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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Trouble over bridged waters. Boris Johnson’s plan to link Scot
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Trouble over bridged waters. Boris Johnson’s plan to link Scotland and Northern Ireland
While love can build a bridge, it’s far from clear that Boris Johnson can. He planned one across the Thames, but that was scrapped. Then he mooted one across the English Channel, to be shot down quickly. Now he is shelling out public money to investigate the possibility of a bridge across the North Channel between Larne (half an hour from Belfast) and Portpatrick (50 lightyears from anywhere). Is it going to be third time a charm for Boris Johnson?
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Edit: not that there aren't several well made points I hasten to add!
The Tower of Babel.
This piece is good evidence that the strategy has worked.
I think the next couple of weeks are key, when we will see if there’s genuine spread of this virus across Asia, or if it’s mostly contained within China.
If the Olympics are to be postponed, it would make sense to take the decision as early as possible, so that hundreds of thousands of people directly involved can make alternative plans. It’s a seriously difficult call to make, I wouldn’t want to be in the room
The maintenance costs would be huge but decommissioning it would be out of the question.
This is Lords to Leeds territory.
If I recall the numbers, the dumped munitions are more than a million tonnes, including up to 50k tonnes of chemical weapons.
Of course this is a remarkably silly idea. His thoughts of a new airport in the Thames estuary made way more sense. Dualling the A1 just might have more economic benefit too. I am bemused that this has not disappeared into the long grass already.
"In so doing, the White House has unearthed some particularly amusing examples of government waste, including support for a Muppet Retrospectacle in New Zealand, millions of dollars to prepare religions across the globe for discovering extraterrestrial life , and $4.6m spent by federal agencies on lobster tails and crab in a “use it or lose it” end year spending spree."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2020/02/11/debt-bubble-should-ring-alarm-bells-amid-strange-death-fiscal/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/giant-dams-could-protect-millions-from-rising-north-sea
https://twitter.com/tswyatt/status/1227578131512463361
AFAIK we buried some under chemical factory sites at the time, too.
At present there are two routes plied from Belfast and Larne to Stranraer (ish) respectively, averaging 12 sailings a day.
Stena operates the Stena Superfast VII, which has a max capacity of 660 cars or 110 lorries or a mixture of both.
Let’s go 1/4 lorries and 3/4 cars. If we assume they all run to capacity all the time then you’re looking at about 500 cars and 30 lorries.
That gets you to 6,000 cars and 400 lorries (round up) a day. Let’s say every car pays £30 for the toll and lorries £100. You could maybe pull in £220k gross income a day.
You wouldn’t get that every day, and it’d be seasonal, but let’s assume you get it on 300 days (closures/bad weather etc) and you pull in £66m a year gross. You’ve then got a good few million a year in maintenance and much more in staff but let’s say an opex profit of £30-40m a year (remember: I’m being very generous with maxed out traffic receipts here) and over a 100 year lifespan you might expect £3-4bn in returns (again, note: I’ve done no NPV here, which will really depress it, and maintenance costs will increase with age).
The likely capex cost of the bridge (sans extra infrastructure) is probably £15-20bn. So it’s business case is some like 0.14-0.25 at best.
In other words, it’s fucking shite. Even if you assumed traffic would more than double you’d get nowhere near breaking even.
It will never be built.
Far more good things to spend money on than there is money to spend or capacity to build.
How do the numbers look for HS2 ?
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/286611/hs2-economic-case.pdf
This was based on a total budget of £70bn. It will turf out somewhere between 60-95bn so there will prob be a 20% MoE on the business case.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00052bl
Though your average parish church uses very little energy, and zero carbon suppliers are already in the market.
When the whole system is becoming renewable, carbon emission reduction is a lot easier as the lecky supply is taken care of by the supplier.
Part of the reason is that talk is cheap I agree. But the second reason I'd give is more nobel than Mr Meeks cynical suggestion - by floating different ideas people talk about them yes but then you can see the ideas that do take off, and when problems get discussed some people set out to start solving those problems.
If an idea is floated and the problems get solved relatively easily then that idea -even if it was originally just a kite - can end up a reality.
https://havewegotafuckingtradedealyet.com/
I was forecasting a 5% Sanders lead over Buttigieg based on early results. They said 1.7%. The actual number looks to be 1-1.5%. That's pretty impressive.
Normally, in a Primary contest, Iowa and New Hampshire rapidly winnow the field, so that there are two or perhaps three viable candidates by the time of Super Tuesday.
Not this time.
There are six candidates who swear blind they're still in the race: Sanders, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Biden, Warren and Bloomberg. Of these, the first two dominate the delegates race, currently. But Biden is hanging on for South Carolina. And Warren is hanging in there in case Sanders has another heart attack. And Bloomberg is hoping that his c. 10% in national polls (and first in Arkansas!) translates into meaningful numbers of delegates on Super Tuesday.
I have been super sceptical about the possibility of a brokered convention. But right now, it's looking like Sanders will turn up there first, but with only about a third of the delegates.
Will this be enough? His supporters will argue he won a plurality, which he will have done, and therefore should have a shot.
But here's the thing: historically, if a candidate drops out and endorses another candidate, then their delegates effectively count for that candidate. So, if Amy Klobuchar dropped out today and endorsed Buttigieg (which she won't), then her seven delegates would become Buttigieg's at the convention.
Now this doesn't normally matter. But this time it probably *really* matters. But it has to happen early. It can't be done on the eve of the convention, it has to be done while the Primaries are still in process. There is therefore be an extraordinary amount of horse trading to come.
John Edwards dropped out of the race and endorsed Obama when he had 14 delegates. At the DNC, because he'd endorsed Obama during the Primary process, they all voted for Obama, and there were no votes for Edwards during the roll call.
That makes him unacceptable to at least 50%+1 of the delegates at the DNC.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/emilyashton/keir-starmer-profile
It feels to me that if he wins he is going to go for a big tent, keeping on some of the Corbynites like RLB but also bringing back the likes of Benn and Cooper. The key question then is whether everyone can get along or whether Momentum start causing trouble.
The danger of trying to keep everyone happy is that Lab may end up with a mish mash of policies with a few bones being thrown to the Corbynites and a few to the Blairites.
- Appropriating 10% of shares in all private companies (over 250 employees)
- Reimbursing WASPI women
- Free broadband
Is there anything else?
https://www.npr.org/2020/02/12/805155617/klobuchars-3rd-place-finish-in-new-hampshire-shocked-the-establishment?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/qjd3p7/how-to-get-out-of-debt
And yes it looks like his is only inching in form where Coybyn was at best.
no substantive change at all, just a new face
On the plus side quite a number of them provide green space where there isn't much, open buildings, if a little on the cool side in winter, all day every day for free, community space, several thousand free and open Grade 1 and II* buildings of immense cultural and artistic value for the public to wander around and a bit of continuity and a thoughtful presence in some extraordinary dumps where there is nothing else left.
Some of them are a bit rubbish of course, but that's life.
(ducks)
I still think the Northern Ireland bridge is a great idea. I don't know quite what it is about this country and bridges - it seems like other countries (Russia was mentioned) just have to think about a bridge and one appears.
For the record Belfast to Larne is about 20 mile not 30.