The next European Council meeting where there is a German government in place could be June 2018.
For once I agree that could happen but it would cause havoc in Europe and Brexit though maybe increases the chances of us walking away, not that I want that to happen
Might the political paralysis in certain European countries not encourage a decision to extend negotiations?
It might make it more likely an extension would be offered, but within the UK it would quickly become a proxy for whether to leave at all.
Depends how it was handled and at what stage the negotiations were at.
You only have to compare the safety records of British Rail and the privatised rail companies to know why it is a success.
That said, as anyone who uses the trains regularly like myself I can understand why the voters are keen to to try something different from the status quo.
There's a reason why I catch the 7.14am train from Dore & Totley to Manchester, any later and I've got no chance of getting a seat, even in First Class.
Your analysis implies that it is merely one policy gaffe which messed things up for the Tories, and that voters only voted out of the ‘safety’ that Corbyn wouldn’t win. But the above link demonstrates that the Conservative party have deeper issues that go beyond one policy blunder; that many see them as not being on their side more generally. If your analysis was correct these voters would have returned to the Tories when the dementia tax policy was effectively dropped/put on the back burner, and they certainly wouldn’t have gone on to vote Labour when many of the shock polls were put on front pages showing the gap shortening dramatically. It was also the hypothesis on here too, that these polls would make people realise how close we were to a hung parliament where Corbyn could get into government, and ‘scare’ voters into voting Conservative. It didn’t happen.
As I said before, the Tory party are not seen as a credible voice among many in this group, and until they are it doesn’t matter what the Conservative campaign says or does to show them how terrible Corbyn is.
What we do know is that the Conservatives were polling strongly at the start of the campaign and that poll lead plummeted after the Dementia Tax was unveiled and it fell again after the U turn (which is actually quite consistent, as it shattered the 'strong and stable' message).
You can cherry pick data all you want and so can I, we can be here until the cows come home on this one.
Page 8 here from YouGov has some very telling stats on the dementia tax:
Notably, the dementia tax changes were opposed by:
33% (18-24) 38% (25-49) 43% (50-64) 41% (65+)
And interestingly it was opposed by
43% (ABC1) 35% (C2DE)
From this we can surmise the people most worried about the dementia tax were a) relatively well off and b) (marginally) more likely to be the _recipients_ of an inheritance than the pensioners who would be 'paying' the tax.
It was also much more likely to be opposed by Labour voters (54%) compared to Conservative voters (29%).
I would suggest that this supports my theory that Corbynism is, in part, a middle class rebellion by ABC1s aged somewhere between 30-65 who were expecting to receive an inheritance.
Of course, it's not the whole picture, and May's authoritarian tendancies do turn my stomach somewhat. However, I voted Conservative because I am in absolutely no doubt that the "free jam" on offer with Labour has to be paid by someone. Unfortunately that is a point very badly communicated by the Tories at the last GE.
They were expensive, unreliable and the butt of many sarcastic jokes about late arrival, poor food, strikes, poor staff attitude, shabby stations, dirty carriages and much more. You have to go back to the golden age up to (I guess) the early to mid 1950s to find that successful romantic image having fulfilment on the railways. Less demand, slower pace of life and a more polite society were in part responsible for the false memory that some have.
I knew a couple of BR drivers. Nothing wrong with them at all, nice blokes. En masse the rail industry was unhinged.
Reggie Perrin is a good example of how reliably unreliable BR were. You could set your watch by the 20 minute late arrival of your commuter train.
And of course no compensation if your train was cancelled or five hours late.
The Tories need to be mindful of continuing to brand Corbynism "hard left". A lot of our policies are so mainstream that they are the policies of the Conservative government in Germany and have been very mainstream Tory as recently as the same 1970s that the Tories think will do the job in warning people away.
As I keep stressing to my happy clappy Momentum friends who have Seen The Light about His ascendance - most voters are NOT political, do not identify with Tory or Labour, do not care about ideology or what is "left" or "right". At a fundamental level "mainstream" politics have failed millions and millions of people, and even the supposedly affluent are worried about the cost of housing and education. Offering a solution to these problems is not "hard left" to most punters, its just different to whats already failing them.
It is an indication of the state of play that the Cons are going to have to articulate quite carefully the difference in spending plans between the two parties. I'm sure that if I went through the Lab manifesto the costs would pretty soon skyrocket but I know that very few Lab voters will be doing that either and the appeal must be far simpler to grasp and delivered in an attention-grabbing way. *innocent face*
I remember BR and I don't think that the privatised railways are better in any respect at all.
I remember BR ... but we don’t have to take your or my word for how it was.
Rightly so. It was a terrible service with gross over-manning and lack of any respect for the travelling passenger.
I seem to remember Robbie Coltrane doing a sketch where he said he had been eating British Rail food for eighteen years, and would continue to eat British Rail food, until his train arrived....
I used to use BR a lot when I was a student. Rare for students to have cars around 1960, even if you were at Oxbridge, which I wasn’t. I could leave the NE late at night and be back, via London, in SE Essex in time for breakfast. And I could, at the end of term, get my case collected by the railway van the day before I left and it would arrive where I was the next day or at worst a day later. Just checked and you can’t do that now.
Only time that let me down was on our honeymoon when instead of our cases, carefully packed with everything we needed arriving at our hotel the day we did, as planned, they arrived a day later. All we had the first night was the clothes we’d left the reception in!
Mr. Stodge, Corbyn's marched with the hammer and sickle as Leader of the Opposition. Would you accept a Conservative doing that with a swastika?
Change can make things worse. Unless a change is reasoned then it's more sensible to stick with the status quo.
Re: the first point, it wouldn't bother me. I would no more assume the hypothetical Conservative to be a fervent supporter of Naziism than I believe Corbyn to be a fervent supporter of Marxism-Leninism. He may think some aspects of it are reasonable and there are some utopian aspects to Marx that would be nice if practical. However, as far as I can see, Corbyn isn't angling for a "dictatorship of the proletariat" and is happy to work within the democratic process here.
As for change, I disagree. There comes a point when any change is worth more than the status quo - it was the feeling in 1945 and 1979 as well. Nobody really know what voting for Thatcher meant in 1979 but they knew it meant the end of Butskellism. The current model of capitalism as practiced here isn't working. If the alternative is ludicrous Dysonomics - no corporation tax and I can sack anyone who looks at me in a funny way - then I would support the status quo reluctantly.
Certainly we are now at a political turning point like 1979 or 1945. I think there can be little doubt about that . It's not yet clear what direction we will turn in - it could be toward Corbynism or it could be toward a nationalistic isolationism favoured by the hard Brexit supporters. I think the former is probably more likely but it's too early to judge.
The image of a burned out Grenfell Tower looming above the mansions of the billionaires in Kensington is as powerfully symbolic of what has gone wrong as the as the images of uncollected rubbish in the winter of discontent or the Jarrow marchers of the 1930s.
Presumably you've punted thousands on a Labour win at the next election then?
Seriously, we're so far away from an election, let alone any idea of change - I have LOTS of doubt about your supposition.
Added to which, all three parties are likely to change leader before 2022.
Anyone who remembers BR knows that that privatised railways offer a far better service.
I remember BR and I don't think that the privatised railways are better in any respect at all.
Oh come on - for all of the many absurdities of the current system things are significantly better now - in some places. More frequent faster services on newer trains. In other places though things haven't changed at all apart from in one aspect - the huge fare increase.
And its right that the railways are better, considering that public subsidy has quintupled. If we removed the insanely complex contracts culture you could save a significant amount in efficiency savings alone.
One more way things have got worse on unprofitable routes. Non-existent services late at night, very early mornings and Sundays.
It is an indication of the state of play that the Cons are going to have to articulate quite carefully the difference in spending plans between the two parties. I'm sure that if I went through the Lab manifesto the costs would pretty soon skyrocket but I know that very few Lab voters will be doing that either and the appeal must be far simpler to grasp and delivered in an attention-grabbing way. *innocent face*
I remember BR and I don't think that the privatised railways are better in any respect at all.
I remember BR ... but we don’t have to take your or my word for how it was.
Rightly so. It was a terrible service with gross over-manning and lack of any respect for the travelling passenger.
I seem to remember Robbie Coltrane doing a sketch where he said he had been eating British Rail food for eighteen years, and would continue to eat British Rail food, until his train arrived....
I used to use BR a lot when I was a student. Rare for students to have cars around 1960, even if you were at Oxbridge, which I wasn’t. I could leave the NE late at night and be back, via London, in SE Essex in time for breakfast. And I could, at the end of term, get my case collected by the railway van the day before I left and it would arrive where I was the next day or at worst a day later. Just checked and you can’t do that now.
Only time that let me down was on our honeymoon when instead of our cases, carefully packed with everything we needed arriving at our hotel the day we did, as planned, they arrived a day later. All we had the first night was the clothes we’d left the reception in!
They were expensive, unreliable and the butt of many sarcastic jokes about late arrival, poor food, strikes, poor staff attitude, shabby stations, dirty carriages and much more. You have to go back to the golden age up to (I guess) the early to mid 1950s to find that successful romantic image having fulfilment on the railways. Less demand, slower pace of life and a more polite society were in part responsible for the false memory that some have.
I knew a couple of BR drivers. Nothing wrong with them at all, nice blokes. En masse the rail industry was unhinged.
Reggie Perrin is a good example of how reliably unreliable BR were. You could set your watch by the 20 minute late arrival of your commuter train.
And of course no compensation if your train was cancelled or five hours late.
And yet people long for British rail.
A few do. There again some Kipper-types long for a return to the 1950s, and some on the left even claim they want to go back to the horrors of the 1970s.
In each case, sensible people can see that things are much better today.
Interesting stuff happening in Germany. One wonders whether Merkel would be allowed to run again, though there aren't really any replacements for her within the CDU ranks such is her ability to neuter internal allies. Another election will suit the FDP and AfD most, which is probably why the FDP are happy to walk away. I think they also fear going into a coalition with a centre left leader and outwardly leftist party. The last time they went into coalition with Merkel it almost killed them as a political force.
As I said before, the Tory party are not seen as a credible voice among many in this group, and until they are it doesn’t matter what the Conservative campaign says or does to show them how terrible Corbyn is.
What we do know is that the Conservatives were polling strongly at the start of the campaign and that poll lead plummeted after the Dementia Tax was unveiled and it fell again after the U turn (which is actually quite consistent, as it shattered the 'strong and stable' message).
You can cherry pick data all you want and so can I, we can be here until the cows come home on this one.
Page 8 here from YouGov has some very telling stats on the dementia tax:
Notably, the dementia tax changes were opposed by:
33% (18-24) 38% (25-49) 43% (50-64) 41% (65+)
And interestingly it was opposed by
43% (ABC1) 35% (C2DE)
From this we can surmise the people most worried about the dementia tax were a) relatively well off and b) (marginally) more likely to be the _recipients_ of an inheritance than the pensioners who would be 'paying' the tax.
It was also much more likely to be opposed by Labour voters (54%) compared to Conservative voters (29%).
I would suggest that this supports my theory that Corbynism is, in part, a middle class rebellion by ABC1s aged somewhere between 30-65 who were expecting to receive an inheritance.
Of course, it's not the whole picture, and May's authoritarian tendancies do turn my stomach somewhat. However, I voted Conservative because I am in absolutely no doubt that the "free jam" on offer with Labour has to be paid by someone. Unfortunately that is a point very badly communicated by the Tories at the last GE.
I don't think that Dementia tax did it in isolation. Pretty much the same percentages would have opposed Mrs Mays Hard Brexit or Supported free tuition.
It is not simply dumping the Dementia tax* that the Tories need to do to become politically relevant to the under 50's again.
The age old problem with nationalisation is that it promises to reinvest profits, but in fact squanders them (generally on producer interests) and has to rely on taxpayer's money or taxpayer's guarantees of loans to do any 'investment'.
Anyone who remembers BR knows that that privatised railways offer a far better service.
I remember BR and I don't think that the privatised railways are better in any respect at all.
I remember them too.
They were expensive, unreliable and the butt of many sarcastic jokes about late arrival, poor food, strikes, poor staff attitude, shabby stations, dirty carriages and much more. You have to go back to the golden age up to (I guess) the early to mid 1950s to find that successful romantic image having fulfilment on the railways. Less demand, slower pace of life and a more polite society were in part responsible for the false memory that some have.
I knew a couple of BR drivers. Nothing wrong with them at all, nice blokes. En masse the rail industry was unhinged.
Reggie Perrin is a good example of how reliably unreliable BR were. You could set your watch by the 20 minute late arrival of your commuter train.
An awful lot of the improvements in reliability and safety are down to modern tech. Cars have become much more reliable and safe too, and it is much easier to keep trains running on time when the whole network is digitally rather than manually controlled. The tech now is simply light years ahead of where it was in the BR days.
However, the difference is that cars haven't become prohibitively expensive since 'the good old days' in fact they are a good deal cheaper. They are no more crowded, you can guarantee a seat, and while traffic may be a little worse, investment in road capacity seems to have managed to keep pace without the cost of car ownership spiralling out of control.
I am not a commuter and couldn't imagine driving in to work every day (I used to, before I lived in central London, and it was a nightmare), but city to city travel for visiting friends etc is considerably cheaper by car than it is by rail.
It is an indication of the state of play that the Cons are going to have to articulate quite carefully the difference in spending plans between the two parties. I'm sure that if I went through the Lab manifesto the costs would pretty soon skyrocket but I know that very few Lab voters will be doing that either and the appeal must be far simpler to grasp and delivered in an attention-grabbing way. *innocent face*
I remember BR and I don't think that the privatised railways are better in any respect at all.
I remember BR ... but we don’t have to take your or my word for how it was.
Rightly so. It was a terrible service with gross over-manning and lack of any respect for the travelling passenger.
I seem to remember Robbie Coltrane doing a sketch where he said he had been eating British Rail food for eighteen years, and would continue to eat British Rail food, until his train arrived....
I used to use BR a lot when I was a student. Rare for students to have cars around 1960, even if you were at Oxbridge, which I wasn’t. I could leave the NE late at night and be back, via London, in SE Essex in time for breakfast. And I could, at the end of term, get my case collected by the railway van the day before I left and it would arrive where I was the next day or at worst a day later. Just checked and you can’t do that now.
Only time that let me down was on our honeymoon when instead of our cases, carefully packed with everything we needed arriving at our hotel the day we did, as planned, they arrived a day later. All we had the first night was the clothes we’d left the reception in!
Not heard of taxis?
You must have lived in a different student economy to me if you think a taxi from the NE of England to SE Essex was a viable option. Of course we used taxis from the station to the hotel.
I used to use BR a lot when I was a student. Rare for students to have cars around 1960, even if you were at Oxbridge, which I wasn’t. I could leave the NE late at night and be back, via London, in SE Essex in time for breakfast. And I could, at the end of term, get my case collected by the railway van the day before I left and it would arrive where I was the next day or at worst a day later. Just checked and you can’t do that now.
Only time that let me down was on our honeymoon when instead of our cases, carefully packed with everything we needed arriving at our hotel the day we did, as planned, they arrived a day later. All we had the first night was the clothes we’d left the reception in!
You can still get luggage delivered these days. It costs, but might be worth it for the convenience depending on your situation.
Interesting stuff happening in Germany. One wonders whether Merkel would be allowed to run again, though there aren't really any replacements for her within the CDU ranks such is her ability to neuter internal allies. Another election will suit the FDP and AfD most, which is probably why the FDP are happy to walk away. I think they also fear going into a coalition with a centre left leader and outwardly leftist party. The last time they went into coalition with Merkel it almost killed them as a political force.
I don't think another election would suit the FDP at this point. Their gamble was that they could sit in opposition to a minority government and escape responsibility, but if new elections are called they may pay the price for Lindner's vanity.
I would suggest that this supports my theory that Corbynism is, in part, a middle class rebellion by ABC1s aged somewhere between 30-65 who were expecting to receive an inheritance.
Of course at the next GE anyone worried about their inheritance should most certainly not be voting Corbyn - as Inheritance Tax is certain to be higher under Lab than Con.
And it may well not just be higher but very substantially higher.
(Assuming Con don't repeat the dementia tax in their next manifesto).
They were expensive, unreliable and the butt of many sarcastic jokes about late arrival, poor food, strikes, poor staff attitude, shabby stations, dirty carriages and much more. You have to go back to the golden age up to (I guess) the early to mid 1950s to find that successful romantic image having fulfilment on the railways. Less demand, slower pace of life and a more polite society were in part responsible for the false memory that some have.
I knew a couple of BR drivers. Nothing wrong with them at all, nice blokes. En masse the rail industry was unhinged.
Reggie Perrin is a good example of how reliably unreliable BR were. You could set your watch by the 20 minute late arrival of your commuter train.
And of course no compensation if your train was cancelled or five hours late.
And yet people long for British rail.
Not those that remember it. If labour takeover the railways investment will go in salaries and old working practices dictated by the like of the RMT who no doubt will have a table in no 10
You only have to compare the safety records of British Rail and the privatised rail companies to know why it is a success.
That said, as anyone who uses the trains regularly like myself I can understand why the voters are keen to to try something different from the status quo.
There's a reason why I catch the 7.14am train from Dore & Totley to Manchester, any later and I've got no chance of getting a seat, even in First Class.
I don't see why a French/German/Dutch state-owned railway company can work but a British one can't.
If you can't swop those bonds for cold hard cash then it is indeed bollx....
There are plenty of financial investments which lock your cash in for a defined period of time where you can't swap them for cash, or you can with a penalty. How are these ok and the public sector ones proposed by McDonald not?
If you really can't see how these are going to cripple a Labour manifesto, then fine, make them the centrepiece.
Just don't expect anyone with a pension to want to vote for them.
Haye is done I think. British boxing in a decent state of health filling around 23 of around 175 (Top ten/eleven slots each weight division) (Ringtv.com) particularly strong at Bantam -> Lightweight and again at Heavy.
What we do know is that the Conservatives were polling strongly at the start of the campaign and that poll lead plummeted after the Dementia Tax was unveiled and it fell again after the U turn (which is actually quite consistent, as it shattered the 'strong and stable' message).
You can cherry pick data all you want and so can I, we can be here until the cows come home on this one.
Page 8 here from YouGov has some very telling stats on the dementia tax:
Notably, the dementia tax changes were opposed by:
33% (18-24) 38% (25-49) 43% (50-64) 41% (65+)
And interestingly it was opposed by
43% (ABC1) 35% (C2DE)
From this we can surmise the people most worried about the dementia tax were a) relatively well off and b) (marginally) more likely to be the _recipients_ of an inheritance than the pensioners who would be 'paying' the tax.
It was also much more likely to be opposed by Labour voters (54%) compared to Conservative voters (29%).
I would suggest that this supports my theory that Corbynism is, in part, a middle class rebellion by ABC1s aged somewhere between 30-65 who were expecting to receive an inheritance.
Of course, it's not the whole picture, and May's authoritarian tendancies do turn my stomach somewhat. However, I voted Conservative because I am in absolutely no doubt that the "free jam" on offer with Labour has to be paid by someone. Unfortunately that is a point very badly communicated by the Tories at the last GE.
I don't think that Dementia tax did it in isolation. Pretty much the same percentages would have opposed Mrs Mays Hard Brexit or Supported free tuition.
It is not simply dumping the Dementia tax* that the Tories need to do to become politically relevant to the under 50's again.
*incidentally a policy that I supported.
The dementia tax was absolutely toxic on the doorstep. No, it wasn't the only thing. Hiding in a cupboard for half the election and hiding the rest of the cabinet in a box in a cupboard, while proclaiming to be strong and stable was laughable; there was some proposal to scrap a benefit (Winter Fuel allowance?) for the well-off which was so badly announced that people on council estates thought it'd apply to them; there was the U-turn on the policy, which made it sound like the party didn't know what it was doing and didn't have the strength of its convictions; there was the uncosted manifesto. There was also the contrast of Corbyn surfing his surging popularity.
All of that made a difference but it was the dementia tax cock-up in the first place will both set it off and which was the biggest single error.
Notably, the dementia tax changes were opposed by:
33% (18-24) 38% (25-49) 43% (50-64) 41% (65+)
And interestingly it was opposed by
43% (ABC1) 35% (C2DE)
From this we can surmise the people most worried about the dementia tax were a) relatively well off and b) (marginally) more likely to be the _recipients_ of an inheritance than the pensioners who would be 'paying' the tax.
It was also much more likely to be opposed by Labour voters (54%) compared to Conservative voters (29%).
I would suggest that this supports my theory that Corbynism is, in part, a middle class rebellion by ABC1s aged somewhere between 30-65 who were expecting to receive an inheritance.
Of course, it's not the whole picture, and May's authoritarian tendancies do turn my stomach somewhat. However, I voted Conservative because I am in absolutely no doubt that the "free jam" on offer with Labour has to be paid by someone. Unfortunately that is a point very badly communicated by the Tories at the last GE.
I don't think that Dementia tax did it in isolation. Pretty much the same percentages would have opposed Mrs Mays Hard Brexit or Supported free tuition.
It is not simply dumping the Dementia tax* that the Tories need to do to become politically relevant to the under 50's again.
*incidentally a policy that I supported.
Indeed, as I say above it's not the whole picture, but it did dominate the headlines for several days and along with costing Theresa May her reputation for competence, it also seemed extremely anti-aspirational (odd, I know - aspiring to inherit!) to ABC1s aged 30-65. It was a clear message to them that the Conservatvies were not on their side, and as such, I think, a major contributor to Corbyn's success.
I imagine quite a few people thought "well, won't be getting our hands on Gran's house now, might as well vote for some free jam".
The real failure was the Conservative Party's in seeming to offer nothing positive or aspirational in their manifesto beyond a few mealy-mouthed words and some Miliband-Lite policies.
I agree with The_Apocalypse when she says that the Conservatives have an image problem - they no longer appear to be the party of aspiration, and that is what has allowed Corbynism in through the back door.
If nobody is making the case for aspirational capitalism then "free jam" looks very appealing.
Interesting stuff happening in Germany. One wonders whether Merkel would be allowed to run again, though there aren't really any replacements for her within the CDU ranks such is her ability to neuter internal allies. Another election will suit the FDP and AfD most, which is probably why the FDP are happy to walk away. I think they also fear going into a coalition with a centre left leader and outwardly leftist party. The last time they went into coalition with Merkel it almost killed them as a political force.
I don't think another election would suit the FDP at this point. Their gamble was that they could sit in opposition to a minority government and escape responsibility, but if new elections are called they may pay the price for Lindner's vanity.
The biggest danger according to commentators is that Afd would do even better.
Of all the stupid decisions made by politicians, Merkel opening the doors to all must rank near the top.
Haye is done I think. British boxing in a decent state of health filling around 23 of around 175 (Top ten/eleven slots each weight division) (Ringtv.com) particularly strong at Bantam -> Lightweight and again at Heavy.
Yep he needs British boxing more than it needs him but he is an exciting fighter and I'll miss not seeing him fight in anger again.
I used to use BR a lot when I was a student. Rare for students to have cars around 1960, even if you were at Oxbridge, which I wasn’t. I could leave the NE late at night and be back, via London, in SE Essex in time for breakfast. And I could, at the end of term, get my case collected by the railway van the day before I left and it would arrive where I was the next day or at worst a day later. Just checked and you can’t do that now.
Only time that let me down was on our honeymoon when instead of our cases, carefully packed with everything we needed arriving at our hotel the day we did, as planned, they arrived a day later. All we had the first night was the clothes we’d left the reception in!
You can still get luggage delivered these days. It costs, but might be worth it for the convenience depending on your situation.
In my day it was very cheap. Certainly worth while, even for a student, to avoid lugging heavy cases around.
They were expensive, unreliable and the butt of many sarcastic jokes about late arrival, poor food, strikes, poor staff attitude, shabby stations, dirty carriages and much more. You have to go back to the golden age up to (I guess) the early to mid 1950s to find that successful romantic image having fulfilment on the railways. Less demand, slower pace of life and a more polite society were in part responsible for the false memory that some have.
I knew a couple of BR drivers. Nothing wrong with them at all, nice blokes. En masse the rail industry was unhinged.
Reggie Perrin is a good example of how reliably unreliable BR were. You could set your watch by the 20 minute late arrival of your commuter train.
And of course no compensation if your train was cancelled or five hours late.
And yet people long for British rail.
The trouble with all state owned businesses is strikes. The workers via the unions think that the state can always pay up regardless of the profitability of the business. Private companies have to rely on customer revenue which puts a brake on union/worker demands.
Interesting stuff happening in Germany. One wonders whether Merkel would be allowed to run again, though there aren't really any replacements for her within the CDU ranks such is her ability to neuter internal allies. Another election will suit the FDP and AfD most, which is probably why the FDP are happy to walk away. I think they also fear going into a coalition with a centre left leader and outwardly leftist party. The last time they went into coalition with Merkel it almost killed them as a political force.
I don't think another election would suit the FDP at this point. Their gamble was that they could sit in opposition to a minority government and escape responsibility, but if new elections are called they may pay the price for Lindner's vanity.
It's not vanity, the compromises being asked of the FDP would have completely killed the party at the next election. In all areas they were being asked to compromise well beyond what they promised to voters, they are to the right of the CSU and are having to compromise with a centre left leader of the CDU and the leftist Greens. If anything they will get more voters next time round, the minor parties are smashing the consensus in Germany - AfD, FDP, Green and The Left got 41.4% combined. In a second election mainstream voters will be the least likely to turn out (SPD and CDU voters) while supporters of the minor parties will be more motivated than ever having seen their results from this election. With AfD certain to get third place in another election, Germany has become ungovernable.
The dementia tax was absolutely toxic on the doorstep. No, it wasn't the only thing. Hiding in a cupboard for half the election and hiding the rest of the cabinet in a box in a cupboard, while proclaiming to be strong and stable was laughable; there was some proposal to scrap a benefit (Winter Fuel allowance?) for the well-off which was so badly announced that people on council estates thought it'd apply to them; there was the U-turn on the policy, which made it sound like the party didn't know what it was doing and didn't have the strength of its convictions; there was the uncosted manifesto. There was also the contrast of Corbyn surfing his surging popularity.
All of that made a difference but it was the dementia tax cock-up in the first place will both set it off and which was the biggest single error.
Yes, that is right, although it seems to have varied by area. Someone here (perhaps @Topping?) reported that in west London the 'dementia tax' wasn't a big issue, but Brexit was. My wife and I helped the (unsuccessful) Tory campaign in Eastbourne, and there the dementia tax was the most common reason given by former Conservative voters who were either going to switch to the LibDems or stay at home.
If you can't swop those bonds for cold hard cash then it is indeed bollx....
There are plenty of financial investments which lock your cash in for a defined period of time where you can't swap them for cash, or you can with a penalty. How are these ok and the public sector ones proposed by McDonald not?
Inasmuch as McDonnell is proposing anything coherent, he seems to be proposing compulsory purchase, no doubt at a derisory price, financed by public-sector borrowing on which he seems to be proposing derisory interest rates. Calling them 'confiscation bonds' or whatever he wants to call them doesn't make any difference to the reality.
There's expropriation at the end of a barrel and expropriation with a veneer of legality. One might recall that the Stalin show trials purported to create a veneer of legality and an illusion of the rule of law but it was of course law determined by one individual.
It is an indication of the state of play that the Cons are going to have to articulate quite carefully the difference in spending plans between the two parties. I'm sure that if I went through the Lab manifesto the costs would pretty soon skyrocket but I know that very few Lab voters will be doing that either and the appeal must be far simpler to grasp and delivered in an attention-grabbing way.
How much for example would renationalising the railways cost? £350m per week?
The age old problem with nationalisation is that it promises to reinvest profits, but in fact squanders them (generally on producer interests) and has to rely on taxpayer's money or taxpayer's guarantees of loans to do any 'investment'.
Anyone who remembers BR knows that that privatised railways offer a far better service.
I remember BR and I don't think that the privatised railways are better in any respect at all.
I remember them too.
They were expensive, unreliable and the butt of many sarcastic jokes about late arrival, poor food, strikes, poor staff attitude, shabby stations, dirty carriages and much more. You have to go back to the golden age up to (I guess) the early to mid 1950s to find that successful romantic image having fulfilment on the railways. Less demand, slower pace of life and a more polite society were in part responsible for the false memory that some have.
I knew a couple of BR drivers. Nothing wrong with them at all, nice blokes. En masse the rail industry was unhinged.
Reggie Perrin is a good example of how reliably unreliable BR were. You could set your watch by the 20 minute late arrival of your commuter train.
Actually I'd say BR's nadir was the 1950s. The infrastructure and rolling stock had been driven into the ground during the Second World War, and BR's response was the infamous Modernisation Plan which bet the farm on US-style marshalling yards for a freight traffic that was rapidly disappearing to the roads. The failure of the Modernisation Plan made the Beeching Axe inevitable.
Arguably BR didn't recover until sectorization in the early 1980s, when the old regional structure inherited from the Big Four "Grouping" companies, was replaced by a structure based on markets: freight, InterCity, NetworkSouthEast etc. This resulted in a huge improvement in BR's performance and finances, with InterCity becoming highly profitable and the organization as a whole heading towards break-even.
The Tories need to be mindful of continuing to brand Corbynism "hard left". A lot of our policies are so mainstream that they are the policies of the Conservative government in Germany and have been very mainstream Tory as recently as the same 1970s that the Tories think will do the job in warning people away.
As I keep stressing to my happy clappy Momentum friends who have Seen The Light about His ascendance - most voters are NOT political, do not identify with Tory or Labour, do not care about ideology or what is "left" or "right". At a fundamental level "mainstream" politics have failed millions and millions of people, and even the supposedly affluent are worried about the cost of housing and education. Offering a solution to these problems is not "hard left" to most punters, its just different to whats already failing them.
As I said to HYUFD on the other thread, there is a fundamental misconception amongst many Tories that people are happy and can be scared into sticking with nanny with tales of the Commie monster. They aren't happy, and the status quo holds no grip on them.
It is an indication of the state of play that the Cons are going to have to articulate quite carefully the difference in spending plans between the two parties. I'm sure that if I went through the Lab manifesto the costs would pretty soon skyrocket but I know that very few Lab voters will be doing that either and the appeal must be far simpler to grasp and delivered in an attention-grabbing way.
How much for example would renationalising the railways cost? £350m per week?
The age old problem with nationalisation is that it promises to reinvest profits, but in fact squanders them (generally on producer interests) and has to rely on taxpayer's money or taxpayer's guarantees of loans to do any 'investment'.
Anyone who remembers BR knows that that privatised railways offer a far better service.
I remember BR and I don't think that the privatised railways are better in any respect at all.
They are better in every conceivable way. And they have managed to do that whilst carrying hugely increased numbers of passengers. They are cleaner, far safer, more punctual and in every way a more pleasant experience.
Interesting stuff happening in Germany. One wonders whether Merkel would be allowed to run again, though there aren't really any replacements for her within the CDU ranks such is her ability to neuter internal allies. Another election will suit the FDP and AfD most, which is probably why the FDP are happy to walk away. I think they also fear going into a coalition with a centre left leader and outwardly leftist party. The last time they went into coalition with Merkel it almost killed them as a political force.
I don't think another election would suit the FDP at this point. Their gamble was that they could sit in opposition to a minority government and escape responsibility, but if new elections are called they may pay the price for Lindner's vanity.
It's not vanity, the compromises being asked of the FDP would have completely killed the party at the next election. In all areas they were being asked to compromise well beyond what they promised to voters, they are to the right of the CSU and are having to compromise with a centre left leader of the CDU and the leftist Greens. If anything they will get more voters next time round, the minor parties are smashing the consensus in Germany - AfD, FDP, Green and The Left got 41.4% combined. In a second election mainstream voters will be the least likely to turn out (SPD and CDU voters) while supporters of the minor parties will be more motivated than ever having seen their results from this election. With AfD certain to get third place in another election, Germany has become ungovernable.
My guess is a second election would see the SPD suffer more losses to the Greens (and AfD) as their vote fragments, and the CDU would regain tactical voters they lost to the FDP.
It's not even certain the AfD would come third in a new election - they could come second, above the SPD, but I think CDU/CSU + Green would have a majority and would govern together.
I remember BR and I don't think that the privatised railways are better in any respect at all.
They are better in every conceivable way. And they have managed to do that whilst carrying hugely increased numbers of passengers. They are cleaner, far safer, more punctual and in every way a more pleasant experience.
Interesting stuff happening in Germany. One wonders whether Merkel would be allowed to run again, though there aren't really any replacements for her within the CDU ranks such is her ability to neuter internal allies. Another election will suit the FDP and AfD most, which is probably why the FDP are happy to walk away. I think they also fear going into a coalition with a centre left leader and outwardly leftist party. The last time they went into coalition with Merkel it almost killed them as a political force.
I don't think another election would suit the FDP at this point. Their gamble was that they could sit in opposition to a minority government and escape responsibility, but if new elections are called they may pay the price for Lindner's vanity.
It's not vanity, the compromises being asked of the FDP would have completely killed the party at the next election. In all areas they were being asked to compromise well beyond what they promised to voters, they are to the right of the CSU and are having to compromise with a centre left leader of the CDU and the leftist Greens. If anything they will get more voters next time round, the minor parties are smashing the consensus in Germany - AfD, FDP, Green and The Left got 41.4% combined. In a second election mainstream voters will be the least likely to turn out (SPD and CDU voters) while supporters of the minor parties will be more motivated than ever having seen their results from this election. With AfD certain to get third place in another election, Germany has become ungovernable.
Who would have thought that 6 months ago
Merkel did not go to Sweden last weekend, who will turn up at the December meeting.
Pound rising strongly againat the euro today, I wonder why
The Tories need to be mindful of continuing to brand Corbynism "hard left". A lot of our policies are so mainstream that they are the policies of the Conservative government in Germany and have been very mainstream Tory as recently as the same 1970s that the Tories think will do the job in warning people away.
As I keep stressing to my happy clappy Momentum friends who have Seen The Light about His ascendance - most voters are NOT political, do not identify with Tory or Labour, do not care about ideology or what is "left" or "right". At a fundamental level "mainstream" politics have failed millions and millions of people, and even the supposedly affluent are worried about the cost of housing and education. Offering a solution to these problems is not "hard left" to most punters, its just different to whats already failing them.
As I said to HYUFD on the other thread, there is a fundamental misconception amongst many Tories that people are happy and can be scared into sticking with nanny with tales of the Commie monster. They aren't happy, and the status quo holds no grip on them.
It is an indication of the state of play that the Cons are going to have to articulate quite carefully the difference in spending plans between the two parties. I'm sure that if I went through the Lab manifesto the costs would pretty soon skyrocket but I know that very few Lab voters will be doing that either and the appeal must be far simpler to grasp and delivered in an attention-grabbing way.
How much for example would renationalising the railways cost? £350m per week?
The age old problem with nationalisation is that it promises to reinvest profits, but in fact squanders them (generally on producer interests) and has to rely on taxpayer's money or taxpayer's guarantees of loans to do any 'investment'.
Anyone who remembers BR knows that that privatised railways offer a far better service.
I remember BR and I don't think that the privatised railways are better in any respect at all.
They are better in every conceivable way. And they have managed to do that whilst carrying hugely increased numbers of passengers. They are cleaner, far safer, more punctual and in every way a more pleasant experience.
But that is true of almost everything, on a now vs 1970s comparison. Very difficult to identify how much to attribute to privatisation.
Interesting stuff happening in Germany. One wonders whether Merkel would be allowed to run again, though there aren't really any replacements for her within the CDU ranks such is her ability to neuter internal allies. Another election will suit the FDP and AfD most, which is probably why the FDP are happy to walk away. I think they also fear going into a coalition with a centre left leader and outwardly leftist party. The last time they went into coalition with Merkel it almost killed them as a political force.
I don't think another election would suit the FDP at this point. Their gamble was that they could sit in opposition to a minority government and escape responsibility, but if new elections are called they may pay the price for Lindner's vanity.
It's not vanity, the compromises being asked of the FDP would have completely killed the party at the next election. In all areas they were being asked to compromise well beyond what they promised to voters, they are to the right of the CSU and are having to compromise with a centre left leader of the CDU and the leftist Greens. If anything they will get more voters next time round, the minor parties are smashing the consensus in Germany - AfD, FDP, Green and The Left got 41.4% combined. In a second election mainstream voters will be the least likely to turn out (SPD and CDU voters) while supporters of the minor parties will be more motivated than ever having seen their results from this election. With AfD certain to get third place in another election, Germany has become ungovernable.
My guess is a second election would see the SPD suffer more losses to the Greens (and AfD) as their vote fragments, and the CDU would regain tactical voters they lost to the FDP.
It's not even certain the AfD would come third in a new election - they could come second, above the SPD, but I think CDU/CSU + Green would have a majority and would govern together.
The voters that decamped to FDP from CDU did so because of Merkel, they may come back if Merkel goes, but if she is still there (which is likely) then I don't see how they come back, if anything more will abandon them either by leaving for FDP/AfD or just not bothering.
Also, a Union/Green coalition would be toxic for the Union in the following election, it would literally be a case of jam today. The anti-industry and pro-immigrant policies of the Greens that would be forced on Merkel would completely destroy them and they would lose far too many voters to AfD and FDP. The only stable route to power for the Union has to involve the FDP at some level, but while Merkel is leader that is unlikely.
The age old problem with nationalisation is that it promises to reinvest profits, but in fact squanders them (generally on producer interests) and has to rely on taxpayer's money or taxpayer's guarantees of loans to do any 'investment'.
Anyone who remembers BR knows that that privatised railways offer a far better service.
I remember BR and I don't think that the privatised railways are better in any respect at all.
I remember them too.
They were expensive, unreliable and the butt of many sarcastic jokes about late arrival, poor food, strikes, poor staff attitude, shabby stations, dirty carriages and much more. You have to go back to the golden age up to (I guess) the early to mid 1950s to find that successful romantic image having fulfilment on the railways. Less demand, slower pace of life and a more polite society were in part responsible for the false memory that some have.
I knew a couple of BR drivers. Nothing wrong with them at all, nice blokes. En masse the rail industry was unhinged.
Reggie Perrin is a good example of how reliably unreliable BR were. You could set your watch by the 20 minute late arrival of your commuter train.
An awful lot of the improvements in reliability and safety are down to modern tech. Cars have become much more reliable and safe too, and it is much easier to keep trains running on time when the whole network is digitally rather than manually controlled. The tech now is simply light years ahead of where it was in the BR days.
However, the difference is that cars haven't become prohibitively expensive since 'the good old days' in fact they are a good deal cheaper. They are no more crowded, you can guarantee a seat, and while traffic may be a little worse, investment in road capacity seems to have managed to keep pace without the cost of car ownership spiralling out of control.
I am not a commuter and couldn't imagine driving in to work every day (I used to, before I lived in central London, and it was a nightmare), but city to city travel for visiting friends etc is considerably cheaper by car than it is by rail.
Glad the investment in tech has improved things.
Rail was not uber cheap in BR days, to my recollection.
You can fly to Aberdeen from a London Airport cheaper and faster than car or train, that wasn't the case in BR days.
Stuff changes, I expect a nationalised railways would be great for about 2 to 5 years, and then there would be a rapid decline back to the lowest common denominator that plagued many nationalised industries in the past.
The Tories need to be mindful of continuing to brand Corbynism "hard left". A lot of our policies are so mainstream that they are the policies of the Conservative government in Germany and have been very mainstream Tory as recently as the same 1970s that the Tories think will do the job in warning people away.
As I keep stressing to my happy clappy Momentum friends who have Seen The Light about His ascendance - most voters are NOT political, do not identify with Tory or Labour, do not care about ideology or what is "left" or "right". At a fundamental level "mainstream" politics have failed millions and millions of people, and even the supposedly affluent are worried about the cost of housing and education. Offering a solution to these problems is not "hard left" to most punters, its just different to whats already failing them.
As I said to HYUFD on the other thread, there is a fundamental misconception amongst many Tories that people are happy and can be scared into sticking with nanny with tales of the Commie monster. They aren't happy, and the status quo holds no grip on them.
It is an indication of the state of play that the Cons are going to have to articulate quite carefully the difference in spending plans between the two parties. I'm sure that if I went through the Lab manifesto the costs would pretty soon skyrocket but I know that very few Lab voters will be doing that either and the appeal must be far simpler to grasp and delivered in an attention-grabbing way.
How much for example would renationalising the railways cost? £350m per week?
The age old problem with nationalisation is that it promises to reinvest profits, but in fact squanders them (generally on producer interests) and has to rely on taxpayer's money or taxpayer's guarantees of loans to do any 'investment'.
Anyone who remembers BR knows that that privatised railways offer a far better service.
I remember BR and I don't think that the privatised railways are better in any respect at all.
They are better in every conceivable way. And they have managed to do that whilst carrying hugely increased numbers of passengers. They are cleaner, far safer, more punctual and in every way a more pleasant experience.
But that is true of almost everything, on a now vs 1970s comparison. Very difficult to identify how much to attribute to privatisation.
Not sure that applies to commuter lines. Anywhere.
An awful lot of the improvements in reliability and safety are down to modern tech. Cars have become much more reliable and safe too, and it is much easier to keep trains running on time when the whole network is digitally rather than manually controlled. The tech now is simply light years ahead of where it was in the BR days.
(Snip)
Absolute rubbish IMO in response to safety. If that is the case, then why do Germany, France, Italy and Spain have a much worse recent safety record? And the manual versus digital control is also largely rubbish as well: just look at Clapham Junction for the way the digital network can fail disastrously: one man leaving a wire dangling during an upgrade.
You have to be careful when talking about safety: any perusal of the RAIB files will show a number of incidents that could have proved fatal, had the dice rolled differently. However, the same holds true for those countries as well, who also have plenty of near misses along with their major accidents.
So the question is why the UK's heavy rail safety record is so good? The answers are probably professionalism, funding and yes, technology. But the first two are probably most important, as without them any technology will fail.
Also largely rubbish in response to reliability. Now there is real billing and costs to delays, it is in the interests of everybody to solve them because it hurts their wallets. In the old BR days delays would cost less than fixing things to avoid delays, and hence masses of temporary speed restrictions across the network.
It is an indication of the state of play that the Cons are going to have to articulate quite carefully the difference in spending plans between the two parties. I'm sure that if I went through the Lab manifesto the costs would pretty soon skyrocket but I know that very few Lab voters will be doing that either and the appeal must be far simpler to grasp and delivered in an attention-grabbing way. *innocent face*
I remember BR and I don't think that the privatised railways are better in any respect at all.
I remember BR ... but we don’t have to take your or my word for how it was.
Rightly so. It was a terrible service with gross over-manning and lack of any respect for the travelling passenger.
I seem to remember Robbie Coltrane doing a sketch where he said he had been eating British Rail food for eighteen years, and would continue to eat British Rail food, until his train arrived....
I used to use BR a lot when I was a student. Rare for students to have cars around 1960, even if you were at Oxbridge, which I wasn’t. I could leave the NE late at night and be back, via London, in SE Essex in time for breakfast. And I could, at the end of term, get my case collected by the railway van the day before I left and it would arrive where I was the next day or at worst a day later. Just checked and you can’t do that now.
Only time that let me down was on our honeymoon when instead of our cases, carefully packed with everything we needed arriving at our hotel the day we did, as planned, they arrived a day later. All we had the first night was the clothes we’d left the reception in!
Not heard of taxis?
You must have lived in a different student economy to me if you think a taxi from the NE of England to SE Essex was a viable option. Of course we used taxis from the station to the hotel.
An awful lot of the improvements in reliability and safety are down to modern tech. Cars have become much more reliable and safe too, and it is much easier to keep trains running on time when the whole network is digitally rather than manually controlled. The tech now is simply light years ahead of where it was in the BR days.
However, the difference is that cars haven't become prohibitively expensive since 'the good old days' in fact they are a good deal cheaper. They are no more crowded, you can guarantee a seat, and while traffic may be a little worse, investment in road capacity seems to have managed to keep pace without the cost of car ownership spiralling out of control.
I am not a commuter and couldn't imagine driving in to work every day (I used to, before I lived in central London, and it was a nightmare), but city to city travel for visiting friends etc is considerably cheaper by car than it is by rail.
Glad the investment in tech has improved things.
Rail was not uber cheap in BR days, to my recollection.
You can fly to Aberdeen from a London Airport cheaper and faster than car or train, that wasn't the case in BR days.
Stuff changes, I expect a nationalised railways would be great for about 2 to 5 years, and then there would be a rapid decline back to the lowest common denominator that plagued many nationalised industries in the past.
Aberdeen is a pretty extreme example as it's one of the furthest points you can reach from London, and it's a journey I usually chose to make by train (sadly since changing jobs I no longer have much call to be up there).
The main problem with flying is the additional cost and time in getting to the airport in advance, checking in, waiting, then the cost and time required to get from the airport to your final destination, which is, outside of London, almost inevitably an expensive taxi or hire car away.
A return on the Gatwick Express is £30 and I'd add to that the cost of the Tube journey to Victoria and back so another £9 on top of that. It's also 1 hour 45 away from my flat in North London. That's 1 hour 45 before I've even checked in, then at least another 45 minutes before you board. It's also "lost" time as it's very hard to get your laptop out and work as opposed to the train, where you just get on at Kings X and settle in for the day.
You only have to compare the safety records of British Rail and the privatised rail companies to know why it is a success.
That said, as anyone who uses the trains regularly like myself I can understand why the voters are keen to to try something different from the status quo.
There's a reason why I catch the 7.14am train from Dore & Totley to Manchester, any later and I've got no chance of getting a seat, even in First Class.
I don't see why a French/German/Dutch state-owned railway company can work but a British one can't.
To be fair, both NS and DB haven't exactly maintained stellar reputations in their home markets in recent years. SNCF's TGV services are superb, but their regional rail services are pretty sparse compared to many countries', including the UK.
Correlation !- causation and all that, but it's hard to argue against it.
Thacher's government started to turn the railways around in the 1980s, when she allowed railwaymen to get on with the job - people like Chris Green. The railways were split up and managers given much more power. But they were still in the mindset of managing a shrinking network, with some line closures (e.g. March to Spalding in 1982, the Woodhead in 1981), and rationalisation (e.g. singling double lines).
What privatisation did was allow people to think big: don't run fewer trains; run more trains. Something they could never have done under government control.
The dementia tax was absolutely toxic on the doorstep. No, it wasn't the only thing. Hiding in a cupboard for half the election and hiding the rest of the cabinet in a box in a cupboard, while proclaiming to be strong and stable was laughable; there was some proposal to scrap a benefit (Winter Fuel allowance?) for the well-off which was so badly announced that people on council estates thought it'd apply to them; there was the U-turn on the policy, which made it sound like the party didn't know what it was doing and didn't have the strength of its convictions; there was the uncosted manifesto. There was also the contrast of Corbyn surfing his surging popularity.
All of that made a difference but it was the dementia tax cock-up in the first place will both set it off and which was the biggest single error.
Yes, that is right, although it seems to have varied by area. Someone here (perhaps @Topping?) reported that in west London the 'dementia tax' wasn't a big issue, but Brexit was. My wife and I helped the (unsuccessful) Tory campaign in Eastbourne, and there the dementia tax was the most common reason given by former Conservative voters who were either going to switch to the LibDems or stay at home.
Yep was me. Was more in sorrow than anger abt the dementia tax. Brexit they were spitting feathers.
snip However, the difference is that cars haven't become prohibitively expensive since 'the good old days' in fact they are a good deal cheaper. They are no more crowded, you can guarantee a seat, and while traffic may be a little worse, investment in road capacity seems to have managed to keep pace without the cost of car ownership spiralling out of control.
I am not a commuter and couldn't imagine driving in to work every day (I used to, before I lived in central London, and it was a nightmare), but city to city travel for visiting friends etc is considerably cheaper by car than it is by rail.
Glad the investment in tech has improved things.
Rail was not uber cheap in BR days, to my recollection.
You can fly to Aberdeen from a London Airport cheaper and faster than car or train, that wasn't the case in BR days.
Stuff changes, I expect a nationalised railways would be great for about 2 to 5 years, and then there would be a rapid decline back to the lowest common denominator that plagued many nationalised industries in the past.
Aberdeen is a pretty extreme example as it's one of the furthest points you can reach from London, and it's a journey I usually chose to make by train (sadly since changing jobs I no longer have much call to be up there).
The main problem with flying is the additional cost and time in getting to the airport in advance, checking in, waiting, then the cost and time required to get from the airport to your final destination, which is, outside of London, almost inevitably an expensive taxi or hire car away.
A return on the Gatwick Express is £30 and I'd add to that the cost of the Tube journey to Victoria and back so another £9 on top of that. It's also 1 hour 45 away from my flat in North London. That's 1 hour 45 before I've even checked in, then at least another 45 minutes before you board. It's also "lost" time as it's very hard to get your laptop out and work as opposed to the train, where you just get on at Kings X and settle in for the day.
I think you go to Euston now for Aberdeen. edit - service from Kings X and Euston now.
I picked Aberdeen as I have done it by car and plane, living 15 minutes from Luton Airport makes flying easy and the quickest option.
My Dad used to do it by train, there was no other option, as cars were more wearisome on long journeys and slower, and plane was either too expensive or not available, don't know which.
If I had a fear of flying I would take the train, except just like in my Dads day, it is a longer journey and expensive.
An awful lot of the improvements in reliability and safety are down to modern tech. Cars have become much more reliable and safe too, and it is much easier to keep trains running on time when the whole network is digitally rather than manually controlled. The tech now is simply light years ahead of where it was in the BR days.
(Snip)
Absolute rubbish IMO in response to safety. If that is the case, then why do Germany, France, Italy and Spain have a much worse recent safety record? And the manual versus digital control is also largely rubbish as well: just look at Clapham Junction for the way the digital network can fail disastrously: one man leaving a wire dangling during an upgrade.
You have to be careful when talking about safety: any perusal of the RAIB files will show a number of incidents that could have proved fatal, had the dice rolled differently. However, the same holds true for those countries as well, who also have plenty of near misses along with their major accidents.
So the question is why the UK's heavy rail safety record is so good? The answers are probably professionalism, funding and yes, technology. But the first two are probably most important, as without them any technology will fail.
Also largely rubbish in response to reliability. Now there is real billing and costs to delays, it is in the interests of everybody to solve them because it hurts their wallets. In the old BR days delays would cost less than fixing things to avoid delays, and hence masses of temporary speed restrictions across the network.
Completely ignoring my point that cars have become much more safe and much more reliable, without spiralling upwards in cost. Train fares have increased in real terms year on year while the cost of car transport has fallen.
The last two times I had to be out of London (Newcastle and Manchester respectively) the cost of the train ticket was far, far, far in excess of the petrol cost, about x3 the cost in fact. I am aware there are other costs to car ownership but the difference in price was very clear.
An awful lot of the improvements in reliability and safety are down to modern tech. Cars have become much more reliable and safe too, and it is much easier to keep trains running on time when the whole network is digitally rather than manually controlled. The tech now is simply light years ahead of where it was in the BR days.
(Snip)
Absolute rubbish IMO in response to safety. If that is the case, then why do Germany, France, Italy and Spain have a much worse recent safety record? And the manual versus digital control is also largely rubbish as well: just look at Clapham Junction for the way the digital network can fail disastrously: one man leaving a wire dangling during an upgrade.
You have to be careful when talking about safety: any perusal of the RAIB files will show a number of incidents that could have proved fatal, had the dice rolled differently. However, the same holds true for those countries as well, who also have plenty of near misses along with their major accidents.
So the question is why the UK's heavy rail safety record is so good? The answers are probably professionalism, funding and yes, technology. But the first two are probably most important, as without them any technology will fail.
Also largely rubbish in response to reliability. Now there is real billing and costs to delays, it is in the interests of everybody to solve them because it hurts their wallets. In the old BR days delays would cost less than fixing things to avoid delays, and hence masses of temporary speed restrictions across the network.
Completely ignoring my point that cars have become much more safe and much more reliable, without spiralling upwards in cost. Train fares have increased in real terms year on year while the cost of car transport has fallen.
The last two times I had to be out of London (Newcastle and Manchester respectively) the cost of the train ticket was far, far, far in excess of the petrol cost, about x3 the cost in fact. I am aware there are other costs to car ownership but the difference in price was very clear.
I didn't ignore your point: I pointed out it was bogus, as other countries have not had the stellar safety record our railways have had. Unless you're saying that Germany and France's railways (amongst others) are not as technically advanced?
The dementia tax was absolutely toxic on the doorstep. No, it wasn't the only thing. Hiding in a cupboard for half the election and hiding the rest of the cabinet in a box in a cupboard, while proclaiming to be strong and stable was laughable; there was some proposal to scrap a benefit (Winter Fuel allowance?) for the well-off which was so badly announced that people on council estates thought it'd apply to them; there was the U-turn on the policy, which made it sound like the party didn't know what it was doing and didn't have the strength of its convictions; there was the uncosted manifesto. There was also the contrast of Corbyn surfing his surging popularity.
All of that made a difference but it was the dementia tax cock-up in the first place will both set it off and which was the biggest single error.
Yes, that is right, although it seems to have varied by area. Someone here (perhaps @Topping?) reported that in west London the 'dementia tax' wasn't a big issue, but Brexit was. My wife and I helped the (unsuccessful) Tory campaign in Eastbourne, and there the dementia tax was the most common reason given by former Conservative voters who were either going to switch to the LibDems or stay at home.
The reason the dementia tax resonated was the cynical - but hugely effective - conservative party/media alliance in the late 2000's that hit labour very hard with the "whatever tax" strategy.
Coming out of the blue, the "dementia tax" would have been dismissed as ridiculous spin but thanks to the 2005-15 tory strategy, the client vote were well prepped for it. The meme developed and found its audience.
An awful lot of the improvements in reliability and safety are down to modern tech. Cars have become much more reliable and safe too, and it is much easier to keep trains running on time when the whole network is digitally rather than manually controlled. The tech now is simply light years ahead of where it was in the BR days.
(Snip)
Absolute rubbish IMO in response to safety. If that is the case, then why do Germany, France, Italy and Spain have a much worse recent safety record? And the manual versus digital control is also largely rubbish as well: just look at Clapham Junction for the way the digital network can fail disastrously: one man leaving a wire dangling during an upgrade.
You have to be careful when talking about safety: any perusal of the RAIB files will show a number of incidents that could have proved fatal, had the dice rolled differently. However, the same holds true for those countries as well, who also have plenty of near misses along with their major accidents.
So the question is why the UK's heavy rail safety record is so good? The answers are probably professionalism, funding and yes, technology. But the first two are probably most important, as without them any technology will fail.
Also largely rubbish in response to reliability. Now there is real billing and costs to delays, it is in the interests of everybody to solve them because it hurts their wallets. In the old BR days delays would cost less than fixing things to avoid delays, and hence masses of temporary speed restrictions across the network.
Completely ignoring my point that cars have become much more safe and much more reliable, without spiralling upwards in cost. Train fares have increased in real terms year on year while the cost of car transport has fallen.
The last two times I had to be out of London (Newcastle and Manchester respectively) the cost of the train ticket was far, far, far in excess of the petrol cost, about x3 the cost in fact. I am aware there are other costs to car ownership but the difference in price was very clear.
As has the cost of air travel fallen.
Is it possible that rail is a financially inefficient transport and therefore bound to be expensive?
Aberdeen is a pretty extreme example as it's one of the furthest points you can reach from London, and it's a journey I usually chose to make by train (sadly since changing jobs I no longer have much call to be up there).
The main problem with flying is the additional cost and time in getting to the airport in advance, checking in, waiting, then the cost and time required to get from the airport to your final destination, which is, outside of London, almost inevitably an expensive taxi or hire car away.
A return on the Gatwick Express is £30 and I'd add to that the cost of the Tube journey to Victoria and back so another £9 on top of that. It's also 1 hour 45 away from my flat in North London. That's 1 hour 45 before I've even checked in, then at least another 45 minutes before you board. It's also "lost" time as it's very hard to get your laptop out and work as opposed to the train, where you just get on at Kings X and settle in for the day.
I think you go to Euston now for Aberdeen. edit - service from Kings X and Euston now.
I picked Aberdeen as I have done it by car and plane, living 15 minutes from Luton Airport makes flying easy and the quickest option.
My Dad used to do it by train, there was no other option, as cars were more wearisome on long journeys and slower, and plane was either too expensive or not available, don't know which.
If I had a fear of flying I would take the train, except just like in my Dads day, it is a longer journey and expensive.
Ah yes, if you live close to an airport it makes much more sense. As you can tell, it has been a while since I made the journey myself, but it's one of my favourite rail routes. Once you get up past Edinburgh the views are magnificient.
I am always amazed these days when I am at the new Kings Cross / St Pancras compared to what it used to look like before the refurbishment. It is hard to convince myself I am standing in the same place.
I wonder if they did a sleeper in your dad's day? I really do wish there were more sleeper services, it's a great way to travel. Sadly not economical to run, I suppose.
An awful lot of the improvements in reliability and safety are down to modern tech. Cars have become much more reliable and safe too, and it is much easier to keep trains running on time when the whole network is digitally rather than manually controlled. The tech now is simply light years ahead of where it was in the BR days.
(Snip)
Absolute rubbish IMO in response to safety. If that is the case, then why do Germany, France, Italy and Spain have a much worse recent safety record? And the manual versus digital control is also largely rubbish as well: just look at Clapham Junction for the way the digital network can fail disastrously: one man leaving a wire dangling during an upgrade.
You have to be careful when talking about safety: any perusal of the RAIB files will show a number of incidents that could have proved fatal, had the dice rolled differently. However, the same holds true for those countries as well, who also have plenty of near misses along with their major accidents.
So the question is why the UK's heavy rail safety record is so good? The answers are probably professionalism, funding and yes, technology. But the first two are probably most important, as without them any technology will fail.
Also largely rubbish in response to reliability. Now there is real billing and costs to delays, it is in the interests of everybody to solve them because it hurts their wallets. In the old BR days delays would cost less than fixing things to avoid delays, and hence masses of temporary speed restrictions across the network.
Completely ignoring my point that cars have become much more safe and much more reliable, without spiralling upwards in cost. Train fares have increased in real terms year on year while the cost of car transport has fallen.
The last two times I had to be out of London (Newcastle and Manchester respectively) the cost of the train ticket was far, far, far in excess of the petrol cost, about x3 the cost in fact. I am aware there are other costs to car ownership but the difference in price was very clear.
Doing it alone, train’s much cheaper. However, if there are two of you, train fares mount up. Can still get bargains of course, if you look hard enough.
It's hard to see what another election will achieve.
I'm gobsmacked that there are German politicians who can seriously propose allowing family members of the one million refugees to join them in Germany,
The dementia tax was absolutely toxic on the doorstep. No, it wasn't the only thing. Hiding in a cupboard for half the election and hiding the rest of the cabinet in a box in a cupboard, while proclaiming to be strong and stable was laughable; there was some proposal to scrap a benefit (Winter Fuel allowance?) for the well-off which was so badly announced that people on council estates thought it'd apply to them; there was the U-turn on the policy, which made it sound like the party didn't know what it was doing and didn't have the strength of its convictions; there was the uncosted manifesto. There was also the contrast of Corbyn surfing his surging popularity.
All of that made a difference but it was the dementia tax cock-up in the first place will both set it off and which was the biggest single error.
Yes, that is right, although it seems to have varied by area. Someone here (perhaps @Topping?) reported that in west London the 'dementia tax' wasn't a big issue, but Brexit was. My wife and I helped the (unsuccessful) Tory campaign in Eastbourne, and there the dementia tax was the most common reason given by former Conservative voters who were either going to switch to the LibDems or stay at home.
Counter-intuitively, the Dementia Tax didn't have any measurable impact in Torbay - where with the average age of voters being 97, you'd think it might have played badly....
An awful lot of the improvements in reliability and safety are down to modern tech. Cars have become much more reliable and safe too, and it is much easier to keep trains running on time when the whole network is digitally rather than manually controlled. The tech now is simply light years ahead of where it was in the BR days.
(Snip)
Absolute rubbish IMO in response to safety. If that is the case, then why do Germany, France, Italy and Spain have a much worse recent safety record? And the manual versus digital control is also largely rubbish as well: just look at Clapham Junction for the way the digital network can fail disastrously: one man leaving a wire dangling during an upgrade.
You have to be careful when talking about safety: any perusal of the RAIB files will show a number of incidents that could have proved fatal, had the dice rolled differently. However, the same holds true for those countries as well, who also have plenty of near misses along with their major accidents.
So the question is why the UK's heavy rail safety record is so good? The answers are probably professionalism, funding and yes, technology. But the first two are probably most important, as without them any technology will fail.
Also largely rubbish in response to reliability. Now there is real billing and costs to delays, it is in the interests of everybody to solve them because it hurts their wallets. In the old BR days delays would cost less than fixing things to avoid delays, and hence masses of temporary speed restrictions across the network.
Completely ignoring my point that cars have become much more safe and much more reliable, without spiralling upwards in cost. Train fares have increased in real terms year on year while the cost of car transport has fallen.
The last two times I had to be out of London (Newcastle and Manchester respectively) the cost of the train ticket was far, far, far in excess of the petrol cost, about x3 the cost in fact. I am aware there are other costs to car ownership but the difference in price was very clear.
As has the cost of air travel fallen.
Is it possible that rail is a financially inefficient transport and therefore bound to be expensive?
And if the result is broadly similar? Surely she has to go at that point....
If she contests the election then the results will be worse for the Union. No doubt about it. She is completely deluded about how popular she is. I thought the results would have put some humility into her, but clearly she needs a bit more punishment from the voters.
Aberdeen is a pretty extreme example as it's one of the furthest points you can reach from London, and it's a journey I usually chose to make by train (sadly since changing jobs I no longer have much call to be up there).
The main problem with flying is the additional cost and time in getting to the airport in advance, checking in, waiting, then the cost and time required to get from the airport to your final destination, which is, outside of London, almost inevitably an expensive taxi or hire car away.
A return on the Gatwick Express is £30 and I'd add to that the cost of the Tube journey to Victoria and back so another £9 on top of that. It's also 1 hour 45 away from my flat in North London. That's 1 hour 45 before I've even checked in, then at least another 45 minutes before you board. It's also "lost" time as it's very hard to get your laptop out and work as opposed to the train, where you just get on at Kings X and settle in for the day.
I think you go to Euston now for Aberdeen. edit - service from Kings X and Euston now.
I picked Aberdeen as I have done it by car and plane, living 15 minutes from Luton Airport makes flying easy and the quickest option.
My Dad used to do it by train, there was no other option, as cars were more wearisome on long journeys and slower, and plane was either too expensive or not available, don't know which.
If I had a fear of flying I would take the train, except just like in my Dads day, it is a longer journey and expensive.
Ah yes, if you live close to an airport it makes much more sense. As you can tell, it has been a while since I made the journey myself, but it's one of my favourite rail routes. Once you get up past Edinburgh the views are magnificient.
I am always amazed these days when I am at the new Kings Cross / St Pancras compared to what it used to look like before the refurbishment. It is hard to convince myself I am standing in the same place.
I wonder if they did a sleeper in your dad's day? I really do wish there were more sleeper services, it's a great way to travel. Sadly not economical to run, I suppose.
He used the sleeper a lot. Got to know the porters at Kings X reasonably well!
The dementia tax was absolutely toxic on the doorstep. No, it wasn't the only thing. Hiding in a cupboard for half the election and hiding the rest of the cabinet in a box in a cupboard, while proclaiming to be strong and stable was laughable; there was some proposal to scrap a benefit (Winter Fuel allowance?) for the well-off which was so badly announced that people on council estates thought it'd apply to them; there was the U-turn on the policy, which made it sound like the party didn't know what it was doing and didn't have the strength of its convictions; there was the uncosted manifesto. There was also the contrast of Corbyn surfing his surging popularity.
All of that made a difference but it was the dementia tax cock-up in the first place will both set it off and which was the biggest single error.
Yes, that is right, although it seems to have varied by area. Someone here (perhaps @Topping?) reported that in west London the 'dementia tax' wasn't a big issue, but Brexit was. My wife and I helped the (unsuccessful) Tory campaign in Eastbourne, and there the dementia tax was the most common reason given by former Conservative voters who were either going to switch to the LibDems or stay at home.
Counter-intuitively, the Dementia Tax didn't have any measurable impact in Torbay - where with the average age of voters being 97, you'd think it might have played badly....
It was a weird election for sure!
Torbay was an extremely good Conservative result.
There were lots of extremely good Conservative results, but not quite enough,.
An awful lot of the improvements in reliability and safety are down to modern tech. Cars have become much more reliable and safe too, and it is much easier to keep trains running on time when the whole network is digitally rather than manually controlled. The tech now is simply light years ahead of where it was in the BR days.
(Snip)
Absolute rubbish IMO in response to safety. If that is the case, then why do Germany, France, Italy and Spain have a much worse recent safety record? And the manual versus digital control is also largely rubbish as well: just look at Clapham Junction for the way the digital network can fail disastrously: one man leaving a wire dangling during an upgrade.
You have to be careful when talking about safety: any perusal of the RAIB files will show a number of incidents that could have proved fatal, had the dice rolled differently. However, the same holds true for those countries as well, who also have plenty of near misses along with their major accidents.
So the question is why the UK's heavy rail safety record is so good? The answers are probably professionalism, funding and yes, technology. But the first two are probably most important, as without them any technology will fail.
Also largely rubbish in response to reliability. Now there is real billing and costs to delays, it is in the interests of everybody to solve them because it hurts their wallets. In the old BR days delays would cost less than fixing things to avoid delays, and hence masses of temporary speed restrictions across the network.
Completely ignoring my point that cars have become much more safe and much more reliable, without spiralling upwards in cost. Train fares have increased in real terms year on year while the cost of car transport has fallen.
The last two times I had to be out of London (Newcastle and Manchester respectively) the cost of the train ticket was far, far, far in excess of the petrol cost, about x3 the cost in fact. I am aware there are other costs to car ownership but the difference in price was very clear.
As has the cost of air travel fallen.
Is it possible that rail is a financially inefficient transport and therefore bound to be expensive?
And if the result is broadly similar? Surely she has to go at that point....
If she contests the election then the results will be worse for the Union. No doubt about it. She is completely deluded about how popular she is. I thought the results would have put some humility into her, but clearly she needs a bit more punishment from the voters.
Just announced she will stand if new elections are needed
Chaos in Europe
The next election will be all about her, and if she stays or goes.
She's fundamentally weakened. Who know's what will happen.
Letting her run would be the same as the Tories letting Theresa run in a snap election during the aftermath of the one she lost.
It seems completely mad for the CDU to let her run. Have they got no teeth?! At least the Tories are using May as a lightning rod for Brexit, there's no way she's leader at the next election.
Aberdeen is a pretty extreme example as it's one of the furthest points you can reach from London, and it's a journey I usually chose to make by train (sadly since changing jobs I no longer have much call to be up there).
The main problem with flying is the additional cost and time in getting to the airport in advance, checking in, waiting, then the cost and time required to get from the airport to your final destination, which is, outside of London, almost inevitably an expensive taxi or hire car away.
A return on the Gatwick Express is £30 and I'd add to that the cost of the Tube journey to Victoria and back so another £9 on top of that. It's also 1 hour 45 away from my flat in North London. That's 1 hour 45 before I've even checked in, then at least another 45 minutes before you board. It's also "lost" time as it's very hard to get your laptop out and work as opposed to the train, where you just get on at Kings X and settle in for the day.
I think you go to Euston now for Aberdeen. edit - service from Kings X and Euston now.
I picked Aberdeen as I have done it by car and plane, living 15 minutes from Luton Airport makes flying easy and the quickest option.
My Dad used to do it by train, there was no other option, as cars were more wearisome on long journeys and slower, and plane was either too expensive or not available, don't know which.
If I had a fear of flying I would take the train, except just like in my Dads day, it is a longer journey and expensive.
Ah yes, if you live close to an airport it makes much more sense. As you can tell, it has been a while since I made the journey myself, but it's one of my favourite rail routes. Once you get up past Edinburgh the views are magnificient.
I am always amazed these days when I am at the new Kings Cross / St Pancras compared to what it used to look like before the refurbishment. It is hard to convince myself I am standing in the same place.
I wonder if they did a sleeper in your dad's day? I really do wish there were more sleeper services, it's a great way to travel. Sadly not economical to run, I suppose.
And if the result is broadly similar? Surely she has to go at that point....
If she contests the election then the results will be worse for the Union. No doubt about it. She is completely deluded about how popular she is. I thought the results would have put some humility into her, but clearly she needs a bit more punishment from the voters.
It will be somewhat ironic that the biggest cheerleader for the EU will be sunk for the very same reason that the second largest economy decided to leave - the fears around uncontrolled migration.
And if the result is broadly similar? Surely she has to go at that point....
If she contests the election then the results will be worse for the Union. No doubt about it. She is completely deluded about how popular she is. I thought the results would have put some humility into her, but clearly she needs a bit more punishment from the voters.
It will be somewhat ironic that the biggest cheerleader for the EU will be sunk for the very same reason that the second largest economy decided to leave - the fears around uncontrolled migration.
It's only going to get worse...look at the crime stats in Sweden.
Just announced she will stand if new elections are needed
Chaos in Europe
Any predictions for how the vote shares might change compared to the previous election if there is a new one?
My initial guess:
CDU/CSU: Up SPD: Down Green: Up FDP: Down and out AfD: Up Linke: Stable
I can't see the Free Democrats going below the 5% threshold again.
Yes I think it's more likely the two main parties will go down again and most of the minor parties go up. But that's just a guess at this stage. We need some more opinion polling, which tends to be very accurate in Germany.
The dementia tax was absolutely toxic on the doorstep. No, it wasn't the only thing. Hiding in a cupboard for half the election and hiding the rest of the cabinet in a box in a cupboard, while proclaiming to be strong and stable was laughable; there was some proposal to scrap a benefit (Winter Fuel allowance?) for the well-off which was so badly announced that people on council estates thought it'd apply to them; there was the U-turn on the policy, which made it sound like the party didn't know what it was doing and didn't have the strength of its convictions; there was the uncosted manifesto. There was also the contrast of Corbyn surfing his surging popularity.
All of that made a difference but it was the dementia tax cock-up in the first place will both set it off and which was the biggest single error.
Yes, that is right, although it seems to have varied by area. Someone here (perhaps @Topping?) reported that in west London the 'dementia tax' wasn't a big issue, but Brexit was. My wife and I helped the (unsuccessful) Tory campaign in Eastbourne, and there the dementia tax was the most common reason given by former Conservative voters who were either going to switch to the LibDems or stay at home.
Counter-intuitively, the Dementia Tax didn't have any measurable impact in Torbay - where with the average age of voters being 97, you'd think it might have played badly....
It was a weird election for sure!
Torbay was an extremely good Conservative result.
There were lots of extremely good Conservative results, but not quite enough,.
Politics is funny. What odds would you have got on June 9th that Theresa May would outlast Angela Merkel and Robert Mugabe?
Perhaps similar to the situation in the winter of 1981. At that time most pundits thought Mrs Thatcher wouldn't last long and of course she ended up staying in power longer than almost everyone else in office at that time.
The Tories need to be mindful of continuing to brand Corbynism "hard left". A lot of our policies are so mainstream that they are the policies of the Conservative government in Germany and have been very mainstream Tory as recently as the same 1970s that the Tories think will do the job in warning people away.
As I keep stressing to my happy clappy Momentum friends who have Seen The Light about His ascendance - most voters are NOT political, do not identify with Tory or Labour, do not care about ideology or what is "left" or "right". At a fundamental level "mainstream" politics have failed millions and millions of people, and even the supposedly affluent are worried about the cost of housing and education. Offering a solution to these problems is not "hard left" to most punters, its just different to whats already failing them.
As I said to HYUFD on the other thread, there is a fundamental misconception amongst many Tories that people are happy and can be scared into sticking with nanny with tales of the Commie monster. They aren't happy, and the status quo holds no grip on them.
It is an indication of the state of play that the Cons are going to have to articulate quite carefully the difference in spending plans between the two parties. I'm sure that if I went through the Lab manifesto the costs would pretty soon skyrocket but I know that very few Lab voters will be doing that either and the appeal must be far simpler to grasp and delivered in an attention-grabbing way.
How much for example would renationalising the railways cost? £350m per week?
The age old problem with nationalisation is that it promises to reinvest profits, but in fact squanders them (generally on producer interests) and has to rely on taxpayer's money or taxpayer's guarantees of loans to do any 'investment'.
Anyone who remembers BR knows that that privatised railways offer a far better service.
Well, given the absolutely massive surge of tax payer money that went into the freshly privatised railways that's a bit of a non-sequiter.
BR for a good couple of decades was directed under a managed-decline model. Successive governments, but especially the last Conservative one, slowly starved it as they assumed that rail was a dead end travel solution.
Privatisation, including the criminal low balling of the values of the rolling stock, came with a massive increase in tax payer subsidy to the new private firms.
Comments
Aren't they all wholly owned subsidiaries of our friends in the EU mainly
Deutsche Bahn, Trenitalia, Virgin - who essentially run them as low yielding bond projects anyway...
Will we see him in the ring again?
That said, as anyone who uses the trains regularly like myself I can understand why the voters are keen to to try something different from the status quo.
There's a reason why I catch the 7.14am train from Dore & Totley to Manchester, any later and I've got no chance of getting a seat, even in First Class.
You can cherry pick data all you want and so can I, we can be here until the cows come home on this one.
Page 8 here from YouGov has some very telling stats on the dementia tax:
http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/wvyc3lofp5/SundayTimesResults_170519_VI_W.pdf
Notably, the dementia tax changes were opposed by:
33% (18-24)
38% (25-49)
43% (50-64)
41% (65+)
And interestingly it was opposed by
43% (ABC1)
35% (C2DE)
From this we can surmise the people most worried about the dementia tax were a) relatively well off and b) (marginally) more likely to be the _recipients_ of an inheritance than the pensioners who would be 'paying' the tax.
It was also much more likely to be opposed by Labour voters (54%) compared to Conservative voters (29%).
I would suggest that this supports my theory that Corbynism is, in part, a middle class rebellion by ABC1s aged somewhere between 30-65 who were expecting to receive an inheritance.
Of course, it's not the whole picture, and May's authoritarian tendancies do turn my stomach somewhat. However, I voted Conservative because I am in absolutely no doubt that the "free jam" on offer with Labour has to be paid by someone. Unfortunately that is a point very badly communicated by the Tories at the last GE.
Only time that let me down was on our honeymoon when instead of our cases, carefully packed with everything we needed arriving at our hotel the day we did, as planned, they arrived a day later. All we had the first night was the clothes we’d left the reception in!
Seriously, we're so far away from an election, let alone any idea of change - I have LOTS of doubt about your supposition.
Added to which, all three parties are likely to change leader before 2022.
In each case, sensible people can see that things are much better today.
It is not simply dumping the Dementia tax* that the Tories need to do to become politically relevant to the under 50's again.
*incidentally a policy that I supported.
However, the difference is that cars haven't become prohibitively expensive since 'the good old days' in fact they are a good deal cheaper. They are no more crowded, you can guarantee a seat, and while traffic may be a little worse, investment in road capacity seems to have managed to keep pace without the cost of car ownership spiralling out of control.
I am not a commuter and couldn't imagine driving in to work every day (I used to, before I lived in central London, and it was a nightmare), but city to city travel for visiting friends etc is considerably cheaper by car than it is by rail.
And it may well not just be higher but very substantially higher.
(Assuming Con don't repeat the dementia tax in their next manifesto).
Just don't expect anyone with a pension to want to vote for them.
https://twitter.com/iainmartin1/status/932580514573234176
British boxing in a decent state of health filling around 23 of around 175 (Top ten/eleven slots each weight division) (Ringtv.com) particularly strong at Bantam -> Lightweight and again at Heavy.
All of that made a difference but it was the dementia tax cock-up in the first place will both set it off and which was the biggest single error.
I imagine quite a few people thought "well, won't be getting our hands on Gran's house now, might as well vote for some free jam".
The real failure was the Conservative Party's in seeming to offer nothing positive or aspirational in their manifesto beyond a few mealy-mouthed words and some Miliband-Lite policies.
I agree with The_Apocalypse when she says that the Conservatives have an image problem - they no longer appear to be the party of aspiration, and that is what has allowed Corbynism in through the back door.
If nobody is making the case for aspirational capitalism then "free jam" looks very appealing.
Bratislava eliminated.
Of all the stupid decisions made by politicians, Merkel opening the doors to all must rank near the top.
Paralysis in Europe beckons
No imagination or sensible thinking in case it contradicated their crusade to overturn democracy
Arguably BR didn't recover until sectorization in the early 1980s, when the old regional structure inherited from the Big Four "Grouping" companies, was replaced by a structure based on markets: freight, InterCity, NetworkSouthEast etc. This resulted in a huge improvement in BR's performance and finances, with InterCity becoming highly profitable and the organization as a whole heading towards break-even.
It's not even certain the AfD would come third in a new election - they could come second, above the SPD, but I think CDU/CSU + Green would have a majority and would govern together.
Merkel did not go to Sweden last weekend, who will turn up at the December meeting.
Pound rising strongly againat the euro today, I wonder why
Also, a Union/Green coalition would be toxic for the Union in the following election, it would literally be a case of jam today. The anti-industry and pro-immigrant policies of the Greens that would be forced on Merkel would completely destroy them and they would lose far too many voters to AfD and FDP. The only stable route to power for the Union has to involve the FDP at some level, but while Merkel is leader that is unlikely.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/19/media/alabama-newspapers-editorial-roy-moore/index.html
Probably have to go back a fair way to see that repeated.
Rail was not uber cheap in BR days, to my recollection.
You can fly to Aberdeen from a London Airport cheaper and faster than car or train, that wasn't the case in BR days.
Stuff changes, I expect a nationalised railways would be great for about 2 to 5 years, and then there would be a rapid decline back to the lowest common denominator that plagued many nationalised industries in the past.
You have to be careful when talking about safety: any perusal of the RAIB files will show a number of incidents that could have proved fatal, had the dice rolled differently. However, the same holds true for those countries as well, who also have plenty of near misses along with their major accidents.
So the question is why the UK's heavy rail safety record is so good? The answers are probably professionalism, funding and yes, technology. But the first two are probably most important, as without them any technology will fail.
Also largely rubbish in response to reliability. Now there is real billing and costs to delays, it is in the interests of everybody to solve them because it hurts their wallets. In the old BR days delays would cost less than fixing things to avoid delays, and hence masses of temporary speed restrictions across the network.
The main problem with flying is the additional cost and time in getting to the airport in advance, checking in, waiting, then the cost and time required to get from the airport to your final destination, which is, outside of London, almost inevitably an expensive taxi or hire car away.
A return on the Gatwick Express is £30 and I'd add to that the cost of the Tube journey to Victoria and back so another £9 on top of that. It's also 1 hour 45 away from my flat in North London. That's 1 hour 45 before I've even checked in, then at least another 45 minutes before you board. It's also "lost" time as it's very hard to get your laptop out and work as opposed to the train, where you just get on at Kings X and settle in for the day.
https://twitter.com/jeremycliffe/status/932649097848336384
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/15/GBR_rail_passengers_by_year_1830-2015.png
Correlation !- causation and all that, but it's hard to argue against it.
Thacher's government started to turn the railways around in the 1980s, when she allowed railwaymen to get on with the job - people like Chris Green. The railways were split up and managers given much more power. But they were still in the mindset of managing a shrinking network, with some line closures (e.g. March to Spalding in 1982, the Woodhead in 1981), and rationalisation (e.g. singling double lines).
What privatisation did was allow people to think big: don't run fewer trains; run more trains. Something they could never have done under government control.
Chaos in Europe
I picked Aberdeen as I have done it by car and plane, living 15 minutes from Luton Airport makes flying easy and the quickest option.
My Dad used to do it by train, there was no other option, as cars were more wearisome on long journeys and slower, and plane was either too expensive or not available, don't know which.
If I had a fear of flying I would take the train, except just like in my Dads day, it is a longer journey and expensive.
The last two times I had to be out of London (Newcastle and Manchester respectively) the cost of the train ticket was far, far, far in excess of the petrol cost, about x3 the cost in fact. I am aware there are other costs to car ownership but the difference in price was very clear.
She's fundamentally weakened. Who know's what will happen.
Coming out of the blue, the "dementia tax" would have been dismissed as ridiculous spin but thanks to the 2005-15 tory strategy, the client vote were well prepped for it. The meme developed and found its audience.
The tories were hoist by their own petard.
Amusing.
Is it possible that rail is a financially inefficient transport and therefore bound to be expensive?
I am always amazed these days when I am at the new Kings Cross / St Pancras compared to what it used to look like before the refurbishment. It is hard to convince myself I am standing in the same place.
I wonder if they did a sleeper in your dad's day? I really do wish there were more sleeper services, it's a great way to travel. Sadly not economical to run, I suppose.
I'm gobsmacked that there are German politicians who can seriously propose allowing family members of the one million refugees to join them in Germany,
https://news.sky.com/story/merkel-says-fresh-elections-would-be-better-than-leading-minority-government-11136106
It was a weird election for sure!
Have you seen the plans for Hyperloop One?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2017/06/07/hyperloop-one-proposes-london-edinburgh-trip-50-minutes/
London to Edinburgh in 50 minutes! We can but dream.
There were lots of extremely good Conservative results, but not quite enough,.
Hyperloop is a ridiculous project for mass transport.
She won't, and Merkel shouldn't.
It seems completely mad for the CDU to let her run. Have they got no teeth?! At least the Tories are using May as a lightning rod for Brexit, there's no way she's leader at the next election.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/aug/30/caledonian-sleeper-train-double-beds-revamp-scotland-london
CDU/CSU: Up
SPD: Down
Green: Up
FDP: Down and out
AfD: Up
Linke: Stable
BR for a good couple of decades was directed under a managed-decline model. Successive governments, but especially the last Conservative one, slowly starved it as they assumed that rail was a dead end travel solution.
Privatisation, including the criminal low balling of the values of the rolling stock, came with a massive increase in tax payer subsidy to the new private firms.