
Ladbrokes now have odds available for every Lib Dem held seat. They are clear favourites in 35, joint favs in a further 3. I've calculated a raw probability in each seat and added them up, and somewhat surprisingly that only gets them to 31 seats. There are a large number of seats in which they are only very slight favourites.
There's the added possibility of them picking up the odd gain, which certainly isn't out of the question. Camborne & Redruth, Oxford West, Watford all live possibilities.
Ladbrokes now have odds available for every Lib Dem held seat. They are clear favourites in 35, joint favs in a further 3. I've calculated a raw probability in each seat and added them up, and somewhat surprisingly that only gets them to 31 seats. There are a large number of seats in which they are only very slight favourites.
There's the added possibility of them picking up the odd gain, which certainly isn't out of the question. Camborne & Redruth, Oxford West, Watford all live possibilities.
I have been tempted by the 7-1 on offer from PP for a minority Labour administration in 2015.In the event of Labour just being short of an overall majority,there may well be other ways of sustaining a workable government without any formal coalition."Memoranda of Understanding" works when a smaller party to any agreement agrees to abstain in any government votes-for a price.There is also the Clegg problem and the fact the L/Ds coalition negotiating team are full of closet Tories.The L/Ds may themselves choose to join the Tories again in opposition.Ed might choose to go it alone and will be under pressure from some Labour MPs to do so.Can Clegg be trusted anyway? It's an outcome that needs covering I think so half a point at 7-1.
Ladbrokes now have odds available for every Lib Dem held seat. They are clear favourites in 35, joint favs in a further 3. I've calculated a raw probability in each seat and added them up, and somewhat surprisingly that only gets them to 31 seats. There are a large number of seats in which they are only very slight favourites.
There's the added possibility of them picking up the odd gain, which certainly isn't out of the question. Camborne & Redruth, Oxford West, Watford all live possibilities.
Good stuff. Shadsy.
However, adding up the raw probabilities to get an expected total is mathematically wrong, isn't it? They are very much related contingencies, so you'd be hugely underestimating the expected total that way.
1. The Euston - St Pancras travelator is allegedly elevated above Phoenix Road and Brill Place 2. Through services between the regions and Europe didn't happen because we aren't in Schengen. The trains need to carry domestic passengers to be viable, customs checks mean they can't carry domestic passengers, so the whole thing got abandoned. 3. There used to be Eurostar connector services to Waterloo from places like Edinburgh which crawled along the north and west london lines to reach Waterloo 4. Camden - and Brixton for that matter - were going to be essentially flattened in the 60s by Ringway 1. From the CBRD site:
"It [Ringway 1] would emerge at Eton Avenue, and cross Adelaide Road. Bus bays would be provided at the now-closed Primrose Hill station, and the motorway would be elevated over what was then the Camden Goods Yard, owned by British Rail, but which is now a large supermarket. BR were not very happy about having a motorway - even on stilts - running over their goods yard, and so an alternative route, slightly further to the north, was proposed in case this was rejected. On plans the only surviving building sandwiched between these two alternative lines is the Camden Roundhouse.
There would be a junction with the proposed Camden Town Bypass on Chalk Farm Road. This would be a very expensive interchange to construct, due to the tight space involved: the site would be heavily constrained by the various railways, the goods yard, and the Regent's Canal. The resulting free-flowing interchange would have employed a double-deck viaduct, carrying the Camden Town Bypass over local roads, and the North Cross Route above that. All Ringway 1 traffic would be able to access the Bypass heading in towards London, but access to the northern arm of the Bypass heading away up Camden Road would only have been to and from the west. Local access roads at this point were to connect only to the Bypass."
Presently my ARSE has you back but just outside the TCTC range. Best get PtP back just in case.
How do you see the seat presently ?
He certainly did!
I'm reasonably hopeful. It's difficult to say this without fitalass telling me off, but there is not a detectable incumbency bonus here, rather the reverse. There is vastly more Labour doorstep work going on - e.g. I had 20 people out at the weekend, while the Tory Association appears to be very elderly and inactive - so our GOTV should be more accurate. Against that, my personal vote will have eroded as people move, die, forget, etc., and the Tories are better-funded and working hard on postal appeals and attempts to get people to take postal votes.
I'd expect to win by a few thousand if the election was tomorrow or if Labour has any national lead at all. Too early to say about a year from now, obviously, but our vote seems pretty solid, so Tory hopes must rest on a big squeeze on UKIP and even former abstainers.
Thanks for that update Nick.
PB will expect regular updates from you and our favourite feather boa wearing equine forecaster. Perhaps at the start of the formal campaign you might place in a sealed envelope your expected majority to be held securely in PtP's garter ?
Here's a few transport improvements for northern England:
1) Straighten and widen to three lanes the A1 in Yorkshire - a crowded and dangerous road.
2) Improved road and rail communications between Sheffield and Manchester - if there's merit in the combined northern city idea then a Manchester-Leeds-Sheffield triangle would be the best basis
3) Put the prefix 'London' in the names of northern and midland airports, improve communications to them and reduce the taxes on them, would bring in huge amounts of foreign investors and tourists if anything connected with 'London' is the magnet we're told it is
4) Go to each northern county and town and ask the people which transport improvements would be beneficial and then implement them
5) Repeat (4)
6) Buy Josias Jessop a super duper new Horny railway with all the accessories so that you can play at trains
I would estimate the cost to be much less than HS2
I don't play trains. I shuffle electrons.
1) Agree. I'd also look at doubling much of the A1 between Morpeth and Haddington, completing the A1 as at least a dual carriageway.
2) This is being done. See the Northern Hub.
3) Ridiculous game-playing.
4) The councils need to drive this. Many councils (e.g. here in Cambridge) are terrible at it. Central government should act as an enabler.
Ladbrokes now have odds available for every Lib Dem held seat. They are clear favourites in 35, joint favs in a further 3. I've calculated a raw probability in each seat and added them up, and somewhat surprisingly that only gets them to 31 seats. There are a large number of seats in which they are only very slight favourites.
There's the added possibility of them picking up the odd gain, which certainly isn't out of the question. Camborne & Redruth, Oxford West, Watford all live possibilities.
Good stuff. Shadsy.
However, adding up the raw probabilities to get an expected total is mathematically wrong, isn't it? They are very much related contingencies, so you'd be hugely underestimating the expected total that way.
Couldn't you just as easily be hugely over estimating the expected total as well? Seems to be the obvious way to do it to me
I'll be amazed if the Lib Dems gain in Cornwall. The Coalition has made them very unpopular with the ornery leftwing Celtic voter, and I bet the pensions stuff is going down a storm with all the retirees, buttressing the Tory position. I reckon the Libs will lose votes to Labour (and maybe MK and UKIP), and the Tory vote will hold up.
OTOH I haven't a clue who is standing, this is just hunchwork.
Would agree. MK will start showing a respectable vote, UKIP will gain well, Labour will sweep some up but are coming from 6th in the Euros, Tories on the way back in Cornwall. Lib Dem wipeout for me.
Rubbish. The travelator will not cost £0. It could quite easily end up costing £300m, if it is any good. And it won't be, it will be a needlessly complex and faffy way of penny pinching £400m, thus wrecking an otherwise good scheme. The great joy of HS2 was that it would link the north with the continental high speed network.
The project is rapidly becoming a shambles, because people cannot grasp the concept of marginal cost, and are worried about Sean's house price, in a lefty ultra Red socialist citadel for the very rich.
Presently my ARSE has you back but just outside the TCTC range. Best get PtP back just in case.
How do you see the seat presently ?
He certainly did!
I'm reasonably hopeful. It's difficult to say this without fitalass telling me off, but there is not a detectable incumbency bonus here, rather the reverse. There is vastly more Labour doorstep work going on - e.g. I had 20 people out at the weekend, while the Tory Association appears to be very elderly and inactive - so our GOTV should be more accurate. Against that, my personal vote will have eroded as people move, die, forget, etc., and the Tories are better-funded and working hard on postal appeals and attempts to get people to take postal votes.
I'd expect to win by a few thousand if the election was tomorrow or if Labour has any national lead at all. Too early to say about a year from now, obviously, but our vote seems pretty solid, so Tory hopes must rest on a big squeeze on UKIP and even former abstainers.
Are you sure that people forgetting will erode your personal vote?
I have been tempted by the 7-1 on offer from PP for a minority Labour administration in 2015.In the event of Labour just being short of an overall majority,there may well be other ways of sustaining a workable government without any formal coalition."Memoranda of Understanding" works when a smaller party to any agreement agrees to abstain in any government votes-for a price.There is also the Clegg problem and the fact the L/Ds coalition negotiating team are full of closet Tories.The L/Ds may themselves choose to join the Tories again in opposition.Ed might choose to go it alone and will be under pressure from some Labour MPs to do so.Can Clegg be trusted anyway? It's an outcome that needs covering I think so half a point at 7-1.
That matches my prediction from ages back.
LAB 310 CON 278 LD 35
Shooould be all green with everything but a CON majority though
Here's a few transport improvements for northern England:
1) Straighten and widen to three lanes the A1 in Yorkshire - a crowded and dangerous road.
2) Improved road and rail communications between Sheffield and Manchester - if there's merit in the combined northern city idea then a Manchester-Leeds-Sheffield triangle would be the best basis
3) Put the prefix 'London' in the names of northern and midland airports, improve communications to them and reduce the taxes on them, would bring in huge amounts of foreign investors and tourists if anything connected with 'London' is the magnet we're told it is
4) Go to each northern county and town and ask the people which transport improvements would be beneficial and then implement them
5) Repeat (4)
6) Buy Josias Jessop a super duper new Horny railway with all the accessories so that you can play at trains
I would estimate the cost to be much less than HS2
Re. 1. I think the A1 now has three lanes through all of Yorkshire, barring a stretch of less than 20 miles south of Darlington, and I believe there are plans for widening that last stretch. It is certainly a much easier drive now than it was 10 or 15 years ago.
However, adding up the raw probabilities to get an expected total is mathematically wrong, isn't it? They are very much related contingencies, so you'd be hugely underestimating the expected total that way.
Not really, it's the way the academics did it to produce their extraordinarily accurate exit forecasts in both 2005 and 2010.
However, the interesting thing is that in 2010, summing raw probabilities from the seats betting market (Betfair), didn't fare so well. You would have done better to simply assign seats to the favourite.
There was an academic paper which ascribed this mismatch to the "favourite-longshot" bias, and came up with a formula to neutralize it...
Rubbish. The travelator will not cost £0. It could quite easily end up costing £300m, if it is any good. And it won't be, it will be a needlessly complex and faffy way of penny pinching £400m, thus wrecking an otherwise good scheme. The great joy of HS2 was that it would link the north with the continental high speed network.
The project is rapidly becoming a shambles, because people cannot grasp the concept of marginal cost, and are worried about Sean's house price, in a lefty ultra Red socialist citadel for the very rich.
They will link it eventually, it just won't go through some of the most expensive real estate in Europe occupied by lots of noisy, influential media-political types.
The failure was in not predicting how much vocal and potent opposition the Camden spur would create. The planners should have anticipated this and looked elsewhere, as they will do, in about 20 years.
Agree about the dim risk planning. Shambolic project management. How can we link the link, though, without going through NW1, or similarly noisy lefty strongholds?
Ladbrokes now have odds available for every Lib Dem held seat. They are clear favourites in 35, joint favs in a further 3. I've calculated a raw probability in each seat and added them up, and somewhat surprisingly that only gets them to 31 seats. There are a large number of seats in which they are only very slight favourites.
There's the added possibility of them picking up the odd gain, which certainly isn't out of the question. Camborne & Redruth, Oxford West, Watford all live possibilities.
Good stuff. Shadsy.
However, adding up the raw probabilities to get an expected total is mathematically wrong, isn't it? They are very much related contingencies, so you'd be hugely underestimating the expected total that way.
Couldn't you just as easily be hugely over estimating the expected total as well? Seems to be the obvious way to do it to me
Yes, I think isam is right. The related contingencies of them winning any combination of seats is conterbalanced by the chances of them winning some and losing others.
Current plan is a covered travelator. Not as convenient for your relative, but not a bad alternative and £700m cheaper.
Wouldn't an underground subway with travelators from station to station be the best solution? The walk from Terminal 1,2,3 tube station to terminal 1 is longer and plenty of people do that.
Sign post it as "transfers to KX/StP" have a few lifts and a couple of escalators and hey presto, £700m saved for about 5 minutes of walking or 10 minutes of standing.
I'm guessing that may be very expensive. The subsurface in that area is massively busy with services and the various underground lines.
As the trains will be 200 metres long, if you have a seat at the far end, you could nearly spend as long walking along the platforms as you do between the stations...
It wouldn't be £700m expensive.
Terminal 5 is around 400m long, people don't complain about that amount of walking, the rest would have travelators anyway.
I look forward to you drawing a 3D map showing how the travelator will negotiate the services, buildings and underground lines in the area, especially taking into account future items such as Crossrail 2. You might find the costs stack up considerably.
A covered travellator at grade alongside the Euston Road might be cheaper, and much more useful for people using the mainline stations as well. But I've got no idea how that'd work, given the roads that lead into Euston Road.
It will all depend on what the predicted traffic flows are along it: the locations of the sources and the destinations.
Golly, Mr. J., talk about over engineering a solution. From Euston to St. Pancras is about half a mile. There will be some for whom that is just too far to walk and for them there is the tube, the buses and the taxis. Spending millions to enable a small number of people to travel a short distance for free is insane.
Current plan is a covered travelator. Not as convenient for your relative, but not a bad alternative and £700m cheaper.
Wouldn't an underground subway with travelators from station to station be the best solution? The walk from Terminal 1,2,3 tube station to terminal 1 is longer and plenty of people do that.
Sign post it as "transfers to KX/StP" have a few lifts and a couple of escalators and hey presto, £700m saved for about 5 minutes of walking or 10 minutes of standing.
I'm guessing that may be very expensive. The subsurface in that area is massively busy with services and the various underground lines.
As the trains will be 200 metres long, if you have a seat at the far end, you could nearly spend as long walking along the platforms as you do between the stations...
It wouldn't be £700m expensive.
Terminal 5 is around 400m long, people don't complain about that amount of walking, the rest would have travelators anyway.
I look forward to you drawing a 3D map showing how the travelator will negotiate the services, buildings and underground lines in the area, especially taking into account future items such as Crossrail 2. You might find the costs stack up considerably.
A covered travellator at grade alongside the Euston Road might be cheaper, and much more useful for people using the mainline stations as well. But I've got no idea how that'd work, given the roads that lead into Euston Road.
It will all depend on what the predicted traffic flows are along it: the locations of the sources and the destinations.
Golly, Mr. J., talk about over engineering a solution. From Euston to St. Pancras is about half a mile. There will be some for whom that is just too far to walk and for them there is the tube, the buses and the taxis. Spending millions to enable a small number of people to travel a short distance for free is insane.
Wrong. Dead wrong. Not having a through link will massively increase the hassle - and sandbag journey times, as contingency has to be built in to the connecting services. It's the difference between an integrated railway and a fragmented, British, half-a-job for the sake of £400m, which is peanuts, given the total capital investment on the project.
The tube option, currently, is farcically useless. It is quicker to walk.
Re. 1. I think the A1 now has three lanes through all of Yorkshire, barring a stretch of less than 20 miles south of Darlington, and I believe there are plans for widening that last stretch. It is certainly a much easier drive now than it was 10 or 15 years ago.
It goes to two lames around Donny and into Notts. I'm driving it tomorrow, always fun.
I'll be amazed if the Lib Dems gain in Cornwall. The Coalition has made them very unpopular with the ornery leftwing Celtic voter, and I bet the pensions stuff is going down a storm with all the retirees, buttressing the Tory position. I reckon the Libs will lose votes to Labour (and maybe MK and UKIP), and the Tory vote will hold up.
OTOH I haven't a clue who is standing, this is just hunchwork.
Would agree. MK will start showing a respectable vote, UKIP will gain well, Labour will sweep some up but are coming from 6th in the Euros, Tories on the way back in Cornwall. Lib Dem wipeout for me.
BUT - there have been good local election results for the LDs in Cornwall, which indicates that they are bucking much of the national picture. I've no local insight but I'd need some convincing that the LDs really are getting squeezed disproportionately there.
My guess is that the London locals will be grim for the LDs. May be worth taking Shadsy up on some long-range punts on their opposition in seats like Hornsey, Sutton and Cheam, Kingston, Carshalton, even Twickenham, in the hope of their odds coming in after May allowing an all green by then jumping on the LDs.
Rubbish. The travelator will not cost £0. It could quite easily end up costing £300m, if it is any good. And it won't be, it will be a needlessly complex and faffy way of penny pinching £400m, thus wrecking an otherwise good scheme. The great joy of HS2 was that it would link the north with the continental high speed network.
The project is rapidly becoming a shambles, because people cannot grasp the concept of marginal cost, and are worried about Sean's house price, in a lefty ultra Red socialist citadel for the very rich.
They will link it eventually, it just won't go through some of the most expensive real estate in Europe occupied by lots of noisy, influential media-political types.
The failure was in not predicting how much vocal and potent opposition the Camden spur would create. The planners should have anticipated this and looked elsewhere, as they will do, in about 20 years.
Agree about the dim risk planning. Shambolic project management. How can we link the link, though, without going through NW1, or similarly noisy lefty strongholds?
I'm no expert, but it seems Stratford makes the most sense: lots of space, a link to HS1, a link via Crossrail into Heathrow, no rich lefty journalists or prime ministers manque to complain.
I expect it will be like HS1, at first that terminated in Waterloo (remember that cramped Grimshaw shed), then it finally went to St Pancras.
HS2 will have a spur going down to Euston, but it will also fork to Stratford. Josias will know if this is feasible, and why the hell it didn't happen in the first place.
Why not go the whole hog?
Replace HS2 with a 300mph travellator linking Euston, Kings Cross, New Street and Manchester Piccadilly?
A sensible question re the SNP vote 2015 If NO wins, I expect pressure on the SNP vote - why vote for independence when the question has been answered for a generation? However, if YES wins (I'm 50/50 on it ATM), what happens to the SNP Westminster vote? Is it job done and the SNP vote stays home? Does it drift back to the Tartan Tories, Labour etc, and will the Lib Dem collapse (much of which went to the SNP in the Scotlection) reverse somewhat?
Yes, I think isam is right. The related contingencies of them winning any combination of seats is conterbalanced by the chances of them winning some and losing others.
I didn't make myself quite clear. What I meant was that the range of possible total outcomes you might expect, when the contingencies are related (as opposed to the summation of all the scenarios) is very different from the sum of the individual cases.
For example, suppose you have an extreme hypothetical case where there are 40 seats each with a 60% chance of a LibDem victory, and where the correlation is 1.0. In that case, the probability of getting 40 LibDem seats is 60%, because they all move together in a block (the result is either going to be 0 seats or 40 seats). So your most likely outcome is 40 seats, not 0.6 x 40 = 24 seats.
If they are completely independent contigencies, ie correlation = 0, the chances of getting a total of 40 is 0.6 to the power 40, which is for all practical purposes zero (1.336749454e¯9 to be more precise).
Re. 1. I think the A1 now has three lanes through all of Yorkshire, barring a stretch of less than 20 miles south of Darlington, and I believe there are plans for widening that last stretch. It is certainly a much easier drive now than it was 10 or 15 years ago.
It goes to two lames around Donny and into Notts. I'm driving it tomorrow, always fun.
If you are going to, or coming from, somewhere north of Leeds it's better to use the A1/M1 link road.
I remember we made a bit of money out of the LD v Cons Cornwall match bet in 2010. Tories went off very short to win a majority of the 6 seats but, luckily for us, the LDs scrambled a handy 3-3 draw. We'll probably do something similar at some point this time - looks like a lot of people will want to back the 6-0 correct score.
I'll be amazed if the Lib Dems gain in Cornwall. The Coalition has made them very unpopular with the ornery leftwing Celtic voter, and I bet the pensions stuff is going down a storm with all the retirees, buttressing the Tory position. I reckon the Libs will lose votes to Labour (and maybe MK and UKIP), and the Tory vote will hold up.
OTOH I haven't a clue who is standing, this is just hunchwork.
Would agree. MK will start showing a respectable vote, UKIP will gain well, Labour will sweep some up but are coming from 6th in the Euros, Tories on the way back in Cornwall. Lib Dem wipeout for me.
You clearly did not bother to look at the UA results in Cornwall last year . MK made no advance at all . UKIP and to a smaller extent Labour made gains from Con and Lib Dem more at the Conservative's expense and the Lib Dems made net gains . The results were pretty much a disaster for the Conservatives the opposite of showing they are on the way back in Cornwall . My tip if there is a market is Lib Dems to gain Cornwall SE next year . Ah I see Shadsy's odds on Cornwall SE , 5/1 on Lib Dems , get your money on now .
I am (Just about) opposed to HS2 but £400 million is indeed monkey nuts. I bought a nice coat from Camden market about a decade back, no idea how it is now - its nice enough I guess but @Bobajobb raises an interesting and valid point right there.
If they're going to do it they might as well do it properly.
I fail to see why anyone is getting worked up about HS2. Work on the white elephant is not going to start anytime soon, if ever. The Hybrid Bill can't have more than a 50% chance of making it onto the statute book in the next Parliament.
If you are going to, or coming from, somewhere north of Leeds it's better to use the A1/M1 link road.
A47 out of Norfolk, A17 to Newark, A1 to Scotch Corner, A66 to the M6 and associated A74(M) to Glasgow, A82 to Fort William. 10 hours with 4 stops, salmon for supper and a skinful in the bar :-)
Yes, I think isam is right. The related contingencies of them winning any combination of seats is conterbalanced by the chances of them winning some and losing others.
I didn't make myself quite clear. What I meant was that the range of possible total outcomes you might expect, when the contingencies are related (as opposed to the summation of all the scenarios) is very different from the sum of the individual cases.
For example, suppose you have an extreme hypothetical case where there are 40 seats each with a 60% chance of a LibDem victory, and where the correlation is 1.0. In that case, the probability of getting 40 LibDem seats is 60%, because they all move together in a block (the result is either going to be 0 seats or 40 seats). So your most likely outcome is 40 seats, not 0.6 x 40 = 24 seats.
If they are completely independent contigencies, ie correlation = 0, the chances of getting a total of 40 is 0.6 to the power 40, which is for all practical purposes zero (1.336749454e¯9 to be more precise).
So if you were to price up a spread bet in the scenario you have described , what would your price be?
So if you were to price up a spread bet in the scenario you have described , what would your price be?
24, of course.
As I said, I probably didn't make myself clear originally. It's the distinction between the most likely seat total (or band of seat totals), and the 'expected' total in the mathematical sense of the sum of N x Probability of N for all the seats.
You clearly did not bother to look at the UA results in Cornwall last year . MK made no advance at all . UKIP and to a smaller extent Labour made gains from Con and Lib Dem more at the Conservative's expense and the Lib Dems made net gains . The results were pretty much a disaster for the Conservatives the opposite of showing they are on the way back in Cornwall . My tip if there is a market is Lib Dems to gain Cornwall SE next year .
Fair comment, I base on nationals rather than locals generally and I will reappraise based on the Euros result.
Rubbish. The travelator will not cost £0. It could quite easily end up costing £300m, if it is any good. And it won't be, it will be a needlessly complex and faffy way of penny pinching £400m, thus wrecking an otherwise good scheme. The great joy of HS2 was that it would link the north with the continental high speed network.
The project is rapidly becoming a shambles, because people cannot grasp the concept of marginal cost, and are worried about Sean's house price, in a lefty ultra Red socialist citadel for the very rich.
They will link it eventually, it just won't go through some of the most expensive real estate in Europe occupied by lots of noisy, influential media-political types.
The failure was in not predicting how much vocal and potent opposition the Camden spur would create. The planners should have anticipated this and looked elsewhere, as they will do, in about 20 years.
Agree about the dim risk planning. Shambolic project management. How can we link the link, though, without going through NW1, or similarly noisy lefty strongholds?
I'm no expert, but it seems Stratford makes the most sense: lots of space, a link to HS1, a link via Crossrail into Heathrow, no rich lefty journalists or prime ministers manque to complain.
I expect it will be like HS1, at first that terminated in Waterloo (remember that cramped Grimshaw shed), then it finally went to St Pancras.
HS2 will have a spur going down to Euston, but it will also fork to Stratford. Josias will know if this is feasible, and why the hell it didn't happen in the first place.
There is already a link from the West Coast Main Line to HS1 at St Pancras via Primrose Hill (station closed 20 years ago but trains still use it during engineering diversions) and the North London Line.
If you are going to, or coming from, somewhere north of Leeds it's better to use the A1/M1 link road.
A47 out of Norfolk, A17 to Newark, A1 to Scotch Corner, A66 to the M6 and associated A74(M) to Glasgow, A82 to Fort William. 10 hours with 4 stops, salmon for supper and a skinful in the bar :-)
Wow. At least the scenery will improve once you're over the border. Trust (and hope) that the skinful is scheduled for arrival only!
It goes to two lames around Donny and into Notts. I'm driving it tomorrow, always fun.
Yep but work has now started on the final bit of motorway (Leeming to Scotch corner). Then it will be three lanes from the M1 to Scotch Corner followed by 2 lanes from Scotch Corner to Gateshead...
Rubbish. The travelator will not cost £0. It could quite easily end up costing £300m, if it is any good. And it won't be, it will be a needlessly complex and faffy way of penny pinching £400m, thus wrecking an otherwise good scheme. The great joy of HS2 was that it would link the north with the continental high speed network.
The project is rapidly becoming a shambles, because people cannot grasp the concept of marginal cost, and are worried about Sean's house price, in a lefty ultra Red socialist citadel for the very rich.
They will link it eventually, it just won't go through some of the most expensive real estate in Europe occupied by lots of noisy, influential media-political types.
The failure was in not predicting how much vocal and potent opposition the Camden spur would create. The planners should have anticipated this and looked elsewhere, as they will do, in about 20 years.
Agree about the dim risk planning. Shambolic project management. How can we link the link, though, without going through NW1, or similarly noisy lefty strongholds?
I'm no expert, but it seems Stratford makes the most sense: lots of space, a link to HS1, a link via Crossrail into Heathrow, no rich lefty journalists or prime ministers manque to complain.
I expect it will be like HS1, at first that terminated in Waterloo (remember that cramped Grimshaw shed), then it finally went to St Pancras.
HS2 will have a spur going down to Euston, but it will also fork to Stratford. Josias will know if this is feasible, and why the hell it didn't happen in the first place.
So if you were to price up a spread bet in the scenario you have described , what would your price be?
24, of course.
Well that's what Shadsy has done, and you said it was wrong
It's wrong to interpret the result (as I thought Shadsy was doing, apologies if he wasn't) as meaning that his figure of 31 or thereabouts was the most likely outcome.
Wow. At least the scenery will improve once you're over the border. Trust (and hope) that the skinful is scheduled for arrival only!
Yes! I'll save the booze for arrival, a treat before hunting the snow line on Nevis for a game of snow face. I do the trip three or four times a year, sometimes to Loch Ness in which case I go past Scotch Cormer, take the A68 to Edinburgh, over the Forth Bridge, M90 then the A9 to Dalwhinnie and across the beautiful A86 to Spean Bridge and up the A82 to Drumnadrochit for tea with Nessie.
[earlier stuff edited out] Likewise, IIRC there was, OUAT, a train from Harwich to Liverpool and one from Harwich to Glasgow. Don’t think either still run.
Can’t the relative be got/get himself to Stansted? There’s also a direct service Edinburgh to Southend. No services (yet) to France, but there is one to Geneva
Thanks. The problem usually is connecting with a service (air or TGV) that actually goes to the Provencal town where he wants to go while avoiding any cross-London transit and which is still running by the time in late season he is willing to be prised free from his greenhouse and garden! Anyway I'll remember those to check out for next time.
So if you were to price up a spread bet in the scenario you have described , what would your price be?
24, of course.
Well that's what Shadsy has done, and you said it was wrong
It's wrong to interpret the result (as I thought Shadsy was doing, apologies if he wasn't) as meaning that his figure of 31 or thereabouts was the most likely outcome.
So if you had to make an under/over market 10/11 either side and the % chance of each seat added up to 31, what would be your over/under mark?
EDIT
Im not trying to be argumentative, I could have got this wrong and I am interested to kno whow
Surely if their were 62 seats on offer, and LDs were EVENS for them all, the correct mark would be 31?
If they are completely independent contigencies, ie correlation = 0, the chances of getting a total of 40 is 0.6 to the power 40, which is for all practical purposes zero (1.336749454e¯9 to be more precise).
So if you had to make an under/over market 10/11 either side and the % chance of each seat added up to 31, what would be your over/under mark?
If the contingencies are 100% correlated , it doesn't actually matter what over/under mark you choose as long as it's greater than zero and less than the total: they will either all come in, or none will
It goes to two lames around Donny and into Notts. I'm driving it tomorrow, always fun.
Yep but work has now started on the final bit of motorway (Leeming to Scotch corner). Then it will be three lanes from the M1 to Scotch Corner followed by 2 lanes from Scotch Corner to Gateshead...
However, for those of us who need to get up from or down to the A17, there is still the Doncaster snarl up, a nightmare in rush hour every time.
I'm no expert, but it seems Stratford makes the most sense: lots of space, a link to HS1, a link via Crossrail into Heathrow, no rich lefty journalists or prime ministers manque to complain.
I expect it will be like HS1, at first that terminated in Waterloo (remember that cramped Grimshaw shed), then it finally went to St Pancras.
HS2 will have a spur going down to Euston, but it will also fork to Stratford. Josias will know if this is feasible, and why the hell it didn't happen in the first place.
Anything's feasible given enough lucre. ;-)
The other day I started looking into whether it might be possible to route trains through London via Crossrail, so trains would come from the continent via HS1 to Stratford, then change onto Crossrail to Old Oak Common, and then zoom along HS2.
Crossrail is a different loading gauge, so the trains would have to be smaller: but they might have to be to cover the rest of the network as well so that would be fine. It seems it would be easy to make the connection at OOC as HS2 is yet to be built, less so at Stratford.
The big problem is capacity: the central Crossrail section is going to be at capacity in terms of train paths (24 per hour) from the moment it opens. But let's say you get one extra train path out of rush hour for continental trains.
So you'd have to build the connections at OOC and Stratford, build some shorter and narrower trains for the service (or perhaps the regional HS2 trains could do), get the paths and then bob's your uncle!
I've no idea how cost-effective or feasible this would be, but it seems like a better solution to me. Sadly it's hard to get the data - for instance Crossrail's exact loading gauge - I doubt it's W10.
Your idea of a longer link line is a no-go, because: a) the shortest route would be to link it to the HS1 line to the north of StPancras, but that would involve tunneling through the exact areas you are complaining of, and would be massively expensive. b) the volumes of traffic are probably far too low to justify the cost.
If they are completely independent contigencies, ie correlation = 0, the chances of getting a total of 40 is 0.6 to the power 40, which is for all practical purposes zero (1.336749454e¯9 to be more precise).
Presently my ARSE has you back but just outside the TCTC range. Best get PtP back just in case.
How do you see the seat presently ?
He certainly did!
I'm reasonably hopeful. It's difficult to say this without fitalass telling me off, but there is not a detectable incumbency bonus here, rather the reverse. There is vastly more Labour doorstep work going on - e.g. I had 20 people out at the weekend, while the Tory Association appears to be very elderly and inactive - so our GOTV should be more accurate. Against that, my personal vote will have eroded as people move, die, forget, etc., and the Tories are better-funded and working hard on postal appeals and attempts to get people to take postal votes.
I'd expect to win by a few thousand if the election was tomorrow or if Labour has any national lead at all. Too early to say about a year from now, obviously, but our vote seems pretty solid, so Tory hopes must rest on a big squeeze on UKIP and even former abstainers.
Interesting, you sound a reasonable guy Nick, we could do with a few Labour guys with your quality in Derbyshire, you could have done the people of Derby a great favour and fought Derby North, or Amber Valley who from both sides have pretty horrible sitting MP's.
If you are going to, or coming from, somewhere north of Leeds it's better to use the A1/M1 link road.
A47 out of Norfolk, A17 to Newark, A1 to Scotch Corner, A66 to the M6 and associated A74(M) to Glasgow, A82 to Fort William. 10 hours with 4 stops, salmon for supper and a skinful in the bar :-)
Wow. At least the scenery will improve once you're over the border. Trust (and hope) that the skinful is scheduled for arrival only!
In late April I am scheduled to do this journey: my home to Paddington (car), Paddington to Heathrow (train), Heathrow to Kuala Lumpur (plane), Kuala Lumpur to Perth (plane), Perth to Broome (plane), Broome airport to Broome port (car), where I get on a boat heading along the Kimberley coast, arriving in Darwin ten days later. Then I fly back from Darwin to Perth, drive on to Fremantle, drive back to Perth, fly back to London, via Kuala Lumpur, where, a few hours later, I get on another plane, which flies me to Calgary, then I get another plane which flies me to Yellowknife, then I get a private plane to Nunavut and the Arctic Haven Wilderness Lodge to watch 350,000 caribou migrate across the Canadian barrenlands.
A sensible question re the SNP vote 2015 If NO wins, I expect pressure on the SNP vote - why vote for independence when the question has been answered for a generation? However, if YES wins (I'm 50/50 on it ATM), what happens to the SNP Westminster vote? Is it job done and the SNP vote stays home? Does it drift back to the Tartan Tories, Labour etc, and will the Lib Dem collapse (much of which went to the SNP in the Scotlection) reverse somewhat?
Been discussed on and off in recent months (before your advent I assume). Basically, if I am not misrepresenting too many folk*, the consensus is that after a Yes it will go sharply pro SNP in view of the need to negotiate for Scotland etc. (Indeed this may already be happening given recent polling, though far too much will happen before that to be a reliable guide.)
This will be an issue for any currently Unionist party after the vote unless they move to cut all links with London. This is perhaps technical for the Tories and LDs as they are, I think, already [edit: organizationally] separate, and the Greens are already completely distinct. And we - probably - won't have too many UKIP MPs in Scotland.
The worst problem would be for Labour as their One Nation slogan and thinking shows, and as it is one monolithic organization - they do not have a separate Scottish Labour Party (despite what they like to claim, and what they put on the voting ballot papers), as was rather obviously shown in the recent Falkirk crisis.
If No wins, I wouldn't be so sure that the SNP would lose out - the SNP have become the natural party og efficient government in Scotland anyway, certainly for the Scottish elections. And a lot of people will have been cheesed off (and very wary of the No campaign's promises of Jam The Year or Three After Next Election) and may decide to vote for SNP rather than (as many do at present) tactically for Anyone But a Tory, which favours Labour and to some extent the LDs. But again that is a long way in the future. Note also, however, that a SNP MP becomes worth that much more in a hung or coalition parliament, so that will increase the likelihood of voting for SNP MPs.
*There is a minority who argue either that the 2010-15 Pmt should be extended till 2016 in view of the crisis, or that the Scots should instantly be deprived of parliamentary representation if they vote Yes, either instantly or at the GE.
If you are going to, or coming from, somewhere north of Leeds it's better to use the A1/M1 link road.
A47 out of Norfolk, A17 to Newark, A1 to Scotch Corner, A66 to the M6 and associated A74(M) to Glasgow, A82 to Fort William. 10 hours with 4 stops, salmon for supper and a skinful in the bar :-)
Wow. At least the scenery will improve once you're over the border. Trust (and hope) that the skinful is scheduled for arrival only!
In late April I am scheduled to do this journey: my home to Paddington (car), Paddington to Heathrow (train), Heathrow to Kuala Lumpur (plane), Kuala Lumpur to Perth (plane), Perth to Broome (plane), Broome airport to Broome port (car), where I get on a boat heading along the Kimberley coast, arriving in Darwin ten days later. Then I fly back from Darwin to Perth, drive on to Fremantle, drive back to Perth, fly back to London, via Kuala Lumpur, where, a few hours later, I get on another plane, which flies me to Calgary, then I get another plane which flies me to Yellowknife, then I get a private plane to Nunavut and the Arctic Haven Wilderness Lodge to watch 350,000 caribou migrate across the Canadian barrenlands.
You are a lucky man getting to drive from Camden to Paddington. Route 66 has nothing on it
So if you had to make an under/over market 10/11 either side and the % chance of each seat added up to 31, what would be your over/under mark?
If the contingencies are 100% correlated , it doesn't actually matter what over/under mark you choose as long as it's greater than zero and less than the total: they will either all come in, or none will
OK
But how is that relevant to Shadsy when trying to price up how many seats the LDS will get at the next GE?
Are you saying that if there was a Bellweather seat in there, and that was lost, then the mark would be a lot lower, or if it were won it would be higher?
Even if that is the case, wouldn't that be in the price?
Comments
What other pubs are there? The Junction was at the top of my road, bit of a foody place.. don't think I ever drunk anywhere else in Tufnell Pk...
Similarly food prices have stabilised - something that was said to be out of George's control when prices were rising quickly.
He has been lucky recently. I don't say this to denigrate him - I'd much rather the country had a lucky Chancellor than otherwise.
AIUI, the proposed link had no south-facing spurs, meaning that trains could run through between the lines, but not stop at either St Pancras or Euston. ISTR this was the same with the original NoL proposal, at Eurostars behest.
http://assets.dft.gov.uk/publications/hs2-maps-20120110/hs2arp00drrw05140issue2.pdf
Man up, flog a few more 'Penny Dreadfuls' to the Gatwick package holiday crowd and ship out to the smarter side of the railway.
Norfolk and Lincolnshire are ripe territories for a UKIP surge and might pose some problems for the Tories in their recent gains. Cornwall is moving away from the Lib Dems at a pace IMO.
If the Tories want a majority, they need 38% and severe movement in the Midlands and NW as well as a decent haul in Scotland (can't see a Tory majority with out 5 or 6, which I can't see them getting, read into that my current thoughts on the result overall)
For all that the Tory Maj price doesn't make much appeal yet, and NOM looks to be the bet yet again.
And re the thread header, the bet isn't on crossover but on contact. On at 4/1, with 4 shots left, I reckon I'm in front, though I still expect to lose. Good value losers don't pay the bills (but then, at PP limits, winners don't pay the bills either).
What price Cameron to offer a National Government and Ed to fall into the trap of rejecting it and pay the price in 6 months. Or, accept and reap the rewards in a year?
Sign post it as "transfers to KX/StP" have a few lifts and a couple of escalators and hey presto, £700m saved for about 5 minutes of walking or 10 minutes of standing.
You can see the real reason why labour is wailing about empty millionaires row houses. The tories don;t even need to bother in those constituencies.
Meanwhile many of their voters are moving into and gentrifying labour areas. And the labour payroll vote is heading for places like Hastings.
London is labour's last stronghold in the South. If they lost it - goodness.
This feels like a reasonable compromise. Not perfect for you, but a good improvement on the current situation and one that it bearable for the residents and the taxpayers.
Having said that Labour must be a bit worried about its 42 vote majority in the other (mostly) Camden seat Hampstead & Kilburn.
As the trains will be 200 metres long, if you have a seat at the far end, you could nearly spend as long walking along the platforms as you do between the stations...
London being London I don't think you can count on gentrification leading to a less Labour friendly electorate. Only the very wealthy and those reliant on benefits can now afford to live in inner London and of the former there will always be a high number of champaign socialists (they have to live somewhere and tend to congregate).
Primrose Hill etc and goggle at the denizens there. Or...is it a reversal?
College Lane has only pavement, no road outside, with a council estate 25 yard away, and many was the time that kids from that estate (I assume) used to run down the road and kick our front door in.. prob just for a laugh, but the girls we lived with were pretty scared
So yes, bad luck.
To make up that deficit in England they don't just need majority voting in England, they need more like healthy majority voting. Or a dramatic reversal in Scotland.
Now, of course, with lower inflation, perhaps there is the view that interest rates won't rise as quickly and hence cable will reverse...
And of course the ONS apply seasonal adjustment to the GDP figures, so a certain level of bad weather is allowed for, its only exceptional weather that will have a noticeable impact.
Here's a bulletin from the AAIB showing the excellent worn being done by Inmarsat to try to work out where the missing flight MH370 went.
http://www.fz.com/content/investigations-mh370-information-aaib
Some really clever stuff there.
Where are all the people in London doing the routine jobs going to live? I see those huge souless brick blocks on the way to City Airport. Living like that must be truly horrible. This is going to cause problems if it goes on like this.
Terminal 5 is around 400m long, people don't complain about that amount of walking, the rest would have travelators anyway.
The partial, unscheduled handshake at 00:19UTC is interesting. I wonder if they can tell anything from that.
It will also be impressive if they are able to resolve the data to a detail where they can estimate plane height.
Re Mr Jessop: on the northern Chunnel trains of yore, I seem to recall that they did run, but briefly, and that there was only one train from Edinburgh a day and that it left at an absurdly early hour - even before the booking office opened. I may be wrong on this, but it seemed so odd that it stuck in my memory ever since.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26731790
"British winters are likely to become milder and wetter like the last one but cold spells still need to be planned for, says the UK Met Office.
Summers are likely to be hotter and drier, but washouts are still on the cards, it adds."
Climate change is the Mr. India of science.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfpqfwt_cLg
Who is going to want to go from, say Edinburgh, to France by train? The business people can fly and flying is and, even with HS2, will be quicker and cheaper. So its down to tourists. How many of them will there be and how many will be put off by having to change trains? Enough to make a business case? I doubt it.
The row about the possible abandonment of the link seems more generated by a northern chauvinism than any economic logic. At a time when we are running £100bn a year deficit a nice to have rail link makes no sense.
A covered travellator at grade alongside the Euston Road might be cheaper, and much more useful for people using the mainline stations as well. But I've got no idea how that'd work, given the roads that lead into Euston Road.
This guy has put some flesh on his own idea:
http://www.townend.me/files/kxlink.pdf
It will all depend on what the predicted traffic flows are along it: the locations of the sources and the destinations.
And yes, I notice the walking. The weaving through the shop displays irritates me more, but there's a lot of walking involved (the walk to the lounge where you have to go 50 metres in the wrong direction to get there is the most annoying).
Can’t the relative be got/get himself to Stansted? There’s also a direct service Edinburgh to Southend. No services (yet) to France, but there is one to Geneva
I'm reasonably hopeful. It's difficult to say this without fitalass telling me off, but there is not a detectable incumbency bonus here, rather the reverse. There is vastly more Labour doorstep work going on - e.g. I had 20 people out at the weekend, while the Tory Association appears to be very elderly and inactive - so our GOTV should be more accurate. Against that, my personal vote will have eroded as people move, die, forget, etc., and the Tories are better-funded and working hard on postal appeals and attempts to get people to take postal votes.
I'd expect to win by a few thousand if the election was tomorrow or if Labour has any national lead at all. Too early to say about a year from now, obviously, but our vote seems pretty solid, so Tory hopes must rest on a big squeeze on UKIP and even former abstainers.
You'll get some of the yellows for sure, you might inherit some BNP (as might Anna) but you'll both lose some to the kippers in all likelihood, but not to a Norfolk/Lincs level or anywhere near.
Gut feeling, you'll have a recount.
Here's a few transport improvements for northern England:
1) Straighten and widen to three lanes the A1 in Yorkshire - a crowded and dangerous road.
2) Improved road and rail communications between Sheffield and Manchester - if there's merit in the combined northern city idea then a Manchester-Leeds-Sheffield triangle would be the best basis
3) Put the prefix 'London' in the names of northern and midland airports, improve communications to them and reduce the taxes on them, would bring in huge amounts of foreign investors and tourists if anything connected with 'London' is the magnet we're told it is
4) Go to each northern county and town and ask the people which transport improvements would be beneficial and then implement them
5) Repeat (4)
6) Buy Josias Jessop a super duper new Horny railway with all the accessories so that you can play at trains
I would estimate the cost to be much less than HS2
They are clear favourites in 35, joint favs in a further 3.
I've calculated a raw probability in each seat and added them up, and somewhat surprisingly that only gets them to 31 seats. There are a large number of seats in which they are only very slight favourites.
There's the added possibility of them picking up the odd gain, which certainly isn't out of the question. Camborne & Redruth, Oxford West, Watford all live possibilities.
It's an outcome that needs covering I think so half a point at 7-1.
However, adding up the raw probabilities to get an expected total is mathematically wrong, isn't it? They are very much related contingencies, so you'd be hugely underestimating the expected total that way.
1. The Euston - St Pancras travelator is allegedly elevated above Phoenix Road and Brill Place
2. Through services between the regions and Europe didn't happen because we aren't in Schengen. The trains need to carry domestic passengers to be viable, customs checks mean they can't carry domestic passengers, so the whole thing got abandoned.
3. There used to be Eurostar connector services to Waterloo from places like Edinburgh which crawled along the north and west london lines to reach Waterloo
4. Camden - and Brixton for that matter - were going to be essentially flattened in the 60s by Ringway 1. From the CBRD site:
"It [Ringway 1] would emerge at Eton Avenue, and cross Adelaide Road. Bus bays would be provided at the now-closed Primrose Hill station, and the motorway would be elevated over what was then the Camden Goods Yard, owned by British Rail, but which is now a large supermarket. BR were not very happy about having a motorway - even on stilts - running over their goods yard, and so an alternative route, slightly further to the north, was proposed in case this was rejected. On plans the only surviving building sandwiched between these two alternative lines is the Camden Roundhouse.
There would be a junction with the proposed Camden Town Bypass on Chalk Farm Road. This would be a very expensive interchange to construct, due to the tight space involved: the site would be heavily constrained by the various railways, the goods yard, and the Regent's Canal. The resulting free-flowing interchange would have employed a double-deck viaduct, carrying the Camden Town Bypass over local roads, and the North Cross Route above that. All Ringway 1 traffic would be able to access the Bypass heading in towards London, but access to the northern arm of the Bypass heading away up Camden Road would only have been to and from the west. Local access roads at this point were to connect only to the Bypass."
http://www.cbrd.co.uk/histories/ringways/ringway1/north.shtml
PB will expect regular updates from you and our favourite feather boa wearing equine forecaster. Perhaps at the start of the formal campaign you might place in a sealed envelope your expected majority to be held securely in PtP's garter ?
1) Agree. I'd also look at doubling much of the A1 between Morpeth and Haddington, completing the A1 as at least a dual carriageway.
2) This is being done. See the Northern Hub.
3) Ridiculous game-playing.
4) The councils need to drive this. Many councils (e.g. here in Cambridge) are terrible at it. Central government should act as an enabler.
http://www.networkrail.co.uk/improvements/northern-hub/
Lib Dem wipeout for me.
Rubbish. The travelator will not cost £0. It could quite easily end up costing £300m, if it is any good. And it won't be, it will be a needlessly complex and faffy way of penny pinching £400m, thus wrecking an otherwise good scheme. The great joy of HS2 was that it would link the north with the continental high speed network.
The project is rapidly becoming a shambles, because people cannot grasp the concept of marginal cost, and are worried about Sean's house price, in a lefty ultra Red socialist citadel for the very rich.
LAB 310 CON 278 LD 35
Shooould be all green with everything but a CON majority though
However, the interesting thing is that in 2010, summing raw probabilities from the seats betting market (Betfair), didn't fare so well. You would have done better to simply assign seats to the favourite.
There was an academic paper which ascribed this mismatch to the "favourite-longshot" bias, and came up with a formula to neutralize it...
The tube option, currently, is farcically useless. It is quicker to walk.
My guess is that the London locals will be grim for the LDs. May be worth taking Shadsy up on some long-range punts on their opposition in seats like Hornsey, Sutton and Cheam, Kingston, Carshalton, even Twickenham, in the hope of their odds coming in after May allowing an all green by then jumping on the LDs.
Replace HS2 with a 300mph travellator linking Euston, Kings Cross, New Street and Manchester Piccadilly?
It would be a wonder of the modern world.
If NO wins, I expect pressure on the SNP vote - why vote for independence when the question has been answered for a generation?
However, if YES wins (I'm 50/50 on it ATM), what happens to the SNP Westminster vote? Is it job done and the SNP vote stays home? Does it drift back to the Tartan Tories, Labour etc, and will the Lib Dem collapse (much of which went to the SNP in the Scotlection) reverse somewhat?
For example, suppose you have an extreme hypothetical case where there are 40 seats each with a 60% chance of a LibDem victory, and where the correlation is 1.0. In that case, the probability of getting 40 LibDem seats is 60%, because they all move together in a block (the result is either going to be 0 seats or 40 seats). So your most likely outcome is 40 seats, not 0.6 x 40 = 24 seats.
If they are completely independent contigencies, ie correlation = 0, the chances of getting a total of 40 is 0.6 to the power 40, which is for all practical purposes zero (1.336749454e¯9 to be more precise).
Yes, some good locals but the national election trend is grim, I'll go with that for now unless the Euros show trend reversing.
Camborne & Redruth
2/5 Cons
5/2 LD
16 UKIP
20 Lab
Cornwall N
4/6 LD
11/10 Cons
Cornwall SE
1/8 Cons
5 LD
St Austell & Newquay
1/2 Cons
6/4 LD
St Ives
4/6 LD
11/10 Cons
Truro & Falmouth
1/4 Cons
11/4 LD
I remember we made a bit of money out of the LD v Cons Cornwall match bet in 2010. Tories went off very short to win a majority of the 6 seats but, luckily for us, the LDs scrambled a handy 3-3 draw. We'll probably do something similar at some point this time - looks like a lot of people will want to back the 6-0 correct score.
My tip if there is a market is Lib Dems to gain Cornwall SE next year .
Ah I see Shadsy's odds on Cornwall SE , 5/1 on Lib Dems , get your money on now .
I am (Just about) opposed to HS2 but £400 million is indeed monkey nuts. I bought a nice coat from Camden market about a decade back, no idea how it is now - its nice enough I guess but @Bobajobb raises an interesting and valid point right there.
If they're going to do it they might as well do it properly.
My favourite of his books, much better than Foundation.
As I said, I probably didn't make myself clear originally. It's the distinction between the most likely seat total (or band of seat totals), and the 'expected' total in the mathematical sense of the sum of N x Probability of N for all the seats.
"We want the questions that you want to put to the leaders of the Liberal Democrats and UKIP.
Send in your questions in form below. Please keep your questions to one sentence and address them to both leaders."
http://www.lbc.co.uk/lbc-leaders-debate-send-in-your-question-87562
I too will be interested to hear Josias' appraisal of this plan.
Most interesting discussion BTW ...
EDIT
Im not trying to be argumentative, I could have got this wrong and I am interested to kno whow
Surely if their were 62 seats on offer, and LDs were EVENS for them all, the correct mark would be 31?
The other day I started looking into whether it might be possible to route trains through London via Crossrail, so trains would come from the continent via HS1 to Stratford, then change onto Crossrail to Old Oak Common, and then zoom along HS2.
Crossrail is a different loading gauge, so the trains would have to be smaller: but they might have to be to cover the rest of the network as well so that would be fine. It seems it would be easy to make the connection at OOC as HS2 is yet to be built, less so at Stratford.
The big problem is capacity: the central Crossrail section is going to be at capacity in terms of train paths (24 per hour) from the moment it opens. But let's say you get one extra train path out of rush hour for continental trains.
So you'd have to build the connections at OOC and Stratford, build some shorter and narrower trains for the service (or perhaps the regional HS2 trains could do), get the paths and then bob's your uncle!
I've no idea how cost-effective or feasible this would be, but it seems like a better solution to me. Sadly it's hard to get the data - for instance Crossrail's exact loading gauge - I doubt it's W10.
Your idea of a longer link line is a no-go, because:
a) the shortest route would be to link it to the HS1 line to the north of StPancras, but that would involve tunneling through the exact areas you are complaining of, and would be massively expensive.
b) the volumes of traffic are probably far too low to justify the cost.
This will be an issue for any currently Unionist party after the vote unless they move to cut all links with London. This is perhaps technical for the Tories and LDs as they are, I think, already [edit: organizationally] separate, and the Greens are already completely distinct. And we - probably - won't have too many UKIP MPs in Scotland.
The worst problem would be for Labour as their One Nation slogan and thinking shows, and as it is one monolithic organization - they do not have a separate Scottish Labour Party (despite what they like to claim, and what they put on the voting ballot papers), as was rather obviously shown in the recent Falkirk crisis.
If No wins, I wouldn't be so sure that the SNP would lose out - the SNP have become the natural party og efficient government in Scotland anyway, certainly for the Scottish elections. And a lot of people will have been cheesed off (and very wary of the No campaign's promises of Jam The Year or Three After Next Election) and may decide to vote for SNP rather than (as many do at present) tactically for Anyone But a Tory, which favours Labour and to some extent the LDs. But again that is a long way in the future. Note also, however, that a SNP MP becomes worth that much more in a hung or coalition parliament, so that will increase the likelihood of voting for SNP MPs.
*There is a minority who argue either that the 2010-15 Pmt should be extended till 2016 in view of the crisis, or that the Scots should instantly be deprived of parliamentary representation if they vote Yes, either instantly or at the GE.
But how is that relevant to Shadsy when trying to price up how many seats the LDS will get at the next GE?
Are you saying that if there was a Bellweather seat in there, and that was lost, then the mark would be a lot lower, or if it were won it would be higher?
Even if that is the case, wouldn't that be in the price?