The curious thing about the Tories implementing UKIP or Labour policies they previously bitterly opposed or spending money like it's water is that none of their traditional supporters seem to care at all. They seem quite happy. Weird.
It's because the Conservatives primary motivation is winning and rubbing their opponents faces in it.
They laugh at their opposition's principles and continue to remain in power.
What is the point of power for if it means doing things that you were against five minutes ago?
The Thatcherite right is clearly dead in British politics.
Despite the name, the Conservative Party is not some kind of historical re-enactment society; it adapts its tactics and strategy to the current circumstances while always holding to its most fundamental priorities: to keep socialists out of power, and to conserve as much as can be conserved while achieving that goal. To have offered the nation a purely Thatcherite economic prospectus in the context of 2019 would have been the best way to propel Jeremy Corbyn into power, and as such would have been a profoundly un-Conservative thing to do.
Labour, by contrast, is remarkably backward-looking. The left look back to Attlee as their supreme model; the right look not only to Blairism for victory, but as Lord Adonis asserted just a few days ago, to Blair himself (!). The party of progress and solidarity is paradoxically stuck in the past and fatally riven; Conservatives stick together and look to the future.
Yes. But you're dressing up vice as a virtue.
What's good for the Conservatives is good for Britain because Labour are bad for Britain, so the Conservatives sacred duty is to win elections and keep out Labour who are very bad for Britain. Therefore whatever the Conservatives do to win elections and stay in power is not only good for them, it is by definition extremely good for Britain.
This is the logic of the ultra partisan. And it's impeccable on its own terms.
That is a most excellent summary indeed, and pretty much where the nation is right now.
Here's the Labour version:
What's good for Labour is good for Britain because the Tories are bad for Britain, so Labour's sacred duty is to win elections and keep out the Tories who are very bad for Britain. Unless that means compromising one micron with Blairites/Brownites/Soft Left/Blue Labour/Corbynites/Starmerites/reality, in which case our faction must maintain absolute ideological purity and if the Tories get in again then who cares anyway at least they'll keep our taxes down...
Yes. We have principles. Don't quite get why people sneer at that. I thought it was only us that did the sneering?
That makes me uneasy. None of the explanations that spring to mind are innocent.
Why? Home Secretary observing implementation of Home Office policy?
It has the air of mob boss wishing to witness at close quarters the 'debriefing' of the 'rat'.
The 'rat' is an alleged criminal gangster making money on others misery.
Where do your sympathies lie?
I love all the screeching about how dare the authorities remove the two Indians illegal immigrants on an Islamic holy day.....and they turn out to two Sikhs. So essentially people are arguing you can't deport an individual from a nominally Christian country on the holy day of a different religion that has nothing to do with those being deported. Interesting logic.
For those doing the screeching, no deportation can ever be morally justified.
The curious thing about the Tories implementing UKIP or Labour policies they previously bitterly opposed or spending money like it's water is that none of their traditional supporters seem to care at all. They seem quite happy. Weird.
It's because the Conservatives primary motivation is winning and rubbing their opponents faces in it.
They laugh at their opposition's principles and continue to remain in power.
What is the point of power for if it means doing things that you were against five minutes ago?
The Thatcherite right is clearly dead in British politics.
Despite the name, the Conservative Party is not some kind of historical re-enactment society; it adapts its tactics and strategy to the current circumstances while always holding to its most fundamental priorities: to keep socialists out of power, and to conserve as much as can be conserved while achieving that goal. To have offered the nation a purely Thatcherite economic prospectus in the context of 2019 would have been the best way to propel Jeremy Corbyn into power, and as such would have been a profoundly un-Conservative thing to do.
Labour, by contrast, is remarkably backward-looking. The left look back to Attlee as their supreme model; the right look not only to Blairism for victory, but as Lord Adonis asserted just a few days ago, to Blair himself (!). The party of progress and solidarity is paradoxically stuck in the past and fatally riven; Conservatives stick together and look to the future.
Yes. But you're dressing up vice as a virtue.
What's good for the Conservatives is good for Britain because Labour are bad for Britain, so the Conservatives sacred duty is to win elections and keep out Labour who are very bad for Britain. Therefore whatever the Conservatives do to win elections and stay in power is not only good for them, it is by definition extremely good for Britain.
This is the logic of the ultra partisan. And it's impeccable on its own terms.
That is a most excellent summary indeed, and pretty much where the nation is right now.
Here's the Labour version:
What's good for Labour is good for Britain because the Tories are bad for Britain, so Labour's sacred duty is to win elections and keep out the Tories who are very bad for Britain. Unless that means compromising one micron with Blairites/Brownites/Soft Left/Blue Labour/Corbynites/Starmerites/reality, in which case our faction must maintain absolute ideological purity and if the Tories get in again then who cares anyway at least they'll keep our taxes down...
Yes. We have principles. Don't quite get why people sneer at that. I thought it was only us that did the sneering?
And our overarching principle is to ensure the worst parts of your principles don't happen. You have a problem with that?
Lol, Rhodes doesn't fall. Oriel College decline to do so because of expense and regulatory concerns, especially given that the culture secretary has an effective veto over its removal now.
Expect Twitter go go mental over it, I wonder whether Labour will fall into this trap as well or if they'll manage to sidestep it by not saying anything. We know the Tories will celebrate it especially given that Oriel have cited regulatory issues as the major reason to not do it.
Labour might win Batley but heading into a pub and asking "Will you be voting for Jo Cox's sister" - which is about what the ConHome chap did is going to elicit a bias response. Most voters will have no idea who she is.
It is a hard call for Labour, IMO
Kim Leadbetter appears a very capable, personable candidate with local roots. She has a unifying appeal with "More in Common". And David Herdson speaks very highly of her.
But, she has no political experience (was she even a member of the Labour party before deciding to put her name forward ?)
This is likely to be a messy by-election and (at the risk of echoing Gordon Brown), this is no time for a novice. She is likely to receive much more scrutiny and even hostility as a political candidate than she has ever experienced before in running local charity.
Hard call ... Labour need a very safe pair of hands.
Lol, Rhodes doesn't fall. Oriel College decline to do so because of expense and regulatory concerns, especially given that the culture secretary has an effective veto over its removal now.
Expect Twitter go go mental over it, I wonder whether Labour will fall into this trap as well or if they'll manage to sidestep it by not saying anything. We know the Tories will celebrate it especially given that Oriel have cited regulatory issues as the major reason to not do it.
That makes me uneasy. None of the explanations that spring to mind are innocent.
Why? Home Secretary observing implementation of Home Office policy?
It has the air of mob boss wishing to witness at close quarters the 'debriefing' of the 'rat'.
The 'rat' is an alleged criminal gangster making money on others misery.
Where do your sympathies lie?
I love all the screeching about how dare the authorities remove the two Indians illegal immigrants on an Islamic holy day.....and they turn out to two Sikhs. So essentially people are arguing you can't deport an individual from a nominally Christian country on the holy day of a different religion that has nothing to do with those being deported. Interesting logic.
I presume these are the same people who commit hate crimes against Sikhs in the wake of Islamic.... accidents?
That makes me uneasy. None of the explanations that spring to mind are innocent.
Why? Home Secretary observing implementation of Home Office policy?
It has the air of mob boss wishing to witness at close quarters the 'debriefing' of the 'rat'.
The 'rat' is an alleged criminal gangster making money on others misery.
Where do your sympathies lie?
I love all the screeching about how dare the authorities remove the two Indians illegal immigrants on an Islamic holy day.....and they turn out to two Sikhs. So essentially people are arguing you can't deport an individual from a nominally Christian country on the holy day of a different religion that has nothing to do with those being deported. Interesting logic.
For those doing the screeching, no deportation can ever be morally justified.
Or they need to go on some unconscious bias training? They saw two brown skinned people and thought they were Muslims?
Lol, Rhodes doesn't fall. Oriel College decline to do so because of expense and regulatory concerns, especially given that the culture secretary has an effective veto over its removal now.
Expect Twitter go go mental over it, I wonder whether Labour will fall into this trap as well or if they'll manage to sidestep it by not saying anything. We know the Tories will celebrate it especially given that Oriel have cited regulatory issues as the major reason to not do it.
They allegedly have £100m reasons not to do it and it is no surprise that they've found an excuse.
I don't personally know who the donor is with that kind of money but there can't be a hugely long list of candidates.
That makes me uneasy. None of the explanations that spring to mind are innocent.
What's the problem? Isn't this part of her job?
Would you prefer she sat in her ivory tower and had no idea what deportations look like in practice, and the implications on the lives of the people targeted?
Hope she turns up for a publicity photo the next time her Zollgenzschutz turn up in Glasgow.
Considering this wasn't an immigration raid, it was a raid on people smuggling gangsters, do you object to them being arrested?
Alleged ... is a useful word in this sort of situation.
Priti Patel is one of those: an attractive woman with an absolutely massive arse. She gives me the horn of dilemma
Not that I want to get too red-blooded here but Priti strikes me as someone who's just... not that interested in all that.
Totes disagreebobs. She looks fun to me
I also like her spirited persona, and admire what she’s achieved as a British Asian women. And she’s a great inspiration for British Asian girls, potentially growing up in a patriarchal culture. Just being where she is, she says: You can do it
Not just billionaires. IT and telecoms workers from amber countries have to quarantine. Apart from travelling to and from work which is fine. Similar with many other occupations.
That makes me uneasy. None of the explanations that spring to mind are innocent.
Why? Home Secretary observing implementation of Home Office policy?
It has the air of mob boss wishing to witness at close quarters the 'debriefing' of the 'rat'.
The 'rat' is an alleged criminal gangster making money on others misery.
Where do your sympathies lie?
I love all the screeching about how dare the authorities remove the two Indians illegal immigrants on an Islamic holy day.....and they turn out to two Sikhs. So essentially people are arguing you can't deport an individual from a nominally Christian country on the holy day of a different religion that has nothing to do with those being deported. Interesting logic.
For those doing the screeching, no deportation can ever be morally justified.
Or they need to go on some unconscious bias training? They saw two brown skinned people and thought they were Muslims?
Yes, indeed - 100 hours of listening to the collected thoughts of Piers Corbyn should sort them out.
That makes me uneasy. None of the explanations that spring to mind are innocent.
What's the problem? Isn't this part of her job?
Would you prefer she sat in her ivory tower and had no idea what deportations look like in practice, and the implications on the lives of the people targeted?
Depends. Is it business or pleasure? Ok, it's surely business. I don't doubt that. Just kidding about her enjoying it. But is she there in a spirit of learning and empathy to see what her policies look like at the sharp end? Or is she there to send out the message to her Xenophobes United fanbase that she takes no shit from foreigners? This is the question you need to answer to yourself.
Priti Patel is one of those: an attractive woman with an absolutely massive arse. She gives me the horn of dilemma
Not that I want to get too red-blooded here but Priti strikes me as someone who's just... not that interested in all that.
Totes disagreebobs. She looks fun to me
I also like her spirited persona, and admire what she’s achieved as a British Asian women. And she’s a great inspiration for British Asian girls, potentially growing up in a patriarchal culture. Just being where she is, she says: You can do it
All that, but I reckon her husband got it once on her wedding night and once more after for their only child and see then he's done what Jacqui Smith's husband was obliged to do.
The curious thing about the Tories implementing UKIP or Labour policies they previously bitterly opposed or spending money like it's water is that none of their traditional supporters seem to care at all. They seem quite happy. Weird.
It's because the Conservatives primary motivation is winning and rubbing their opponents faces in it.
They laugh at their opposition's principles and continue to remain in power.
What is the point of power for if it means doing things that you were against five minutes ago?
The Thatcherite right is clearly dead in British politics.
Despite the name, the Conservative Party is not some kind of historical re-enactment society; it adapts its tactics and strategy to the current circumstances while always holding to its most fundamental priorities: to keep socialists out of power, and to conserve as much as can be conserved while achieving that goal. To have offered the nation a purely Thatcherite economic prospectus in the context of 2019 would have been the best way to propel Jeremy Corbyn into power, and as such would have been a profoundly un-Conservative thing to do.
Labour, by contrast, is remarkably backward-looking. The left look back to Attlee as their supreme model; the right look not only to Blairism for victory, but as Lord Adonis asserted just a few days ago, to Blair himself (!). The party of progress and solidarity is paradoxically stuck in the past and fatally riven; Conservatives stick together and look to the future.
Yes. But you're dressing up vice as a virtue.
What's good for the Conservatives is good for Britain because Labour are bad for Britain, so the Conservatives sacred duty is to win elections and keep out Labour who are very bad for Britain. Therefore whatever the Conservatives do to win elections and stay in power is not only good for them, it is by definition extremely good for Britain.
This is the logic of the ultra partisan. And it's impeccable on its own terms.
That is a most excellent summary indeed, and pretty much where the nation is right now.
Here's the Labour version:
What's good for Labour is good for Britain because the Tories are bad for Britain, so Labour's sacred duty is to win elections and keep out the Tories who are very bad for Britain. Unless that means compromising one micron with Blairites/Brownites/Soft Left/Blue Labour/Corbynites/Starmerites/reality, in which case our faction must maintain absolute ideological purity and if the Tories get in again then who cares anyway at least they'll keep our taxes down...
Blue, I was with you all the way until " if the Tories get in again then who cares anyway at least they'll keep our taxes down". Have you not been paying attention to Government spending (actuality and proposals) since December 2019. Unless we get rampant inflation and the debt pays for itself, I suspect we will need tax rises, and enormous ones too, from government irrespective of stripe.
Priti Patel is one of those: an attractive woman with an absolutely massive arse. She gives me the horn of dilemma
Not that I want to get too red-blooded here but Priti strikes me as someone who's just... not that interested in all that.
Totes disagreebobs. She looks fun to me
I also like her spirited persona, and admire what she’s achieved as a British Asian women. And she’s a great inspiration for British Asian girls, potentially growing up in a patriarchal culture. Just being where she is, she says: You can do it
To be considered for the Sea..er..Leon wankbank among her proudest achievements I’m sure!
Got to love the old vox pops...they asked a lady about what she thought about the government plans for Great British Railways and she witters on about remembering BR, how the trains didn't run on time, was all a bit shit, but does a 180 and says but I am glad we are going back to that.
That makes me uneasy. None of the explanations that spring to mind are innocent.
What's the problem? Isn't this part of her job?
Would you prefer she sat in her ivory tower and had no idea what deportations look like in practice, and the implications on the lives of the people targeted?
Depends. Is it business or pleasure? Ok, it's surely business. I don't doubt that. Just kidding about her enjoying it. But is she there in a spirit of learning and empathy to see what her policies look like at the sharp end? Or is she there to send out the message to her Xenophobes United fanbase that she takes no shit from foreigners? This is the question you need to answer to yourself.
So, we're agreed that there is an "innocent" explanation. Good.
I sort of see your point about it being slightly cynical positioning, but do you really not see how ludicrous it is to accuse a first-generation immigrant of having or encouraging xenophobic ideals? The zero tolerance is towards criminals, not foroigners.
Labour might win Batley but heading into a pub and asking "Will you be voting for Jo Cox's sister" - which is about what the ConHome chap did is going to elicit a bias response. Most voters will have no idea who she is.
It is a hard call for Labour, IMO
Kim Leadbetter appears a very capable, personable candidate with local roots. She has a unifying appeal with "More in Common". And David Herdson speaks very highly of her.
But, she has no political experience (was she even a member of the Labour party before deciding to put her name forward ?)
This is likely to be a messy by-election and (at the risk of echoing Gordon Brown), this is no time for a novice. She is likely to receive much more scrutiny and even hostility as a political candidate than she has ever experienced before in running local charity.
Hard call ... Labour need a very safe pair of hands.
I'm scratching my head, but no, I can't think of that safe pair of hands.
My temptation would be give Pidcock another try out, when she sinks without trace, hopefully that will be her done for eternity.
Labour might win Batley but heading into a pub and asking "Will you be voting for Jo Cox's sister" - which is about what the ConHome chap did is going to elicit a bias response. Most voters will have no idea who she is.
It is a hard call for Labour, IMO
Kim Leadbetter appears a very capable, personable candidate with local roots. She has a unifying appeal with "More in Common". And David Herdson speaks very highly of her.
But, she has no political experience (was she even a member of the Labour party before deciding to put her name forward ?)
This is likely to be a messy by-election and (at the risk of echoing Gordon Brown), this is no time for a novice. She is likely to receive much more scrutiny and even hostility as a political candidate than she has ever experienced before in running local charity.
Hard call ... Labour need a very safe pair of hands.
To be fair to Kim, she's regularly on the local news here promoting charities relating to her sister and appears very competent in front of a camera. She might not have dipped her toe into politics before but she seems a natural compared to some of the 2019 intake. If she appears natural she will appear to be competent to the voters, experience or not.
Lol, Rhodes doesn't fall. Oriel College decline to do so because of expense and regulatory concerns, especially given that the culture secretary has an effective veto over its removal now.
Expect Twitter go go mental over it, I wonder whether Labour will fall into this trap as well or if they'll manage to sidestep it by not saying anything. We know the Tories will celebrate it especially given that Oriel have cited regulatory issues as the major reason to not do it.
On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).
So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.
Cars are probably a big one.
For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.
If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?
I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.
Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.
I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.
I think I've said on here before that the Conservatives are on a hiding to nothing if they think cold homes, no more foreign holidays and bland diets are a vote winner.
We only go green with lots of innovative new technology that enhances choice and makes people's lives better.
Yes, and they also need to make the case for positive innovative greenery, as opposed to the greenery proposed by those on the left that is mostly negative and destroying of economic activity.
As we move to zero-emission cars, having suburban people move about via cars in tree-lined streets is going to be very environmentally friendly.
Indeed if we're using net zero fuel then I wonder whether clean cars moving about in spacious tree-lined streets will be cleaner than trams in concrete jungles.
Unlikely. Electric cars solve the problem of NO2 emissions and reduce carbon emissions (though carbon is remarkably complex!). OTOH, they increase the emissions of some particulates, and there are also issues around, especially, lithium extraction for batteries. Basically, however you're doing it, you are, per passenger, moving a lot more weight and having to work a lot harder against friction if you're moving people by cars than if you're moving people by mass transit. You're also occupying far more road space. I'm not denying that electric cars are a big step forward, but they are not a panacea to all our urban transport travails. The point about spacious tree-lined streets is key - we can only really get these streets if we reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets. For which we need improvements in the provision of non-car modes (including walking - see 'spacious tree-lined streets'. This can be done without taking a heavy handed, hardline anti-car approach.
One big thing electric cars do give us when we are trying to make streets a nicer place to be is a massive reduction in noise. It's much more pleasant to be in a street with electric cars humming silently past you than being shouted at by an internal combustion engine. It does present issues crossing the road though - it's amazing how much we use sound as an indication that nothing is coming when we cross. We will get used to it soon enough though.
We don't need to reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets, we can build more and bigger streets.
Have more undeveloped fields developed and built on. You can have buildings for housing, trees for the environment, roads for moving, buildings for businesses etc - rather than fields for animals to wander on that our economically irrelevant and could be imported from New Zealand instead.
More streets means more space dedicated to cars instead of the things people actually want - shops, restaurants, libraries, housing & all that stuff. The problem with allocating all that space is that you turn walkable places where you could live & get access to all the amenities you need on foot or by bicycle into car-dependent suburbs. In a car-dependent ’urb it’s impossible to live without a car, because so much space has been given over to cars that you can’t get anywhere without using one, whether you like it or not. Even travelling short distances that many people would be happy to walk becomes impossible once enough space has been given over to cars, because the roads become so wide that crossing them becomes an exercise in taking your life in your hands.
This is not a model of development that actually leads to a great deal of happiness - individually we all like the idea of the large garden /and/ the wide streets on which we can drive where-ever we want, but the net effect when everyone does that is to destroy the very places we inhabit.
The country is not short of space.
70% of UK land is used for agriculture. Agriculture is 0.61% of UK GDP.
Personally I find dedicating 70% of land to 0.61% of GDP to be rather inefficient - what about you?
I don't think that's a particularly strong argument. We don't allocate land dependent on GDP, otherwise the country would be covered in office blocks. We keep country agricultural because we value green space.
We shouldn't.
I sometimes think you’d be happier moving to Coruscant. No green space, big buildings everywhere, the best political intrigue in the galaxy...
That's what those advocating piling people high in cities, while we keep the countryside (or "their view") unspoilt want. That's the opposite of what I am proposing.
I am saying there should be more green space, more trees, more gardens, more parks where people LIVE, not just in fields that nobody ever goes to, are totally uneconomic, and are only ever seen from the sky.
Besides I've said all along if you want an unspoilt view then buy your view. Not one person has come up with an objection to that.
I agree that we have too much ordinary under-utilised scrub or pasture land that could be much better used, rather than being mechanically mowed. Far too great a distance between hedgerows and those that are there, cut far too frequently and aggressively.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean concreting over with roads, houses with patios. We have a shortage of housing in some parts of the country. But just about everywhere we have a shortage of quality hedgerow, woodland, wetland and wildflower meadow, all of which are important from a biodiversity and carbon perspective.
Your complete disinterest in this with a sole focus on building building building is completely at odds with the direction of both politicians and the public mood.
If building is so at odds why is there so much demand for housing? Why are prices so high? Why do new houses get bought from the plots before they're even built and have people moving in the day they're ready?
It's at odds with the selfish shits who want unspoilt views but don't want to pay to buy those views. Again, if you buy your own view then that's it, discussion over, if you don't then jog on.
I have done so.
Fantastic. That's the free market solution.
Now if you get a tempting offer that says I will give you ££££ for some of that land to be built on, then in my view that should be between you as the owner and the prospective buyers. Nobody else.
I am paying with my own money to boost biodiversity on some poorly managed land that is not particularly suitable for housing for a number of reasons. It is not a scaleable answer to the problem.
Like you I am using almost all of my spare money In reverting paddock to flower meadow and open woodland to improve biodiversity. My land serves as an important bridge between two nature reserves so I am getting a lot of advice from the Lincs Wildlife Trust on how to do things.
Sadly it strikes me that Philip displays an astonishing degree of almost wilful ignorance of the importance of proper non-agricultural countryside in his desperate desire for never ending development. And that is the issue - in his world it really is never ending and nothing can stand in the way of building. It is a genuinely stupid philosophy.
A good article, and it’s striking just how far the Midlands has shifted. Traditional marginal seats like Burton, Nuneaton, N W Leics are now very solidly Conservative.
The reverse is middle class urban and university seats shifting left at a rate of knots, and not just left, but far left. One could imagine the Greens eventually gaining some from Labour.
A good article, and it’s striking just how far the Midlands has shifted. Traditional marginal seats like Burton, Nuneaton, N W Leics are now very solidly Conservative.
The reverse is middle class urban and university seats shifting left at a rate of knots, and not just left, but far left. One could imagine the Greens eventually gaining some from Labour.
Though seats suchas Gedling, Wolverhampton SW and Edgbaston are far less Tory than in the past. Ken Clarke's retirement might see Rushcliffe drift the same way.
Got to love the old vox pops...they asked a lady about what she thought about the government plans for Great British Railways and she witters on about remembering BR, how the trains didn't run on time, was all a bit shit, but does a 180 and says but I am glad we are going back to that.
Got to love the old vox pops...they asked a lady about what she thought about the government plans for Great British Railways and she witters on about remembering BR, how the trains didn't run on time, was all a bit shit, but does a 180 and says but I am glad we are going back to that.
The public want one arse to kick, where the government cannot hide from responsibility, and a load of chiselling franchisees can't just blame each other for their failings. They want an integrated system of ticketing rather than an absurd one which prevents you travelling on a different train because it's run by a different 'company' – even though they are all subsidised by the taxpayer, who also pays for the track they run on.
Franchising has been a three-decade long farce and an embarrassment to this country, the pioneer of rail. We need a single railway run under a single public-facing brand that is accountable to the taxpayers who fund it.
No surprise that the idea will be massively popular with the public, despite the niche views expressed furiously on PB from people who have seemingly no interest, understanding or experience of using the railway.
A good article, and it’s striking just how far the Midlands has shifted. Traditional marginal seats like Burton, Nuneaton, N W Leics are now very solidly Conservative.
The reverse is middle class urban and university seats shifting left at a rate of knots, and not just left, but far left. One could imagine the Greens eventually gaining some from Labour.
A good article, and it’s striking just how far the Midlands has shifted. Traditional marginal seats like Burton, Nuneaton, N W Leics are now very solidly Conservative.
The reverse is middle class urban and university seats shifting left at a rate of knots, and not just left, but far left. One could imagine the Greens eventually gaining some from Labour.
Though seats suchas Gedling, Wolverhampton SW and Edgbaston are far less Tory than in the past. Ken Clarke's retirement might see Rushcliffe drift the same way.
Gedling has moved more, rather than less, Conservative. It was solidly Labour from 1997 to 2019.
On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).
So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.
Cars are probably a big one.
For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.
If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?
I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.
Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.
I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.
The curious thing about the Tories implementing UKIP or Labour policies they previously bitterly opposed or spending money like it's water is that none of their traditional supporters seem to care at all. They seem quite happy. Weird.
It's because the Conservatives primary motivation is winning and rubbing their opponents faces in it.
They laugh at their opposition's principles and continue to remain in power.
What is the point of power for if it means doing things that you were against five minutes ago?
The Thatcherite right is clearly dead in British politics.
Despite the name, the Conservative Party is not some kind of historical re-enactment society; it adapts its tactics and strategy to the current circumstances while always holding to its most fundamental priorities: to keep socialists out of power, and to conserve as much as can be conserved while achieving that goal. To have offered the nation a purely Thatcherite economic prospectus in the context of 2019 would have been the best way to propel Jeremy Corbyn into power, and as such would have been a profoundly un-Conservative thing to do.
Labour, by contrast, is remarkably backward-looking. The left look back to Attlee as their supreme model; the right look not only to Blairism for victory, but as Lord Adonis asserted just a few days ago, to Blair himself (!). The party of progress and solidarity is paradoxically stuck in the past and fatally riven; Conservatives stick together and look to the future.
The Conservative Party continues to be the most cutting-edge party in England at least, fast getting there in Wales.
That our opponents think we should play by some other set of rules to enable them a fair crack of the whip is endlessly amusing. "But they morphed...can they do that? Is that right?" It is a failure to "get" politics - in the same way as bitching about the electorate they have got....
On the contrary, feel sad for you. Must be a rather empty existence to believe in nothing but power and blocking others.
On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).
So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.
Cars are probably a big one.
For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.
If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?
I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.
Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.
I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.
I think I've said on here before that the Conservatives are on a hiding to nothing if they think cold homes, no more foreign holidays and bland diets are a vote winner.
We only go green with lots of innovative new technology that enhances choice and makes people's lives better.
Yes, and they also need to make the case for positive innovative greenery, as opposed to the greenery proposed by those on the left that is mostly negative and destroying of economic activity.
As we move to zero-emission cars, having suburban people move about via cars in tree-lined streets is going to be very environmentally friendly.
Indeed if we're using net zero fuel then I wonder whether clean cars moving about in spacious tree-lined streets will be cleaner than trams in concrete jungles.
Unlikely. Electric cars solve the problem of NO2 emissions and reduce carbon emissions (though carbon is remarkably complex!). OTOH, they increase the emissions of some particulates, and there are also issues around, especially, lithium extraction for batteries. Basically, however you're doing it, you are, per passenger, moving a lot more weight and having to work a lot harder against friction if you're moving people by cars than if you're moving people by mass transit. You're also occupying far more road space. I'm not denying that electric cars are a big step forward, but they are not a panacea to all our urban transport travails. The point about spacious tree-lined streets is key - we can only really get these streets if we reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets. For which we need improvements in the provision of non-car modes (including walking - see 'spacious tree-lined streets'. This can be done without taking a heavy handed, hardline anti-car approach.
One big thing electric cars do give us when we are trying to make streets a nicer place to be is a massive reduction in noise. It's much more pleasant to be in a street with electric cars humming silently past you than being shouted at by an internal combustion engine. It does present issues crossing the road though - it's amazing how much we use sound as an indication that nothing is coming when we cross. We will get used to it soon enough though.
We don't need to reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets, we can build more and bigger streets.
Have more undeveloped fields developed and built on. You can have buildings for housing, trees for the environment, roads for moving, buildings for businesses etc - rather than fields for animals to wander on that our economically irrelevant and could be imported from New Zealand instead.
More streets means more space dedicated to cars instead of the things people actually want - shops, restaurants, libraries, housing & all that stuff. The problem with allocating all that space is that you turn walkable places where you could live & get access to all the amenities you need on foot or by bicycle into car-dependent suburbs. In a car-dependent ’urb it’s impossible to live without a car, because so much space has been given over to cars that you can’t get anywhere without using one, whether you like it or not. Even travelling short distances that many people would be happy to walk becomes impossible once enough space has been given over to cars, because the roads become so wide that crossing them becomes an exercise in taking your life in your hands.
This is not a model of development that actually leads to a great deal of happiness - individually we all like the idea of the large garden /and/ the wide streets on which we can drive where-ever we want, but the net effect when everyone does that is to destroy the very places we inhabit.
The country is not short of space.
70% of UK land is used for agriculture. Agriculture is 0.61% of UK GDP.
Personally I find dedicating 70% of land to 0.61% of GDP to be rather inefficient - what about you?
I don't think that's a particularly strong argument. We don't allocate land dependent on GDP, otherwise the country would be covered in office blocks. We keep country agricultural because we value green space.
We shouldn't.
I sometimes think you’d be happier moving to Coruscant. No green space, big buildings everywhere, the best political intrigue in the galaxy...
That's what those advocating piling people high in cities, while we keep the countryside (or "their view") unspoilt want. That's the opposite of what I am proposing.
I am saying there should be more green space, more trees, more gardens, more parks where people LIVE, not just in fields that nobody ever goes to, are totally uneconomic, and are only ever seen from the sky.
Besides I've said all along if you want an unspoilt view then buy your view. Not one person has come up with an objection to that.
I agree that we have too much ordinary under-utilised scrub or pasture land that could be much better used, rather than being mechanically mowed. Far too great a distance between hedgerows and those that are there, cut far too frequently and aggressively.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean concreting over with roads, houses with patios. We have a shortage of housing in some parts of the country. But just about everywhere we have a shortage of quality hedgerow, woodland, wetland and wildflower meadow, all of which are important from a biodiversity and carbon perspective.
Your complete disinterest in this with a sole focus on building building building is completely at odds with the direction of both politicians and the public mood.
If building is so at odds why is there so much demand for housing? Why are prices so high? Why do new houses get bought from the plots before they're even built and have people moving in the day they're ready?
It's at odds with the selfish shits who want unspoilt views but don't want to pay to buy those views. Again, if you buy your own view then that's it, discussion over, if you don't then jog on.
I have done so.
Fantastic. That's the free market solution.
Now if you get a tempting offer that says I will give you ££££ for some of that land to be built on, then in my view that should be between you as the owner and the prospective buyers. Nobody else.
I am paying with my own money to boost biodiversity on some poorly managed land that is not particularly suitable for housing for a number of reasons. It is not a scaleable answer to the problem.
Like you I am using almost all of my spare money In reverting paddock to flower meadow and open woodland to improve biodiversity. My land serves as an important bridge between two nature reserves so I am getting a lot of advice from the Lincs Wildlife Trust on how to do things.
Sadly it strikes me that Philip displays an astonishing degree of almost wilful ignorance of the importance of proper non-agricultural countryside in his desperate desire for never ending development. And that is the issue - in his world it really is never ending and nothing can stand in the way of building. It is a genuinely stupid philosophy.
I have no objection to non-agricultural countryside.
I just don't think its necessary to maintain 70% of land in this country as agricultural countryside.
Nor do I agree with abusing the green belt, not to maintain the countryside, but instead as a weapon to keep houses unaffordable.
The green belt today is twice the size of the green belt in 1979, despite the fact that we have many more population needing housing now so it would be logical to have a smaller belt not a bigger one.
On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).
So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.
Cars are probably a big one.
For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.
If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?
I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.
Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.
I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.
Which green targets are the unrealistic ones?
Getting rid of all new Petrol and diesel cars by 2035. I am not sure anyone has yet clocked what a massive change that will mean to our lives unless we start to see some of these technological breakthroughs we are promised.
On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).
So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.
Cars are probably a big one.
For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.
If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?
I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.
Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.
I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.
I think I've said on here before that the Conservatives are on a hiding to nothing if they think cold homes, no more foreign holidays and bland diets are a vote winner.
We only go green with lots of innovative new technology that enhances choice and makes people's lives better.
Yes, and they also need to make the case for positive innovative greenery, as opposed to the greenery proposed by those on the left that is mostly negative and destroying of economic activity.
As we move to zero-emission cars, having suburban people move about via cars in tree-lined streets is going to be very environmentally friendly.
Indeed if we're using net zero fuel then I wonder whether clean cars moving about in spacious tree-lined streets will be cleaner than trams in concrete jungles.
Unlikely. Electric cars solve the problem of NO2 emissions and reduce carbon emissions (though carbon is remarkably complex!). OTOH, they increase the emissions of some particulates, and there are also issues around, especially, lithium extraction for batteries. Basically, however you're doing it, you are, per passenger, moving a lot more weight and having to work a lot harder against friction if you're moving people by cars than if you're moving people by mass transit. You're also occupying far more road space. I'm not denying that electric cars are a big step forward, but they are not a panacea to all our urban transport travails. The point about spacious tree-lined streets is key - we can only really get these streets if we reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets. For which we need improvements in the provision of non-car modes (including walking - see 'spacious tree-lined streets'. This can be done without taking a heavy handed, hardline anti-car approach.
One big thing electric cars do give us when we are trying to make streets a nicer place to be is a massive reduction in noise. It's much more pleasant to be in a street with electric cars humming silently past you than being shouted at by an internal combustion engine. It does present issues crossing the road though - it's amazing how much we use sound as an indication that nothing is coming when we cross. We will get used to it soon enough though.
We don't need to reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets, we can build more and bigger streets.
Have more undeveloped fields developed and built on. You can have buildings for housing, trees for the environment, roads for moving, buildings for businesses etc - rather than fields for animals to wander on that our economically irrelevant and could be imported from New Zealand instead.
More streets means more space dedicated to cars instead of the things people actually want - shops, restaurants, libraries, housing & all that stuff. The problem with allocating all that space is that you turn walkable places where you could live & get access to all the amenities you need on foot or by bicycle into car-dependent suburbs. In a car-dependent ’urb it’s impossible to live without a car, because so much space has been given over to cars that you can’t get anywhere without using one, whether you like it or not. Even travelling short distances that many people would be happy to walk becomes impossible once enough space has been given over to cars, because the roads become so wide that crossing them becomes an exercise in taking your life in your hands.
This is not a model of development that actually leads to a great deal of happiness - individually we all like the idea of the large garden /and/ the wide streets on which we can drive where-ever we want, but the net effect when everyone does that is to destroy the very places we inhabit.
The country is not short of space.
70% of UK land is used for agriculture. Agriculture is 0.61% of UK GDP.
Personally I find dedicating 70% of land to 0.61% of GDP to be rather inefficient - what about you?
I don't think that's a particularly strong argument. We don't allocate land dependent on GDP, otherwise the country would be covered in office blocks. We keep country agricultural because we value green space.
We shouldn't.
I sometimes think you’d be happier moving to Coruscant. No green space, big buildings everywhere, the best political intrigue in the galaxy...
That's what those advocating piling people high in cities, while we keep the countryside (or "their view") unspoilt want. That's the opposite of what I am proposing.
I am saying there should be more green space, more trees, more gardens, more parks where people LIVE, not just in fields that nobody ever goes to, are totally uneconomic, and are only ever seen from the sky.
Besides I've said all along if you want an unspoilt view then buy your view. Not one person has come up with an objection to that.
I agree that we have too much ordinary under-utilised scrub or pasture land that could be much better used, rather than being mechanically mowed. Far too great a distance between hedgerows and those that are there, cut far too frequently and aggressively.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean concreting over with roads, houses with patios. We have a shortage of housing in some parts of the country. But just about everywhere we have a shortage of quality hedgerow, woodland, wetland and wildflower meadow, all of which are important from a biodiversity and carbon perspective.
Your complete disinterest in this with a sole focus on building building building is completely at odds with the direction of both politicians and the public mood.
If building is so at odds why is there so much demand for housing? Why are prices so high? Why do new houses get bought from the plots before they're even built and have people moving in the day they're ready?
It's at odds with the selfish shits who want unspoilt views but don't want to pay to buy those views. Again, if you buy your own view then that's it, discussion over, if you don't then jog on.
I have done so.
Fantastic. That's the free market solution.
Now if you get a tempting offer that says I will give you ££££ for some of that land to be built on, then in my view that should be between you as the owner and the prospective buyers. Nobody else.
I am paying with my own money to boost biodiversity on some poorly managed land that is not particularly suitable for housing for a number of reasons. It is not a scaleable answer to the problem.
Like you I am using almost all of my spare money In reverting paddock to flower meadow and open woodland to improve biodiversity. My land serves as an important bridge between two nature reserves so I am getting a lot of advice from the Lincs Wildlife Trust on how to do things.
Sadly it strikes me that Philip displays an astonishing degree of almost wilful ignorance of the importance of proper non-agricultural countryside in his desperate desire for never ending development. And that is the issue - in his world it really is never ending and nothing can stand in the way of building. It is a genuinely stupid philosophy.
I think nurseryman Thompson's idea is; plant small private houses and watch the Conservative votes grow.
Got to love the old vox pops...they asked a lady about what she thought about the government plans for Great British Railways and she witters on about remembering BR, how the trains didn't run on time, was all a bit shit, but does a 180 and says but I am glad we are going back to that.
The public want one arse to kick.....
Talking about arses again...Leon won't be able to control himself.
That makes me uneasy. None of the explanations that spring to mind are innocent.
Why? Home Secretary observing implementation of Home Office policy?
It has the air of mob boss wishing to witness at close quarters the 'debriefing' of the 'rat'.
The 'rat' is an alleged criminal gangster making money on others misery.
Where do your sympathies lie?
I love all the screeching about how dare the authorities remove the two Indians illegal immigrants on an Islamic holy day.....and they turn out to two Sikhs. So essentially people are arguing you can't deport an individual from a nominally Christian country on the holy day of a different religion that has nothing to do with those being deported. Interesting logic.
For those doing the screeching, no deportation can ever be morally justified.
Or they need to go on some unconscious bias training? They saw two brown skinned people and thought they were Muslims?
I was there and folk knew they were Sikhs from the get go, what with them being neighbours and all. At the end of the stand off the 2 guys were escorted to the local mosque just in case the heavies did a double cross; amazing how people of different religions or none can stick together in the face of pricks in uniforms.
That makes me uneasy. None of the explanations that spring to mind are innocent.
Why? Home Secretary observing implementation of Home Office policy?
It has the air of mob boss wishing to witness at close quarters the 'debriefing' of the 'rat'.
The 'rat' is an alleged criminal gangster making money on others misery.
Where do your sympathies lie?
I love all the screeching about how dare the authorities remove the two Indians illegal immigrants on an Islamic holy day.....and they turn out to two Sikhs. So essentially people are arguing you can't deport an individual from a nominally Christian country on the holy day of a different religion that has nothing to do with those being deported. Interesting logic.
For those doing the screeching, no deportation can ever be morally justified.
Or they need to go on some unconscious bias training? They saw two brown skinned people and thought they were Muslims?
I was there and folk knew they were Sikhs from the get go, what with them being neighbours and all. At the end of the stand off the 2 guys were escorted to the local mosque just in case the heavies did a double cross; amazing how people of different religions can stick together in the face of pricks in uniforms.
I was talking about people on social media. There was lots of people banging on about what an outrage it was to deport somebody on such a holy day for Muslims.
That makes me uneasy. None of the explanations that spring to mind are innocent.
What's the problem? Isn't this part of her job?
Would you prefer she sat in her ivory tower and had no idea what deportations look like in practice, and the implications on the lives of the people targeted?
Depends. Is it business or pleasure? Ok, it's surely business. I don't doubt that. Just kidding about her enjoying it. But is she there in a spirit of learning and empathy to see what her policies look like at the sharp end? Or is she there to send out the message to her Xenophobes United fanbase that she takes no shit from foreigners? This is the question you need to answer to yourself.
So, we're agreed that there is an "innocent" explanation. Good.
I sort of see your point about it being slightly cynical positioning, but do you really not see how ludicrous it is to accuse a first-generation immigrant of having or encouraging xenophobic ideals? The zero tolerance is towards criminals, not foroigners.
No, it's not ludicrous to accuse a first-generation immigrant of pandering to xenophobia. On the contrary, it's ludicrous to suggest a first-generation immigrant is incapable of doing such a thing merely by dint of being a first-generation immigrant.
On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).
So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.
Cars are probably a big one.
For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.
If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?
I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.
Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.
I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.
Which green targets are the unrealistic ones?
Getting rid of all new Petrol and diesel cars by 2035. I am not sure anyone has yet clocked what a massive change that will mean to our lives unless we start to see some of these technological breakthroughs we are promised.
Haven't you just given the Government the benefit of another 5 years to achieve their unrealistic target? 2030?
The curious thing about the Tories implementing UKIP or Labour policies they previously bitterly opposed or spending money like it's water is that none of their traditional supporters seem to care at all. They seem quite happy. Weird.
It's because the Conservatives primary motivation is winning and rubbing their opponents faces in it.
They laugh at their opposition's principles and continue to remain in power.
What is the point of power for if it means doing things that you were against five minutes ago?
The Thatcherite right is clearly dead in British politics.
Despite the name, the Conservative Party is not some kind of historical re-enactment society; it adapts its tactics and strategy to the current circumstances while always holding to its most fundamental priorities: to keep socialists out of power, and to conserve as much as can be conserved while achieving that goal. To have offered the nation a purely Thatcherite economic prospectus in the context of 2019 would have been the best way to propel Jeremy Corbyn into power, and as such would have been a profoundly un-Conservative thing to do.
Labour, by contrast, is remarkably backward-looking. The left look back to Attlee as their supreme model; the right look not only to Blairism for victory, but as Lord Adonis asserted just a few days ago, to Blair himself (!). The party of progress and solidarity is paradoxically stuck in the past and fatally riven; Conservatives stick together and look to the future.
Yes. But you're dressing up vice as a virtue.
What's good for the Conservatives is good for Britain because Labour are bad for Britain, so the Conservatives sacred duty is to win elections and keep out Labour who are very bad for Britain. Therefore whatever the Conservatives do to win elections and stay in power is not only good for them, it is by definition extremely good for Britain.
This is the logic of the ultra partisan. And it's impeccable on its own terms.
That is a most excellent summary indeed, and pretty much where the nation is right now.
Here's the Labour version:
What's good for Labour is good for Britain because the Tories are bad for Britain, so Labour's sacred duty is to win elections and keep out the Tories who are very bad for Britain. Unless that means compromising one micron with Blairites/Brownites/Soft Left/Blue Labour/Corbynites/Starmerites/reality, in which case our faction must maintain absolute ideological purity and if the Tories get in again then who cares anyway at least they'll keep our taxes down...
Blue, I was with you all the way until " if the Tories get in again then who cares anyway at least they'll keep our taxes down". Have you not been paying attention to Government spending (actuality and proposals) since December 2019. Unless we get rampant inflation and the debt pays for itself, I suspect we will need tax rises, and enormous ones too, from government irrespective of stripe.
What might have happened since December 2019 to require enormous Government spending across the world, I wonder? Nonetheless, I strongly suspect that the Tories will levy less in tax to pay for a global pandemic than Labour would have levied had one never existed at all.
My goodness, but Mark clearly enjoyed writing this one.
Res ipsa loquitur....
I suspect I will have more fun writing the follow-up piece: where the hell does Labour draw its battle lines for the next election?
Yes, I look forward to it. I can't deny I also enjoyed reading this one, but it does feel a tad hubristic.
I like to think it was rather a bookend to the "Boris = Brexit bad man: boooo!" threads we see here too often.
I grew up in Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire. I don't recognise the political geography there now. Same across the West Midlands. I just thought it worth exploring how far that change has moved the goalposts for Labour. They now don't even seem to be on the playing surface over much of the Midlands. Yes, that can change - but it seems to be Labour waiting for the Tories to spontaneously combust, rather than anything more proactive.
I think all new undergraduates to Oriel College should simply be required to watch Rhodes: The Life The Legend.
I believe that's the kind of thing they are suggesting...
"...Instead, it is determined to focus its time and resources on delivering the report's recommendations around the contextualisation of the college's relationship with Rhodes..."
Lol, Rhodes doesn't fall. Oriel College decline to do so because of expense and regulatory concerns, especially given that the culture secretary has an effective veto over its removal now.
Expect Twitter go go mental over it, I wonder whether Labour will fall into this trap as well or if they'll manage to sidestep it by not saying anything. We know the Tories will celebrate it especially given that Oriel have cited regulatory issues as the major reason to not do it.
On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).
So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.
Cars are probably a big one.
For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.
If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?
I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.
Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.
I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.
I think I've said on here before that the Conservatives are on a hiding to nothing if they think cold homes, no more foreign holidays and bland diets are a vote winner.
We only go green with lots of innovative new technology that enhances choice and makes people's lives better.
Yes, and they also need to make the case for positive innovative greenery, as opposed to the greenery proposed by those on the left that is mostly negative and destroying of economic activity.
As we move to zero-emission cars, having suburban people move about via cars in tree-lined streets is going to be very environmentally friendly.
Indeed if we're using net zero fuel then I wonder whether clean cars moving about in spacious tree-lined streets will be cleaner than trams in concrete jungles.
Unlikely. Electric cars solve the problem of NO2 emissions and reduce carbon emissions (though carbon is remarkably complex!). OTOH, they increase the emissions of some particulates, and there are also issues around, especially, lithium extraction for batteries. Basically, however you're doing it, you are, per passenger, moving a lot more weight and having to work a lot harder against friction if you're moving people by cars than if you're moving people by mass transit. You're also occupying far more road space. I'm not denying that electric cars are a big step forward, but they are not a panacea to all our urban transport travails. The point about spacious tree-lined streets is key - we can only really get these streets if we reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets. For which we need improvements in the provision of non-car modes (including walking - see 'spacious tree-lined streets'. This can be done without taking a heavy handed, hardline anti-car approach.
One big thing electric cars do give us when we are trying to make streets a nicer place to be is a massive reduction in noise. It's much more pleasant to be in a street with electric cars humming silently past you than being shouted at by an internal combustion engine. It does present issues crossing the road though - it's amazing how much we use sound as an indication that nothing is coming when we cross. We will get used to it soon enough though.
We don't need to reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets, we can build more and bigger streets.
Have more undeveloped fields developed and built on. You can have buildings for housing, trees for the environment, roads for moving, buildings for businesses etc - rather than fields for animals to wander on that our economically irrelevant and could be imported from New Zealand instead.
More streets means more space dedicated to cars instead of the things people actually want - shops, restaurants, libraries, housing & all that stuff. The problem with allocating all that space is that you turn walkable places where you could live & get access to all the amenities you need on foot or by bicycle into car-dependent suburbs. In a car-dependent ’urb it’s impossible to live without a car, because so much space has been given over to cars that you can’t get anywhere without using one, whether you like it or not. Even travelling short distances that many people would be happy to walk becomes impossible once enough space has been given over to cars, because the roads become so wide that crossing them becomes an exercise in taking your life in your hands.
This is not a model of development that actually leads to a great deal of happiness - individually we all like the idea of the large garden /and/ the wide streets on which we can drive where-ever we want, but the net effect when everyone does that is to destroy the very places we inhabit.
The country is not short of space.
70% of UK land is used for agriculture. Agriculture is 0.61% of UK GDP.
Personally I find dedicating 70% of land to 0.61% of GDP to be rather inefficient - what about you?
I don't think that's a particularly strong argument. We don't allocate land dependent on GDP, otherwise the country would be covered in office blocks. We keep country agricultural because we value green space.
We shouldn't.
I sometimes think you’d be happier moving to Coruscant. No green space, big buildings everywhere, the best political intrigue in the galaxy...
That's what those advocating piling people high in cities, while we keep the countryside (or "their view") unspoilt want. That's the opposite of what I am proposing.
I am saying there should be more green space, more trees, more gardens, more parks where people LIVE, not just in fields that nobody ever goes to, are totally uneconomic, and are only ever seen from the sky.
Besides I've said all along if you want an unspoilt view then buy your view. Not one person has come up with an objection to that.
I agree that we have too much ordinary under-utilised scrub or pasture land that could be much better used, rather than being mechanically mowed. Far too great a distance between hedgerows and those that are there, cut far too frequently and aggressively.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean concreting over with roads, houses with patios. We have a shortage of housing in some parts of the country. But just about everywhere we have a shortage of quality hedgerow, woodland, wetland and wildflower meadow, all of which are important from a biodiversity and carbon perspective.
Your complete disinterest in this with a sole focus on building building building is completely at odds with the direction of both politicians and the public mood.
If building is so at odds why is there so much demand for housing? Why are prices so high? Why do new houses get bought from the plots before they're even built and have people moving in the day they're ready?
It's at odds with the selfish shits who want unspoilt views but don't want to pay to buy those views. Again, if you buy your own view then that's it, discussion over, if you don't then jog on.
I have done so.
Fantastic. That's the free market solution.
Now if you get a tempting offer that says I will give you ££££ for some of that land to be built on, then in my view that should be between you as the owner and the prospective buyers. Nobody else.
I am paying with my own money to boost biodiversity on some poorly managed land that is not particularly suitable for housing for a number of reasons. It is not a scaleable answer to the problem.
Like you I am using almost all of my spare money In reverting paddock to flower meadow and open woodland to improve biodiversity. My land serves as an important bridge between two nature reserves so I am getting a lot of advice from the Lincs Wildlife Trust on how to do things.
Fantastic. If we ever get the chance to purchase the paddock behind our house we would do exactly the same.
The curious thing about the Tories implementing UKIP or Labour policies they previously bitterly opposed or spending money like it's water is that none of their traditional supporters seem to care at all. They seem quite happy. Weird.
It's because the Conservatives primary motivation is winning and rubbing their opponents faces in it.
They laugh at their opposition's principles and continue to remain in power.
What is the point of power for if it means doing things that you were against five minutes ago?
The Thatcherite right is clearly dead in British politics.
Despite the name, the Conservative Party is not some kind of historical re-enactment society; it adapts its tactics and strategy to the current circumstances while always holding to its most fundamental priorities: to keep socialists out of power, and to conserve as much as can be conserved while achieving that goal. To have offered the nation a purely Thatcherite economic prospectus in the context of 2019 would have been the best way to propel Jeremy Corbyn into power, and as such would have been a profoundly un-Conservative thing to do.
Labour, by contrast, is remarkably backward-looking. The left look back to Attlee as their supreme model; the right look not only to Blairism for victory, but as Lord Adonis asserted just a few days ago, to Blair himself (!). The party of progress and solidarity is paradoxically stuck in the past and fatally riven; Conservatives stick together and look to the future.
Yes. But you're dressing up vice as a virtue.
What's good for the Conservatives is good for Britain because Labour are bad for Britain, so the Conservatives sacred duty is to win elections and keep out Labour who are very bad for Britain. Therefore whatever the Conservatives do to win elections and stay in power is not only good for them, it is by definition extremely good for Britain.
This is the logic of the ultra partisan. And it's impeccable on its own terms.
That is a most excellent summary indeed, and pretty much where the nation is right now.
Here's the Labour version:
What's good for Labour is good for Britain because the Tories are bad for Britain, so Labour's sacred duty is to win elections and keep out the Tories who are very bad for Britain. Unless that means compromising one micron with Blairites/Brownites/Soft Left/Blue Labour/Corbynites/Starmerites/reality, in which case our faction must maintain absolute ideological purity and if the Tories get in again then who cares anyway at least they'll keep our taxes down...
Blue, I was with you all the way until " if the Tories get in again then who cares anyway at least they'll keep our taxes down". Have you not been paying attention to Government spending (actuality and proposals) since December 2019. Unless we get rampant inflation and the debt pays for itself, I suspect we will need tax rises, and enormous ones too, from government irrespective of stripe.
What might have happened since December 2019 to require enormous Government spending across the world, I wonder? Nonetheless, I strongly suspect that the Tories will levy less in tax to pay for a global pandemic than Labour would have levied had one never existed at all.
That's actually a bit of a shame really. Would have been nice to have a GB-wide system.
That's devolution for you. In fact, it will probably only be the "DfT TOCs", so not London Overground, TfL Rail, Merseyrail, ScotRail, Caledonian Sleeper and TfW Rail.
On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).
So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.
Cars are probably a big one.
For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.
If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?
I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.
Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.
I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.
I think I've said on here before that the Conservatives are on a hiding to nothing if they think cold homes, no more foreign holidays and bland diets are a vote winner.
We only go green with lots of innovative new technology that enhances choice and makes people's lives better.
Yes, and they also need to make the case for positive innovative greenery, as opposed to the greenery proposed by those on the left that is mostly negative and destroying of economic activity.
As we move to zero-emission cars, having suburban people move about via cars in tree-lined streets is going to be very environmentally friendly.
Indeed if we're using net zero fuel then I wonder whether clean cars moving about in spacious tree-lined streets will be cleaner than trams in concrete jungles.
Unlikely. Electric cars solve the problem of NO2 emissions and reduce carbon emissions (though carbon is remarkably complex!). OTOH, they increase the emissions of some particulates, and there are also issues around, especially, lithium extraction for batteries. Basically, however you're doing it, you are, per passenger, moving a lot more weight and having to work a lot harder against friction if you're moving people by cars than if you're moving people by mass transit. You're also occupying far more road space. I'm not denying that electric cars are a big step forward, but they are not a panacea to all our urban transport travails. The point about spacious tree-lined streets is key - we can only really get these streets if we reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets. For which we need improvements in the provision of non-car modes (including walking - see 'spacious tree-lined streets'. This can be done without taking a heavy handed, hardline anti-car approach.
One big thing electric cars do give us when we are trying to make streets a nicer place to be is a massive reduction in noise. It's much more pleasant to be in a street with electric cars humming silently past you than being shouted at by an internal combustion engine. It does present issues crossing the road though - it's amazing how much we use sound as an indication that nothing is coming when we cross. We will get used to it soon enough though.
We don't need to reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets, we can build more and bigger streets.
Have more undeveloped fields developed and built on. You can have buildings for housing, trees for the environment, roads for moving, buildings for businesses etc - rather than fields for animals to wander on that our economically irrelevant and could be imported from New Zealand instead.
More streets means more space dedicated to cars instead of the things people actually want - shops, restaurants, libraries, housing & all that stuff. The problem with allocating all that space is that you turn walkable places where you could live & get access to all the amenities you need on foot or by bicycle into car-dependent suburbs. In a car-dependent ’urb it’s impossible to live without a car, because so much space has been given over to cars that you can’t get anywhere without using one, whether you like it or not. Even travelling short distances that many people would be happy to walk becomes impossible once enough space has been given over to cars, because the roads become so wide that crossing them becomes an exercise in taking your life in your hands.
This is not a model of development that actually leads to a great deal of happiness - individually we all like the idea of the large garden /and/ the wide streets on which we can drive where-ever we want, but the net effect when everyone does that is to destroy the very places we inhabit.
The country is not short of space.
70% of UK land is used for agriculture. Agriculture is 0.61% of UK GDP.
Personally I find dedicating 70% of land to 0.61% of GDP to be rather inefficient - what about you?
I don't think that's a particularly strong argument. We don't allocate land dependent on GDP, otherwise the country would be covered in office blocks. We keep country agricultural because we value green space.
We shouldn't.
I sometimes think you’d be happier moving to Coruscant. No green space, big buildings everywhere, the best political intrigue in the galaxy...
That's what those advocating piling people high in cities, while we keep the countryside (or "their view") unspoilt want. That's the opposite of what I am proposing.
I am saying there should be more green space, more trees, more gardens, more parks where people LIVE, not just in fields that nobody ever goes to, are totally uneconomic, and are only ever seen from the sky.
Besides I've said all along if you want an unspoilt view then buy your view. Not one person has come up with an objection to that.
I agree that we have too much ordinary under-utilised scrub or pasture land that could be much better used, rather than being mechanically mowed. Far too great a distance between hedgerows and those that are there, cut far too frequently and aggressively.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean concreting over with roads, houses with patios. We have a shortage of housing in some parts of the country. But just about everywhere we have a shortage of quality hedgerow, woodland, wetland and wildflower meadow, all of which are important from a biodiversity and carbon perspective.
Your complete disinterest in this with a sole focus on building building building is completely at odds with the direction of both politicians and the public mood.
If building is so at odds why is there so much demand for housing? Why are prices so high? Why do new houses get bought from the plots before they're even built and have people moving in the day they're ready?
It's at odds with the selfish shits who want unspoilt views but don't want to pay to buy those views. Again, if you buy your own view then that's it, discussion over, if you don't then jog on.
I have done so.
Fantastic. That's the free market solution.
Now if you get a tempting offer that says I will give you ££££ for some of that land to be built on, then in my view that should be between you as the owner and the prospective buyers. Nobody else.
I am paying with my own money to boost biodiversity on some poorly managed land that is not particularly suitable for housing for a number of reasons. It is not a scaleable answer to the problem.
Like you I am using almost all of my spare money In reverting paddock to flower meadow and open woodland to improve biodiversity. My land serves as an important bridge between two nature reserves so I am getting a lot of advice from the Lincs Wildlife Trust on how to do things.
Sadly it strikes me that Philip displays an astonishing degree of almost wilful ignorance of the importance of proper non-agricultural countryside in his desperate desire for never ending development. And that is the issue - in his world it really is never ending and nothing can stand in the way of building. It is a genuinely stupid philosophy.
I have no objection to non-agricultural countryside.
I just don't think its necessary to maintain 70% of land in this country as agricultural countryside.
Nor do I agree with abusing the green belt, not to maintain the countryside, but instead as a weapon to keep houses unaffordable.
The green belt today is twice the size of the green belt in 1979, despite the fact that we have many more population needing housing now so it would be logical to have a smaller belt not a bigger one.
Since 1995 there has actually been a drop in Green Belt land 37,000 hectares.
Labour might win Batley but heading into a pub and asking "Will you be voting for Jo Cox's sister" - which is about what the ConHome chap did is going to elicit a bias response. Most voters will have no idea who she is.
It is a hard call for Labour, IMO
Kim Leadbetter appears a very capable, personable candidate with local roots. She has a unifying appeal with "More in Common". And David Herdson speaks very highly of her.
But, she has no political experience (was she even a member of the Labour party before deciding to put her name forward ?)
This is likely to be a messy by-election and (at the risk of echoing Gordon Brown), this is no time for a novice. She is likely to receive much more scrutiny and even hostility as a political candidate than she has ever experienced before in running local charity.
Hard call ... Labour need a very safe pair of hands.
I'm scratching my head, but no, I can't think of that safe pair of hands.
My temptation would be give Pidcock another try out, when she sinks without trace, hopefully that will be her done for eternity.
Labour might win Batley but heading into a pub and asking "Will you be voting for Jo Cox's sister" - which is about what the ConHome chap did is going to elicit a bias response. Most voters will have no idea who she is.
It is a hard call for Labour, IMO
Kim Leadbetter appears a very capable, personable candidate with local roots. She has a unifying appeal with "More in Common". And David Herdson speaks very highly of her.
But, she has no political experience (was she even a member of the Labour party before deciding to put her name forward ?)
This is likely to be a messy by-election and (at the risk of echoing Gordon Brown), this is no time for a novice. She is likely to receive much more scrutiny and even hostility as a political candidate than she has ever experienced before in running local charity.
Hard call ... Labour need a very safe pair of hands.
To be fair to Kim, she's regularly on the local news here promoting charities relating to her sister and appears very competent in front of a camera. She might not have dipped her toe into politics before but she seems a natural compared to some of the 2019 intake. If she appears natural she will appear to be competent to the voters, experience or not.
Are you in the constituency ? If so, then we rely on your local knowledge, please advise us ...
What did she do before running charities in memory of her sister ?
On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).
So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.
Cars are probably a big one.
For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.
If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?
I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.
Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.
I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.
Which green targets are the unrealistic ones?
Getting rid of all new Petrol and diesel cars by 2035. I am not sure anyone has yet clocked what a massive change that will mean to our lives unless we start to see some of these technological breakthroughs we are promised.
Haven't you just given the Government the benefit of another 5 years to achieve their unrealistic target? 2030?
Sorry I thought it was 2035. That makes the target even less realistic.
A good article, and it’s striking just how far the Midlands has shifted. Traditional marginal seats like Burton, Nuneaton, N W Leics are now very solidly Conservative.
The reverse is middle class urban and university seats shifting left at a rate of knots, and not just left, but far left. One could imagine the Greens eventually gaining some from Labour.
A good article, and it’s striking just how far the Midlands has shifted. Traditional marginal seats like Burton, Nuneaton, N W Leics are now very solidly Conservative.
The reverse is middle class urban and university seats shifting left at a rate of knots, and not just left, but far left. One could imagine the Greens eventually gaining some from Labour.
Though seats suchas Gedling, Wolverhampton SW and Edgbaston are far less Tory than in the past. Ken Clarke's retirement might see Rushcliffe drift the same way.
Gedling has moved more, rather than less, Conservative. It was solidly Labour from 1997 to 2019.
Not so. It was a safe Tory seat pre-1997 - represented by Andrew Mitchell. The Tories only managed to recapture it in a year when they enjoyed a majority of 80 and a popular vote lead of nearly 12%.
Got to love the old vox pops...they asked a lady about what she thought about the government plans for Great British Railways and she witters on about remembering BR, how the trains didn't run on time, was all a bit shit, but does a 180 and says but I am glad we are going back to that.
Then there's the guy saying that he doesn't see the results of any of the investment - while standing in front of a station served by a fleet of brand new trains.
Got to love the old vox pops...they asked a lady about what she thought about the government plans for Great British Railways and she witters on about remembering BR, how the trains didn't run on time, was all a bit shit, but does a 180 and says but I am glad we are going back to that.
Then there's the guy saying that he doesn't see the results of any of the investment - while standing in front of a station served by a fleet of brand new trains.
On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).
So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.
Cars are probably a big one.
For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.
If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?
I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.
Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.
I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.
I think I've said on here before that the Conservatives are on a hiding to nothing if they think cold homes, no more foreign holidays and bland diets are a vote winner.
We only go green with lots of innovative new technology that enhances choice and makes people's lives better.
Yes, and they also need to make the case for positive innovative greenery, as opposed to the greenery proposed by those on the left that is mostly negative and destroying of economic activity.
As we move to zero-emission cars, having suburban people move about via cars in tree-lined streets is going to be very environmentally friendly.
Indeed if we're using net zero fuel then I wonder whether clean cars moving about in spacious tree-lined streets will be cleaner than trams in concrete jungles.
Unlikely. Electric cars solve the problem of NO2 emissions and reduce carbon emissions (though carbon is remarkably complex!). OTOH, they increase the emissions of some particulates, and there are also issues around, especially, lithium extraction for batteries. Basically, however you're doing it, you are, per passenger, moving a lot more weight and having to work a lot harder against friction if you're moving people by cars than if you're moving people by mass transit. You're also occupying far more road space. I'm not denying that electric cars are a big step forward, but they are not a panacea to all our urban transport travails. The point about spacious tree-lined streets is key - we can only really get these streets if we reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets. For which we need improvements in the provision of non-car modes (including walking - see 'spacious tree-lined streets'. This can be done without taking a heavy handed, hardline anti-car approach.
One big thing electric cars do give us when we are trying to make streets a nicer place to be is a massive reduction in noise. It's much more pleasant to be in a street with electric cars humming silently past you than being shouted at by an internal combustion engine. It does present issues crossing the road though - it's amazing how much we use sound as an indication that nothing is coming when we cross. We will get used to it soon enough though.
We don't need to reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets, we can build more and bigger streets.
Have more undeveloped fields developed and built on. You can have buildings for housing, trees for the environment, roads for moving, buildings for businesses etc - rather than fields for animals to wander on that our economically irrelevant and could be imported from New Zealand instead.
More streets means more space dedicated to cars instead of the things people actually want - shops, restaurants, libraries, housing & all that stuff. The problem with allocating all that space is that you turn walkable places where you could live & get access to all the amenities you need on foot or by bicycle into car-dependent suburbs. In a car-dependent ’urb it’s impossible to live without a car, because so much space has been given over to cars that you can’t get anywhere without using one, whether you like it or not. Even travelling short distances that many people would be happy to walk becomes impossible once enough space has been given over to cars, because the roads become so wide that crossing them becomes an exercise in taking your life in your hands.
This is not a model of development that actually leads to a great deal of happiness - individually we all like the idea of the large garden /and/ the wide streets on which we can drive where-ever we want, but the net effect when everyone does that is to destroy the very places we inhabit.
The country is not short of space.
70% of UK land is used for agriculture. Agriculture is 0.61% of UK GDP.
Personally I find dedicating 70% of land to 0.61% of GDP to be rather inefficient - what about you?
I don't think that's a particularly strong argument. We don't allocate land dependent on GDP, otherwise the country would be covered in office blocks. We keep country agricultural because we value green space.
We shouldn't.
I sometimes think you’d be happier moving to Coruscant. No green space, big buildings everywhere, the best political intrigue in the galaxy...
That's what those advocating piling people high in cities, while we keep the countryside (or "their view") unspoilt want. That's the opposite of what I am proposing.
I am saying there should be more green space, more trees, more gardens, more parks where people LIVE, not just in fields that nobody ever goes to, are totally uneconomic, and are only ever seen from the sky.
Besides I've said all along if you want an unspoilt view then buy your view. Not one person has come up with an objection to that.
I agree that we have too much ordinary under-utilised scrub or pasture land that could be much better used, rather than being mechanically mowed. Far too great a distance between hedgerows and those that are there, cut far too frequently and aggressively.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean concreting over with roads, houses with patios. We have a shortage of housing in some parts of the country. But just about everywhere we have a shortage of quality hedgerow, woodland, wetland and wildflower meadow, all of which are important from a biodiversity and carbon perspective.
Your complete disinterest in this with a sole focus on building building building is completely at odds with the direction of both politicians and the public mood.
If building is so at odds why is there so much demand for housing? Why are prices so high? Why do new houses get bought from the plots before they're even built and have people moving in the day they're ready?
It's at odds with the selfish shits who want unspoilt views but don't want to pay to buy those views. Again, if you buy your own view then that's it, discussion over, if you don't then jog on.
I have done so.
Fantastic. That's the free market solution.
Now if you get a tempting offer that says I will give you ££££ for some of that land to be built on, then in my view that should be between you as the owner and the prospective buyers. Nobody else.
I am paying with my own money to boost biodiversity on some poorly managed land that is not particularly suitable for housing for a number of reasons. It is not a scaleable answer to the problem.
Like you I am using almost all of my spare money In reverting paddock to flower meadow and open woodland to improve biodiversity. My land serves as an important bridge between two nature reserves so I am getting a lot of advice from the Lincs Wildlife Trust on how to do things.
Sadly it strikes me that Philip displays an astonishing degree of almost wilful ignorance of the importance of proper non-agricultural countryside in his desperate desire for never ending development. And that is the issue - in his world it really is never ending and nothing can stand in the way of building. It is a genuinely stupid philosophy.
I think nurseryman Thompson's idea is; plant small private houses and watch the Conservative votes grow.
Been thinking about this homeowners = Tory theory for a while.
Thing is, I recon it is only true because of capital appreciation.
If that stops, or reverses, these new homeowners won’t be happy home owning tories any more, IMO.
So, not only do the tories need to plant a load of new private houses, they also need to (continue) to engineer house price inflation in order to keep harvesting the votes.
On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).
So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.
Cars are probably a big one.
For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.
If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?
I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.
Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.
I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.
I think I've said on here before that the Conservatives are on a hiding to nothing if they think cold homes, no more foreign holidays and bland diets are a vote winner.
We only go green with lots of innovative new technology that enhances choice and makes people's lives better.
Yes, and they also need to make the case for positive innovative greenery, as opposed to the greenery proposed by those on the left that is mostly negative and destroying of economic activity.
As we move to zero-emission cars, having suburban people move about via cars in tree-lined streets is going to be very environmentally friendly.
Indeed if we're using net zero fuel then I wonder whether clean cars moving about in spacious tree-lined streets will be cleaner than trams in concrete jungles.
Unlikely. Electric cars solve the problem of NO2 emissions and reduce carbon emissions (though carbon is remarkably complex!). OTOH, they increase the emissions of some particulates, and there are also issues around, especially, lithium extraction for batteries. Basically, however you're doing it, you are, per passenger, moving a lot more weight and having to work a lot harder against friction if you're moving people by cars than if you're moving people by mass transit. You're also occupying far more road space. I'm not denying that electric cars are a big step forward, but they are not a panacea to all our urban transport travails. The point about spacious tree-lined streets is key - we can only really get these streets if we reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets. For which we need improvements in the provision of non-car modes (including walking - see 'spacious tree-lined streets'. This can be done without taking a heavy handed, hardline anti-car approach.
One big thing electric cars do give us when we are trying to make streets a nicer place to be is a massive reduction in noise. It's much more pleasant to be in a street with electric cars humming silently past you than being shouted at by an internal combustion engine. It does present issues crossing the road though - it's amazing how much we use sound as an indication that nothing is coming when we cross. We will get used to it soon enough though.
We don't need to reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets, we can build more and bigger streets.
Have more undeveloped fields developed and built on. You can have buildings for housing, trees for the environment, roads for moving, buildings for businesses etc - rather than fields for animals to wander on that our economically irrelevant and could be imported from New Zealand instead.
More streets means more space dedicated to cars instead of the things people actually want - shops, restaurants, libraries, housing & all that stuff. The problem with allocating all that space is that you turn walkable places where you could live & get access to all the amenities you need on foot or by bicycle into car-dependent suburbs. In a car-dependent ’urb it’s impossible to live without a car, because so much space has been given over to cars that you can’t get anywhere without using one, whether you like it or not. Even travelling short distances that many people would be happy to walk becomes impossible once enough space has been given over to cars, because the roads become so wide that crossing them becomes an exercise in taking your life in your hands.
This is not a model of development that actually leads to a great deal of happiness - individually we all like the idea of the large garden /and/ the wide streets on which we can drive where-ever we want, but the net effect when everyone does that is to destroy the very places we inhabit.
The country is not short of space.
70% of UK land is used for agriculture. Agriculture is 0.61% of UK GDP.
Personally I find dedicating 70% of land to 0.61% of GDP to be rather inefficient - what about you?
I don't think that's a particularly strong argument. We don't allocate land dependent on GDP, otherwise the country would be covered in office blocks. We keep country agricultural because we value green space.
We shouldn't.
I sometimes think you’d be happier moving to Coruscant. No green space, big buildings everywhere, the best political intrigue in the galaxy...
That's what those advocating piling people high in cities, while we keep the countryside (or "their view") unspoilt want. That's the opposite of what I am proposing.
I am saying there should be more green space, more trees, more gardens, more parks where people LIVE, not just in fields that nobody ever goes to, are totally uneconomic, and are only ever seen from the sky.
Besides I've said all along if you want an unspoilt view then buy your view. Not one person has come up with an objection to that.
I agree that we have too much ordinary under-utilised scrub or pasture land that could be much better used, rather than being mechanically mowed. Far too great a distance between hedgerows and those that are there, cut far too frequently and aggressively.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean concreting over with roads, houses with patios. We have a shortage of housing in some parts of the country. But just about everywhere we have a shortage of quality hedgerow, woodland, wetland and wildflower meadow, all of which are important from a biodiversity and carbon perspective.
Your complete disinterest in this with a sole focus on building building building is completely at odds with the direction of both politicians and the public mood.
If building is so at odds why is there so much demand for housing? Why are prices so high? Why do new houses get bought from the plots before they're even built and have people moving in the day they're ready?
It's at odds with the selfish shits who want unspoilt views but don't want to pay to buy those views. Again, if you buy your own view then that's it, discussion over, if you don't then jog on.
I have done so.
Fantastic. That's the free market solution.
Now if you get a tempting offer that says I will give you ££££ for some of that land to be built on, then in my view that should be between you as the owner and the prospective buyers. Nobody else.
I am paying with my own money to boost biodiversity on some poorly managed land that is not particularly suitable for housing for a number of reasons. It is not a scaleable answer to the problem.
Like you I am using almost all of my spare money In reverting paddock to flower meadow and open woodland to improve biodiversity. My land serves as an important bridge between two nature reserves so I am getting a lot of advice from the Lincs Wildlife Trust on how to do things.
Sadly it strikes me that Philip displays an astonishing degree of almost wilful ignorance of the importance of proper non-agricultural countryside in his desperate desire for never ending development. And that is the issue - in his world it really is never ending and nothing can stand in the way of building. It is a genuinely stupid philosophy.
I have no objection to non-agricultural countryside.
I just don't think its necessary to maintain 70% of land in this country as agricultural countryside.
Nor do I agree with abusing the green belt, not to maintain the countryside, but instead as a weapon to keep houses unaffordable.
The green belt today is twice the size of the green belt in 1979, despite the fact that we have many more population needing housing now so it would be logical to have a smaller belt not a bigger one.
Since 1995 there has actually been a drop in Green Belt land 37,000 hectares.
So more than doubled between 1979 and 1995 and a 2% drop since 1995?
On this one the more than doubling wins as the more relevant stat!
My goodness, but Mark clearly enjoyed writing this one.
Res ipsa loquitur....
I suspect I will have more fun writing the follow-up piece: where the hell does Labour draw its battle lines for the next election?
Yes, I look forward to it. I can't deny I also enjoyed reading this one, but it does feel a tad hubristic.
I like to think it was rather a bookend to the "Boris = Brexit bad man: boooo!" threads we see here too often.
I grew up in Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire. I don't recognise the political geography there now. Same across the West Midlands. I just thought it worth exploring how far that change has moved the goalposts for Labour. They now don't even seem to be on the playing surface over much of the Midlands. Yes, that can change - but it seems to be Labour waiting for the Tories to spontaneously combust, rather than anything more proactive.
It was a very effective header. Totally did the job. Reading it was like being kicked repeatedly in the belly and then at the end, heavy footsteps recede, door bangs shut, lights go out.
That's actually a bit of a shame really. Would have been nice to have a GB-wide system.
That's devolution for you. In fact, it will probably only be the "DfT TOCs", so not London Overground, TfL Rail, Merseyrail, ScotRail, Caledonian Sleeper and TfW Rail.
Well yes, as ScotRail is being renationalised – to the Scottish Government – and TfL is already nationalised (and indeed was never privatised in the first place). Ditto NI Rail.
I'm not sure what the problem is? GBR is a state-run English railway that serves some stations in Scotland and Wales. This is entirely normal – TGV (France) and Trentitalia (Italy) are nationalised railways that – guess what? – cross borders.
People aren't going to be kicked out at the banks of the Tweed and told to continue their journey by river raft.
On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).
So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.
Cars are probably a big one.
For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.
If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?
I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.
Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.
I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.
Which green targets are the unrealistic ones?
Getting rid of all new Petrol and diesel cars by 2035. I am not sure anyone has yet clocked what a massive change that will mean to our lives unless we start to see some of these technological breakthroughs we are promised.
Indeed. It is an unrealistic target without massive infrastructure investment - which doesn't seem to be happening - and even if it was, it would no doubt turn out to be investment in old technology that is out of date before it is finished. Think DAB or Smart Meters on a bigger scale.
Oddly, there doesn't seem to be the drive to get rid of aviation emissions at the same pace. The result of that will be that it will become easier for me to get on a plane to the US than drive to the Highlands.
I wonder whether some vehicle types will be exempted and if this will drive some unexpected behaviour. Perhaps we'll have people driving round in lorry cabs, Chris Eubank style.
That's actually a bit of a shame really. Would have been nice to have a GB-wide system.
That's devolution for you. In fact, it will probably only be the "DfT TOCs", so not London Overground, TfL Rail, Merseyrail, ScotRail, Caledonian Sleeper and TfW Rail.
Well yes, as ScotRail is being renationalised – to the Scottish Government and TfL is already nationalised (and indeed was never privatised in the first place). Ditto NI Rail.
I'm not sure what the problem is? It's an English railway that serves some stations in Scotland and Wales. This is entirely normal – TGV (France) and Trentitalia (Italy) are nationalised railways that – guess what? – cross borders.
People aren't going to be kicked out at the banks of the Tweed and told to continue their journey by river raft.
I remember back to the early days of the rail franchising, that is exactly what happened. It was a total clusterf##k, as people bought tickets for a journey not realizing that you couldn't always just jump on a different run train.
My goodness, but Mark clearly enjoyed writing this one.
Res ipsa loquitur....
I suspect I will have more fun writing the follow-up piece: where the hell does Labour draw its battle lines for the next election?
Yes, I look forward to it. I can't deny I also enjoyed reading this one, but it does feel a tad hubristic.
I like to think it was rather a bookend to the "Boris = Brexit bad man: boooo!" threads we see here too often.
I grew up in Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire. I don't recognise the political geography there now. Same across the West Midlands. I just thought it worth exploring how far that change has moved the goalposts for Labour. They now don't even seem to be on the playing surface over much of the Midlands. Yes, that can change - but it seems to be Labour waiting for the Tories to spontaneously combust, rather than anything more proactive.
Oh my.
I had him down as an extreme Southerner.
Now I discover he's a turncoat as well .
On comment: I think the point of inflexion in the perceived political direction may actually be the Miners' Strike, though the main demographic / geographical trend is more recent with industrial diseases etc killing people early. There still quite a lot of people who remember King Arthur sending his flying thugs down the motorway to intimidate. I remember not being able to get to school because a thousand of them were trying to force the closure of Babbington Colliery.
And a lot of people bought their Council Houses.
More recently there are things like a biggish regional light-rail system which has affected where people live to an extent.
---------------------- At Babbington colliery, police faced 2,000 pickets and were pelted with stones when they made more than 60 arrests.
Seven officers needed treatment for cuts to the head and legs. One officer suffered an eye injury and a union spokesman was also hurt.
Less than half the normal shift of 200 men went into work, but the pit was able to continue production.
Got to love the old vox pops...they asked a lady about what she thought about the government plans for Great British Railways and she witters on about remembering BR, how the trains didn't run on time, was all a bit shit, but does a 180 and says but I am glad we are going back to that.
The public want one arse to kick, where the government cannot hide from responsibility, and a load of chiselling franchisees can't just blame each other for their failings. They want an integrated system of ticketing rather than an absurd one which prevents you travelling on a different train because it's run by a different 'company' – even though they are all subsidised by the taxpayer, who also pays for the track they run on.
Franchising has been a three-decade long farce and an embarrassment to this country, the pioneer of rail. We need a single railway run under a single public-facing brand that is accountable to the taxpayers who fund it.
No surprise that the idea will be massively popular with the public, despite the niche views expressed furiously on PB from people who have seemingly no interest, understanding or experience of using the railway.
It has ended up as one of those "well you wouldn't start from here" problems. Everyone got that it was stupid, but how do you fix it? Hello Ms Passenger Customer. You want to go from A to B? OK, here are 43 different tickets you could buy most of which seem arbitrary and strange with their rules. Better still as you travel you will find staff who disagree with the rules and try to confuse you more. Finally you as a taxpayer will pay vast sums in subsidy to pay for all the bureaucracy.
The only thing that worries me about the new plan is that DafT are going to have even more power than they already have. They are a significant part of the current problems, having Great British Railways run commercially at arms length would have been preferable to bringing everything to be run in house by muppets.
A good article, and it’s striking just how far the Midlands has shifted. Traditional marginal seats like Burton, Nuneaton, N W Leics are now very solidly Conservative.
The reverse is middle class urban and university seats shifting left at a rate of knots, and not just left, but far left. One could imagine the Greens eventually gaining some from Labour.
A good article, and it’s striking just how far the Midlands has shifted. Traditional marginal seats like Burton, Nuneaton, N W Leics are now very solidly Conservative.
The reverse is middle class urban and university seats shifting left at a rate of knots, and not just left, but far left. One could imagine the Greens eventually gaining some from Labour.
Though seats suchas Gedling, Wolverhampton SW and Edgbaston are far less Tory than in the past. Ken Clarke's retirement might see Rushcliffe drift the same way.
Tory vote share in Rushcliffe down to 2001 levels (when Blair won his second landslide). 47.5%
A good article, and it’s striking just how far the Midlands has shifted. Traditional marginal seats like Burton, Nuneaton, N W Leics are now very solidly Conservative.
The reverse is middle class urban and university seats shifting left at a rate of knots, and not just left, but far left. One could imagine the Greens eventually gaining some from Labour.
A good article, and it’s striking just how far the Midlands has shifted. Traditional marginal seats like Burton, Nuneaton, N W Leics are now very solidly Conservative.
The reverse is middle class urban and university seats shifting left at a rate of knots, and not just left, but far left. One could imagine the Greens eventually gaining some from Labour.
Though seats suchas Gedling, Wolverhampton SW and Edgbaston are far less Tory than in the past. Ken Clarke's retirement might see Rushcliffe drift the same way.
Gedling has moved more, rather than less, Conservative. It was solidly Labour from 1997 to 2019.
And Wolverhampton SW was Enoch Powell's seat. He got 64% there in 1970. But he clearly had a huge personal vote that crossed political boundaries. The Tories got 45% in 1974 and 48% in 2019. So - wrong!
It seems like the national system is breaking down with different regions deciding to fudge the rules...
A scheme to offer university students walk-in Covid vaccinations has been suspended on its second day after too many people turned up.
Bournemouth University said it was told "all students" could queue for jabs at Bournemouth International Centre for seven days, beginning on Tuesday. Yesterday hundreds of students turned up - with some queuing for up to eight hours, while others were turned away.
---
I am not sure this is the best approach, as one of the beauties of the roll out so far has been the simplicity, so everybody knew where they stood (and makes planning much easier).
On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).
So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.
Cars are probably a big one.
For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.
If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?
I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.
Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.
I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.
I think I've said on here before that the Conservatives are on a hiding to nothing if they think cold homes, no more foreign holidays and bland diets are a vote winner.
We only go green with lots of innovative new technology that enhances choice and makes people's lives better.
Yes, and they also need to make the case for positive innovative greenery, as opposed to the greenery proposed by those on the left that is mostly negative and destroying of economic activity.
As we move to zero-emission cars, having suburban people move about via cars in tree-lined streets is going to be very environmentally friendly.
Indeed if we're using net zero fuel then I wonder whether clean cars moving about in spacious tree-lined streets will be cleaner than trams in concrete jungles.
Unlikely. Electric cars solve the problem of NO2 emissions and reduce carbon emissions (though carbon is remarkably complex!). OTOH, they increase the emissions of some particulates, and there are also issues around, especially, lithium extraction for batteries. Basically, however you're doing it, you are, per passenger, moving a lot more weight and having to work a lot harder against friction if you're moving people by cars than if you're moving people by mass transit. You're also occupying far more road space. I'm not denying that electric cars are a big step forward, but they are not a panacea to all our urban transport travails. The point about spacious tree-lined streets is key - we can only really get these streets if we reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets. For which we need improvements in the provision of non-car modes (including walking - see 'spacious tree-lined streets'. This can be done without taking a heavy handed, hardline anti-car approach.
One big thing electric cars do give us when we are trying to make streets a nicer place to be is a massive reduction in noise. It's much more pleasant to be in a street with electric cars humming silently past you than being shouted at by an internal combustion engine. It does present issues crossing the road though - it's amazing how much we use sound as an indication that nothing is coming when we cross. We will get used to it soon enough though.
We don't need to reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets, we can build more and bigger streets.
Have more undeveloped fields developed and built on. You can have buildings for housing, trees for the environment, roads for moving, buildings for businesses etc - rather than fields for animals to wander on that our economically irrelevant and could be imported from New Zealand instead.
More streets means more space dedicated to cars instead of the things people actually want - shops, restaurants, libraries, housing & all that stuff. The problem with allocating all that space is that you turn walkable places where you could live & get access to all the amenities you need on foot or by bicycle into car-dependent suburbs. In a car-dependent ’urb it’s impossible to live without a car, because so much space has been given over to cars that you can’t get anywhere without using one, whether you like it or not. Even travelling short distances that many people would be happy to walk becomes impossible once enough space has been given over to cars, because the roads become so wide that crossing them becomes an exercise in taking your life in your hands.
This is not a model of development that actually leads to a great deal of happiness - individually we all like the idea of the large garden /and/ the wide streets on which we can drive where-ever we want, but the net effect when everyone does that is to destroy the very places we inhabit.
The country is not short of space.
70% of UK land is used for agriculture. Agriculture is 0.61% of UK GDP.
Personally I find dedicating 70% of land to 0.61% of GDP to be rather inefficient - what about you?
I don't think that's a particularly strong argument. We don't allocate land dependent on GDP, otherwise the country would be covered in office blocks. We keep country agricultural because we value green space.
We shouldn't.
I sometimes think you’d be happier moving to Coruscant. No green space, big buildings everywhere, the best political intrigue in the galaxy...
That's what those advocating piling people high in cities, while we keep the countryside (or "their view") unspoilt want. That's the opposite of what I am proposing.
I am saying there should be more green space, more trees, more gardens, more parks where people LIVE, not just in fields that nobody ever goes to, are totally uneconomic, and are only ever seen from the sky.
Besides I've said all along if you want an unspoilt view then buy your view. Not one person has come up with an objection to that.
I agree that we have too much ordinary under-utilised scrub or pasture land that could be much better used, rather than being mechanically mowed. Far too great a distance between hedgerows and those that are there, cut far too frequently and aggressively.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean concreting over with roads, houses with patios. We have a shortage of housing in some parts of the country. But just about everywhere we have a shortage of quality hedgerow, woodland, wetland and wildflower meadow, all of which are important from a biodiversity and carbon perspective.
Your complete disinterest in this with a sole focus on building building building is completely at odds with the direction of both politicians and the public mood.
If building is so at odds why is there so much demand for housing? Why are prices so high? Why do new houses get bought from the plots before they're even built and have people moving in the day they're ready?
It's at odds with the selfish shits who want unspoilt views but don't want to pay to buy those views. Again, if you buy your own view then that's it, discussion over, if you don't then jog on.
I have done so.
Fantastic. That's the free market solution.
Now if you get a tempting offer that says I will give you ££££ for some of that land to be built on, then in my view that should be between you as the owner and the prospective buyers. Nobody else.
I am paying with my own money to boost biodiversity on some poorly managed land that is not particularly suitable for housing for a number of reasons. It is not a scaleable answer to the problem.
Like you I am using almost all of my spare money In reverting paddock to flower meadow and open woodland to improve biodiversity. My land serves as an important bridge between two nature reserves so I am getting a lot of advice from the Lincs Wildlife Trust on how to do things.
Sadly it strikes me that Philip displays an astonishing degree of almost wilful ignorance of the importance of proper non-agricultural countryside in his desperate desire for never ending development. And that is the issue - in his world it really is never ending and nothing can stand in the way of building. It is a genuinely stupid philosophy.
I have no objection to non-agricultural countryside.
I just don't think its necessary to maintain 70% of land in this country as agricultural countryside.
Nor do I agree with abusing the green belt, not to maintain the countryside, but instead as a weapon to keep houses unaffordable.
The green belt today is twice the size of the green belt in 1979, despite the fact that we have many more population needing housing now so it would be logical to have a smaller belt not a bigger one.
Since 1995 there has actually been a drop in Green Belt land 37,000 hectares.
Only another 900,000 hectares to go and it would be back to the size it was in 1979 then.
Nobody wants to see all green land built upon, but much of what is supposedly green isn't even anyway and its just kept named as such in order to prevent houses being built which is the opposite of what we should be seeking to do.
Good argument from six years ago, emphasis mine: https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/economics/re-examining-londons-misnamed-green-belt/ The first step in re-evaluation might be to classify Green Belt land into the different types that comprise it. There is genuinely green land, the fields and woods that everyone likes. There is damaged or brownfield land, partly made up of abandoned buildings, gravel pits and the like. And there is farmland, much of which is not environmentally friendly.
The government that takes office after May's election could take the initiative to redress a chronic shortage of housing where it is needed by allowing building to take place on land of types two and three, while leaving the genuinely green land preserved. The opposition will be much diminished if it is understood that only damaged, distressed or intensively farmed land will be affected. And more to the point, the extra houses will bring down the costs of housing and make it available to more people.
That makes me uneasy. None of the explanations that spring to mind are innocent.
Why? Home Secretary observing implementation of Home Office policy?
It has the air of mob boss wishing to witness at close quarters the 'debriefing' of the 'rat'.
The 'rat' is an alleged criminal gangster making money on others misery.
Where do your sympathies lie?
I love all the screeching about how dare the authorities remove the two Indians illegal immigrants on an Islamic holy day.....and they turn out to two Sikhs. So essentially people are arguing you can't deport an individual from a nominally Christian country on the holy day of a different religion that has nothing to do with those being deported. Interesting logic.
For those doing the screeching, no deportation can ever be morally justified.
Or they need to go on some unconscious bias training? They saw two brown skinned people and thought they were Muslims?
I was there and folk knew they were Sikhs from the get go, what with them being neighbours and all. At the end of the stand off the 2 guys were escorted to the local mosque just in case the heavies did a double cross; amazing how people of different religions can stick together in the face of pricks in uniforms.
I was talking about people on social media. There was lots of people banging on about what an outrage it was to deport somebody on such a holy day for Muslims.
If you want a proper display of pointless, vacuous, Woke-frenzied virtue signalling, it is hard to do better than this. They didn't even check if they were Muslim, they didn't give a fuck. All about looking good on social media, braying about the evil English Tories, then briskly move on. Cringe
And theuniondivvie was THERE, in his funny little shorts, wet-dreaming of 1968 in Paris, from the grey pavements of Glasgow
Not true. It is an English railway based in England, but services will enter Scotland and Wales in the same way that the TGV serves stations in Italy.
It is the English Railway with extensions into neighbouring countries like the TGV example. SNCF is called French State Railways though, not Great EU Railways.
It's not true in the slightest. Plenty of GBR trains will serve stations in Scotland and Wales. It's not a hard concept to grasp. Maybe the press officer needs to read up on it a bit?
That makes me uneasy. None of the explanations that spring to mind are innocent.
Why? Home Secretary observing implementation of Home Office policy?
It has the air of mob boss wishing to witness at close quarters the 'debriefing' of the 'rat'.
The 'rat' is an alleged criminal gangster making money on others misery.
Where do your sympathies lie?
I love all the screeching about how dare the authorities remove the two Indians illegal immigrants on an Islamic holy day.....and they turn out to two Sikhs. So essentially people are arguing you can't deport an individual from a nominally Christian country on the holy day of a different religion that has nothing to do with those being deported. Interesting logic.
For those doing the screeching, no deportation can ever be morally justified.
Or they need to go on some unconscious bias training? They saw two brown skinned people and thought they were Muslims?
I was there and folk knew they were Sikhs from the get go, what with them being neighbours and all. At the end of the stand off the 2 guys were escorted to the local mosque just in case the heavies did a double cross; amazing how people of different religions can stick together in the face of pricks in uniforms.
I was talking about people on social media. There was lots of people banging on about what an outrage it was to deport somebody on such a holy day for Muslims.
If you want a proper display of pointless, vacuous, Woke-frenzied virtue signalling, it is hard to do better than this. They didn't even check if they were Muslim, they didn't give a fuck. All about looking good on social media, braying about the evil English Tories, then briskly move on. Cringe
And theuniondivvie was THERE, in his funny little shorts, wet-dreaming of 1968 in Paris, from the grey pavements of Glasgow
As I say, they need unconscious bias training...brown skinned man must be muslim...bloody racists.
A good article, and it’s striking just how far the Midlands has shifted. Traditional marginal seats like Burton, Nuneaton, N W Leics are now very solidly Conservative.
The reverse is middle class urban and university seats shifting left at a rate of knots, and not just left, but far left. One could imagine the Greens eventually gaining some from Labour.
A good article, and it’s striking just how far the Midlands has shifted. Traditional marginal seats like Burton, Nuneaton, N W Leics are now very solidly Conservative.
The reverse is middle class urban and university seats shifting left at a rate of knots, and not just left, but far left. One could imagine the Greens eventually gaining some from Labour.
Though seats suchas Gedling, Wolverhampton SW and Edgbaston are far less Tory than in the past. Ken Clarke's retirement might see Rushcliffe drift the same way.
Gedling has moved more, rather than less, Conservative. It was solidly Labour from 1997 to 2019.
And Wolverhampton SW was Enoch Powell's seat. He got 64% there in 1970. But he clearly had a huge personal vote that crossed political boundaries. The Tories got 45% in 1974 and 48% in 2019. So - wrong!
But the Tory national vote share at both 1974 elections was under 39% - compared with almost 45% in 2019. That rather confirms the drift away from the Tories there.
On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).
So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.
Cars are probably a big one.
For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.
If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?
I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.
Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.
I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.
Which green targets are the unrealistic ones?
Getting rid of all new Petrol and diesel cars by 2035. I am not sure anyone has yet clocked what a massive change that will mean to our lives unless we start to see some of these technological breakthroughs we are promised.
Haven't you just given the Government the benefit of another 5 years to achieve their unrealistic target? 2030?
Yes - it's 2030.
Not sure how unrealistic I would call that. Though I would go with "demanding".
Pure electric car sales have jumped from 1% to 6% in 2 years.
On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).
So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.
Cars are probably a big one.
For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.
If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?
I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.
Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.
I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.
I think I've said on here before that the Conservatives are on a hiding to nothing if they think cold homes, no more foreign holidays and bland diets are a vote winner.
We only go green with lots of innovative new technology that enhances choice and makes people's lives better.
Yes, and they also need to make the case for positive innovative greenery, as opposed to the greenery proposed by those on the left that is mostly negative and destroying of economic activity.
As we move to zero-emission cars, having suburban people move about via cars in tree-lined streets is going to be very environmentally friendly.
Indeed if we're using net zero fuel then I wonder whether clean cars moving about in spacious tree-lined streets will be cleaner than trams in concrete jungles.
Unlikely. Electric cars solve the problem of NO2 emissions and reduce carbon emissions (though carbon is remarkably complex!). OTOH, they increase the emissions of some particulates, and there are also issues around, especially, lithium extraction for batteries. Basically, however you're doing it, you are, per passenger, moving a lot more weight and having to work a lot harder against friction if you're moving people by cars than if you're moving people by mass transit. You're also occupying far more road space. I'm not denying that electric cars are a big step forward, but they are not a panacea to all our urban transport travails. The point about spacious tree-lined streets is key - we can only really get these streets if we reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets. For which we need improvements in the provision of non-car modes (including walking - see 'spacious tree-lined streets'. This can be done without taking a heavy handed, hardline anti-car approach.
One big thing electric cars do give us when we are trying to make streets a nicer place to be is a massive reduction in noise. It's much more pleasant to be in a street with electric cars humming silently past you than being shouted at by an internal combustion engine. It does present issues crossing the road though - it's amazing how much we use sound as an indication that nothing is coming when we cross. We will get used to it soon enough though.
We don't need to reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets, we can build more and bigger streets.
Have more undeveloped fields developed and built on. You can have buildings for housing, trees for the environment, roads for moving, buildings for businesses etc - rather than fields for animals to wander on that our economically irrelevant and could be imported from New Zealand instead.
More streets means more space dedicated to cars instead of the things people actually want - shops, restaurants, libraries, housing & all that stuff. The problem with allocating all that space is that you turn walkable places where you could live & get access to all the amenities you need on foot or by bicycle into car-dependent suburbs. In a car-dependent ’urb it’s impossible to live without a car, because so much space has been given over to cars that you can’t get anywhere without using one, whether you like it or not. Even travelling short distances that many people would be happy to walk becomes impossible once enough space has been given over to cars, because the roads become so wide that crossing them becomes an exercise in taking your life in your hands.
This is not a model of development that actually leads to a great deal of happiness - individually we all like the idea of the large garden /and/ the wide streets on which we can drive where-ever we want, but the net effect when everyone does that is to destroy the very places we inhabit.
The country is not short of space.
70% of UK land is used for agriculture. Agriculture is 0.61% of UK GDP.
Personally I find dedicating 70% of land to 0.61% of GDP to be rather inefficient - what about you?
I don't think that's a particularly strong argument. We don't allocate land dependent on GDP, otherwise the country would be covered in office blocks. We keep country agricultural because we value green space.
We shouldn't.
I sometimes think you’d be happier moving to Coruscant. No green space, big buildings everywhere, the best political intrigue in the galaxy...
That's what those advocating piling people high in cities, while we keep the countryside (or "their view") unspoilt want. That's the opposite of what I am proposing.
I am saying there should be more green space, more trees, more gardens, more parks where people LIVE, not just in fields that nobody ever goes to, are totally uneconomic, and are only ever seen from the sky.
Besides I've said all along if you want an unspoilt view then buy your view. Not one person has come up with an objection to that.
I agree that we have too much ordinary under-utilised scrub or pasture land that could be much better used, rather than being mechanically mowed. Far too great a distance between hedgerows and those that are there, cut far too frequently and aggressively.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean concreting over with roads, houses with patios. We have a shortage of housing in some parts of the country. But just about everywhere we have a shortage of quality hedgerow, woodland, wetland and wildflower meadow, all of which are important from a biodiversity and carbon perspective.
Your complete disinterest in this with a sole focus on building building building is completely at odds with the direction of both politicians and the public mood.
If building is so at odds why is there so much demand for housing? Why are prices so high? Why do new houses get bought from the plots before they're even built and have people moving in the day they're ready?
It's at odds with the selfish shits who want unspoilt views but don't want to pay to buy those views. Again, if you buy your own view then that's it, discussion over, if you don't then jog on.
I have done so.
Fantastic. That's the free market solution.
Now if you get a tempting offer that says I will give you ££££ for some of that land to be built on, then in my view that should be between you as the owner and the prospective buyers. Nobody else.
I am paying with my own money to boost biodiversity on some poorly managed land that is not particularly suitable for housing for a number of reasons. It is not a scaleable answer to the problem.
Like you I am using almost all of my spare money In reverting paddock to flower meadow and open woodland to improve biodiversity. My land serves as an important bridge between two nature reserves so I am getting a lot of advice from the Lincs Wildlife Trust on how to do things.
Sadly it strikes me that Philip displays an astonishing degree of almost wilful ignorance of the importance of proper non-agricultural countryside in his desperate desire for never ending development. And that is the issue - in his world it really is never ending and nothing can stand in the way of building. It is a genuinely stupid philosophy.
Indeed. I thought we'd discovered that green space was vital during the lockdown?
I'm also involved in managing more than one site for wildlife (wetland & bog) as my other half is an ecologist. The idea that we should just turn the place into urban sprawl is bonkers.
Philip's mentality has reached our local Labour mayor though. She hated the sight of sheep on the approach to the town (she thought it made the place look backward) and the sheep field is now a massive empty (ie built speculatively) warehouse. A great improvement, I must say.
That's actually a bit of a shame really. Would have been nice to have a GB-wide system.
That's devolution for you. In fact, it will probably only be the "DfT TOCs", so not London Overground, TfL Rail, Merseyrail, ScotRail, Caledonian Sleeper and TfW Rail.
Well yes, as ScotRail is being renationalised – to the Scottish Government and TfL is already nationalised (and indeed was never privatised in the first place). Ditto NI Rail.
I'm not sure what the problem is? It's an English railway that serves some stations in Scotland and Wales. This is entirely normal – TGV (France) and Trentitalia (Italy) are nationalised railways that – guess what? – cross borders.
People aren't going to be kicked out at the banks of the Tweed and told to continue their journey by river raft.
I remember back to the early days of the rail franchising, that is exactly what happened. It was a total clusterf##k, as people bought tickets for a journey not realizing that you couldn't always just jump on a different run train.
Still true today. Some ticket are valid only on the slower service. For example, you can save £1,300 a year on an annual season ticket between Peterborough and King's Cross if you're happy to travel on Great Northern services, which generally take 1 hour 10 minutes compared with 50 minutes on the LNER train.
Got to love the old vox pops...they asked a lady about what she thought about the government plans for Great British Railways and she witters on about remembering BR, how the trains didn't run on time, was all a bit shit, but does a 180 and says but I am glad we are going back to that.
The public want one arse to kick, where the government cannot hide from responsibility, and a load of chiselling franchisees can't just blame each other for their failings. They want an integrated system of ticketing rather than an absurd one which prevents you travelling on a different train because it's run by a different 'company' – even though they are all subsidised by the taxpayer, who also pays for the track they run on.
Franchising has been a three-decade long farce and an embarrassment to this country, the pioneer of rail. We need a single railway run under a single public-facing brand that is accountable to the taxpayers who fund it.
No surprise that the idea will be massively popular with the public, despite the niche views expressed furiously on PB from people who have seemingly no interest, understanding or experience of using the railway.
It has ended up as one of those "well you wouldn't start from here" problems. Everyone got that it was stupid, but how do you fix it? Hello Ms Passenger Customer. You want to go from A to B? OK, here are 43 different tickets you could buy most of which seem arbitrary and strange with their rules. Better still as you travel you will find staff who disagree with the rules and try to confuse you more. Finally you as a taxpayer will pay vast sums in subsidy to pay for all the bureaucracy.
The only thing that worries me about the new plan is that DafT are going to have even more power than they already have. They are a significant part of the current problems, having Great British Railways run commercially at arms length would have been preferable to bringing everything to be run in house by muppets.
Indeed I absolutely agree with your point about it being arms-length – there was a chap on the Today programme this morning that was arguing similarly. The government should grasp that nettle and give the new body lots of independence from the meddling trainspotters at Great Minster House.
It's not true in the slightest. Plenty of GBR trains will serve stations in Scotland and Wales. It's not a hard concept to grasp. Maybe the press officer needs to read up on it a bit?
I think it is the media again as much as anything, seeing a division / wanting to mock claims of its being "British" rather than "English", flag shagging Boris etc.
On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).
So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.
Cars are probably a big one.
For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.
If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?
I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.
Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.
I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.
I think I've said on here before that the Conservatives are on a hiding to nothing if they think cold homes, no more foreign holidays and bland diets are a vote winner.
We only go green with lots of innovative new technology that enhances choice and makes people's lives better.
Yes, and they also need to make the case for positive innovative greenery, as opposed to the greenery proposed by those on the left that is mostly negative and destroying of economic activity.
As we move to zero-emission cars, having suburban people move about via cars in tree-lined streets is going to be very environmentally friendly.
Indeed if we're using net zero fuel then I wonder whether clean cars moving about in spacious tree-lined streets will be cleaner than trams in concrete jungles.
Unlikely. Electric cars solve the problem of NO2 emissions and reduce carbon emissions (though carbon is remarkably complex!). OTOH, they increase the emissions of some particulates, and there are also issues around, especially, lithium extraction for batteries. Basically, however you're doing it, you are, per passenger, moving a lot more weight and having to work a lot harder against friction if you're moving people by cars than if you're moving people by mass transit. You're also occupying far more road space. I'm not denying that electric cars are a big step forward, but they are not a panacea to all our urban transport travails. The point about spacious tree-lined streets is key - we can only really get these streets if we reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets. For which we need improvements in the provision of non-car modes (including walking - see 'spacious tree-lined streets'. This can be done without taking a heavy handed, hardline anti-car approach.
One big thing electric cars do give us when we are trying to make streets a nicer place to be is a massive reduction in noise. It's much more pleasant to be in a street with electric cars humming silently past you than being shouted at by an internal combustion engine. It does present issues crossing the road though - it's amazing how much we use sound as an indication that nothing is coming when we cross. We will get used to it soon enough though.
We don't need to reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets, we can build more and bigger streets.
Have more undeveloped fields developed and built on. You can have buildings for housing, trees for the environment, roads for moving, buildings for businesses etc - rather than fields for animals to wander on that our economically irrelevant and could be imported from New Zealand instead.
More streets means more space dedicated to cars instead of the things people actually want - shops, restaurants, libraries, housing & all that stuff. The problem with allocating all that space is that you turn walkable places where you could live & get access to all the amenities you need on foot or by bicycle into car-dependent suburbs. In a car-dependent ’urb it’s impossible to live without a car, because so much space has been given over to cars that you can’t get anywhere without using one, whether you like it or not. Even travelling short distances that many people would be happy to walk becomes impossible once enough space has been given over to cars, because the roads become so wide that crossing them becomes an exercise in taking your life in your hands.
This is not a model of development that actually leads to a great deal of happiness - individually we all like the idea of the large garden /and/ the wide streets on which we can drive where-ever we want, but the net effect when everyone does that is to destroy the very places we inhabit.
The country is not short of space.
70% of UK land is used for agriculture. Agriculture is 0.61% of UK GDP.
Personally I find dedicating 70% of land to 0.61% of GDP to be rather inefficient - what about you?
I don't think that's a particularly strong argument. We don't allocate land dependent on GDP, otherwise the country would be covered in office blocks. We keep country agricultural because we value green space.
We shouldn't.
I sometimes think you’d be happier moving to Coruscant. No green space, big buildings everywhere, the best political intrigue in the galaxy...
That's what those advocating piling people high in cities, while we keep the countryside (or "their view") unspoilt want. That's the opposite of what I am proposing.
I am saying there should be more green space, more trees, more gardens, more parks where people LIVE, not just in fields that nobody ever goes to, are totally uneconomic, and are only ever seen from the sky.
Besides I've said all along if you want an unspoilt view then buy your view. Not one person has come up with an objection to that.
I agree that we have too much ordinary under-utilised scrub or pasture land that could be much better used, rather than being mechanically mowed. Far too great a distance between hedgerows and those that are there, cut far too frequently and aggressively.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean concreting over with roads, houses with patios. We have a shortage of housing in some parts of the country. But just about everywhere we have a shortage of quality hedgerow, woodland, wetland and wildflower meadow, all of which are important from a biodiversity and carbon perspective.
Your complete disinterest in this with a sole focus on building building building is completely at odds with the direction of both politicians and the public mood.
If building is so at odds why is there so much demand for housing? Why are prices so high? Why do new houses get bought from the plots before they're even built and have people moving in the day they're ready?
It's at odds with the selfish shits who want unspoilt views but don't want to pay to buy those views. Again, if you buy your own view then that's it, discussion over, if you don't then jog on.
I have done so.
Fantastic. That's the free market solution.
Now if you get a tempting offer that says I will give you ££££ for some of that land to be built on, then in my view that should be between you as the owner and the prospective buyers. Nobody else.
I am paying with my own money to boost biodiversity on some poorly managed land that is not particularly suitable for housing for a number of reasons. It is not a scaleable answer to the problem.
Like you I am using almost all of my spare money In reverting paddock to flower meadow and open woodland to improve biodiversity. My land serves as an important bridge between two nature reserves so I am getting a lot of advice from the Lincs Wildlife Trust on how to do things.
Sadly it strikes me that Philip displays an astonishing degree of almost wilful ignorance of the importance of proper non-agricultural countryside in his desperate desire for never ending development. And that is the issue - in his world it really is never ending and nothing can stand in the way of building. It is a genuinely stupid philosophy.
I think nurseryman Thompson's idea is; plant small private houses and watch the Conservative votes grow.
Been thinking about this homeowners = Tory theory for a while.
Thing is, I recon it is only true because of capital appreciation.
If that stops, or reverses, these new homeowners won’t be happy home owning tories any more, IMO.
So, not only do the tories need to plant a lid of new private houses, they also need to (continue) to engineer house price inflation in order to keep harvesting the votes.
Thatcher and Blair both presided over massive house price booms. In Maggie's case, it was tempered by Right To Buy discounts, and in Tony's by falling interest rates. It's an excellent way to generate some something-for-nothing feelgood.
Unfortunately, even a smallish increase in interest rates from here has the potential to do nasty things to monthly repayments.
Basically, I don't see how person A can get a huge something-for-nothing without person B (somewhere and somewhen else) getting nothing-for-something. And somewhen has been put off for a long time already.
On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).
So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.
Cars are probably a big one.
For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.
If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?
I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.
Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.
I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.
I think I've said on here before that the Conservatives are on a hiding to nothing if they think cold homes, no more foreign holidays and bland diets are a vote winner.
We only go green with lots of innovative new technology that enhances choice and makes people's lives better.
Yes, and they also need to make the case for positive innovative greenery, as opposed to the greenery proposed by those on the left that is mostly negative and destroying of economic activity.
As we move to zero-emission cars, having suburban people move about via cars in tree-lined streets is going to be very environmentally friendly.
Indeed if we're using net zero fuel then I wonder whether clean cars moving about in spacious tree-lined streets will be cleaner than trams in concrete jungles.
Unlikely. Electric cars solve the problem of NO2 emissions and reduce carbon emissions (though carbon is remarkably complex!). OTOH, they increase the emissions of some particulates, and there are also issues around, especially, lithium extraction for batteries. Basically, however you're doing it, you are, per passenger, moving a lot more weight and having to work a lot harder against friction if you're moving people by cars than if you're moving people by mass transit. You're also occupying far more road space. I'm not denying that electric cars are a big step forward, but they are not a panacea to all our urban transport travails. The point about spacious tree-lined streets is key - we can only really get these streets if we reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets. For which we need improvements in the provision of non-car modes (including walking - see 'spacious tree-lined streets'. This can be done without taking a heavy handed, hardline anti-car approach.
One big thing electric cars do give us when we are trying to make streets a nicer place to be is a massive reduction in noise. It's much more pleasant to be in a street with electric cars humming silently past you than being shouted at by an internal combustion engine. It does present issues crossing the road though - it's amazing how much we use sound as an indication that nothing is coming when we cross. We will get used to it soon enough though.
We don't need to reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets, we can build more and bigger streets.
Have more undeveloped fields developed and built on. You can have buildings for housing, trees for the environment, roads for moving, buildings for businesses etc - rather than fields for animals to wander on that our economically irrelevant and could be imported from New Zealand instead.
More streets means more space dedicated to cars instead of the things people actually want - shops, restaurants, libraries, housing & all that stuff. The problem with allocating all that space is that you turn walkable places where you could live & get access to all the amenities you need on foot or by bicycle into car-dependent suburbs. In a car-dependent ’urb it’s impossible to live without a car, because so much space has been given over to cars that you can’t get anywhere without using one, whether you like it or not. Even travelling short distances that many people would be happy to walk becomes impossible once enough space has been given over to cars, because the roads become so wide that crossing them becomes an exercise in taking your life in your hands.
This is not a model of development that actually leads to a great deal of happiness - individually we all like the idea of the large garden /and/ the wide streets on which we can drive where-ever we want, but the net effect when everyone does that is to destroy the very places we inhabit.
The country is not short of space.
70% of UK land is used for agriculture. Agriculture is 0.61% of UK GDP.
Personally I find dedicating 70% of land to 0.61% of GDP to be rather inefficient - what about you?
I don't think that's a particularly strong argument. We don't allocate land dependent on GDP, otherwise the country would be covered in office blocks. We keep country agricultural because we value green space.
We shouldn't.
I sometimes think you’d be happier moving to Coruscant. No green space, big buildings everywhere, the best political intrigue in the galaxy...
That's what those advocating piling people high in cities, while we keep the countryside (or "their view") unspoilt want. That's the opposite of what I am proposing.
I am saying there should be more green space, more trees, more gardens, more parks where people LIVE, not just in fields that nobody ever goes to, are totally uneconomic, and are only ever seen from the sky.
Besides I've said all along if you want an unspoilt view then buy your view. Not one person has come up with an objection to that.
I agree that we have too much ordinary under-utilised scrub or pasture land that could be much better used, rather than being mechanically mowed. Far too great a distance between hedgerows and those that are there, cut far too frequently and aggressively.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean concreting over with roads, houses with patios. We have a shortage of housing in some parts of the country. But just about everywhere we have a shortage of quality hedgerow, woodland, wetland and wildflower meadow, all of which are important from a biodiversity and carbon perspective.
Your complete disinterest in this with a sole focus on building building building is completely at odds with the direction of both politicians and the public mood.
If building is so at odds why is there so much demand for housing? Why are prices so high? Why do new houses get bought from the plots before they're even built and have people moving in the day they're ready?
It's at odds with the selfish shits who want unspoilt views but don't want to pay to buy those views. Again, if you buy your own view then that's it, discussion over, if you don't then jog on.
I have done so.
Fantastic. That's the free market solution.
Now if you get a tempting offer that says I will give you ££££ for some of that land to be built on, then in my view that should be between you as the owner and the prospective buyers. Nobody else.
I am paying with my own money to boost biodiversity on some poorly managed land that is not particularly suitable for housing for a number of reasons. It is not a scaleable answer to the problem.
Like you I am using almost all of my spare money In reverting paddock to flower meadow and open woodland to improve biodiversity. My land serves as an important bridge between two nature reserves so I am getting a lot of advice from the Lincs Wildlife Trust on how to do things.
Sadly it strikes me that Philip displays an astonishing degree of almost wilful ignorance of the importance of proper non-agricultural countryside in his desperate desire for never ending development. And that is the issue - in his world it really is never ending and nothing can stand in the way of building. It is a genuinely stupid philosophy.
I have no objection to non-agricultural countryside.
I just don't think its necessary to maintain 70% of land in this country as agricultural countryside.
Nor do I agree with abusing the green belt, not to maintain the countryside, but instead as a weapon to keep houses unaffordable.
The green belt today is twice the size of the green belt in 1979, despite the fact that we have many more population needing housing now so it would be logical to have a smaller belt not a bigger one.
Since 1995 there has actually been a drop in Green Belt land 37,000 hectares.
So more than doubled between 1979 and 1995 and a 2% drop since 1995?
On this one the more than doubling wins as the more relevant stat!
Well if you want to look at Statistics like that, in 1939 there were 11,300,000 houses in Britain serving 41 million people - 3.6 people per house.
There are now 27 million houses serving 68 million people - or 2.5 people per house.
A good article, and it’s striking just how far the Midlands has shifted. Traditional marginal seats like Burton, Nuneaton, N W Leics are now very solidly Conservative.
The reverse is middle class urban and university seats shifting left at a rate of knots, and not just left, but far left. One could imagine the Greens eventually gaining some from Labour.
A good article, and it’s striking just how far the Midlands has shifted. Traditional marginal seats like Burton, Nuneaton, N W Leics are now very solidly Conservative.
The reverse is middle class urban and university seats shifting left at a rate of knots, and not just left, but far left. One could imagine the Greens eventually gaining some from Labour.
Though seats suchas Gedling, Wolverhampton SW and Edgbaston are far less Tory than in the past. Ken Clarke's retirement might see Rushcliffe drift the same way.
Tory vote share in Rushcliffe down to 2001 levels (when Blair won his second landslide). 47.5%
Rushcliffe is really part of Nottingham City.
Though announce that in the centre of it, and you will be run out of town by a lynch-mob.
My goodness, but Mark clearly enjoyed writing this one.
Res ipsa loquitur....
I suspect I will have more fun writing the follow-up piece: where the hell does Labour draw its battle lines for the next election?
Yes, I look forward to it. I can't deny I also enjoyed reading this one, but it does feel a tad hubristic.
I like to think it was rather a bookend to the "Boris = Brexit bad man: boooo!" threads we see here too often.
I grew up in Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire. I don't recognise the political geography there now. Same across the West Midlands. I just thought it worth exploring how far that change has moved the goalposts for Labour. They now don't even seem to be on the playing surface over much of the Midlands. Yes, that can change - but it seems to be Labour waiting for the Tories to spontaneously combust, rather than anything more proactive.
Oh my.
I had him down as an extreme Southerner.
Now I discover he's a turncoat as well .
On comment: I think the point of inflexion in the perceived political direction may actually be the Miners' Strike, though the main demographic / geographical trend is more recent with industrial diseases etc killing people early. There still quite a lot of people who remember King Arthur sending his flying thugs down the motorway to intimidate. I remember not being able to get to school because a thousand of them were trying to force the closure of Babbington Colliery.
And a lot of people bought their Council Houses.
More recently there are things like a biggish regional light-rail system which has affected where people live to an extent.
---------------------- At Babbington colliery, police faced 2,000 pickets and were pelted with stones when they made more than 60 arrests.
Seven officers needed treatment for cuts to the head and legs. One officer suffered an eye injury and a union spokesman was also hurt.
Less than half the normal shift of 200 men went into work, but the pit was able to continue production.
GB-wide. Network Rail does not cover Northern Ireland. Its future control over chunks of Wales, Merseyside and all of Scotland also looks increasingly tenuous. This is Great English Railways but we can't call it that.
A good article, and it’s striking just how far the Midlands has shifted. Traditional marginal seats like Burton, Nuneaton, N W Leics are now very solidly Conservative.
The reverse is middle class urban and university seats shifting left at a rate of knots, and not just left, but far left. One could imagine the Greens eventually gaining some from Labour.
A good article, and it’s striking just how far the Midlands has shifted. Traditional marginal seats like Burton, Nuneaton, N W Leics are now very solidly Conservative.
The reverse is middle class urban and university seats shifting left at a rate of knots, and not just left, but far left. One could imagine the Greens eventually gaining some from Labour.
Though seats suchas Gedling, Wolverhampton SW and Edgbaston are far less Tory than in the past. Ken Clarke's retirement might see Rushcliffe drift the same way.
Tory vote share in Rushcliffe down to 2001 levels (when Blair won his second landslide). 47.5%
Rushcliffe is really part of Nottingham City.
Though announce that in the centre of it, and you will be run out of town by a lynch-mob.
If the government needs to build on Green Belt land, it could impose this rule on councils: for every acre of less desirable Green Belt taken, it must turn two acres of tedious neighbouring monocultural farmland into woodland, and wildflower meadow.
That way they beautify the nation even as they build. That way might just be acceptable to voters
That's actually a bit of a shame really. Would have been nice to have a GB-wide system.
That's devolution for you. In fact, it will probably only be the "DfT TOCs", so not London Overground, TfL Rail, Merseyrail, ScotRail, Caledonian Sleeper and TfW Rail.
Well yes, as ScotRail is being renationalised – to the Scottish Government and TfL is already nationalised (and indeed was never privatised in the first place). Ditto NI Rail.
I'm not sure what the problem is? It's an English railway that serves some stations in Scotland and Wales. This is entirely normal – TGV (France) and Trentitalia (Italy) are nationalised railways that – guess what? – cross borders.
People aren't going to be kicked out at the banks of the Tweed and told to continue their journey by river raft.
I remember back to the early days of the rail franchising, that is exactly what happened. It was a total clusterf##k, as people bought tickets for a journey not realizing that you couldn't always just jump on a different run train.
The public never got used to it – and why should they? – after all, we pay for it. The utterly bonkers ticketing system led to several millions of fares for the same journey on some lines, some of which were transferable, some of which were not, and some of which you could find three different opinions on vis a vis their transferability depending on which official you spoke to. The entire system was a complete shambles from the off and got progressively worse from there.
GB-wide. Network Rail does not cover Northern Ireland. Its future control over chunks of Wales, Merseyside and all of Scotland also looks increasingly tenuous. This is Great English Railways but we can't call it that.
Calling it Great English Railways probably would have been equally popular
It's not true in the slightest. Plenty of GBR trains will serve stations in Scotland and Wales. It's not a hard concept to grasp. Maybe the press officer needs to read up on it a bit?
Pause. Breathe. Stop making arrogant fact-free statements.
GBR will not set fares in Scotland. Four of their concessions will operate trains that run to Scotland but the fares there will be set by Scotrail as they are now. Simplification will mean the TOC-only fares being removed, so an end to fares set by Cross Country and LNER for internal Scottish services.
My goodness, but Mark clearly enjoyed writing this one.
Res ipsa loquitur....
I suspect I will have more fun writing the follow-up piece: where the hell does Labour draw its battle lines for the next election?
Yes, I look forward to it. I can't deny I also enjoyed reading this one, but it does feel a tad hubristic.
I like to think it was rather a bookend to the "Boris = Brexit bad man: boooo!" threads we see here too often.
I grew up in Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire. I don't recognise the political geography there now. Same across the West Midlands. I just thought it worth exploring how far that change has moved the goalposts for Labour. They now don't even seem to be on the playing surface over much of the Midlands. Yes, that can change - but it seems to be Labour waiting for the Tories to spontaneously combust, rather than anything more proactive.
Sad to say, but the Conservatives do have to spontaneously combust before Labour is even allowed to speak to the voters of (to quote Priestley) Rusty Lane, West Bromwich.
It is difficult to see what Labour, or anyone else can offer, when the Johnsonian vision of English purity and his sunny disposition has captured the zeitgeist.
Personally, I would keep the social justice to a minimum (sod, love thy neighbour, this is a dog-eat-dog world) and focus on environmental themes. Maybe proposing a sanctuary for the Brexit unicorns- Family Starmer almost has form here!
Comments
Kim Leadbetter appears a very capable, personable candidate with local roots. She has a unifying appeal with "More in Common". And David Herdson speaks very highly of her.
But, she has no political experience (was she even a member of the Labour party before deciding to put her name forward ?)
This is likely to be a messy by-election and (at the risk of echoing Gordon Brown), this is no time for a novice. She is likely to receive much more scrutiny and even hostility as a political candidate than she has ever experienced before in running local charity.
Hard call ... Labour need a very safe pair of hands.
(there's something else somewhere on the Graun website)
I don't personally know who the donor is with that kind of money but there can't be a hugely long list of candidates.
Let the protests begin!
I also like her spirited persona, and admire what she’s achieved as a British Asian women. And she’s a great inspiration for British Asian girls, potentially growing up in a patriarchal culture. Just being where she is, she says: You can do it
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-travellers-exempt-from-uk-border-rules/coronavirus-covid-19-travellers-exempt-from-uk-border-rules#it-and-telecoms-workers
Me. Without a doubt.
I sort of see your point about it being slightly cynical positioning, but do you really not see how ludicrous it is to accuse a first-generation immigrant of having or encouraging xenophobic ideals? The zero tolerance is towards criminals, not foroigners.
My temptation would be give Pidcock another try out, when she sinks without trace, hopefully that will be her done for eternity.
Sounds quite blackmaily to me, just keep those £100m chunks coming and your precious statue will be fine..
Sadly it strikes me that Philip displays an astonishing degree of almost wilful ignorance of the importance of proper non-agricultural countryside in his desperate desire for never ending development. And that is the issue - in his world it really is never ending and nothing can stand in the way of building. It is a genuinely stupid philosophy.
Franchising has been a three-decade long farce and an embarrassment to this country, the pioneer of rail. We need a single railway run under a single public-facing brand that is accountable to the taxpayers who fund it.
No surprise that the idea will be massively popular with the public, despite the niche views expressed furiously on PB from people who have seemingly no interest, understanding or experience of using the railway.
It is the winner's lot.
I just don't think its necessary to maintain 70% of land in this country as agricultural countryside.
Nor do I agree with abusing the green belt, not to maintain the countryside, but instead as a weapon to keep houses unaffordable.
The green belt today is twice the size of the green belt in 1979, despite the fact that we have many more population needing housing now so it would be logical to have a smaller belt not a bigger one.
https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1395341389693693956
I grew up in Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire. I don't recognise the political geography there now. Same across the West Midlands. I just thought it worth exploring how far that change has moved the goalposts for Labour. They now don't even seem to be on the playing surface over much of the Midlands. Yes, that can change - but it seems to be Labour waiting for the Tories to spontaneously combust, rather than anything more proactive.
"...Instead, it is determined to focus its time and resources on delivering the report's recommendations around the contextualisation of the college's relationship with Rhodes..." Charles I was definitely cancelled but "Regnante Carolo" still looms over Oriel first quad. Should that go too?
A new donor isn't going to be keen on setting a precedent that anyone can be rendered unmentionable a few years down the line.
What did she do before running charities in memory of her sister ?
Should Labour chose her ?
https://www.thenational.scot/news/19316252.great-british-railways-tory-plan-sparks-scottish-government-anger/
Thing is, I recon it is only true because of capital appreciation.
If that stops, or reverses, these new homeowners won’t be happy home owning tories any more, IMO.
So, not only do the tories need to plant a load of new private houses, they also need to (continue) to engineer house price inflation in order to keep harvesting the votes.
On this one the more than doubling wins as the more relevant stat!
I thoroughly look forward to the sequel.
I'm not sure what the problem is? GBR is a state-run English railway that serves some stations in Scotland and Wales. This is entirely normal – TGV (France) and Trentitalia (Italy) are nationalised railways that – guess what? – cross borders.
People aren't going to be kicked out at the banks of the Tweed and told to continue their journey by river raft.
Oddly, there doesn't seem to be the drive to get rid of aviation emissions at the same pace. The result of that will be that it will become easier for me to get on a plane to the US than drive to the Highlands.
I wonder whether some vehicle types will be exempted and if this will drive some unexpected behaviour. Perhaps we'll have people driving round in lorry cabs, Chris Eubank style.
I had him down as an extreme Southerner.
Now I discover he's a turncoat as well
On comment: I think the point of inflexion in the perceived political direction may actually be the Miners' Strike, though the main demographic / geographical trend is more recent with industrial diseases etc killing people early. There still quite a lot of people who remember King Arthur sending his flying thugs down the motorway to intimidate. I remember not being able to get to school because a thousand of them were trying to force the closure of Babbington Colliery.
And a lot of people bought their Council Houses.
More recently there are things like a biggish regional light-rail system which has affected where people live to an extent.
----------------------
At Babbington colliery, police faced 2,000 pickets and were pelted with stones when they made more than 60 arrests.
Seven officers needed treatment for cuts to the head and legs. One officer suffered an eye injury and a union spokesman was also hurt.
Less than half the normal shift of 200 men went into work, but the pit was able to continue production.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/9/newsid_2903000/2903651.stm
PassengerCustomer. You want to go from A to B? OK, here are 43 different tickets you could buy most of which seem arbitrary and strange with their rules. Better still as you travel you will find staff who disagree with the rules and try to confuse you more. Finally you as a taxpayer will pay vast sums in subsidy to pay for all the bureaucracy.The only thing that worries me about the new plan is that DafT are going to have even more power than they already have. They are a significant part of the current problems, having
GreatBritish Railwaysrun commercially at arms length would have been preferable to bringing everything to be run in house by muppets.A scheme to offer university students walk-in Covid vaccinations has been suspended on its second day after too many people turned up.
Bournemouth University said it was told "all students" could queue for jabs at Bournemouth International Centre for seven days, beginning on Tuesday. Yesterday hundreds of students turned up - with some queuing for up to eight hours, while others were turned away.
---
I am not sure this is the best approach, as one of the beauties of the roll out so far has been the simplicity, so everybody knew where they stood (and makes planning much easier).
In 1979 the Green Belt was 721,500 hectares.
https://www.adamsmith.org/research/the-green-noose/
60% of the Green Belt is agricultural, often intensive agricultural land. Not a green and pleasant land.
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/economics/re-examining-londons-misnamed-green-belt/
Nobody wants to see all green land built upon, but much of what is supposedly green isn't even anyway and its just kept named as such in order to prevent houses being built which is the opposite of what we should be seeking to do.
Good argument from six years ago, emphasis mine:
https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/economics/re-examining-londons-misnamed-green-belt/
The first step in re-evaluation might be to classify Green Belt land into the different types that comprise it. There is genuinely green land, the fields and woods that everyone likes. There is damaged or brownfield land, partly made up of abandoned buildings, gravel pits and the like. And there is farmland, much of which is not environmentally friendly.
The government that takes office after May's election could take the initiative to redress a chronic shortage of housing where it is needed by allowing building to take place on land of types two and three, while leaving the genuinely green land preserved. The opposition will be much diminished if it is understood that only damaged, distressed or intensively farmed land will be affected. And more to the point, the extra houses will bring down the costs of housing and make it available to more people.
"Rob Perry
@docrobperry
For anyone who doesn’t follow Scottish affairs, this is the Glasgow public preventing a Muslim family from being deported. On Eid."
https://twitter.com/docrobperry/status/1392875349545992194?s=20
50,000 likes. Incredibly, he hasn't deleted it. They all look the same to him
This Labour MP is no better
"Nadia Whittome MP
May 13
This is what solidarity looks like.
When the Home Office carried out an immigration raid on two Muslim men during Eid, the people of Glasgow got their neighbours released.
Don’t let anyone tell you direct action doesn’t work."
https://twitter.com/NadiaWhittomeMP/status/1392944666073616390?s=20
If you want a proper display of pointless, vacuous, Woke-frenzied virtue signalling, it is hard to do better than this. They didn't even check if they were Muslim, they didn't give a fuck. All about looking good on social media, braying about the evil English Tories, then briskly move on. Cringe
And theuniondivvie was THERE, in his funny little shorts, wet-dreaming of 1968 in Paris, from the grey pavements of Glasgow
Not sure how unrealistic I would call that. Though I would go with "demanding".
Pure electric car sales have jumped from 1% to 6% in 2 years.
I'm also involved in managing more than one site for wildlife (wetland & bog) as my other half is an ecologist. The idea that we should just turn the place into urban sprawl is bonkers.
Philip's mentality has reached our local Labour mayor though. She hated the sight of sheep on the approach to the town (she thought it made the place look backward) and the sheep field is now a massive empty (ie built speculatively) warehouse. A great improvement, I must say.
Unfortunately, even a smallish increase in interest rates from here has the potential to do nasty things to monthly repayments.
Basically, I don't see how person A can get a huge something-for-nothing without person B (somewhere and somewhen else) getting nothing-for-something. And somewhen has been put off for a long time already.
There are now 27 million houses serving 68 million people - or 2.5 people per house.
Though announce that in the centre of it, and you will be run out of town by a lynch-mob.
That way they beautify the nation even as they build. That way might just be acceptable to voters
The public never got used to it – and why should they? – after all, we pay for it. The utterly bonkers ticketing system led to several millions of fares for the same journey on some lines, some of which were transferable, some of which were not, and some of which you could find three different opinions on vis a vis their transferability depending on which official you spoke to. The entire system was a complete shambles from the off and got progressively worse from there.
GBR will not set fares in Scotland. Four of their concessions will operate trains that run to Scotland but the fares there will be set by Scotrail as they are now. Simplification will mean the TOC-only fares being removed, so an end to fares set by Cross Country and LNER for internal Scottish services.
It is difficult to see what Labour, or anyone else can offer, when the Johnsonian vision of English purity and his sunny disposition has captured the zeitgeist.
Personally, I would keep the social justice to a minimum (sod, love thy neighbour, this is a dog-eat-dog world) and focus on environmental themes. Maybe proposing a sanctuary for the Brexit unicorns- Family Starmer almost has form here!