This is what Johnson said about the Single Market during the campaign:
What we want is for Britain to be like many other countries in having free-trade access to the territory covered by the Single Market – but not to be subject to the vast, growing and politically-driven empire of EU law.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
Of course it’s been deferring to authority. We STILL have not received anything resembling a cost benefit analysis of the measures taken, either individually or in totality.
Cyclefree has repeatedly pointed out some of the contradictions and absurdities in the measures. And we should not forget that as many as 40% of the country ended up catching this virus inside one year anyway. So it is very reasonable to ask whether it was necessary or effective to do x,y and z, without trite comparisons to wearing a seatbelt, for which there is excellent supporting evidence by the way.
We have 120 years of data for seatbelts.
My PB pedantry senses tingling. Seatbelts might have been invented in the 19th century but were only introduced to cars in the very late 1940's. Its an interesting thing though. Seatbelts demonstrably save lives (pace Princess Diana). We believe that mask and social distancing work, but the actual data is lacking and hard to generate anyway. It might be that mask use is very important on trains and planes, but much less so in shops for instance. or there might be a threshold of community rates of covid that means masks are useful, but below that there is little or no effect in most situations. FWIW I think we are at that point now.
The other thing to think about is marginal cost. The marginal cost of wearing a mask is very low - both to the individual and the social/economic system around them.
I'm not sure of this. On holiday in Wales I was seriously fed up having to wear a mask in shops etc. I hate it. It puts me off from browsing and shopping in general. I think there is a danger that it reduces the extent to which people do things, and that will affect the economy. The same could be true of needing to take lateral flow tests days before attending say a football match. It will deter the casual fan. There is also the danger of keeping a population more scared than they need to be.
Indeed. Malmesbury is wrong about this. Most people loathe masks, but have considered them a necessary evil. Sure, some people may be fine with them, but they are in the minority I think.
I hate the damn things. Inclined to wear them on the tube (although tbh I wouldn’t be heartbroken if I never went on the tube again) but otherwise no one round her is wearing them.
It's also amusing that people are still treating Hartlepool as a *possible* Con gain rather than an absolute dead certainty.
If the Tories can gain a seat in a by-election while in Government it will be a shock, not a certainty. It would also signal about 15 more Labour-held seats as probable Tory gains next time, which gives a baseline of a Tory majority of 110 going into the next election.
My money is where my mouth is, I've bet on a Labour hold.
Like I said — amusing.
We'll see. If I'm wrong I'll lose some money, but I'll be happy to take 110 majority as a baseline going into the next election before swing.
Is that seriously what you think?
Not exactly because uniform swing doesn't apply and Hartlepool is somewhat of a 'special case' because of the ridiculously high Brexit Party vote.
But generally for the next election I expect nothing other than a repeat of 2019, based on the current status quo.
That's the point though, I don't think its possible to say that the Brexit Party vote are Tories in exile. They're far more likely to be Labour in exile "neverTories" who were not prepared to vote Tory, even to "Get Brexit Done".
If constituencies with a very high Brexit Party vote is split about 2:1 then that switches Hartlepool from red to blue - but Hartlepool is not a "special case" it is one of 15 seats like this. It would also switch 14 other constituencies too. There are 15 constituencies across the country that would fall to the blue team like Hartlepool if high BXP splits that way.
Perhaps you're right, perhaps high BXP will split Tory and not as I think be "neverTories" but if so then that's setting a baseline of 110 majority that should be in the Tory column without any other swings just from squeezing BXP next time.
I'd expect Labour, under Starmer, to win some metropolitan liberal elite seats in the south to make up for the further loss in the North — leading us back to 2019.
I also expect Labour to make gains in the South too. Quite frankly there are some long-held Tory areas that the Tories deserve to lose due to pandering to NIMBYism and meaning that people can't afford their own homes. If that means the likes of IDS lose their seat then I can live with that.
If that balances out net to another 2019 style result but IDS and other southern MPs replaced with Northern ones then even better.
A clueless post.
If the Tories concrete all over the greenbelt and homecounties they will not just lose Remain voting areas of London like Chingford to Labour, they will lose dozens of Home Counties seats which they have lost to the LDs at council level now over anti development to the LDs too from Chelmsford and Esher and Walton to Tunbridge Wells and Wantage and Witney and Henley.
It is fine for you in the North, you have very low density and vast amounts of countryside still left and no commuter belt the size of London's so you do not need to worry, in the South, particularly here in the South East, we are far more densely populated and want to preserve the countryside and fields we have to remain livable.
Yes our housing is more expensive but that is a product of living in the London commuter belt, we can build some more affordable housing in brownbelt areas but housing will always be cheaper in the North and Midlands so if you still cannot afford to buy in London and the South then move to the Midlands or North
'If you can't afford to buy a house in the South because we won't let them get built then you should move.'
Once again I'm ashamed to be in the same party as you. I believe in the free market and the free market can solve the housing crisis if we deregulate planning, you do not.
HYUFD is right and you are wrong. No one wants a free for all that turns the SE into a rainy, grey English version of Los Angeles' sprawl. It would be wildly unpopular, and in the end self-defeating, as people would flee this dystopia. By that time it would be too late as we would have tarmacked the entire southern half of the country
What's wrong with Los Angeles? Inner city Los Angeles has its problems sure, just like inner city London does.
But across "Greater Los Angeles" there is a population density of 212/km^2. That's half the English average. Across that region houses are bigger, have bigger gardens, more green spaces where people live. What of that is objectionable? When people are having to live in extortionate flatshares because of a lack of available housing, what part of more, bigger houses with gardens and green space do you find to be a dystopia?
Besides the thing with the free market that works is if people don't want it, the market won't provide it in general.
There is already a sprawl across the Southeast that already exists. What doesn't exist is sufficient housing for the people living there, nor much in the way for many people of gardens etc.
Some parts of LA are very nice, large parts of the endless suburbs are horrible, saved only and partly by the glorious climate
It's also bad for health. Dense walkable cities are the ideal, endless burbs where everyone drives simply create more obesity
If you want to live in one of the most densely populated areas of Europe - SE England - you have to accept it is unlikely you will get a garden, unless you are rich or lucky. It's a trade off. We all have to make them, all the time
Besides, your argument is pointless. No party will ever adopt this policy, because it would be massively unpopular. The Tories are already pushing the boundaries now, and meeting resistance
You say it would be massively unpopular but the Tories have pushed this policy up here in the North - and are reaping the rewards as a result as red seats turn blue once people are able to own their own home.
If NIMBYism leads to the South being mostly renting instead of owner occupiers it will switch red and it will deserve to do so too. That's already happened in London and it is spreading out from there as people get priced out of the market.
So no it won't be unpopular, not long term. What is unpopular in the long term is ensuring people have no choice but to be tenants.
No, that was mainly because of Corbyn and Brexit and the desire to get Brexit done.
The Tories lost 13 seats in 2017 and gained 48 seats in 2019, there was not a vast increase in home ownership in the North in those 2 years and in fact here in Epping Forest we have one of the safest Tory seats nationally already with 64% voting Tory in 2019 but at local level the LDs are making inroads because of opposition to new development.
In London we do have a problem because most Londoners now rent and vote Labour but that means it is London where most of the new affordable housing should be built in brownbelt there as it is London where we have the biggest shortage of homeowning Tory voters
You're 100% wrong.
The North, as those of us who live or lived here from across the political spectrum like myself, Gallowgate and RochdalePioneers can confirm, has been absolutely abuzz for the past decade in construction.
The trend from red to blue did not begin in 2019 and wasn't simply a Brexit factor (which is why its not fading away now), the trend has been going on for the past decade and predates Brexit. It will continue too.
Home ownership rates in the north and south are reversing, political allegiances are too as a result.
Your I'm Alright Jackboots selfishness in suggesting that building should only happen in London when there isn't the brownfield space to build enough homes in London for the people who need them is disgusting.
No, I am right.
70% of white British in the East and 72% of those who live in the South East already own their own homes, actually higher than the 66% in Yorkshire, 62% in the North East (and 50% of BME North Easterners) and 67% in the North West who own their own homes.
Only in London is the home ownership rate lower than in the North with only 62% of white British Londoners and just 35% of BME Londoners owning their own home.
If you exclude London from being part of the South East. 🤦♂️🙄
And anyway my point was the trends. Home ownership was very high in the south but is falling. Home ownership was lower in the north but is rising. The trend is the difference.
London is not part of the South East no, it is overspill from Londoners looking for cheaper properties they can buy in the South East which is creating the demand for development here as not enough new affordable housing to buy is being built in London
It is absolutely farcical to say that London is not part of the South East and very large numbers of people live in what you'd call the South East and commute in to London.
Your argument is like suggesting that Liverpool and Manchester are not a part of the Northwest.
London is a global city of 8.9 million people, the entire Northwest (including Liverpool and Manchester) only has 7.3 million people
Another problem with high-rise in the UK is that we don't build enough car parking. This will become even more of a problem when electric cars become common place.
Any high-rise should include secure underground car parking and space for at least 2 vehicles per unit.
High-rise is mainly sensible in cities and large towns, and the solution there is good public transport rather than lots of car parking, because having a car in a city tends to take longer to get anywhere. When I lived in Holloway there was no parking allowance, so I sold my car and normally used the Tube to get around, which was usually fine. If I wanted to drive for some reason (e.g. a visit to someone outside London) I rented a car for the period.
Now I'm in godalming I have a car again. I wish I didn't need to, but the bus service runs twice a day...
You still need someone capable of driving a car. And they have to stay alert while doing nothing, which is far harder than just driving the damned car yourself.
Duh. They will fix that.
At one point every car had a man in front of it with a flag, because cars weren't trusted. Your discourse is on about that level
AI is going to change everything, this is just one aspect.
Most trains could operate without drivers tomorrow, the Docklands Light Railway has never had drivers, no one minds
Sure but why would we need cars when we can all get around on Marty McFly's flying hoverboard anyway?
Owning your own car gives you freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want, on the open road. As cars become environmentally friendly there is no excuse not to be having more roads, more cars anymore. Cars are the future.
Think harder. You will be able to order up a self drive electric car (the way you order an Uber now), and it will take you wherever you wanna go, and drop you off. The car will then disappear to service the next customer. No hassle parking, no traffic jams, no pollution, no accidents, no dead people, no flattened badgers, much cheaper than owning, for the huge majority of people this will be superior, and it will benefit cities intensely, as I have outlined.
Owning a car will, as I have also said, probably become an exorbitant luxury for a tiny elite, a status symbol - as keeping a horse is today, when once they were universal
It's also amusing that people are still treating Hartlepool as a *possible* Con gain rather than an absolute dead certainty.
If the Tories can gain a seat in a by-election while in Government it will be a shock, not a certainty. It would also signal about 15 more Labour-held seats as probable Tory gains next time, which gives a baseline of a Tory majority of 110 going into the next election.
My money is where my mouth is, I've bet on a Labour hold.
Like I said — amusing.
We'll see. If I'm wrong I'll lose some money, but I'll be happy to take 110 majority as a baseline going into the next election before swing.
Is that seriously what you think?
Not exactly because uniform swing doesn't apply and Hartlepool is somewhat of a 'special case' because of the ridiculously high Brexit Party vote.
But generally for the next election I expect nothing other than a repeat of 2019, based on the current status quo.
That's the point though, I don't think its possible to say that the Brexit Party vote are Tories in exile. They're far more likely to be Labour in exile "neverTories" who were not prepared to vote Tory, even to "Get Brexit Done".
If constituencies with a very high Brexit Party vote is split about 2:1 then that switches Hartlepool from red to blue - but Hartlepool is not a "special case" it is one of 15 seats like this. It would also switch 14 other constituencies too. There are 15 constituencies across the country that would fall to the blue team like Hartlepool if high BXP splits that way.
Perhaps you're right, perhaps high BXP will split Tory and not as I think be "neverTories" but if so then that's setting a baseline of 110 majority that should be in the Tory column without any other swings just from squeezing BXP next time.
I'd expect Labour, under Starmer, to win some metropolitan liberal elite seats in the south to make up for the further loss in the North — leading us back to 2019.
I also expect Labour to make gains in the South too. Quite frankly there are some long-held Tory areas that the Tories deserve to lose due to pandering to NIMBYism and meaning that people can't afford their own homes. If that means the likes of IDS lose their seat then I can live with that.
If that balances out net to another 2019 style result but IDS and other southern MPs replaced with Northern ones then even better.
A clueless post.
If the Tories concrete all over the greenbelt and homecounties they will not just lose Remain voting areas of London like Chingford to Labour, they will lose dozens of Home Counties seats which they have lost to the LDs at council level now over anti development to the LDs too from Chelmsford and Esher and Walton to Tunbridge Wells and Wantage and Witney and Henley.
It is fine for you in the North, you have very low density and vast amounts of countryside still left and no commuter belt the size of London's so you do not need to worry, in the South, particularly here in the South East, we are far more densely populated and want to preserve the countryside and fields we have to remain livable.
Yes our housing is more expensive but that is a product of living in the London commuter belt, we can build some more affordable housing in brownbelt areas but housing will always be cheaper in the North and Midlands so if you still cannot afford to buy in London and the South then move to the Midlands or North
'If you can't afford to buy a house in the South because we won't let them get built then you should move.'
Once again I'm ashamed to be in the same party as you. I believe in the free market and the free market can solve the housing crisis if we deregulate planning, you do not.
HYUFD is right and you are wrong. No one wants a free for all that turns the SE into a rainy, grey English version of Los Angeles' sprawl. It would be wildly unpopular, and in the end self-defeating, as people would flee this dystopia. By that time it would be too late as we would have tarmacked the entire southern half of the country
What's wrong with Los Angeles? Inner city Los Angeles has its problems sure, just like inner city London does.
But across "Greater Los Angeles" there is a population density of 212/km^2. That's half the English average. Across that region houses are bigger, have bigger gardens, more green spaces where people live. What of that is objectionable? When people are having to live in extortionate flatshares because of a lack of available housing, what part of more, bigger houses with gardens and green space do you find to be a dystopia?
Besides the thing with the free market that works is if people don't want it, the market won't provide it in general.
There is already a sprawl across the Southeast that already exists. What doesn't exist is sufficient housing for the people living there, nor much in the way for many people of gardens etc.
Some parts of LA are very nice, large parts of the endless suburbs are horrible, saved only and partly by the glorious climate
It's also bad for health. Dense walkable cities are the ideal, endless burbs where everyone drives simply create more obesity
If you want to live in one of the most densely populated areas of Europe - SE England - you have to accept it is unlikely you will get a garden, unless you are rich or lucky. It's a trade off. We all have to make them, all the time
Besides, your argument is pointless. No party will ever adopt this policy, because it would be massively unpopular. The Tories are already pushing the boundaries now, and meeting resistance
You say it would be massively unpopular but the Tories have pushed this policy up here in the North - and are reaping the rewards as a result as red seats turn blue once people are able to own their own home.
If NIMBYism leads to the South being mostly renting instead of owner occupiers it will switch red and it will deserve to do so too. That's already happened in London and it is spreading out from there as people get priced out of the market.
So no it won't be unpopular, not long term. What is unpopular in the long term is ensuring people have no choice but to be tenants.
No, that was mainly because of Corbyn and Brexit and the desire to get Brexit done.
The Tories lost 13 seats in 2017 and gained 48 seats in 2019, there was not a vast increase in home ownership in the North in those 2 years and in fact here in Epping Forest we have one of the safest Tory seats nationally already with 64% voting Tory in 2019 but at local level the LDs are making inroads because of opposition to new development.
In London we do have a problem because most Londoners now rent and vote Labour but that means it is London where most of the new affordable housing should be built in brownbelt there as it is London where we have the biggest shortage of homeowning Tory voters
You're 100% wrong.
The North, as those of us who live or lived here from across the political spectrum like myself, Gallowgate and RochdalePioneers can confirm, has been absolutely abuzz for the past decade in construction.
The trend from red to blue did not begin in 2019 and wasn't simply a Brexit factor (which is why its not fading away now), the trend has been going on for the past decade and predates Brexit. It will continue too.
Home ownership rates in the north and south are reversing, political allegiances are too as a result.
Your I'm Alright Jackboots selfishness in suggesting that building should only happen in London when there isn't the brownfield space to build enough homes in London for the people who need them is disgusting.
No, I am right.
70% of white British in the East and 72% of those who live in the South East already own their own homes, actually higher than the 66% in Yorkshire, 62% in the North East (and 50% of BME North Easterners) and 67% in the North West who own their own homes.
Only in London is the home ownership rate lower than in the North with only 62% of white British Londoners and just 35% of BME Londoners owning their own home.
If you exclude London from being part of the South East. 🤦♂️🙄
And anyway my point was the trends. Home ownership was very high in the south but is falling. Home ownership was lower in the north but is rising. The trend is the difference.
London is not part of the South East no, it is overspill from Londoners looking for cheaper properties they can buy in the South East which is creating the demand for development here as not enough new affordable housing to buy is being built in London
It is absolutely farcical to say that London is not part of the South East and very large numbers of people live in what you'd call the South East and commute in to London.
Your argument is like suggesting that Liverpool and Manchester are not a part of the Northwest.
London is a global city of 8.9 million people, the entire Northwest only has 7.3 million people
Yes and the South East are the suburbs of that global city.
Yet you want to say a giant "f**k you" to your fellow residents of the South East in that city, while you commute in from your suburban home.
You still need someone capable of driving a car. And they have to stay alert while doing nothing, which is far harder than just driving the damned car yourself.
Duh. They will fix that.
At one point every car had a man in front of it with a flag, because cars weren't trusted. Your discourse is on about that level
AI is going to change everything, this is just one aspect.
Most trains could operate without drivers tomorrow, the Docklands Light Railway has never had drivers, no one minds
Sure but why would we need cars when we can all get around on Marty McFly's flying hoverboard anyway?
Owning your own car gives you freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want, on the open road. As cars become environmentally friendly there is no excuse not to be having more roads, more cars anymore. Cars are the future.
The "more roads" will eat up land on which houses could otherwise have been built. An evil, selfish creed. Pulling the ladder up. And why bother to take to the open road anyway, when everything is houses? You sound like Look & Learn magazine circa 1970.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
Of course it’s been deferring to authority. We STILL have not received anything resembling a cost benefit analysis of the measures taken, either individually or in totality.
Cyclefree has repeatedly pointed out some of the contradictions and absurdities in the measures. And we should not forget that as many as 40% of the country ended up catching this virus inside one year anyway. So it is very reasonable to ask whether it was necessary or effective to do x,y and z, without trite comparisons to wearing a seatbelt, for which there is excellent supporting evidence by the way.
We have 120 years of data for seatbelts.
My PB pedantry senses tingling. Seatbelts might have been invented in the 19th century but were only introduced to cars in the very late 1940's. Its an interesting thing though. Seatbelts demonstrably save lives (pace Princess Diana). We believe that mask and social distancing work, but the actual data is lacking and hard to generate anyway. It might be that mask use is very important on trains and planes, but much less so in shops for instance. or there might be a threshold of community rates of covid that means masks are useful, but below that there is little or no effect in most situations. FWIW I think we are at that point now.
The other thing to think about is marginal cost. The marginal cost of wearing a mask is very low - both to the individual and the social/economic system around them.
I'm not sure of this. On holiday in Wales I was seriously fed up having to wear a mask in shops etc. I hate it. It puts me off from browsing and shopping in general. I think there is a danger that it reduces the extent to which people do things, and that will affect the economy. The same could be true of needing to take lateral flow tests days before attending say a football match. It will deter the casual fan. There is also the danger of keeping a population more scared than they need to be.
Indeed. Malmesbury is wrong about this. Most people loathe masks, but have considered them a necessary evil. Sure, some people may be fine with them, but they are in the minority I think.
I hate the damn things. Inclined to wear them on the tube (although tbh I wouldn’t be heartbroken if I never went on the tube again) but otherwise no one round her is wearing them.
I went on the tube last week for the first time in what, eight months perhaps. Was heading to St. James's and it was such a long time that without thinking I ended up getting out at the wrong station (Piccadilly Circus vs Green Park)!
I stood there in the booking hall looking slightly dazed wondering which exit to go out of until a TfL guy came up and asked me if I was alright!
Re the weather. One of the great problems is that our memories are rarely accurate. What was the weather line in April 1989? Or 1999? Its hard to say from memory. In my head my summer holidays were all warm and sunny and spent in North Devon. Only one part of that sentence is true. UK weather is usually dominated by westerlies, but by no means always. When things get stuck in different patterns, we tend to notice. Great events such as 1948, 1963, 1976 and so on stick in the memory because they were so unusual. Its odd that for the time of the pandemic, the UK weather has been unusual, but I'd draw no conclusions from it. Its also important to remember what an average temperature means. Saying the temperature should be about 16 for London in April (or whatever) does not reflect day to day variability, in the same way that taking 100 people and averaging their ages (lets say 40?) does not mean everyone you meet will be 40.
The people walking past my flat are wearing winter coats, woolly hats and SCARVES
It is 10C with a biting wind. Tomorrow is the first of May. It has been cold for months; it is odd. Probably nothing, but it is odd
I'm a frequenter of weather and climate forums as that's my other big interest and long-ago academic specialism.
It is indeed an unusual pattern though increasingly common in recent springs. Wet and windy with mild zonal flow throughout the boreal winter, and then high latitude anticyclones dominating Europe and the North Atlantic during spring, until the rain returns in early summer. Sometimes the anticyclone is positioned nicely to give us warm weather, like 2018 and 2020. Sometimes it's in the wrong place, as this year - centred over Greenland bringing continuous Northerlies. The so call WACC phenomenon (warm Arctic, cold continents).
Bad news for European vineyards which have been decimated by late frosts after early budburst in 4 out of the last 6 years (2016, 17, 20, 21), with this year's frosts being the worst.
We don't know what has caused this although there are a few statistical matches, with low Arctic ice concentration (reduces the poleward temperature gradient and weakens the jet stream), and low solar activity (does likewise), as well as the North Atlantic cold blob which surfaces to worry everyone about a shutdown of the North Atlantic drift every year or two.
When I was a lad, climate change was all about the coming of the next Ice Age. I guess we have something to be grateful for...
You still need someone capable of driving a car. And they have to stay alert while doing nothing, which is far harder than just driving the damned car yourself.
Duh. They will fix that.
At one point every car had a man in front of it with a flag, because cars weren't trusted. Your discourse is on about that level
AI is going to change everything, this is just one aspect.
Most trains could operate without drivers tomorrow, the Docklands Light Railway has never had drivers, no one minds
Sure but why would we need cars when we can all get around on Marty McFly's flying hoverboard anyway?
Owning your own car gives you freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want, on the open road. As cars become environmentally friendly there is no excuse not to be having more roads, more cars anymore. Cars are the future.
Think harder. You will be able to order up a self drive electric car (the way you order an Uber now), and it will take you wherever you wanna go, and drop you off. The car will then disappear to service the next customer. No hassle parking, no traffic jams, no pollution, no accidents, no dead people, no flattened badgers, much cheaper than owning, for the huge majority of people this will be superior, and it will benefit cities intensely, as I have outlined.
Owning a car will, as I have also said, probably become an exorbitant luxury for a tiny elite, a status symbol - as keeping a horse is today, when once they were universal
Except I don't order an Uber now. I get in my car. For the people who order an Uber now this may be an issue, but that's not changing for them, all that is changing is the nature of their Uber. They may have switched from black cab, to Uber, to driverless Uber - but they've not switched from driving.
Incidentally if everyone switched to an Uber that would mean more traffic not less. My car is not in traffic when its parked up, its wherever I am. The traffic only occurs whenever I move. But if you're relying upon Ubers then the car has to get to me rather than already being where I am, then it has to get to the next person.
The overwhelming majority of the country do not take Ubers on a day to day basis. Driving is the way the overwhelming majority of the nation gets about.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
It's because most believed them to be necessary, having seen some of the horrors elsewhere.
We're already seeing crumbling of the concensus on here and I'm seeing it anecdotally in friends and family. As the threat recedes, acceptance of the restrictions will too. It would be crazy if that was not the case.
Is it surprising that restrictions have been accepted so far? Maybe. It would be astonishing to me if restrictions were accepted after June, unless there are unforeseen events (some new super-variant that renders vaccines largley ineffective and a third wave). I'm part of the shadowy cabal (scientists, epidemiologists in particular) that apparently wants to take away peoples freedoms forever, but extend the restrictions beyond 21 June without good reason and I'll be joining you on the barricades.
It reminds me of the famous "we've established what you are, we're just haggling over price" quote.
Once people have willingly accepted, welcomed even, those restrictions they are likely not going to be put back in the box and one person's "red line" is another's "that sounds perfectly fine".
To use the most obvious example on here, @contrarian had a red line way, way, way over there <== while, say, @SandyRentool and @FrancisUrquhart I believe (apols if not) have a red line over there ==>
Everyone has a red line but that line is on the continuum of a restriction of liberties. OK what about seatbelts you say. And it is a good question. But there has not been copious legislation about the freedom to drive or be in a car. There has been for freedom of assembly, etc.
Yes, of course there's a continuum of opinions. There are some things that I stopped doing while still legal (we stopped seeing my in-laws before the first lockdown as they were in a vulnerable group) and some things that vexed me a bit due to being illegal (cancelled holiday last summer, in a cottage miles from anywhere with my household only - really zero risk from us going, we'd have seen no one, but I accepted that the rules - if there are rules - have to be universal).
The question is, should things have been illegal or simply just guidance? Most people are fairly pragmatic and - as there was support for many of the restrictions, were not against that being in law (I know that's the 'they came for the Jews but as I was not a Jew I did nothing' argument). I can see the philosophical point about whether these things should be in law or not. However, there's a practical point too in that making things illegal does give people cover to not do them under peer pressure (as also for seatbelts, motorcycle helmets). While I like the Swedish approach in many ways, I suspect passing the law, breaking the law being undetectable in most cases, is still useful for compliance. However, I wouldn't want to see the law enforced in all but the most egregious cases (does that make me a hypocrite? maybe so). I was apalled by Derbyshire police harassing walkers who were going out miles away from anyone. Or indeed stops of cars on the roads.
I do however think the circumstances are/were exceptional and don't think a precendent has been set. If there's another major pandemic then we may see similar laws. But I don't see where this is going to creep into other areas of life, because it simply won't be accepted. Masks this winter for flu? I don't see the government getting away with it or wanting to risk unpopularity by trying. How do I know? Because it crossed my red line, which is much closer to Sandy and Francis's than Contrarian's. To remain popular, the government has to 'win' against Covid and that means things going back to normal. Continued restrictions is not victory, it's failure and the government will not be rewarded for failure.
In short: we can disagree on whether legal restrictions were right or wrong (and there is no right answer, I think). But I don't believe this set of legal restrictions changes the future other than in another pandemic of similar or greater severity.
Thank you. I paid you the compliment (I hope) of reading your post carefully. Line by line indeed - something that I have been doing while reading Jonathan Sumption's latest book which is necessary!
And yes - for me the nub is laws vs guidelines. The lockdowns were to save lives and protect the NHS. So the lives yes of course (cf seatbelts) and saving us from ourselves, which has precedent. But the laws dealt with the most fundamental of our rights as the seatbelt laws don't and once laws are on the books and that precedent is set then it is damned difficult and nor do governments seem to want to remove them.
As for the peer pressure for me it's not enough of a quid pro quo.
So I do think that the government will maintain this anxiety because logically, politically, it works and the role of a government is to keep itself in power. I don't think "THEY WANT TO CONTROL US BECAUSE EVIL". But I do think that having found that they are popular with such measures, that people approve of them, the imperative to remove them is diminished greatly.
Although as others have said, if the UK wants voluntarily to submit to such a life then who am I to complain.
There is always a danger in extrapolating.
Although people have been happy to be locked down now, while they're worried about the virus or while they know a vaccine rollout is happening, that doesn't mean that people will remain happy to be locked down in the future.
Such measures in normal circumstances would likely be deeply unpopular.
Nice cartoon and yes of course. But we are accumulating a lot of muscle memory now. Not for pubs and clubs where there will be push back we can all agree.
But what about public transport? Government buildings? OK so what does it matter? Perhaps it doesn't. And it softens us up for restrictive measures whenever the govt pleases.
If I had a cartoon showing the Lab govt saying their new counter terrorism laws were justified and were not able to be abused and then moments later Walter Wolfgang being thrown out of the Lab conference under counter terrorism laws I would post it here now.
The govt is openly developing all the ingredients of a Chinese social credit system. Digital IDs have gone through. A parliamentary committee wants comments on vaccine passports within a few days. Gove already plans them.
Ferguson was happy that he and colleagues had 'got away with' lockdown in the west. Just what are we doing with government advisers who celebrate the use of CCP policies?
It doesn't help that the executive seems to be running the country without a parliament.
You still need someone capable of driving a car. And they have to stay alert while doing nothing, which is far harder than just driving the damned car yourself.
Duh. They will fix that.
At one point every car had a man in front of it with a flag, because cars weren't trusted. Your discourse is on about that level
AI is going to change everything, this is just one aspect.
Most trains could operate without drivers tomorrow, the Docklands Light Railway has never had drivers, no one minds
Sure but why would we need cars when we can all get around on Marty McFly's flying hoverboard anyway?
Owning your own car gives you freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want, on the open road. As cars become environmentally friendly there is no excuse not to be having more roads, more cars anymore. Cars are the future.
The "more roads" will eat up land on which houses could otherwise have been built. An evil, selfish creed. Pulling the ladder up. And why bother to take to the open road anyway, when everything is houses? You sound like Look & Learn magazine circa 1970.
Not at all. Do both. Take undeveloped land not being used and build roads and houses and businesses on it.
It comes with zero car parking, other than a bit of "on street parking". Zero car parking for "luxury apartments"!
Absolutely insane.
Not insane at all. Clairvoyant
Cars are going. Electric self drive cars will be here in 5-10 years. World changing. No need to own a car. It will transform our cities for the better, making them cleaner, quieter, lovelier. All those car parks, drives, garages? - gone. They can be turned into urban woodlands. Marvellous.
Embrace the future
About the only time you sound like a typical member of the metropolitan elite is when you start talking about cars.
London is massively unrepresentative of the rest of the UK.
I know that you're a hick. I am specifically talking about cities. Private urban owner-driven cars are history. No more drink driving deaths. No more car accidents. No more ugly driveways and multistorey car parks. Of course they will vanish, along with the noise and pollution
In the countryside the future of cars is less certain, as they are much more useful there. I strongly suspect they will disappear in the end, but it will take longer
Personally, I find this sad as well as exciting. Owning and driving a car is great. I love mine. it's been a sanctuary and a saviour during lockdown. I have enjoyed driving insanely fast on empty roads. Last week I touched 137mph on a bizarrely deserted rural A Road in the southwest. Mad but fun
But cars are leaving us. I collect a new car today, I am sure it will be the last petrol car I ever own. I will probably hand back my last private car in the next decade, should God spare me
You still need someone capable of driving a car. And they have to stay alert while doing nothing, which is far harder than just driving the damned car yourself.
Duh. They will fix that.
At one point every car had a man in front of it with a flag, because cars weren't trusted. Your discourse is on about that level
AI is going to change everything, this is just one aspect.
Most trains could operate without drivers tomorrow, the Docklands Light Railway has never had drivers, no one minds
Sure but why would we need cars when we can all get around on Marty McFly's flying hoverboard anyway?
Owning your own car gives you freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want, on the open road. As cars become environmentally friendly there is no excuse not to be having more roads, more cars anymore. Cars are the future.
Think harder. You will be able to order up a self drive electric car (the way you order an Uber now), and it will take you wherever you wanna go, and drop you off. The car will then disappear to service the next customer. No hassle parking, no traffic jams, no pollution, no accidents, no dead people, no flattened badgers, much cheaper than owning, for the huge majority of people this will be superior, and it will benefit cities intensely, as I have outlined.
Owning a car will, as I have also said, probably become an exorbitant luxury for a tiny elite, a status symbol - as keeping a horse is today, when once they were universal
That was the dream 5 years ago.
The dream is dead as you can see from Google's inability to expand their self driving car scheme and Lyft's desperate attempts to flog their self driving systems.
Self driving cars was seen as a 90/10% problem where once the 90% was solved the rest would be quickly fixed.
It's actual turned out to be a 99.9/0.1% problem and it's proven impossible to get much further than the 90% point.
Self driving cars will appear but they are still 5-10 years away.
It comes with zero car parking, other than a bit of "on street parking". Zero car parking for "luxury apartments"!
Absolutely insane.
Not insane at all. Clairvoyant
Cars are going. Electric self drive cars will be here in 5-10 years. World changing. No need to own a car. It will transform our cities for the better, making them cleaner, quieter, lovelier. All those car parks, drives, garages? - gone. They can be turned into urban woodlands. Marvellous.
Embrace the future
I think this is right - about cars being on their way out.
A good technique (if you can do it) for predicting the future is to go out and view the environment as one of those "Cadbury's Smash Aliens" would. Disassociate yourself from the reality you've grown accustomed to and look at things afresh through the question, "Does this really make sense?"
If you do this, the sight of all these small yet bulky metallic boxes strewn all over the place, occasionally being used to transport just one or two flesh & blood units in a slow, painful manner from one place to another place, it will suddenly strike you as absurd.
You'll shake your head in wonder as this dawns. Then you'll have a giggle (like in the advert) and know for a fact that in not too many years from now they will have disappeared.
The Osmonds were onto this before anybody. Crazy Horses, wooo, wooo. Got to number 2 in 1972.
It comes with zero car parking, other than a bit of "on street parking". Zero car parking for "luxury apartments"!
Absolutely insane.
Not insane at all. Clairvoyant
Cars are going. Electric self drive cars will be here in 5-10 years. World changing. No need to own a car. It will transform our cities for the better, making them cleaner, quieter, lovelier. All those car parks, drives, garages? - gone. They can be turned into urban woodlands. Marvellous.
Embrace the future
About the only time you sound like a typical member of the metropolitan elite is when you start talking about cars.
London is massively unrepresentative of the rest of the UK.
I know that you're a hick. I am specifically talking about cities. Private urban owner-driven cars are history. No more drink driving deaths. No more car accidents. No more ugly driveways and multistorey car parks. Of course they will vanish, along with the noise and pollution
In the countryside the future of cars is less certain, as they are much more useful there. I strongly suspect they will disappear in the end, but it will take longer
Personally, I find this sad as well as exciting. Owning and driving a car is great. I love mine. it's been a sanctuary and a saviour during lockdown. I have enjoyed driving insanely fast on empty roads. Last week I touched 137mph on a bizarrely deserted rural A Road in the southwest. Mad but fun
But cars are leaving us. I collect a new car today, I am sure it will be the last petrol car I ever own. I will probably hand back my last private car in the next decade, should God spare me
You're not talking about cities. You're talking about London alone. I have friends in Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, etc, and a majority of them have cars. It's only in London where they don't.
It comes with zero car parking, other than a bit of "on street parking". Zero car parking for "luxury apartments"!
Absolutely insane.
Not insane at all. Clairvoyant
Cars are going. Electric self drive cars will be here in 5-10 years. World changing. No need to own a car. It will transform our cities for the better, making them cleaner, quieter, lovelier. All those car parks, drives, garages? - gone. They can be turned into urban woodlands. Marvellous.
Embrace the future
About the only time you sound like a typical member of the metropolitan elite is when you start talking about cars.
London is massively unrepresentative of the rest of the UK.
I know that you're a hick. I am specifically talking about cities. Private urban owner-driven cars are history. No more drink driving deaths. No more car accidents. No more ugly driveways and multistorey car parks. Of course they will vanish, along with the noise and pollution
In the countryside the future of cars is less certain, as they are much more useful there. I strongly suspect they will disappear in the end, but it will take longer
Personally, I find this sad as well as exciting. Owning and driving a car is great. I love mine. it's been a sanctuary and a saviour during lockdown. I have enjoyed driving insanely fast on empty roads. Last week I touched 137mph on a bizarrely deserted rural A Road in the southwest. Mad but fun
But cars are leaving us. I collect a new car today, I am sure it will be the last petrol car I ever own. I will probably hand back my last private car in the next decade, should God spare me
You are operating under a misappprehension that inner city living is the norm.
Do you have any idea what percentage of the country gets to work via Uber? Do you have any idea what percentage of the country gets to work via their own car?
Cars aren't just for the countryside. They're for the suburbs, they're for the overwhelming majority of the nation.
You still need someone capable of driving a car. And they have to stay alert while doing nothing, which is far harder than just driving the damned car yourself.
Duh. They will fix that.
At one point every car had a man in front of it with a flag, because cars weren't trusted. Your discourse is on about that level
AI is going to change everything, this is just one aspect.
Most trains could operate without drivers tomorrow, the Docklands Light Railway has never had drivers, no one minds
Sure but why would we need cars when we can all get around on Marty McFly's flying hoverboard anyway?
Owning your own car gives you freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want, on the open road. As cars become environmentally friendly there is no excuse not to be having more roads, more cars anymore. Cars are the future.
Think harder. You will be able to order up a self drive electric car (the way you order an Uber now), and it will take you wherever you wanna go, and drop you off. The car will then disappear to service the next customer. No hassle parking, no traffic jams, no pollution, no accidents, no dead people, no flattened badgers, much cheaper than owning, for the huge majority of people this will be superior, and it will benefit cities intensely, as I have outlined.
Owning a car will, as I have also said, probably become an exorbitant luxury for a tiny elite, a status symbol - as keeping a horse is today, when once they were universal
Like Philip said, a car is an expression of an individual's style, identity and even their dreams - they are still hugely aspirational for the vast majority of the population, and a symbol of success. They represent freedom and control - you can go anywhere, anytime, in a vehicle customised exactly as you like it. And it's YOURS. You own it.
Also, if you have kids, the car has trikes, car seats, toys in it and other stuff you need to lug around so it's an extensive of your household - it's not something you just hail & dismiss.
You still need someone capable of driving a car. And they have to stay alert while doing nothing, which is far harder than just driving the damned car yourself.
Duh. They will fix that.
At one point every car had a man in front of it with a flag, because cars weren't trusted. Your discourse is on about that level
AI is going to change everything, this is just one aspect.
Most trains could operate without drivers tomorrow, the Docklands Light Railway has never had drivers, no one minds
Sure but why would we need cars when we can all get around on Marty McFly's flying hoverboard anyway?
Owning your own car gives you freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want, on the open road. As cars become environmentally friendly there is no excuse not to be having more roads, more cars anymore. Cars are the future.
The "more roads" will eat up land on which houses could otherwise have been built. An evil, selfish creed. Pulling the ladder up. And why bother to take to the open road anyway, when everything is houses? You sound like Look & Learn magazine circa 1970.
Not at all. Do both. Take undeveloped land not being used and build roads and houses and businesses on it.
I'm not sure that your vision of turning this green and pleasant land into a concrete jungle of roads and buildings will have widespread appeal. I certainly wouldn't want to live there. Roads in particular blight lives, and restrict freedoms - particularly of children.
It comes with zero car parking, other than a bit of "on street parking". Zero car parking for "luxury apartments"!
Absolutely insane.
Not insane at all. Clairvoyant
Cars are going. Electric self drive cars will be here in 5-10 years. World changing. No need to own a car. It will transform our cities for the better, making them cleaner, quieter, lovelier. All those car parks, drives, garages? - gone. They can be turned into urban woodlands. Marvellous.
Embrace the future
I think this is right - about cars being on their way out.
A good technique (if you can do it) for predicting the future is to go out and view the environment as one of those "Cadbury's Smash Aliens" would. Disassociate yourself from the reality you've grown accustomed to and look at things afresh through the question, "Does this really make sense?"
If you do this, the sight of all these small yet bulky metallic boxes strewn all over the place, occasionally being used to transport just one or two flesh & blood units in a slow, painful manner from one place to another place, it will suddenly strike you as absurd.
You'll shake your head in wonder as this dawns. Then you'll have a giggle (like in the advert) and know for a fact that in not too many years from now they will have disappeared.
The Osmonds were onto this before anybody. Crazy Horses, wooo, wooo. Got to number 2 in 1972.
"Little metal boxes" whizzing around carrying one or two people in a very fast manner, much faster than people can move on their own right, makes perfect sense.
No idea why you'd consider moving from A to B between 30mph and 70mph to be "slow" or "painful".
It comes with zero car parking, other than a bit of "on street parking". Zero car parking for "luxury apartments"!
Absolutely insane.
Not insane at all. Clairvoyant
Cars are going. Electric self drive cars will be here in 5-10 years. World changing. No need to own a car. It will transform our cities for the better, making them cleaner, quieter, lovelier. All those car parks, drives, garages? - gone. They can be turned into urban woodlands. Marvellous.
Embrace the future
I think this is right - about cars being on their way out.
A good technique (if you can do it) for predicting the future is to go out and view the environment as one of those "Cadbury's Smash Aliens" would. Disassociate yourself from the reality you've grown accustomed to and look at things afresh through the question, "Does this really make sense?"
If you do this, the sight of all these small yet bulky metallic boxes strewn all over the place, occasionally being used to transport just one or two flesh & blood units in a slow, painful manner from one place to another place, it will suddenly strike you as absurd.
You'll shake your head in wonder as this dawns. Then you'll have a giggle (like in the advert) and know for a fact that in not too many years from now they will have disappeared.
The Osmonds were onto this before anybody. Crazy Horses, wooo, wooo. Got to number 2 in 1972.
Exactly right. On this issue we are seers, and the rest of PB is too dull-witted to comprehend
Imagine trying to explain to people why everyone rides horses.
What, you climb on top of a massive half-domesticated animal, with a tendency to bolt, and you order it to walk you somewhere in the city by threatening it with a stick, and so it slowly walks around as it craps on small children and pisses on old ladies, and then it dies and it is turned into glue?
It comes with zero car parking, other than a bit of "on street parking". Zero car parking for "luxury apartments"!
Absolutely insane.
Not insane at all. Clairvoyant
Cars are going. Electric self drive cars will be here in 5-10 years. World changing. No need to own a car. It will transform our cities for the better, making them cleaner, quieter, lovelier. All those car parks, drives, garages? - gone. They can be turned into urban woodlands. Marvellous.
Embrace the future
About the only time you sound like a typical member of the metropolitan elite is when you start talking about cars.
London is massively unrepresentative of the rest of the UK.
I know that you're a hick. I am specifically talking about cities. Private urban owner-driven cars are history. No more drink driving deaths. No more car accidents. No more ugly driveways and multistorey car parks. Of course they will vanish, along with the noise and pollution
In the countryside the future of cars is less certain, as they are much more useful there. I strongly suspect they will disappear in the end, but it will take longer
Personally, I find this sad as well as exciting. Owning and driving a car is great. I love mine. it's been a sanctuary and a saviour during lockdown. I have enjoyed driving insanely fast on empty roads. Last week I touched 137mph on a bizarrely deserted rural A Road in the southwest. Mad but fun
But cars are leaving us. I collect a new car today, I am sure it will be the last petrol car I ever own. I will probably hand back my last private car in the next decade, should God spare me
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
There's a lot of nonsense about. I diagnose the cause as a mix of virtue-signaling and paranoia. This latter perhaps fed by the trauma and claustrophobia of the past year.
"I'm a rugged, freedom luvin' bear, always chaffing against these petty-fogging rules that all you pussies accept without a murmur."
"I'm an astute and seasoned unit, sussing that the "authorities" have a nefarious plan to keep the rules in place even after the virus is gone cos they love the power. I don't just trust them like you naive kiddies."
These are the main 2 strands.
What was that quiet, out of the way pub in Hampstead you went to the other day? Sounds great.
Yes, I'd like to visit that pub, too. Perhaps it is called The Moon Under Water
It's great. No need for contact details unless you insist on ordering oysters.
Oh, why? In case you get D&V?
Maybe. But I suspect it's more to do with keeping out the sorts of people who would order oysters in a pub instead of just necking a few jars like normal proper blokes do.
Alternatively, it's a lie? There is no quiet, out of the way pub in Hampstead with a large beer garden that you can just breeze into.
I kinda wish is wasn't a lie, tho.
For decades I had a fantasy that I would happen upon a hidden corner of Regent's Park, barely known, not even on the map, a total secret, full of wildflowers and maybe native English fauna. A tiny tiny Eden in the middle of London
A couple of years ago I did, indeed, chance upon a corner of the Park I'd never visited before, enchantingly pretty, not entirely unknown, but new to me. Not Eden, but delightful. Incredible that I had never discovered it hitherto. I've lived near this park for 35 years
A secret gem of a leafy pub in Hampstead would be like that
The Duke of Hamilton might fit the bill? It's a bit out of the way but still usually very busy.
Edit - it's also not much a of a secret pub...
"the pub was out of the way and quiet."
I think we need a judge-led enquiry.
Not the Duke of Hamilton. No aristo titles in this one. And it's only 2 words. "The ......."
Might go there now actually. Not that I want a beer - but just for the sake of it.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
There's a lot of nonsense about. I diagnose the cause as a mix of virtue-signaling and paranoia. This latter perhaps fed by the trauma and claustrophobia of the past year.
"I'm a rugged, freedom luvin' bear, always chaffing against these petty-fogging rules that all you pussies accept without a murmur."
"I'm an astute and seasoned unit, sussing that the "authorities" have a nefarious plan to keep the rules in place even after the virus is gone cos they love the power. I don't just trust them like you naive kiddies."
These are the main 2 strands.
What was that quiet, out of the way pub in Hampstead you went to the other day? Sounds great.
Yes, I'd like to visit that pub, too. Perhaps it is called The Moon Under Water
It's great. No need for contact details unless you insist on ordering oysters.
Oh, why? In case you get D&V?
Maybe. But I suspect it's more to do with keeping out the sorts of people who would order oysters in a pub instead of just necking a few jars like normal proper blokes do.
Alternatively, it's a lie? There is no quiet, out of the way pub in Hampstead with a large beer garden that you can just breeze into.
I kinda wish is wasn't a lie, tho.
For decades I had a fantasy that I would happen upon a hidden corner of Regent's Park, barely known, not even on the map, a total secret, full of wildflowers and maybe native English fauna. A tiny tiny Eden in the middle of London
A couple of years ago I did, indeed, chance upon a corner of the Park I'd never visited before, enchantingly pretty, not entirely unknown, but new to me. Not Eden, but delightful. Incredible that I had never discovered it hitherto. I've lived near this park for 35 years
A secret gem of a leafy pub in Hampstead would be like that
The Duke of Hamilton might fit the bill? It's a bit out of the way but still usually very busy.
Edit - it's also not much a of a secret pub...
"the pub was out of the way and quiet."
I think we need a judge-led enquiry.
Not the Duke of Hamilton. No aristo titles in this one. And it's only 2 words. "The ......."
Might go there now actually. Not that I want a beer - but just for the sake of it.
It comes with zero car parking, other than a bit of "on street parking". Zero car parking for "luxury apartments"!
Absolutely insane.
Not insane at all. Clairvoyant
Cars are going. Electric self drive cars will be here in 5-10 years. World changing. No need to own a car. It will transform our cities for the better, making them cleaner, quieter, lovelier. All those car parks, drives, garages? - gone. They can be turned into urban woodlands. Marvellous.
Embrace the future
I think this is right - about cars being on their way out.
A good technique (if you can do it) for predicting the future is to go out and view the environment as one of those "Cadbury's Smash Aliens" would. Disassociate yourself from the reality you've grown accustomed to and look at things afresh through the question, "Does this really make sense?"
If you do this, the sight of all these small yet bulky metallic boxes strewn all over the place, occasionally being used to transport just one or two flesh & blood units in a slow, painful manner from one place to another place, it will suddenly strike you as absurd.
You'll shake your head in wonder as this dawns. Then you'll have a giggle (like in the advert) and know for a fact that in not too many years from now they will have disappeared.
The Osmonds were onto this before anybody. Crazy Horses, wooo, wooo. Got to number 2 in 1972.
Exactly right. On this issue we are seers, and the rest of PB is too dull-witted to comprehend
Imagine trying to explain to people why everyone rides horses.
What, you climb on top of a massive half-domesticated animal, with a tendency to bolt, and you order it to walk you somewhere in the city by threatening it with a stick, and so it slowly walks around as it craps on small children and pisses on old ladies, and then it dies and it is turned into glue?
Two members of the north London metropolitan elite agreeing vociferously with each other, despite both being totally wrong.
It comes with zero car parking, other than a bit of "on street parking". Zero car parking for "luxury apartments"!
Absolutely insane.
Not insane at all. Clairvoyant
Cars are going. Electric self drive cars will be here in 5-10 years. World changing. No need to own a car. It will transform our cities for the better, making them cleaner, quieter, lovelier. All those car parks, drives, garages? - gone. They can be turned into urban woodlands. Marvellous.
Embrace the future
I think this is right - about cars being on their way out.
A good technique (if you can do it) for predicting the future is to go out and view the environment as one of those "Cadbury's Smash Aliens" would. Disassociate yourself from the reality you've grown accustomed to and look at things afresh through the question, "Does this really make sense?"
If you do this, the sight of all these small yet bulky metallic boxes strewn all over the place, occasionally being used to transport just one or two flesh & blood units in a slow, painful manner from one place to another place, it will suddenly strike you as absurd.
You'll shake your head in wonder as this dawns. Then you'll have a giggle (like in the advert) and know for a fact that in not too many years from now they will have disappeared.
The Osmonds were onto this before anybody. Crazy Horses, wooo, wooo. Got to number 2 in 1972.
Exactly right. On this issue we are seers, and the rest of PB is too dull-witted to comprehend
Imagine trying to explain to people why everyone rides horses.
What, you climb on top of a massive half-domesticated animal, with a tendency to bolt, and you order it to walk you somewhere in the city by threatening it with a stick, and so it slowly walks around as it craps on small children and pisses on old ladies, and then it dies and it is turned into glue?
Horses were replaced because people could get a personal chassis that would move an order of magnitude faster than the horse.
Taxis, Ubers, whatever you want to call them are vastly inferior to a personal car. They're not yours, they're not personalised, they're not available on demand, they don't have your own equipment in them. If I want to take my kids to school I get them ready, step out of my house, through my garden and into my car. Their car seats are already there. I then drive and am at the school a few minutes later.
Why would I trade that for hailing an Uber, that will arrive without car seats, that will take about as long to get to me as the drive itself takes?
Its a vastly inferior service. That's why we already don't use it.
Quoting Liz Cheney with approval isn’t something I do every day. But credit where it is due.
https://twitter.com/Liz_Cheney/status/1387921478889394183 I disagree strongly w/ @JoeBiden policies, but when the President reaches out to greet me in the chamber of the US House of Representatives, I will always respond in a civil, respectful & dignified way. We’re different political parties. We’re not sworn enemies. We’re Americans.
Re the weather. One of the great problems is that our memories are rarely accurate. What was the weather line in April 1989? Or 1999? Its hard to say from memory. In my head my summer holidays were all warm and sunny and spent in North Devon. Only one part of that sentence is true. UK weather is usually dominated by westerlies, but by no means always. When things get stuck in different patterns, we tend to notice. Great events such as 1948, 1963, 1976 and so on stick in the memory because they were so unusual. Its odd that for the time of the pandemic, the UK weather has been unusual, but I'd draw no conclusions from it. Its also important to remember what an average temperature means. Saying the temperature should be about 16 for London in April (or whatever) does not reflect day to day variability, in the same way that taking 100 people and averaging their ages (lets say 40?) does not mean everyone you meet will be 40.
Indeed the PB Weather Experts are generally well worth ignoring. They pop up when the weather is notably above or below average, snowy, cold or hot, and disappear all the other times when it's boringly standard. The temperatures should recover to the seasonal norm week after next and, by that stage, we'll be met with a wall of silence from the meteorological seers on here.
You still need someone capable of driving a car. And they have to stay alert while doing nothing, which is far harder than just driving the damned car yourself.
Duh. They will fix that.
At one point every car had a man in front of it with a flag, because cars weren't trusted. Your discourse is on about that level
AI is going to change everything, this is just one aspect.
Most trains could operate without drivers tomorrow, the Docklands Light Railway has never had drivers, no one minds
Sure but why would we need cars when we can all get around on Marty McFly's flying hoverboard anyway?
Owning your own car gives you freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want, on the open road. As cars become environmentally friendly there is no excuse not to be having more roads, more cars anymore. Cars are the future.
Think harder. You will be able to order up a self drive electric car (the way you order an Uber now), and it will take you wherever you wanna go, and drop you off. The car will then disappear to service the next customer. No hassle parking, no traffic jams, no pollution, no accidents, no dead people, no flattened badgers, much cheaper than owning, for the huge majority of people this will be superior, and it will benefit cities intensely, as I have outlined.
Owning a car will, as I have also said, probably become an exorbitant luxury for a tiny elite, a status symbol - as keeping a horse is today, when once they were universal
Like Philip said, a car is an expression of an individual's style, identity and even their dreams - they are still hugely aspirational for the vast majority of the population, and a symbol of success. They represent freedom and control - you can go anywhere, anytime, in a vehicle customised exactly as you like it. And it's YOURS. You own it.
Also, if you have kids, the car has trikes, car seats, toys in it and other stuff you need to lug around so it's an extensive of your household - it's not something you just hail & dismiss.
Cars also crash into each other and kill children. They will be automated into anonymity, and then taxed into extinction
I know it's sad they are going, but they are going
You still need someone capable of driving a car. And they have to stay alert while doing nothing, which is far harder than just driving the damned car yourself.
Duh. They will fix that.
At one point every car had a man in front of it with a flag, because cars weren't trusted. Your discourse is on about that level
AI is going to change everything, this is just one aspect.
Most trains could operate without drivers tomorrow, the Docklands Light Railway has never had drivers, no one minds
Sure but why would we need cars when we can all get around on Marty McFly's flying hoverboard anyway?
Owning your own car gives you freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want, on the open road. As cars become environmentally friendly there is no excuse not to be having more roads, more cars anymore. Cars are the future.
Think harder. You will be able to order up a self drive electric car (the way you order an Uber now), and it will take you wherever you wanna go, and drop you off. The car will then disappear to service the next customer. No hassle parking, no traffic jams, no pollution, no accidents, no dead people, no flattened badgers, much cheaper than owning, for the huge majority of people this will be superior, and it will benefit cities intensely, as I have outlined.
Owning a car will, as I have also said, probably become an exorbitant luxury for a tiny elite, a status symbol - as keeping a horse is today, when once they were universal
Like Philip said, a car is an expression of an individual's style, identity and even their dreams - they are still hugely aspirational for the vast majority of the population, and a symbol of success. They represent freedom and control - you can go anywhere, anytime, in a vehicle customised exactly as you like it. And it's YOURS. You own it.
Also, if you have kids, the car has trikes, car seats, toys in it and other stuff you need to lug around so it's an extensive of your household - it's not something you just hail & dismiss.
Cars also crash into each other and kill children. They will be automated into anonymity, and then taxed into extinction
I know it's sad they are going, but they are going
Yes, they will be increasingly autonomous - there's been an increasing trend of driver aids on new cars for almost 15 years now - but that has precisely zero correlation with car ownership trends.
People will simply want to buy their own self-driving electric car as opposed to a driver-aided petrol car.
You still need someone capable of driving a car. And they have to stay alert while doing nothing, which is far harder than just driving the damned car yourself.
Duh. They will fix that.
At one point every car had a man in front of it with a flag, because cars weren't trusted. Your discourse is on about that level
AI is going to change everything, this is just one aspect.
Most trains could operate without drivers tomorrow, the Docklands Light Railway has never had drivers, no one minds
Sure but why would we need cars when we can all get around on Marty McFly's flying hoverboard anyway?
Owning your own car gives you freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want, on the open road. As cars become environmentally friendly there is no excuse not to be having more roads, more cars anymore. Cars are the future.
Think harder. You will be able to order up a self drive electric car (the way you order an Uber now), and it will take you wherever you wanna go, and drop you off. The car will then disappear to service the next customer. No hassle parking, no traffic jams, no pollution, no accidents, no dead people, no flattened badgers, much cheaper than owning, for the huge majority of people this will be superior, and it will benefit cities intensely, as I have outlined.
Owning a car will, as I have also said, probably become an exorbitant luxury for a tiny elite, a status symbol - as keeping a horse is today, when once they were universal
Like Philip said, a car is an expression of an individual's style, identity and even their dreams - they are still hugely aspirational for the vast majority of the population, and a symbol of success. They represent freedom and control - you can go anywhere, anytime, in a vehicle customised exactly as you like it. And it's YOURS. You own it.
Also, if you have kids, the car has trikes, car seats, toys in it and other stuff you need to lug around so it's an extensive of your household - it's not something you just hail & dismiss.
Cars also crash into each other and kill children. They will be automated into anonymity, and then taxed into extinction
I know it's sad they are going, but they are going
Cars only crash because people make mistakes - and that can happen whether they're driven by a taxi driver or an owner.
Even if driverless technology takes off, that would take off within your own vehicle too that you own. Just like all the other safety features that have been adopted for decades now.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
There's a lot of nonsense about. I diagnose the cause as a mix of virtue-signaling and paranoia. This latter perhaps fed by the trauma and claustrophobia of the past year.
"I'm a rugged, freedom luvin' bear, always chaffing against these petty-fogging rules that all you pussies accept without a murmur."
"I'm an astute and seasoned unit, sussing that the "authorities" have a nefarious plan to keep the rules in place even after the virus is gone cos they love the power. I don't just trust them like you naive kiddies."
These are the main 2 strands.
What was that quiet, out of the way pub in Hampstead you went to the other day? Sounds great.
Yes, I'd like to visit that pub, too. Perhaps it is called The Moon Under Water
It's great. No need for contact details unless you insist on ordering oysters.
Do tell. Because any pub which is open at the moment must have a significant garden, and/or a large terrace on the street, making it quite prominent
A pub in Hampstead with a large beer garden, which is "quiet and out of the way"? Really?
Luckily, I don't need to visit this pub, as I live right next door to a vast, yet little-known park, the Regent's Park. Most people aren't aware of it and head straight for Clapham Common, or their acid trip ends
This one is a little bar in the Belsize area with a couple of tables outside.
Are you implying I'm inventing it?
An outrageous slur if so. I for one do not think that to gain PB cred points for some unfathomable reason a chartered accountant wanting to appear on the case and in order to participate in the debate about all pubs being ram packed would invent a story that he had found a little, out of the way pub in or around Hampstead which very few people go to and for which IIRC no registration was required.
Quite so. It would make me a total plonker. Sort of thing others might do, but no way me. C'mon.
You still need someone capable of driving a car. And they have to stay alert while doing nothing, which is far harder than just driving the damned car yourself.
Duh. They will fix that.
At one point every car had a man in front of it with a flag, because cars weren't trusted. Your discourse is on about that level
AI is going to change everything, this is just one aspect.
Most trains could operate without drivers tomorrow, the Docklands Light Railway has never had drivers, no one minds
Sure but why would we need cars when we can all get around on Marty McFly's flying hoverboard anyway?
Owning your own car gives you freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want, on the open road. As cars become environmentally friendly there is no excuse not to be having more roads, more cars anymore. Cars are the future.
Think harder. You will be able to order up a self drive electric car (the way you order an Uber now), and it will take you wherever you wanna go, and drop you off. The car will then disappear to service the next customer. No hassle parking, no traffic jams, no pollution, no accidents, no dead people, no flattened badgers, much cheaper than owning, for the huge majority of people this will be superior, and it will benefit cities intensely, as I have outlined.
Owning a car will, as I have also said, probably become an exorbitant luxury for a tiny elite, a status symbol - as keeping a horse is today, when once they were universal
Like Philip said, a car is an expression of an individual's style, identity and even their dreams - they are still hugely aspirational for the vast majority of the population, and a symbol of success. They represent freedom and control - you can go anywhere, anytime, in a vehicle customised exactly as you like it. And it's YOURS. You own it.
Also, if you have kids, the car has trikes, car seats, toys in it and other stuff you need to lug around so it's an extensive of your household - it's not something you just hail & dismiss.
Cars also crash into each other and kill children. They will be automated into anonymity, and then taxed into extinction
I know it's sad they are going, but they are going
Yes, they will be increasingly autonomous - there's been an increasing trend of driver aids on new cars for almost 15 years now - but that has precisely zero correlation with car ownership trends.
People will simply want to buy their own self-driving electric car as opposed to a driver-aided petrol car.
Cheer up, you'll be able to have your own DRONE. Much more exciting. Take the kids to school by air!
Important to think about things a little less literally. I am not sure I buy the communal travel box vision. Cars are not just about transport, they provide portable personal space, a shield against the outside world. A place to keep your stuff. People like that. Whatever comes after cars, will have to deliver that as well as a way to get from A to B.
You still need someone capable of driving a car. And they have to stay alert while doing nothing, which is far harder than just driving the damned car yourself.
Duh. They will fix that.
At one point every car had a man in front of it with a flag, because cars weren't trusted. Your discourse is on about that level
AI is going to change everything, this is just one aspect.
Most trains could operate without drivers tomorrow, the Docklands Light Railway has never had drivers, no one minds
Sure but why would we need cars when we can all get around on Marty McFly's flying hoverboard anyway?
Owning your own car gives you freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want, on the open road. As cars become environmentally friendly there is no excuse not to be having more roads, more cars anymore. Cars are the future.
Think harder. You will be able to order up a self drive electric car (the way you order an Uber now), and it will take you wherever you wanna go, and drop you off. The car will then disappear to service the next customer. No hassle parking, no traffic jams, no pollution, no accidents, no dead people, no flattened badgers, much cheaper than owning, for the huge majority of people this will be superior, and it will benefit cities intensely, as I have outlined.
Owning a car will, as I have also said, probably become an exorbitant luxury for a tiny elite, a status symbol - as keeping a horse is today, when once they were universal
Like Philip said, a car is an expression of an individual's style, identity and even their dreams - they are still hugely aspirational for the vast majority of the population, and a symbol of success. They represent freedom and control - you can go anywhere, anytime, in a vehicle customised exactly as you like it. And it's YOURS. You own it.
Also, if you have kids, the car has trikes, car seats, toys in it and other stuff you need to lug around so it's an extensive of your household - it's not something you just hail & dismiss.
Cars also crash into each other and kill children. They will be automated into anonymity, and then taxed into extinction
I know it's sad they are going, but they are going
Yes, they will be increasingly autonomous - there's been an increasing trend of driver aids on new cars for almost 15 years now - but that has precisely zero correlation with car ownership trends.
People will simply want to buy their own self-driving electric car as opposed to a driver-aided petrol car.
Precisely.
Why would I hail an Uber and wait for it to arrive, lifeless and devoid of personalisation, when I could own my own autonomous vehicle that is parked at my property ready and waiting for me whenever I want it? Ready and waiting with my kids car seats and anything else I choose to store in it.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
There's a lot of nonsense about. I diagnose the cause as a mix of virtue-signaling and paranoia. This latter perhaps fed by the trauma and claustrophobia of the past year.
"I'm a rugged, freedom luvin' bear, always chaffing against these petty-fogging rules that all you pussies accept without a murmur."
"I'm an astute and seasoned unit, sussing that the "authorities" have a nefarious plan to keep the rules in place even after the virus is gone cos they love the power. I don't just trust them like you naive kiddies."
These are the main 2 strands.
What was that quiet, out of the way pub in Hampstead you went to the other day? Sounds great.
Yes, I'd like to visit that pub, too. Perhaps it is called The Moon Under Water
It's great. No need for contact details unless you insist on ordering oysters.
Do tell. Because any pub which is open at the moment must have a significant garden, and/or a large terrace on the street, making it quite prominent
A pub in Hampstead with a large beer garden, which is "quiet and out of the way"? Really?
Luckily, I don't need to visit this pub, as I live right next door to a vast, yet little-known park, the Regent's Park. Most people aren't aware of it and head straight for Clapham Common, or their acid trip ends
This one is a little bar in the Belsize area with a couple of tables outside.
Are you implying I'm inventing it?
An outrageous slur if so. I for one do not think that to gain PB cred points for some unfathomable reason a chartered accountant wanting to appear on the case and in order to participate in the debate about all pubs being ram packed would invent a story that he had found a little, out of the way pub in or around Hampstead which very few people go to and for which IIRC no registration was required.
Quite so. It would make me a total plonker. Sort of thing others might do, but no way me. C'mon.
I wonder if the innovation enabled by self driving will be a fully enclosed box or tinted windows that give total privacy. What better way to travel up the M6 than in bed?
You still need someone capable of driving a car. And they have to stay alert while doing nothing, which is far harder than just driving the damned car yourself.
Duh. They will fix that.
At one point every car had a man in front of it with a flag, because cars weren't trusted. Your discourse is on about that level
AI is going to change everything, this is just one aspect.
Most trains could operate without drivers tomorrow, the Docklands Light Railway has never had drivers, no one minds
Sure but why would we need cars when we can all get around on Marty McFly's flying hoverboard anyway?
Owning your own car gives you freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want, on the open road. As cars become environmentally friendly there is no excuse not to be having more roads, more cars anymore. Cars are the future.
Think harder. You will be able to order up a self drive electric car (the way you order an Uber now), and it will take you wherever you wanna go, and drop you off. The car will then disappear to service the next customer. No hassle parking, no traffic jams, no pollution, no accidents, no dead people, no flattened badgers, much cheaper than owning, for the huge majority of people this will be superior, and it will benefit cities intensely, as I have outlined.
Owning a car will, as I have also said, probably become an exorbitant luxury for a tiny elite, a status symbol - as keeping a horse is today, when once they were universal
Like Philip said, a car is an expression of an individual's style, identity and even their dreams - they are still hugely aspirational for the vast majority of the population, and a symbol of success. They represent freedom and control - you can go anywhere, anytime, in a vehicle customised exactly as you like it. And it's YOURS. You own it.
Also, if you have kids, the car has trikes, car seats, toys in it and other stuff you need to lug around so it's an extensive of your household - it's not something you just hail & dismiss.
Cars also crash into each other and kill children. They will be automated into anonymity, and then taxed into extinction
I know it's sad they are going, but they are going
Yes, they will be increasingly autonomous - there's been an increasing trend of driver aids on new cars for almost 15 years now - but that has precisely zero correlation with car ownership trends.
People will simply want to buy their own self-driving electric car as opposed to a driver-aided petrol car.
Precisely.
Why would I hail an Uber and wait for it to arrive, lifeless and devoid of personalisation, when I could own my own autonomous vehicle that is parked at my property ready and waiting for me whenever I want it? Ready and waiting with my kids car seats and anything else I choose to store in it.
Two idiot, low-watt, provincial Tories endlessly agreeing with each other about the continuing necessity for steam engines. Get a room
I own a big Audi, which I love, but which I rarely use outside of fetch-and-carry style tasks and trips to see friends (for which it's great). If I go to my local Sainsbury's, I catch the bus, which comes every three minutes and which drops me right outside. I then take the bus back and don't have to faff about with parking. It's quicker – much quicker – than driving. And I walk a lot. When I go into town, I would never dream of driving. The Tube is much quicker.
Leon is right that we need to design human-sized cities for people and the infrastructure to zip about easily. If people want cars, let them have them, but they shouldn't have to 'need' them.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
There's a lot of nonsense about. I diagnose the cause as a mix of virtue-signaling and paranoia. This latter perhaps fed by the trauma and claustrophobia of the past year.
"I'm a rugged, freedom luvin' bear, always chaffing against these petty-fogging rules that all you pussies accept without a murmur."
"I'm an astute and seasoned unit, sussing that the "authorities" have a nefarious plan to keep the rules in place even after the virus is gone cos they love the power. I don't just trust them like you naive kiddies."
These are the main 2 strands.
What was that quiet, out of the way pub in Hampstead you went to the other day? Sounds great.
Yes, I'd like to visit that pub, too. Perhaps it is called The Moon Under Water
It's great. No need for contact details unless you insist on ordering oysters.
Oh, why? In case you get D&V?
Maybe. But I suspect it's more to do with keeping out the sorts of people who would order oysters in a pub instead of just necking a few jars like normal proper blokes do.
Alternatively, it's a lie? There is no quiet, out of the way pub in Hampstead with a large beer garden that you can just breeze into.
I kinda wish is wasn't a lie, tho.
For decades I had a fantasy that I would happen upon a hidden corner of Regent's Park, barely known, not even on the map, a total secret, full of wildflowers and maybe native English fauna. A tiny tiny Eden in the middle of London
A couple of years ago I did, indeed, chance upon a corner of the Park I'd never visited before, enchantingly pretty, not entirely unknown, but new to me. Not Eden, but delightful. Incredible that I had never discovered it hitherto. I've lived near this park for 35 years
A secret gem of a leafy pub in Hampstead would be like that
I see it's become "leafy" now. Did I say it was leafy? No, I most assuredly did not.
I wonder if the innovation enabled by self driving will be a fully enclosed box or tinted windows that give total privacy. What better way to travel up the M6 than in bed?
You still need someone capable of driving a car. And they have to stay alert while doing nothing, which is far harder than just driving the damned car yourself.
Duh. They will fix that.
At one point every car had a man in front of it with a flag, because cars weren't trusted. Your discourse is on about that level
AI is going to change everything, this is just one aspect.
Most trains could operate without drivers tomorrow, the Docklands Light Railway has never had drivers, no one minds
Sure but why would we need cars when we can all get around on Marty McFly's flying hoverboard anyway?
Owning your own car gives you freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want, on the open road. As cars become environmentally friendly there is no excuse not to be having more roads, more cars anymore. Cars are the future.
Think harder. You will be able to order up a self drive electric car (the way you order an Uber now), and it will take you wherever you wanna go, and drop you off. The car will then disappear to service the next customer. No hassle parking, no traffic jams, no pollution, no accidents, no dead people, no flattened badgers, much cheaper than owning, for the huge majority of people this will be superior, and it will benefit cities intensely, as I have outlined.
Owning a car will, as I have also said, probably become an exorbitant luxury for a tiny elite, a status symbol - as keeping a horse is today, when once they were universal
Like Philip said, a car is an expression of an individual's style, identity and even their dreams - they are still hugely aspirational for the vast majority of the population, and a symbol of success. They represent freedom and control - you can go anywhere, anytime, in a vehicle customised exactly as you like it. And it's YOURS. You own it.
Also, if you have kids, the car has trikes, car seats, toys in it and other stuff you need to lug around so it's an extensive of your household - it's not something you just hail & dismiss.
Cars also crash into each other and kill children. They will be automated into anonymity, and then taxed into extinction
I know it's sad they are going, but they are going
Yes, they will be increasingly autonomous - there's been an increasing trend of driver aids on new cars for almost 15 years now - but that has precisely zero correlation with car ownership trends.
People will simply want to buy their own self-driving electric car as opposed to a driver-aided petrol car.
Cheer up, you'll be able to have your own DRONE. Much more exciting. Take the kids to school by air!
(This will probably happen, actually)
I'll just plug myself into The Matrix and live an alternate reality that'd make @Roger cry.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
There's a lot of nonsense about. I diagnose the cause as a mix of virtue-signaling and paranoia. This latter perhaps fed by the trauma and claustrophobia of the past year.
"I'm a rugged, freedom luvin' bear, always chaffing against these petty-fogging rules that all you pussies accept without a murmur."
"I'm an astute and seasoned unit, sussing that the "authorities" have a nefarious plan to keep the rules in place even after the virus is gone cos they love the power. I don't just trust them like you naive kiddies."
These are the main 2 strands.
What was that quiet, out of the way pub in Hampstead you went to the other day? Sounds great.
Yes, I'd like to visit that pub, too. Perhaps it is called The Moon Under Water
It's great. No need for contact details unless you insist on ordering oysters.
Do tell. Because any pub which is open at the moment must have a significant garden, and/or a large terrace on the street, making it quite prominent
A pub in Hampstead with a large beer garden, which is "quiet and out of the way"? Really?
Luckily, I don't need to visit this pub, as I live right next door to a vast, yet little-known park, the Regent's Park. Most people aren't aware of it and head straight for Clapham Common, or their acid trip ends
Within earshot of the Edinboro Castle… Delancy St is a favourite cut through for me…
Re the weather. One of the great problems is that our memories are rarely accurate. What was the weather line in April 1989? Or 1999? Its hard to say from memory. In my head my summer holidays were all warm and sunny and spent in North Devon. Only one part of that sentence is true. UK weather is usually dominated by westerlies, but by no means always. When things get stuck in different patterns, we tend to notice. Great events such as 1948, 1963, 1976 and so on stick in the memory because they were so unusual. Its odd that for the time of the pandemic, the UK weather has been unusual, but I'd draw no conclusions from it. Its also important to remember what an average temperature means. Saying the temperature should be about 16 for London in April (or whatever) does not reflect day to day variability, in the same way that taking 100 people and averaging their ages (lets say 40?) does not mean everyone you meet will be 40.
The people walking past my flat are wearing winter coats, woolly hats and SCARVES
It is 10C with a biting wind. Tomorrow is the first of May. It has been cold for months; it is odd. Probably nothing, but it is odd
I'm a frequenter of weather and climate forums as that's my other big interest and long-ago academic specialism.
It is indeed an unusual pattern though increasingly common in recent springs. Wet and windy with mild zonal flow throughout the boreal winter, and then high latitude anticyclones dominating Europe and the North Atlantic during spring, until the rain returns in early summer. Sometimes the anticyclone is positioned nicely to give us warm weather, like 2018 and 2020. Sometimes it's in the wrong place, as this year - centred over Greenland bringing continuous Northerlies. The so call WACC phenomenon (warm Arctic, cold continents).
Bad news for European vineyards which have been decimated by late frosts after early budburst in 4 out of the last 6 years (2016, 17, 20, 21), with this year's frosts being the worst.
We don't know what has caused this although there are a few statistical matches, with low Arctic ice concentration (reduces the poleward temperature gradient and weakens the jet stream), and low solar activity (does likewise), as well as the North Atlantic cold blob which surfaces to worry everyone about a shutdown of the North Atlantic drift every year or two.
When I was a lad, climate change was all about the coming of the next Ice Age. I guess we have something to be grateful for...
Judging from the weather, I think they were right...
I wonder if the innovation enabled by self driving will be a fully enclosed box or tinted windows that give total privacy. What better way to travel up the M6 than in bed?
Best way to travel up the M6 is to go up the A1 instead.
I wonder if the innovation enabled by self driving will be a fully enclosed box or tinted windows that give total privacy. What better way to travel up the M6 than in bed?
Shag your way to Manchester?
Why not do it in style. Much more fun than the insanity of dealing with a contraflow and more romantic than the toilets of a National Express coach and Stafford services.
I wonder if the innovation enabled by self driving will be a fully enclosed box or tinted windows that give total privacy. What better way to travel up the M6 than in bed?
Best way to travel up the M6 is to go up the A1 instead.
You still need someone capable of driving a car. And they have to stay alert while doing nothing, which is far harder than just driving the damned car yourself.
Duh. They will fix that.
At one point every car had a man in front of it with a flag, because cars weren't trusted. Your discourse is on about that level
AI is going to change everything, this is just one aspect.
Most trains could operate without drivers tomorrow, the Docklands Light Railway has never had drivers, no one minds
Sure but why would we need cars when we can all get around on Marty McFly's flying hoverboard anyway?
Owning your own car gives you freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want, on the open road. As cars become environmentally friendly there is no excuse not to be having more roads, more cars anymore. Cars are the future.
Think harder. You will be able to order up a self drive electric car (the way you order an Uber now), and it will take you wherever you wanna go, and drop you off. The car will then disappear to service the next customer. No hassle parking, no traffic jams, no pollution, no accidents, no dead people, no flattened badgers, much cheaper than owning, for the huge majority of people this will be superior, and it will benefit cities intensely, as I have outlined.
Owning a car will, as I have also said, probably become an exorbitant luxury for a tiny elite, a status symbol - as keeping a horse is today, when once they were universal
Like Philip said, a car is an expression of an individual's style, identity and even their dreams - they are still hugely aspirational for the vast majority of the population, and a symbol of success. They represent freedom and control - you can go anywhere, anytime, in a vehicle customised exactly as you like it. And it's YOURS. You own it.
Also, if you have kids, the car has trikes, car seats, toys in it and other stuff you need to lug around so it's an extensive of your household - it's not something you just hail & dismiss.
Cars also crash into each other and kill children. They will be automated into anonymity, and then taxed into extinction
I know it's sad they are going, but they are going
Yes, they will be increasingly autonomous - there's been an increasing trend of driver aids on new cars for almost 15 years now - but that has precisely zero correlation with car ownership trends.
People will simply want to buy their own self-driving electric car as opposed to a driver-aided petrol car.
Precisely.
Why would I hail an Uber and wait for it to arrive, lifeless and devoid of personalisation, when I could own my own autonomous vehicle that is parked at my property ready and waiting for me whenever I want it? Ready and waiting with my kids car seats and anything else I choose to store in it.
Two idiot, low-watt, provincial Tories endlessly agreeing with each other about the continuing necessity for steam engines. Get a room
I'd forgotten you were the only person in the history of the world who felt it necessary to lay down a two-minute hate on steam engines.
Transport is your Vietnam. In future, I will skip any post you write on this subject, and laugh quietly to myself instead.
I wonder if the innovation enabled by self driving will be a fully enclosed box or tinted windows that give total privacy. What better way to travel up the M6 than in bed?
Best way to travel up the M6 is to go up the A1 instead.
Important to think about things a little less literally. I am not sure I buy the communal travel box vision. Cars are not just about transport, they provide portable personal space, a shield against the outside world. A place to keep your stuff. People like that. Whatever comes after cars, will have to deliver that as well as a way to get from A to B.
Again, @Jonathan gets it and shows why he'd be a better leader of the Labour Party than Keir Starmer.
It comes with zero car parking, other than a bit of "on street parking". Zero car parking for "luxury apartments"!
Absolutely insane.
Not insane at all. Clairvoyant
Cars are going. Electric self drive cars will be here in 5-10 years. World changing. No need to own a car. It will transform our cities for the better, making them cleaner, quieter, lovelier. All those car parks, drives, garages? - gone. They can be turned into urban woodlands. Marvellous.
Embrace the future
I think this is right - about cars being on their way out.
A good technique (if you can do it) for predicting the future is to go out and view the environment as one of those "Cadbury's Smash Aliens" would. Disassociate yourself from the reality you've grown accustomed to and look at things afresh through the question, "Does this really make sense?"
If you do this, the sight of all these small yet bulky metallic boxes strewn all over the place, occasionally being used to transport just one or two flesh & blood units in a slow, painful manner from one place to another place, it will suddenly strike you as absurd.
You'll shake your head in wonder as this dawns. Then you'll have a giggle (like in the advert) and know for a fact that in not too many years from now they will have disappeared.
The Osmonds were onto this before anybody. Crazy Horses, wooo, wooo. Got to number 2 in 1972.
Exactly right. On this issue we are seers, and the rest of PB is too dull-witted to comprehend
Imagine trying to explain to people why everyone rides horses.
What, you climb on top of a massive half-domesticated animal, with a tendency to bolt, and you order it to walk you somewhere in the city by threatening it with a stick, and so it slowly walks around as it craps on small children and pisses on old ladies, and then it dies and it is turned into glue?
Same logic explains why offices aren't coming back in their old form.
So I he Earth people spend money on big boxes of brick, metal and glass...
So they can waste time and spend money travelling to these big boxes in little metal boxes on wheels...
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
There's a lot of nonsense about. I diagnose the cause as a mix of virtue-signaling and paranoia. This latter perhaps fed by the trauma and claustrophobia of the past year.
"I'm a rugged, freedom luvin' bear, always chaffing against these petty-fogging rules that all you pussies accept without a murmur."
"I'm an astute and seasoned unit, sussing that the "authorities" have a nefarious plan to keep the rules in place even after the virus is gone cos they love the power. I don't just trust them like you naive kiddies."
These are the main 2 strands.
What was that quiet, out of the way pub in Hampstead you went to the other day? Sounds great.
Yes, I'd like to visit that pub, too. Perhaps it is called The Moon Under Water
It's great. No need for contact details unless you insist on ordering oysters.
Oh, why? In case you get D&V?
Maybe. But I suspect it's more to do with keeping out the sorts of people who would order oysters in a pub instead of just necking a few jars like normal proper blokes do.
Alternatively, it's a lie? There is no quiet, out of the way pub in Hampstead with a large beer garden that you can just breeze into.
I kinda wish is wasn't a lie, tho.
For decades I had a fantasy that I would happen upon a hidden corner of Regent's Park, barely known, not even on the map, a total secret, full of wildflowers and maybe native English fauna. A tiny tiny Eden in the middle of London
A couple of years ago I did, indeed, chance upon a corner of the Park I'd never visited before, enchantingly pretty, not entirely unknown, but new to me. Not Eden, but delightful. Incredible that I had never discovered it hitherto. I've lived near this park for 35 years
A secret gem of a leafy pub in Hampstead would be like that
I hadn’t been to the avenue garden until last week - very pleasant
You still need someone capable of driving a car. And they have to stay alert while doing nothing, which is far harder than just driving the damned car yourself.
Duh. They will fix that.
At one point every car had a man in front of it with a flag, because cars weren't trusted. Your discourse is on about that level
AI is going to change everything, this is just one aspect.
Most trains could operate without drivers tomorrow, the Docklands Light Railway has never had drivers, no one minds
Sure but why would we need cars when we can all get around on Marty McFly's flying hoverboard anyway?
Owning your own car gives you freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want, on the open road. As cars become environmentally friendly there is no excuse not to be having more roads, more cars anymore. Cars are the future.
Think harder. You will be able to order up a self drive electric car (the way you order an Uber now), and it will take you wherever you wanna go, and drop you off. The car will then disappear to service the next customer. No hassle parking, no traffic jams, no pollution, no accidents, no dead people, no flattened badgers, much cheaper than owning, for the huge majority of people this will be superior, and it will benefit cities intensely, as I have outlined.
Owning a car will, as I have also said, probably become an exorbitant luxury for a tiny elite, a status symbol - as keeping a horse is today, when once they were universal
I'm an engineer. My car contains a whole selection of tools etc, most of which I only use occasionally, however it's very handy to have the full selection when required.
My car is scruffy - I drive it wearing dirty work clothes. It's got marks on the door trim from where I've wedged lumps of steel across the rear seats.
Oh, and I regularly drive 3 hours non-stop to go to a site where charging is unlikely to be available, and then back again, same day.
I do all of this in a car that cost me £2k four years and 100k miles ago. Its going to be a very long time before there is a second hand electric option that does what I need in my budget - and this is what those promoting electric cars don't seem to get.
Some enterprising young chap round here set up a "temporary mobile" bar, usually reserved for music festivals, on a bit of waste land and car park on an industrial estate near me. It's proving incredibly popular and has acres of outdoor space.
Still incredibly cold mind. I miss the indoors.
Incontrovertible proof that you are not from Newcastle
Another problem with high-rise in the UK is that we don't build enough car parking. This will become even more of a problem when electric cars become common place.
Any high-rise should include secure underground car parking and space for at least 2 vehicles per unit.
We had a garden in London that we tried to convert into underground parking.
The council was utterly resistant - said it would attract more cars - although we argued that taking parking away from the streets would give more space for bike lanes
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
There's a lot of nonsense about. I diagnose the cause as a mix of virtue-signaling and paranoia. This latter perhaps fed by the trauma and claustrophobia of the past year.
"I'm a rugged, freedom luvin' bear, always chaffing against these petty-fogging rules that all you pussies accept without a murmur."
"I'm an astute and seasoned unit, sussing that the "authorities" have a nefarious plan to keep the rules in place even after the virus is gone cos they love the power. I don't just trust them like you naive kiddies."
These are the main 2 strands.
What was that quiet, out of the way pub in Hampstead you went to the other day? Sounds great.
Yes, I'd like to visit that pub, too. Perhaps it is called The Moon Under Water
It's great. No need for contact details unless you insist on ordering oysters.
Oh, why? In case you get D&V?
Maybe. But I suspect it's more to do with keeping out the sorts of people who would order oysters in a pub instead of just necking a few jars like normal proper blokes do.
Alternatively, it's a lie? There is no quiet, out of the way pub in Hampstead with a large beer garden that you can just breeze into.
I kinda wish is wasn't a lie, tho.
For decades I had a fantasy that I would happen upon a hidden corner of Regent's Park, barely known, not even on the map, a total secret, full of wildflowers and maybe native English fauna. A tiny tiny Eden in the middle of London
A couple of years ago I did, indeed, chance upon a corner of the Park I'd never visited before, enchantingly pretty, not entirely unknown, but new to me. Not Eden, but delightful. Incredible that I had never discovered it hitherto. I've lived near this park for 35 years
A secret gem of a leafy pub in Hampstead would be like that
The Duke of Hamilton might fit the bill? It's a bit out of the way but still usually very busy.
Edit - it's also not much a of a secret pub...
"the pub was out of the way and quiet."
I think we need a judge-led enquiry.
Not the Duke of Hamilton. No aristo titles in this one. And it's only 2 words. "The ......."
Might go there now actually. Not that I want a beer - but just for the sake of it.
Great. Which is it?
I do hope you're not slipping into 'badgering one liner' mode again, Captain.
It comes with zero car parking, other than a bit of "on street parking". Zero car parking for "luxury apartments"!
Absolutely insane.
Not insane at all. Clairvoyant
Cars are going. Electric self drive cars will be here in 5-10 years. World changing. No need to own a car. It will transform our cities for the better, making them cleaner, quieter, lovelier. All those car parks, drives, garages? - gone. They can be turned into urban woodlands. Marvellous.
Embrace the future
I think this is right - about cars being on their way out.
A good technique (if you can do it) for predicting the future is to go out and view the environment as one of those "Cadbury's Smash Aliens" would. Disassociate yourself from the reality you've grown accustomed to and look at things afresh through the question, "Does this really make sense?"
If you do this, the sight of all these small yet bulky metallic boxes strewn all over the place, occasionally being used to transport just one or two flesh & blood units in a slow, painful manner from one place to another place, it will suddenly strike you as absurd.
You'll shake your head in wonder as this dawns. Then you'll have a giggle (like in the advert) and know for a fact that in not too many years from now they will have disappeared.
The Osmonds were onto this before anybody. Crazy Horses, wooo, wooo. Got to number 2 in 1972.
Exactly right. On this issue we are seers, and the rest of PB is too dull-witted to comprehend
Imagine trying to explain to people why everyone rides horses.
What, you climb on top of a massive half-domesticated animal, with a tendency to bolt, and you order it to walk you somewhere in the city by threatening it with a stick, and so it slowly walks around as it craps on small children and pisses on old ladies, and then it dies and it is turned into glue?
Horses were replaced because people could get a personal chassis that would move an order of magnitude faster than the horse.
Taxis, Ubers, whatever you want to call them are vastly inferior to a personal car. They're not yours, they're not personalised, they're not available on demand, they don't have your own equipment in them. If I want to take my kids to school I get them ready, step out of my house, through my garden and into my car. Their car seats are already there. I then drive and am at the school a few minutes later.
Why would I trade that for hailing an Uber, that will arrive without car seats, that will take about as long to get to me as the drive itself takes?
Its a vastly inferior service. That's why we already don't use it.
But the Uber user hasn’t tied up capital in a car. It’s just like a PFI solution - less good and costs more but you don’t have to buy and operate it yourself
I grew up in a village in rural Sussex. So getting a driving licence meant freedom. Of all my qualifications this is one that counted and still counts the most. I would toss degrees, a-levels, GCSEs in the bin before losing that. I doubt I am alone.
One thing I appreciate about the car is that you can for a few hundred quid get something that can basically do the same thing as any other car costing far more. It's pretty democratic.
For all the real problems cars bring, it is important not to forget the good bits. The freedom and that it brought affordable travel to so many.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
There's a lot of nonsense about. I diagnose the cause as a mix of virtue-signaling and paranoia. This latter perhaps fed by the trauma and claustrophobia of the past year.
"I'm a rugged, freedom luvin' bear, always chaffing against these petty-fogging rules that all you pussies accept without a murmur."
"I'm an astute and seasoned unit, sussing that the "authorities" have a nefarious plan to keep the rules in place even after the virus is gone cos they love the power. I don't just trust them like you naive kiddies."
These are the main 2 strands.
What was that quiet, out of the way pub in Hampstead you went to the other day? Sounds great.
Yes, I'd like to visit that pub, too. Perhaps it is called The Moon Under Water
It's great. No need for contact details unless you insist on ordering oysters.
Oh, why? In case you get D&V?
Maybe. But I suspect it's more to do with keeping out the sorts of people who would order oysters in a pub instead of just necking a few jars like normal proper blokes do.
Alternatively, it's a lie? There is no quiet, out of the way pub in Hampstead with a large beer garden that you can just breeze into.
I kinda wish is wasn't a lie, tho.
For decades I had a fantasy that I would happen upon a hidden corner of Regent's Park, barely known, not even on the map, a total secret, full of wildflowers and maybe native English fauna. A tiny tiny Eden in the middle of London
A couple of years ago I did, indeed, chance upon a corner of the Park I'd never visited before, enchantingly pretty, not entirely unknown, but new to me. Not Eden, but delightful. Incredible that I had never discovered it hitherto. I've lived near this park for 35 years
A secret gem of a leafy pub in Hampstead would be like that
The Duke of Hamilton might fit the bill? It's a bit out of the way but still usually very busy.
Edit - it's also not much a of a secret pub...
"the pub was out of the way and quiet."
I think we need a judge-led enquiry.
Not the Duke of Hamilton. No aristo titles in this one. And it's only 2 words. "The ......."
Might go there now actually. Not that I want a beer - but just for the sake of it.
Hmm, there used to be a pub in Newport called 'Le Pub'. Maybe anglicised post Brexit? Not your neck of the woods, though?
It comes with zero car parking, other than a bit of "on street parking". Zero car parking for "luxury apartments"!
Absolutely insane.
Not insane at all. Clairvoyant
Cars are going. Electric self drive cars will be here in 5-10 years. World changing. No need to own a car. It will transform our cities for the better, making them cleaner, quieter, lovelier. All those car parks, drives, garages? - gone. They can be turned into urban woodlands. Marvellous.
Embrace the future
I think this is right - about cars being on their way out.
A good technique (if you can do it) for predicting the future is to go out and view the environment as one of those "Cadbury's Smash Aliens" would. Disassociate yourself from the reality you've grown accustomed to and look at things afresh through the question, "Does this really make sense?"
If you do this, the sight of all these small yet bulky metallic boxes strewn all over the place, occasionally being used to transport just one or two flesh & blood units in a slow, painful manner from one place to another place, it will suddenly strike you as absurd.
You'll shake your head in wonder as this dawns. Then you'll have a giggle (like in the advert) and know for a fact that in not too many years from now they will have disappeared.
The Osmonds were onto this before anybody. Crazy Horses, wooo, wooo. Got to number 2 in 1972.
Exactly right. On this issue we are seers, and the rest of PB is too dull-witted to comprehend
Imagine trying to explain to people why everyone rides horses.
What, you climb on top of a massive half-domesticated animal, with a tendency to bolt, and you order it to walk you somewhere in the city by threatening it with a stick, and so it slowly walks around as it craps on small children and pisses on old ladies, and then it dies and it is turned into glue?
Horses were replaced because people could get a personal chassis that would move an order of magnitude faster than the horse.
Taxis, Ubers, whatever you want to call them are vastly inferior to a personal car. They're not yours, they're not personalised, they're not available on demand, they don't have your own equipment in them. If I want to take my kids to school I get them ready, step out of my house, through my garden and into my car. Their car seats are already there. I then drive and am at the school a few minutes later.
Why would I trade that for hailing an Uber, that will arrive without car seats, that will take about as long to get to me as the drive itself takes?
Its a vastly inferior service. That's why we already don't use it.
But the Uber user hasn’t tied up capital in a car. It’s just like a PFI solution - less good and costs more but you don’t have to buy and operate it yourself
Good only for large cities , especially London , for most people uber is not even remotely comparable to car ownership, less than useless and would cost you many times more.
We are a 2 car household. The main family car is leased and it is a big car designed to move lots of people around. Mainly driven by my wive, it will be replaced in June with a new hybrid SUV. We use it all the time and the convenience of having our own things would be hard to give up. I expect the next replacement in 4 years time will be fully electric.
The second car is an almost 20 year old Ford Focus. It was taken over from my parents who had managed to do 50K miles in 16 years! Since Covid it does 1,500 miles/year and rarely goes more than 10 miles in any direction from our house. It costs me about £300/year to run (plus another ~£300 on petrol). I will keep it until it dies. My kids are very embarrassed about it but I don't mind as it means we have more money to spend on other things. When it does go though I would like to do my bit for the environment with an electric car, especially given the short journeys it does. I would be very tempted with some kind of regular AI-driven hailed service if I knew it would always turn up when I needed it.
So although I can't see AI-driven car services taking over completely I think there will be a sizable market for it.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
There's a lot of nonsense about. I diagnose the cause as a mix of virtue-signaling and paranoia. This latter perhaps fed by the trauma and claustrophobia of the past year.
"I'm a rugged, freedom luvin' bear, always chaffing against these petty-fogging rules that all you pussies accept without a murmur."
"I'm an astute and seasoned unit, sussing that the "authorities" have a nefarious plan to keep the rules in place even after the virus is gone cos they love the power. I don't just trust them like you naive kiddies."
These are the main 2 strands.
What was that quiet, out of the way pub in Hampstead you went to the other day? Sounds great.
Yes, I'd like to visit that pub, too. Perhaps it is called The Moon Under Water
It's great. No need for contact details unless you insist on ordering oysters.
Oh, why? In case you get D&V?
Maybe. But I suspect it's more to do with keeping out the sorts of people who would order oysters in a pub instead of just necking a few jars like normal proper blokes do.
Alternatively, it's a lie? There is no quiet, out of the way pub in Hampstead with a large beer garden that you can just breeze into.
I kinda wish is wasn't a lie, tho.
For decades I had a fantasy that I would happen upon a hidden corner of Regent's Park, barely known, not even on the map, a total secret, full of wildflowers and maybe native English fauna. A tiny tiny Eden in the middle of London
A couple of years ago I did, indeed, chance upon a corner of the Park I'd never visited before, enchantingly pretty, not entirely unknown, but new to me. Not Eden, but delightful. Incredible that I had never discovered it hitherto. I've lived near this park for 35 years
A secret gem of a leafy pub in Hampstead would be like that
The Duke of Hamilton might fit the bill? It's a bit out of the way but still usually very busy.
Edit - it's also not much a of a secret pub...
"the pub was out of the way and quiet."
I think we need a judge-led enquiry.
Not the Duke of Hamilton. No aristo titles in this one. And it's only 2 words. "The ......."
Might go there now actually. Not that I want a beer - but just for the sake of it.
Hmm, there used to be a pub in Newport called 'Le Pub'. Maybe anglicised post Brexit? Not your neck of the woods, though?
You still need someone capable of driving a car. And they have to stay alert while doing nothing, which is far harder than just driving the damned car yourself.
Duh. They will fix that.
At one point every car had a man in front of it with a flag, because cars weren't trusted. Your discourse is on about that level
AI is going to change everything, this is just one aspect.
Most trains could operate without drivers tomorrow, the Docklands Light Railway has never had drivers, no one minds
Sure but why would we need cars when we can all get around on Marty McFly's flying hoverboard anyway?
Owning your own car gives you freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want, on the open road. As cars become environmentally friendly there is no excuse not to be having more roads, more cars anymore. Cars are the future.
Think harder. You will be able to order up a self drive electric car (the way you order an Uber now), and it will take you wherever you wanna go, and drop you off. The car will then disappear to service the next customer. No hassle parking, no traffic jams, no pollution, no accidents, no dead people, no flattened badgers, much cheaper than owning, for the huge majority of people this will be superior, and it will benefit cities intensely, as I have outlined.
Owning a car will, as I have also said, probably become an exorbitant luxury for a tiny elite, a status symbol - as keeping a horse is today, when once they were universal
I'm an engineer. My car contains a whole selection of tools etc, most of which I only use occasionally, however it's very handy to have the full selection when required.
My car is scruffy - I drive it wearing dirty work clothes. It's got marks on the door trim from where I've wedged lumps of steel across the rear seats.
Oh, and I regularly drive 3 hours non-stop to go to a site where charging is unlikely to be available, and then back again, same day.
I do all of this in a car that cost me £2k four years and 100k miles ago. Its going to be a very long time before there is a second hand electric option that does what I need in my budget - and this is what those promoting electric cars don't seem to get.
I agree with the first part on car ownership, outside cities.
On the second though, about it being a long time before you can get a second hand electric that does what you want in budget - where's the problem? When are new ICE cars going to disappear? 2030 (and only for wholly ICE powered cars, I think). Your 2k cars are, what, 8 or so years old? Depends on size/make of course. So you need the ICE cars made towards 2030 to be suitable for you to buy in 2038 or so. Seems likely to me - look at the electric cars from ten years ago to gauge possible progress in range, life and price.
Now, the market may destroy ICE-only cars before then, but if so that will be because the combination of price, range and longevity/resale value has become compelling sooner.
Front page headline 'What a boost for Britain ' on vaccine rollout and plummeting infections
And on the inside 'The Jokes on you , Sir Keir' referring to his woeful photo stunt
It was an avoidable error by Starmer and he needs better advisors
Quite right, Starmer's woeful photo stunt at John Lewis demeans his office.
I mean, could anybody imagine our Prime Minister engaging in cheap publicity stunts to try to pretend he's a man of the people? He has far more dignity than that. Perish the thought.
Boris has that priced in. Starmer is supposed to be serious and competent. He's already failed at the latter and now he's failing at the former with that cringey photo.
Starmer does no stunts - You cant be PM with less personality than your opponent! Starmer does stunts - You cant be PM doing stunts like that!
Have Starmer critics thought maybe they just dont like him because he is a lefty, not because of his personality?
No, he's just not very good and it's disappointing because we need a strong opposition to the government more than ever given how our liberties are being curtailed. A good opposition leader would be planning with Tory rebels right now to defeat the government on their likely renewal of the virus measures in September. Instead he'll bitch for about two seconds and then quietly vote in favour leaving 60-80 Tory rebels wondering what they need to do to get the opposition to actually bloody oppose.
Rightly or wrongly from a public health perspective our liberties have been curtailed for the past 13 months.
Not a peep from anyone until the week before last or somesuch.
With ongoing huge popularity as evidenced in the polls why on earth would they decide to change policy now? Keep us if not scared, then anxious and in need of nanny.
Alternatively - after a number of false starts, we have a defined policy program to deal with COVID19. That is working....
And in the meantime unparalleled restrictions on our liberty have been waved through with a smile.
As I said, perhaps this was necessary. But the enthusiasm with which the country, not least here on PB, has embraced the restrictions of freedoms has been imo extraodinary.
Britons will be slaves, it seems.
I’ve been amazed at the collective reflex to defer to authority figures over the last year. I was always under the impression that the British cultural norm was instinctive distrust of authority. I can only assume it’s because they’ve put up on stage a doctor and a “scientist”, for whom the normal rules go out the window.
Nonsense. People think lockdown is the right way to go, so they go with it. Like driving on the left. Am I deferring to authority figures, failing to show enough distrust for authority etc when I stop at red lights, put a seatbelt on and so on? This "look at the sheeple" stuff aims for sophistication and actually sounds like Rik Mayall in the Young Ones.
There's a lot of nonsense about. I diagnose the cause as a mix of virtue-signaling and paranoia. This latter perhaps fed by the trauma and claustrophobia of the past year.
"I'm a rugged, freedom luvin' bear, always chaffing against these petty-fogging rules that all you pussies accept without a murmur."
"I'm an astute and seasoned unit, sussing that the "authorities" have a nefarious plan to keep the rules in place even after the virus is gone cos they love the power. I don't just trust them like you naive kiddies."
These are the main 2 strands.
What was that quiet, out of the way pub in Hampstead you went to the other day? Sounds great.
Yes, I'd like to visit that pub, too. Perhaps it is called The Moon Under Water
It's great. No need for contact details unless you insist on ordering oysters.
Oh, why? In case you get D&V?
Maybe. But I suspect it's more to do with keeping out the sorts of people who would order oysters in a pub instead of just necking a few jars like normal proper blokes do.
Alternatively, it's a lie? There is no quiet, out of the way pub in Hampstead with a large beer garden that you can just breeze into.
I kinda wish is wasn't a lie, tho.
For decades I had a fantasy that I would happen upon a hidden corner of Regent's Park, barely known, not even on the map, a total secret, full of wildflowers and maybe native English fauna. A tiny tiny Eden in the middle of London
A couple of years ago I did, indeed, chance upon a corner of the Park I'd never visited before, enchantingly pretty, not entirely unknown, but new to me. Not Eden, but delightful. Incredible that I had never discovered it hitherto. I've lived near this park for 35 years
A secret gem of a leafy pub in Hampstead would be like that
The Duke of Hamilton might fit the bill? It's a bit out of the way but still usually very busy.
Edit - it's also not much a of a secret pub...
"the pub was out of the way and quiet."
I think we need a judge-led enquiry.
Not the Duke of Hamilton. No aristo titles in this one. And it's only 2 words. "The ......."
Might go there now actually. Not that I want a beer - but just for the sake of it.
Hmm, there used to be a pub in Newport called 'Le Pub'. Maybe anglicised post Brexit? Not your neck of the woods, though?
Call the samaritans if you feel suicidal advises Jenrick aide to a family who are now fucked in their inferno risk flat.
Surely the correct advice is to buy a ticket for a Tory fundraiser. Jenrick would sort them out no problem.
I'm not saying the government is doing the direct bidding of its donors, but - no hang on, I AM saying that.
Surely the government can do better than that, it is unreasonable for leaseholders to take such a crippling share of responsibility for what has obviously been systemic failure. It's not as if there is moral hazard at work and these leaseholders could have done much if anything to avoid this. A classic case for the government to step in.
Professor JohnCurtice (for it is He) says that whilst SNP support is slipping, the Greens are romping along, so a majority of MSPs will support independence. Strap yourselves in - when HYUFD explodes as a result of Boris doing what he has endlessly said he won't do, it will be messy.
Professor JohnCurtice (for it is He) says that whilst SNP support is slipping, the Greens are romping along, so a majority of MSPs will support independence. Strap yourselves in - when HYUFD explodes as a result of Boris doing what he has endlessly said he won't do, it will be messy.
I'm expecting the greens to do well over the next few years. One of the things that is striking me is how many ex-Labour people are standing for them or the Lib Dems. People who had enough during the Corbynite / Brexit years. Some who I would never had thought would jump ship.
Professor JohnCurtice (for it is He) says that whilst SNP support is slipping, the Greens are romping along, so a majority of MSPs will support independence. Strap yourselves in - when HYUFD explodes as a result of Boris doing what he has endlessly said he won't do, it will be messy.
"Explodes" being perhaps the wrong term in this instance given you're talking about HYUFD.
Call the samaritans if you feel suicidal advises Jenrick aide to a family who are now fucked in their inferno risk flat.
Surely the correct advice is to buy a ticket for a Tory fundraiser. Jenrick would sort them out no problem.
I'm not saying the government is doing the direct bidding of its donors, but - no hang on, I AM saying that.
Surely the government can do better than that, it is unreasonable for leaseholders to take such a crippling share of responsibility for what has obviously been systemic failure. It's not as if there is moral hazard at work and these leaseholders could have done much if anything to avoid this. A classic case for the government to step in.
£11m well spent say the developers, as the government mysteriously refuse to engage with millions of occupants stuck in unsaleable properties and instead backs the developers.
Professor JohnCurtice (for it is He) says that whilst SNP support is slipping, the Greens are romping along, so a majority of MSPs will support independence. Strap yourselves in - when HYUFD explodes as a result of Boris doing what he has endlessly said he won't do, it will be messy.
First Boris will refuse indyref2 regardless.
Second a plurality of Scottish Green voters now oppose indyref2 so only an SNP and Alba majority can even be considered to have a mandate for indyref2, an SNP and Green majority will not count https://archive.ph/eg2lt
You still need someone capable of driving a car. And they have to stay alert while doing nothing, which is far harder than just driving the damned car yourself.
Duh. They will fix that.
At one point every car had a man in front of it with a flag, because cars weren't trusted. Your discourse is on about that level
AI is going to change everything, this is just one aspect.
Most trains could operate without drivers tomorrow, the Docklands Light Railway has never had drivers, no one minds
Sure but why would we need cars when we can all get around on Marty McFly's flying hoverboard anyway?
Owning your own car gives you freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want, on the open road. As cars become environmentally friendly there is no excuse not to be having more roads, more cars anymore. Cars are the future.
Think harder. You will be able to order up a self drive electric car (the way you order an Uber now), and it will take you wherever you wanna go, and drop you off. The car will then disappear to service the next customer. No hassle parking, no traffic jams, no pollution, no accidents, no dead people, no flattened badgers, much cheaper than owning, for the huge majority of people this will be superior, and it will benefit cities intensely, as I have outlined.
Owning a car will, as I have also said, probably become an exorbitant luxury for a tiny elite, a status symbol - as keeping a horse is today, when once they were universal
I'm an engineer. My car contains a whole selection of tools etc, most of which I only use occasionally, however it's very handy to have the full selection when required.
My car is scruffy - I drive it wearing dirty work clothes. It's got marks on the door trim from where I've wedged lumps of steel across the rear seats.
Oh, and I regularly drive 3 hours non-stop to go to a site where charging is unlikely to be available, and then back again, same day.
I do all of this in a car that cost me £2k four years and 100k miles ago. Its going to be a very long time before there is a second hand electric option that does what I need in my budget - and this is what those promoting electric cars don't seem to get.
I agree with the first part on car ownership, outside cities.
On the second though, about it being a long time before you can get a second hand electric that does what you want in budget - where's the problem? When are new ICE cars going to disappear? 2030 (and only for wholly ICE powered cars, I think). Your 2k cars are, what, 8 or so years old? Depends on size/make of course. So you need the ICE cars made towards 2030 to be suitable for you to buy in 2038 or so. Seems likely to me - look at the electric cars from ten years ago to gauge possible progress in range, life and price.
Now, the market may destroy ICE-only cars before then, but if so that will be because the combination of price, range and longevity/resale value has become compelling sooner.
Two really big issues with second hand electric cars.
First, as the battery is the expensive bit, decent ranges are only really going to be offered on more expensive cars for the foreseeable future. My £2k car was a fairly cheap car when it was new, probably £10-12k. It works just as well as a £50k new car regarding range. So given I need a long range, the second hand market in 2038 probably doesn't offer me the option of buying a cheap cheerful car. I'll have to buy what was a very expensive new car - which will only ever depreciate down to £2k in value when it's essentially worn out.
In practice, electric cars means that long distance non-stop driving will become the preserve of the rich alone - it's one of the (many) ways that's the green revolution is going to be great for the upper middle class, and utterly shaft the poor.
The other thing is that because poorer regular long distance drivers will end up having to just keep repairing their ICE cars in a sort of 21st century version of Cuba, the government will either ban or tax to death ICE vehicles to get rid of them - there is little governments hate more than people driving old bangers on the cheap (see also everything from scrappage schemes to ULEZs all designed to get the cars driven by the poor and/or thrifty off the roads).
The irony is on a personal level, I'll probably end up driving round in a cooking oil powered diesel series landrover again like I did when I was in my late teens / early 20s, as it will be the only form transport left available that actually suits my needs.
You still need someone capable of driving a car. And they have to stay alert while doing nothing, which is far harder than just driving the damned car yourself.
Duh. They will fix that.
At one point every car had a man in front of it with a flag, because cars weren't trusted. Your discourse is on about that level
AI is going to change everything, this is just one aspect.
Most trains could operate without drivers tomorrow, the Docklands Light Railway has never had drivers, no one minds
Sure but why would we need cars when we can all get around on Marty McFly's flying hoverboard anyway?
Owning your own car gives you freedom to go wherever you want, whenever you want, on the open road. As cars become environmentally friendly there is no excuse not to be having more roads, more cars anymore. Cars are the future.
Think harder. You will be able to order up a self drive electric car (the way you order an Uber now), and it will take you wherever you wanna go, and drop you off. The car will then disappear to service the next customer. No hassle parking, no traffic jams, no pollution, no accidents, no dead people, no flattened badgers, much cheaper than owning, for the huge majority of people this will be superior, and it will benefit cities intensely, as I have outlined.
Owning a car will, as I have also said, probably become an exorbitant luxury for a tiny elite, a status symbol - as keeping a horse is today, when once they were universal
I'm an engineer. My car contains a whole selection of tools etc, most of which I only use occasionally, however it's very handy to have the full selection when required.
My car is scruffy - I drive it wearing dirty work clothes. It's got marks on the door trim from where I've wedged lumps of steel across the rear seats.
Oh, and I regularly drive 3 hours non-stop to go to a site where charging is unlikely to be available, and then back again, same day.
I do all of this in a car that cost me £2k four years and 100k miles ago. Its going to be a very long time before there is a second hand electric option that does what I need in my budget - and this is what those promoting electric cars don't seem to get.
I agree with the first part on car ownership, outside cities.
On the second though, about it being a long time before you can get a second hand electric that does what you want in budget - where's the problem? When are new ICE cars going to disappear? 2030 (and only for wholly ICE powered cars, I think). Your 2k cars are, what, 8 or so years old? Depends on size/make of course. So you need the ICE cars made towards 2030 to be suitable for you to buy in 2038 or so. Seems likely to me - look at the electric cars from ten years ago to gauge possible progress in range, life and price.
Now, the market may destroy ICE-only cars before then, but if so that will be because the combination of price, range and longevity/resale value has become compelling sooner.
Two really big issues with second hand electric cars.
First, as the battery is the expensive bit, decent ranges are only really going to be offered on more expensive cars for the foreseeable future. My £2k car was a fairly cheap car when it was new, probably £10-12k. It works just as well as a £50k new car regarding range. So given I need a long range, the second hand market in 2038 probably doesn't offer me the option of buying a cheap cheerful car. I'll have to buy what was a very expensive new car - which will only ever depreciate down to £2k in value when it's essentially worn out.
In practice, electric cars means that long distance non-stop driving will become the preserve of the rich alone - it's one of the (many) ways that's the green revolution is going to be great for the upper middle class, and utterly shaft the poor.
The other thing is that because poorer regular long distance drivers will end up having to just keep repairing their ICE cars in a sort of 21st century version of Cuba, the government will either ban or tax to death ICE vehicles to get rid of them - there is little governments hate more than people driving old bangers on the cheap (see also everything from scrappage schemes to ULEZs all designed to get the cars driven by the poor and/or thrifty off the roads).
The irony is on a personal level, I'll probably end up driving round in a cooking oil powered diesel series landrover again like I did when I was in my late teens / early 20s, as it will be the only form transport left available that actually suits my needs.
We need a battery swap infrastructure rather than a charging infrastructure. A standardised battery bay with space for n modules depending on how big the car is. Batteries no longer meeting the required standard get recycled and the cost of that is factored in to the cost of a swap.
There's no way I'd be able to drive non-stop to the Northern Highlands from the Flatlands in an electric car, which is something I used to do several times a year pre-pandemic (in place of getting on a plane to go elsewhere, I might add).
Green stuff has to be BETTER, not just putting on a hair shirt.
Professor JohnCurtice (for it is He) says that whilst SNP support is slipping, the Greens are romping along, so a majority of MSPs will support independence. Strap yourselves in - when HYUFD explodes as a result of Boris doing what he has endlessly said he won't do, it will be messy.
First Boris will refuse indyref2 regardless.
Second a plurality of Scottish Green voters now oppose indyref2 so only an SNP and Alba majority can even be considered to have a mandate for indyref2, an SNP and Green majority will not count https://archive.ph/eg2lt
Comments
You're essentially volunteering for the EU to write your regulatory rules for you, without input.
Now I'm in godalming I have a car again. I wish I didn't need to, but the bus service runs twice a day...
Owning a car will, as I have also said, probably become an exorbitant luxury for a tiny elite, a status symbol - as keeping a horse is today, when once they were universal
Yet you want to say a giant "f**k you" to your fellow residents of the South East in that city, while you commute in from your suburban home.
I stood there in the booking hall looking slightly dazed wondering which exit to go out of until a TfL guy came up and asked me if I was alright!
Incidentally if everyone switched to an Uber that would mean more traffic not less. My car is not in traffic when its parked up, its wherever I am. The traffic only occurs whenever I move. But if you're relying upon Ubers then the car has to get to me rather than already being where I am, then it has to get to the next person.
The overwhelming majority of the country do not take Ubers on a day to day basis. Driving is the way the overwhelming majority of the nation gets about.
Ferguson was happy that he and colleagues had 'got away with' lockdown in the west. Just what are we doing with government advisers who celebrate the use of CCP policies?
It doesn't help that the executive seems to be running the country without a parliament.
% of Londoners who have "a good idea of who this [mayoral] candidate is and what they stand for"
Sadiq Khan - 65%
Shaun Bailey - 33%
Laurence Fox - 16%
Siân Berry - 14%
Piers Corbyn - 9%
Count Binface - 6%
Luisa Porritt - 5%
Peter Gammons - 4%
Good to see Count Binface getting his message across better. Whatever that message might be.
In the countryside the future of cars is less certain, as they are much more useful there. I strongly suspect they will disappear in the end, but it will take longer
Personally, I find this sad as well as exciting. Owning and driving a car is great. I love mine. it's been a sanctuary and a saviour during lockdown. I have enjoyed driving insanely fast on empty roads. Last week I touched 137mph on a bizarrely deserted rural A Road in the southwest. Mad but fun
But cars are leaving us. I collect a new car today, I am sure it will be the last petrol car I ever own. I will probably hand back my last private car in the next decade, should God spare me
The dream is dead as you can see from Google's inability to expand their self driving car scheme and Lyft's desperate attempts to flog their self driving systems.
Self driving cars was seen as a 90/10% problem where once the 90% was solved the rest would be quickly fixed.
It's actual turned out to be a 99.9/0.1% problem and it's proven impossible to get much further than the 90% point.
Self driving cars will appear but they are still 5-10 years away.
A good technique (if you can do it) for predicting the future is to go out and view the environment as one of those "Cadbury's Smash Aliens" would. Disassociate yourself from the reality you've grown accustomed to and look at things afresh through the question, "Does this really make sense?"
If you do this, the sight of all these small yet bulky metallic boxes strewn all over the place, occasionally being used to transport just one or two flesh & blood units in a slow, painful manner from one place to another place, it will suddenly strike you as absurd.
You'll shake your head in wonder as this dawns. Then you'll have a giggle (like in the advert) and know for a fact that in not too many years from now they will have disappeared.
The Osmonds were onto this before anybody. Crazy Horses, wooo, wooo. Got to number 2 in 1972.
Do you have any idea what percentage of the country gets to work via Uber?
Do you have any idea what percentage of the country gets to work via their own car?
Cars aren't just for the countryside. They're for the suburbs, they're for the overwhelming majority of the nation.
Generally speaking, New Towns is failed model.
There’s no space for them anyway.
Also, if you have kids, the car has trikes, car seats, toys in it and other stuff you need to lug around so it's an extensive of your household - it's not something you just hail & dismiss.
No idea why you'd consider moving from A to B between 30mph and 70mph to be "slow" or "painful".
Imagine trying to explain to people why everyone rides horses.
What, you climb on top of a massive half-domesticated animal, with a tendency to bolt, and you order it to walk you somewhere in the city by threatening it with a stick, and so it slowly walks around as it craps on small children and pisses on old ladies, and then it dies and it is turned into glue?
Lol. You're from Cornwall mate.
Might go there now actually. Not that I want a beer - but just for the sake of it.
Get a room, guys.
Taxis, Ubers, whatever you want to call them are vastly inferior to a personal car. They're not yours, they're not personalised, they're not available on demand, they don't have your own equipment in them. If I want to take my kids to school I get them ready, step out of my house, through my garden and into my car. Their car seats are already there. I then drive and am at the school a few minutes later.
Why would I trade that for hailing an Uber, that will arrive without car seats, that will take about as long to get to me as the drive itself takes?
Its a vastly inferior service. That's why we already don't use it.
But credit where it is due.
https://twitter.com/Liz_Cheney/status/1387921478889394183
I disagree strongly w/ @JoeBiden
policies, but when the President reaches out to greet me in the chamber of the US House of Representatives, I will always respond in a civil, respectful & dignified way. We’re different political parties. We’re not sworn enemies. We’re Americans.
I know it's sad they are going, but they are going
People will simply want to buy their own self-driving electric car as opposed to a driver-aided petrol car.
Even if driverless technology takes off, that would take off within your own vehicle too that you own. Just like all the other safety features that have been adopted for decades now.
(This will probably happen, actually)
Why would I hail an Uber and wait for it to arrive, lifeless and devoid of personalisation, when I could own my own autonomous vehicle that is parked at my property ready and waiting for me whenever I want it? Ready and waiting with my kids car seats and anything else I choose to store in it.
Leon is right that we need to design human-sized cities for people and the infrastructure to zip about easily. If people want cars, let them have them, but they shouldn't have to 'need' them.
Transport is your Vietnam. In future, I will skip any post you write on this subject, and laugh quietly to myself instead.
So I he Earth people spend money on big boxes of brick, metal and glass...
So they can waste time and spend money travelling to these big boxes in little metal boxes on wheels...
To do things they could do at home anyway?
https://youtu.be/3SAbJjktk7E
The benefits of training and networking will have to happen a different way, because the old way is crazy if you look at it from outside.
London needs to reinvent as the water cooler of the nation.
My car is scruffy - I drive it wearing dirty work clothes. It's got marks on the door trim from where I've wedged lumps of steel across the rear seats.
Oh, and I regularly drive 3 hours non-stop to go to a site where charging is unlikely to be available, and then back again, same day.
I do all of this in a car that cost me £2k four years and 100k miles ago. Its going to be a very long time before there is a second hand electric option that does what I need in my budget - and this is what those promoting electric cars don't seem to get.
The council was utterly resistant - said it would attract more cars - although we argued that taking parking away from the streets would give more space for bike lanes
SYAL.
One thing I appreciate about the car is that you can for a few hundred quid get something that can basically do the same thing as any other car costing far more. It's pretty democratic.
For all the real problems cars bring, it is important not to forget the good bits. The freedom and that it brought affordable travel to so many.
The second car is an almost 20 year old Ford Focus. It was taken over from my parents who had managed to do 50K miles in 16 years! Since Covid it does 1,500 miles/year and rarely goes more than 10 miles in any direction from our house. It costs me about £300/year to run (plus another ~£300 on petrol). I will keep it until it dies. My kids are very embarrassed about it but I don't mind as it means we have more money to spend on other things. When it does go though I would like to do my bit for the environment with an electric car, especially given the short journeys it does. I would be very tempted with some kind of regular AI-driven hailed service if I knew it would always turn up when I needed it.
So although I can't see AI-driven car services taking over completely I think there will be a sizable market for it.
Call the samaritans if you feel suicidal advises Jenrick aide to a family who are now fucked in their inferno risk flat.
Surely the correct advice is to buy a ticket for a Tory fundraiser. Jenrick would sort them out no problem.
I'm not saying the government is doing the direct bidding of its donors, but - no hang on, I AM saying that.
On the second though, about it being a long time before you can get a second hand electric that does what you want in budget - where's the problem? When are new ICE cars going to disappear? 2030 (and only for wholly ICE powered cars, I think). Your 2k cars are, what, 8 or so years old? Depends on size/make of course. So you need the ICE cars made towards 2030 to be suitable for you to buy in 2038 or so. Seems likely to me - look at the electric cars from ten years ago to gauge possible progress in range, life and price.
Now, the market may destroy ICE-only cars before then, but if so that will be because the combination of price, range and longevity/resale value has become compelling sooner.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Pub
Professor JohnCurtice (for it is He) says that whilst SNP support is slipping, the Greens are romping along, so a majority of MSPs will support independence. Strap yourselves in - when HYUFD explodes as a result of Boris doing what he has endlessly said he won't do, it will be messy.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tory-party-property-developer-boris-johnson-conservative-donors-a9588381.html
Second a plurality of Scottish Green voters now oppose indyref2 so only an SNP and Alba majority can even be considered to have a mandate for indyref2, an SNP and Green majority will not count
https://archive.ph/eg2lt
First, as the battery is the expensive bit, decent ranges are only really going to be offered on more expensive cars for the foreseeable future. My £2k car was a fairly cheap car when it was new, probably £10-12k. It works just as well as a £50k new car regarding range.
So given I need a long range, the second hand market in 2038 probably doesn't offer me the option of buying a cheap cheerful car. I'll have to buy what was a very expensive new car - which will only ever depreciate down to £2k in value when it's essentially worn out.
In practice, electric cars means that long distance non-stop driving will become the preserve of the rich alone - it's one of the (many) ways that's the green revolution is going to be great for the upper middle class, and utterly shaft the poor.
The other thing is that because poorer regular long distance drivers will end up having to just keep repairing their ICE cars in a sort of 21st century version of Cuba, the government will either ban or tax to death ICE vehicles to get rid of them - there is little governments hate more than people driving old bangers on the cheap (see also everything from scrappage schemes to ULEZs all designed to get the cars driven by the poor and/or thrifty off the roads).
The irony is on a personal level, I'll probably end up driving round in a cooking oil powered diesel series landrover again like I did when I was in my late teens / early 20s, as it will be the only form transport left available that actually suits my needs.
There's no way I'd be able to drive non-stop to the Northern Highlands from the Flatlands in an electric car, which is something I used to do several times a year pre-pandemic (in place of getting on a plane to go elsewhere, I might add).
Green stuff has to be BETTER, not just putting on a hair shirt.