Struggling to understand the logic of your post: "in past years, the Mail on Sunday has done worse than the Mail by around 4-5%. The gap has narrowed considerably in the last few months as the Mail declines have sharpened"
'Past few months' (to September 18) had Dacre, not Greig, as DM editor - so surely Dacre's line has shaperened that decline, not Greig's?
Sorry, been away from the desk. Dacre announced he was stepping down as editor in June. He left early September but was a lame duck. From June, journalists who wanted to curry favour with Greig knew a hard line Brexit stance would not do them any favours.
As I said before, I'm not saying the Mail declines have got worse because they are losing some of the pro-Brexit fans. What I am saying is that I would not take the Daily Mail's conversion to being a TM fan as permanent if Rothermere believes such a stance is losing him readers.
O/T Two more US Senate races seem to be resolving themselves, with new polls showing Nelson 6% and 8% ahead in Florida, and Cramer 16% ahead in North Dakota.
ND looks like a sure Republican gain, Florida and West Virginia sure Democratic holds.
As a counterfactual, if Hilary Clinton had won in 2016, the Republicans would be on course to gain about 10 Senate seats.
Agree on Flordia, although one poll had Scott at +1%. However, Indiana looks to be tightening (Donnelly at +1%).
If you want two possible surprises, I would go for Minnesota Special and Michigan - in Minnesota, the Republican candidate is the wife of a ice hockey celeb and a couple of the Dem-held House seats seem to be trending their way. In Michigan, the Republican is 9 points behind but that was as large as +23%. Moreover, he has (a) good back story (African American, helicopter pilot, businessman) and (b) in his Republican primary, he came storming through at the end to win, suggesting he knows how to time the final burst.
Indeed. From a quick bit of maths I think the inflation-adjusted FTSE100 is now where it was in 1995 and only 60% of where it was at the end of 1999. (That ignores dividend income of course.)
Never forget dividends. Comparing stock market value whilst ignoring dividends is a sure route to insanity.
Quite right.
The FTSE 100 index is calculated without taking accountv of dividends. Only the German DAX index does this.
Allowing for the dividends being reinvested back into equity shares accounts for virtually all equity gains over time.
After all the only reason shares have the value they do is because of the future income they provide. The resale value of a share is just the present value of expected future dividends at the time the shares are sold.
Following the principle of power sharing I would say to Barnier we will only agree to an NI-specific deal that has the backing of Sinn Fein, the SDLP, Alliance, UUP and DUP. The DUP then have a veto on any deal and so being part of the government block is moot. I would insist the integrity of our union is as sacrosanct as the integrity of theirs.
The SDLP and UUP should be given a veto? Interesting idea. Any other dead parties that ought to have their say? The SDP? The Whigs? The People's Front of Judea?
Interesting you object to them but not Alliance. Last I checked they're still bigger than Alliance. Though realistically any deal satisfying Sinn Fein and DUP is unlikely to find other objectors.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
Would they have been going at normal walking speed though?
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
Doing some rough and ready calculations from that sped-up youtube video of the march, I come up with a figure of about 300,000 attendees.
That would gel with historical estimates by organisers being 2-3 times greater than official estimates. Still a big crowd - but not a patch on the Iraq demo.
Bit silly comment. If they had a vnoc would be commenced
I thought Brady had confirmed if they had he would speak to all those whose letters have been in already to confirm they're still valid? Before commencing it. So they could be in but take an hour or two to confirm.
Not saying that's happened but if it does happen we won't know immediately as Brady would want to be discrete. It could leak quickly though.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
Would they have been going at normal walking speed though?
No. It was much slower with frequent stops as the march funnelled into narrower sections of the route such as Pall Mall.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
Would they have been going at normal walking speed though?
In my experience normally slower.
Using the variables that Alastair describes it's hard to reach the organisers estimate - though the total number of people present will be a bit greater than the number who pass a single point.
Mr. HYUFD, it's important that, if that transpires, the referendum is held in 2019. So my bet can come off.
The Metro said yesterday if Parliament voted for EUref2 before Brexit Day in March 2019 we would stay in the EU for another 6 months to allow the referendum to be held.
Depending on the result of the referendum we would then either Remain in the EU and Brexit would be cancelled, leave with a Deal May had negotiated and approved by the referendum or crash out with No Deal at all
Bit silly comment. If they had a vnoc would be commenced
I thought Brady had confirmed if they had he would speak to all those whose letters have been in already to confirm they're still valid? Before commencing it. So they could be in but take an hour or two to confirm.
Not saying that's happened but if it does happen we won't know immediately as Brady would want to be discrete. It could leak quickly though.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
Would they have been going at normal walking speed though?
No. It was much slower with frequent stops as the march funnelled into narrower sections of the route such as Pall Mall.
So Mr Meeks estimate seems a reasonable upper bound but probably fewer.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
Would they have been going at normal walking speed though?
No. It was much slower with frequent stops as the march funnelled into narrower sections of the route such as Pall Mall.
Yes I think the walking speed would be closer to 2 mph, a walk of 4 mph is going somewhere very quickly and in a hurry. I've never seen any march get remotely close to 4 mph.
Bit silly comment. If they had a vnoc would be commenced
I thought Brady had confirmed if they had he would speak to all those whose letters have been in already to confirm they're still valid? Before commencing it. So they could be in but take an hour or two to confirm.
Not saying that's happened but if it does happen we won't know immediately as Brady would want to be discrete. It could leak quickly though.
In the event of No Deal I expect a general strike and marches of at least 20 million.
I’d expect Drumhead trials for those Leavers who said it would be easy/WTO was Project Fear.
I think worst case scenario is massive disruption for a period of months, and then some lost growth, possible recession. Capitalism has an amazing way of finding away. I don’t want to leave the single market, it will leave us all a bit porter. But only a bit.
At least four Conservative MPs have told colleagues they have submitted letters of no confidence in Theresa May since Friday – and two of them are Remain-backers, BuzzFeed News understands.
The news comes as speculation once again mounted at Westminster that Tory MPs are close to reaching the threshold of 48 letters that would trigger a confidence vote in the prime minister. The number of letters is kept private by 1922 Committee chairman Graham Brady until the threshold is met.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
Would they have been going at normal walking speed though?
No. It was much slower with frequent stops as the march funnelled into narrower sections of the route such as Pall Mall.
Yes I think the walking speed would be closer to 2 mph, a walk of 4 mph is going somewhere very quickly and in a hurry. I've never seen any march get remotely close to 4 mph.
I agree, but the slower the walking speed, the lower the attendance in those calculations, and it already seems Alistair's total is well under what others are estimating - so I wonder if that really is a robust way of estimating it?
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
A good estimation question is one of my staples when conducting mock oxbridge interviews. I once asked “if an umbrella covered in solar panels can run a washing machine, what is the rate of mass loss from the sun?” And got an answer which was within a factor of two. Wasn’t surprised when he got in to Cambridge.
NB Jeremy Corbyn has drifted from 6 to 7 on Betfair for next Prime Minister in the last week or so. Some people at least seem to think that the chances of Mrs May being replaced before the next election by a member of her own party are rising.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
Would they have been going at normal walking speed though?
No. It was much slower with frequent stops as the march funnelled into narrower sections of the route such as Pall Mall.
So Mr Meeks estimate seems a reasonable upper bound but probably fewer.
Probably, yes, but his width and density figures could be underestimates, so it may largely balance out.
NB Jeremy Corbyn has drifted from 6 to 7 on Betfair for next Prime Minister in the last week or so. Some people at least seem to think that the chances of Mrs May being replaced before the next election by a member of her own party are rising.
There are other factors - notably Labour's chance of winning the election and the likelihood of Labour replacing Corbyn - but I agree the next PM market has become a bit of a proxy for TM's exit date (which you could bet on anyway).
NB Jeremy Corbyn has drifted from 6 to 7 on Betfair for next Prime Minister in the last week or so. Some people at least seem to think that the chances of Mrs May being replaced before the next election by a member of her own party are rising.
Isn’t that due to a few polls showing the Tories 5% ahead ?
In the event of No Deal I expect a general strike and marches of at least 20 million.
I’d expect Drumhead trials for those Leavers who said it would be easy/WTO was Project Fear.
I think worst case scenario is massive disruption for a period of months, and then some lost growth, possible recession. Capitalism has an amazing way of finding away. I don’t want to leave the single market, it will leave us all a bit porter. But only a bit.
No, worst case scenario is that AND Scotland voting for independence and Northern Ireland for a United Ireland.
So the economy could collapse followed by the country breaking up
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
Would they have been going at normal walking speed though?
No. It was much slower with frequent stops as the march funnelled into narrower sections of the route such as Pall Mall.
Yes I think the walking speed would be closer to 2 mph, a walk of 4 mph is going somewhere very quickly and in a hurry. I've never seen any march get remotely close to 4 mph.
I agree, but the slower the walking speed, the lower the attendance in those calculations, and it already seems Alistair's total is well under what others are estimating - so I wonder if that really is a robust way of estimating it?
The formula is correct: the issue with any estimate is what values you assume for each term. It also assumes all the marchers went past this point.
NB Jeremy Corbyn has drifted from 6 to 7 on Betfair for next Prime Minister in the last week or so. Some people at least seem to think that the chances of Mrs May being replaced before the next election by a member of her own party are rising.
Isn’t that due to a few polls showing the Tories 5% ahead ?
It's not an either-or. Could be various things.
1. Increased chance of early VoNC; 2. Steady or possibly slightly increasing Con lead in polls; 3. Time / political window closing on any 2018 GE (v difficult to align with a parliamentary VoNC, no prompt from EU summit big enough to call one, and unlikely to even be a Nov summit); 4. DUP less likely to vote against Budget.
I guess because geographically, nothing is changing?
Indeed. Last time I checked Singapore is neither in a political nor a customs union with its neighbouring nations whom it is trading with. Yet somehow it survives. Funny that!
Its citizens are hard working, intelligent and well-educated. I rest my case.
Dyson said the decision was based on the availability of engineering talent, regional supply chains and proximity to some key target markets.
However, it seems his plan was to have solid state batteries but the technology is not sufficiently developed and he will just have the same lihium batteries as everyone else - so no competitive advantage.
The first solid state batteries will likely be built in Japan, as they control a majority of the patents.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
Would they have been going at normal walking speed though?
No. It was much slower with frequent stops as the march funnelled into narrower sections of the route such as Pall Mall.
Yes I think the walking speed would be closer to 2 mph, a walk of 4 mph is going somewhere very quickly and in a hurry. I've never seen any march get remotely close to 4 mph.
I agree, but the slower the walking speed, the lower the attendance in those calculations, and it already seems Alistair's total is well under what others are estimating - so I wonder if that really is a robust way of estimating it?
The formula is correct: the issue with any estimate is what values you assume for each term. It also assumes all the marchers went past this point.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
That's what I did, except that I used my own times to estimate the speed at which we were walking, which was a bit under 2 miles an hour. 4 miles an hour is brisk walk - you can see in the video that people were going much slower than they would normally.
Latest seems to be a UK wide customs transition arrangement by treaty, and outside the withdrawal agreement. Which looks perfectly satisfactory to me at first glance.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
Would they have been going at normal walking speed though?
No. It was much slower with frequent stops as the march funnelled into narrower sections of the route such as Pall Mall.
So Mr Meeks estimate seems a reasonable upper bound but probably fewer.
Probably, yes, but his width and density figures could be underestimates, so it may largely balance out.
300,000 is still an impressive number, on a par with the marches against the hunting ban.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
A good estimation question is one of my staples when conducting mock oxbridge interviews. I once asked “if an umbrella covered in solar panels can run a washing machine, what is the rate of mass loss from the sun?” And got an answer which was within a factor of two. Wasn’t surprised when he got in to Cambridge.
Is that solved by (say) a 1kW machine needing 1000 J/s so the sun loses 1000/c2 per second to power one machine?
Or did you want the total mass loss, i.e. you estimate the proportion of a sphere around the sun covered by one umbrella?
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
Would they have been going at normal walking speed though?
No. It was much slower with frequent stops as the march funnelled into narrower sections of the route such as Pall Mall.
Yes I think the walking speed would be closer to 2 mph, a walk of 4 mph is going somewhere very quickly and in a hurry. I've never seen any march get remotely close to 4 mph.
I agree, but the slower the walking speed, the lower the attendance in those calculations, and it already seems Alistair's total is well under what others are estimating - so I wonder if that really is a robust way of estimating it?
The tweet does say that others took alternative routes to the parks, but we don't know the proportions. Perhaps 200k-300k? Doesn't really matter now though?
In the event of No Deal I expect a general strike and marches of at least 20 million.
I’d expect Drumhead trials for those Leavers who said it would be easy/WTO was Project Fear.
I think worst case scenario is massive disruption for a period of months, and then some lost growth, possible recession. Capitalism has an amazing way of finding away....
Freudian slip ?
Capitalism does indeed usually find a way, but for some (see the interviews with scientists of the Crick Institute this morning), that might well be outside of the UK.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
Would they have been going at normal walking speed though?
No. It was much slower with frequent stops as the march funnelled into narrower sections of the route such as Pall Mall.
Yes I think the walking speed would be closer to 2 mph, a walk of 4 mph is going somewhere very quickly and in a hurry. I've never seen any march get remotely close to 4 mph.
I agree, but the slower the walking speed, the lower the attendance in those calculations, and it already seems Alistair's total is well under what others are estimating - so I wonder if that really is a robust way of estimating it?
The formula is correct: the issue with any estimate is what values you assume for each term. It also assumes all the marchers went past this point.
In the event of No Deal I expect a general strike and marches of at least 20 million.
I’d expect Drumhead trials for those Leavers who said it would be easy/WTO was Project Fear.
I think worst case scenario is massive disruption for a period of months, and then some lost growth, possible recession. Capitalism has an amazing way of finding away. I don’t want to leave the single market, it will leave us all a bit porter. But only a bit.
No, worst case scenario is that AND Scotland voting for independence and Northern Ireland for a United Ireland.
So the economy could collapse followed by the country breaking up
Not to mention starving to death and bubonic plague.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
Would they have been going at normal walking speed though?
No. It was much slower with frequent stops as the march funnelled into narrower sections of the route such as Pall Mall.
Yes I think the walking speed would be closer to 2 mph, a walk of 4 mph is going somewhere very quickly and in a hurry. I've never seen any march get remotely close to 4 mph.
I agree, but the slower the walking speed, the lower the attendance in those calculations, and it already seems Alistair's total is well under what others are estimating - so I wonder if that really is a robust way of estimating it?
The formula is correct: the issue with any estimate is what values you assume for each term. It also assumes all the marchers went past this point.
The latter point seems a fairly dodgy assumption.
Then the whole point of the video is rather moot.
Agreed. I'd hesitate to put any particular figure on the number marching.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
Would they have been going at normal walking speed though?
No. It was much slower with frequent stops as the march funnelled into narrower sections of the route such as Pall Mall.
Yes I think the walking speed would be closer to 2 mph, a walk of 4 mph is going somewhere very quickly and in a hurry. I've never seen any march get remotely close to 4 mph.
I agree, but the slower the walking speed, the lower the attendance in those calculations, and it already seems Alistair's total is well under what others are estimating - so I wonder if that really is a robust way of estimating it?
The formula is correct: the issue with any estimate is what values you assume for each term. It also assumes all the marchers went past this point.
It would also be interesting to hear from pb-ers who visit or live near football grounds, who once every week or two will be used to seeing a crowd walk past whose size is known because the match attendance is published (and more-or-less constant).
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
A good estimation question is one of my staples when conducting mock oxbridge interviews. I once asked “if an umbrella covered in solar panels can run a washing machine, what is the rate of mass loss from the sun?” And got an answer which was within a factor of two. Wasn’t surprised when he got in to Cambridge.
Is that solved by (say) a 1kW machine needing 1000 J/s so the sun loses 1000/c2 per second to power one machine?
Or did you want the total mass loss, i.e. you estimate the proportion of a sphere around the sun covered by one umbrella?
Can someone who hasn't lost the will explain what this actually means?
So we're currently agreeing the Withdrawal Agreement. In the future we will agree a Future Partnership.
So part of the Withdrawal Agreement is about what happens if we don't agree the Future Partnership (the Backstop) and part of it is about what the Future Partnership will look like in big picture terms (the Protocol).
If a UK CU was part of the Backstop, it would arguably give the UK the best of both worlds (we'd be *too* happy with the Backstop). As part of the Protocol, it gives us some of both - an element of backstop to it, because it would be replaced by the Future Partnership once agreed.
It's a bit of an abuse of the framework... but... not a bad idea in practice.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
Would they have been going at normal walking speed though?
No. It was much slower with frequent stops as the march funnelled into narrower sections of the route such as Pall Mall.
Yes I think the walking speed would be closer to 2 mph, a walk of 4 mph is going somewhere very quickly and in a hurry. I've never seen any march get remotely close to 4 mph.
I agree, but the slower the walking speed, the lower the attendance in those calculations, and it already seems Alistair's total is well under what others are estimating - so I wonder if that really is a robust way of estimating it?
The formula is correct: the issue with any estimate is what values you assume for each term. It also assumes all the marchers went past this point.
God this is a dismal science. You’d have thought by now that someone would have devised a piece of software that could count the size of a crowd within a 100 or so MOE from a helicopter picture. We can put a man on the moon, but we still can’t count a crowd.
Can someone who hasn't lost the will explain what this actually means?
Essentially the same fudge that’s been talked about. The Northern Ireland backstop stays but slightly redrafted to make it sound less like annexation, and a protocol will be added to provide an option to negotiate a UK wide customs union as a separate treaty.
At least four Conservative MPs have told colleagues they have submitted letters of no confidence in Theresa May since Friday – and two of them are Remain-backers, BuzzFeed News understands.
The news comes as speculation once again mounted at Westminster that Tory MPs are close to reaching the threshold of 48 letters that would trigger a confidence vote in the prime minister. The number of letters is kept private by 1922 Committee chairman Graham Brady until the threshold is met.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
Would they have been going at normal walking speed though?
No. It was much slower with frequent stops as the march funnelled into narrower sections of the route such as Pall Mall.
Yes I think the walking speed would be closer to 2 mph, a walk of 4 mph is going somewhere very quickly and in a hurry. I've never seen any march get remotely close to 4 mph.
I agree, but the slower the walking speed, the lower the attendance in those calculations, and it already seems Alistair's total is well under what others are estimating - so I wonder if that really is a robust way of estimating it?
The formula is correct: the issue with any estimate is what values you assume for each term. It also assumes all the marchers went past this point.
God this is a dismal science. You’d have thought by now that someone would have devised a piece of software that could count the size of a crowd within a 100 or so MOE from a helicopter picture. We can put a man on the moon, but we still can’t count a crowd.
But arguing over the compeating estimates is much more fun!
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
Would they have been going at normal walking speed though?
No. It was much slower with frequent stops as the march funnelled into narrower sections of the route such as Pall Mall.
Yes I think the walking speed would be closer to 2 mph, a walk of 4 mph is going somewhere very quickly and in a hurry. I've never seen any march get remotely close to 4 mph.
I agree, but the slower the walking speed, the lower the attendance in those calculations, and it already seems Alistair's total is well under what others are estimating - so I wonder if that really is a robust way of estimating it?
The formula is correct: the issue with any estimate is what values you assume for each term. It also assumes all the marchers went past this point.
God this is a dismal science. You’d have thought by now that someone would have devised a piece of software that could count the size of a crowd within a 100 or so MOE from a helicopter picture. We can put a man on the moon, but we still can’t count a crowd.
Not according to the video posted the other day. Apparently man on the moon is all a hoax.
Following the principle of power sharing I would say to Barnier we will only agree to an NI-specific deal that has the backing of Sinn Fein, the SDLP, Alliance, UUP and DUP. The DUP then have a veto on any deal and so being part of the government block is moot. I would insist the integrity of our union is as sacrosanct as the integrity of theirs.
The SDLP and UUP should be given a veto? Interesting idea. Any other dead parties that ought to have their say? The SDP? The Whigs? The People's Front of Judea?
Interesting you object to them but not Alliance. Last I checked they're still bigger than Alliance. Though realistically any deal satisfying Sinn Fein and DUP is unlikely to find other objectors.
Alliance are small, have always been small, and are likely to stay small, whereas the UUP and SDLP are on a downward trajectory towards nothing (which in the SDLP's case is likely to mean their absorption into Fianna Fail sooner or later). But yes, I agree with you that satisfying Sinn Fein and the DUP would in practice be enough.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
Would they have been going at normal walking speed though?
No. It was much slower with frequent stops as the march funnelled into narrower sections of the route such as Pall Mall.
Yes I think the walking speed would be closer to 2 mph, a walk of 4 mph is going somewhere very quickly and in a hurry. I've never seen any march get remotely close to 4 mph.
I agree, but the slower the walking speed, the lower the attendance in those calculations, and it already seems Alistair's total is well under what others are estimating - so I wonder if that really is a robust way of estimating it?
The formula is correct: the issue with any estimate is what values you assume for each term. It also assumes all the marchers went past this point.
God this is a dismal science. You’d have thought by now that someone would have devised a piece of software that could count the size of a crowd within a 100 or so MOE from a helicopter picture. We can put a man on the moon, but we still can’t count a crowd.
This blogpost is very interesting on the topic of counting crowds.
I forget where I read it now, but someone has done a sqm estimate of the area occupied by the marchers, and reckoned that to get the 700k claimed you'd be up to 5-6 people sqm (total non starter), i.e. the actual size was probably more like 100k. Anyone got any decent helicopter photos of the march, and we can conclusively prove the point.
In the event of No Deal I expect a general strike and marches of at least 20 million.
I’d expect Drumhead trials for those Leavers who said it would be easy/WTO was Project Fear.
I think worst case scenario is massive disruption for a period of months, and then some lost growth, possible recession. Capitalism has an amazing way of finding away. I don’t want to leave the single market, it will leave us all a bit porter. But only a bit.
No, worst case scenario is that AND Scotland voting for independence and Northern Ireland for a United Ireland.
So the economy could collapse followed by the country breaking up
Not to mention starving to death and bubonic plague.
And all caused by the brightest PPE graduate ever. TSE is right. We must immediately close the University of Oxford.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
A good estimation question is one of my staples when conducting mock oxbridge interviews. I once asked “if an umbrella covered in solar panels can run a washing machine, what is the rate of mass loss from the sun?” And got an answer which was within a factor of two. Wasn’t surprised when he got in to Cambridge.
So - estimate the amount of energy needed to run a washing machine, then estimate the area covered by an umbrella and the efficiency of the solar cells on it, then the surface area of a sphere at the Earth's distance from the Sun, then divide by c^2? (omitting atmosphere loss and angular tilt of umbrella at whatever latitude you're at; effectively assuming midday at the equator)
Impressive for the estimate accuracy at each stage to be good enough for a factor of two.
I'd guesstimate 1kW, 2 square metres, 30%, 150 billion metres times 4 pi, divide by 9 times ten to the 16, but I think that would give the wrong answer.
Let's see - 1kW for 2 square metres, implying 500W/square metre power output, implying 1.5kW/sq metre at Earth's distance from Sun, which would be 6 x pi x 10^11 sq metres = about 1.9 x 10^12 square metres gives 2.8 x 10^15 W . Divide by 3^8, twice, gives about 0.03kg/s
Which I know for a fact is wrong. Where did I go wrong?
Having seen footage of the march, here is my estimate:
Number of working class voters from Stoke or Sunderland on the march: Zero.
Well I can't contradict that, but I did speak to a dinner lady from Newcastle. It was a pretty middle class crowd overall, but there were certainly people from other strata.
In the event of No Deal I expect a general strike and marches of at least 20 million.
I’d expect Drumhead trials for those Leavers who said it would be easy/WTO was Project Fear.
I think worst case scenario is massive disruption for a period of months, and then some lost growth, possible recession. Capitalism has an amazing way of finding away. I don’t want to leave the single market, it will leave us all a bit porter. But only a bit.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
A good estimation question is one of my staples when conducting mock oxbridge interviews. I once asked “if an umbrella covered in solar panels can run a washing machine, what is the rate of mass loss from the sun?” And got an answer which was within a factor of two. Wasn’t surprised when he got in to Cambridge.
So - estimate the amount of energy needed to run a washing machine, then estimate the area covered by an umbrella and the efficiency of the solar cells on it, then the surface area of a sphere at the Earth's distance from the Sun, then divide by c^2? (omitting atmosphere loss and angular tilt of umbrella at whatever latitude you're at; effectively assuming midday at the equator)
Impressive for the estimate accuracy at each stage to be good enough for a factor of two.
I'd guesstimate 1kW, 2 square metres, 30%, 150 billion metres times 4 pi, divide by 9 times ten to the 16, but I think that would give the wrong answer.
Let's see - 1kW for 2 square metres, implying 500W/square metre power output, implying 1.5kW/sq metre at Earth's distance from Sun, which would be 6 x pi x 10^11 sq metres = about 1.9 x 10^12 square metres gives 2.8 x 10^15 W . Divide by 3^8, twice, gives about 0.03kg/s
Which I know for a fact is wrong. Where did I go wrong?
My effort is an order of magnitude out. Not bad for a PPEist.
Say the umbrella is 1m across which gives it a surface area of (U) = 1/4 PI m^2 The surface area of a sphere 1.5 * 10^10 km in radius is (S) 4 * 2.25 * 10^20 PI m^2
Total umbrellas required to capture all the emitted energy at that distance = (S)/(U) = 3.6 * 10^21
Each umbrella delivers 1kW to the machine, let's say the panel has 10% efficiency, so each is capturing 10^4 W
Total energy output (e) from Sun is therefore 3.6 * 10^25
e = mc^2 so divding through by 9 * 10^16 gives m = 4 * 10^8 kg/s
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
A good estimation question is one of my staples when conducting mock oxbridge interviews. I once asked “if an umbrella covered in solar panels can run a washing machine, what is the rate of mass loss from the sun?” And got an answer which was within a factor of two. Wasn’t surprised when he got in to Cambridge.
So - estimate the amount of energy needed to run a washing machine, then estimate the area covered by an umbrella and the efficiency of the solar cells on it, then the surface area of a sphere at the Earth's distance from the Sun, then divide by c^2? (omitting atmosphere loss and angular tilt of umbrella at whatever latitude you're at; effectively assuming midday at the equator)
Impressive for the estimate accuracy at each stage to be good enough for a factor of two.
I'd guesstimate 1kW, 2 square metres, 30%, 150 billion metres times 4 pi, divide by 9 times ten to the 16, but I think that would give the wrong answer.
Let's see - 1kW for 2 square metres, implying 500W/square metre power output, implying 1.5kW/sq metre at Earth's distance from Sun, which would be 6 x pi x 10^11 sq metres = about 1.9 x 10^12 square metres gives 2.8 x 10^15 W . Divide by 3^8, twice, gives about 0.03kg/s
Which I know for a fact is wrong. Where did I go wrong?
Pretty good up to the point where you forgot to square the radius before multiplying by four pi.
Can someone who hasn't lost the will explain what this actually means?
So we're currently agreeing the Withdrawal Agreement. In the future we will agree a Future Partnership.
So part of the Withdrawal Agreement is about what happens if we don't agree the Future Partnership (the Backstop) and part of it is about what the Future Partnership will look like in big picture terms (the Protocol).
If a UK CU was part of the Backstop, it would arguably give the UK the best of both worlds (we'd be *too* happy with the Backstop). As part of the Protocol, it gives us some of both - an element of backstop to it, because it would be replaced by the Future Partnership once agreed.
It's a bit of an abuse of the framework... but... not a bad idea in practice.
Or, in even simpler terms (if I understand it correctly) - we envisage that we will effectively remain in the Customs Union until such time as we agree to something else. However, it kicks the final decision on this into the next stage (the detailed Future Partnership).
If I'm right, that is classic Theresa May/EU fudge, as it means that there won't be a casus belli for eitrher soft Brexit or hard Brexit people in the vote on the agreement because the commitment isn't in the WA and the Protocol is just a set of chapter headings to be agreed later. So MPs on both flanks could vote it through, hoping to get their way in 1-2 years' time when the Future Partnership is settled.
The snag for People's Vote MPs is that it slides us out of the EU before the customs union issue is finally decided. The snag for Brexiteers is that it leaves the default position as permanent Customs Union (aka vassalage).
Can someone who hasn't lost the will explain what this actually means?
So we're currently agreeing the Withdrawal Agreement. In the future we will agree a Future Partnership.
So part of the Withdrawal Agreement is about what happens if we don't agree the Future Partnership (the Backstop) and part of it is about what the Future Partnership will look like in big picture terms (the Protocol).
If a UK CU was part of the Backstop, it would arguably give the UK the best of both worlds (we'd be *too* happy with the Backstop). As part of the Protocol, it gives us some of both - an element of backstop to it, because it would be replaced by the Future Partnership once agreed.
It's a bit of an abuse of the framework... but... not a bad idea in practice.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
A good estimation question is one of my staples when conducting mock oxbridge interviews. I once asked “if an umbrella covered in solar panels can run a washing machine, what is the rate of mass loss from the sun?” And got an answer which was within a factor of two. Wasn’t surprised when he got in to Cambridge.
Is that solved by (say) a 1kW machine needing 1000 J/s so the sun loses 1000/c2 per second to power one machine?
Or did you want the total mass loss, i.e. you estimate the proportion of a sphere around the sun covered by one umbrella?
Or is this why I did engineering not physics?
Total mass loss, yes.
The student concerned read engineering...
I get about 300,000,000kg?
(Though I don't think an umbrella-sized panel would be powerful enough to run a washing machine)
Anyone got any decent helicopter photos of the march, and we can conclusively prove the point.
I don't think there's one that shows all the people in one shot. The densest section before the march started went up to Marble Arch which isn't shown on any of the aerial shots and others bypassed the start or went straight to Parliament Square.
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
A good estimation question is one of my staples when conducting mock oxbridge interviews. I once asked “if an umbrella covered in solar panels can run a washing machine, what is the rate of mass loss from the sun?” And got an answer which was within a factor of two. Wasn’t surprised when he got in to Cambridge.
So - estimate the amount of energy needed to run a washing machine, then estimate the area covered by an umbrella and the efficiency of the solar cells on it, then the surface area of a sphere at the Earth's distance from the Sun, then divide by c^2? (omitting atmosphere loss and angular tilt of umbrella at whatever latitude you're at; effectively assuming midday at the equator)
Impressive for the estimate accuracy at each stage to be good enough for a factor of two.
I'd guesstimate 1kW, 2 square metres, 30%, 150 billion metres times 4 pi, divide by 9 times ten to the 16, but I think that would give the wrong answer.
Let's see - 1kW for 2 square metres, implying 500W/square metre power output, implying 1.5kW/sq metre at Earth's distance from Sun, which would be 6 x pi x 10^11 sq metres = about 1.9 x 10^12 square metres gives 2.8 x 10^15 W . Divide by 3^8, twice, gives about 0.03kg/s
Which I know for a fact is wrong. Where did I go wrong?
Pretty good up to the point where you forgot to square the radius before multiplying by four pi.
Ah, bugger. So I multiply by 1.5 x 10^11 to get about 4.5 x 10^9 kg or about 4.5 x 10^6 tonnes or 4.5 million tonnes per second... that's not far off!
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
A good estimation question is one of my staples when conducting mock oxbridge interviews. I once asked “if an umbrella covered in solar panels can run a washing machine, what is the rate of mass loss from the sun?” And got an answer which was within a factor of two. Wasn’t surprised when he got in to Cambridge.
So - estimate the amount of energy needed to run a washing machine, then estimate the area covered by an umbrella and the efficiency of the solar cells on it, then the surface area of a sphere at the Earth's distance from the Sun, then divide by c^2? (omitting atmosphere loss and angular tilt of umbrella at whatever latitude you're at; effectively assuming midday at the equator)
Impressive for the estimate accuracy at each stage to be good enough for a factor of two.
I'd guesstimate 1kW, 2 square metres, 30%, 150 billion metres times 4 pi, divide by 9 times ten to the 16, but I think that would give the wrong answer.
Let's see - 1kW for 2 square metres, implying 500W/square metre power output, implying 1.5kW/sq metre at Earth's distance from Sun, which would be 6 x pi x 10^11 sq metres = about 1.9 x 10^12 square metres gives 2.8 x 10^15 W . Divide by 3^8, twice, gives about 0.03kg/s
Which I know for a fact is wrong. Where did I go wrong?
My effort is an order of magnitude out. Not bad for a PPEist.
Say the umbrella is 1m across which gives it a surface area of (U) = 1/4 PI m^2 The surface area of a sphere 1.5 * 10^10 km in radius is (S) 4 * 2.25 * 10^20 PI m^2
Total umbrellas required to capture all the emitted energy at that distance = (S)/(U) = 3.6 * 10^21
Each umbrella delivers 1kW to the machine, let's say the panel has 10% efficiency, so each is capturing 10^4 W
Total energy output (e) from Sun is therefore 3.6 * 10^25
e = mc^2 so divding through by 9 * 10^16 gives m = 4 * 10^8 kg/s
NB - the Earth is about 150,000,000 km, so 1.5*10^8 km or 1.5*10^11 metres
Would they have been going at normal walking speed though?
No. It was much slower with frequent stops as the march funnelled into narrower sections of the route such as Pall Mall.
Yes I think the walking speed would be closer to 2 mph, a walk of 4 mph is going somewhere very quickly and in a hurry. I've never seen any march get remotely close to 4 mph.
I agree, but the slower the walking speed, the lower the attendance in those calculations, and it already seems Alistair's total is well under what others are estimating - so I wonder if that really is a robust way of estimating it?
The formula is correct: the issue with any estimate is what values you assume for each term. It also assumes all the marchers went past this point.
God this is a dismal science. You’d have thought by now that someone would have devised a piece of software that could count the size of a crowd within a 100 or so MOE from a helicopter picture. We can put a man on the moon, but we still can’t count a crowd.
This blogpost is very interesting on the topic of counting crowds.
I forget where I read it now, but someone has done a sqm estimate of the area occupied by the marchers, and reckoned that to get the 700k claimed you'd be up to 5-6 people sqm (total non starter), i.e. the actual size was probably more like 100k. Anyone got any decent helicopter photos of the march, and we can conclusively prove the point.
This unavailable estimate would have to be quite sophisticated. I'd say that the crowd density varied from 1 to 4 people per square meter at the start point - but there were groups gathering at various points in Hyde Park and Iots of individuals roaming around. There was also a very large group gathering just outside Victoria station when I went by, at least a thousand probably more. Presumably there were similar ones elsewhere around but not at the gathering point. And people arriving by tube would be able to get to join the march without getting picked up by a helicopter's camera.
Comments
https://twitter.com/bbclaurak/status/1054680858332983296
If you want two possible surprises, I would go for Minnesota Special and Michigan - in Minnesota, the Republican candidate is the wife of a ice hockey celeb and a couple of the Dem-held House seats seem to be trending their way. In Michigan, the Republican is 9 points behind but that was as large as +23%. Moreover, he has (a) good back story (African American, helicopter pilot, businessman) and (b) in his Republican primary, he came storming through at the end to win, suggesting he knows how to time the final burst.
I’d expect Drumhead trials for those Leavers who said it would be easy/WTO was Project Fear.
Any estimate is only as good as its error bar.
The FTSE 100 index is calculated without taking accountv of dividends. Only the German DAX index does this.
Allowing for the dividends being reinvested back into equity shares accounts for virtually all equity gains over time.
After all the only reason shares have the value they do is because of the future income they provide. The resale value of a share is just the present value of expected future dividends at the time the shares are sold.
See https://www.telegraph.co.uk/investing/income-iq/reinvesting-dividends-simple-but-effective/
Each line had something like 20 people in it, so far as I can tell. Each line is spaced about a yard apart. That means there's 35,000 or so marchers a mile.
A normal walking speed is 3-4 miles an hour. The video states that the march took 2 1/2 hours to pass by. Getting rid of all false precision, I get to 300,000.
I'm very open to other calculations.
https://twitter.com/faizashaheen/status/1054695084745256960?s=21
Not saying that's happened but if it does happen we won't know immediately as Brady would want to be discrete. It could leak quickly though.
Using the variables that Alastair describes it's hard to reach the organisers estimate - though the total number of people present will be a bit greater than the number who pass a single point.
Depending on the result of the referendum we would then either Remain in the EU and Brexit would be cancelled, leave with a Deal May had negotiated and approved by the referendum or crash out with No Deal at all
Events could come after it finally breaks up.
I think worst case scenario is massive disruption for a period of months, and then some lost growth, possible recession. Capitalism has an amazing way of finding away. I don’t want to leave the single market, it will leave us all a bit porter. But only a bit.
The news comes as speculation once again mounted at Westminster that Tory MPs are close to reaching the threshold of 48 letters that would trigger a confidence vote in the prime minister. The number of letters is kept private by 1922 Committee chairman Graham Brady until the threshold is met.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/at-least-four-tory-mps-have-submitted-letters-of-no
People who attended People's Vote Rally in 2018 = 670,000 300,000
People who voted Leave in 2016 = 17,400,000
https://twitter.com/Aidan4Europe/status/1054382470664208389
So the economy could collapse followed by the country breaking up
1. Increased chance of early VoNC;
2. Steady or possibly slightly increasing Con lead in polls;
3. Time / political window closing on any 2018 GE (v difficult to align with a parliamentary VoNC, no prompt from EU summit big enough to call one, and unlikely to even be a Nov summit);
4. DUP less likely to vote against Budget.
When they do, their Tweets will show up here.
Can someone who hasn't lost the will explain what this actually means?
Which looks perfectly satisfactory to me at first glance.
Or did you want the total mass loss, i.e. you estimate the proportion of a sphere around the sun covered by one umbrella?
Or is this why I did engineering not physics?
Capitalism does indeed usually find a way, but for some (see the interviews with scientists of the Crick Institute this morning), that might well be outside of the UK.
The student concerned read engineering...
So part of the Withdrawal Agreement is about what happens if we don't agree the Future Partnership (the Backstop) and part of it is about what the Future Partnership will look like in big picture terms (the Protocol).
If a UK CU was part of the Backstop, it would arguably give the UK the best of both worlds (we'd be *too* happy with the Backstop). As part of the Protocol, it gives us some of both - an element of backstop to it, because it would be replaced by the Future Partnership once agreed.
It's a bit of an abuse of the framework... but... not a bad idea in practice.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/412673-texas-sees-massive-turnout-on-first-day-of-early-voting
Just as Superman’s age is always 29, the number of letters to Graham Brady is a constant of 47.9
https://ahdinnaeken.wordpress.com/2018/05/06/delusion-of-the-35000-indy-marchers/
I forget where I read it now, but someone has done a sqm estimate of the area occupied by the marchers, and reckoned that to get the 700k claimed you'd be up to 5-6 people sqm (total non starter), i.e. the actual size was probably more like 100k.
Anyone got any decent helicopter photos of the march, and we can conclusively prove the point.
Number of working class voters from Stoke or Sunderland on the march: Zero.
They wouldn't have been welcome?
Impressive for the estimate accuracy at each stage to be good enough for a factor of two.
I'd guesstimate 1kW, 2 square metres, 30%, 150 billion metres times 4 pi, divide by 9 times ten to the 16, but I think that would give the wrong answer.
Let's see - 1kW for 2 square metres, implying 500W/square metre power output, implying 1.5kW/sq metre at Earth's distance from Sun, which would be 6 x pi x 10^11 sq metres = about 1.9 x 10^12 square metres gives 2.8 x 10^15 W .
Divide by 3^8, twice, gives about 0.03kg/s
Which I know for a fact is wrong. Where did I go wrong?
Say the umbrella is 1m across which gives it a surface area of (U) = 1/4 PI m^2
The surface area of a sphere 1.5 * 10^10 km in radius is (S) 4 * 2.25 * 10^20 PI m^2
Total umbrellas required to capture all the emitted energy at that distance = (S)/(U) = 3.6 * 10^21
Each umbrella delivers 1kW to the machine, let's say the panel has 10% efficiency, so each is capturing 10^4 W
Total energy output (e) from Sun is therefore 3.6 * 10^25
e = mc^2 so divding through by 9 * 10^16 gives m = 4 * 10^8 kg/s
If I'm right, that is classic Theresa May/EU fudge, as it means that there won't be a casus belli for eitrher soft Brexit or hard Brexit people in the vote on the agreement because the commitment isn't in the WA and the Protocol is just a set of chapter headings to be agreed later. So MPs on both flanks could vote it through, hoping to get their way in 1-2 years' time when the Future Partnership is settled.
The snag for People's Vote MPs is that it slides us out of the EU before the customs union issue is finally decided. The snag for Brexiteers is that it leaves the default position as permanent Customs Union (aka vassalage).
(Though I don't think an umbrella-sized panel would be powerful enough to run a washing machine)
So I multiply by 1.5 x 10^11 to get about 4.5 x 10^9 kg or about 4.5 x 10^6 tonnes or 4.5 million tonnes per second... that's not far off!