politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The Boris Bridge to Ireland plan – the ultimate vanity project?
Reminder what engineers think of building a 22 mile bridge through a deep and stormy munitions dump pic.twitter.com/odNFyZD87E
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Thanks for this - I`m often scratching my head over this subject. If what you say is correct, how come when I "cash out" my BF cash balance goes up and the increase can be used to bet on other things (or, presumably, withdraw)?
This happened yesterday - when i placed £20 on RLB my BF cash balance went up not down. (I have lots of conflicting bets on this market.)
A rail bridge on the other hand...
You could run through services from Dublin to Brussels. A proper EU gravy train.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposed_British_Isles_fixed_sea_link_connections
but there's hardly a crackpot idea that hasn't been floated before.
Am I getting there? I find this really confusing.
But Forest beat Leeds at the weekend, so who cares?
Bear in mind the MOD only came clean in 2005 odd on the amount of ordnance (inc nuclear) in Beauforts Dyke so most studies are unaware of the problem.
Good news if you cashed out for a loss though, as you’ll lose the loss too!
Basically all bets are unwound, so the money you staked on that market will appear back in your account as available - as if that market never existed.
Is that not a gift?
IIUC they do not have enough candidates for that.
It would cost tens of billions to build, be subject to all sorts of delays, could take more than one or two decades to build and would regularly be unusable due to high winds.
It would also have a business case that would make almost any other infrastructure project in the UK look stellar by comparison.
The Denmark-Sweden bridge connected two major metropolises (Malmo and Copenhagen), and linked Sweden, Norway and Finland to the Continental railways systems. It also linked Malmo to a major international airport. There was clear demand for the link, and the distance was not too great.
Now, Scotland-Northern Ireland... I would guess, and I could be wrong here, that the number of Glasgow to Dublin flights isn't that great. So, you'd mostly be displacing ferry activity for HGVs in different routes.
And this bridge would be an order of magnitude more expensive.
It's hard to see the economic rationale.
Now, Mr Cummings is no idiot. Is there really a plan to build this bridge? Or is it a kite floating exercise to demonstrate a commitment to the Northern Irish and Scottish economies, where actual cancellation is left to some other government in the future?
That's 7.5miles long over a 30m deep strait.
This Boris bridge would be 30 miles over a 300m deep strait. So maybe a factor of 40 times harder?
Still we have a great track record of delivering these big infrastructure projects quickly and cheaply in Britain, so I am sure it will all be fine.
The only problem with that being that he might get attached to the idea of actually green-lighting it.
https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/news/18224368.amp/?__twitter_impression=true
Furthermore if it were built (per impossibile) the EU would find it a handy piece of infrastructure joining EU United Ireland and EU independent Scotland.
Dull and sleep inducing!
We will, Guido fears, find out in the end that the trouble with zero interest rate “One Nation Toryism” is that eventually you run out of other people’s money…
https://order-order.com/2020/02/10/voted-socialism-lite/
The death toll in mainland China rose by 97, taking the number of global fatalities to 910.
Another 3,062 cases were reported in China yesterday - an increase of 15 per cent compared to Saturday which put an end to a series of daily declines.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7986067/Japan-says-60-virus-cases-cruise-ship.html
More likely it will be one of those commitments to look into it but then never get anything formal so nothing needs to be formally cancelled. Eg Dubya, Obama and Trump have all announced plans for manned missions to Mars. Maybe Clinton and before too I don't know. Those plans never get formally cancelled and then years later their successor announces it too. Repeat ad nauseum.
Corbyn merely makes jam.
800 years sounds about right tbf.
41 FF, 37 SF, 36 FG
Caven Monaghan
2 FF. Definitely 1
Cork North Central
1 FG, 1 Other
Donegal
1 FF, 1 FG, 1 Other
Dublin bay North
1 FF, 2 other
Dublin Fingal
1 FG, 1 Other
Dublin SW
1 FG, 1 FF, 2 Other
Dublin NW
1 Other (PBP), outside chance it is 1 FF instead
4638 FG votes to distribute; PBP 436 votes ahead of FF
Galway West
1 FG, 1 other
Kerry
1 FF, 1 FG, 1 Other
Kildare South
1 FF, 1 FG
Laios Offaly
1 FF, 1 FG, 1 Other
Longford Westmeath
1 FG, 2 FF
Louth
1 FG, 1 FF, 1 Other (FF could miss out)
Sleigo
2 FF, 1 FG, (Possibly 1 FF, 1 Other, 1 FG)
Wicklow
2 FG, 1 FF, 1 Green
is the working. Others can check if you like
Despite it being a lot further, it would make more sense - and may even be cheaper - if you're going to do a GB-Ireland physical link at all, to run it from Anglesea to Dublin and then upgrade the north Welsh routes. A Scotland-NI link is no use to the vast majority of people on either side of the Irish Sea.
But really, there's little justification spending that amount of money on a link to an island where so few people live, where most of them are in a foreign country (unless that foreign country, which were the prime beneficiary were to stump up most of the cash), and when there's plenty of intra-GB infrastructure that it could be spent on.
https://twitter.com/lwcalex/status/1226840055869632512?s=19
If the phrase "Wind over tide" means nothing to you, maybe you had better go and look it up because it happens twice a day out there.
BTW - do not forget to add another 50 to 100 metres of height to allow shipping UNDER the bridge.
I don't think Klobuchar has any realistic chance of overhauling Sanders in NH. Simply, he's going to get something in the 26-32% range, while Klobuchar is still polling only the low-teens.
She does, however, have a shot (a small one) of getting second. The moderate lane of the Democratic Primaries remains extremely crowded, and she has more appeal to the left of the Party than Biden, Buttigieg or Bloomberg. No doubt some Warren voters could go for her too.
I suspect her surge is too late, and that she'll end up in the mid-teens, alongside Warren. Buttigieg will end up on 17-23%. And Biden will end up fifth, although I no longer think he'll end up in single digits.
The problem is that this is unlikely to get the Klobuchar momentum truly moving. She really needs a second.
Next to Nevada. There hasn't been much polling there. And organisation matters. I think this is Warren's state.
From there, who knows? Having four or five credible players contesting Super Tuesday is incredibly uncommon. It makes getting 50+1% of delegates really tough. And it also means lots of moderate votes end up going to waste thanks to the the 15% bar at the precinct level.
Nevertheless, randomness will ensure a certain % of humans will have natural immunity (or as good as).
I admire Boris pushing through initial skepticism, even if sometimes it fails. You have to do that with any new idea. There's nothing as certain in life as some smart Alec trampling on a new idea with their size 9s, but they're not the ones who actually achieve things.
However international law doesn't dictate this. As far as I'm aware (IANAL) this right applies to colonised peoples and not constituent parts of a country. So if Falklands or Gibraltar wanted independence they could get it, but not Scotland or Catalonia.
Otherwise the Catalans could take their case to the Hague and demand their rights.
It probably suggests that there is a need for the political parties in Ireland to redefine themselves. And that could well be true of other countries too.
Meanwhile, if SF can work in government with extreme protestants in Northern Ireland, there is no inherent reason why they should not be able to work with more closely-aligned parties in the Republic.