On physically intimidating, I'd have guessed that the Japanese army in WW2 was a whole lot smaller than the US one, but it gave the Americans a run for their money for a good time.
Allowing women into combat zones does not mean that 50% of those fighting will be women in the future. Presumably, only those women who can pass muster physically will get onto the frontline. At a guess maybe 5% to 10% might have a chance.
Quite, hence why it is not a big deal, so long as standards are upheld, and so long as cohesion does not suffer, only those who can handle it will make it through and have an impact.
However, the employees, friends and family of business owners have votes too - and when you've a leader who's alienated them en masse - you can't win.
Being all Soak The Rich may feel very pure and idealistic - it won't get you FPTP. It requires a broad church of self-interest beyond the hard-Left, welfarists of Methyr Tydfellstan, Guardianistas and recent immigrants.
One of the reasons Labour won in 1997 was the prawn cocktail offensive.
Labour ministers launched a three year schmoozathon with the City and business leaders.
It worked. When the Tories brought out their New Labour, New Danger fear campaign it had no bite.
Business leaders had listened to New Labour and would give them a chance.
The Tories couldn’t build a coalition of business leaders to make dire warnings about Labour as they had done in past elections.
Ed Miliband’s Labour party has undergone no sustained prawn cocktail offensive.
Instead it is at open war with business promising a waterfall of new taxes and regulations with no upside. It’s all stick and no carrot.
As if "endorsements" from big-business fat cats would win Labour any votes. Much as the Right might hate to admit it, people trust "business leaders" LESS than they trust trade union leaders:
There are more than "people you do not like" who believe that rich people and wealthy corporations should pay more tax.
That's a different argument, though. My point is that there are many more than appalling welfare junkies, Guardian readers and recent immigrants who believe that the wealthy should pay more tax.
BTW - for those who want to know what the army really thinks there is only one infallible resource: ARRSE.
The general view there is 'to let the dorises / split harrises in but only if the standards are exactly the same and they get same PFA pass mark'. Can't get fairer than that!
Mr. Pulpstar, *cough* some men wouldn't find it so hard.
I'm still a bit surprised we don't have female F1 drivers. There are all sorts of advantages - 1) trailblazer, good for PR/sponsors/media coverage 2) lighter, more ballast for better handling 3) easier to make the slightly challenging weight requirements 4) shorter, means lower centre-of-mass and better handling
The only general downside would be the difficulty of getting a neck strong enough, but that's surmountable and the loads now are a bit less than in the past, I think, due to decrease downforce meaning lower cornering speeds [if memory serves].
BTW - for those who want to know what the army really thinks there is only one infallible resource: ARRSE.
The general view there is 'to let the dorises / split harrises in but only if the standards are exactly the same and they get same PFA pass mark'. Can't get fairer than that!
Hey, this isn’t exactly the best place to say this, but I couldn’t find a contact email for you. I love your blog, read it every week, I always find it insightful and measured. I wasn’t such a fan of your Scottish Indy coverage, just because I don’t think it was sufficiently critical of the SNP assertions, but I always admired the points you made. I think it’s always important to reflect back on your vote to see if you would do the same now, particularly with something as important and game changing as the Scottish referendum.
I had a very sobering conversation with a mate about the falling price of oil and what would have happened if Scotland had become Independent this year. We were promised by Salmond and the SNP that the price of oil would remain at $113 per barrel, and that this would float us through to a massive budget surplus, and we’d have low taxes, better living, and more money. Those of us who pointed out that $113 per barrel wasn’t a stable or accurate reflection on the market were accused of scaremongering and being anti-Scottish.
Now that oil has crashed to around $60 per barrel just a few months later, we’d have lost billions of pounds overnight, have a huge budget shortfall, and be forced to rack up a massive deficit, with a much smaller population to pay it off. We’d be locked into an unrecognised sharing of the pound, so Scotland would be unable to devalue its currency or undertake quantative easing to minimise the damage. Prices would soar, wages would crash, and thousands more jobs in the oil sector (1,000 already, 35,000 over the next 5 years), and elsewhere would be lost, and swinging cuts would be made into the public sector, schools and the NHS, that would make the Conservatives and LibDems austerity policy look like a fond memory.
And because of the weakness of the Westminster parties, it was very nearly successful.
One of the Westminster parties supporters voted 95% to stay in the Union.....
95% of not very many is not very many.
Surely you are smarter than the Yestapo who only count MPs?
Voters in 2010 GE Scotland: ('000)
Con: 412 LibD: 465 SNP: 491 Lab: 1,035
One of the Westminster parties failed to carry its supporters - too busy fighting among themselves, as was pointed out over Falkirk to deaf ears on here - with a bit of luck Jim Murphy will put that right.....
I sponsored Suzie Stannard or Stoddart or Something for a couple of seasons in the pre F1 category - she had a neck like a tree trunk and had to wear her hair long to hide it.
Mr. Pulpstar, *cough* some men wouldn't find it so hard.
I'm still a bit surprised we don't have female F1 drivers. There are all sorts of advantages - 1) trailblazer, good for PR/sponsors/media coverage 2) lighter, more ballast for better handling 3) easier to make the slightly challenging weight requirements 4) shorter, means lower centre-of-mass and better handling
The only general downside would be the difficulty of getting a neck strong enough, but that's surmountable and the loads now are a bit less than in the past, I think, due to decrease downforce meaning lower cornering speeds [if memory serves].
Big news for the government this morning, deficit is now down YoY. Labour's attack line of "increasing the deficit" has now turned to dust. Even though it is just a £0.5bn decrease, the symbol of a continually reducing deficit is important I think.
What's more, there is a lot of good underlying news from tax receipts which are now up across the board. Taking out the lowered APF transfers this year tax receipts are up YoY by 2.8% and on a 6 monthly basis income tax receipts are up 3.9%, so stripping out the 45p rate related oddities we're seeing close GDP+inlfation rises in tax receipts, so it is not a taxless recovery in the slightest. The only thing that is down is APF receipts and "other" which is related to petroleum tax revenues (low oil prices, dwindling output). If the current trend continues the deficit will fall overall this year, and excluding APF it will be a fall of around £10bn which is not too shabby.
That’s the real danger with threats; terrorise one person and 10,000 will fall into line. Following the Salman Rushdie and Mohammed cartoon sagas Britain has de facto censorship laws protecting Islam from the same mockery that other religions must put up with; it takes huge, almost suicidal bravery to take on such taboos, and most people aren’t suicidally brave.
And it’s much harder for this small group of very courageous people when they don’t get support from the wider society; yesterday’s response to the Sony capitulation was one of unreserved contempt, with condemnations from across Hollywood and politics. But a precedent was set with the Mohammed cartoons when Western politicians almost universally condemned the blasphemers for lacking ‘respect’ for Islam. As with the Innocence of Muslims film fiasco, that sent a key clear signal to the rest of the world that the West is not prepared to stand up for its freedoms.
Hey, this isn’t exactly the best place to say this, but I couldn’t find a contact email for you. I love your blog, read it every week, I always find it insightful and measured. I wasn’t such a fan of your Scottish Indy coverage, just because I don’t think it was sufficiently critical of the SNP assertions, but I always admired the points you made. I think it’s always important to reflect back on your vote to see if you would do the same now, particularly with something as important and game changing as the Scottish referendum.
I had a very sobering conversation with a mate about the falling price of oil and what would have happened if Scotland had become Independent this year. We were promised by Salmond and the SNP that the price of oil would remain at $113 per barrel, and that this would float us through to a massive budget surplus, and we’d have low taxes, better living, and more money. Those of us who pointed out that $113 per barrel wasn’t a stable or accurate reflection on the market were accused of scaremongering and being anti-Scottish.
Now that oil has crashed to around $60 per barrel just a few months later, we’d have lost billions of pounds overnight, have a huge budget shortfall, and be forced to rack up a massive deficit, with a much smaller population to pay it off. We’d be locked into an unrecognised sharing of the pound, so Scotland would be unable to devalue its currency or undertake quantative easing to minimise the damage. Prices would soar, wages would crash, and thousands more jobs in the oil sector (1,000 already, 35,000 over the next 5 years), and elsewhere would be lost, and swinging cuts would be made into the public sector, schools and the NHS, that would make the Conservatives and LibDems austerity policy look like a fond memory.
And because of the weakness of the Westminster parties, it was very nearly successful.
One of the Westminster parties supporters voted 95% to stay in the Union.....
95% of not very many is not very many.
Surely you are smarter than the Yestapo who only count MPs?
Voters in 2010 GE Scotland: ('000)
Con: 412 LibD: 465 SNP: 491 Lab: 1,035
One of the Westminster parties failed to carry its supporters - too busy fighting among themselves, as was pointed out over Falkirk to deaf ears on here - with a bit of luck Jim Murphy will put that right.....
My original point was that the large Yes vote was as much about disgust at Westminster's political elite as it was about independence. In England you protest by voting UKIP, in Scotland there was the referendum and there is the SNP.
My original point was that the large Yes vote was as much about disgust at Westminster's political elite as it was about independence. In England you protest by voting UKIP, in Scotland there was the referendum and there is the SNP.
The last week or two of the campaign was about how best to create social justice in Scotland, which in large part meant how to limit the impact of the Tories.
My original point was that the large Yes vote was as much about disgust at Westminster's political elite as it was about independence. In England you protest by voting UKIP, in Scotland there was the referendum and there is the SNP.
The last week or two of the campaign was about how best to create social justice in Scotland, which in large part meant how to limit the impact of the Tories.
My original point was that the large Yes vote was as much about disgust at Westminster's political elite as it was about independence. In England you protest by voting UKIP, in Scotland there was the referendum and there is the SNP.
The last week or two of the campaign was about how best to create social justice in Scotland, which in large part meant how to limit the impact of the Tories.
But we now see the SNP retreating from their "squeeze social justice from the middle classes" rates of stamp duty and will follow the more sensible Conservative proposals.
Quentin Letts is word perfect on the farce of this under Bercow.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
I sponsored Suzie Stannard or Stoddart or Something for a couple of seasons in the pre F1 category - she had a neck like a tree trunk and had to wear her hair long to hide it.
Now Susie Wolff, test driver for Williams
If you follow her twitter feed, you see she trains just as hard as the guys (including neck muscles), but a lot of her press work and photoshoots seem to emphasise femininity
Quentin Letts is word perfect on the farce of this under Bercow.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
I sponsored Suzie Stannard or Stoddart or Something for a couple of seasons in the pre F1 category - she had a neck like a tree trunk and had to wear her hair long to hide it.
Now Susie Wolff, test driver for Williams
If you follow her twitter feed, you see she trains just as hard as the guys (including neck muscles), but a lot of her press work and photoshoots seem to emphasise femininity
My original point was that the large Yes vote was as much about disgust at Westminster's political elite as it was about independence. In England you protest by voting UKIP, in Scotland there was the referendum and there is the SNP.
The last week or two of the campaign was about how best to create social justice in Scotland, which in large part meant how to limit the impact of the Tories.
How are the SNP creating social justice by failing in the education of poorer Scots children?
How can the Scottish run NHS be 'saved from the Tories?'
The last two weeks of the campaign were desperate shroud waving from a party which had lost the economic argument....coming to you soon in a General Election in the UK.....
Quentin Letts is word perfect on the farce of this under Bercow.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
Quentin Letts is word perfect on the farce of this under Bercow.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
Top BBC article: "A&E has 'worst week' in England"
It's a co-ordinated campaign.
The NHS is the only thing Labour have left.
Performance in Wales and Northern Ireland is even worse, while the picture in Scotland is unclear.
As England is the only part of the UK that produces weekly data, how the NHS is performing there gives the best indication of the pressure the system is under.
Coffee House reached out to Douglas Carswell, the Ukip MP for Clacton, who declined to comment on Farage’s remarks. Carswell responded to say he was travelling to his constituency and was ‘not in a position to comment’ right now.
Mark Reckless, the Ukip member for Rochester and Strood, also declined to comment. ‘I am not aware of his remarks and I have no comment to make’, he said, also noting that he has been focused has been on the legal action the Tories are pursuing against him.
Perhaps both feel that they have had to go from backbench mavericks in the Tory party to well-polished representatives of Ukip who defend, rather than criticise, their own party.
Mr. Taffys, some time (probably 10-15 years) ago I saw a docu-drama about training new soldiers, some men, some women. The women had a quantitatively easier time of it (pressups on their knees, for example). Hopefully that kind of bullshit has been knocked on the head.
I'm not against women on the frontline in principle, but they should have be able to pick up 250 lbs (200 lb soldier + kit) and walk a mile or w/e is needed to pass the physical. In practice that's going to mean only perhaps 0.01% of women can do that or so but its no place to be PC.
Agree about the need for training to be gender-free, but laugh at your 0.01% assumption.
I'd suggest that the inclusion of women in front-line combat units will in fact make zero difference at all to the unit's effectiveness in combat.
I say this because it is quite well understood that hardly any members of combat units are effective in combat.
There is a book called Brains & Bullets: How psychology wins wars, by Leo Murray, that sets it all out rather starkly.
Essentially, hardly anyone ever fights. Those who do shoot do so ever less effectively as the range closes, because at short range they're likelier to hit but don't want to. In WW1 Palestine, the British army found that the effect of defensive rifle fire against Turkish attackers fell as the range shortened.
In consequence, 80% of casualties are inflicted nowadays by artillery and most of the rest by longish range standoff such as mortars and machine guns, with small arms injuries pretty rare. It is so well documented it's not even in dispute.
When you understand this, an awful lot of military encounters start to make sense. At Rorke's Drift 100-odd British soldiers fired 20,000 rounds of ammunition at 4,000 Zulus and inflicted perhaps 500 casualties. That's one per 40 rounds fired. This was a firefight at a range so close the Zulus were within stabbing distance, so it wasn't an accuracy issue, they just didn't want to fight. Neither did the Zulus, who only inflicted about a dozen casualties.
Quentin Letts is word perfect on the farce of this under Bercow.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
That's fascinating. I tend to think more of the SAS close-combat/ninja sort of soldier rather than CIA drone guiders sat in Virginia bombing Homeland Style
Mr. Taffys, some time (probably 10-15 years) ago I saw a docu-drama about training new soldiers, some men, some women. The women had a quantitatively easier time of it (pressups on their knees, for example). Hopefully that kind of bullshit has been knocked on the head.
I'm not against women on the frontline in principle, but they should have be able to pick up 250 lbs (200 lb soldier + kit) and walk a mile or w/e is needed to pass the physical. In practice that's going to mean only perhaps 0.01% of women can do that or so but its no place to be PC.
Agree about the need for training to be gender-free, but laugh at your 0.01% assumption.
I'd suggest that the inclusion of women in front-line combat units will in fact make zero difference at all to the unit's effectiveness in combat.
I say this because it is quite well understood that hardly any members of combat units are effective in combat.
There is a book called Brains & Bullets: How psychology wins wars, by Leo Murray, that sets it all out rather starkly.
Essentially, hardly anyone ever fights. Those who do shoot do so ever less effectively as the range closes, because at short range they're likelier to hit but don't want to. In WW1 Palestine, the British army found that the effect of defensive rifle fire against Turkish attackers fell as the range shortened.
In consequence, 80% of casualties are inflicted nowadays by artillery and most of the rest by longish range standoff such as mortars and machine guns, with small arms injuries pretty rare. It is so well documented it's not even in dispute.
When you understand this, an awful lot of military encounters start to make sense. At Rorke's Drift 100-odd British soldiers fired 20,000 rounds of ammunition at 4,000 Zulus and inflicted perhaps 500 casualties. That's one per 40 rounds fired. This was a firefight at a range so close the Zulus were within stabbing distance, so it wasn't an accuracy issue, they just didn't want to fight. Neither did the Zulus, who only inflicted about a dozen casualties.
That's...actually pretty bad; usually these things are pretty tame. Granted, her job relied less on the public seeing that and reacting than on what MPs and her leader think, but that was not a great clip for her. I suppose I don't know the best response to journalists quoting unnamed party colleagues saying nasty things about you, but denying she speaks off the record was a pretty unbelievable thing to suggest, not even including the rest of the clip.
That's...actually pretty bad; usually these things are pretty tame. Granted, her job relied less on the public seeing that and reacting than on what MPs and her leader think, but that was not a great clip for her. I suppose I don't know the best response to journalists quoting unnamed party colleagues saying nasty things about you, but denying she speaks off the record was a pretty unbelievable thing to suggest, not even including the rest of the clip.
Stand by for another Cathy Newman tele article on why Brillo only asked the question because she is a woman...
That's...actually pretty bad; usually these things are pretty tame. Granted, her job relied less on the public seeing that and reacting than on what MPs and her leader think, but that was not a great clip for her. I suppose I don't know the best response to journalists quoting unnamed party colleagues saying nasty things about you, but denying she speaks off the record was a pretty unbelievable thing to suggest, not even including the rest of the clip.
Edit: Her job 'relies', not 'relied'. She's going nowhere, I am sure. Pretty sure.
That's fascinating. I tend to think more of the SAS close-combat/ninja sort of soldier rather than CIA drone guiders sat in Virginia bombing Homeland Style
Mr. Taffys, some time (probably 10-15 years) ago I saw a docu-drama about training new soldiers, some men, some women. The women had a quantitatively easier time of it (pressups on their knees, for example). Hopefully that kind of bullshit has been knocked on the head.
I'm not against women on the frontline in principle, but they should have be able to pick up 250 lbs (200 lb soldier + kit) and walk a mile or w/e is needed to pass the physical. In practice that's going to mean only perhaps 0.01% of women can do that or so but its no place to be PC.
Agree about the need for training to be gender-free, but laugh at your 0.01% assumption.
I'd suggest that the inclusion of women in front-line combat units will in fact make zero difference at all to the unit's effectiveness in combat.
I say this because it is quite well understood that hardly any members of combat units are effective in combat.
There is a book called Brains & Bullets: How psychology wins wars, by Leo Murray, that sets it all out rather starkly.
When you understand this, an awful lot of military encounters start to make sense. At Rorke's Drift 100-odd British soldiers fired 20,000 rounds of ammunition at 4,000 Zulus and inflicted perhaps 500 casualties. That's one per 40 rounds fired. This was a firefight at a range so close the Zulus were within stabbing distance, so it wasn't an accuracy issue, they just didn't want to fight. Neither did the Zulus, who only inflicted about a dozen casualties.
You are always going to get gung-ho individuals, but a WW2 estimate of how many this was (that landed its author in trouble with Monty) was one to two men per 40-man platoon. A platoon attack on an enemy position was decided by the fighting among two to four combatants in total.
The Murray book's conclusion is that you win battles by inducing the enemy to stop fighting - by providing them with an opportunity to flee or surrender, before he does the same to your men.
Mr. Pulpstar, *cough* some men wouldn't find it so hard.
I'm still a bit surprised we don't have female F1 drivers. There are all sorts of advantages - 1) trailblazer, good for PR/sponsors/media coverage 2) lighter, more ballast for better handling 3) easier to make the slightly challenging weight requirements 4) shorter, means lower centre-of-mass and better handling
The only general downside would be the difficulty of getting a neck strong enough, but that's surmountable and the loads now are a bit less than in the past, I think, due to decrease downforce meaning lower cornering speeds [if memory serves].
As a generalisation women are substantially less good than men at spacial skills (some studies suggest up to one standard deviation worse), and substantially better than men at verbal reasoning skills, it would therefore follow that men would tend to excel at jobs involving an instinctive grasp of vectors and speeds, like competitive driving, and women at jobs requiring instinctive grasp of use and comprehension of language, like managing and negotiating.
Quentin Letts is word perfect on the farce of this under Bercow.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
Top BBC article: "A&E has 'worst week' in England"
It's a co-ordinated campaign.
The NHS is the only thing Labour have left.
Performance in Wales and Northern Ireland is even worse, while the picture in Scotland is unclear.
As England is the only part of the UK that produces weekly data, how the NHS is performing there gives the best indication of the pressure the system is under.
Quentin Letts is word perfect on the farce of this under Bercow.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
Top BBC article: "A&E has 'worst week' in England"
It's a co-ordinated campaign.
The NHS is the only thing Labour have left.
Performance in Wales and Northern Ireland is even worse, while the picture in Scotland is unclear.
As England is the only part of the UK that produces weekly data, how the NHS is performing there gives the best indication of the pressure the system is under.
Quentin Letts is word perfect on the farce of this under Bercow.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
Top BBC article: "A&E has 'worst week' in England"
It's a co-ordinated campaign.
The NHS is the only thing Labour have left.
Performance in Wales and Northern Ireland is even worse, while the picture in Scotland is unclear.
As England is the only part of the UK that produces weekly data, how the NHS is performing there gives the best indication of the pressure the system is under.
Quentin Letts is word perfect on the farce of this under Bercow.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
Top BBC article: "A&E has 'worst week' in England"
It's a co-ordinated campaign.
The NHS is the only thing Labour have left.
Performance in Wales and Northern Ireland is even worse, while the picture in Scotland is unclear.
As England is the only part of the UK that produces weekly data, how the NHS is performing there gives the best indication of the pressure the system is under.
Quentin Letts is word perfect on the farce of this under Bercow.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
Top BBC article: "A&E has 'worst week' in England"
It's a co-ordinated campaign.
The NHS is the only thing Labour have left.
Performance in Wales and Northern Ireland is even worse, while the picture in Scotland is unclear.
As England is the only part of the UK that produces weekly data, how the NHS is performing there gives the best indication of the pressure the system is under.
Quentin Letts is word perfect on the farce of this under Bercow.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
Top BBC article: "A&E has 'worst week' in England"
It's a co-ordinated campaign.
The NHS is the only thing Labour have left.
Performance in Wales and Northern Ireland is even worse, while the picture in Scotland is unclear.
As England is the only part of the UK that produces weekly data, how the NHS is performing there gives the best indication of the pressure the system is under.
But lets be honest it wont happen. The existing model has to be tested to utter destruction before a politician has the nuts to sort it out.
Until then hospitals are like Health Food Banks.
This is my local A&E.. the next nearest one at King Georges in Ilford is being closed down
"Dr Saleyha Ahsan has worked in places torn by armed conflict across the world, including Syria, but said some of her “most stressful moments” were while on duty at the Rom Valley Way unit, the busiest A&E in the country
Speaking to The Guardian, Dr Ashan said: “I have worked as a doctor in various conflicts and yet some of my most stressful moments, facing a tidal wave of pressure, have happened closer to home, in Queen’s Hospital.”
Redbridge Cllr Andy Walker, of the Save King George Hospital Party, believes this underlines the need to save the Goodmayes hospital’s A&E from closure plans next year, with the overspill absorbed by Queen’s.
He said: “Queen’s is heading towards a Mid-Staffs situation unless more resources are found.
“It’s an absolute disgrace and it discourages people to go to A&E.”
He believes councils need to listen to the doctors who work in the department rather than the hospital’s executives.
Queen’s was built to treat 90,000 patients a year but now receives 140,000."
Quentin Letts is word perfect on the farce of this under Bercow.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
Top BBC article: "A&E has 'worst week' in England"
It's a co-ordinated campaign.
The NHS is the only thing Labour have left.
Performance in Wales and Northern Ireland is even worse, while the picture in Scotland is unclear.
As England is the only part of the UK that produces weekly data, how the NHS is performing there gives the best indication of the pressure the system is under.
Quentin Letts is word perfect on the farce of this under Bercow.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
Top BBC article: "A&E has 'worst week' in England"
It's a co-ordinated campaign.
The NHS is the only thing Labour have left.
Performance in Wales and Northern Ireland is even worse, while the picture in Scotland is unclear.
As England is the only part of the UK that produces weekly data, how the NHS is performing there gives the best indication of the pressure the system is under.
Quentin Letts is word perfect on the farce of this under Bercow.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
Top BBC article: "A&E has 'worst week' in England"
It's a co-ordinated campaign.
The NHS is the only thing Labour have left.
Performance in Wales and Northern Ireland is even worse, while the picture in Scotland is unclear.
As England is the only part of the UK that produces weekly data, how the NHS is performing there gives the best indication of the pressure the system is under.
@TGOHF Tories have an interesting view on "Darwinism", survival of the richest, as opposed to survival of the fittest. I never understood how any human can use money as the measure of all things, but it seems to be the consensus on here.
Hey, this isn’t exactly the best place to say this, but I couldn’t find a contact email for you. I love your blog, read it every week, I always find it insightful and measured. I wasn’t such a fan of your Scottish Indy coverage, just because I don’t think it was sufficiently critical of the SNP assertions, but I always admired the points you made. I think it’s always important to reflect back on your vote to see if you would do the same now, particularly with something as important and game changing as the Scottish referendum.
I had a very sobering conversation with a mate about the falling price of oil and what would have happened if Scotland had become Independent this year. We were promised by Salmond and the SNP that the price of oil would remain at $113 per barrel, and that this would float us through to a massive budget surplus, and we’d have low taxes, better living, and more money. Those of us who pointed out that $113 per barrel wasn’t a stable or accurate reflection on the market were accused of scaremongering and being anti-Scottish.
And because of the weakness of the Westminster parties, it was very nearly successful.
One of the Westminster parties supporters voted 95% to stay in the Union.....
95% of not very many is not very many.
Surely you are smarter than the Yestapo who only count MPs?
Voters in 2010 GE Scotland: ('000)
Con: 412 LibD: 465 SNP: 491 Lab: 1,035
One of the Westminster parties failed to carry its supporters - too busy fighting among themselves, as was pointed out over Falkirk to deaf ears on here - with a bit of luck Jim Murphy will put that right.....
My original point was that the large Yes vote was as much about disgust at Westminster's political elite as it was about independence. In England you protest by voting UKIP, in Scotland there was the referendum and there is the SNP.
If there was uniform disgust at Westminster, why did 95% of one parties voters vote for the union?
@TGOHF Tories have an interesting view on "Darwinism", survival of the richest, as opposed to survival of the fittest. I never understood how any human can use money as the measure of all things, but it seems to be the consensus on here.
Surely the very definition of money is that is the universal measure of economic value.
Economic value is not all things: but you'll find that there's a price for almost everything.
@rcs1000 "but you'll find that there's a price for almost everything"
Apparently so, and it no doubt seems entirely rational. Perhaps one day society will complete it's journey, and understand that it is mindless bullsh*t.
Quentin Letts is word perfect on the farce of this under Bercow.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
Top BBC article: "A&E has 'worst week' in England"
It's a co-ordinated campaign.
The NHS is the only thing Labour have left.
Performance in Wales and Northern Ireland is even worse, while the picture in Scotland is unclear.
As England is the only part of the UK that produces weekly data, how the NHS is performing there gives the best indication of the pressure the system is under.
"There were over 111,000 emergency admissions to hospital - 80,000 from A&E units - which is an all-time high."
Sounds like it is doing just fine coping with unprecedented demand.
A £5 charge would see that diminish significantly.
How about there being a £10 charge for A&E if you are found to be twice the drink driving limit?
So what you're saying is if I drink four pints and am randomly attacked while walking home, I should cough up a tenner? Do I understand your idea correctly?
Quentin Letts is word perfect on the farce of this under Bercow.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
Top BBC article: "A&E has 'worst week' in England"
It's a co-ordinated campaign.
The NHS is the only thing Labour have left.
Performance in Wales and Northern Ireland is even worse, while the picture in Scotland is unclear.
As England is the only part of the UK that produces weekly data, how the NHS is performing there gives the best indication of the pressure the system is under.
"There were over 111,000 emergency admissions to hospital - 80,000 from A&E units - which is an all-time high."
Sounds like it is doing just fine coping with unprecedented demand.
A £5 charge would see that diminish significantly.
How about there being a £10 charge for A&E if you are found to be twice the drink driving limit?
So what you're saying is if I drink four pints and am randomly attacked while walking home, I should cough up a tenner? Do I understand your idea correctly?
Yes, if you want to be treated at A&E
Although I am sure there would be ways of making sure if that happened people wouldn't end up out of pocket
@Morris_Dancer Since there are female fighter pilots, you would assume not?
Absolutely. It's an utter absurdity to suggest that a difference in, say, average spacial awareness between the genders means that "women can't drive". I'd say men and women cover the same spectrum of ability, although the distribution may be skewed in different ways.
That may indeed suggest a small proportion of one gender would be suited to a particular role than the other gender, but given there are upwards of 3 billion of each flavour knocking about our planet, there should be no shortage of elite candidates for any task you could name. And I'd include anything from F1 driving to the special forces in that.
Quentin Letts is word perfect on the farce of this under Bercow.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
Top BBC article: "A&E has 'worst week' in England"
It's a co-ordinated campaign.
The NHS is the only thing Labour have left.
Performance in Wales and Northern Ireland is even worse, while the picture in Scotland is unclear.
As England is the only part of the UK that produces weekly data, how the NHS is performing there gives the best indication of the pressure the system is under.
"There were over 111,000 emergency admissions to hospital - 80,000 from A&E units - which is an all-time high."
Sounds like it is doing just fine coping with unprecedented demand.
A £5 charge would see that diminish significantly.
How about there being a £10 charge for A&E if you are found to be twice the drink driving limit?
So what you're saying is if I drink four pints and am randomly attacked while walking home, I should cough up a tenner? Do I understand your idea correctly?
Yes, if you want to be treated at A&E
Although I am sure there would be ways of making sure if that happened people wouldn't end up out of pocket
I love it! Tightwad @Saddened forbears to pay £10 to the hard pressed NHS when using the A&E and cries, "this ain't socialism".
I'm not sure that installing a breathalyser at the triage desk of A&E is going to be tremendously popular.
Charging hotel rates for hospital beds might, however, be worth considering, giving those who are in financial need housing benefit for that cost as necessary.
Quentin Letts is word perfect on the farce of this under Bercow.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
Top BBC article: "A&E has 'worst week' in England"
It's a co-ordinated campaign.
The NHS is the only thing Labour have left.
Performance in Wales and Northern Ireland is even worse, while the picture in Scotland is unclear.
As England is the only part of the UK that produces weekly data, how the NHS is performing there gives the best indication of the pressure the system is under.
"There were over 111,000 emergency admissions to hospital - 80,000 from A&E units - which is an all-time high."
Sounds like it is doing just fine coping with unprecedented demand.
A £5 charge would see that diminish significantly.
How about there being a £10 charge for A&E if you are found to be twice the drink driving limit?
So what you're saying is if I drink four pints and am randomly attacked while walking home, I should cough up a tenner? Do I understand your idea correctly?
Yes, if you want to be treated at A&E
Although I am sure there would be ways of making sure if that happened people wouldn't end up out of pocket
Charge 'em more than a tenner, and let users claim it back. I believe that's how the French system works. Should weed out a few wasters. And not just the drunk. Everyone.
As for Saddo's scenario, I'd guess more drunkards are overloading A&E through their own stupid fault, than are victims of the inebriated.
The quote in there from Bill Gates "You can't have a rigid view that all new taxes are evil" reminds me exactly why I detest him and want him purged with fire.
@Morris_Dancer Since there are female fighter pilots, you would assume not?
Absolutely. It's an utter absurdity to suggest that a difference in, say, average spacial awareness between the genders means that "women can't drive". I'd say men and women cover the same spectrum of ability, although the distribution may be skewed in different ways.
That may indeed suggest a small proportion of one gender would be suited to a particular role than the other gender, but given there are upwards of 3 billion of each flavour knocking about our planet, there should be no shortage of elite candidates for any task you could name. And I'd include anything from F1 driving to the special forces in that.
There is a one standard deviation difference in spatial awareness in favour of men, unsurprisingly. Not insignificant.
I don't think any woman would ever be a top footballer, although few women would interested in being a footballer anyway.
After the hugely disappointing (for them) 5% Labour lead from YouGov last night, it must have come as a considerable relief to Tory High Command that today's Populus poll shows them just 1% (or 0.4% expressed to one place of decimals), behind Labour, a narrowing of the 2% lead reported by the same pollster on Monday. Elsewhere, the latest batch of polls appear to confirm that the LibDems have upped their share of the vote from around 7% to 9%, whilst UKIP's share has declined by roughly the same extent, from 15% to 13%.
Quentin Letts is word perfect on the farce of this under Bercow.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
Top BBC article: "A&E has 'worst week' in England"
It's a co-ordinated campaign.
The NHS is the only thing Labour have left.
Performance in Wales and Northern Ireland is even worse, while the picture in Scotland is unclear.
As England is the only part of the UK that produces weekly data, how the NHS is performing there gives the best indication of the pressure the system is under.
"There were over 111,000 emergency admissions to hospital - 80,000 from A&E units - which is an all-time high."
Sounds like it is doing just fine coping with unprecedented demand.
A £5 charge would see that diminish significantly.
How about there being a £10 charge for A&E if you are found to be twice the drink driving limit?
So what you're saying is if I drink four pints and am randomly attacked while walking home, I should cough up a tenner? Do I understand your idea correctly?
Yes, if you want to be treated at A&E
Although I am sure there would be ways of making sure if that happened people wouldn't end up out of pocket
@Morris_Dancer Since there are female fighter pilots, you would assume not?
Absolutely. It's an utter absurdity to suggest that a difference in, say, average spacial awareness between the genders means that "women can't drive". I'd say men and women cover the same spectrum of ability, although the distribution may be skewed in different ways.
That may indeed suggest a small proportion of one gender would be suited to a particular role than the other gender, but given there are upwards of 3 billion of each flavour knocking about our planet, there should be no shortage of elite candidates for any task you could name. And I'd include anything from F1 driving to the special forces in that.
You wouldn't be an advocate of all-women car parks then.
When an MP I put forward the idea of having a separate, lower-priority but well-policed waiting area for drunks at A&E, so staff could concentrate on the serious cases and sober patients wouldn't get pestered by drunks. It was a popular idea among most constituents but NHS staff unanimously opposed it - they said that sorting out who should go to which would be yet another layer of hassle, and would carry the risk of serious error if someone who was BOTH drunk and dangerously ill (quite a common pattern) would get dumped in the drunk area and only seen too late to help. So I backed off. I guess that charging them a tenner would have the same drawback.
@Morris_Dancer Since there are female fighter pilots, you would assume not?
Absolutely. It's an utter absurdity to suggest that a difference in, say, average spacial awareness between the genders means that "women can't drive". I'd say men and women cover the same spectrum of ability, although the distribution may be skewed in different ways.
That may indeed suggest a small proportion of one gender would be suited to a particular role than the other gender, but given there are upwards of 3 billion of each flavour knocking about our planet, there should be no shortage of elite candidates for any task you could name. And I'd include anything from F1 driving to the special forces in that.
You wouldn't be an advocate of all-women car parks then.
I'd suggest that the inclusion of women in front-line combat units will in fact make zero difference at all to the unit's effectiveness in combat.
I say this because it is quite well understood that hardly any members of combat units are effective in combat.
There is a book called Brains & Bullets: How psychology wins wars, by Leo Murray, that sets it all out rather starkly.
Essentially, hardly anyone ever fights. Those who do shoot do so ever less effectively as the range closes, because at short range they're likelier to hit but don't want to. In WW1 Palestine, the British army found that the effect of defensive rifle fire against Turkish attackers fell as the range shortened.
In consequence, 80% of casualties are inflicted nowadays by artillery and most of the rest by longish range standoff such as mortars and machine guns, with small arms injuries pretty rare. It is so well documented it's not even in dispute.
When you understand this, an awful lot of military encounters start to make sense. At Rorke's Drift 100-odd British soldiers fired 20,000 rounds of ammunition at 4,000 Zulus and inflicted perhaps 500 casualties. That's one per 40 rounds fired. This was a firefight at a range so close the Zulus were within stabbing distance, so it wasn't an accuracy issue, they just didn't want to fight. Neither did the Zulus, who only inflicted about a dozen casualties.
There were 31 British casualties at Rorke's Drift (a shade under 20%), rather more than your own estimate. One of the reasons for that of course was that the Zulu's were kept back out of stabbing distance for much of the time by the massed rifle fire.
The studies you cite that concluded that very few people in a rifle platoon actually fight are rather dated and relate primarily to a set of circumstances that applied for part of the 20th century and no longer do so (i.e. major wars) and even then they are not as widely accepted as you imply. Nor indeed are they as simplistic.
I would suggest that the reason why is some modern wars most casualties are caused by indirect weapons (e.g. artillery) is because they can be and it is more effective to fight that way. It has very little if anything to do with the combat effectiveness of the infantry.
After the hugely disappointinting (for them) 5% Labour lead from YouGov last night, it must have come as a considerable relief to Tory High Command that today's Populus poll shows them just 1% (or 0.4% expressed to one place of decimals), behind Labour, a narrowing of the 2% lead reported by the same pollster on Monday. Elsewhere, the latest batch of polls appear to confirm that the LibDems have upped their share of the vote from around 7% to 9%, whilst UKIP's share has declined by roughly the same extent, from 15% to 13%.
I don't really pay too much attention to, or care much about the polls, they seem to be all over the place.
But if you do, you shouldn't fool yourself that UKIPs share has gone down to 13%
12 polls have been released with fieldwork that took place in the last week, and UKIPs average is 15.1%
The high is 19% the low is 12%
If we remove the 2 best and the 2 worst the average is 14.9%
Why just make things up? There is no way you can look at the latest batch of polls and come to the conclusion that you have
Mr. M, to be fair, I'd be less concerned about this VAT change if I were a billionaire.
I would be equally outraged whatever my personal circumstances are. It's the principle. Just because you *can* afford to pay something doesn't give greedy scrounging socialist officialdom the right to pick your pocket.
Quentin Letts is word perfect on the farce of this under Bercow.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
Top BBC article: "A&E has 'worst week' in England"
It's a co-ordinated campaign.
The NHS is the only thing Labour have left.
Performance in Wales and Northern Ireland is even worse, while the picture in Scotland is unclear.
As England is the only part of the UK that produces weekly data, how the NHS is performing there gives the best indication of the pressure the system is under.
"There were over 111,000 emergency admissions to hospital - 80,000 from A&E units - which is an all-time high."
Sounds like it is doing just fine coping with unprecedented demand.
A £5 charge would see that diminish significantly.
How about there being a £10 charge for A&E if you are found to be twice the drink driving limit?
So what you're saying is if I drink four pints and am randomly attacked while walking home, I should cough up a tenner? Do I understand your idea correctly?
Yes, if you want to be treated at A&E
Although I am sure there would be ways of making sure if that happened people wouldn't end up out of pocket
I love it! Tightwad @Saddened forbears to pay £10 to the hard pressed NHS when using the A&E and cries, "this ain't socialism".
The great joy of the VAT change is that lots of people/businesses can't afford to pay. It's driving small firms/sole traders out of business or forcing them to use, er, Amazon (and similar sites) which the law was meant to hit by making them pay more tax.
I concur entirely that this notion 'fair taxes' = 'the rich always paying more' is utter nonsense.
A bizarre combination of cultural Marxism and nerdy fantasies of butt kicking babes.
Er, no. If a woman passes the physical and mental requirements to serve as a soldier - even if on average women are less likely to do both than the average man, accepting that for the sake of argument, that doesn't mean some women are not capable of meeting those requirements just as some men aren't - why shouldn't they serve? The only part left is undermining unit cohesion, and the Army just said there would not be an adverse affect, and I would hope the Army would know enough about unit cohesion.
Edit: I'm not going to be demanding women in combat roles purely on the strength of some equality mantra, and modern, actual combat is not good fodder for nerd sexy fantasies either, sadly, but if the Army thinks, pending some further reviews, there would be no adverse effect, I think they can be trusted to be defending their own institution and its makeup.
My understanding is that the real issue is the behaviour of men in a combat situation: that if a female colleague is in danger they will take excessive risks to try and protect/rescue her, even when that might not be the most appropriate action.
But, fundamentally, if the military does a proper review and says it's a good idea then I'm fine with that. They should know best on operational matters like this.
Quentin Letts is word perfect on the farce of this under Bercow.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
Top BBC article: "A&E has 'worst week' in England"
It's a co-ordinated campaign.
The NHS is the only thing Labour have left.
Performance in Wales and Northern Ireland is even worse, while the picture in Scotland is unclear.
As England is the only part of the UK that produces weekly data, how the NHS is performing there gives the best indication of the pressure the system is under.
"There were over 111,000 emergency admissions to hospital - 80,000 from A&E units - which is an all-time high."
Sounds like it is doing just fine coping with unprecedented demand.
A £5 charge would see that diminish significantly.
How about there being a £10 charge for A&E if you are found to be twice the drink driving limit?
So what you're saying is if I drink four pints and am randomly attacked while walking home, I should cough up a tenner? Do I understand your idea correctly?
Yes, if you want to be treated at A&E
Although I am sure there would be ways of making sure if that happened people wouldn't end up out of pocket
Off-topic: I see the Mayor of London's approved the insane green bridge in London.
It will cost us now: Transport for London is committing £30 million, and the same amount is coming from the Treasury. And then there are the nightmarish long-term running costs. All for people too lazy to walk a few hundred yards to the other bridges.
BTW, this 'bridge' will not be open to the public at night, cyclists will be banned, and you will be limited to crossing it in small groups of less than eight people. It is London's first fascist bridge.
Transport for London is paying for the redevelopment of Temple Tube, which has been on their wish list for ages
The government is foregoing VAT rather than making a cash contribution.
Are cyclists banned? I know when it was designed they made the paths curved (a figure of 8 from recollection) to avoid cyclists dominating the pedestrians.
You need to remember that this is a public space, that just happens to cross a river. It's primary purpose is not to be a bridge.
I'm not sure that installing a breathalyser at the triage desk of A&E is going to be tremendously popular.
Charging hotel rates for hospital beds might, however, be worth considering, giving those who are in financial need housing benefit for that cost as necessary.
Not at hotel rates surely, but I will be surpised if we don't see the introduction of hospital bed charges, along with charges for visiting one's GP (subject to the usual exclusions) in the next Parliament, whichever party wins. In these difficult times, it's unrealistic to think we can keep shovelling yet more and more money into the NHS seemingly without regard to the consequencies to the economy as a whole. After all, our supposedly "free" NHS already requires us to pay potentially very considerable amounts of money when receiving dental treatment.
@TGOHF Tories have an interesting view on "Darwinism", survival of the richest, as opposed to survival of the fittest. I never understood how any human can use money as the measure of all things, but it seems to be the consensus on here.
Who mentioned wealth - I was talking about stupidity - if I had been stabbed whilst drunk I would be happy to fork out a few quid - less than the cost of the last round no doubt.
You lefties are obsessed with money and wealth - there is more to life than that.
@TGOHF Tories have an interesting view on "Darwinism", survival of the richest, as opposed to survival of the fittest. I never understood how any human can use money as the measure of all things, but it seems to be the consensus on here.
Statistically the better off tend to live longer, Compare life expectancy in Surrey with Glasgow. The question is do then fitter become richer or do the richer become fitter ?
Off-topic: I see the Mayor of London's approved the insane green bridge in London.
It will cost us now: Transport for London is committing £30 million, and the same amount is coming from the Treasury. And then there are the nightmarish long-term running costs. All for people too lazy to walk a few hundred yards to the other bridges.
BTW, this 'bridge' will not be open to the public at night, cyclists will be banned, and you will be limited to crossing it in small groups of less than eight people. It is London's first fascist bridge.
Transport for London is paying for the redevelopment of Temple Tube, which has been on their wish list for ages
The government is foregoing VAT rather than making a cash contribution.
Are cyclists banned? I know when it was designed they made the paths curved (a figure of 8 from recollection) to avoid cyclists dominating the pedestrians.
You need to remember that this is a public space, that just happens to cross a river. It's primary purpose is not to be a bridge.
The website says it is "the Bridge will provide a vital new route between north and south London"
What a load of rubbish. Blackfriars and Waterloo Bridges are about a two minute walk
Pretentious vanity project. Waste of money
This is exactly the kind of wastage that reinforces the "out of touch" meme. I can barely believe it is happening to be honest
Off-topic: I see the Mayor of London's approved the insane green bridge in London.
It will cost us now: Transport for London is committing £30 million, and the same amount is coming from the Treasury. And then there are the nightmarish long-term running costs. All for people too lazy to walk a few hundred yards to the other bridges.
BTW, this 'bridge' will not be open to the public at night, cyclists will be banned, and you will be limited to crossing it in small groups of less than eight people. It is London's first fascist bridge.
Transport for London is paying for the redevelopment of Temple Tube, which has been on their wish list for ages
The government is foregoing VAT rather than making a cash contribution.
Are cyclists banned? I know when it was designed they made the paths curved (a figure of 8 from recollection) to avoid cyclists dominating the pedestrians.
You need to remember that this is a public space, that just happens to cross a river. It's primary purpose is not to be a bridge.
It's clearly all tied into the redevelopment of the block of land between The Strand/Fleet St and the river. Fingers crossed it won't wreck the existing views along the Thames, though I wouldn't be too hopeful.
@TGOHF Tories have an interesting view on "Darwinism", survival of the richest, as opposed to survival of the fittest. I never understood how any human can use money as the measure of all things, but it seems to be the consensus on here.
Who mentioned wealth - I was talking about stupidity - if I had been stabbed whilst drunk I would be happy to fork out a few quid - less than the cost of the last round no doubt.
You lefties are obsessed with money and wealth - there is more to life than that.
You never know, it might make people more likely to consider whether to get so drunk they are twice the legal driving limit
One area where Hollywood gets it totally wrong is to portray fighting women as warrior princesses. A woman who fights on the front line will need the same sort of physique as a man who does so.
Only if you believe the primary purpose of Hollywood is accuracy rather than sales...
"You need to remember that this is a public space, that just happens to cross a river. It's primary purpose is not to be a bridge"
So a public right of way that crosses a river is a bridge but in this case not primarily so. Its primary purpose is to be something else. Why does the taxpayer need to fork out tens of millions for this thing, that is a bridge but isn't, not really?
Off-topic: I see the Mayor of London's approved the insane green bridge in London.
It will cost us now: Transport for London is committing £30 million, and the same amount is coming from the Treasury. And then there are the nightmarish long-term running costs. All for people too lazy to walk a few hundred yards to the other bridges.
BTW, this 'bridge' will not be open to the public at night, cyclists will be banned, and you will be limited to crossing it in small groups of less than eight people. It is London's first fascist bridge.
Transport for London is paying for the redevelopment of Temple Tube, which has been on their wish list for ages
The government is foregoing VAT rather than making a cash contribution.
Are cyclists banned? I know when it was designed they made the paths curved (a figure of 8 from recollection) to avoid cyclists dominating the pedestrians.
You need to remember that this is a public space, that just happens to cross a river. It's primary purpose is not to be a bridge.
Charles, it's a public space as long as there are not more than eight members of the public in a group. Cyclists will be banned (1), and it will be closed off at night, and for private functions (2). Given these rather pathetic restrictions have been put in at an early stage, they will only get more onerous with time. In fact, anyone want to bet against it becoming ticketed paid-for access?
If TfL want to use the £60 million for redeveloping Temple tube, fair enough; that's what the money should be spent on. If this bridge has got developer's mucky little fingers on it, we should run screaming.
And remember: it will cost £3.5 million per year just to maintain. Whilst they may a few million aside to pay for the first few years, soon enough it will become a cost to us.
I'm not against inspirational architecture; in fact I generally love it, as my posts on here passim show. But I see nothing in this bridge that fulfils a purpose (it isn't a bridge, and isn't a public space because of the restrictions, and is in the wrong place). The cost to the public will be too high just to sate Joanna Lumley's wet dreams.
@TGOHF Tories have an interesting view on "Darwinism", survival of the richest, as opposed to survival of the fittest. I never understood how any human can use money as the measure of all things, but it seems to be the consensus on here.
Who mentioned wealth - I was talking about stupidity - if I had been stabbed whilst drunk I would be happy to fork out a few quid - less than the cost of the last round no doubt.
You lefties are obsessed with money and wealth - there is more to life than that.
You never know, it might make people more likely to consider whether to get so drunk they are twice the legal driving limit
So drunk they are twice the limit? Come on, Mr. Sam! The legal limit for driving is, all things considered and on average, about two standard-strength pints. How many people do you know who are drunk on four pints?
@TGOHF Tories have an interesting view on "Darwinism", survival of the richest, as opposed to survival of the fittest. I never understood how any human can use money as the measure of all things, but it seems to be the consensus on here.
Who mentioned wealth - I was talking about stupidity - if I had been stabbed whilst drunk I would be happy to fork out a few quid - less than the cost of the last round no doubt.
You lefties are obsessed with money and wealth - there is more to life than that.
You never know, it might make people more likely to consider whether to get so drunk they are twice the legal driving limit
So drunk they are twice the limit? Come on, Mr. Sam! The legal limit for driving is, all things considered and on average, about two standard-strength pints. How many people do you know who are drunk on four pints?
My wife. Which kind of explains how she ended up as my wife...
The great joy of the VAT change is that lots of people/businesses can't afford to pay. It's driving small firms/sole traders out of business or forcing them to use, er, Amazon (and similar sites) which the law was meant to hit by making them pay more tax.
I concur entirely that this notion 'fair taxes' = 'the rich always paying more' is utter nonsense.
On the Telegraph website today we are greeted with: "Ukip leader says comedian's quips during an appearance on BBC debating show were pre-prepared as row between the pair rumbles on"
My first thought was not of the article but of you spluttering in righteous fury over "pre-prepared". You are a positive influence on our nation, Mr Dancer, but one whose crusade against such outrages remains as yet incomplete.
.. it is quite well understood that hardly any members of combat units are effective in combat.
There is a book called Brains & Bullets: How psychology wins wars, by Leo Murray, that sets it all out rather starkly.
Essentially, hardly anyone ever fights. Those who do shoot do so ever less effectively as the range closes, because at short range they're likelier to hit but don't want to. In WW1 Palestine, the British army found that the effect of defensive rifle fire against Turkish attackers fell as the range shortened.
In consequence, 80% of casualties are inflicted nowadays by artillery and most of the rest by longish range standoff such as mortars and machine guns, with small arms injuries pretty rare. It is so well documented it's not even in dispute.
When you understand this, an awful lot of military encounters start to make sense. At Rorke's Drift 100-odd British soldiers fired 20,000 rounds of ammunition at 4,000 Zulus and inflicted perhaps 500 casualties. That's one per 40 rounds fired. This was a firefight at a range so close the Zulus were within stabbing distance, so it wasn't an accuracy issue, they just didn't want to fight. Neither did the Zulus, who only inflicted about a dozen casualties.
Morale, detrermination and courage clearly has a very important place. As does physique (if only to withstand the shock of wounds). The notion that the Zulus only inflicted 'a dozen' casualties is simply wrong. 17 were killed and 15 wounded out of about 150 in all. Over 20%. Much of the firing was at night - the daylight battle lasted 3 hours. Likewise quoting Zulu dead takes no account of the wounded so overall the casualties were estimated at about 30 - 35%. 1500?
I do not think it is rocket science to point out that modern war WW1 & 2 etc involves artillery mines and machin gun and mortar fire and is not in the least bit Napoleonic. In WW1 the whole activity of large numbers of troops was to effectively position and support the position of a Lewis gun which in turn allowed 'bomber's to throw grenades with bayonet men to protect them. You only need to look at WW2 Normandy and NW Europe casualties to see that in the fighting forces the attrition was severe, its effects significant. The point about rifles is irellevant, infantry occupy the ground. I think that those who walked up Mount Tumbeldown might want to take issue with you that hardly anyone fights.
Comments
That's a different argument, though. My point is that there are many more than appalling welfare junkies, Guardian readers and recent immigrants who believe that the wealthy should pay more tax.
The general view there is 'to let the dorises / split harrises in but only if the standards are exactly the same and they get same PFA pass mark'. Can't get fairer than that!
I'm still a bit surprised we don't have female F1 drivers. There are all sorts of advantages -
1) trailblazer, good for PR/sponsors/media coverage
2) lighter, more ballast for better handling
3) easier to make the slightly challenging weight requirements
4) shorter, means lower centre-of-mass and better handling
The only general downside would be the difficulty of getting a neck strong enough, but that's surmountable and the loads now are a bit less than in the past, I think, due to decrease downforce meaning lower cornering speeds [if memory serves].
Even his breathing annoyed me. Fair to say we had a personality clash...
Voters in 2010 GE Scotland: ('000)
Con: 412
LibD: 465
SNP: 491
Lab: 1,035
One of the Westminster parties failed to carry its supporters - too busy fighting among themselves, as was pointed out over Falkirk to deaf ears on here - with a bit of luck Jim Murphy will put that right.....
What's more, there is a lot of good underlying news from tax receipts which are now up across the board. Taking out the lowered APF transfers this year tax receipts are up YoY by 2.8% and on a 6 monthly basis income tax receipts are up 3.9%, so stripping out the 45p rate related oddities we're seeing close GDP+inlfation rises in tax receipts, so it is not a taxless recovery in the slightest. The only thing that is down is APF receipts and "other" which is related to petroleum tax revenues (low oil prices, dwindling output). If the current trend continues the deficit will fall overall this year, and excluding APF it will be a fall of around £10bn which is not too shabby.
That remains the funniest thing anyone has said to me at a PB do.
Let it be twenty.
Merry Christmas.
Funny old world.
There is a parliamentary gambit called the Urgent Question. It used to be rare but under Speaker Bercow it has become pretty common – and Urgent Questions have lost their dramatic effect.
An MP seeking to ask an Urgent Question goes to Speaker's House at the start of the day and says 'look, Speaker, here is a matter of such life-threatening importance or constitutional significance that it demands a ministerial response in the next few hours'.
Speakers in the past were often gnarled old beaks, hard to impress. They understood the difference between public interest and cheap politics. They would usually tell the MP 'sorry, chum, I can see it is important to you but I am not persuaded it is so pressing to the public that we need to drag the Secretary of State to the Chamber this afternoon'.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2879964/A-black-eye-bloody-hooter-Mr-Burnham-Yesterday-Parliament-Quentin-Letts.html#ixzz3MLewQAPM
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
If you follow her twitter feed, you see she trains just as hard as the guys (including neck muscles), but a lot of her press work and photoshoots seem to emphasise femininity
@Susie_Wolff: Going for 60's glamour (in a vintage @MercedesBenz of course)... #instylemanrussia #reginemahaux http://t.co/ElGmIHR5ah
http://cdni.condenast.co.uk/1920x1280/s_v/susie-wolff-vogue-jun13-issue-jason-bell-1-b.jpg
Top BBC article: "A&E has 'worst week' in England"
It's a co-ordinated campaign.
The NHS is the only thing Labour have left.
She's a charming lady. No Rachael Hey-Ho Flint for PR value.
@CCHQPress: Would @MichaelDugherMP ever have allowed this? #BringBackDugher https://t.co/ujTdf1fYeD
How can the Scottish run NHS be 'saved from the Tories?'
The last two weeks of the campaign were desperate shroud waving from a party which had lost the economic argument....coming to you soon in a General Election in the UK.....
As England is the only part of the UK that produces weekly data, how the NHS is performing there gives the best indication of the pressure the system is under.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-30541135
I say this because it is quite well understood that hardly any members of combat units are effective in combat.
There is a book called Brains & Bullets: How psychology wins wars, by Leo Murray, that sets it all out rather starkly.
Essentially, hardly anyone ever fights. Those who do shoot do so ever less effectively as the range closes, because at short range they're likelier to hit but don't want to. In WW1 Palestine, the British army found that the effect of defensive rifle fire against Turkish attackers fell as the range shortened.
In consequence, 80% of casualties are inflicted nowadays by artillery and most of the rest by longish range standoff such as mortars and machine guns, with small arms injuries pretty rare. It is so well documented it's not even in dispute.
When you understand this, an awful lot of military encounters start to make sense. At Rorke's Drift 100-odd British soldiers fired 20,000 rounds of ammunition at 4,000 Zulus and inflicted perhaps 500 casualties. That's one per 40 rounds fired. This was a firefight at a range so close the Zulus were within stabbing distance, so it wasn't an accuracy issue, they just didn't want to fight. Neither did the Zulus, who only inflicted about a dozen casualties.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11296222/Lucy-Powell-immigration-row-Sexism-at-the-heart-of-Labour-Surely-not.html
The Murray book's conclusion is that you win battles by inducing the enemy to stop fighting - by providing them with an opportunity to flee or surrender, before he does the same to your men.
Sounds like it is doing just fine coping with unprecedented demand.
A £5 charge would see that diminish significantly.
Its like food banks - something good and free proves popular.
Until then hospitals are like Health Food Banks.
down
"Dr Saleyha Ahsan has worked in places torn by armed conflict across the world, including Syria, but said some of her “most stressful moments” were while on duty at the Rom Valley Way unit, the busiest A&E in the country
Speaking to The Guardian, Dr Ashan said: “I have worked as a doctor in various conflicts and yet some of my most stressful moments, facing a tidal wave of pressure, have happened closer to home, in Queen’s Hospital.”
Redbridge Cllr Andy Walker, of the Save King George Hospital Party, believes this underlines the need to save the Goodmayes hospital’s A&E from closure plans next year, with the overspill absorbed by Queen’s.
He said: “Queen’s is heading towards a Mid-Staffs situation unless more resources are found.
“It’s an absolute disgrace and it discourages people to go to A&E.”
He believes councils need to listen to the doctors who work in the department rather than the hospital’s executives.
Queen’s was built to treat 90,000 patients a year but now receives 140,000."
http://www.romfordrecorder.co.uk/news/health/a_e_like_war_zone_says_queen_s_hospital_doctor_1_3401030
Of course the downside is someone who has 6 hrs to live waits until the morning to sober up. But in the long term there is an element of Darwinism ..
@neiledwardlovat: #GE2015 NOM dips a little but remains way out ahead, with Tories ahead at 17% and Labour at 16%… but… http://t.co/pFfuD6p58m
Tories have an interesting view on "Darwinism", survival of the richest, as opposed to survival of the fittest.
I never understood how any human can use money as the measure of all things, but it seems to be the consensus on here.
@IsabelHardman: Absurd use of already useless ‘nothing to see here’ spinning technique by Lucy Powell in her interview with @afneil http://t.co/IPOwlmDBxU
Mr. Indigo, I accept that, but finding one woman capable of driving an F1 car is not an incredible quest.
@SkyBet: Get Non-Runner Money Back for all antepost markets on Championship races at Cheltenham Festival in March > http://t.co/Il5HdVAI3c
Since there are female fighter pilots, you would assume not?
Economic value is not all things: but you'll find that there's a price for almost everything.
"but you'll find that there's a price for almost everything"
Apparently so, and it no doubt seems entirely rational.
Perhaps one day society will complete it's journey, and understand that it is mindless bullsh*t.
Although I am sure there would be ways of making sure if that happened people wouldn't end up out of pocket
That may indeed suggest a small proportion of one gender would be suited to a particular role than the other gender, but given there are upwards of 3 billion of each flavour knocking about our planet, there should be no shortage of elite candidates for any task you could name. And I'd include anything from F1 driving to the special forces in that.
Good blog on the Euro-VAT mess: https://blog.pythonanywhere.com/105/
Charging hotel rates for hospital beds might, however, be worth considering, giving those who are in financial need housing benefit for that cost as necessary.
As for Saddo's scenario, I'd guess more drunkards are overloading A&E through their own stupid fault, than are victims of the inebriated.
I don't think any woman would ever be a top footballer, although few women would interested in being a footballer anyway.
The amount of tech-talk there explains why so many sole traders and small businesses are just shutting up shop rather than dealing with the admin.
http://thaddeusthesixth.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/an-interview-with-jo-zebedee-author-of.html
You wouldn't be an advocate of all-women car parks then.
http://resortjobs.co.uk/features/jokes/car park.gif
[Gets tin hat and scarpers, fast....]
A: Because men tell them that this:
<---------------------------------------------------------------------->
is eight inches.
The studies you cite that concluded that very few people in a rifle platoon actually fight are rather dated and relate primarily to a set of circumstances that applied for part of the 20th century and no longer do so (i.e. major wars) and even then they are not as widely accepted as you imply. Nor indeed are they as simplistic.
I would suggest that the reason why is some modern wars most casualties are caused by indirect weapons (e.g. artillery) is because they can be and it is more effective to fight that way. It has very little if anything to do with the combat effectiveness of the infantry.
But if you do, you shouldn't fool yourself that UKIPs share has gone down to 13%
12 polls have been released with fieldwork that took place in the last week, and UKIPs average is 15.1%
The high is 19% the low is 12%
If we remove the 2 best and the 2 worst the average is 14.9%
Why just make things up? There is no way you can look at the latest batch of polls and come to the conclusion that you have
Just because you *can* afford to pay something doesn't give greedy scrounging socialist officialdom the right to pick your pocket.
The great joy of the VAT change is that lots of people/businesses can't afford to pay. It's driving small firms/sole traders out of business or forcing them to use, er, Amazon (and similar sites) which the law was meant to hit by making them pay more tax.
I concur entirely that this notion 'fair taxes' = 'the rich always paying more' is utter nonsense.
2014 low position was a "negative profit" touched of £11,000 at one point.... tricky moments...
Year end position currently sitting in profit of £860 plus dividends received of £700 approx.
Well done George, keep it up in 2015!!!
But, fundamentally, if the military does a proper review and says it's a good idea then I'm fine with that. They should know best on operational matters like this.
The government is foregoing VAT rather than making a cash contribution.
Are cyclists banned? I know when it was designed they made the paths curved (a figure of 8 from recollection) to avoid cyclists dominating the pedestrians.
You need to remember that this is a public space, that just happens to cross a river. It's primary purpose is not to be a bridge.
In these difficult times, it's unrealistic to think we can keep shovelling yet more and more money into the NHS seemingly without regard to the consequencies to the economy as a whole.
After all, our supposedly "free" NHS already requires us to pay potentially very considerable amounts of money when receiving dental treatment.
You lefties are obsessed with money and wealth - there is more to life than that.
The words smoke and mirrors spring to mind.
The question is do then fitter become richer or do the richer become fitter ?
If they ever bring in a stupidity tax, you will be in the highest band ;-)
What a load of rubbish. Blackfriars and Waterloo Bridges are about a two minute walk
Pretentious vanity project. Waste of money
This is exactly the kind of wastage that reinforces the "out of touch" meme. I can barely believe it is happening to be honest
France starts to realise they're crap at food.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/11303443/France-launches-campaign-against-British-plot-to-dethrone-it-as-worlds-food-capital.html
"You need to remember that this is a public space, that just happens to cross a river. It's primary purpose is not to be a bridge"
So a public right of way that crosses a river is a bridge but in this case not primarily so. Its primary purpose is to be something else. Why does the taxpayer need to fork out tens of millions for this thing, that is a bridge but isn't, not really?
If TfL want to use the £60 million for redeveloping Temple tube, fair enough; that's what the money should be spent on. If this bridge has got developer's mucky little fingers on it, we should run screaming.
And remember: it will cost £3.5 million per year just to maintain. Whilst they may a few million aside to pay for the first few years, soon enough it will become a cost to us.
I'm not against inspirational architecture; in fact I generally love it, as my posts on here passim show. But I see nothing in this bridge that fulfils a purpose (it isn't a bridge, and isn't a public space because of the restrictions, and is in the wrong place). The cost to the public will be too high just to sate Joanna Lumley's wet dreams.
(1): http://www.cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest-news/cycling-will-banned-londons-garden-bridge-145620
(2): http://road.cc/content/news/136774-joanna-lumley-claims-sole-responsibility-banning-cyclists-garden-bridge
"Ukip leader says comedian's quips during an appearance on BBC debating show were pre-prepared as row between the pair rumbles on"
My first thought was not of the article but of you spluttering in righteous fury over "pre-prepared". You are a positive influence on our nation, Mr Dancer, but one whose crusade against such outrages remains as yet incomplete.
The notion that the Zulus only inflicted 'a dozen' casualties is simply wrong. 17 were killed and 15 wounded out of about 150 in all. Over 20%. Much of the firing was at night - the daylight battle lasted 3 hours. Likewise quoting Zulu dead takes no account of the wounded so overall the casualties were estimated at about 30 - 35%. 1500?
I do not think it is rocket science to point out that modern war WW1 & 2 etc involves artillery mines and machin gun and mortar fire and is not in the least bit Napoleonic. In WW1 the whole activity of large numbers of troops was to effectively position and support the position of a Lewis gun which in turn allowed 'bomber's to throw grenades with bayonet men to protect them. You only need to look at WW2 Normandy and NW Europe casualties to see that in the fighting forces the attrition was severe, its effects significant. The point about rifles is irellevant, infantry occupy the ground.
I think that those who walked up Mount Tumbeldown might want to take issue with you that hardly anyone fights.