Interesting that the New Statesman stopped accepting comments on its articles in 2012. Maybe this was an indication that a lot of things they didn't like — like Brexit, Trump, 3 Tory election victories — were going to happen in the near future.
Their solution was to try and silence those they considered "populist" in the hope they'd therefore would go away.
It didn't work because they were just sticking their fingers in their ears and not bothering to try and understand the real issues that underlay it. It's actually a sign of the lack of confidence they had in their own ideas to convince and the contempt they held for those not already of their ilk who had the audacity to disagree with them.
A lot of sites stopped comments around that time. Whatever the public rationales I imagine this kind of decision is more likely to be commercial than about someone not wanting to be contradicted; If people are clicking on the site to write about what an idiot your journalists are and watching the ads, the people in charge aren't going to want to cut them off to protect the journalist's feelings.
The obvious benefits to stopping comments are: 1) You save on moderation costs 2) The discussion goes off to social media instead, which is more likely to send you traffic than an argument among people who are already there
Also, please don't call me Mr Battery, I've asked you before to call me Horse and it's disrespectful to keep ignoring what I've kindly asked you to do.
Also, please don't call me Mr Battery, I've asked you before to call me Horse and it's disrespectful to keep ignoring what I've kindly asked you to do.
I don't like being called mate but people still do it. Sometimes you see teenagers calling elderly men they don't know mate which really annoys me. Very disrespectful IMO.
If you feel disrespected I can only apologise, I will call you by your username in future Andy_JS.
Also, please don't call me Mr Battery, I've asked you before to call me Horse and it's disrespectful to keep ignoring what I've kindly asked you to do.
I'm getting quite miffed with all the articles in the Mail and the Telegraph blaming the lazy workers for not going back. It is partly up to employers as well. Most companies will already have budgeted for the cost of the office but if workers go back they will need to budget for daily deep cleaning, buying partitions etc etc. Most modern offices are open plan and badly set up for social distancing.
Even when COVID is over (assuming we get a vaccine), I think most companies will move to a model of 2-3 days in the office and 2-3 at home, with smaller offices and hot desking.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is how completely screwed the RMT is. Their strike power which led to them getting 60+k a year has completely evaporated. If the authorities have any sense, it is time to start looking at driverless tubes.
They are reflecting the prejudices of their readers, most of whom are retired and had to do the same throughout their working careers.
PS. One way to make railways more sustainable is to fully digitise operation.
We don't have nor need signalman, brakemen or firemen anymore.
There is no need for a guard either.
Signals have been massively automated already, with networks hugely simplified by the removal of points and sidings and conflicting routes (presumably why the multiple crossover at Newcastle, under the Castle tower, sadly no longer exists).
Brakemen are so C19.
Firemen are so C20.
But guards ... especially on non- commuter trains.
Guards exist to safely close and open doors, dispatch trains and make announcements.
There is none of that which can't be automated.
I don'ty commute (didn't commute). I went on long distance trains which needed train crews to deal with problems and collect ticket revenue from unstaffed/ungated stations.
Also, please don't call me Mr Battery, I've asked you before to call me Horse and it's disrespectful to keep ignoring what I've kindly asked you to do.
I don't like being called mate but people still do it. Sometimes you see teenagers calling elderly men they don't know mate which really annoys me. Very disrespectful IMO.
If you feel disrespected I can only apologise, I will call you by your username in future Andy_JS.
Being a Lancastrian I can advice that the proper way to address everyone is "love"
Interesting that the New Statesman stopped accepting comments on its articles in 2012. Maybe this was an indication that a lot of things they didn't like — like Brexit, Trump, 3 Tory election victories — were going to happen in the near future.
Their solution was to try and silence those they considered "populist" in the hope they'd therefore would go away.
It didn't work because they were just sticking their fingers in their ears and not bothering to try and understand the real issues that underlay it. It's actually a sign of the lack of confidence they had in their own ideas to convince and the contempt they held for those not already of their ilk who had the audacity to disagree with them.
That was very much my impresion of the BBC's Scottish arm - see my posting. You could be writing about them.
I don't know about that but it's hard to disagree that a strong undercurrent of Scottish opinion (not all) has been badly misunderstood for some time.
Without commuters paying peak fares – particularly into London – then it’s hard to see how the sector could survive without serious cuts, given that significantly increased subsidies are likely to be off the table for a government that will need to rein in its budget deficit.
The government has something of a problem. Usage of National Rail is about a 1/3 of what it normally is:
Passengers pay c.£10 billion a year. Let's assume that those travelling at the moment are paying quite a lot less than the normal average (i.e. no one will buy a first class ticket, those travelling are probably more local, fewer tickets purchased for business use). Let's say that the government is getting around £2 billion a year (and we're assuming that August usage is maintained - it might be propped up by a higher share of leisure travel).
So as David says, the subsidy goes from £4.5 billion a year to £12.5 billion a year. But what can the government do other than pay it? The people using the trains are people who have to go to work. They are key workers. There would be a huge backlash if the government starts cutting services.
Oh, and one other thing. HS2. How can the government justify ploughing on with that whilst closing existing railways? They can't.
The Government can save some money by reducing the frequency of services, particularly at peak times - indeed, if we arrive in a situation where flexible working means that the remaining passenger journeys are much more spread out during the day, then I can see the entire peak/off-peak divide being tossed in the dustbin.
Certainly it's going to take a couple of years for such changes to come into effect: all those who had to endure the great TSGN timetabling disaster of 2018 will be all too acutely aware of the need to manage these things properly. But it must surely happen?
As for HS2, I think the London to Birmingham section will end up being built in full, for several reasons. Firstly, it's already underway so this Government has to deal with it (whereas the branches to the North can be placed under review and booted into the long grass for the next Prime Minister to worry about.) Secondly, it's being used as much as a means to dole out contracts to the construction industry and maintain and develop skills as it is to build infrastructure, and this arguably becomes a greater priority for Government during a recession. Thirdly, there will be the usual concerns about sunk costs involved in abandoning any partially completed project. Finally, the Tory West Midlands metro-mayor is an enthusiast for the scheme and is up for re-election next May.
However, I seriously doubt if the remainder of HS2 will ever get built.
And that leaves Johnson's levelling up with the North in tatters.
Nonsense. If there really is a WFH revolution, cities and towns won't be competing on proximity to London anymore, it will be on crime, livability, beauty, amenities, surrounding countryside, airports, and price. That will level up the North.
As a Northerner by birth, and Midlander by choice, I don't think many Northern and Midland towns would score very highly on those criteria. I like Leicester, and am not planning to move away, but it is not a tourist hotspot for a reason.
That may be being unnecessarily pessimistic about parts outside the Greater South East. London is hugely expensive and much of it is a complete shithole. There are plenty of nice places to live in the Home Counties but they're also very costly to buy into.
There is a reason why we hear reports of estate agents in Manchester getting a lot of enquiries from worried Hongkongers with BN(O) passports. They are not stupid and know a good deal when they see one.
My guess is that places on a train line within 60-90 minutes of London will see a surge of interest from younger people looking to start families/get on the property ladder who will end up doing one or two days a week down at HQ and the rest WFH. Some of our lot are looking at this right now. The political consequences of changing demographics in such places will be interesting.
It will. Fast forward ten or twenty years and we may find that great swathes of the South-East will have become marginals or fallen to Labour, whilst the Conservatives will have wiped Labour out in much of what's left of its former Northern strongholds.
If we had enough constituency level demographic data then it would probably be possible to accurately predict the outcome in the bulk of seats by plugging a few numbers into a formula: the percentage of voters from various ethnic minority groups, the median age of the electorate, the percentage of voters identifying primarily as British, and the percentage of voters who have a university degree. It's entirely possible that future General Elections will see Labour swapping seats in County Durham for others in Surrey.
I'm not so sure about this. Young people become more conservative as they get older, and their values can evolve too. They will become more concerned about car and home ownership and family responsibilities and conserving the look and feel of their local areas.
Remember: the radical flower-power hippies of the 1960s are the ultra-Boomers of today.
That doesn't map to France where the radical students of the 60s are now far more left wing than the general population.
The flower power hippies were a tiny proportion of the population.
Are they? French people in their 60s and 70s are far more left wing? I can see they prefer Macron to Le Pen more but are they just more 'conservative" because Macron and the current social welfare system works for them, and they fear Le Pen would be too revolutionary?
Of course hippies were a tiny percentage of the population but social attitudes changed massively in the 60s amongst that generation and not many were voting Tory at the time.
Older people in France still vote for the conservatives just as they do in the UK and USA, eg in 2017 in the first round Fillon got 27% of 60 to 69 year olds to 26% for Macron and Fillon got 45% of over 70s to just 27% for Macron.
However French pensioners still preferred Macron to the far right and Le Pen, with Macron winning 70% of 60 to 69 year olds to 30% for Le Pen and 78% of over 70s to 22% for Le Pen in the second round run off
If anyone has felt disrespected by my calling them mate I do apologise and if you let me know what you'd prefer to be called, please do so and I will listen.
It's only fair if I wish to be called Horse - as I've explained before Mr makes me feel like you're putting me above yourself and I'm below most of you in knowledge and experience - that I call you by your preferred name.
Interesting discussion at the Flower Event referred to above. We have a local charity which makes small grants to local young people for educational purposes. Got talking to the Secretary, who said that they had had a lot of applications this year from people who wanted to do Masters. He put it down to graduates thinking that a 'sort' of supported study year would be better than spending a year searching fruitlessly for work.
Guards exist to safely close and open doors, dispatch trains and make announcements.
There is none of that which can't be automated.
An impressive thing in the "green car" on Japanese trains is that they disguise the ticket inspector as a snack and drinks vendor. This is much more customer-friendly and civilized-feeling, and most of the time she doesn't need to talk to you about your ticket or look like she's there to enforce rules, as if you're in the right seat it's handled electronically. But as well as being able to check for people without tickets and bring down the hammer on fare dodgers, she's also available to tell people off for talking on their phones or typing too loudly, and do other little bits of in-train law-and-order enforcement.
Interesting that the New Statesman stopped accepting comments on its articles in 2012. Maybe this was an indication that a lot of things they didn't like — like Brexit, Trump, 3 Tory election victories — were going to happen in the near future.
Their solution was to try and silence those they considered "populist" in the hope they'd therefore would go away.
It didn't work because they were just sticking their fingers in their ears and not bothering to try and understand the real issues that underlay it. It's actually a sign of the lack of confidence they had in their own ideas to convince and the contempt they held for those not already of their ilk who had the audacity to disagree with them.
A lot of sites stopped comments around that time. Whatever the public rationales I imagine this kind of decision is more likely to be commercial than about someone not wanting to be contradicted; If people are clicking on the site to write about what an idiot your journalists are and watching the ads, the people in charge aren't going to want to cut them off to protect the journalist's feelings.
The obvious benefits to stopping comments are: 1) You save on moderation costs 2) The discussion goes off to social media instead, which is more likely to send you traffic than an argument among people who are already there
It's not consistent, though.
The Guardian, to it's credit, decided to keep it going.
Interesting that the New Statesman stopped accepting comments on its articles in 2012. Maybe this was an indication that a lot of things they didn't like — like Brexit, Trump, 3 Tory election victories — were going to happen in the near future.
Their solution was to try and silence those they considered "populist" in the hope they'd therefore would go away.
It didn't work because they were just sticking their fingers in their ears and not bothering to try and understand the real issues that underlay it. It's actually a sign of the lack of confidence they had in their own ideas to convince and the contempt they held for those not already of their ilk who had the audacity to disagree with them.
That was very much my impresion of the BBC's Scottish arm - see my posting. You could be writing about them.
I don't know about that but it's hard to disagree that a strong undercurrent of Scottish opinion (not all) has been badly misunderstood for some time.
That was also a period when some journalists/commentators got very indignant at being challenged by the public. I suspect they made sure the comments were turned off. There are still certain journalists who seem to manage to do that.
The wider situation [edit] was manifested in Scotland by the way in which the 'cybernat' terminology was very heavily pushed by the Scottish journalistic establishment to try and discredit the non-unionist thinking. Yet that thinking was poorly represented by the mainstream media especially after the Scotsman and Herals went full-on unionist about the same time.
Also, please don't call me Mr Battery, I've asked you before to call me Horse and it's disrespectful to keep ignoring what I've kindly asked you to do.
I don't like being called mate but people still do it. Sometimes you see teenagers calling elderly men they don't know mate which really annoys me. Very disrespectful IMO.
If you feel disrespected I can only apologise, I will call you by your username in future Andy_JS.
Being a Lancastrian I can advice that the proper way to address everyone is "love"
I understand the correct address in the NE is 'man'.To men or women. I once heard someone agreeing with his female companion as follows: ' Why-aye woman, man!'
A great piece on the economic impacts of this revolution in working practices if it happens. My view is it will be a good thing long term but there will be pain for many on the road there and it’s the government’s duty to ensure that the costs – of the restructuring and the deficit reduction – are borne exclusively by those who can afford it and in proportion to how much they can afford it. If the government fails to do this I fail to see the point of the government.
And there’s another aspect which I sense is under appreciated. Forget the economy and the public finances for a minute and think about what the end of The Commute will do to the look & feel of life and relationships. In my opinion it will change things enormously and these changes will be as important as those flagged in the header.
One example from many that spring to mind. A different group of people will excel (struggle) at work. WFH is nothing like the office. Physical presence, charisma, assertiveness, are less important. Others things - concise precision in communication, quality of home environment, diligence and discipline - become more important. Some people are more effective digitally and on the phone than they are flesh & blood in a room. For others it is the opposite. Men and women will be affected differently. So will younger people as compared to older colleagues. Attached vs single. Family or not. Etc.
The office is a place where power is wielded and relationships are formed in a particular way based on particular characteristics. It is also a place which encourages the compartmentalization of “work” from “life”. Two separate and distinct worlds with the commute transporting a person from one to the other and back again. Eliminate this and you change the very fabric of life.
I agree but it's worth pointing out that only a small fraction of the population work with computers or phones and could in theory continue effectively at home. For the majority - in factories, farms, construction sites, schools and hospitals with drills, hammers, mops and buckets - working "from" (why not "at"?) home will never be an option. Obviously they don't commute on WCML (or comment here).
Yes good point. My post was about the white collar world. The one I know. I don't think it's a small fraction of workers though. Think it's larger than that.
If anyone has felt disrespected by my calling them mate I do apologise and if you let me know what you'd prefer to be called, please do so and I will listen.
It's only fair if I wish to be called Horse - as I've explained before Mr makes me feel like you're putting me above yourself and I'm below most of you in knowledge and experience - that I call you by your preferred name.
I can't tell if you're joking or not but - if you're not - since this is obviously not your real name (at least.. I really hope for your sake it isn't) then why does it matter?
I couldn't care less if I'm called Casino, Mr. Royale or any other derivative. It's not my name. It's an internet ID.
I do care if someone personally insults me or swears at me but that's different.
Without commuters paying peak fares – particularly into London – then it’s hard to see how the sector could survive without serious cuts, given that significantly increased subsidies are likely to be off the table for a government that will need to rein in its budget deficit.
The government has something of a problem. Usage of National Rail is about a 1/3 of what it normally is:
Passengers pay c.£10 billion a year. Let's assume that those travelling at the moment are paying quite a lot less than the normal average (i.e. no one will buy a first class ticket, those travelling are probably more local, fewer tickets purchased for business use). Let's say that the government is getting around £2 billion a year (and we're assuming that August usage is maintained - it might be propped up by a higher share of leisure travel).
So as David says, the subsidy goes from £4.5 billion a year to £12.5 billion a year. But what can the government do other than pay it? The people using the trains are people who have to go to work. They are key workers. There would be a huge backlash if the government starts cutting services.
Oh, and one other thing. HS2. How can the government justify ploughing on with that whilst closing existing railways? They can't.
The Government can save some money by reducing the frequency of services, particularly at peak times - indeed, if we arrive in a situation where flexible working means that the remaining passenger journeys are much more spread out during the day, then I can see the entire peak/off-peak divide being tossed in the dustbin.
Certainly it's going to take a couple of years for such changes to come into effect: all those who had to endure the great TSGN timetabling disaster of 2018 will be all too acutely aware of the need to manage these things properly. But it must surely happen?
As for HS2, I think the London to Birmingham section will end up being built in full, for several reasons. Firstly, it's already underway so this Government has to deal with it (whereas the branches to the North can be placed under review and booted into the long grass for the next Prime Minister to worry about.) Secondly, it's being used as much as a means to dole out contracts to the construction industry and maintain and develop skills as it is to build infrastructure, and this arguably becomes a greater priority for Government during a recession. Thirdly, there will be the usual concerns about sunk costs involved in abandoning any partially completed project. Finally, the Tory West Midlands metro-mayor is an enthusiast for the scheme and is up for re-election next May.
However, I seriously doubt if the remainder of HS2 will ever get built.
And that leaves Johnson's levelling up with the North in tatters.
Nonsense. If there really is a WFH revolution, cities and towns won't be competing on proximity to London anymore, it will be on crime, livability, beauty, amenities, surrounding countryside, airports, and price. That will level up the North.
As a Northerner by birth, and Midlander by choice, I don't think many Northern and Midland towns would score very highly on those criteria. I like Leicester, and am not planning to move away, but it is not a tourist hotspot for a reason.
That may be being unnecessarily pessimistic about parts outside the Greater South East. London is hugely expensive and much of it is a complete shithole. There are plenty of nice places to live in the Home Counties but they're also very costly to buy into.
There is a reason why we hear reports of estate agents in Manchester getting a lot of enquiries from worried Hongkongers with BN(O) passports. They are not stupid and know a good deal when they see one.
My guess is that places on a train line within 60-90 minutes of London will see a surge of interest from younger people looking to start families/get on the property ladder who will end up doing one or two days a week down at HQ and the rest WFH. Some of our lot are looking at this right now. The political consequences of changing demographics in such places will be interesting.
It will. Fast forward ten or twenty years and we may find that great swathes of the South-East will have become marginals or fallen to Labour, whilst the Conservatives will have wiped Labour out in much of what's left of its former Northern strongholds.
If we had enough constituency level demographic data then it would probably be possible to accurately predict the outcome in the bulk of seats by plugging a few numbers into a formula: the percentage of voters from various ethnic minority groups, the median age of the electorate, the percentage of voters identifying primarily as British, and the percentage of voters who have a university degree. It's entirely possible that future General Elections will see Labour swapping seats in County Durham for others in Surrey.
I'm not so sure about this. Young people become more conservative as they get older, and their values can evolve too. They will become more concerned about car and home ownership and family responsibilities and conserving the look and feel of their local areas.
Remember: the radical flower-power hippies of the 1960s are the ultra-Boomers of today.
That doesn't map to France where the radical students of the 60s are now far more left wing than the general population.
The flower power hippies were a tiny proportion of the population.
Are they? French people in their 60s and 70s are far more left wing? I can see they prefer Macron to Le Pen more but are they just more 'conservative" because Macron and the current social welfare system works for them, and they fear Le Pen would be too revolutionary?
Of course hippies were a tiny percentage of the population but social attitudes changed massively in the 60s amongst that generation and not many were voting Tory at the time.
Older people in France still vote for the conservatives just as they do in the UK and USA, eg in 2017 in the first round Fillon got 27% of 60 to 69 year olds to 26% for Macron and Fillon got 45% of over 70s to just 27% for Macron.
However French pensioners still preferred Macron to the far right and Le Pen, with Macron winning 70% of 60 to 69 year olds to 30% for Le Pen and 78% of over 70s to 22% for Le Pen in the second round run off
Also, please don't call me Mr Battery, I've asked you before to call me Horse and it's disrespectful to keep ignoring what I've kindly asked you to do.
I don't like being called mate but people still do it. Sometimes you see teenagers calling elderly men they don't know mate which really annoys me. Very disrespectful IMO.
Waiting staff calling anyone 'mate' is a pet hate of mine.
When I'm canvassing its Sir, Madam, or Miss - if not Mr/Mrs when the names are known. On the odd occasion I've helped friends out behind bars/waiting on, its been the same.
'Mate' is a certain way to prevent any tips from Mr Mortimer....
Interesting that the New Statesman stopped accepting comments on its articles in 2012. Maybe this was an indication that a lot of things they didn't like — like Brexit, Trump, 3 Tory election victories — were going to happen in the near future.
Their solution was to try and silence those they considered "populist" in the hope they'd therefore would go away.
It didn't work because they were just sticking their fingers in their ears and not bothering to try and understand the real issues that underlay it. It's actually a sign of the lack of confidence they had in their own ideas to convince and the contempt they held for those not already of their ilk who had the audacity to disagree with them.
I doubt that it had much to do with not liking comments from the populist right in the case of the New Statesman. The far-left may have been more of an issue, espoecially with regards to Israel, and concerns about potential legal liability for what was posted.
If anyone has felt disrespected by my calling them mate I do apologise and if you let me know what you'd prefer to be called, please do so and I will listen.
It's only fair if I wish to be called Horse - as I've explained before Mr makes me feel like you're putting me above yourself and I'm below most of you in knowledge and experience - that I call you by your preferred name.
I can't tell if you're joking or not but - if you're not - since this is obviously not your real name (at least.. I really hope for your sake it isn't) then why does it matter?
I couldn't care less if I'm called Casino, Mr. Royale or any other derivative. It's not my name. It's an internet ID.
I do care if someone personally insults me or swears at me but that's different.
It's the Mr I'd prefer not to be called because to me it's like you're putting me above yourself.
It's like when I go into a shop and they start calling me Mr X, I just don't feel comfortable with it
I'm getting quite miffed with all the articles in the Mail and the Telegraph blaming the lazy workers for not going back. It is partly up to employers as well. Most companies will already have budgeted for the cost of the office but if workers go back they will need to budget for daily deep cleaning, buying partitions etc etc. Most modern offices are open plan and badly set up for social distancing.
Even when COVID is over (assuming we get a vaccine), I think most companies will move to a model of 2-3 days in the office and 2-3 at home, with smaller offices and hot desking.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is how completely screwed the RMT is. Their strike power which led to them getting 60+k a year has completely evaporated. If the authorities have any sense, it is time to start looking at driverless tubes.
They are reflecting the prejudices of their readers, most of whom are retired and had to do the same throughout their working careers.
PS. One way to make railways more sustainable is to fully digitise operation.
We don't have nor need signalman, brakemen or firemen anymore.
There is no need for a guard either.
Signals have been massively automated already, with networks hugely simplified by the removal of points and sidings and conflicting routes (presumably why the multiple crossover at Newcastle, under the Castle tower, sadly no longer exists).
Brakemen are so C19.
Firemen are so C20.
But guards ... especially on non- commuter trains.
Guards exist to safely close and open doors, dispatch trains and make announcements.
There is none of that which can't be automated.
I don'ty commute (didn't commute). I went on long distance trains which needed train crews to deal with problems and collect ticket revenue from unstaffed/ungated stations.
With apps, phones, autogates and scans you don't need people to collect ticket revenue anymore. You do sometimes need a customer services rep on busy trains to deal with problems and issues, I agree, but they don't need to operate the doors or dispatch trains.
I get that it's rather sterile and not much fun when it's all automated.
But that's why we have heritage railways. Business is business and we need to do what's necessary to keep railways sustainable and open.
If anyone has felt disrespected by my calling them mate I do apologise and if you let me know what you'd prefer to be called, please do so and I will listen.
It's only fair if I wish to be called Horse - as I've explained before Mr makes me feel like you're putting me above yourself and I'm below most of you in knowledge and experience - that I call you by your preferred name.
I can't tell if you're joking or not but - if you're not - since this is obviously not your real name (at least.. I really hope for your sake it isn't) then why does it matter?
I couldn't care less if I'm called Casino, Mr. Royale or any other derivative. It's not my name. It's an internet ID.
I do care if someone personally insults me or swears at me but that's different.
It's the Mr I'd prefer not to be called because to me it's like you're putting me above yourself.
It's like when I go into a shop and they start calling me Mr X, I just don't feel comfortable with it
Eh? Its good manners to address people in that manner....
On topic, there is a phrase for all this change - creative destruction. It is the very essence of capitalism. If city centres are as out of date as saddlers were when people started to buy cars, or miners were when cheap gas became available, then the capitalist system shouldn't protect them, but should redeploy their inefficiently used land, labour and capital to other, sunrise industries. And governments should get on the right side of history and welcome and, where possible, facilitate such changes. That was the lesson that Mrs Thatcher taught us, though many people seem to have forgotten it.
Many commercial districts are too large, so shrinking them by facilitating change of use from commercial to residential or green space shoud be a priority. And if we don't need such a large commuter train network, that's good because the resources can be deployed in other sectors. And so on.
While that is true, re-engineering of city centres will take a very long time indeed without significant government (both central and local) intervention. Individual private sector development simply aren’t going to happen in a vacuum. And at the moment, local government has very little capacity indeed, and central government is in what seems to be a state of denial.
Without commuters paying peak fares – particularly into London – then it’s hard to see how the sector could survive without serious cuts, given that significantly increased subsidies are likely to be off the table for a government that will need to rein in its budget deficit.
The government has something of a problem. Usage of National Rail is about a 1/3 of what it normally is:
Passengers pay c.£10 billion a year. Let's assume that those travelling at the moment are paying quite a lot less than the normal average (i.e. no one will buy a first class ticket, those travelling are probably more local, fewer tickets purchased for business use). Let's say that the government is getting around £2 billion a year (and we're assuming that August usage is maintained - it might be propped up by a higher share of leisure travel).
So as David says, the subsidy goes from £4.5 billion a year to £12.5 billion a year. But what can the government do other than pay it? The people using the trains are people who have to go to work. They are key workers. There would be a huge backlash if the government starts cutting services.
Oh, and one other thing. HS2. How can the government justify ploughing on with that whilst closing existing railways? They can't.
The Government can save some money by reducing the frequency of services, particularly at peak times - indeed, if we arrive in a situation where flexible working means that the remaining passenger journeys are much more spread out during the day, then I can see the entire peak/off-peak divide being tossed in the dustbin.
Certainly it's going to take a couple of years for such changes to come into effect: all those who had to endure the great TSGN timetabling disaster of 2018 will be all too acutely aware of the need to manage these things properly. But it must surely happen?
As for HS2, I think the London to Birmingham section will end up being built in full, for several reasons. Firstly, it's already underway so this Government has to deal with it (whereas the branches to the North can be placed under review and booted into the long grass for the next Prime Minister to worry about.) Secondly, it's being used as much as a means to dole out contracts to the construction industry and maintain and develop skills as it is to build infrastructure, and this arguably becomes a greater priority for Government during a recession. Thirdly, there will be the usual concerns about sunk costs involved in abandoning any partially completed project. Finally, the Tory West Midlands metro-mayor is an enthusiast for the scheme and is up for re-election next May.
However, I seriously doubt if the remainder of HS2 will ever get built.
And that leaves Johnson's levelling up with the North in tatters.
Nonsense. If there really is a WFH revolution, cities and towns won't be competing on proximity to London anymore, it will be on crime, livability, beauty, amenities, surrounding countryside, airports, and price. That will level up the North.
As a Northerner by birth, and Midlander by choice, I don't think many Northern and Midland towns would score very highly on those criteria. I like Leicester, and am not planning to move away, but it is not a tourist hotspot for a reason.
That may be being unnecessarily pessimistic about parts outside the Greater South East. London is hugely expensive and much of it is a complete shithole. There are plenty of nice places to live in the Home Counties but they're also very costly to buy into.
There is a reason why we hear reports of estate agents in Manchester getting a lot of enquiries from worried Hongkongers with BN(O) passports. They are not stupid and know a good deal when they see one.
My guess is that places on a train line within 60-90 minutes of London will see a surge of interest from younger people looking to start families/get on the property ladder who will end up doing one or two days a week down at HQ and the rest WFH. Some of our lot are looking at this right now. The political consequences of changing demographics in such places will be interesting.
It will. Fast forward ten or twenty years and we may find that great swathes of the South-East will have become marginals or fallen to Labour, whilst the Conservatives will have wiped Labour out in much of what's left of its former Northern strongholds.
If we had enough constituency level demographic data then it would probably be possible to accurately predict the outcome in the bulk of seats by plugging a few numbers into a formula: the percentage of voters from various ethnic minority groups, the median age of the electorate, the percentage of voters identifying primarily as British, and the percentage of voters who have a university degree. It's entirely possible that future General Elections will see Labour swapping seats in County Durham for others in Surrey.
I'm not so sure about this. Young people become more conservative as they get older, and their values can evolve too. They will become more concerned about car and home ownership and family responsibilities and conserving the look and feel of their local areas.
Remember: the radical flower-power hippies of the 1960s are the ultra-Boomers of today.
That doesn't map to France where the radical students of the 60s are now far more left wing than the general population.
The flower power hippies were a tiny proportion of the population.
Are they? French people in their 60s and 70s are far more left wing? I can see they prefer Macron to Le Pen more but are they just more 'conservative" because Macron and the current social welfare system works for them, and they fear Le Pen would be too revolutionary?
Of course hippies were a tiny percentage of the population but social attitudes changed massively in the 60s amongst that generation and not many were voting Tory at the time.
I'm not really sure what Alistair is talking about. The older generation in France are very much in favour of the "liberals" like Les Republicains and En Marche. It is the young/middle-aged that much more radical, either rightist National Rally or lefty Melenchonistas and their ilk.
Who are all these WFH people who are going into town for their lunch? I, like I suspect the vast majority, just go into the kitchen to make a sandwich and dip into the fruit bowl.
Where do you buy your ingredients for the sandwich and the fruit? From shops in your market town whereas before you would not have needed to buy lunch for the week from there as you would have bought lunch in the city centre
Interesting that the New Statesman stopped accepting comments on its articles in 2012. Maybe this was an indication that a lot of things they didn't like — like Brexit, Trump, 3 Tory election victories — were going to happen in the near future.
Their solution was to try and silence those they considered "populist" in the hope they'd therefore would go away.
It didn't work because they were just sticking their fingers in their ears and not bothering to try and understand the real issues that underlay it. It's actually a sign of the lack of confidence they had in their own ideas to convince and the contempt they held for those not already of their ilk who had the audacity to disagree with them.
A lot of sites stopped comments around that time. Whatever the public rationales I imagine this kind of decision is more likely to be commercial than about someone not wanting to be contradicted; If people are clicking on the site to write about what an idiot your journalists are and watching the ads, the people in charge aren't going to want to cut them off to protect the journalist's feelings.
The obvious benefits to stopping comments are: 1) You save on moderation costs 2) The discussion goes off to social media instead, which is more likely to send you traffic than an argument among people who are already there
It's not consistent, though.
The Guardian, to it's credit, decided to keep it going.
I wouldn't expect different media organizations to be consistent, as they're in different situations and legacy media are always groping around for the best way to make money. If you can build a site where lots of people are actually coming there for the comments, that's quite a different proposition to people coming for the articles and commenting while they're there. But running a discussion board that people want to read in its own right is quite a dark art, most people who try to pull it off fail.
Also, please don't call me Mr Battery, I've asked you before to call me Horse and it's disrespectful to keep ignoring what I've kindly asked you to do.
If anyone has felt disrespected by my calling them mate I do apologise and if you let me know what you'd prefer to be called, please do so and I will listen.
It's only fair if I wish to be called Horse - as I've explained before Mr makes me feel like you're putting me above yourself and I'm below most of you in knowledge and experience - that I call you by your preferred name.
I can't tell if you're joking or not but - if you're not - since this is obviously not your real name (at least.. I really hope for your sake it isn't) then why does it matter?
I couldn't care less if I'm called Casino, Mr. Royale or any other derivative. It's not my name. It's an internet ID.
I do care if someone personally insults me or swears at me but that's different.
It's the Mr I'd prefer not to be called because to me it's like you're putting me above yourself.
It's like when I go into a shop and they start calling me Mr X, I just don't feel comfortable with it
Eh? Its good manners to address people in that manner....
I am sure it's just me then, I don't feel comfortable if somebody calls me Mr in any context, doesn't feel right to me somehow.
Also, please don't call me Mr Battery, I've asked you before to call me Horse and it's disrespectful to keep ignoring what I've kindly asked you to do.
Horse, I forgot about that request regarding your name. It was a genuine error.
You continuing to annoy and pester me is a deliberate and repeated choice. Let me make this plain: I don't care that you dislike that I don't use the quote button. I didn't care the first time you posted that. Or when you posted it today. And if you post the same thing tomorrow I won't care then.
My disinterest in your attempts to make me use the quote button is as boundless as the ocean.
Without commuters paying peak fares – particularly into London – then it’s hard to see how the sector could survive without serious cuts, given that significantly increased subsidies are likely to be off the table for a government that will need to rein in its budget deficit.
The government has something of a problem. Usage of National Rail is about a 1/3 of what it normally is:
Passengers pay c.£10 billion a year. Let's assume that those travelling at the moment are paying quite a lot less than the normal average (i.e. no one will buy a first class ticket, those travelling are probably more local, fewer tickets purchased for business use). Let's say that the government is getting around £2 billion a year (and we're assuming that August usage is maintained - it might be propped up by a higher share of leisure travel).
So as David says, the subsidy goes from £4.5 billion a year to £12.5 billion a year. But what can the government do other than pay it? The people using the trains are people who have to go to work. They are key workers. There would be a huge backlash if the government starts cutting services.
Oh, and one other thing. HS2. How can the government justify ploughing on with that whilst closing existing railways? They can't.
The Government can save some money by reducing the frequency of services, particularly at peak times - indeed, if we arrive in a situation where flexible working means that the remaining passenger journeys are much more spread out during the day, then I can see the entire peak/off-peak divide being tossed in the dustbin.
Certainly it's going to take a couple of years for such changes to come into effect: all those who had to endure the great TSGN timetabling disaster of 2018 will be all too acutely aware of the need to manage these things properly. But it must surely happen?
As for HS2, I think the London to Birmingham section will end up being built in full, for several reasons. Firstly, it's already underway so this Government has to deal with it (whereas the branches to the North can be placed under review and booted into the long grass for the next Prime Minister to worry about.) Secondly, it's being used as much as a means to dole out contracts to the construction industry and maintain and develop skills as it is to build infrastructure, and this arguably becomes a greater priority for Government during a recession. Thirdly, there will be the usual concerns about sunk costs involved in abandoning any partially completed project. Finally, the Tory West Midlands metro-mayor is an enthusiast for the scheme and is up for re-election next May.
However, I seriously doubt if the remainder of HS2 will ever get built.
And that leaves Johnson's levelling up with the North in tatters.
Nonsense. If there really is a WFH revolution, cities and towns won't be competing on proximity to London anymore, it will be on crime, livability, beauty, amenities, surrounding countryside, airports, and price. That will level up the North.
As a Northerner by birth, and Midlander by choice, I don't think many Northern and Midland towns would score very highly on those criteria. I like Leicester, and am not planning to move away, but it is not a tourist hotspot for a reason.
That may be being unnecessarily pessimistic about parts outside the Greater South East. London is hugely expensive and much of it is a complete shithole. There are plenty of nice places to live in the Home Counties but they're also very costly to buy into.
There is a reason why we hear reports of estate agents in Manchester getting a lot of enquiries from worried Hongkongers with BN(O) passports. They are not stupid and know a good deal when they see one.
My guess is that places on a train line within 60-90 minutes of London will see a surge of interest from younger people looking to start families/get on the property ladder who will end up doing one or two days a week down at HQ and the rest WFH. Some of our lot are looking at this right now. The political consequences of changing demographics in such places will be interesting.
It will. Fast forward ten or twenty years and we may find that great swathes of the South-East will have become marginals or fallen to Labour, whilst the Conservatives will have wiped Labour out in much of what's left of its former Northern strongholds.
If we had enough constituency level demographic data then it would probably be possible to accurately predict the outcome in the bulk of seats by plugging a few numbers into a formula: the percentage of voters from various ethnic minority groups, the median age of the electorate, the percentage of voters identifying primarily as British, and the percentage of voters who have a university degree. It's entirely possible that future General Elections will see Labour swapping seats in County Durham for others in Surrey.
I'm not so sure about this. Young people become more conservative as they get older, and their values can evolve too. They will become more concerned about car and home ownership and family responsibilities and conserving the look and feel of their local areas.
Remember: the radical flower-power hippies of the 1960s are the ultra-Boomers of today.
That doesn't map to France where the radical students of the 60s are now far more left wing than the general population.
The flower power hippies were a tiny proportion of the population.
Are they? French people in their 60s and 70s are far more left wing? I can see they prefer Macron to Le Pen more but are they just more 'conservative" because Macron and the current social welfare system works for them, and they fear Le Pen would be too revolutionary?
Of course hippies were a tiny percentage of the population but social attitudes changed massively in the 60s amongst that generation and not many were voting Tory at the time.
Melenchon (not to self check spelling) was the choice of the oldies in France.
Interesting that the New Statesman stopped accepting comments on its articles in 2012. Maybe this was an indication that a lot of things they didn't like — like Brexit, Trump, 3 Tory election victories — were going to happen in the near future.
Their solution was to try and silence those they considered "populist" in the hope they'd therefore would go away.
It didn't work because they were just sticking their fingers in their ears and not bothering to try and understand the real issues that underlay it. It's actually a sign of the lack of confidence they had in their own ideas to convince and the contempt they held for those not already of their ilk who had the audacity to disagree with them.
I doubt that it had much to do with not liking comments from the populist right in the case of the New Statesman. The far-left may have been more of an issue, espoecially with regards to Israel, and concerns about potential legal liability for what was posted.
If it's about liability then that's different, but I don't think that was the argument being put in that article.
Also, please don't call me Mr Battery, I've asked you before to call me Horse and it's disrespectful to keep ignoring what I've kindly asked you to do.
🤣
Hope you're well Casino_Royale.
The full name?
You sound like my mum.
Any derivates of your handle are okay? Hmm, how about Cassie?
I see Rotterdam and Amsterdam are stopping the requirement for mask wearing after only a few weeks. Odd as apparently they work so well as demonstrated by the two countries where mask wearing is most prevalent in Europe France and Spain. It’s not like they have by far the highest number of new infections.
It’s those not wearing masks when required that have driven up the infection rates, get back under your stone and stop posting the same crap every day.
What is crap in what I posted? Perhaps you can explain why Amsterdam and Rotterdam have removed the requirement for masks.
Horse, I forgot about that request regarding your name. It was a genuine error.
You continuing to annoy and pester me is a deliberate and repeated choice. Let me make this plain: I don't care that you dislike that I don't use the quote button. I didn't care the first time you posted that. Or when you posted it today. And if you post the same thing tomorrow I won't care then.
My disinterest in your attempts to make me use the quote button is as boundless as the ocean.
That's okay, I understand about the name.
The quote thing is more frustrating because I don't have a clue what you're responding to, most of your comments are interesting but I don't have a clue what you're going on about I'm afraid. It's odd you won't use it, very odd indeed but we all have odd quirks.
If anyone has felt disrespected by my calling them mate I do apologise and if you let me know what you'd prefer to be called, please do so and I will listen.
It's only fair if I wish to be called Horse - as I've explained before Mr makes me feel like you're putting me above yourself and I'm below most of you in knowledge and experience - that I call you by your preferred name.
Mr. Dancer appears to have adopted (for reasons best known to himself) the modes of address of the Victorians. I don’t believe he’s trying to disrespect you or anyone else.
Eschewing use of the quote button is part and parcel of that.
If anyone has felt disrespected by my calling them mate I do apologise and if you let me know what you'd prefer to be called, please do so and I will listen.
It's only fair if I wish to be called Horse - as I've explained before Mr makes me feel like you're putting me above yourself and I'm below most of you in knowledge and experience - that I call you by your preferred name.
I can't tell if you're joking or not but - if you're not - since this is obviously not your real name (at least.. I really hope for your sake it isn't) then why does it matter?
I couldn't care less if I'm called Casino, Mr. Royale or any other derivative. It's not my name. It's an internet ID.
I do care if someone personally insults me or swears at me but that's different.
It's the Mr I'd prefer not to be called because to me it's like you're putting me above yourself.
It's like when I go into a shop and they start calling me Mr X, I just don't feel comfortable with it
Fair enough, I quite like it and feel very respected when addressed in that manner. It's a sign of courtesy.
If someone I don't know repeats my name time and time again (yes, I'm talking to you Starbucks and HSBC call centre) then I find it overlyfamiliar and rather irritating.
If anyone has felt disrespected by my calling them mate I do apologise and if you let me know what you'd prefer to be called, please do so and I will listen.
It's only fair if I wish to be called Horse - as I've explained before Mr makes me feel like you're putting me above yourself and I'm below most of you in knowledge and experience - that I call you by your preferred name.
I can't tell if you're joking or not but - if you're not - since this is obviously not your real name (at least.. I really hope for your sake it isn't) then why does it matter?
I couldn't care less if I'm called Casino, Mr. Royale or any other derivative. It's not my name. It's an internet ID.
I do care if someone personally insults me or swears at me but that's different.
I have a natural inclination - in the digital world only - to call people babe. I fight it though. There's the odd lapse but these days not often.
If anyone has felt disrespected by my calling them mate I do apologise and if you let me know what you'd prefer to be called, please do so and I will listen.
It's only fair if I wish to be called Horse - as I've explained before Mr makes me feel like you're putting me above yourself and I'm below most of you in knowledge and experience - that I call you by your preferred name.
I can't tell if you're joking or not but - if you're not - since this is obviously not your real name (at least.. I really hope for your sake it isn't) then why does it matter?
I couldn't care less if I'm called Casino, Mr. Royale or any other derivative. It's not my name. It's an internet ID.
I do care if someone personally insults me or swears at me but that's different.
It's the Mr I'd prefer not to be called because to me it's like you're putting me above yourself.
It's like when I go into a shop and they start calling me Mr X, I just don't feel comfortable with it
Fair enough, I quite like it and feel very respected when addressed in that manner. It's a sign of courtesy.
If someone I don't know repeats my name time and time again (yes, I'm talking to you Starbucks and HSBC call centre) then I find it overlyfamiliar and rather irritating.
Like I said, I think I'm just odd, I just don't feel comfortable with it, much rather they called me by my first name.
Equally though, it's uncomfortable for the person to be told what to cal you, so I tolerate it.
When I used to work retail we used to be told, "ask them, can I call you by your first name", which I just thought was such an inorganic question and made the interaction uncomfortable for all involved
If anyone has felt disrespected by my calling them mate I do apologise and if you let me know what you'd prefer to be called, please do so and I will listen.
It's only fair if I wish to be called Horse - as I've explained before Mr makes me feel like you're putting me above yourself and I'm below most of you in knowledge and experience - that I call you by your preferred name.
I can't tell if you're joking or not but - if you're not - since this is obviously not your real name (at least.. I really hope for your sake it isn't) then why does it matter?
I couldn't care less if I'm called Casino, Mr. Royale or any other derivative. It's not my name. It's an internet ID.
I do care if someone personally insults me or swears at me but that's different.
It's the Mr I'd prefer not to be called because to me it's like you're putting me above yourself.
It's like when I go into a shop and they start calling me Mr X, I just don't feel comfortable with it
Fair enough, I quite like it and feel very respected when addressed in that manner. It's a sign of courtesy.
If someone I don't know repeats my name time and time again (yes, I'm talking to you Starbucks and HSBC call centre) then I find it overlyfamiliar and rather irritating.
I totally agree!
Call centre operatives calling me Mr first name also annoys me....
Somewhat crass even at the time, but a friend at Uni's dad had been to the same college. When one of the Porter's addressed the friend as 'mate' he turned around and without irony said, 'He's sir to you, or nothing'. Ouch.
If anyone has felt disrespected by my calling them mate I do apologise and if you let me know what you'd prefer to be called, please do so and I will listen.
It's only fair if I wish to be called Horse - as I've explained before Mr makes me feel like you're putting me above yourself and I'm below most of you in knowledge and experience - that I call you by your preferred name.
Mr. Dancer appears to have adopted (for reasons best known to himself) the modes of address of the Victorians. I don’t believe he’s trying to disrespect you or anyone else.
Eschewing use of the quote button is part and parcel of that.
If anyone has felt disrespected by my calling them mate I do apologise and if you let me know what you'd prefer to be called, please do so and I will listen.
It's only fair if I wish to be called Horse - as I've explained before Mr makes me feel like you're putting me above yourself and I'm below most of you in knowledge and experience - that I call you by your preferred name.
I wasn't talking about you personally when I made that comment, it was a general comment.
Another problem with assuming a title e.g. Mr Eristdoof, is that you do not know whether Eritstdoof is male or female or even if that thitle is appropriate. For all you know I could be Baroness Eristdoof.
If anyone has felt disrespected by my calling them mate I do apologise and if you let me know what you'd prefer to be called, please do so and I will listen.
It's only fair if I wish to be called Horse - as I've explained before Mr makes me feel like you're putting me above yourself and I'm below most of you in knowledge and experience - that I call you by your preferred name.
I wasn't talking about you personally when I made that comment, it was a general comment.
No no but you do raise a point that could apply to me. So that is why I apologised.
Another problem with assuming a title e.g. Mr Eristdoof, is that you do not know whether Eritstdoof is male or female or even if that thitle is appropriate. For all you know I could be Baroness Eristdoof.
I'm certain Moris_Dancer checks Who's Who before commenting.
In the face of such chaotic and incompetant government, what is keeping the Conservative poll ratings afloat is in my view the unfinished business of Brexit. Referencing the last YouGov poll, the leave vote is still very solidly behind Johnson (71% v 13% for Lab), the Tories are still further ahead of Labour with C2DEs than they are with ABC1s (9% v 4%) and over 65s are still rock solid for the Conservatives (62% v 21% Lab).
We have to accept that Brexit is still the defining political issue of our generation, strong enough to supersede normal political loyalties. It is still redefining those loyalties. However, I think that once the UK has left in 2021, Brexit will be regarded as a done deal and there will scope for a quite rapid shift of loyalties as people look to the future rather than the past. The political mood appears to be as febrile as it did in John Major's latter years, and without the Brexit support crutch the Conservatives will find themselves trailing in the polls.
If anyone has felt disrespected by my calling them mate I do apologise and if you let me know what you'd prefer to be called, please do so and I will listen.
It's only fair if I wish to be called Horse - as I've explained before Mr makes me feel like you're putting me above yourself and I'm below most of you in knowledge and experience - that I call you by your preferred name.
Mr. Dancer appears to have adopted (for reasons best known to himself) the modes of address of the Victorians. I don’t believe he’s trying to disrespect you or anyone else.
Eschewing use of the quote button is part and parcel of that.
Using the verb to eschew also sounds victorian to me. It was probably meant.
Horse, I forgot about that request regarding your name. It was a genuine error.
You continuing to annoy and pester me is a deliberate and repeated choice. Let me make this plain: I don't care that you dislike that I don't use the quote button. I didn't care the first time you posted that. Or when you posted it today. And if you post the same thing tomorrow I won't care then.
My disinterest in your attempts to make me use the quote button is as boundless as the ocean.
That's okay, I understand about the name.
The quote thing is more frustrating because I don't have a clue what you're responding to, most of your comments are interesting but I don't have a clue what you're going on about I'm afraid. It's odd you won't use it, very odd indeed but we all have odd quirks.
All the best Morris_Dancer.
Mr Dancer may not use the quote button but he does usually start his post by addressing the person he is responding to - and, usually, it will be the most recent post from that person or the context of the reply will allow fairly easy identification.
Also, please don't call me Mr Battery, I've asked you before to call me Horse and it's disrespectful to keep ignoring what I've kindly asked you to do.
The very MPs who should be benefiting the most from the prime minister’s levelling-up agenda are among those who feel the most disenchanted. Their Whatsapp group, mistakenly called the 109 group to reflect the size of the new Tory intake (in fact there are 107), has been abuzz with discontent.
Also, please don't call me Mr Battery, I've asked you before to call me Horse and it's disrespectful to keep ignoring what I've kindly asked you to do.
If anyone has felt disrespected by my calling them mate I do apologise and if you let me know what you'd prefer to be called, please do so and I will listen.
It's only fair if I wish to be called Horse - as I've explained before Mr makes me feel like you're putting me above yourself and I'm below most of you in knowledge and experience - that I call you by your preferred name.
Mr. Dancer appears to have adopted (for reasons best known to himself) the modes of address of the Victorians. I don’t believe he’s trying to disrespect you or anyone else.
Eschewing use of the quote button is part and parcel of that.
Using the verb to eschew also sounds victorian to me. It was probably meant.
Well I do have a degree of fondness for the Victorian era, the novels especially.
The very MPs who should be benefiting the most from the prime minister’s levelling-up agenda are among those who feel the most disenchanted. Their Whatsapp group, mistakenly called the 109 group to reflect the size of the new Tory intake (in fact there are 107), has been abuzz with discontent.
In the face of such chaotic and incompetant government, what is keeping the Conservative poll ratings afloat is in my view the unfinished business of Brexit. Referencing the last YouGov poll, the leave vote is still very solidly behind Johnson (71% v 13% for Lab), the Tories are still further ahead of Labour with C2DEs than they are with ABC1s (9% v 4%) and over 65s are still rock solid for the Conservatives (62% v 21% Lab).
We have to accept that Brexit is still the defining political issue of our generation, strong enough to supersede normal political loyalties. It is still redefining those loyalties. However, I think that once the UK has left in 2021, Brexit will be regarded as a done deal and there will scope for a quite rapid shift of loyalties as people look to the future rather than the past. The political mood appears to be as febrile as it did in John Major's latter years, and without the Brexit support crutch the Conservatives will find themselves trailing in the polls.
We'll walk straight into an existential debate over the UK and a constitutional crisis, and a battle over those who want to tear down British heritage and those who want to preserve it.
What I will say about Starmer is that so far he's proved fairly skilled (far better than Biden, for example) at avoiding falling into the obvious elephant traps for him here.
I'm getting quite miffed with all the articles in the Mail and the Telegraph blaming the lazy workers for not going back. It is partly up to employers as well. Most companies will already have budgeted for the cost of the office but if workers go back they will need to budget for daily deep cleaning, buying partitions etc etc. Most modern offices are open plan and badly set up for social distancing.
Even when COVID is over (assuming we get a vaccine), I think most companies will move to a model of 2-3 days in the office and 2-3 at home, with smaller offices and hot desking.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned anywhere is how completely screwed the RMT is. Their strike power which led to them getting 60+k a year has completely evaporated. If the authorities have any sense, it is time to start looking at driverless tubes.
They are reflecting the prejudices of their readers, most of whom are retired and had to do the same throughout their working careers.
PS. One way to make railways more sustainable is to fully digitise operation.
We don't have nor need signalman, brakemen or firemen anymore.
There is no need for a guard either.
Signals have been massively automated already, with networks hugely simplified by the removal of points and sidings and conflicting routes (presumably why the multiple crossover at Newcastle, under the Castle tower, sadly no longer exists).
Brakemen are so C19.
Firemen are so C20.
But guards ... especially on non- commuter trains.
Guards exist to safely close and open doors, dispatch trains and make announcements.
There is none of that which can't be automated.
I don'ty commute (didn't commute). I went on long distance trains which needed train crews to deal with problems and collect ticket revenue from unstaffed/ungated stations.
On my local line, Carlisle to Newcastle, there is only one station with gates. Newcastle. No other checks tickets. Only Carlisle has staff, apart from one person at Hexham on an irregular basis. Few stations have a ticket machine, and then only one, which often is out of order, and they don't take cash. No guards equals no revenue on that line at least.
The traditional ice-breaking address by RSMs to young subaltern recruits was along the lines of "You call me 'sir' and I call you 'sir' - the difference being, you mean it and I don't."
In the face of such chaotic and incompetant government, what is keeping the Conservative poll ratings afloat is in my view the unfinished business of Brexit. Referencing the last YouGov poll, the leave vote is still very solidly behind Johnson (71% v 13% for Lab), the Tories are still further ahead of Labour with C2DEs than they are with ABC1s (9% v 4%) and over 65s are still rock solid for the Conservatives (62% v 21% Lab).
We have to accept that Brexit is still the defining political issue of our generation, strong enough to supersede normal political loyalties. It is still redefining those loyalties. However, I think that once the UK has left in 2021, Brexit will be regarded as a done deal and there will scope for a quite rapid shift of loyalties as people look to the future rather than the past. The political mood appears to be as febrile as it did in John Major's latter years, and without the Brexit support crutch the Conservatives will find themselves trailing in the polls.
We'll walk straight into an existential debate over the UK and a constitutional crisis, and a battle over those who want to tear down British heritage and those who want to preserve it.
What I will say about Starmer is that so far he's proved fairly skilled (far better than Biden, for example) at avoiding falling into the obvious elephant traps for him here.
Blair was right when he said, don't have the culture war at all, we can't win. We only lose.
Off topic, this is an article about the terrifying Straw Hat Riots in New York in 1922. Fortunately America has calmed down noticeably since, at least where men's fashion is concerned.
If anyone has felt disrespected by my calling them mate I do apologise and if you let me know what you'd prefer to be called, please do so and I will listen.
It's only fair if I wish to be called Horse - as I've explained before Mr makes me feel like you're putting me above yourself and I'm below most of you in knowledge and experience - that I call you by your preferred name.
I can't tell if you're joking or not but - if you're not - since this is obviously not your real name (at least.. I really hope for your sake it isn't) then why does it matter?
I couldn't care less if I'm called Casino, Mr. Royale or any other derivative. It's not my name. It's an internet ID.
I do care if someone personally insults me or swears at me but that's different.
It's the Mr I'd prefer not to be called because to me it's like you're putting me above yourself.
It's like when I go into a shop and they start calling me Mr X, I just don't feel comfortable with it
Fair enough, I quite like it and feel very respected when addressed in that manner. It's a sign of courtesy.
If someone I don't know repeats my name time and time again (yes, I'm talking to you Starbucks and HSBC call centre) then I find it overlyfamiliar and rather irritating.
I totally agree!
Call centre operatives calling me Mr first name also annoys me....
Somewhat crass even at the time, but a friend at Uni's dad had been to the same college. When one of the Porter's addressed the friend as 'mate' he turned around and without irony said, 'He's sir to you, or nothing'. Ouch.
Mr Firstname is common in Asia and Arabia, used to show deference when talking to someone more senior. It still annoys me after a decade and a half of living in Asia and Arabia.
In the face of such chaotic and incompetant government, what is keeping the Conservative poll ratings afloat is in my view the unfinished business of Brexit. Referencing the last YouGov poll, the leave vote is still very solidly behind Johnson (71% v 13% for Lab), the Tories are still further ahead of Labour with C2DEs than they are with ABC1s (9% v 4%) and over 65s are still rock solid for the Conservatives (62% v 21% Lab).
We have to accept that Brexit is still the defining political issue of our generation, strong enough to supersede normal political loyalties. It is still redefining those loyalties. However, I think that once the UK has left in 2021, Brexit will be regarded as a done deal and there will scope for a quite rapid shift of loyalties as people look to the future rather than the past. The political mood appears to be as febrile as it did in John Major's latter years, and without the Brexit support crutch the Conservatives will find themselves trailing in the polls.
I think somebody made the good point the other day that there is also the massive issue of Labour having elected Corbyn, and, even worse, come very close to having got him into power in 2017. Lots of voters who were frankly terrified of the prospect of him becoming Prime Minister, will take a lot of convincing that Labour might not do it again (obviously not Corbyn himself, but somebody of that ilk) but after they’ve actually got into power on a “moderate” platform. All it takes is a leadership challenge and a paltry amount of nominations from the Parliamentary party.
In the face of such chaotic and incompetant government, what is keeping the Conservative poll ratings afloat is in my view the unfinished business of Brexit. Referencing the last YouGov poll, the leave vote is still very solidly behind Johnson (71% v 13% for Lab), the Tories are still further ahead of Labour with C2DEs than they are with ABC1s (9% v 4%) and over 65s are still rock solid for the Conservatives (62% v 21% Lab).
We have to accept that Brexit is still the defining political issue of our generation, strong enough to supersede normal political loyalties. It is still redefining those loyalties. However, I think that once the UK has left in 2021, Brexit will be regarded as a done deal and there will scope for a quite rapid shift of loyalties as people look to the future rather than the past. The political mood appears to be as febrile as it did in John Major's latter years, and without the Brexit support crutch the Conservatives will find themselves trailing in the polls.
I think somebody made the good point the other day that there is also the massive issue of Labour having elected Corbyn, and, even worse, come very close to having got him into power in 2017. Lots of voters who were frankly terrified of the prospect of him becoming Prime Minister, will take a lot of convincing that Labour might not do it again (obviously not Corbyn himself, but somebody of that ilk) but after they’ve actually got into power on a “moderate” platform. All it takes is a leadership challenge and a paltry amount of nominations from the Parliamentary party.
I think this might only happen with significant action post EHRC, e.g. Corbyn getting expelled
One or two fairly predictable comments and some people finally picking up on themes and arguments I've been expounding for a while.
Let's first nail some of the more ludicrous notions with some big nails.
First, the issue is not people being scared or cowering in their homes. Social distancing (which I'm sure one or two on here would like to see ended) mean most offices can only take 30-40% of the numbers. That means either staff working in rota at the office perhaps 1-3 days per week or a core of staff working full time at the office and others working from home.
How each organisation resolves that is up to them not the Government and implying staff who work at home are "vulnerable" to dismissal was, even by this Government's abysmal standards, beneath contempt.
Second, if someone wants to work at an office, they should be able to. There should be no compulsion either way - home working isn't for everyone and I've never pretended it was. If you genuinely prefer the discipline of the commute and sitting in an office you should be bale to do so.
Third, this old nonsense about "productivity". There's a notion among some that those who work at home aren't really working at all. Clearly, if you want to be distracted, you'll find a way to be distracted whether you are in your home or at the office. Many open plan offices are hives of distraction. It's my experience those who are productive in the office are productive at home and vice versa.
When the children are back at school, many parents will find working at home even more attractive and as the weather gets worse even more so. I don't blame anyone who would rather renounce the trudge to the station or sitting in a traffic jam for the advantages of home working but nor would I compel anyone who would rather differentiate between their home and working lives to work at home.
It's not an either/or - it's a both/and or should be.
I've argued on here many times capitalism is brutal and if a swathe of jobs in support services for office workers are lost, that is regrettable but adversity creates opportunity and as some have argued, those commuter dormitory towns which were moribund during the day will enjoy a new lease of life.
The very MPs who should be benefiting the most from the prime minister’s levelling-up agenda are among those who feel the most disenchanted. Their Whatsapp group, mistakenly called the 109 group to reflect the size of the new Tory intake (in fact there are 107), has been abuzz with discontent.
From memory it depends on whether you count a couple of people who had served in Parliament before, but had not been in the 2017 Parliament, as new members or not.
Back to Corona :-) This is something I have been cogitating for the last couple of weeks, and would like the opinion of NigelB or Foxy or anyone else with a better biology background than me.
In the last couple of months we have seen big increases in the number of cases of SARS-COV2 in some countries, but the level of severe illness is much lower than expected, as measured by hospitalisations and deaths. There was speculation in the spring that the virus would not spread as quickly in summer as colds and flu are strongly seasonal. But it seems that the spread of the SARS-COV2 virus has little to do with the season.
Is it at all plausible though, that these seasonal illness viruses still spread at a similar rate but less frequently appears as an illness? It is possible that the human body is under less stress in summer and more stress in winter, due to lots of reasons: not moving from cold to warm environments several times a day, not inhailing air under 10 degrees, generally getting more exercise, sunlight and fresh air etc. If the body or in particular the immune system is under more stress then an onslaught from a virus is more likely to develop into illness.
Is it plausible that catching the virus is just as easy in summer, but this developing into a serious disease is much lower in summer and higher in winter? For most other Rhino/Corona/Flu viruses there is as good as no testing of the prevelance of the virus in the general population, so we do not really appreciate how widley cold viruses are spread in summer, and only if the immune system is under some other kind of stress does this develop into a "summer cold" which are ususally not as heavy as a winter cold.
Back to Corona :-) This is something I have been cogitating for the last couple of weeks, and would like the opinion of NigelB or Foxy or anyone else with a better biology background than me.
In the last couple of months we have seen big increases in the number of cases of SARS-COV2 in some countries, but the level of severe illness is much lower than expected, as measured by hospitalisations and deaths. There was speculation in the spring that the virus would not spread as quickly in summer as colds and flu are strongly seasonal. But it seems that the spread of the SARS-COV2 virus has little to do with the season.
Is it at all plausible though, that these seasonal illness viruses still spread at a similar rate but less frequently appears as an illness? It is possible that the human body is under less stress in summer and more stress in winter, due to lots of reasons: not moving from cold to warm environments several times a day, not inhailing air under 10 degrees, generally getting more exercise, sunlight and fresh air etc. If the body or in particular the immune system is under more stress then an onslaught from a virus is more likely to develop into illness.
Is it plausible that catching the virus is just as easy in summer, but this developing into a serious disease is much lower in summer and higher in winter? For most other Rhino/Corona/Flu viruses there is as good as no testing of the prevelance of the virus in the general population, so we do not really appreciate how widley cold viruses are spread in summer, and only if the immune system is under some other kind of stress does this develop into a "summer cold" which are ususally not as heavy as a winter cold.
I'm nowhere near an expert, but can't it be explained by the age profile of those infected being significantly younger, and nothing to do with transmission is summer vs. winter?
Off topic, this is an article about the terrifying Straw Hat Riots in New York in 1922. Fortunately America has calmed down noticeably since, at least where men's fashion is concerned.
In the face of such chaotic and incompetant government, what is keeping the Conservative poll ratings afloat is in my view the unfinished business of Brexit. Referencing the last YouGov poll, the leave vote is still very solidly behind Johnson (71% v 13% for Lab), the Tories are still further ahead of Labour with C2DEs than they are with ABC1s (9% v 4%) and over 65s are still rock solid for the Conservatives (62% v 21% Lab).
We have to accept that Brexit is still the defining political issue of our generation, strong enough to supersede normal political loyalties. It is still redefining those loyalties. However, I think that once the UK has left in 2021, Brexit will be regarded as a done deal and there will scope for a quite rapid shift of loyalties as people look to the future rather than the past. The political mood appears to be as febrile as it did in John Major's latter years, and without the Brexit support crutch the Conservatives will find themselves trailing in the polls.
We'll walk straight into an existential debate over the UK and a constitutional crisis, and a battle over those who want to tear down British heritage and those who want to preserve it.
What I will say about Starmer is that so far he's proved fairly skilled (far better than Biden, for example) at avoiding falling into the obvious elephant traps for him here.
Blair was right when he said, don't have the culture war at all, we can't win. We only lose.
Add to the long list of reasons Tony Blair won elections, and no Labour leader two decades either side of him has been able to do so.
Who are all these WFH people who are going into town for their lunch? I, like I suspect the vast majority, just go into the kitchen to make a sandwich and dip into the fruit bowl.
Where do you buy your ingredients for the sandwich and the fruit? From shops in your market town whereas before you would not have needed to buy lunch for the week from there as you would have bought lunch in the city centre
In the face of such chaotic and incompetant government, what is keeping the Conservative poll ratings afloat is in my view the unfinished business of Brexit. Referencing the last YouGov poll, the leave vote is still very solidly behind Johnson (71% v 13% for Lab), the Tories are still further ahead of Labour with C2DEs than they are with ABC1s (9% v 4%) and over 65s are still rock solid for the Conservatives (62% v 21% Lab).
We have to accept that Brexit is still the defining political issue of our generation, strong enough to supersede normal political loyalties. It is still redefining those loyalties. However, I think that once the UK has left in 2021, Brexit will be regarded as a done deal and there will scope for a quite rapid shift of loyalties as people look to the future rather than the past. The political mood appears to be as febrile as it did in John Major's latter years, and without the Brexit support crutch the Conservatives will find themselves trailing in the polls.
I think somebody made the good point the other day that there is also the massive issue of Labour having elected Corbyn, and, even worse, come very close to having got him into power in 2017. Lots of voters who were frankly terrified of the prospect of him becoming Prime Minister, will take a lot of convincing that Labour might not do it again (obviously not Corbyn himself, but somebody of that ilk) but after they’ve actually got into power on a “moderate” platform. All it takes is a leadership challenge and a paltry amount of nominations from the Parliamentary party.
I don't think that more than a handful of the electorate might entertain that risible idea, excluding those whose perspective is clouded by the reality that they would never have voted Labour in a month of Sundays.
In the face of such chaotic and incompetant government, what is keeping the Conservative poll ratings afloat is in my view the unfinished business of Brexit. Referencing the last YouGov poll, the leave vote is still very solidly behind Johnson (71% v 13% for Lab), the Tories are still further ahead of Labour with C2DEs than they are with ABC1s (9% v 4%) and over 65s are still rock solid for the Conservatives (62% v 21% Lab).
We have to accept that Brexit is still the defining political issue of our generation, strong enough to supersede normal political loyalties. It is still redefining those loyalties. However, I think that once the UK has left in 2021, Brexit will be regarded as a done deal and there will scope for a quite rapid shift of loyalties as people look to the future rather than the past. The political mood appears to be as febrile as it did in John Major's latter years, and without the Brexit support crutch the Conservatives will find themselves trailing in the polls.
We'll walk straight into an existential debate over the UK and a constitutional crisis, and a battle over those who want to tear down British heritage and those who want to preserve it.
What I will say about Starmer is that so far he's proved fairly skilled (far better than Biden, for example) at avoiding falling into the obvious elephant traps for him here.
Blair was right when he said, don't have the culture war at all, we can't win. We only lose.
Add to the long list of reasons Tony Blair won elections, and no Labour leader two decades either side of him has been able to do so.
Yet. Yes, Starmer is indeed capable of avoiding elephant traps.
Off topic, this is an article about the terrifying Straw Hat Riots in New York in 1922. Fortunately America has calmed down noticeably since, at least where men's fashion is concerned.
Who are all these WFH people who are going into town for their lunch? I, like I suspect the vast majority, just go into the kitchen to make a sandwich and dip into the fruit bowl.
Isn't that what people do in offices ? Or are there two types of office worker ?
Back to Corona :-) This is something I have been cogitating for the last couple of weeks, and would like the opinion of NigelB or Foxy or anyone else with a better biology background than me.
In the last couple of months we have seen big increases in the number of cases of SARS-COV2 in some countries, but the level of severe illness is much lower than expected, as measured by hospitalisations and deaths. There was speculation in the spring that the virus would not spread as quickly in summer as colds and flu are strongly seasonal. But it seems that the spread of the SARS-COV2 virus has little to do with the season.
Is it at all plausible though, that these seasonal illness viruses still spread at a similar rate but less frequently appears as an illness? It is possible that the human body is under less stress in summer and more stress in winter, due to lots of reasons: not moving from cold to warm environments several times a day, not inhailing air under 10 degrees, generally getting more exercise, sunlight and fresh air etc. If the body or in particular the immune system is under more stress then an onslaught from a virus is more likely to develop into illness.
Is it plausible that catching the virus is just as easy in summer, but this developing into a serious disease is much lower in summer and higher in winter? For most other Rhino/Corona/Flu viruses there is as good as no testing of the prevelance of the virus in the general population, so we do not really appreciate how widley cold viruses are spread in summer, and only if the immune system is under some other kind of stress does this develop into a "summer cold" which are ususally not as heavy as a winter cold.
I'm nowhere near an expert, but can't it be explained by the age profile of those infected being significantly younger, and nothing to do with transmission is summer vs. winter?
The reduction in fatality rate may be caused by the death of what is bleakly called 'dry tinder' in the spring/early summer. Frail, very old, major complications, often in care homes and so on. To be blunt they possibly only had months to live. Obviously not very nice to think in these stark terms, but it may be the medical reality.
If anyone has felt disrespected by my calling them mate I do apologise and if you let me know what you'd prefer to be called, please do so and I will listen.
It's only fair if I wish to be called Horse - as I've explained before Mr makes me feel like you're putting me above yourself and I'm below most of you in knowledge and experience - that I call you by your preferred name.
I can't tell if you're joking or not but - if you're not - since this is obviously not your real name (at least.. I really hope for your sake it isn't) then why does it matter?
I couldn't care less if I'm called Casino, Mr. Royale or any other derivative. It's not my name. It's an internet ID.
I do care if someone personally insults me or swears at me but that's different.
It's the Mr I'd prefer not to be called because to me it's like you're putting me above yourself.
It's like when I go into a shop and they start calling me Mr X, I just don't feel comfortable with it
Fair enough, I quite like it and feel very respected when addressed in that manner. It's a sign of courtesy.
If someone I don't know repeats my name time and time again (yes, I'm talking to you Starbucks and HSBC call centre) then I find it overlyfamiliar and rather irritating.
I totally agree!
Call centre operatives calling me Mr first name also annoys me....
Somewhat crass even at the time, but a friend at Uni's dad had been to the same college. When one of the Porter's addressed the friend as 'mate' he turned around and without irony said, 'He's sir to you, or nothing'. Ouch.
Mr Firstname is common in Asia and Arabia, used to show deference when talking to someone more senior. It still annoys me after a decade and a half of living in Asia and Arabia.
One or two fairly predictable comments and some people finally picking up on themes and arguments I've been expounding for a while.
Let's first nail some of the more ludicrous notions with some big nails.
First, the issue is not people being scared or cowering in their homes. Social distancing (which I'm sure one or two on here would like to see ended) mean most offices can only take 30-40% of the numbers. That means either staff working in rota at the office perhaps 1-3 days per week or a core of staff working full time at the office and others working from home.
There might be a difference between business in different sectors and possibly areas of the country as to how office space is used.
There are 100% of people working at the offices where I am employed with only minor modifications - some screening between desks, office doors open, one at a time in the kitchen, more flexitime.
If anyone has felt disrespected by my calling them mate I do apologise and if you let me know what you'd prefer to be called, please do so and I will listen.
It's only fair if I wish to be called Horse - as I've explained before Mr makes me feel like you're putting me above yourself and I'm below most of you in knowledge and experience - that I call you by your preferred name.
If we all just refer to each other as 'Comrade' then I'm sure that will not upset anyone, comrade.
In the face of such chaotic and incompetant government, what is keeping the Conservative poll ratings afloat is in my view the unfinished business of Brexit. Referencing the last YouGov poll, the leave vote is still very solidly behind Johnson (71% v 13% for Lab), the Tories are still further ahead of Labour with C2DEs than they are with ABC1s (9% v 4%) and over 65s are still rock solid for the Conservatives (62% v 21% Lab).
We have to accept that Brexit is still the defining political issue of our generation, strong enough to supersede normal political loyalties. It is still redefining those loyalties. However, I think that once the UK has left in 2021, Brexit will be regarded as a done deal and there will scope for a quite rapid shift of loyalties as people look to the future rather than the past. The political mood appears to be as febrile as it did in John Major's latter years, and without the Brexit support crutch the Conservatives will find themselves trailing in the polls.
I think somebody made the good point the other day that there is also the massive issue of Labour having elected Corbyn, and, even worse, come very close to having got him into power in 2017. Lots of voters who were frankly terrified of the prospect of him becoming Prime Minister, will take a lot of convincing that Labour might not do it again (obviously not Corbyn himself, but somebody of that ilk) but after they’ve actually got into power on a “moderate” platform. All it takes is a leadership challenge and a paltry amount of nominations from the Parliamentary party.
I don't think that more than a handful of the electorate might entertain that risible idea, excluding those whose perspective is clouded by the reality that they would never have voted Labour in a month of Sundays.
Enthusiastic Conservative supporters on here thinking the spectre of Corbyn will save them from their electoral Waterloo, haven't understood how bleak the uncertainty we are about to encounter could become.
It might, but the article could just be wishful thinking on the part of The Daily Telegraph.
Although this makes a decent point:
"In 1972, Richard Nixon, a president less loved than perhaps even Donald Trump, managed to win his second term in a landslide by campaigning against crime and social decay.
Who knows what will happen in this mad year, but the widespread sense of BLM anarchy has given Trump's campaign an impetus it had hitherto lacked."
Who are all these WFH people who are going into town for their lunch? I, like I suspect the vast majority, just go into the kitchen to make a sandwich and dip into the fruit bowl.
Isn't that what people do in offices ? Or are there two types of office worker ?
There seems to be.
In my world sandwiches come from the supermarket and coffee is made in the kitchen.
Nonsense. If there really is a WFH revolution, cities and towns won't be competing on proximity to London anymore, it will be on crime, livability, beauty, amenities, surrounding countryside, airports, and price. That will level up the North.
I agree, though people might also start thinking about the weather as well, in which case Scotland and the north are screwed.
*gloriously sunny Devon gives a big smug wave*
Weather in Scotland is just fine and you can have a much better lifestyle, better scenery , more countryside , golf , etc. Fishing has obviously never been to Scotland.
Comments
The obvious benefits to stopping comments are:
1) You save on moderation costs
2) The discussion goes off to social media instead, which is more likely to send you traffic than an argument among people who are already there
The public are totally losing faith in the government.
Why wouldn;t they when voters are at once being terrorised by Hanock on Corona, at at the same time being screamed at by Johnson to go back to work?
However French pensioners still preferred Macron to the far right and Le Pen, with Macron winning 70% of 60 to 69 year olds to 30% for Le Pen and 78% of over 70s to 22% for Le Pen in the second round run off
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_French_presidential_election
It's only fair if I wish to be called Horse - as I've explained before Mr makes me feel like you're putting me above yourself and I'm below most of you in knowledge and experience - that I call you by your preferred name.
The Guardian, to it's credit, decided to keep it going.
The wider situation [edit] was manifested in Scotland by the way in which the 'cybernat' terminology was very heavily pushed by the Scottish journalistic establishment to try and discredit the non-unionist thinking. Yet that thinking was poorly represented by the mainstream media especially after the Scotsman and Herals went full-on unionist about the same time.
I couldn't care less if I'm called Casino, Mr. Royale or any other derivative. It's not my name. It's an internet ID.
I do care if someone personally insults me or swears at me but that's different.
When I'm canvassing its Sir, Madam, or Miss - if not Mr/Mrs when the names are known. On the odd occasion I've helped friends out behind bars/waiting on, its been the same.
'Mate' is a certain way to prevent any tips from Mr Mortimer....
It's like when I go into a shop and they start calling me Mr X, I just don't feel comfortable with it
I get that it's rather sterile and not much fun when it's all automated.
But that's why we have heritage railways. Business is business and we need to do what's necessary to keep railways sustainable and open.
And at the moment, local government has very little capacity indeed, and central government is in what seems to be a state of denial.
If I was a backbencher my letter would be written with just the date to follow most likely in the early new year.
Boris has lost his mojo and USP
You sound like my mum.
You continuing to annoy and pester me is a deliberate and repeated choice. Let me make this plain: I don't care that you dislike that I don't use the quote button. I didn't care the first time you posted that. Or when you posted it today. And if you post the same thing tomorrow I won't care then.
My disinterest in your attempts to make me use the quote button is as boundless as the ocean.
Edit: I might be talking total cock here. Ignore.
The quote thing is more frustrating because I don't have a clue what you're responding to, most of your comments are interesting but I don't have a clue what you're going on about I'm afraid. It's odd you won't use it, very odd indeed but we all have odd quirks.
All the best Morris_Dancer.
Eschewing use of the quote button is part and parcel of that.
If someone I don't know repeats my name time and time again (yes, I'm talking to you Starbucks and HSBC call centre) then I find it overlyfamiliar and rather irritating.
Equally though, it's uncomfortable for the person to be told what to cal you, so I tolerate it.
When I used to work retail we used to be told, "ask them, can I call you by your first name", which I just thought was such an inorganic question and made the interaction uncomfortable for all involved
Call centre operatives calling me Mr first name also annoys me....
Somewhat crass even at the time, but a friend at Uni's dad had been to the same college. When one of the Porter's addressed the friend as 'mate' he turned around and without irony said, 'He's sir to you, or nothing'. Ouch.
https://enormo-haddock.blogspot.com/2020/08/belgium-pre-qualifying-2020.html
No tip, but a surprising amount of off-track news.
We have to accept that Brexit is still the defining political issue of our generation, strong enough to supersede normal political loyalties. It is still redefining those loyalties. However, I think that once the UK has left in 2021, Brexit will be regarded as a done deal and there will scope for a quite rapid shift of loyalties as people look to the future rather than the past. The political mood appears to be as febrile as it did in John Major's latter years, and without the Brexit support crutch the Conservatives will find themselves trailing in the polls.
Nobody thought we were electing a Churchill
Maths is obviously not their strong point
What I will say about Starmer is that so far he's proved fairly skilled (far better than Biden, for example) at avoiding falling into the obvious elephant traps for him here.
No other checks tickets. Only Carlisle has staff, apart from one person at Hexham on an irregular basis. Few stations have a ticket machine, and then only one, which often is out of order, and they don't take cash.
No guards equals no revenue on that line at least.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_Hat_Riot
One or two fairly predictable comments and some people finally picking up on themes and arguments I've been expounding for a while.
Let's first nail some of the more ludicrous notions with some big nails.
First, the issue is not people being scared or cowering in their homes. Social distancing (which I'm sure one or two on here would like to see ended) mean most offices can only take 30-40% of the numbers. That means either staff working in rota at the office perhaps 1-3 days per week or a core of staff working full time at the office and others working from home.
How each organisation resolves that is up to them not the Government and implying staff who work at home are "vulnerable" to dismissal was, even by this Government's abysmal standards, beneath contempt.
Second, if someone wants to work at an office, they should be able to. There should be no compulsion either way - home working isn't for everyone and I've never pretended it was. If you genuinely prefer the discipline of the commute and sitting in an office you should be bale to do so.
Third, this old nonsense about "productivity". There's a notion among some that those who work at home aren't really working at all. Clearly, if you want to be distracted, you'll find a way to be distracted whether you are in your home or at the office. Many open plan offices are hives of distraction. It's my experience those who are productive in the office are productive at home and vice versa.
When the children are back at school, many parents will find working at home even more attractive and as the weather gets worse even more so. I don't blame anyone who would rather renounce the trudge to the station or sitting in a traffic jam for the advantages of home working but nor would I compel anyone who would rather differentiate between their home and working lives to work at home.
It's not an either/or - it's a both/and or should be.
I've argued on here many times capitalism is brutal and if a swathe of jobs in support services for office workers are lost, that is regrettable but adversity creates opportunity and as some have argued, those commuter dormitory towns which were moribund during the day will enjoy a new lease of life.
Nobody works for 8 hours a day, productively 100% of that time, it is impossible. I would suggest it's more like 4-6 hours of productive work.
I believe for our company we worked out two hours a day are lost due to all manner of things
Semantics, not mathematics.
This is something I have been cogitating for the last couple of weeks, and would like the opinion of NigelB or Foxy or anyone else with a better biology background than me.
In the last couple of months we have seen big increases in the number of cases of SARS-COV2 in some countries, but the level of severe illness is much lower than expected, as measured by hospitalisations and deaths. There was speculation in the spring that the virus would not spread as quickly in summer as colds and flu are strongly seasonal. But it seems that the spread of the SARS-COV2 virus has little to do with the season.
Is it at all plausible though, that these seasonal illness viruses still spread at a similar rate but less frequently appears as an illness? It is possible that the human body is under less stress in summer and more stress in winter, due to lots of reasons: not moving from cold to warm environments several times a day, not inhailing air under 10 degrees, generally getting more exercise, sunlight and fresh air etc. If the body or in particular the immune system is under more stress then an onslaught from a virus is more likely to develop into illness.
Is it plausible that catching the virus is just as easy in summer, but this developing into a serious disease is much lower in summer and higher in winter? For most other Rhino/Corona/Flu viruses there is as good as no testing of the prevelance of the virus in the general population, so we do not really appreciate how widley cold viruses are spread in summer, and only if the immune system is under some other kind of stress does this develop into a "summer cold" which are ususally not as heavy as a winter cold.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/08/28/democrats-embrace-blm-may-monumentally-backfire/
Stopped clock
Nor, indeed, of the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_speech_levels
There are 100% of people working at the offices where I am employed with only minor modifications - some screening between desks, office doors open, one at a time in the kitchen, more flexitime.
"In 1972, Richard Nixon, a president less loved than perhaps even Donald Trump, managed to win his second term in a landslide by campaigning against crime and social decay.
Who knows what will happen in this mad year, but the widespread sense of BLM anarchy has given Trump's campaign an impetus it had hitherto lacked."
In my world sandwiches come from the supermarket and coffee is made in the kitchen.
Spending £5 on each seems to be an urban thing.