General comment on economic arguments - throughout this whole pandemic the zerocovidians and lockdown enthusiasts have been able to brush off arguments about effect on businesses and the economy with the (not entirely without foundation) arguments that it is better to lockdown for a shorter period now, than face a longer and more prolonged lockdown later.
However they can’t use this argument forever (not that they aren’t trying, hard...)
Because there comes a point where for huge number of businesses there is no trade off between “short period now” vs “long period later”. If they aren’t allowed to open (fully) now there is no later. And so, it can no longer be presented as a purely health related decision (on the grounds that all economic outcomes are bad). The effects on business and the economy need to be front and centre as an equal partner in the decision making process.
Even more so when the “inevitability of bad health outcomes and need for future lockdowns” in an unvaccinated world is increasingly open to question and challenge.
The Times are reporting one arrest following the defibrillator incident. No comments allowed, which is probably just as well given my incandescence. My husband's life was saved with one 8 years ago.
Def. two people involved. One male, one female. Wonder which one.
17-year-old male.
I have long thought that reciprocal justice would be a good idea in these kind of cases. He is 17, he will have an Xbox or similar. Sledgehammer it to death in front of his mates on top of whatever other sentence is given. You vandalise other people's stuff, we smash yours. See how you fucking like that.
Sitting in softly air conditioned room on the Genome Campus, Cambridgeshire hot and sunny outside, musing about Corona this week. TL;DR - the UK looks like it is sensibly going to delay; the Delta variant is more transmissible and this implies at least one more wave worldwide.
Meanwhile joined up government building back and levelling up continues. Just as HM Treasury plans to move functions to Darlington, LNER propose a timetable to reduce the number of trains and add 15 minutes to journey times...
You miss out the £100m+ renovation of Darlington Station which the Government is funding.
I really can't see the reductions being allowed.
Allowed? The problem is that the infrastructure upgrades haven't been done due to government throttling of available cash for Network Rail. So there aren't enough slots and not enough amps in the overhead power lines, which means a reduction in services is needed which in turn means more station stops on some services and less stops on others.
And it isn't just Darlo. The King of the Tees Valley himself personally got London trains for Middlesbrough, it definitely wasn't a franchise commitment before he was Mayor. Anyway the proposal is for a single train per day - honestly not sure the money spent extending the usable platform at Middlesbrough was worth the dosh.
Sunak is not just a homunculus who worked at one of the dodgiest of dodgy hedge funds when RBS went belly up (and what I can tell you about the real story behind that would make everyone's ears burn) but a f***ing stupid irresponsible destructive bastard.
Grr .....🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
Glad to see that the most popular comments all support the ending of furlough. Apparently they are all lazy scroungers who should get a job. So perhaps the clown has the mood of England* right again.
Mr. HYUFD, what Starmer says is irrelevant. Whether he votes for or against the continuation of lockdown, assuming there is a vote, is what counts.
I doubt there will be any Tory movement to Labour after this evening's announcement of a delay to Freedom Day, there might be some to ReformUK however
HYUFD You are quite bullish on Reform (especially considering they dismal May results)...do you know something we don't?
May was when Freedom Day was still on, by cancelling Freedom Day Boris risks suffering the same loss of some of his core vote Theresa May did when she delayed Brexit.
At least a quarter of the Tory vote want all restrictions ended now, including masks and social distancing, on the latest polling and most Tory voters want an end to restrictions on wedding guests
I think GB News have focussed on the presenters, editors, shows and angles to take but perhaps glossed over the "backroom staff" that are crucial to getting a slick professional news operation up and running. The ratio is probably 3:1 or 4:1 or more and you must have them.
Say what you like about Sky, BBC and ITV but they get the technical stuff right and we usually take it for granted.
I watched a bit last night - Dan Wooten shouting at someone is not what I want to watch at 11pm at night. Forensic it ain't.
Dan Wootton was a prat. However, I found Neil Oliver and Jonathan Sumption measured and interesting.
There is potential there, but they need to start with a well-run operation. It's a basic hygiene factor that will drive the success of everything else.
It reminds me of the Muslim/African channels you get on the high numbers of the Sky Box - SD so it looks like its a repeat from the 80s or 90s, coupled with Crossroads style production. All that's missing is adverts for the local cash and carry/solicitors
Sunak is not just a homunculus who worked at one of the dodgiest of dodgy hedge funds when RBS went belly up (and what I can tell you about the real story behind that would make everyone's ears burn) but a f***ing stupid irresponsible destructive bastard.
Grr .....🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
Glad to see that the most popular comments all support the ending of furlough. Apparently they are all lazy scroungers who should get a job. So perhaps the clown has the mood of England* right again.
*Sooooo glad I left.
Most people who were on furlough are now off it.
Most premises that were shut down are now reopened.
I suspect an increasingly significant chunk of those left on furlough are deliberately abusing the system.
A stark and bracing reminder of how unusual news junkies like most of us on PB really are compared to the rest of the population.
Also, how YouTube and Twitch are where its at. I watched a restream on twitch of an E3 game announcement last night (so this isn't the main official stream, this is people adding their comment over the top), with 4 blokes from their home offices talk about the games being shown and that had more viewers than Sky News at the same time.
Sunak is not just a homunculus who worked at one of the dodgiest of dodgy hedge funds when RBS went belly up (and what I can tell you about the real story behind that would make everyone's ears burn) but a f***ing stupid irresponsible destructive bastard.
Grr .....🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
An unnecessary gift to Starmer from Sunak, extending the current Covid restrictions and restricting hospitality full reopening and then ending furlough at the same time would not go down well
A LD activist explains why they're refusing to campaign in the C&A by-election. Short answer: because the local party and candidate are being NIMBY-istic.
Can someone please summarise why on earth SKS would support the government in a vote in Parliament?
Because public opinion. And because it’s the right thing to do.
PB consensus is way off vs the general public’s pro-lockdown majority consensus.
The public, Boris & sks are right on this. PB libertarians are wrong.
That's the reason as SKS sees it. His leadership is an unusual experiment in thinking issues through and voting accordingly, rather than trying to oppose the government at every turn. It's the precise opposite of the dictum that "The duty of the Opposition is to oppose".
In terms of electoral success, the experiment is not going well. But it's an honourable idea (even if you disagree with the specific conclusion).
Can someone please summarise why on earth SKS would support the government in a vote in Parliament?
Because a large chunk of his own party are very, very zero-COVID. They want more lock down, not less.
That's true. I don't understand why they are, though.
Because big government. Because "caring" - without considering anything else. Because COVID hits minorities harder*. Because "choose people over money" etc etc
*As does lockdown. But this is about emoting. Not thinking. Or actually caring about the end result.
Starmer opposing restrictions is as likely as his announcing an alliance with the DUP over Brexit.
Can someone please summarise why on earth SKS would support the government in a vote in Parliament?
Because public opinion. And because it’s the right thing to do.
PB consensus is way off vs the general public’s pro-lockdown majority consensus.
The public, Boris & sks are right on this. PB libertarians are wrong.
That's the reason as SKS sees it. His leadership is an unusual experiment in thinking issues through and voting accordingly, rather than trying to oppose the government at every turn. It's the precise opposite of the dictum that "The duty of the Opposition is to oppose".
In terms of electoral success, the experiment is not going well. But it's an honourable idea (even if you disagree with the specific conclusion).
"rather than trying to oppose the government at _any_ turn".
Has he voted against the govt ever over the past 15 months?
Can someone please summarise why on earth SKS would support the government in a vote in Parliament?
Because public opinion. And because it’s the right thing to do.
PB consensus is way off vs the general public’s pro-lockdown majority consensus.
The public, Boris & sks are right on this. PB libertarians are wrong.
That's the reason as SKS sees it. His leadership is an unusual experiment in thinking issues through and voting accordingly, rather than trying to oppose the government at every turn. It's the precise opposite of the dictum that "The duty of the Opposition is to oppose".
In terms of electoral success, the experiment is not going well. But it's an honourable idea (even if you disagree with the specific conclusion).
That's an interesting (and a not wrong) way to see it. I've never doubted that SKS is a grown up and sensible. I don't think hes a very good politician however.
A stark and bracing reminder of how unusual news junkies like most of us on PB really are compared to the rest of the population.
Also, how YouTube and Twitch are where its at. I watched a restream on twitch of an E3 game announcement last night (so this isn't the main official stream, this is people adding their comment over the top), with 4 blokes from their home offices talk about the games being shown and that had more viewers than Sky News at the same time.
I watch some really interesting detail and fact based videos on youtube on all sorts of subject matters
If you look you can find plenty where information is provided without the grandstanding and fact light / free crap we get from mainstream nowadays
Can someone please summarise why on earth SKS would support the government in a vote in Parliament?
Because public opinion. And because it’s the right thing to do.
PB consensus is way off vs the general public’s pro-lockdown majority consensus.
The public, Boris & sks are right on this. PB libertarians are wrong.
That's the reason as SKS sees it. His leadership is an unusual experiment in thinking issues through and voting accordingly, rather than trying to oppose the government at every turn. It's the precise opposite of the dictum that "The duty of the Opposition is to oppose".
In terms of electoral success, the experiment is not going well. But it's an honourable idea (even if you disagree with the specific conclusion).
If only....the man is mr hindsight...he backs a position then moans about why the government did it.
Mr Thoughtful hasn't been against closing the borders until very recently, and even then not really. Anybody with half a brain could see that Airbridges V1 and Airbridge V2 was idiotic and some of us called for proper travel restrictions for well over a year.
The only time he has taken a pre-emptive position was the absolutely flawed firebreak. Again, if he is Mr intellectual, he should have been able to look at the model and see it was horseshit....the model said well if we have two week lockdown it might SAVE somewhere between 600 and 106,000 lives in the following 3 months. We have had 15 months of the pandemic and only just over 106k people have died in total, not 3 months, not saved....
Absolute nonsense confidence intervals....and if he had done any other reading, it would have shown that behavioural changes take several days to kick in, plus locking everybody down, looks like it initially slightly increases transmission as everybody is stuck together and you put people in contact for longer with infected....then on exit, people bend the rules early.
i.e. 2 weeks, you basically gain nothing from first week (in fact it could increase transmission) and the second week, the last week days you aren't gaining much as people are being the rules.
What we know, you need a month to really make any impact and appear in the data. Hence the government position of 5 week gaps.
Can someone please summarise why on earth SKS would support the government in a vote in Parliament?
Because public opinion. And because it’s the right thing to do.
PB consensus is way off vs the general public’s pro-lockdown majority consensus.
The public, Boris & sks are right on this. PB libertarians are wrong.
That's the reason as SKS sees it. His leadership is an unusual experiment in thinking issues through and voting accordingly, rather than trying to oppose the government at every turn. It's the precise opposite of the dictum that "The duty of the Opposition is to oppose".
In terms of electoral success, the experiment is not going well. But it's an honourable idea (even if you disagree with the specific conclusion).
Credit to you also, Nick. You are a big fan of and loyal to electorally hopeless, principled basket cases.
Sunak is not just a homunculus who worked at one of the dodgiest of dodgy hedge funds when RBS went belly up (and what I can tell you about the real story behind that would make everyone's ears burn) but a f***ing stupid irresponsible destructive bastard.
Grr .....🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
Glad to see that the most popular comments all support the ending of furlough. Apparently they are all lazy scroungers who should get a job. So perhaps the clown has the mood of England* right again.
*Sooooo glad I left.
Are you suggesting that furlough and other financial aid measures are extended again? I think you should go back to Labour.
Sunak is not just a homunculus who worked at one of the dodgiest of dodgy hedge funds when RBS went belly up (and what I can tell you about the real story behind that would make everyone's ears burn) but a f***ing stupid irresponsible destructive bastard.
Grr .....🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
An unnecessary gift to Starmer from Sunak, extending the current Covid restrictions and restricting hospitality full reopening and then ending furlough at the same time would not go down well
Its almost as if Sunak wants rid of lockdown - and Johnson to boot.
Can Starmer really support the government now furlough is ending?
A LD activist explains why they're refusing to campaign in the C&A by-election. Short answer: because the local party and candidate are being NIMBY-istic.
That does pretty much sum up the lib dems. White, middle class nimbys who hate to be thought of as conservative (small c), even though they pretty much are.
A LD activist explains why they're refusing to campaign in the C&A by-election. Short answer: because the local party and candidate are being NIMBY-istic.
Unless the government produces a massive package of support for the arts/nightclub/music/entertainment sector, Sir Keir has to oppose the extension IMO.
It’s going to be interesting to see the scientists explain how things are looking very bad now (hence delay to roadmap) but not so bad that they think we should slam on the breaks and hit reverse.
I was in a popular local pub last night and beyond people going through the motions of putting on a mask when going to the toilet, you wouldn’t have noticed the difference from a Sunday evening 2 years ago.
Virtually everyone knows each other and therefore everyone chats to everyone.
Double-checking the map, a motorway between Oxford and Cambridge would probably make sense to continue SW down to Swindon and connecting to the M4.
Connect then the M4, M1, M40, A1(M) and M11.
The Government didn't want it there.
They wanted to link it to the A34 for the run down the (often-jammed) dual carriageway to Southampton/Portsmouth area and past Cambridge to the existing A14 to Felixstowe and Harwich.
With no significant upgrade for the A34.
The real driver for it is to provide an alternative route for heavy freight between the ports. Estimated increase in traffic of 1.3 million HGV movements per year up the A34. Unsurprisingly, this is not popular amongst those who actually use the A34 and the villages alongside (which already frequently have the entire traffic of the A34 go through them when the A34 goes down - it has uncomfortably frequent HGV accidents)
(Full disclosure: I'm a local councillor down there and originally liked the idea of this as it hit my "more infrastructure" button. But then the more I went into the details, the more my heart sank.
No upgrades to local roads. The only upgrade the the A34 being "smart motorway technology" (Note: the A34 has no hard shoulder, so what the hell?). Add extra 100,000 houses along the route with no further infrastructure envisaged (seriously? We need housing, but how to make it unpopular or what?!? You don't build houses alongside a motorway; you need local roads for that! Seriously - it's like someone came along and said "How can we turn this into a really stupid idea?")
Any proposed motorway linking Oxford and Cambridge would surely intersect A34 and A14 too, it would make perfect sense to have Junctions there. Plus surely the A6, A1 and others too.
Absolutely extra local roads would be required. A motorway should facilitate investment in local roads off its junctions as well as taking traffic off the existing A roads.
Fundamentally motorways should serve the purpose of removing vehicles from the A roads allowing the A roads to be used for locals instead, not increasing the vehicles on the A roads.
A motorway parallel to the A34 (is there an M34) would make more sense than increasing traffic on the A34 - but I was trying to avoid cutting through AONBs with my path.
Oh, it would. All of that is very sensible and would have prevented me going over to the "no" side on this. (It's been canned, anyway). All it was going to do was to reinforce the belief that development = making things worse. That's the last thing we bloody need here.
We've managed to get local opinion on side for house building in my village (the Neighbourhood Plan proposed MORE houses than had been requested); the key thing was emphasising the new facilities and infrastructure and getting people involved in that.
Removing vehicles from the A-roads: a damn fine idea and the key selling point - if they'd bothered to actually think it through. It's enormously frustrating as a pro-development councillor - whenever we manage to get opinion moving towards us, something like this happens and you end up thinking "Oh, seriously? Do they WANT to get everyones' backs up, or something?"
Glad we can agree on this, I don't understand what goes through the mind of people planning these things. Building a motorway to increase A-road traffic is the exact opposite of what should be happening, motorways should provide capacity to remove traffic from the A-roads.
What would you think of eg a motorway parallel to the A34 if that has heavy traffic (M34?), even if that cuts through the AONB, minimising disruption to the AONB as much as possible - connecting eg Southampton, the M27, Winchester, the M3, Whitchurch, Newbury and Oxford; and then a SW/NE sloped Motorway (M41?) as I proposed linking the M4 at Swindon, Oxford and the M34, MK, Bedford, Cambridge, M1 etc?
The two could intersect at Oxford and there'd be two connections of this route to the M4 - and non-local traffic should be removed then from the A roads.
Can someone please summarise why on earth SKS would support the government in a vote in Parliament?
Because public opinion. And because it’s the right thing to do.
PB consensus is way off vs the general public’s pro-lockdown majority consensus.
The public, Boris & sks are right on this. PB libertarians are wrong.
That's the reason as SKS sees it. His leadership is an unusual experiment in thinking issues through and voting accordingly, rather than trying to oppose the government at every turn. It's the precise opposite of the dictum that "The duty of the Opposition is to oppose".
In terms of electoral success, the experiment is not going well. But it's an honourable idea (even if you disagree with the specific conclusion).
If only....the man is mr hindsight...he backs a position then moans about why the government did it.
Mr Thoughtful hasn't been against closing the borders until very recently, and even then not really. Anybody with half a brain could see that Airbridges V1 and Airbridge V2 was idiotic and some of us called for proper travel restrictions for well over a year.
The only time he has taken a pre-emptive position was the absolutely flawed firebreak. Again, if he is Mr intellectual, he should have been able to look at the model and see it was horseshit....the model said well if we have two week lockdown it might SAVE somewhere between 600 and 106,000 lives in the following 3 months.
A stark and bracing reminder of how unusual news junkies like most of us on PB really are compared to the rest of the population.
Also, how YouTube and Twitch are where its at. I watched a restream on twitch of an E3 game announcement last night (so this isn't the main official stream, this is people adding their comment over the top), with 4 blokes from their home offices talk about the games being shown and that had more viewers than Sky News at the same time.
I watch some really interesting detail and fact based videos on youtube on all sorts of subject matters
If you look you can find plenty where information is provided without the grandstanding and fact light / free crap we get from mainstream nowadays
ColdFusion, Economics Explained, Wendover Productions....the list goes on.
And there there are the info-entertainment stuff say like Linus Tech Tips + his other channels....they pump out I believe 30+ videos a week, plus live streams.
And then you get to podcasts....if you are interested in x, there is a podcast for it. Usually hosted by some expert or that they get on experts.
Can someone please summarise why on earth SKS would support the government in a vote in Parliament?
Because public opinion. And because it’s the right thing to do.
PB consensus is way off vs the general public’s pro-lockdown majority consensus.
The public, Boris & sks are right on this. PB libertarians are wrong.
That's the reason as SKS sees it. His leadership is an unusual experiment in thinking issues through and voting accordingly, rather than trying to oppose the government at every turn. It's the precise opposite of the dictum that "The duty of the Opposition is to oppose".
In terms of electoral success, the experiment is not going well. But it's an honourable idea (even if you disagree with the specific conclusion).
If only....the man is mr hindsight...he backs a position then moans about why the government did it.
Mr Thoughtful hasn't been against closing the borders until very recently, and even then not really. Anybody with half a brain could see that Airbridges V1 and Airbridge V2 was idiotic and some of us called for proper travel restrictions for well over a year.
The only time he has taken a pre-emptive position was the absolutely flawed firebreak. Again, if he is Mr intellectual, he should have been able to look at the model and see it was horseshit....the model said well if we have two week lockdown it might SAVE somewhere between 600 and 106,000 lives in the following 3 months.
Had we done that -> we'd be sticking with June for lifting restrictions.
As I say recently....Took him a year. Some of us on here have been saying this for longer than that.
And where is he on vaccine roll-out.....again some of us saw the slowing down, realized there was an issue....and AZN is just piling up in a warehouse, millions and millions of doses. Starmer, nowhere on this.
For weeks now, we should have been running mass drop-in vaccine clinics at big stadiums. You want to be jabbed, come get it, but you have to have AZN. We could have got ahead of the curve.
We could have got millions more done and again might have been able to be free.
Here's an idea: make lockdown guidance rather than law.
Then the likes of Chris, Nick and Ping from PB can lock themselves away while those who choose to take the risk can do so.
Would be a sensible compromise.
The only reason for not making restrictions guidance (ie making it the law) was that businesses would suffer if the govt chose to close the pubs or advise against going to them as they would effectively be discriminated against economically for a govt mandate. Hence furlough.
Now that furlough is ending, there is no reason not to make it voluntary.
Still not sure what freedoms Freedom day offers beyond the ‘freedom’ to resume a long commute, to take off a mask I’m not remotely bothered about wearing or to be crammed closer to some dudes sweaty pits.
I think it's right to say that a minority of people commute on trains to work, (or did before the pandemic). This sounds like a very London and south-east centric view of life. Most people drive to work and it takes less than 30 or 45 minutes IIRC.
Interesting fact about commute times (apologies if this is well known): commute times have remained static for well over 100 years, at an average of about 40 minutes. When new infrastructure or technologies allow us to reduce our commute times, we respond by getting jobs further away. There is a slightly higher average in the south east but this can be explained solely by a concentration of higher-paying jobs (which makes it worth people's while to stretch beyond the 40-odd minutes).
This is v interesting and explains why one of the key things you need to do to encourage economic growth is metro mass transit systems.
Thereby, employers are able to access a larger pool of skilled labour (and in turn, employees are able to access a larger concentration of jobs).
It’s something we’ve been astonishingly poor at this in this country because we have tended to rely on failed market solutions, and we also grudge subsidising commuters (since such systems seldom pay for themselves). Sadly in doing so we cut off out nose to save our face.
Leeds is the largest city in Europe without a mass transit system.
Agree entirely. There are a few subtleties though - metro mass transit systems don't necessarily have to run on rails. What they do need to do is be rapid, with predictable journey times (more predictable than driving, anyway). This therefore means they have to either be separated from general traffic or have some effective way of getting priority over it.
Leeds does, if I recall, have some stretches of busway which do this to some extent - I don't know how effectively.
We also have to consider where we want to serve with our mass transit - the working class communities with low car ownership or the middle class communities where the skilled labour is (and the greatest market for mass transit). Not an easy decision.
Mass transit systems don't sound like a good idea at the moment, especially with people who think the pre-covid world was rubbish.
'At the moment' being the operative phrase.
My expectation is that demand for urban rapid transit in cities outside London will be higher in 2025 than it was in 2015. Trips per job will decrease (my central estimate is by about 20% - bear in mind that roughly 50% of city centre jobs cannot be done from home) but absolute numbers of city centre jobs will increase*; also non-work trips will increase. (This pattern is very good news for public transport, whose central problem is peakiness in demand, meaning crushes at peak times and an unprofitable carrying of empty air at other times). Cars - even connected autonomous vehicles - simply can't carry people in high enough volumes to meet demand in cities.
Declaration of interest: my job basically depends on there being a future for public transport. There is a risk therefore that the above is informed by wishful thinking! But I have worked through the scenarios and my 'central' scenarios sees growth.
*I have specified 'outside London' because I am less confident making this claim for London than I am for Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds etc.
I think that, outside London, you may well be right.
Real levelling up, as it were. Essentially the other major cities in the UK will grow relative to London. Part of that will require a massive catchup in public transport to get to a fraction of what London has.
The interesting one in all this, is the possibility of total automation of tunnelling, which leads to some rather interesting effects. Combined with future generations of power and signalling delivery, there is the possibility of some major reductions in cost.
Alternatively have a road network that works.
Milton Keynes is a strange town with its roundabouts but it works, has fast moving roads and has a strong economy as a result.
Rather than cramming more and more people into city high rises and trying to get them moving about in mass transit boxes, getting more new towns like Milton Keynes with roads that work would deal well with both the economy and housing.
High speed roads are the last thing we need in towns.
We need higher speed roads outside, between, and around towns. Not in.
Sunak is not just a homunculus who worked at one of the dodgiest of dodgy hedge funds when RBS went belly up (and what I can tell you about the real story behind that would make everyone's ears burn) but a f***ing stupid irresponsible destructive bastard.
Grr .....🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
Glad to see that the most popular comments all support the ending of furlough. Apparently they are all lazy scroungers who should get a job. So perhaps the clown has the mood of England* right again.
*Sooooo glad I left.
Most people who were on furlough are now off it.
Most premises that were shut down are now reopened.
I suspect an increasingly significant chunk of those left on furlough are deliberately abusing the system.
As discussed earlier, somewhere being open with a skeleton customer base is not viable, hence the need to maintain furlough. Yes the likes of Cinemas have finally been allowed to open with a big cut in capacity.
Anyone been to be able to say what actual numbers are like this year? August September last year was around 20% of normal. So they may be open, but suspect many of their staff are at least on part time furlough.
Sunak is not just a homunculus who worked at one of the dodgiest of dodgy hedge funds when RBS went belly up (and what I can tell you about the real story behind that would make everyone's ears burn) but a f***ing stupid irresponsible destructive bastard.
Grr .....🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
An unnecessary gift to Starmer from Sunak, extending the current Covid restrictions and restricting hospitality full reopening and then ending furlough at the same time would not go down well
Its almost as if Sunak wants rid of lockdown - and Johnson to boot.
Can Starmer really support the government now furlough is ending?
But furlough isn't ending. It's just that Sunak's contribution is going down from 80% to 70% in July, then 60% in August and September. You keep repeating this fake news. The issue is whether it should stay at 80% if restrictions aren't ended, e.g. on travel, clubs etc.
Can someone please summarise why on earth SKS would support the government in a vote in Parliament?
Because public opinion. And because it’s the right thing to do.
PB consensus is way off vs the general public’s pro-lockdown majority consensus.
The public, Boris & sks are right on this. PB libertarians are wrong.
That's the reason as SKS sees it. His leadership is an unusual experiment in thinking issues through and voting accordingly, rather than trying to oppose the government at every turn. It's the precise opposite of the dictum that "The duty of the Opposition is to oppose".
In terms of electoral success, the experiment is not going well. But it's an honourable idea (even if you disagree with the specific conclusion).
If only....the man is mr hindsight...he backs a position then moans about why the government did it.
Mr Thoughtful hasn't been against closing the borders until very recently, and even then not really. Anybody with half a brain could see that Airbridges V1 and Airbridge V2 was idiotic and some of us called for proper travel restrictions for well over a year.
The only time he has taken a pre-emptive position was the absolutely flawed firebreak. Again, if he is Mr intellectual, he should have been able to look at the model and see it was horseshit....the model said well if we have two week lockdown it might SAVE somewhere between 600 and 106,000 lives in the following 3 months.
On SKS and where Nick's argument falls down (honourable guy doing the honourable thing).
The Opposition's stance has to be that anything they do is better than anything the government does. From cones hotlines to national emergencies. Once you give up that principle you are finished.
It's like the hooker question - we've established that Labour think the government is doing the right thing in A, B, C, D & E. No one is going to listen to them when they say, oh but you are really messing up on F.
Sunak is not just a homunculus who worked at one of the dodgiest of dodgy hedge funds when RBS went belly up (and what I can tell you about the real story behind that would make everyone's ears burn) but a f***ing stupid irresponsible destructive bastard.
Grr .....🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
An unnecessary gift to Starmer from Sunak, extending the current Covid restrictions and restricting hospitality full reopening and then ending furlough at the same time would not go down well
Its almost as if Sunak wants rid of lockdown - and Johnson to boot.
Can Starmer really support the government now furlough is ending?
If Sunak took down Boris by ending furlough completely before all restrictions end he would go down with him
On SKS and where Nick's argument falls down (honourable guy doing the honourable thing).
The Opposition's stance has to be that anything they do is better than anything the government does. From cones hotlines to national emergencies. Once you give up that principle you are finished.
It's like the hooker question - we've established that Labour think the government is doing the right thing in A, B, C, D & E. No one is going to listen to them when they say, oh but you are really messing up on F.
The classic is always the government announce some massive spending....and up popped Anneliese Dodds...not enough...
We are going to spend 6 trillion quid on a scheme...no not enough.
Still not sure what freedoms Freedom day offers beyond the ‘freedom’ to resume a long commute, to take off a mask I’m not remotely bothered about wearing or to be crammed closer to some dudes sweaty pits.
I think it's right to say that a minority of people commute on trains to work, (or did before the pandemic). This sounds like a very London and south-east centric view of life. Most people drive to work and it takes less than 30 or 45 minutes IIRC.
Interesting fact about commute times (apologies if this is well known): commute times have remained static for well over 100 years, at an average of about 40 minutes. When new infrastructure or technologies allow us to reduce our commute times, we respond by getting jobs further away. There is a slightly higher average in the south east but this can be explained solely by a concentration of higher-paying jobs (which makes it worth people's while to stretch beyond the 40-odd minutes).
This is v interesting and explains why one of the key things you need to do to encourage economic growth is metro mass transit systems.
Thereby, employers are able to access a larger pool of skilled labour (and in turn, employees are able to access a larger concentration of jobs).
It’s something we’ve been astonishingly poor at this in this country because we have tended to rely on failed market solutions, and we also grudge subsidising commuters (since such systems seldom pay for themselves). Sadly in doing so we cut off out nose to save our face.
Leeds is the largest city in Europe without a mass transit system.
Agree entirely. There are a few subtleties though - metro mass transit systems don't necessarily have to run on rails. What they do need to do is be rapid, with predictable journey times (more predictable than driving, anyway). This therefore means they have to either be separated from general traffic or have some effective way of getting priority over it.
Leeds does, if I recall, have some stretches of busway which do this to some extent - I don't know how effectively.
We also have to consider where we want to serve with our mass transit - the working class communities with low car ownership or the middle class communities where the skilled labour is (and the greatest market for mass transit). Not an easy decision.
Mass transit systems don't sound like a good idea at the moment, especially with people who think the pre-covid world was rubbish.
'At the moment' being the operative phrase.
My expectation is that demand for urban rapid transit in cities outside London will be higher in 2025 than it was in 2015. Trips per job will decrease (my central estimate is by about 20% - bear in mind that roughly 50% of city centre jobs cannot be done from home) but absolute numbers of city centre jobs will increase*; also non-work trips will increase. (This pattern is very good news for public transport, whose central problem is peakiness in demand, meaning crushes at peak times and an unprofitable carrying of empty air at other times). Cars - even connected autonomous vehicles - simply can't carry people in high enough volumes to meet demand in cities.
Declaration of interest: my job basically depends on there being a future for public transport. There is a risk therefore that the above is informed by wishful thinking! But I have worked through the scenarios and my 'central' scenarios sees growth.
*I have specified 'outside London' because I am less confident making this claim for London than I am for Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds etc.
I think that, outside London, you may well be right.
Real levelling up, as it were. Essentially the other major cities in the UK will grow relative to London. Part of that will require a massive catchup in public transport to get to a fraction of what London has.
The interesting one in all this, is the possibility of total automation of tunnelling, which leads to some rather interesting effects. Combined with future generations of power and signalling delivery, there is the possibility of some major reductions in cost.
Alternatively have a road network that works.
Milton Keynes is a strange town with its roundabouts but it works, has fast moving roads and has a strong economy as a result.
Rather than cramming more and more people into city high rises and trying to get them moving about in mass transit boxes, getting more new towns like Milton Keynes with roads that work would deal well with both the economy and housing.
High speed roads are the last thing we need in towns.
We need higher speed roads outside, between, and around towns. Not in.
Why?
So long as pedestrians are segregated from the roads, high speed roads in towns working as arteries work very, very well. With a well designed town it really ought to be possible to do 60 to 70mph in a town.
Here's an idea: make lockdown guidance rather than law.
Then the likes of Chris, Nick and Ping from PB can lock themselves away while those who choose to take the risk can do so.
Would be a sensible compromise.
The only reason for not making restrictions guidance (ie making it the law) was that businesses would suffer if the govt chose to close the pubs or advise against going to them as they would effectively be discriminated against economically for a govt mandate. Hence furlough.
Now that furlough is ending, there is no reason not to make it voluntary.
Can someone please summarise why on earth SKS would support the government in a vote in Parliament?
Because public opinion. And because it’s the right thing to do.
PB consensus is way off vs the general public’s pro-lockdown majority consensus.
The public, Boris & sks are right on this. PB libertarians are wrong.
That's the reason as SKS sees it. His leadership is an unusual experiment in thinking issues through and voting accordingly, rather than trying to oppose the government at every turn. It's the precise opposite of the dictum that "The duty of the Opposition is to oppose".
In terms of electoral success, the experiment is not going well. But it's an honourable idea (even if you disagree with the specific conclusion).
If only....the man is mr hindsight...he backs a position then moans about why the government did it.
Mr Thoughtful hasn't been against closing the borders until very recently, and even then not really. Anybody with half a brain could see that Airbridges V1 and Airbridge V2 was idiotic and some of us called for proper travel restrictions for well over a year.
The only time he has taken a pre-emptive position was the absolutely flawed firebreak. Again, if he is Mr intellectual, he should have been able to look at the model and see it was horseshit....the model said well if we have two week lockdown it might SAVE somewhere between 600 and 106,000 lives in the following 3 months.
Had we done that -> we'd be sticking with June for lifting restrictions.
As I say recently....Took him a year.
It's not hindsight though is it? He said *in advance* of the delta variant that this was a problem. Govt didn't listen. And here we are.
And this past week, what has Starmer been focusing on....trans self Id laws, taking the knee and BBQ's.....
He could have been hammering home that we need to get the vaccine roll-out going.
The best sensible opposition to the government has consistently been Jeremy Hunt. So often he has popped up and said ok well there is this issue, this issue and this issue, I think we should do y instead e.g. he was well ahead with keeping schools open for kids of key workers.
Identify issue, propose solution...that is good opposition.
Can someone please summarise why on earth SKS would support the government in a vote in Parliament?
Because public opinion. And because it’s the right thing to do.
PB consensus is way off vs the general public’s pro-lockdown majority consensus.
The public, Boris & sks are right on this. PB libertarians are wrong.
That's the reason as SKS sees it. His leadership is an unusual experiment in thinking issues through and voting accordingly, rather than trying to oppose the government at every turn. It's the precise opposite of the dictum that "The duty of the Opposition is to oppose".
In terms of electoral success, the experiment is not going well. But it's an honourable idea (even if you disagree with the specific conclusion).
If only....the man is mr hindsight...he backs a position then moans about why the government did it.
Mr Thoughtful hasn't been against closing the borders until very recently, and even then not really. Anybody with half a brain could see that Airbridges V1 and Airbridge V2 was idiotic and some of us called for proper travel restrictions for well over a year.
The only time he has taken a pre-emptive position was the absolutely flawed firebreak. Again, if he is Mr intellectual, he should have been able to look at the model and see it was horseshit....the model said well if we have two week lockdown it might SAVE somewhere between 600 and 106,000 lives in the following 3 months.
One other feature of today’s decision however is it may represent the first time that the scientist’s models will get unambiguously tested (if we ignore reopening of schools/outdoor activities in March/April where they failed miserably). Because this is the first time where they will be producing models to accompany, effectively a “status quo” decision. Whereas previously they could argue that it was restrictions introduced on the back of their modelling which meant their worst scenarios didn’t come to pass.
If the models perform poorly over the next few weeks then there will be some real questions to answer. With so much at stake, decisions need to be based on more than ultra caution.
So long as pedestrians are segregated from the roads, high speed roads in towns working as arteries work very, very well. With a well designed town it really ought to be possible to do 60 to 70mph in a town.
Building long-distance roads as a through-pass hasn't worked in so may American cities now looking to remove them. Build a bypass - a proper one not that awful excuse of one that Oxford pollutes Botley with.
As for the A34 "Smart Motorway" reported earlier you do wonder how stupid the DfT are and how much cash we are wasting in "upgrades" not fit for purpose.
Not so sure about on here, but in real life my mates are moaning as if we were still locked down as we were last spring. As far as I can see the pubs, cafes and shops are quite busy, & my social media is full of photo's of people out enjoying themselves. Is the difference between what we have now and normal life that big? Maybe it is and I have just become conditioned to lockdown as, at the start, I was amazed how easily people swallowed the restrictions, and argued against those who were worried by that ease
Can someone please summarise why on earth SKS would support the government in a vote in Parliament?
Because public opinion. And because it’s the right thing to do.
PB consensus is way off vs the general public’s pro-lockdown majority consensus.
The public, Boris & sks are right on this. PB libertarians are wrong.
That's the reason as SKS sees it. His leadership is an unusual experiment in thinking issues through and voting accordingly, rather than trying to oppose the government at every turn. It's the precise opposite of the dictum that "The duty of the Opposition is to oppose".
In terms of electoral success, the experiment is not going well. But it's an honourable idea (even if you disagree with the specific conclusion).
If only....the man is mr hindsight...he backs a position then moans about why the government did it.
Mr Thoughtful hasn't been against closing the borders until very recently, and even then not really. Anybody with half a brain could see that Airbridges V1 and Airbridge V2 was idiotic and some of us called for proper travel restrictions for well over a year.
The only time he has taken a pre-emptive position was the absolutely flawed firebreak. Again, if he is Mr intellectual, he should have been able to look at the model and see it was horseshit....the model said well if we have two week lockdown it might SAVE somewhere between 600 and 106,000 lives in the following 3 months.
Had we done that -> we'd be sticking with June for lifting restrictions.
As I say recently....Took him a year.
It's not hindsight though is it? He said *in advance* of the delta variant that this was a problem. Govt didn't listen. And here we are.
And this past week, what has Starmer been focusing on....trans self Id laws, taking the knee and BBQ's.....
He could have been hammering home that we need to get the vaccine roll-out going.
The best sensible opposition to the government has consistently been Jeremy Hunt. So often he has popped up and said ok well there is this issue, this issue and this issue, I think we should do y instead e.g. he was well ahead with keeping schools open for kids of key workers.
Identify issue, propose solution...that is good opposition.
You must have missed the list of PPE suppliers Labour provided to the government then.
Not so sure about on here, but in real life my mates are moaning as if we were still locked down as we were last spring. As far as I can see the pubs, cafes and shops are quite busy, & my social media is full of photo's of people out enjoying themselves. Is the difference between what we have now and normal life that big? Maybe it is and I have just become conditioned to lockdown as, at the start, I was amazed how easily people swallowed the restrictions, and argued against those who were worried by that ease
I think it is like a dark cloud hanging over us which affects some people more than others.
It is the concept rather than the reality.
Watching footage of pre-lockdown events, for example, packed stadiums, courts, etc. The French Open was fantastic but every mask represents, to many people, an oppression.
Zoe survey has been showing massive case growth recently but down to flat in North West today.
Will make for fun conspiracy theories in future years if the 3rd wave shows up in case data with limited impact on hospitals and barely anything on deaths, and more or less stops right as freedom is delayed.
Sunak is not just a homunculus who worked at one of the dodgiest of dodgy hedge funds when RBS went belly up (and what I can tell you about the real story behind that would make everyone's ears burn) but a f***ing stupid irresponsible destructive bastard.
Grr .....🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
An unnecessary gift to Starmer from Sunak, extending the current Covid restrictions and restricting hospitality full reopening and then ending furlough at the same time would not go down well
Its almost as if Sunak wants rid of lockdown - and Johnson to boot.
Can Starmer really support the government now furlough is ending?
If Sunak took down Boris by ending furlough completely before all restrictions end he would go down with him
Sunak is not just a homunculus who worked at one of the dodgiest of dodgy hedge funds when RBS went belly up (and what I can tell you about the real story behind that would make everyone's ears burn) but a f***ing stupid irresponsible destructive bastard.
Grr .....🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
An unnecessary gift to Starmer from Sunak, extending the current Covid restrictions and restricting hospitality full reopening and then ending furlough at the same time would not go down well
Its almost as if Sunak wants rid of lockdown - and Johnson to boot.
Can Starmer really support the government now furlough is ending?
If Sunak took down Boris by ending furlough completely before all restrictions end he would go down with him
So Sunak is going to row back then.
I see.
There hasn’t been any change of plan from the current taper, has there?
Sunak is not just a homunculus who worked at one of the dodgiest of dodgy hedge funds when RBS went belly up (and what I can tell you about the real story behind that would make everyone's ears burn) but a f***ing stupid irresponsible destructive bastard.
Grr .....🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
An unnecessary gift to Starmer from Sunak, extending the current Covid restrictions and restricting hospitality full reopening and then ending furlough at the same time would not go down well
Its almost as if Sunak wants rid of lockdown - and Johnson to boot.
Can Starmer really support the government now furlough is ending?
If Sunak took down Boris by ending furlough completely before all restrictions end he would go down with him
So Sunak is going to row back then.
I see.
There hasn’t been any change of plan from the current taper, has there?
Nothing has been announced - just "informed sources" being quoted in stories.
Not so sure about on here, but in real life my mates are moaning as if we were still locked down as we were last spring. As far as I can see the pubs, cafes and shops are quite busy, & my social media is full of photo's of people out enjoying themselves. Is the difference between what we have now and normal life that big? Maybe it is and I have just become conditioned to lockdown as, at the start, I was amazed how easily people swallowed the restrictions, and argued against those who were worried by that ease
Turn it round the other way and ask the question if everything is apparently fine do the government ever need to go any further in unlocking?
Sunak is not just a homunculus who worked at one of the dodgiest of dodgy hedge funds when RBS went belly up (and what I can tell you about the real story behind that would make everyone's ears burn) but a f***ing stupid irresponsible destructive bastard.
Grr .....🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
An unnecessary gift to Starmer from Sunak, extending the current Covid restrictions and restricting hospitality full reopening and then ending furlough at the same time would not go down well
Its almost as if Sunak wants rid of lockdown - and Johnson to boot.
Can Starmer really support the government now furlough is ending?
If Sunak took down Boris by ending furlough completely before all restrictions end he would go down with him
So Sunak is going to row back then.
I see.
There hasn’t been any change of plan from the current taper, has there?
The report in the Mail says the taper is going ahead from 01 July and the scheme will end at the end of September. The Times has the same story.
and so Furlough, far as I can see, if f*cking ending.
As soon as employers contributions start to rise, so will the redundancies. Natch.
Have just received an email from HMRC about the "SME Brexit Support Fund". Dishy offering up to £2k a pop for small businesses who do a variety of things including having to "move goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland".
So when Raaaaaab and the liars complain that Macron said NI is separate from the rest of GB, they might want to ask HMRC.
For me to export products from Somerset to Antrim, I have to apply for an export license and complete paperwork with product commodity codes and may have to pay EEA customs duties and provide SPS certificates and manage the import VAT due.
Northern Ireland is separate from Great Britain. The United Kingdom - from a customs and international trading perspective - no longer exists. And the customs man wants to offer £2k to train me up on the new process.
Zoe survey has been showing massive case growth recently but down to flat in North West today.
Will make for fun conspiracy theories in future years if the 3rd wave shows up in case data with limited impact on hospitals and barely anything on deaths, and more or less stops right as freedom is delayed.
I do wonder how much of the “increased transmissibility”/massive R number stats are simply a consequence of it being seeded direct from India in to large extended families, rather than genuine random community transmission.
Also claims about “increased risk of hospitalisation” is a consequence of a perception that hospitals aren’t that busy and are any early port of call for anyone showing even mild symptoms. Whereas previously you were encouraged to stay away unless things were really bad.
Double-checking the map, a motorway between Oxford and Cambridge would probably make sense to continue SW down to Swindon and connecting to the M4.
Connect then the M4, M1, M40, A1(M) and M11.
The Government didn't want it there.
They wanted to link it to the A34 for the run down the (often-jammed) dual carriageway to Southampton/Portsmouth area and past Cambridge to the existing A14 to Felixstowe and Harwich.
With no significant upgrade for the A34.
The real driver for it is to provide an alternative route for heavy freight between the ports. Estimated increase in traffic of 1.3 million HGV movements per year up the A34. Unsurprisingly, this is not popular amongst those who actually use the A34 and the villages alongside (which already frequently have the entire traffic of the A34 go through them when the A34 goes down - it has uncomfortably frequent HGV accidents)
(Full disclosure: I'm a local councillor down there and originally liked the idea of this as it hit my "more infrastructure" button. But then the more I went into the details, the more my heart sank.
No upgrades to local roads. The only upgrade the the A34 being "smart motorway technology" (Note: the A34 has no hard shoulder, so what the hell?). Add extra 100,000 houses along the route with no further infrastructure envisaged (seriously? We need housing, but how to make it unpopular or what?!? You don't build houses alongside a motorway; you need local roads for that! Seriously - it's like someone came along and said "How can we turn this into a really stupid idea?")
Any proposed motorway linking Oxford and Cambridge would surely intersect A34 and A14 too, it would make perfect sense to have Junctions there. Plus surely the A6, A1 and others too.
Absolutely extra local roads would be required. A motorway should facilitate investment in local roads off its junctions as well as taking traffic off the existing A roads.
Fundamentally motorways should serve the purpose of removing vehicles from the A roads allowing the A roads to be used for locals instead, not increasing the vehicles on the A roads.
A motorway parallel to the A34 (is there an M34) would make more sense than increasing traffic on the A34 - but I was trying to avoid cutting through AONBs with my path.
Oh, it would. All of that is very sensible and would have prevented me going over to the "no" side on this. (It's been canned, anyway). All it was going to do was to reinforce the belief that development = making things worse. That's the last thing we bloody need here.
We've managed to get local opinion on side for house building in my village (the Neighbourhood Plan proposed MORE houses than had been requested); the key thing was emphasising the new facilities and infrastructure and getting people involved in that.
Removing vehicles from the A-roads: a damn fine idea and the key selling point - if they'd bothered to actually think it through. It's enormously frustrating as a pro-development councillor - whenever we manage to get opinion moving towards us, something like this happens and you end up thinking "Oh, seriously? Do they WANT to get everyones' backs up, or something?"
Glad we can agree on this, I don't understand what goes through the mind of people planning these things. Building a motorway to increase A-road traffic is the exact opposite of what should be happening, motorways should provide capacity to remove traffic from the A-roads.
What would you think of eg a motorway parallel to the A34 if that has heavy traffic (M34?), even if that cuts through the AONB, minimising disruption to the AONB as much as possible - connecting eg Southampton, the M27, Winchester, the M3, Whitchurch, Newbury and Oxford; and then a SW/NE sloped Motorway (M41?) as I proposed linking the M4 at Swindon, Oxford and the M34, MK, Bedford, Cambridge, M1 etc?
The two could intersect at Oxford and there'd be two connections of this route to the M4 - and non-local traffic should be removed then from the A roads.
The challenge is the AONB (although that never seemed to worry the Ox-Cam Expressway people; bludegoning a proposed route right through the worst of it). I can wax lyrical four hours on the four types of induced traffic, which vary from "we want to induce this" through all the way to "no way"
1 - Time shifting induced traffic: we want this. It only exists because people go on at absurd times to try to avoid the congested periods. Make it non-congested enough, and peoples lives improve 2 - Route shifting: we want the ones we intend and not the ones we don't. A bypass shifts chosen routes from "through villages" to "onto the bypass." Tick. Excellent. We do, though, sometimes end up making a route attractive to those who would have avoided the whole area (as it saves time on the other routes) and they just recongest it all over again. This may alleviate some congestion elsewhere, but it tends to be really unpopular with those who've seen the disruption of this development and then got zero or negative benefit. Needs holistic view. 3 - New journey capability: To some degree, we want this (people use the road who previously wouldn't have made that journey before as it was not feasible). Arguably, it's the point of roads in the first place. It's painfully easy, though, to end up encouraging so much in the way of new journeys that you end up jamming up the entire thing. A very difficult one to balance. 4 - Modal shift: people who previously used the train or bike look at the new route and go "sod it, I'll drive." This is really not what we want to see happen.
Ahem, sorry. I go on about all that whenever someone either says "We don't want more roads; they just create traffic" OR "We always just need more roads." I always end up in the middle. We need SENSIBLE roads.
I'd say dualling the A420 is first on the list, for me. Some form of alternative to the A34, definitely - whatever form it takes. Balancing things like AONBs and avoiding inducing the wrong traffic whilst inducing the right traffic is key. Even making a new HGV-only route might be the sort of thing we could see.
Have just received an email from HMRC about the "SME Brexit Support Fund". Dishy offering up to £2k a pop for small businesses who do a variety of things including having to "move goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland".
So when Raaaaaab and the liars complain that Macron said NI is separate from the rest of GB, they might want to ask HMRC.
For me to export products from Somerset to Antrim, I have to apply for an export license and complete paperwork with product commodity codes and may have to pay EEA customs duties and provide SPS certificates and manage the import VAT due.
Northern Ireland is separate from Great Britain. The United Kingdom - from a customs and international trading perspective - no longer exists. And the customs man wants to offer £2k to train me up on the new process.
Not so sure about on here, but in real life my mates are moaning as if we were still locked down as we were last spring. As far as I can see the pubs, cafes and shops are quite busy, & my social media is full of photo's of people out enjoying themselves. Is the difference between what we have now and normal life that big? Maybe it is and I have just become conditioned to lockdown as, at the start, I was amazed how easily people swallowed the restrictions, and argued against those who were worried by that ease
I think it is like a dark cloud hanging over us which affects some people more than others.
It is the concept rather than the reality.
Watching footage of pre-lockdown events, for example, packed stadiums, courts, etc. The French Open was fantastic but every mask represents, to many people, an oppression.
For example, the other evening I was out at the pub with friends. Total mask wearing time all evening - probably 10 minutes between multiple places.
Quite frankly, with British pub toilets, an N95 seems quite sensible really.
So long as pedestrians are segregated from the roads, high speed roads in towns working as arteries work very, very well. With a well designed town it really ought to be possible to do 60 to 70mph in a town.
Building long-distance roads as a through-pass hasn't worked in so may American cities now looking to remove them. Build a bypass - a proper one not that awful excuse of one that Oxford pollutes Botley with.
As for the A34 "Smart Motorway" reported earlier you do wonder how stupid the DfT are and how much cash we are wasting in "upgrades" not fit for purpose.
On throughpasses it depends if they're actual arteries or if they're problematic. Warrington for instance while not an entirely new town like MK is much bigger than it was decades ago and on the outskirts where its developed 60 and 70mph roads can allow you to get from A to B without going into the heavily congested roads in the town centre where you're lucky to do thirty. Although Warrington is very unusual in having three different motorways running through the town so can use the M6, M62 and M56 as well getting from one part of town to another.
America's roads are racially clouded and often developed deliberately building in African American areas with on and off ramps designed for white areas, hence why a lot of them now need to be removed, not because roads are a bad thing in themselves.
As for the "Smart Motorway" concept, completely agreed! The DfT is not fit for purpose and a mentality that set in, in the nineties, of rejecting new roads and instead perpetually "upgrading" existing roads is an issue.
Just take on the environmental lobby that rejects any new roads and build new fit for purpose motorways and allow the A roads to be used for local traffic not HGVs or long distance traffic.
Can someone please summarise why on earth SKS would support the government in a vote in Parliament?
Because public opinion. And because it’s the right thing to do.
PB consensus is way off vs the general public’s pro-lockdown majority consensus.
The public, Boris & sks are right on this. PB libertarians are wrong.
That's the reason as SKS sees it. His leadership is an unusual experiment in thinking issues through and voting accordingly, rather than trying to oppose the government at every turn. It's the precise opposite of the dictum that "The duty of the Opposition is to oppose".
In terms of electoral success, the experiment is not going well. But it's an honourable idea (even if you disagree with the specific conclusion).
If only....the man is mr hindsight...he backs a position then moans about why the government did it.
Mr Thoughtful hasn't been against closing the borders until very recently, and even then not really. Anybody with half a brain could see that Airbridges V1 and Airbridge V2 was idiotic and some of us called for proper travel restrictions for well over a year.
The only time he has taken a pre-emptive position was the absolutely flawed firebreak. Again, if he is Mr intellectual, he should have been able to look at the model and see it was horseshit....the model said well if we have two week lockdown it might SAVE somewhere between 600 and 106,000 lives in the following 3 months.
Had we done that -> we'd be sticking with June for lifting restrictions.
As I say recently....Took him a year.
It's not hindsight though is it? He said *in advance* of the delta variant that this was a problem. Govt didn't listen. And here we are.
And this past week, what has Starmer been focusing on....trans self Id laws, taking the knee and BBQ's.....
He could have been hammering home that we need to get the vaccine roll-out going.
The best sensible opposition to the government has consistently been Jeremy Hunt. So often he has popped up and said ok well there is this issue, this issue and this issue, I think we should do y instead e.g. he was well ahead with keeping schools open for kids of key workers.
Identify issue, propose solution...that is good opposition.
Not so sure about on here, but in real life my mates are moaning as if we were still locked down as we were last spring. As far as I can see the pubs, cafes and shops are quite busy, & my social media is full of photo's of people out enjoying themselves. Is the difference between what we have now and normal life that big? Maybe it is and I have just become conditioned to lockdown as, at the start, I was amazed how easily people swallowed the restrictions, and argued against those who were worried by that ease
It is a bit weird. We are nowhere near being in a lockdown, yet the last restrictions are chaffing all the more. For some, such as cyclefree’s daughter, this must be awful. For me, I’m just fed up with stupid mask regulations in pubs and at work. We are so close to the end of this, but it still feels far away.
Not so sure about on here, but in real life my mates are moaning as if we were still locked down as we were last spring. As far as I can see the pubs, cafes and shops are quite busy, & my social media is full of photo's of people out enjoying themselves. Is the difference between what we have now and normal life that big? Maybe it is and I have just become conditioned to lockdown as, at the start, I was amazed how easily people swallowed the restrictions, and argued against those who were worried by that ease
Some of those pubs etc are operating at a loss, hoping for an end to distancing. And You have not had the bill yet.
Can someone please summarise why on earth SKS would support the government in a vote in Parliament?
Because public opinion. And because it’s the right thing to do.
PB consensus is way off vs the general public’s pro-lockdown majority consensus.
The public, Boris & sks are right on this. PB libertarians are wrong.
That's the reason as SKS sees it. His leadership is an unusual experiment in thinking issues through and voting accordingly, rather than trying to oppose the government at every turn. It's the precise opposite of the dictum that "The duty of the Opposition is to oppose".
In terms of electoral success, the experiment is not going well. But it's an honourable idea (even if you disagree with the specific conclusion).
If only....the man is mr hindsight...he backs a position then moans about why the government did it.
Mr Thoughtful hasn't been against closing the borders until very recently, and even then not really. Anybody with half a brain could see that Airbridges V1 and Airbridge V2 was idiotic and some of us called for proper travel restrictions for well over a year.
The only time he has taken a pre-emptive position was the absolutely flawed firebreak. Again, if he is Mr intellectual, he should have been able to look at the model and see it was horseshit....the model said well if we have two week lockdown it might SAVE somewhere between 600 and 106,000 lives in the following 3 months.
Had we done that -> we'd be sticking with June for lifting restrictions.
As I say recently....Took him a year.
It's not hindsight though is it? He said *in advance* of the delta variant that this was a problem. Govt didn't listen. And here we are.
And this past week, what has Starmer been focusing on....trans self Id laws, taking the knee and BBQ's.....
He could have been hammering home that we need to get the vaccine roll-out going.
The best sensible opposition to the government has consistently been Jeremy Hunt. So often he has popped up and said ok well there is this issue, this issue and this issue, I think we should do y instead e.g. he was well ahead with keeping schools open for kids of key workers.
Identify issue, propose solution...that is good opposition.
Zoe survey has been showing massive case growth recently but down to flat in North West today.
Will make for fun conspiracy theories in future years if the 3rd wave shows up in case data with limited impact on hospitals and barely anything on deaths, and more or less stops right as freedom is delayed.
I do wonder how much of the “increased transmissibility”/massive R number stats are simply a consequence of it being seeded direct from India in to large extended families, rather than genuine random community transmission.
Also claims about “increased risk of hospitalisation” is a consequence of a perception that hospitals aren’t that busy and are any early port of call for anyone showing even mild symptoms. Whereas previously you were encouraged to stay away unless things were really bad.
No idea what the comprison was in previous months, but the PHE data last week confirmed 2/3rds of people turning up at hospitals with covid right now are sent home the same day.
I'm very confused. The Scotland fans in Hampden Park chose to cheer their team at the start of the match. I thought that proper fans boo their team at the start of the match...
I'm very confused. The Scotland fans in Hampden Park chose to cheer their team at the start of the match. I thought that proper fans boo their team at the start of the match...
Zoe survey has been showing massive case growth recently but down to flat in North West today.
Will make for fun conspiracy theories in future years if the 3rd wave shows up in case data with limited impact on hospitals and barely anything on deaths, and more or less stops right as freedom is delayed.
I do wonder how much of the “increased transmissibility”/massive R number stats are simply a consequence of it being seeded direct from India in to large extended families, rather than genuine random community transmission.
Also claims about “increased risk of hospitalisation” is a consequence of a perception that hospitals aren’t that busy and are any early port of call for anyone showing even mild symptoms. Whereas previously you were encouraged to stay away unless things were really bad.
No idea what the comprison was in previous months, but the PHE data last week confirmed 2/3rds of people turning up at hospitals with covid right now are sent home the same day.
Which just goes to show how much potential there is to distort figures to present a misleading picture. I wonder how much ministers really know about the data they are being presented with and what it actually represents?
Zoe survey has been showing massive case growth recently but down to flat in North West today.
Will make for fun conspiracy theories in future years if the 3rd wave shows up in case data with limited impact on hospitals and barely anything on deaths, and more or less stops right as freedom is delayed.
I do wonder how much of the “increased transmissibility”/massive R number stats are simply a consequence of it being seeded direct from India in to large extended families, rather than genuine random community transmission.
Also claims about “increased risk of hospitalisation” is a consequence of a perception that hospitals aren’t that busy and are any early port of call for anyone showing even mild symptoms. Whereas previously you were encouraged to stay away unless things were really bad.
Others will know more, but recent evidence of contacts not related to travel were suggesting a genuine increased transmissibility. I suspected differential life style and seeding may have exaggerated the delta’s increase, but it genuinely seems to be up at about 60%. That said it does look to be finding it hard to spread out of the major conurbations, despite scares about it being found everywhere. For instance my county of Wiltshire has cases, but no explosion, at least yet.
Comments
Can someone please summarise why on earth SKS would support the government in a vote in Parliament?
PB consensus is way off vs the general public’s pro-lockdown majority consensus.
The public, Boris & sks are right on this. PB libertarians are wrong.
However they can’t use this argument forever (not that they aren’t trying, hard...)
Because there comes a point where for huge number of businesses there is no trade off between “short period now” vs “long period later”. If they aren’t allowed to open (fully) now there is no later. And so, it can no longer be presented as a purely health related decision (on the grounds that all economic outcomes are bad). The effects on business and the economy need to be front and centre as an equal partner in the decision making process.
Even more so when the “inevitability of bad health outcomes and need for future lockdowns” in an unvaccinated world is increasingly open to question and challenge.
Tiny audience shares for all of them
Sitting in softly air conditioned room on the Genome Campus, Cambridgeshire hot and sunny outside, musing about Corona this week. TL;DR - the UK looks like it is sensibly going to delay; the Delta variant is more transmissible and this implies at least one more wave worldwide.
https://twitter.com/ewanbirney/status/1404362440209489922?s=20
* by big hitters I mean known names, not intellectual giants.
I genuinely can't see how you can run a full scale tv production on even 150k viewers that will turn any sort of profit.
And it isn't just Darlo. The King of the Tees Valley himself personally got London trains for Middlesbrough, it definitely wasn't a franchise commitment before he was Mayor. Anyway the proposal is for a single train per day - honestly not sure the money spent extending the usable platform at Middlesbrough was worth the dosh.
*Sooooo glad I left.
So that more people can see more of the context of what is going on?
At least a quarter of the Tory vote want all restrictions ended now, including masks and social distancing, on the latest polling and most Tory voters want an end to restrictions on wedding guests
Most premises that were shut down are now reopened.
I suspect an increasingly significant chunk of those left on furlough are deliberately abusing the system.
http://cula.org.uk/2021/06/13/why-im-not-going-to-chesham-and-amersham/
In terms of electoral success, the experiment is not going well. But it's an honourable idea (even if you disagree with the specific conclusion).
*As does lockdown. But this is about emoting. Not thinking. Or actually caring about the end result.
Starmer opposing restrictions is as likely as his announcing an alliance with the DUP over Brexit.
Has he voted against the govt ever over the past 15 months?
If you look you can find plenty where information is provided without the grandstanding and fact light / free crap we get from mainstream nowadays
Mr Thoughtful hasn't been against closing the borders until very recently, and even then not really. Anybody with half a brain could see that Airbridges V1 and Airbridge V2 was idiotic and some of us called for proper travel restrictions for well over a year.
The only time he has taken a pre-emptive position was the absolutely flawed firebreak. Again, if he is Mr intellectual, he should have been able to look at the model and see it was horseshit....the model said well if we have two week lockdown it might SAVE somewhere between 600 and 106,000 lives in the following 3 months. We have had 15 months of the pandemic and only just over 106k people have died in total, not 3 months, not saved....
Absolute nonsense confidence intervals....and if he had done any other reading, it would have shown that behavioural changes take several days to kick in, plus locking everybody down, looks like it initially slightly increases transmission as everybody is stuck together and you put people in contact for longer with infected....then on exit, people bend the rules early.
i.e. 2 weeks, you basically gain nothing from first week (in fact it could increase transmission) and the second week, the last week days you aren't gaining much as people are being the rules.
What we know, you need a month to really make any impact and appear in the data. Hence the government position of 5 week gaps.
C'MON SCOTLAND!!
Can Starmer really support the government now furlough is ending?
Funny old world.
Will he? Probably not.
I was in a popular local pub last night and beyond people going through the motions of putting on a mask when going to the toilet, you wouldn’t have noticed the difference from a Sunday evening 2 years ago.
Virtually everyone knows each other and therefore everyone chats to everyone.
Then the likes of Chris, Nick and Ping from PB can lock themselves away while those who choose to take the risk can do so.
Would be a sensible compromise.
What would you think of eg a motorway parallel to the A34 if that has heavy traffic (M34?), even if that cuts through the AONB, minimising disruption to the AONB as much as possible - connecting eg Southampton, the M27, Winchester, the M3, Whitchurch, Newbury and Oxford; and then a SW/NE sloped Motorway (M41?) as I proposed linking the M4 at Swindon, Oxford and the M34, MK, Bedford, Cambridge, M1 etc?
The two could intersect at Oxford and there'd be two connections of this route to the M4 - and non-local traffic should be removed then from the A roads.
Had we done that -> we'd be sticking with June for lifting restrictions.
https://twitter.com/itsbenknight/status/1404412546023575563
"@Google
Are you really advertising on GB News?
Wow. As soon as I can, I'll be taking steps to move all my digital life (which is a lot!) and that of my business away from you.
What happened to "Don't be evil"?"
GB news is evil?
This is a fair comment in response
https://twitter.com/hovis_the/status/1404420572415676416
"Absolutely zero problem with Google operating in China but gets triggered by them advertising on GB news"
And there there are the info-entertainment stuff say like Linus Tech Tips + his other channels....they pump out I believe 30+ videos a week, plus live streams.
And then you get to podcasts....if you are interested in x, there is a podcast for it. Usually hosted by some expert or that they get on experts.
They will will characterise it as a consequence of Boris Johnson’s mishandling and criticise lack of economic support
Keir Starmer had briefing from gvt scientists earlier
https://twitter.com/SamCoatesSky/status/1404422063742410754
And where is he on vaccine roll-out.....again some of us saw the slowing down, realized there was an issue....and AZN is just piling up in a warehouse, millions and millions of doses. Starmer, nowhere on this.
For weeks now, we should have been running mass drop-in vaccine clinics at big stadiums. You want to be jabbed, come get it, but you have to have AZN. We could have got ahead of the curve.
We could have got millions more done and again might have been able to be free.
Now that furlough is ending, there is no reason not to make it voluntary.
We need higher speed roads outside, between, and around towns. Not in.
Anyone been to be able to say what actual numbers are like this year? August September last year was around 20% of normal. So they may be open, but suspect many of their staff are at least on part time furlough.
Split stake with
Scotland AH -1.5 @7.67/1
Govt didn't listen. And here we are.
Starmer has intercepted
There's no goalkeeper
STAARRRMERRR!
Oh how did he miss that?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtDamyTlVzA
The Opposition's stance has to be that anything they do is better than anything the government does. From cones hotlines to national emergencies. Once you give up that principle you are finished.
It's like the hooker question - we've established that Labour think the government is doing the right thing in A, B, C, D & E. No one is going to listen to them when they say, oh but you are really messing up on F.
We are going to spend 6 trillion quid on a scheme...no not enough.
So long as pedestrians are segregated from the roads, high speed roads in towns working as arteries work very, very well. With a well designed town it really ought to be possible to do 60 to 70mph in a town.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/football/50940774
He could have been hammering home that we need to get the vaccine roll-out going.
The best sensible opposition to the government has consistently been Jeremy Hunt. So often he has popped up and said ok well there is this issue, this issue and this issue, I think we should do y instead e.g. he was well ahead with keeping schools open for kids of key workers.
Identify issue, propose solution...that is good opposition.
If the models perform poorly over the next few weeks then there will be some real questions to answer. With so much at stake, decisions need to be based on more than ultra caution.
As for the A34 "Smart Motorway" reported earlier you do wonder how stupid the DfT are and how much cash we are wasting in "upgrades" not fit for purpose.
"If you get the ball, have a wee kick, get the feel of it, then, when you are done, PASS IT TO SOMEONE YOU KNOW !!"
It is the concept rather than the reality.
Watching footage of pre-lockdown events, for example, packed stadiums, courts, etc. The French Open was fantastic but every mask represents, to many people, an oppression.
Will make for fun conspiracy theories in future years if the 3rd wave shows up in case data with limited impact on hospitals and barely anything on deaths, and more or less stops right as freedom is delayed.
I see.
and so Furlough, far as I can see, if f*cking ending.
As soon as employers contributions start to rise, so will the redundancies. Natch.
So when Raaaaaab and the liars complain that Macron said NI is separate from the rest of GB, they might want to ask HMRC.
For me to export products from Somerset to Antrim, I have to apply for an export license and complete paperwork with product commodity codes and may have to pay EEA customs duties and provide SPS certificates and manage the import VAT due.
Northern Ireland is separate from Great Britain. The United Kingdom - from a customs and international trading perspective - no longer exists. And the customs man wants to offer £2k to train me up on the new process.
Also claims about “increased risk of hospitalisation” is a consequence of a perception that hospitals aren’t that busy and are any early port of call for anyone showing even mild symptoms. Whereas previously you were encouraged to stay away unless things were really bad.
I can wax lyrical four hours on the four types of induced traffic, which vary from "we want to induce this" through all the way to "no way"
1 - Time shifting induced traffic: we want this. It only exists because people go on at absurd times to try to avoid the congested periods. Make it non-congested enough, and peoples lives improve
2 - Route shifting: we want the ones we intend and not the ones we don't. A bypass shifts chosen routes from "through villages" to "onto the bypass." Tick. Excellent. We do, though, sometimes end up making a route attractive to those who would have avoided the whole area (as it saves time on the other routes) and they just recongest it all over again. This may alleviate some congestion elsewhere, but it tends to be really unpopular with those who've seen the disruption of this development and then got zero or negative benefit. Needs holistic view.
3 - New journey capability: To some degree, we want this (people use the road who previously wouldn't have made that journey before as it was not feasible). Arguably, it's the point of roads in the first place. It's painfully easy, though, to end up encouraging so much in the way of new journeys that you end up jamming up the entire thing. A very difficult one to balance.
4 - Modal shift: people who previously used the train or bike look at the new route and go "sod it, I'll drive." This is really not what we want to see happen.
Ahem, sorry. I go on about all that whenever someone either says "We don't want more roads; they just create traffic" OR "We always just need more roads." I always end up in the middle. We need SENSIBLE roads.
I'd say dualling the A420 is first on the list, for me. Some form of alternative to the A34, definitely - whatever form it takes. Balancing things like AONBs and avoiding inducing the wrong traffic whilst inducing the right traffic is key. Even making a new HGV-only route might be the sort of thing we could see.
https://twitter.com/EuroGuido/status/1404426455640068096?s=19
Quite frankly, with British pub toilets, an N95 seems quite sensible really.
America's roads are racially clouded and often developed deliberately building in African American areas with on and off ramps designed for white areas, hence why a lot of them now need to be removed, not because roads are a bad thing in themselves.
As for the "Smart Motorway" concept, completely agreed! The DfT is not fit for purpose and a mentality that set in, in the nineties, of rejecting new roads and instead perpetually "upgrading" existing roads is an issue.
Just take on the environmental lobby that rejects any new roads and build new fit for purpose motorways and allow the A roads to be used for local traffic not HGVs or long distance traffic.
I think smart to wait until the decision is actually made before putting the boot in.
And
You have not had the bill yet.
🏴 123,866 1st doses / 153,449 2nd doses
🏴 20,381 / 21,009
🏴 2,981 / 6,663
NI 507 / 1,181
Rubbish.