Upwards revision for May as well with early reports from businesses too cautious compared to actual results, I think that bodes well for June and July to be upwardly revised in due course.
The UK PMIs are no worse than most other European countries, and will probably be better than the US in July and August, so that seems like an eminently reasonably prediction.
I've got total economy size by October at 94%, but I think that final 6 points is going to take a year to recover with a vaccine and over two years without one and the recovery will be in different sectors compared to the pre-virus economy, especially in the no vaccine timeline.
This. Big question for me is what happens to the railways.
At present, I'm thinking passenger numbers only recover to 50-60% of pre-virus numbers over the next 2 years.
That will make several TOCs unviable and unprofitable, so I expect quasi-nationalisation to continue for a while yet, and some new transport schemes (where not politically essential) put on a go-slow.
Most TOCs run at a loss anyway, so in theory the franchising system could come back just with a greater level of overall public subsidy. I guess it was easier to stick them all on management contracts for the time being. Those contracts are appropriate for London Overground type operations. They are less effective for operations that compete with other modes. The longer distance services can benefit from the franchisee seeking to increase usage by advertising, altering service patterns etc.
But as long as people have to wear masks on trains, they are going to struggle to attract business, in my opinion. I expect things will stay as they are until next summer when we might have a better idea of where things are heading in terms of a vaccine. As you said in another post, the days of the gold card may be over.
Yes, they’re in a holding pattern at the moment. But don’t forget that the Government was trying to gradually reduce subsidy and make them all more sustainable. And some TOCs were returning cash to the Treasury: like South West Trains (now Railways).
It won’t be any more so HMG will have to cough up more cash potentially as-infinitum.
All adds up.
There was an aim for 75% of the total GB cost to be met by the user, but I'm not sure if that was still a thing pre-COVID-19. The DfT changed the scoring method for bids to place more emphasis on quality. That in turn led to a lot of successful bids including the purchasing of new rolling stock, paid for (leasing costs, not building costs) by the tax payer. The 707s on SWR should be going off-lease at some point in the new year and the owner will need to find someone else to use them to get a return on their investment. The FT have some good pieces on that subject.
But yes, the game has very much changed now. My walking route takes in the bridges west of Woking station and in the middle of the day SWR are running 12 car trains on the Basingstoke and Alton semi-fasts, presumably to allow for social distancing. Obviously there will be key workers using trains, so the government is in a tricky position. They need to strike a balance between facilitating the transportation of key workers who don't have cars/work in central London etc. and trying to reduce the amount it's spending on running what are mostly empty trains.
Curious why the UK GDP decline is significantly larger. Our lockdown wasn't as stringent as many, and it was of comparable length to others, right?
The figures for GDP are just guesses. The ONS always go on the pessimistic side. Does the country feel like it has just had a 20% GDP reduction? Are houses selling? Do people have plenty of money in their pocket. Its all hyperbole nonsense.
I tend to agree that the ONS will probably revise GDP upwards.
But to accuse them of 'guesswork' ignores the massive - and well documented work - that goes into the creation of GDP numbers.
Working in construction I have had years of the ONS saying that Construction was contracting and in recession when it clearly wasn't. We had regular discussions on here about where the ONS were getting their figures from as it did not match what was going on in the real world.
What the ONS do is make dramatic negative annoucements and make very quiet corrections.
This. Big question for me is what happens to the railways.
At present, I'm thinking passenger numbers only recover to 50-60% of pre-virus numbers over the next 2 years.
That will make several TOCs unviable and unprofitable, so I expect quasi-nationalisation to continue for a while yet, and some new transport schemes (were not politically essential) put on a go-slow.
HS2 is dead
HS2 certainly isn't dead - it's well under construction. It's possible phase 2 will be kicked into the long-grass though.
Crossrail2 is definitely dead.
What have they built for HS2? Site clearance in London and Birmingham isn't constructing a railway. Not a single mile of embankment or tunnel yet built or even started. Cancel now and they will just build something else at Euston, OOC and Curzon Street.
I also think the Chancellor will extend the eat out scheme for September if the weather is good, it's a cheap way to support the industry vs furlough IMO.
It seems to me like that is an excellent idea, considering the devastation that the virus has done to the industry.
If it were up to me I'd extend it to November. Not December as hopefully by then Christmas bookings will be picking up - if Christmas Parties aren't permitted this year then that will be devastating.
I am boycotting a particular establishment near where I work. It is a place that in the height of summer turns over 40 grand a day. They have not discounted to customers, but my understanding is they are part of the scheme !?
Later today on my way to an appointment in Cardiff I will enjoy a McDonalds sausage and egg Mcmuffin meal for £1.75. So the scheme is a bad idea. A coronary financed by the government and a breakfast I would have indulged in for full price at my own expense. Is the scheme really meant to benefit fast food franchises?
How are they not discounting to customers? If they're taking full price from the customers and then 50% extra from HMRC then that sounds to me like it would be criminal tax fraud and HMRC would not take a pleasant view upon that!
As for fast food restaurants of course they should be in the scheme. Why on earth would restaurants not be part of a scheme to help restaurants?
There are plenty of "fast food" restaurants that could have gone bust had this scheme not been created, there are many restaurant chains that have struggled or gone into administration during this virus: Frankie & Benny's, Ask Italia, Zizzis, Byron Burger, Pizza Express, Pret A Manger, Cafe Rouge, Bella Italia, Upper Crust, Ritazza, Wagama, Carluccios to name just a few have all either announced large job losses or entered administration.
Your typical McDonalds in a normal year probably pays wages to dozens of people and generates over a million pounds of taxes per annum to HMRC between VAT, Business Rates, Corporation Tax, Employment Taxes and more. Why would these restaurants uniquely be excluded from a scheme to support restaurants?
Its an interesting question but given restaurants can charge what they like then they could just say they have put up their prices 100% and then applied the discount. A bit like the 5% VAt rate in that restaurants can choose to pass it on or keep it because fundamentally they are allowed to charge what they like
Considering the scheme is only open Monday to Wednesday and the price (and discount) must be printed on the bill then if the prices were claimed to be double Monday-Wednesday then I think that would be somewhat open to investigation.
If you're going to defraud HMRC then printing that you have done so on your bills you give to customers you're pissing off does not seem like an intelligent move to me. I can't imagine many would do that!
One restaurant I went to only had two white wines on the menu Mon-Wed, the cheapest about £35 a bottle, normally there are lots of wines starting about £20. So they probably havent put the prices up but only served the premium mark up ones. Bad form and will put me off going back but not fraud.
Pissing off your customers is rarely a long term recipe for success.
I'll be going out tonight but drinking soft drinks - I'm driving.
Yes, they’re in a holding pattern at the moment. But don’t forget that the Government was trying to gradually reduce subsidy and make them all more sustainable. And some TOCs were returning cash to the Treasury: like South West Trains (now Railways).
It won’t be any more so HMG will have to cough up more cash potentially as-infinitum.
All adds up.
South West Trains was profitable and returning money to the treasury. South West Railway was in deep trouble and heading towards being handed back to the DfT. Two completely different franchises. How fantastic that DfT shot the golden goose by getting greedy.
SWR lied about the trains they could run. SWT knew it wasn't possible and got out, rather intelligently
SWR have certainly pissed a load of money away on the plastic pigs!
This. Big question for me is what happens to the railways.
At present, I'm thinking passenger numbers only recover to 50-60% of pre-virus numbers over the next 2 years.
That will make several TOCs unviable and unprofitable, so I expect quasi-nationalisation to continue for a while yet, and some new transport schemes (were not politically essential) put on a go-slow.
HS2 is dead
HS2 certainly isn't dead - it's well under construction. It's possible phase 2 will be kicked into the long-grass though.
Crossrail2 is definitely dead.
What have they built for HS2? Site clearance in London and Birmingham isn't constructing a railway. Not a single mile of embankment or tunnel yet built or even started. Cancel now and they will just build something else at Euston, OOC and Curzon Street.
Hmmmmm. Correlation does not equal causation. I very much doubt the Cummings incident helped Johnson but there are other reasons why his ratings might have fallen.
The disaster in care homes, shaking hands with everyone, an apparent sense of a u-turn on policy, a lack of clarity on advice to the public. He just doesn't seem like a PM for the crisis. So maybe it was all Cummings, maybe not. I can't help but feel you WANT it to be about Cummings.
You also have to factor in Starmer being an entirely new leader.
Also, there were other possible options between “do nothing” and “sack him”.
Not to the media mob there wasn’t. They’d decided long ago that he was a witch, and nothing short of burning at the stake was going to be acceptable.
The fact that they blew up the story as big as they did was probably a factor in the PM standing by him. Remember that we are talking about an ‘offence’ for which the legal punishment would have been an £80 fine, same as a parking ticket.
The Barnard castle issue was in the press due to the excuse used. But it was the stay in Durham that was the problem.
One rule for the Westminster elite and another for us plebs is inevitably corrosive of confidence.
Not that we expect anything different from this government of chancers.
-20.4% GDP in Q2, but +8.7% in June and a predicted +8% in July going by the indices.
Recovery looking pretty V shaped at the moment.
Provided it doesn't bubble-up again and we get a half-decent vaccine in the next 6-9 months, we should be ok.
Still a £300bn penalty charge to pay though, and probably an extra £25-40bn annual deficit to deal with too.
But could have been worse.
300bn is chump change in the long run.
Yes, it's more important that our debt ratio % GDP is stable and we have a path to balance the books again.
This is why I await the budget with interest.
No what matters is that the %age of GDP going to interest payments is low and stable, so that the debt is not a drain on public finances.
Crudely, and if we assume the classic situation of non-repayable consols, a debt of 50% of GDP at 10% interest is as bad as 100% at 5% interest.
Crudely but the Treasury has done an excellent job (not just now but down the years) at maintaining long dates on its bonds, many due to be rolled over decades from now. So with a variable mortgage for a household yes if the interest rates double then so does your interest - but that is not the case for the Treasury. If bond yields were to rise now that would not immediately impact upon our existing debts.
Curious why the UK GDP decline is significantly larger. Our lockdown wasn't as stringent as many, and it was of comparable length to others, right?
We are more of a consumer-based services-based economy?
Think about Italy, they shut down everything in the North for 3 months. That is where their factories are. In the South their economy is based on tourism and there were no tourists. yet somehow their GDP reduction is far less than ours. Does anyone really believe that?
UK gross domestic product (GDP) is estimated to have fallen by a record 20.4% in Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2020, marking the second consecutive quarterly decline after it fell by 2.2% in Quarter 1 (Jan to Mar) 2020.
Curious why the UK GDP decline is significantly larger. Our lockdown wasn't as stringent as many, and it was of comparable length to others, right?
We are more of a consumer-based services-based economy?
Think about Italy, they shut down everything in the North for 3 months. That is where their factories are. In the South their economy is based on tourism and there were no tourists. yet somehow their GDP reduction is far less than ours. Does anyone really believe that?
Curious why the UK GDP decline is significantly larger. Our lockdown wasn't as stringent as many, and it was of comparable length to others, right?
We are more of a consumer-based services-based economy?
Think about Italy, they shut down everything in the North for 3 months. That is where their factories are. In the South their economy is based on tourism and there were no tourists. yet somehow their GDP reduction is far less than ours. Does anyone really believe that?
I don't believe Italian figures at the best of times.
This. Big question for me is what happens to the railways.
At present, I'm thinking passenger numbers only recover to 50-60% of pre-virus numbers over the next 2 years.
That will make several TOCs unviable and unprofitable, so I expect quasi-nationalisation to continue for a while yet, and some new transport schemes (were not politically essential) put on a go-slow.
HS2 is dead
HS2 certainly isn't dead - it's well under construction. It's possible phase 2 will be kicked into the long-grass though.
Crossrail2 is definitely dead.
What have they built for HS2? Site clearance in London and Birmingham isn't constructing a railway. Not a single mile of embankment or tunnel yet built or even started. Cancel now and they will just build something else at Euston, OOC and Curzon Street.
It can’t be cancelled now without billions of pounds in penalties and much of the land has already been bought too.
It’s past the point of no return to all intents and purposes. For phase 1..
With Phase 1 being the less needed part of the project. The project should have started in the North not the other way around.
Yes there is need in the north. But the lack of capacity on the southern WCML is the reason the project was started. Happily Covid has forced 10 years of evolution in 10 weeks, a loss less commuters means less trains means less congestion.
I stand by my point about HS2 progress. A big hole being dug in a field can be filled it. They haven't constructed a single mile of railway or cutting or embankment or tunnel. A bridge over the M42? No different to the unused canal bridge over the M6Toll.
Curious why the UK GDP decline is significantly larger. Our lockdown wasn't as stringent as many, and it was of comparable length to others, right?
The figures for GDP are just guesses. The ONS always go on the pessimistic side. Does the country feel like it has just had a 20% GDP reduction? Are houses selling? Do people have plenty of money in their pocket. Its all hyperbole nonsense.
I tend to agree that the ONS will probably revise GDP upwards.
But to accuse them of 'guesswork' ignores the massive - and well documented work - that goes into the creation of GDP numbers.
Working in construction I have had years of the ONS saying that Construction was contracting and in recession when it clearly wasn't. We had regular discussions on here about where the ONS were getting their figures from as it did not match what was going on in the real world.
What the ONS do is make dramatic negative annoucements and make very quiet corrections.
Their figures on construction were not much short of a joke. I remember that over a period of relatively few years, in which they had recorded construction as being pretty much permanently in recession, they discovered that output had increased by over 20%!
As I said downthread the most surprising thing for me is the level of bounce back in GDP given that millions are still on furlough. It tends to suggest to me that a significant part of our workforce make a relatively insignificant contribution to our GDP.
This. Big question for me is what happens to the railways.
At present, I'm thinking passenger numbers only recover to 50-60% of pre-virus numbers over the next 2 years.
That will make several TOCs unviable and unprofitable, so I expect quasi-nationalisation to continue for a while yet, and some new transport schemes (were not politically essential) put on a go-slow.
HS2 is dead
HS2 certainly isn't dead - it's well under construction. It's possible phase 2 will be kicked into the long-grass though.
Crossrail2 is definitely dead.
What have they built for HS2? Site clearance in London and Birmingham isn't constructing a railway. Not a single mile of embankment or tunnel yet built or even started. Cancel now and they will just build something else at Euston, OOC and Curzon Street.
It can’t be cancelled now without billions of pounds in penalties and much of the land has already been bought too.
It’s past the point of no return to all intents and purposes. For phase 1..
With Phase 1 being the less needed part of the project. The project should have started in the North not the other way around.
The most crowded part of the WCML is the stretch from Rugby to London. Capacity problems ease when the Trent Valley line diverges, diminish further at Crewe, and are much less significant north of Manchester. It's hard to argue the southern stretch it's the 'less needed' part of the railway!
Even if that were not true, however, there is little point in building lines in the north to provide extra capacity until the extra trains that result have somewhere to go. To give an example, when the M5 was built, the first phase to be constructed was actually the M50. Now that may seem bizarre, as the M50 goes from nowhere to nowhere calling at nowhere in between (to be exact, from Tewkesbury to Ross passing through Bromsberrow and Gorsley at a fair distance from Ledbury and Newent). But the whole logic was that as soon as the M5 opened there would be a lot of traffic going between South Wales and Birmingham and the roads in the Botloe area simply wouldn't cope with it.
The irony is that the M50 remains a very rare example of a late 1950s motorway in essentially its original condition - because there's comparatively little traffic on it.
Curious why the UK GDP decline is significantly larger. Our lockdown wasn't as stringent as many, and it was of comparable length to others, right?
We are more of a consumer-based services-based economy?
Think about Italy, they shut down everything in the North for 3 months. That is where their factories are. In the South their economy is based on tourism and there were no tourists. yet somehow their GDP reduction is far less than ours. Does anyone really believe that?
Statistical science based on anecdata and cultural prejudices, it's the future isn't it.
Curious why the UK GDP decline is significantly larger. Our lockdown wasn't as stringent as many, and it was of comparable length to others, right?
The figures for GDP are just guesses. The ONS always go on the pessimistic side. Does the country feel like it has just had a 20% GDP reduction? Are houses selling? Do people have plenty of money in their pocket. Its all hyperbole nonsense.
I tend to agree that the ONS will probably revise GDP upwards.
But to accuse them of 'guesswork' ignores the massive - and well documented work - that goes into the creation of GDP numbers.
Working in construction I have had years of the ONS saying that Construction was contracting and in recession when it clearly wasn't. We had regular discussions on here about where the ONS were getting their figures from as it did not match what was going on in the real world.
What the ONS do is make dramatic negative annoucements and make very quiet corrections.
Their figures on construction were not much short of a joke. I remember that over a period of relatively few years, in which they had recorded construction as being pretty much permanently in recession, they discovered that output had increased by over 20%!
As I said downthread the most surprising thing for me is the level of bounce back in GDP given that millions are still on furlough. It tends to suggest to me that a significant part of our workforce make a relatively insignificant contribution to our GDP.
Considering that many of those on furlough likely work minimum wage jobs is that all that surprising?
Curious why the UK GDP decline is significantly larger. Our lockdown wasn't as stringent as many, and it was of comparable length to others, right?
The figures for GDP are just guesses. The ONS always go on the pessimistic side. Does the country feel like it has just had a 20% GDP reduction? Are houses selling? Do people have plenty of money in their pocket. Its all hyperbole nonsense.
I tend to agree that the ONS will probably revise GDP upwards.
But to accuse them of 'guesswork' ignores the massive - and well documented work - that goes into the creation of GDP numbers.
Working in construction I have had years of the ONS saying that Construction was contracting and in recession when it clearly wasn't. We had regular discussions on here about where the ONS were getting their figures from as it did not match what was going on in the real world.
What the ONS do is make dramatic negative annoucements and make very quiet corrections.
Curious why the UK GDP decline is significantly larger. Our lockdown wasn't as stringent as many, and it was of comparable length to others, right?
The figures for GDP are just guesses. The ONS always go on the pessimistic side. Does the country feel like it has just had a 20% GDP reduction? Are houses selling? Do people have plenty of money in their pocket. Its all hyperbole nonsense.
I tend to agree that the ONS will probably revise GDP upwards.
But to accuse them of 'guesswork' ignores the massive - and well documented work - that goes into the creation of GDP numbers.
Working in construction I have had years of the ONS saying that Construction was contracting and in recession when it clearly wasn't. We had regular discussions on here about where the ONS were getting their figures from as it did not match what was going on in the real world.
What the ONS do is make dramatic negative annoucements and make very quiet corrections.
Their figures on construction were not much short of a joke. I remember that over a period of relatively few years, in which they had recorded construction as being pretty much permanently in recession, they discovered that output had increased by over 20%!
As I said downthread the most surprising thing for me is the level of bounce back in GDP given that millions are still on furlough. It tends to suggest to me that a significant part of our workforce make a relatively insignificant contribution to our GDP.
Given our low productivity, does that surprise you?
Although I suspect it's worse in the public sector where generous salaries and flexible Ts+Cs have made part time working so popular.
This. Big question for me is what happens to the railways.
At present, I'm thinking passenger numbers only recover to 50-60% of pre-virus numbers over the next 2 years.
That will make several TOCs unviable and unprofitable, so I expect quasi-nationalisation to continue for a while yet, and some new transport schemes (were not politically essential) put on a go-slow.
HS2 is dead
HS2 certainly isn't dead - it's well under construction. It's possible phase 2 will be kicked into the long-grass though.
Crossrail2 is definitely dead.
What have they built for HS2? Site clearance in London and Birmingham isn't constructing a railway. Not a single mile of embankment or tunnel yet built or even started. Cancel now and they will just build something else at Euston, OOC and Curzon Street.
It can’t be cancelled now without billions of pounds in penalties and much of the land has already been bought too.
It’s past the point of no return to all intents and purposes. For phase 1..
With Phase 1 being the less needed part of the project. The project should have started in the North not the other way around.
At the time the capacity was needed in the South - the issue was that it was sold as a solution for speed rather than what it actually was, creating bypasses to allow the local tracks to be used for local traffic.
Up north it's needed for a different reason, the old tracks are twisty and slow and it's almost cheaper to start again.
Curious why the UK GDP decline is significantly larger. Our lockdown wasn't as stringent as many, and it was of comparable length to others, right?
We are more of a consumer-based services-based economy?
Think about Italy, they shut down everything in the North for 3 months. That is where their factories are. In the South their economy is based on tourism and there were no tourists. yet somehow their GDP reduction is far less than ours. Does anyone really believe that?
Statistical science based on anecdata and cultural prejudices, it's the future isn't it.
My god what a ludicrous response. An air quality survey was carried out in Northern Italy in May and it showed an incredible improvement because all their factories were shut. I buy light fittings from Italy, I can't get them at the moment as the factory has been shut and they are miles behind.
New Zealand investigates the origin of the outbreak that has forced the country's largest city to confine. The authorities believe that imported frozen goods could be the source of four infections detected yesterday, after 102 days without local infections in the country. "We are working hard to put the pieces of this puzzle together to find out how this family got infected," said New Zealand Health Director-General Ashley Bloomfield
I see Trump is going with the line that Harris as VP candidate indicates that the Dems have been taken over by the radical left. Do they really believe that shit or more specifically that voters will?
Curious why the UK GDP decline is significantly larger. Our lockdown wasn't as stringent as many, and it was of comparable length to others, right?
We are more of a consumer-based services-based economy?
Think about Italy, they shut down everything in the North for 3 months. That is where their factories are. In the South their economy is based on tourism and there were no tourists. yet somehow their GDP reduction is far less than ours. Does anyone really believe that?
Statistical science based on anecdata and cultural prejudices, it's the future isn't it.
My god what a ludicrous response. An air quality survey was carried out in Northern Italy in May and it showed an incredible improvement because all their factories were shut. I buy light fittings from Italy, I can't get them at the moment as the factory has been shut and they are miles behind.
Italian economic figures have always been questionable due to corruption and organised crime etc.
Curious why the UK GDP decline is significantly larger. Our lockdown wasn't as stringent as many, and it was of comparable length to others, right?
The figures for GDP are just guesses. The ONS always go on the pessimistic side. Does the country feel like it has just had a 20% GDP reduction? Are houses selling? Do people have plenty of money in their pocket. Its all hyperbole nonsense.
I tend to agree that the ONS will probably revise GDP upwards.
But to accuse them of 'guesswork' ignores the massive - and well documented work - that goes into the creation of GDP numbers.
Working in construction I have had years of the ONS saying that Construction was contracting and in recession when it clearly wasn't. We had regular discussions on here about where the ONS were getting their figures from as it did not match what was going on in the real world.
What the ONS do is make dramatic negative annoucements and make very quiet corrections.
Their figures on construction were not much short of a joke. I remember that over a period of relatively few years, in which they had recorded construction as being pretty much permanently in recession, they discovered that output had increased by over 20%!
As I said downthread the most surprising thing for me is the level of bounce back in GDP given that millions are still on furlough. It tends to suggest to me that a significant part of our workforce make a relatively insignificant contribution to our GDP.
The data on the numbers on furlough seem odd as it never goes down.
Yet there are now millions of workers in construction, manufacturing, retail, leisure and hospitality who are now working and no longer on furlough.
This. Big question for me is what happens to the railways.
At present, I'm thinking passenger numbers only recover to 50-60% of pre-virus numbers over the next 2 years.
That will make several TOCs unviable and unprofitable, so I expect quasi-nationalisation to continue for a while yet, and some new transport schemes (were not politically essential) put on a go-slow.
HS2 is dead
HS2 certainly isn't dead - it's well under construction. It's possible phase 2 will be kicked into the long-grass though.
Crossrail2 is definitely dead.
What have they built for HS2? Site clearance in London and Birmingham isn't constructing a railway. Not a single mile of embankment or tunnel yet built or even started. Cancel now and they will just build something else at Euston, OOC and Curzon Street.
It can’t be cancelled now without billions of pounds in penalties and much of the land has already been bought too.
It’s past the point of no return to all intents and purposes. For phase 1..
With Phase 1 being the less needed part of the project. The project should have started in the North not the other way around.
At the time the capacity was needed in the South - the issue was that it was sold as a solution for speed rather than what it actually was, creating bypasses to allow the local tracks to be used for local traffic.
Up north it's needed for a different reason, the old tracks are twisty and slow and it's almost cheaper to start again.
Essentially two choices - build a slower line and divert the freight, or build high speed and divert the passengers. As high speed is the default elsewhere we did the same, despite cheaper faster options being available.
London voting intention for UK elections, via @RedfieldWilton, 5-7 August (changes since 2019)
LAB 48% (-) CON 29% (-3) LD 14% (-1) GRN 7% (+4)
Labour would likely gain Chingford, Chipping Barnet and Kensington
Lab gain Kensington is almost certain next time round I think, even if the Tories move ahead of where they were.
Really? How did they manage to lose it in 2019?
An absolute knobber as an MP
Not many MPs have personal votes. I doubt too many have anti-votes ala Neil Hamilton. I think Labour's hope in Kensinton is that enough of those that voted Lib Dem can vote Labour next time due to Starmer.
-20.4% GDP in Q2, but +8.7% in June and a predicted +8% in July going by the indices.
Recovery looking pretty V shaped at the moment.
Provided it doesn't bubble-up again and we get a half-decent vaccine in the next 6-9 months, we should be ok.
Still a £300bn penalty charge to pay though, and probably an extra £25-40bn annual deficit to deal with too.
But could have been worse.
300bn is chump change in the long run.
Yes, it's more important that our debt ratio % GDP is stable and we have a path to balance the books again.
This is why I await the budget with interest.
No what matters is that the %age of GDP going to interest payments is low and stable, so that the debt is not a drain on public finances.
Crudely, and if we assume the classic situation of non-repayable consols, a debt of 50% of GDP at 10% interest is as bad as 100% at 5% interest.
No, the repayment of the capital is the issue, not the interest rate. When, say, a ten-year bond matures, the choices are 1) don't roll the debt over, and take a hit to 2030 GDP; or 2) roll over at 2030 interest rates, which could well be higher. We cannot live off our grandchildren's credit cards forever.
Curious why the UK GDP decline is significantly larger. Our lockdown wasn't as stringent as many, and it was of comparable length to others, right?
We are more of a consumer-based services-based economy?
Think about Italy, they shut down everything in the North for 3 months. That is where their factories are. In the South their economy is based on tourism and there were no tourists. yet somehow their GDP reduction is far less than ours. Does anyone really believe that?
Statistical science based on anecdata and cultural prejudices, it's the future isn't it.
My god what a ludicrous response. An air quality survey was carried out in Northern Italy in May and it showed an incredible improvement because all their factories were shut. I buy light fittings from Italy, I can't get them at the moment as the factory has been shut and they are miles behind.
This. Big question for me is what happens to the railways.
At present, I'm thinking passenger numbers only recover to 50-60% of pre-virus numbers over the next 2 years.
That will make several TOCs unviable and unprofitable, so I expect quasi-nationalisation to continue for a while yet, and some new transport schemes (were not politically essential) put on a go-slow.
HS2 is dead
HS2 certainly isn't dead - it's well under construction. It's possible phase 2 will be kicked into the long-grass though.
Crossrail2 is definitely dead.
What have they built for HS2? Site clearance in London and Birmingham isn't constructing a railway. Not a single mile of embankment or tunnel yet built or even started. Cancel now and they will just build something else at Euston, OOC and Curzon Street.
It can’t be cancelled now without billions of pounds in penalties and much of the land has already been bought too.
It’s past the point of no return to all intents and purposes. For phase 1..
With Phase 1 being the less needed part of the project. The project should have started in the North not the other way around.
The most crowded part of the WCML is the stretch from Rugby to London. Capacity problems ease when the Trent Valley line diverges, diminish further at Crewe, and are much less significant north of Manchester. It's hard to argue the southern stretch it's the 'less needed' part of the railway!
Even if that were not true, however, there is little point in building lines in the north to provide extra capacity until the extra trains that result have somewhere to go. To give an example, when the M5 was built, the first phase to be constructed was actually the M50. Now that may seem bizarre, as the M50 goes from nowhere to nowhere calling at nowhere in between (to be exact, from Tewkesbury to Ross passing through Bromsberrow and Gorsley at a fair distance from Ledbury and Newent). But the whole logic was that as soon as the M5 opened there would be a lot of traffic going between South Wales and Birmingham and the roads in the Botloe area simply wouldn't cope with it.
The irony is that the M50 remains a very rare example of a late 1950s motorway in essentially its original condition - because there's comparatively little traffic on it.
This - the primary capacity issue is into London.
Without it, Phase 2 doesn't make much sense, and you'd have to build extra bespoke rolling stock depots for the new HS2 trains (they can't be stored or serviced anywhere we have at present) and they are more costly than you think.
You'd have very expensive new trains shuttling back and forth between Birmingham and Manchester whilst doing little to decant people wholesale off the WCML (who'd continue to use Virgin trains direct from London in the meantime).
[Also, you can't achieve much modal shift from domestic air (e.g. London-Manchester/Leeds) air without it.]
Curious why the UK GDP decline is significantly larger. Our lockdown wasn't as stringent as many, and it was of comparable length to others, right?
We are more of a consumer-based services-based economy?
Think about Italy, they shut down everything in the North for 3 months. That is where their factories are. In the South their economy is based on tourism and there were no tourists. yet somehow their GDP reduction is far less than ours. Does anyone really believe that?
Statistical science based on anecdata and cultural prejudices, it's the future isn't it.
My god what a ludicrous response. An air quality survey was carried out in Northern Italy in May and it showed an incredible improvement because all their factories were shut. I buy light fittings from Italy, I can't get them at the moment as the factory has been shut and they are miles behind.
Yes, they’re in a holding pattern at the moment. But don’t forget that the Government was trying to gradually reduce subsidy and make them all more sustainable. And some TOCs were returning cash to the Treasury: like South West Trains (now Railways).
It won’t be any more so HMG will have to cough up more cash potentially as-infinitum.
All adds up.
South West Trains was profitable and returning money to the treasury. South West Railway was in deep trouble and heading towards being handed back to the DfT. Two completely different franchises. How fantastic that DfT shot the golden goose by getting greedy.
Giving the franchise to SWR (First group/MTR JV) was a mistake, as I said at the time. First are utterly shite at trains.
But, that doesn't stop that TOC being innately profitable, which was why they bid for it.
Curious why the UK GDP decline is significantly larger. Our lockdown wasn't as stringent as many, and it was of comparable length to others, right?
The figures for GDP are just guesses. The ONS always go on the pessimistic side. Does the country feel like it has just had a 20% GDP reduction? Are houses selling? Do people have plenty of money in their pocket. Its all hyperbole nonsense.
I tend to agree that the ONS will probably revise GDP upwards.
But to accuse them of 'guesswork' ignores the massive - and well documented work - that goes into the creation of GDP numbers.
Working in construction I have had years of the ONS saying that Construction was contracting and in recession when it clearly wasn't. We had regular discussions on here about where the ONS were getting their figures from as it did not match what was going on in the real world.
What the ONS do is make dramatic negative annoucements and make very quiet corrections.
Their figures on construction were not much short of a joke. I remember that over a period of relatively few years, in which they had recorded construction as being pretty much permanently in recession, they discovered that output had increased by over 20%!
As I said downthread the most surprising thing for me is the level of bounce back in GDP given that millions are still on furlough. It tends to suggest to me that a significant part of our workforce make a relatively insignificant contribution to our GDP.
Considering that many of those on furlough likely work minimum wage jobs is that all that surprising?
I think that two other things should be considered -
- The productivity gap. Mentioned many times in recent years, UK productivity has failed to grow. Are we seeing a hard reset? - Anecdote alert: in some companies the Fuckwit Management idea of the moment is to furlough most of your staff, and try and get the secretaries to run it (I exaggerate only slightly). In some cases, this has resulted in potential customers trying to ring the CEO to get him to get some actual staff on the job so they can do business...
Can't wait for No Deal to give the economy the boost it needs
The customs "arrangements" will pull a few thousand off the dole. Every cloud etc.
If I were looking for work I'd keep as close an eye as I could on the development of the customs arrangements and at the right moment...... probably late November...... offer my services to 'do' the customs and associated paperwork for some small and medium sized businesses.
It does. It’s much more of a problem for new grads and starters.
My thinking is that Wednesdays and Thursdays become the new usual days, with team socials on Thursdays nights. Tuesdays perhaps once a month for team catch-ups, briefings etc and introduction of new team members.
Something like that.
The Government will have to reform the ticketing options with the TOCs and compensate them accordingly or renegotiate/ retender new franchises.
The old peak/off-peak thing and Monday to Friday pattern is toast.
We were thinking of tech teams Mondays and Thursdays, Sales and Marketing Tuesdays, Finance Wednesdays, and Everyone Else Fridays...
Everyone Else Friday won't be popular! But, maybe it's different in the US.
In major projects (my area) if you're going to go in, you really need everyone in. That's because it's about mass collaboration and co-ordination to deal with programme-wide issues and risks - that vary throughout the lifecycle - and not steady-state operations where it's a bit easier to demarcate and compartmentalise.
Upwards revision for May as well with early reports from businesses too cautious compared to actual results, I think that bodes well for June and July to be upwardly revised in due course.
The UK PMIs are no worse than most other European countries, and will probably be better than the US in July and August, so that seems like an eminently reasonably prediction.
I've got total economy size by October at 94%, but I think that final 6 points is going to take a year to recover with a vaccine and over two years without one and the recovery will be in different sectors compared to the pre-virus economy, especially in the no vaccine timeline.
This. Big question for me is what happens to the railways.
At present, I'm thinking passenger numbers only recover to 50-60% of pre-virus numbers over the next 2 years.
That will make several TOCs unviable and unprofitable, so I expect quasi-nationalisation to continue for a while yet, and some new transport schemes (where not politically essential) put on a go-slow.
Most TOCs run at a loss anyway, so in theory the franchising system could come back just with a greater level of overall public subsidy. I guess it was easier to stick them all on management contracts for the time being. Those contracts are appropriate for London Overground type operations. They are less effective for operations that compete with other modes. The longer distance services can benefit from the franchisee seeking to increase usage by advertising, altering service patterns etc.
But as long as people have to wear masks on trains, they are going to struggle to attract business, in my opinion. I expect things will stay as they are until next summer when we might have a better idea of where things are heading in terms of a vaccine. As you said in another post, the days of the gold card may be over.
Yes, they’re in a holding pattern at the moment. But don’t forget that the Government was trying to gradually reduce subsidy and make them all more sustainable. And some TOCs were returning cash to the Treasury: like South West Trains (now Railways).
It won’t be any more so HMG will have to cough up more cash potentially as-infinitum.
All adds up.
There was an aim for 75% of the total GB cost to be met by the user, but I'm not sure if that was still a thing pre-COVID-19. The DfT changed the scoring method for bids to place more emphasis on quality. That in turn led to a lot of successful bids including the purchasing of new rolling stock, paid for (leasing costs, not building costs) by the tax payer. The 707s on SWR should be going off-lease at some point in the new year and the owner will need to find someone else to use them to get a return on their investment. The FT have some good pieces on that subject.
But yes, the game has very much changed now. My walking route takes in the bridges west of Woking station and in the middle of the day SWR are running 12 car trains on the Basingstoke and Alton semi-fasts, presumably to allow for social distancing. Obviously there will be key workers using trains, so the government is in a tricky position. They need to strike a balance between facilitating the transportation of key workers who don't have cars/work in central London etc. and trying to reduce the amount it's spending on running what are mostly empty trains.
I live right next to the Alton line, and they're running 12 car trains on Sundays.
Curious why the UK GDP decline is significantly larger. Our lockdown wasn't as stringent as many, and it was of comparable length to others, right?
We are more of a consumer-based services-based economy?
Think about Italy, they shut down everything in the North for 3 months. That is where their factories are. In the South their economy is based on tourism and there were no tourists. yet somehow their GDP reduction is far less than ours. Does anyone really believe that?
Statistical science based on anecdata and cultural prejudices, it's the future isn't it.
Northern Italy was indeed shut down. The Italian government was saying that was what they did, the press was running stories on it....
Curious why the UK GDP decline is significantly larger. Our lockdown wasn't as stringent as many, and it was of comparable length to others, right?
We are more of a consumer-based services-based economy?
Think about Italy, they shut down everything in the North for 3 months. That is where their factories are. In the South their economy is based on tourism and there were no tourists. yet somehow their GDP reduction is far less than ours. Does anyone really believe that?
Statistical science based on anecdata and cultural prejudices, it's the future isn't it.
My god what a ludicrous response. An air quality survey was carried out in Northern Italy in May and it showed an incredible improvement because all their factories were shut. I buy light fittings from Italy, I can't get them at the moment as the factory has been shut and they are miles behind.
Hooray, another anecdote!
How is an air quality survey an anecdote?
Your exciting foray in to the world of Italian light fittings is an anecdote, capisce?
Hmm... I wonder who the unnamed former cabinet minister quoted was?
I think that there is substance and a genuine concern in the piece but it is inevitably a bit waffly and imprecise.
Quite like the Atlantic though. They are producing some of the best journalism around.
Given the article states this:
At the start of 2020, Britain had been through 10 years of austerity following the 2008 financial crash
its credibility has to be questioned.
It also ignores, as internationalists tend to do, the imbecility of the government's lack of restriction on entry to the UK.
TBF it makes the point that Asian countries were quick to impose travel restrictions, and flags the role that incoming (or returning) travellers probably played in magnifying our crisis.
Really interesting More or Less on Radio4 this AM about the impact of a 28 day limit on counting a positive COVID test in death statistics (eg Scotland) vs no limit (England), and the relation to other counting methods. Especially how improved treatment / survivability is pushing more beyond limits and diverging statistics.
Not an existential material change, but does have an impact.
Apparently PHE are about to start publishing 3 sets of data with 28 day, 60 day and no limits, just to make it all less confusing :-).
And they report on Hawaiian Pizzas, and the difference Euro average levels of obesity would make to COVID deaths here (about 600 less).
Mr. W, if the stats are accurate it'll actually be very useful for seeing just what impact the stupid "If this person ever had COVID-19 their death shall be attributed to it" approach had on the figures.
This. Big question for me is what happens to the railways.
At present, I'm thinking passenger numbers only recover to 50-60% of pre-virus numbers over the next 2 years.
That will make several TOCs unviable and unprofitable, so I expect quasi-nationalisation to continue for a while yet, and some new transport schemes (were not politically essential) put on a go-slow.
HS2 is dead
HS2 certainly isn't dead - it's well under construction. It's possible phase 2 will be kicked into the long-grass though.
Crossrail2 is definitely dead.
What have they built for HS2? Site clearance in London and Birmingham isn't constructing a railway. Not a single mile of embankment or tunnel yet built or even started. Cancel now and they will just build something else at Euston, OOC and Curzon Street.
It can’t be cancelled now without billions of pounds in penalties and much of the land has already been bought too.
It’s past the point of no return to all intents and purposes. For phase 1..
With Phase 1 being the less needed part of the project. The project should have started in the North not the other way around.
The most crowded part of the WCML is the stretch from Rugby to London. Capacity problems ease when the Trent Valley line diverges, diminish further at Crewe, and are much less significant north of Manchester. It's hard to argue the southern stretch it's the 'less needed' part of the railway!
Even if that were not true, however, there is little point in building lines in the north to provide extra capacity until the extra trains that result have somewhere to go. To give an example, when the M5 was built, the first phase to be constructed was actually the M50. Now that may seem bizarre, as the M50 goes from nowhere to nowhere calling at nowhere in between (to be exact, from Tewkesbury to Ross passing through Bromsberrow and Gorsley at a fair distance from Ledbury and Newent). But the whole logic was that as soon as the M5 opened there would be a lot of traffic going between South Wales and Birmingham and the roads in the Botloe area simply wouldn't cope with it.
The irony is that the M50 remains a very rare example of a late 1950s motorway in essentially its original condition - because there's comparatively little traffic on it.
This - the primary capacity issue is into London.
Without it, Phase 2 doesn't make much sense, and you'd have to build extra bespoke rolling stock depots for the new HS2 trains (they can't be stored or serviced anywhere we have at present) and they are more costly than you think.
You'd have very expensive new trains shuttling back and forth between Birmingham and Manchester whilst doing little to decant people wholesale off the WCML (who'd continue to use Virgin trains direct from London in the meantime).
[Also, you can't achieve much modal shift from domestic air (e.g. London-Manchester/Leeds) air without it.]
Given the obscene prices of London-Manchester tickets, is it possible that HS2 would undercut on price?
London voting intention for UK elections, via @RedfieldWilton, 5-7 August (changes since 2019)
LAB 48% (-) CON 29% (-3) LD 14% (-1) GRN 7% (+4)
Labour would likely gain Chingford, Chipping Barnet and Kensington
Lab gain Kensington is almost certain next time round I think, even if the Tories move ahead of where they were.
Really? How did they manage to lose it in 2019?
An absolute knobber as an MP
Not many MPs have personal votes. I doubt too many have anti-votes ala Neil Hamilton. I think Labour's hope in Kensinton is that enough of those that voted Lib Dem can vote Labour next time due to Starmer.
I think Gloria probably did, but Geoff the Hoon having poisoned the well beforehand, plus demographic changes, made it too small.
Is Kensington the only seat in the UK to have had four different people returned as MP at the last four elections?
Aberdeen South: 2010 Anne Begg Labour 2015 Callum McCaig Scottish National Party 2017 Ross Thomson Conservative 2019 Stephen Flynn Scottish National Party
May be some other Scottish seats as well - Perth, or Stirling?
London voting intention for UK elections, via @RedfieldWilton, 5-7 August (changes since 2019)
LAB 48% (-) CON 29% (-3) LD 14% (-1) GRN 7% (+4)
Labour would likely gain Chingford, Chipping Barnet and Kensington
Lab gain Kensington is almost certain next time round I think, even if the Tories move ahead of where they were.
Really? How did they manage to lose it in 2019?
An absolute knobber as an MP
Not many MPs have personal votes. I doubt too many have anti-votes ala Neil Hamilton. I think Labour's hope in Kensinton is that enough of those that voted Lib Dem can vote Labour next time due to Starmer.
Thats my point. The Labour MP had shown that she was reprehensible. And there were sane Tory and LibDem candidates in 2019. Why vote for the silly candidate when sensible alternatives are there. She stood on the rostrum when the 2019 results were read out with her fist in the air FFS
London voting intention for UK elections, via @RedfieldWilton, 5-7 August (changes since 2019)
LAB 48% (-) CON 29% (-3) LD 14% (-1) GRN 7% (+4)
Labour would likely gain Chingford, Chipping Barnet and Kensington
Lab gain Kensington is almost certain next time round I think, even if the Tories move ahead of where they were.
Really? How did they manage to lose it in 2019?
An absolute knobber as an MP
Not many MPs have personal votes. I doubt too many have anti-votes ala Neil Hamilton. I think Labour's hope in Kensinton is that enough of those that voted Lib Dem can vote Labour next time due to Starmer.
The swing in Kensington was only 0.2% to the Tories compared to 9.6% nationwide. Broadly I think Keir gets back the "I'm not voting for Corbyn" votes more easily than the "Brexit Brexit Brexit" votes, enough of those probably went for Gyimah last time round to push Kensington back Labour even against a small swing to the Tories broadly - which I doubt happens in 2024.
Yes, they’re in a holding pattern at the moment. But don’t forget that the Government was trying to gradually reduce subsidy and make them all more sustainable. And some TOCs were returning cash to the Treasury: like South West Trains (now Railways).
It won’t be any more so HMG will have to cough up more cash potentially as-infinitum.
All adds up.
South West Trains was profitable and returning money to the treasury. South West Railway was in deep trouble and heading towards being handed back to the DfT. Two completely different franchises. How fantastic that DfT shot the golden goose by getting greedy.
SWR lied about the trains they could run. SWT knew it wasn't possible and got out, rather intelligently
SWT (Stagecoach) knew what they were doing.
They had a lot of ex-BR Network South-East people working for them who re-designed the timetable bottom-up in 1996. They wanted to do it even better than Network South-East, and succeeded. In fact, I have a very good book on it.
First got the SWR franchise by flattering the Treasury with how much money they could hand back. They did this by cutting spare capacity to the bone (both stock and staff) leaving them nothing to deal with a perturbed or emergency service, which is why the whole network fell over whenever someone coughed. They also cut back on cleaning and customer service agents. They also assumed DOO would be a doddle and save them costs over the franchise - to be fair, that's mainly the dinosaurs in the RMT but they smelt SWR blood early-on and exploited it.
Grayling shouldn't have fallen for First's bullshit but, surprise surprise, he did as all he could see was pound signs.
Is Kensington the only seat in the UK to have had four different people returned as MP at the last four elections?
Aberdeen South: 2010 Anne Begg Labour 2015 Callum McCaig Scottish National Party 2017 Ross Thomson Conservative 2019 Stephen Flynn Scottish National Party
May be some other Scottish seats as well - Perth, or Stirling?
Stirling is another: 2010 Dame Anne McGuire Labour 2015 Steven Paterson SNP 2017 Stephen Kerr Conservative 2019 Alyn Smith SNP
What brainfart made me think Perth wasn't SNP from way back?
London voting intention for UK elections, via @RedfieldWilton, 5-7 August (changes since 2019)
LAB 48% (-) CON 29% (-3) LD 14% (-1) GRN 7% (+4)
Labour would likely gain Chingford, Chipping Barnet and Kensington
Lab gain Kensington is almost certain next time round I think, even if the Tories move ahead of where they were.
Really? How did they manage to lose it in 2019?
An absolute knobber as an MP
Not many MPs have personal votes. I doubt too many have anti-votes ala Neil Hamilton. I think Labour's hope in Kensinton is that enough of those that voted Lib Dem can vote Labour next time due to Starmer.
The swing in Kensington was only 0.2% to the Tories compared to 9.6% nationwide. Broadly I think Keir gets back the "I'm not voting for Corbyn" votes more easily than the "Brexit Brexit Brexit" votes, enough of those probably went for Gyimah last time round to push Kensington back Labour even against a small swing to the Tories broadly - which I doubt happens in 2024.
I wonder how many people on universal credit, or food bank users or homeless people use the £10 off offer? It’s really just a bung to the moderately well off and ignores those in greatest need.
On the topic of changing seats I wonder what proportion of seats have done the opposite. I wonder what proportion of seats had the same MP consistently from 1/1/10 to 31/12/19?
My guess is it would be considerably fewer than the previous decade.
London voting intention for UK elections, via @RedfieldWilton, 5-7 August (changes since 2019)
LAB 48% (-) CON 29% (-3) LD 14% (-1) GRN 7% (+4)
Labour would likely gain Chingford, Chipping Barnet and Kensington
Lab gain Kensington is almost certain next time round I think, even if the Tories move ahead of where they were.
Really? How did they manage to lose it in 2019?
An absolute knobber as an MP
Not many MPs have personal votes. I doubt too many have anti-votes ala Neil Hamilton. I think Labour's hope in Kensinton is that enough of those that voted Lib Dem can vote Labour next time due to Starmer.
The swing in Kensington was only 0.2% to the Tories compared to 9.6% nationwide. Broadly I think Keir gets back the "I'm not voting for Corbyn" votes more easily than the "Brexit Brexit Brexit" votes, enough of those probably went for Gyimah last time round to push Kensington back Labour even against a small swing to the Tories broadly - which I doubt happens in 2024.
What was the swing in London though?
I would agree the current Kensington seat is a surefire gain. Bear in mind thought that it is quite undersized so will see quite a bit of change during the boundary review, which could either help Lab or the Cons. While London is expected to gain 2 seats overall. the Central boroughs - Westminster, K&C, H&F are expected to lose a seat. Partly this is due to lots of super rich foreigners moving in who don't have the right to vote.
This. Big question for me is what happens to the railways.
At present, I'm thinking passenger numbers only recover to 50-60% of pre-virus numbers over the next 2 years.
That will make several TOCs unviable and unprofitable, so I expect quasi-nationalisation to continue for a while yet, and some new transport schemes (were not politically essential) put on a go-slow.
HS2 is dead
HS2 certainly isn't dead - it's well under construction. It's possible phase 2 will be kicked into the long-grass though.
Crossrail2 is definitely dead.
What have they built for HS2? Site clearance in London and Birmingham isn't constructing a railway. Not a single mile of embankment or tunnel yet built or even started. Cancel now and they will just build something else at Euston, OOC and Curzon Street.
It can’t be cancelled now without billions of pounds in penalties and much of the land has already been bought too.
It’s past the point of no return to all intents and purposes. For phase 1..
With Phase 1 being the less needed part of the project. The project should have started in the North not the other way around.
The most crowded part of the WCML is the stretch from Rugby to London. Capacity problems ease when the Trent Valley line diverges, diminish further at Crewe, and are much less significant north of Manchester. It's hard to argue the southern stretch it's the 'less needed' part of the railway!
Even if that were not true, however, there is little point in building lines in the north to provide extra capacity until the extra trains that result have somewhere to go. To give an example, when the M5 was built, the first phase to be constructed was actually the M50. Now that may seem bizarre, as the M50 goes from nowhere to nowhere calling at nowhere in between (to be exact, from Tewkesbury to Ross passing through Bromsberrow and Gorsley at a fair distance from Ledbury and Newent). But the whole logic was that as soon as the M5 opened there would be a lot of traffic going between South Wales and Birmingham and the roads in the Botloe area simply wouldn't cope with it.
The irony is that the M50 remains a very rare example of a late 1950s motorway in essentially its original condition - because there's comparatively little traffic on it.
This - the primary capacity issue is into London.
Without it, Phase 2 doesn't make much sense, and you'd have to build extra bespoke rolling stock depots for the new HS2 trains (they can't be stored or serviced anywhere we have at present) and they are more costly than you think.
You'd have very expensive new trains shuttling back and forth between Birmingham and Manchester whilst doing little to decant people wholesale off the WCML (who'd continue to use Virgin trains direct from London in the meantime).
[Also, you can't achieve much modal shift from domestic air (e.g. London-Manchester/Leeds) air without it.]
Given the obscene prices of London-Manchester tickets, is it possible that HS2 would undercut on price?
If you think Manchester - London is expensive you should see the East Coast Mainline prices.
It's usually cheaper for me to head to London the night before and stay at a Hilton.
Anecdotally, friends in commercial law and finance report never being busier, with every company on the books trying to restructure their balance sheets at the same time. This is backed up somewhat by the data on bond issuances etc...
Sure, we know all about foreign tourism. But the blow is cushioned somewhat by the drop off in tourist pounds to M (and to a far lesser extent domestic tourism spread around the country). Foreign tourist £s will come back in 2022.
I’ve seen little evidence of construction ceasing very much and the housing boom will help. But we do need a bit more counter cyclical Keynesianism such as HS2, not less.
City centre F&B as has been noted predominantly employs cheap imported labour and often earns no profit in the Uk jurisdiction. My experience is that it’s a different story in Semi Ruralania, far more independently owned businesses that should in theory thrive through all this, and that provide local employment too, especially given the apparent net emigration we are seeing from lower skilled EU workers. This is “levelling up” and the upside to Brexit in action folks.
Not much to be said about aviation (and associated services) and auto. The absolute no brainer policy for auto at least would be to announce a generous and long term diesel to EV scrappage scheme but only for vehicles where more than 50% of the value add comes from UK production and UK tax domiciled companies.
Meanwhile transformation in the energy sector continues at a pace, as we gradually remove the deadweight of hydrocarbons from our overall productivity.
Things needn’t be as melodramatic and negative as many seem to want to spin it.
So long as we don’t fall into the trap of hysterical over reactions to case numbers (like the lauded New Zealand), personally I think things looked pumped for a period of strong growth once the dust has settled. Peaking in dare I say it, the 2024-5 time period.
I wonder how many people on universal credit, or food bank users or homeless people use the £10 off offer? It’s really just a bung to the moderately well off and ignores those in greatest need.
The whole point is to get the large numbers in the middle class spending again.
This. Big question for me is what happens to the railways.
At present, I'm thinking passenger numbers only recover to 50-60% of pre-virus numbers over the next 2 years.
That will make several TOCs unviable and unprofitable, so I expect quasi-nationalisation to continue for a while yet, and some new transport schemes (were not politically essential) put on a go-slow.
HS2 is dead
HS2 certainly isn't dead - it's well under construction. It's possible phase 2 will be kicked into the long-grass though.
Crossrail2 is definitely dead.
What have they built for HS2? Site clearance in London and Birmingham isn't constructing a railway. Not a single mile of embankment or tunnel yet built or even started. Cancel now and they will just build something else at Euston, OOC and Curzon Street.
It can’t be cancelled now without billions of pounds in penalties and much of the land has already been bought too.
It’s past the point of no return to all intents and purposes. For phase 1..
With Phase 1 being the less needed part of the project. The project should have started in the North not the other way around.
At the time the capacity was needed in the South - the issue was that it was sold as a solution for speed rather than what it actually was, creating bypasses to allow the local tracks to be used for local traffic.
Up north it's needed for a different reason, the old tracks are twisty and slow and it's almost cheaper to start again.
Essentially two choices - build a slower line and divert the freight, or build high speed and divert the passengers. As high speed is the default elsewhere we did the same, despite cheaper faster options being available.
Freight isn't that significant (because the line is so full it currently isn't used for freight) which was why we went for the faster line.
And the faster line isn't that much more expensive, the problem was no one sold the capacity solution, they talked about completely pointless time savings.
Curious why the UK GDP decline is significantly larger. Our lockdown wasn't as stringent as many, and it was of comparable length to others, right?
We are more of a consumer-based services-based economy?
Think about Italy, they shut down everything in the North for 3 months. That is where their factories are. In the South their economy is based on tourism and there were no tourists. yet somehow their GDP reduction is far less than ours. Does anyone really believe that?
Statistical science based on anecdata and cultural prejudices, it's the future isn't it.
Northern Italy was indeed shut down. The Italian government was saying that was what they did, the press was running stories on it....
London voting intention for UK elections, via @RedfieldWilton, 5-7 August (changes since 2019)
LAB 48% (-) CON 29% (-3) LD 14% (-1) GRN 7% (+4)
Labour would likely gain Chingford, Chipping Barnet and Kensington
Lab gain Kensington is almost certain next time round I think, even if the Tories move ahead of where they were.
Really? How did they manage to lose it in 2019?
An absolute knobber as an MP
Not many MPs have personal votes. I doubt too many have anti-votes ala Neil Hamilton. I think Labour's hope in Kensinton is that enough of those that voted Lib Dem can vote Labour next time due to Starmer.
The swing in Kensington was only 0.2% to the Tories compared to 9.6% nationwide. Broadly I think Keir gets back the "I'm not voting for Corbyn" votes more easily than the "Brexit Brexit Brexit" votes, enough of those probably went for Gyimah last time round to push Kensington back Labour even against a small swing to the Tories broadly - which I doubt happens in 2024.
This. Big question for me is what happens to the railways.
At present, I'm thinking passenger numbers only recover to 50-60% of pre-virus numbers over the next 2 years.
That will make several TOCs unviable and unprofitable, so I expect quasi-nationalisation to continue for a while yet, and some new transport schemes (were not politically essential) put on a go-slow.
HS2 is dead
HS2 certainly isn't dead - it's well under construction. It's possible phase 2 will be kicked into the long-grass though.
Crossrail2 is definitely dead.
What have they built for HS2? Site clearance in London and Birmingham isn't constructing a railway. Not a single mile of embankment or tunnel yet built or even started. Cancel now and they will just build something else at Euston, OOC and Curzon Street.
It can’t be cancelled now without billions of pounds in penalties and much of the land has already been bought too.
It’s past the point of no return to all intents and purposes. For phase 1..
With Phase 1 being the less needed part of the project. The project should have started in the North not the other way around.
The most crowded part of the WCML is the stretch from Rugby to London. Capacity problems ease when the Trent Valley line diverges, diminish further at Crewe, and are much less significant north of Manchester. It's hard to argue the southern stretch it's the 'less needed' part of the railway!
Even if that were not true, however, there is little point in building lines in the north to provide extra capacity until the extra trains that result have somewhere to go. To give an example, when the M5 was built, the first phase to be constructed was actually the M50. Now that may seem bizarre, as the M50 goes from nowhere to nowhere calling at nowhere in between (to be exact, from Tewkesbury to Ross passing through Bromsberrow and Gorsley at a fair distance from Ledbury and Newent). But the whole logic was that as soon as the M5 opened there would be a lot of traffic going between South Wales and Birmingham and the roads in the Botloe area simply wouldn't cope with it.
The irony is that the M50 remains a very rare example of a late 1950s motorway in essentially its original condition - because there's comparatively little traffic on it.
This - the primary capacity issue is into London.
Without it, Phase 2 doesn't make much sense, and you'd have to build extra bespoke rolling stock depots for the new HS2 trains (they can't be stored or serviced anywhere we have at present) and they are more costly than you think.
You'd have very expensive new trains shuttling back and forth between Birmingham and Manchester whilst doing little to decant people wholesale off the WCML (who'd continue to use Virgin trains direct from London in the meantime).
[Also, you can't achieve much modal shift from domestic air (e.g. London-Manchester/Leeds) air without it.]
Given the obscene prices of London-Manchester tickets, is it possible that HS2 would undercut on price?
London voting intention for UK elections, via @RedfieldWilton, 5-7 August (changes since 2019)
LAB 48% (-) CON 29% (-3) LD 14% (-1) GRN 7% (+4)
Labour would likely gain Chingford, Chipping Barnet and Kensington
Lab gain Kensington is almost certain next time round I think, even if the Tories move ahead of where they were.
Really? How did they manage to lose it in 2019?
An absolute knobber as an MP
Not many MPs have personal votes. I doubt too many have anti-votes ala Neil Hamilton. I think Labour's hope in Kensinton is that enough of those that voted Lib Dem can vote Labour next time due to Starmer.
The swing in Kensington was only 0.2% to the Tories compared to 9.6% nationwide. Broadly I think Keir gets back the "I'm not voting for Corbyn" votes more easily than the "Brexit Brexit Brexit" votes, enough of those probably went for Gyimah last time round to push Kensington back Labour even against a small swing to the Tories broadly - which I doubt happens in 2024.
Mr. W, if the stats are accurate it'll actually be very useful for seeing just what impact the stupid "If this person ever had COVID-19 their death shall be attributed to it" approach had on the figures.
MaxPB's estimate of knocking down the death-all-settings figures by 30 on a day of death basis is probably accurate.
Lets say it is 25.
Which means that
becomes
Can you see why there might be a political issue here?
If a student got an A in their mocks but their grade after "adjustments" is claimed to be a C, how is it unreasonable or unfair for them to be able to say "no, I deserve an A like I got in my mocks"?
It's easy to criticise the government on this, but at least a decision and way forward has been made before the results are out - unlike in other places.
Once the exams were cancelled, the situation was inevitable. I'm not sure it was possible for them to go ahead given the timing.
It could certainly be argued that the exams going ahead would have disadvantaged poorer pupils and state comprehensive schools, who didn't have the resources to operate virtually during the lockdown period.
What was wrong with Plan A - have the teachers grade their students. Based on all the work submitted. Based on their knowledge of the student. As opposed to the utter farce we have before us because Tories hate Teachers apparently. You're all trots, can't be trusted.
Its part of a "triple lock" so teachers grades are the primary input, the mocks a secondary one and actual exams a tertiary one.
Teacher grading hasn't gone away.
Incorrect. Plan A was the teacher uses coursework exams and knowledge to assign a grade. Then they planned to rinse that through an algorithm so that bright kids in poor areas get downgrades (know your station plebs). Now the offer is "mock exams". Thats only a part of what has been assessed, and on so many courses misses all of the practical work that is inherent in the qualification.
Its rampant panicked bollocks from a government who fundamentally distrusts the teaching profession and a man who has no idea what day it is never mind what lie he's told in it. But its ok, its only education, it doesn't matter.
As I understand it, the algorithm looked at a school's previous results and the SATS of this cohort to see if the predicted grades looked reasonable. That might have the effect of giving downgrades to bright kids in poor areas but it doesn't necessarily follow. In Scotland the gap between schools in poor areas and other schools is much bigger than the equivalent gap in England. Also, the evidence in Scotland strongly suggests that teachers in the schools in poor areas were more likely to overegg their predictions than teachers in other areas.
Given that the link between income and educational outcomes is much weaker in England than in Scotland there is a decent chance that the algorithm wasn't simply downgrading kids in poor areas.
My view is that the move to predicted grades in Scotland means that Scottish grades for this year no longer have any credibility - the improvement in performance compared with previous years is too much to be believable. The change that has been made in England also reduces the credibility of grades. In my view they should have stuck with the approach they were using.
Curious why the UK GDP decline is significantly larger. Our lockdown wasn't as stringent as many, and it was of comparable length to others, right?
We are more of a consumer-based services-based economy?
Think about Italy, they shut down everything in the North for 3 months. That is where their factories are. In the South their economy is based on tourism and there were no tourists. yet somehow their GDP reduction is far less than ours. Does anyone really believe that?
Statistical science based on anecdata and cultural prejudices, it's the future isn't it.
Northern Italy was indeed shut down. The Italian government was saying that was what they did, the press was running stories on it....
The Italian government was saying it? Can we really believe the garlicky, lying barstewards (I paraphrase, but not much)?
Hmmm
- Italian Government said they did it. Value - 5/10. The Italian governmental system* has been caught lying on statistics before. Not just one party, several. - The Italian press - including TV - 8/10. Given all the corruption available to investigate, the Italian Press in general is quite good at this kind of thing. They caught a number of sweat shop bosses trying to stay open etc. - ESA (Above) - 10/10 - Hard science, by scientists, pear-reviewed outside the reach of the Italian governmental system. - Personal knowledge. A relative works in the construction industry. According to his importers/dealings with Italian firms, anything made in Northern Italy vanished from the supply chain in the period in question.
London voting intention for UK elections, via @RedfieldWilton, 5-7 August (changes since 2019)
LAB 48% (-) CON 29% (-3) LD 14% (-1) GRN 7% (+4)
Labour would likely gain Chingford, Chipping Barnet and Kensington
Lab gain Kensington is almost certain next time round I think, even if the Tories move ahead of where they were.
Really? How did they manage to lose it in 2019?
An absolute knobber as an MP
Not many MPs have personal votes. I doubt too many have anti-votes ala Neil Hamilton. I think Labour's hope in Kensinton is that enough of those that voted Lib Dem can vote Labour next time due to Starmer.
The swing in Kensington was only 0.2% to the Tories compared to 9.6% nationwide. Broadly I think Keir gets back the "I'm not voting for Corbyn" votes more easily than the "Brexit Brexit Brexit" votes, enough of those probably went for Gyimah last time round to push Kensington back Labour even against a small swing to the Tories broadly - which I doubt happens in 2024.
What was the swing in London though?
Not sure
GE2017 was (Ben Walker's numbers)
Con 33.2 Lab 54.6 LD 8.8 Others 3.4
Will look for GE2019
Con 32.0 Lab 48.1 LD 14.9 Others 5.0
Yep, so London trended to Labour once again. You don't need any special pleading to stick Kensington back in the Labour column at the next GE,
London voting intention for UK elections, via @RedfieldWilton, 5-7 August (changes since 2019)
LAB 48% (-) CON 29% (-3) LD 14% (-1) GRN 7% (+4)
Labour would likely gain Chingford, Chipping Barnet and Kensington
Lab gain Kensington is almost certain next time round I think, even if the Tories move ahead of where they were.
Really? How did they manage to lose it in 2019?
An absolute knobber as an MP
Not many MPs have personal votes. I doubt too many have anti-votes ala Neil Hamilton. I think Labour's hope in Kensinton is that enough of those that voted Lib Dem can vote Labour next time due to Starmer.
The swing in Kensington was only 0.2% to the Tories compared to 9.6% nationwide. Broadly I think Keir gets back the "I'm not voting for Corbyn" votes more easily than the "Brexit Brexit Brexit" votes, enough of those probably went for Gyimah last time round to push Kensington back Labour even against a small swing to the Tories broadly - which I doubt happens in 2024.
What was the swing in London though?
Not sure
GE2017 was (Ben Walker's numbers)
Con 33.2 Lab 54.6 LD 8.8 Others 3.4
Will look for GE2019
Con 32.0 Lab 48.1 LD 14.9 Others 5.0
So there was a slight Lab-Con swing, but the killer punch for Labour was the rise in the Lib Dem vote.
Sounds a good summary of why they lost Kensington.
Will this mean an amendment to the list of devolved areas in specifically listed in the Scotland Act? Or it this a case of a power grab of powers that were not devolved in the first place?
London voting intention for UK elections, via @RedfieldWilton, 5-7 August (changes since 2019)
LAB 48% (-) CON 29% (-3) LD 14% (-1) GRN 7% (+4)
Labour would likely gain Chingford, Chipping Barnet and Kensington
Lab gain Kensington is almost certain next time round I think, even if the Tories move ahead of where they were.
Really? How did they manage to lose it in 2019?
An absolute knobber as an MP
Not many MPs have personal votes. I doubt too many have anti-votes ala Neil Hamilton. I think Labour's hope in Kensinton is that enough of those that voted Lib Dem can vote Labour next time due to Starmer.
The swing in Kensington was only 0.2% to the Tories compared to 9.6% nationwide. Broadly I think Keir gets back the "I'm not voting for Corbyn" votes more easily than the "Brexit Brexit Brexit" votes, enough of those probably went for Gyimah last time round to push Kensington back Labour even against a small swing to the Tories broadly - which I doubt happens in 2024.
My nose tells me (and the emerging leadership data) that Keir will win in four years time.
He doesn't threaten, and Brexit will be "done" by then, however you spin it.
I expect plenty in the SE will go LD losing Tories seats there, and Unionists will go to him in Scotland too. Tories will lose some southern marginals direct to Labour where the demographics are right, including students and lots of middle-class voters. Boris will probably retain most red-wall seats.
Question is whether he can get close to a majority or not.
London voting intention for UK elections, via @RedfieldWilton, 5-7 August (changes since 2019)
LAB 48% (-) CON 29% (-3) LD 14% (-1) GRN 7% (+4)
Labour would likely gain Chingford, Chipping Barnet and Kensington
Lab gain Kensington is almost certain next time round I think, even if the Tories move ahead of where they were.
Really? How did they manage to lose it in 2019?
An absolute knobber as an MP
Not many MPs have personal votes. I doubt too many have anti-votes ala Neil Hamilton. I think Labour's hope in Kensinton is that enough of those that voted Lib Dem can vote Labour next time due to Starmer.
The swing in Kensington was only 0.2% to the Tories compared to 9.6% nationwide. Broadly I think Keir gets back the "I'm not voting for Corbyn" votes more easily than the "Brexit Brexit Brexit" votes, enough of those probably went for Gyimah last time round to push Kensington back Labour even against a small swing to the Tories broadly - which I doubt happens in 2024.
What was the swing in London though?
Not sure
GE2017 was (Ben Walker's numbers)
Con 33.2 Lab 54.6 LD 8.8 Others 3.4
Will look for GE2019
Con 32.0 Lab 48.1 LD 14.9 Others 5.0
Yep, so London trended to Labour once again. You don't need any special pleading to stick Kensington back in the Labour column at the next GE,
Or rather it trended away from the Tories.
I think @isam is right to suggest that Starmer has a difficult balancing act. I can see the Greens doing quite well if Labour aren't perceived to be left-wing enough.
The difference between the government’s attitude to schools and hospitals is very different. Hancock is clearly better than Williamson.
Damning with faint praise!
Actually I think Hancock has been pretty good, but he's not a big enough figure to dominate the policy response and without proper leadership from Boris there hasn't the necessary cross-departmental discipline and coordination. So the overall effect has been unnecessarily chaotic, lurching from one U-turn to the next.
Johnson did not have to lose Cummings. That was not the problem. The problem was the craven way he handled it. That he felt unable even to express disapproval.
"He acted as he saw fit in the best interests of his family and I will not mark him down for that."
An astonishing utterance from a PM in the circumstances. It laid bare his weakness of character. Told us all - or at least those of us with an interest and the relevant faculties - that he could not hack it without this one particular SPAD. This is unprecedented and it has (rightly) damaged him.
London voting intention for UK elections, via @RedfieldWilton, 5-7 August (changes since 2019)
LAB 48% (-) CON 29% (-3) LD 14% (-1) GRN 7% (+4)
Labour would likely gain Chingford, Chipping Barnet and Kensington
Lab gain Kensington is almost certain next time round I think, even if the Tories move ahead of where they were.
Really? How did they manage to lose it in 2019?
An absolute knobber as an MP
Not many MPs have personal votes. I doubt too many have anti-votes ala Neil Hamilton. I think Labour's hope in Kensinton is that enough of those that voted Lib Dem can vote Labour next time due to Starmer.
The swing in Kensington was only 0.2% to the Tories compared to 9.6% nationwide. Broadly I think Keir gets back the "I'm not voting for Corbyn" votes more easily than the "Brexit Brexit Brexit" votes, enough of those probably went for Gyimah last time round to push Kensington back Labour even against a small swing to the Tories broadly - which I doubt happens in 2024.
My nose tells me (and the emerging leadership data) that Keir will win in four years time.
He doesn't threaten, and Brexit will be "done" by then, however you spin it.
I expect plenty in the SE will go LD losing Tories seats there, and Unionists will go to him in Scotland too. Tories will lose some southern marginals direct to Labour where the demographics are right, including students and lots of middle-class voters. Boris will probably retain most red-wall seats.
Question is whether he can get close to a majority or not.
Starmer needs Scottish seats to become PM, whether Labour or SNP confidence and supply, if Boris granted indyref2 and Yes won the Tories would almost certainly win another majority in 2024 on an English nationalist, hard Brexit ticket.
Comments
LAB 48% (-)
CON 29% (-3)
LD 14% (-1)
GRN 7% (+4)
Labour would likely gain Chingford, Chipping Barnet and Kensington
But yes, the game has very much changed now. My walking route takes in the bridges west of Woking station and in the middle of the day SWR are running 12 car trains on the Basingstoke and Alton semi-fasts, presumably to allow for social distancing. Obviously there will be key workers using trains, so the government is in a tricky position. They need to strike a balance between facilitating the transportation of key workers who don't have cars/work in central London etc. and trying to reduce the amount it's spending on running what are mostly empty trains.
What the ONS do is make dramatic negative annoucements and make very quiet corrections.
It can’t be cancelled now without billions of pounds in penalties and much of the land has already been bought too.
It’s past the point of no return to all intents and purposes. For phase 1..
I'll be going out tonight but drinking soft drinks - I'm driving.
There were queues in the street to get into the nearest curry restaurant to my house last night. Never seen that before.
Crudely, and if we assume the classic situation of non-repayable consols, a debt of 50% of GDP at 10% interest is as bad as 100% at 5% interest.
I think that there is substance and a genuine concern in the piece but it is inevitably a bit waffly and imprecise.
Quite like the Atlantic though. They are producing some of the best journalism around.
https://twitter.com/Jackson_Carlaw/status/1246762299865604096?s=20
He had to go of course..
No country has ever seen a collapse in output on this scale without a lot of pain. Just because we have postponed it doesn’t mean it has gone away.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/08/11/real-lockdown-nightmare-hasnt-even-begun/
See figure 2: https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/grossdomesticproductgdp/bulletins/gdpfirstquarterlyestimateuk/apriltojune2020
Fine - but then nothing about taking more refugees in general. Poor.
Does anyone really believe that?
But seeing IDS lose his seat would be very entertaining.
Raab could likely go as well
I stand by my point about HS2 progress. A big hole being dug in a field can be filled it. They haven't constructed a single mile of railway or cutting or embankment or tunnel. A bridge over the M42? No different to the unused canal bridge over the M6Toll.
As I said downthread the most surprising thing for me is the level of bounce back in GDP given that millions are still on furlough. It tends to suggest to me that a significant part of our workforce make a relatively insignificant contribution to our GDP.
Even if that were not true, however, there is little point in building lines in the north to provide extra capacity until the extra trains that result have somewhere to go. To give an example, when the M5 was built, the first phase to be constructed was actually the M50. Now that may seem bizarre, as the M50 goes from nowhere to nowhere calling at nowhere in between (to be exact, from Tewkesbury to Ross passing through Bromsberrow and Gorsley at a fair distance from Ledbury and Newent). But the whole logic was that as soon as the M5 opened there would be a lot of traffic going between South Wales and Birmingham and the roads in the Botloe area simply wouldn't cope with it.
The irony is that the M50 remains a very rare example of a late 1950s motorway in essentially its original condition - because there's comparatively little traffic on it.
Heck, even Pidcock would probably have clung on.
Although I suspect it's worse in the public sector where generous salaries and flexible Ts+Cs have made part time working so popular.
Up north it's needed for a different reason, the old tracks are twisty and slow and it's almost cheaper to start again.
New Zealand investigates the origin of the outbreak that has forced the country's largest city to confine. The authorities believe that imported frozen goods could be the source of four infections detected yesterday, after 102 days without local infections in the country. "We are working hard to put the pieces of this puzzle together to find out how this family got infected," said New Zealand Health Director-General Ashley Bloomfield
Yet there are now millions of workers in construction, manufacturing, retail, leisure and hospitality who are now working and no longer on furlough.
When, say, a ten-year bond matures, the choices are
1) don't roll the debt over, and take a hit to 2030 GDP; or
2) roll over at 2030 interest rates, which could well be higher.
We cannot live off our grandchildren's credit cards forever.
In one minor respect, it is wrong. We don't have five areas with a GDPpc below $25,000, it's six (I think he missed outer London).
But that doesn't exactly undermine his case...
At the start of 2020, Britain had been through 10 years of austerity following the 2008 financial crash
its credibility has to be questioned.
It also ignores, as internationalists tend to do, the imbecility of the government's lack of restriction on entry to the UK.
Without it, Phase 2 doesn't make much sense, and you'd have to build extra bespoke rolling stock depots for the new HS2 trains (they can't be stored or serviced anywhere we have at present) and they are more costly than you think.
You'd have very expensive new trains shuttling back and forth between Birmingham and Manchester whilst doing little to decant people wholesale off the WCML (who'd continue to use Virgin trains direct from London in the meantime).
[Also, you can't achieve much modal shift from domestic air (e.g. London-Manchester/Leeds) air without it.]
https://airqualitynews.com/2020/03/16/air-pollution-has-fallen-in-northern-italy-following-lockdown/
But, that doesn't stop that TOC being innately profitable, which was why they bid for it.
- The productivity gap. Mentioned many times in recent years, UK productivity has failed to grow. Are we seeing a hard reset?
- Anecdote alert: in some companies the Fuckwit Management idea of the moment is to furlough most of your staff, and try and get the secretaries to run it (I exaggerate only slightly). In some cases, this has resulted in potential customers trying to ring the CEO to get him to get some actual staff on the job so they can do business...
In major projects (my area) if you're going to go in, you really need everyone in. That's because it's about mass collaboration and co-ordination to deal with programme-wide issues and risks - that vary throughout the lifecycle - and not steady-state operations where it's a bit easier to demarcate and compartmentalise.
It's like a model railway.
Incidentally, just found this -
https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2020/03/Coronavirus_nitrogen_dioxide_emissions_drop_over_Italy
Talk about visualising data....
Not an existential material change, but does have an impact.
Apparently PHE are about to start publishing 3 sets of data with 28 day, 60 day and no limits, just to make it all less confusing :-).
And they report on Hawaiian Pizzas, and the difference Euro average levels of obesity would make to COVID deaths here (about 600 less).
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000llw2
2010 Anne Begg Labour
2015 Callum McCaig Scottish National Party
2017 Ross Thomson Conservative
2019 Stephen Flynn Scottish National Party
May be some other Scottish seats as well - Perth, or Stirling?
They had a lot of ex-BR Network South-East people working for them who re-designed the timetable bottom-up in 1996. They wanted to do it even better than Network South-East, and succeeded. In fact, I have a very good book on it.
First got the SWR franchise by flattering the Treasury with how much money they could hand back. They did this by cutting spare capacity to the bone (both stock and staff) leaving them nothing to deal with a perturbed or emergency service, which is why the whole network fell over whenever someone coughed. They also cut back on cleaning and customer service agents. They also assumed DOO would be a doddle and save them costs over the franchise - to be fair, that's mainly the dinosaurs in the RMT but they smelt SWR blood early-on and exploited it.
Grayling shouldn't have fallen for First's bullshit but, surprise surprise, he did as all he could see was pound signs.
2010 Dame Anne McGuire Labour
2015 Steven Paterson SNP
2017 Stephen Kerr Conservative
2019 Alyn Smith SNP
What brainfart made me think Perth wasn't SNP from way back?
My guess is it would be considerably fewer than the previous decade.
It's usually cheaper for me to head to London the night before and stay at a Hilton.
Sure, we know all about foreign tourism. But the blow is cushioned somewhat by the drop off in tourist pounds to M (and to a far lesser extent domestic tourism spread around the country). Foreign tourist £s will come back in 2022.
I’ve seen little evidence of construction ceasing very much and the housing boom will help. But we do need a bit more counter cyclical Keynesianism such as HS2, not less.
City centre F&B as has been noted predominantly employs cheap imported labour and often earns no profit in the Uk jurisdiction. My experience is that it’s a different story in Semi Ruralania, far more independently owned businesses that should in theory thrive through all this, and that provide local employment too, especially given the apparent net emigration we are seeing from lower skilled EU workers. This is “levelling up” and the upside to Brexit in action folks.
Not much to be said about aviation (and associated services) and auto. The absolute no brainer policy for auto at least would be to announce a generous and long term diesel to EV scrappage scheme but only for vehicles where more than 50% of the value add comes from UK production and UK tax domiciled companies.
Meanwhile transformation in the energy sector continues at a pace, as we gradually remove the deadweight of hydrocarbons from our overall productivity.
Things needn’t be as melodramatic and negative as many seem to want to spin it.
So long as we don’t fall into the trap of hysterical over reactions to case numbers (like the lauded New Zealand), personally I think things looked pumped for a period of strong growth once the dust has settled. Peaking in dare I say it, the 2024-5 time period.
And the faster line isn't that much more expensive, the problem was no one sold the capacity solution, they talked about completely pointless time savings.
GE2017 was (Ben Walker's numbers)
Con 33.2
Lab 54.6
LD 8.8
Others 3.4
Will look for GE2019
Lab 48.1
LD 14.9
Others 5.0
Lets say it is 25.
Which means that
becomes
Can you see why there might be a political issue here?
https://twitter.com/Politics_Polls/status/1293331485928415233?s=19
Given that the link between income and educational outcomes is much weaker in England than in Scotland there is a decent chance that the algorithm wasn't simply downgrading kids in poor areas.
My view is that the move to predicted grades in Scotland means that Scottish grades for this year no longer have any credibility - the improvement in performance compared with previous years is too much to be believable. The change that has been made in England also reduces the credibility of grades. In my view they should have stuck with the approach they were using.
https://twitter.com/patrickharvie/status/1293469485559697409?s=20
- Italian Government said they did it. Value - 5/10. The Italian governmental system* has been caught lying on statistics before. Not just one party, several.
- The Italian press - including TV - 8/10. Given all the corruption available to investigate, the Italian Press in general is quite good at this kind of thing. They caught a number of sweat shop bosses trying to stay open etc.
- ESA (Above) - 10/10 - Hard science, by scientists, pear-reviewed outside the reach of the Italian governmental system.
- Personal knowledge. A relative works in the construction industry. According to his importers/dealings with Italian firms, anything made in Northern Italy vanished from the supply chain in the period in question.
Sounds a good summary of why they lost Kensington.
He doesn't threaten, and Brexit will be "done" by then, however you spin it.
I expect plenty in the SE will go LD losing Tories seats there, and Unionists will go to him in Scotland too. Tories will lose some southern marginals direct to Labour where the demographics are right, including students and lots of middle-class voters. Boris will probably retain most red-wall seats.
Question is whether he can get close to a majority or not.
I think @isam is right to suggest that Starmer has a difficult balancing act. I can see the Greens doing quite well if Labour aren't perceived to be left-wing enough.
Actually I think Hancock has been pretty good, but he's not a big enough figure to dominate the policy response and without proper leadership from Boris there hasn't the necessary cross-departmental discipline and coordination. So the overall effect has been unnecessarily chaotic, lurching from one U-turn to the next.
Johnson did not have to lose Cummings. That was not the problem. The problem was the craven way he handled it. That he felt unable even to express disapproval.
"He acted as he saw fit in the best interests of his family and I will not mark him down for that."
An astonishing utterance from a PM in the circumstances. It laid bare his weakness of character. Told us all - or at least those of us with an interest and the relevant faculties - that he could not hack it without this one particular SPAD. This is unprecedented and it has (rightly) damaged him.