Morning all. No doubt the PB Europhiles and LibDems wil be hailing the end of the Conservative Government. This result is a good mid-term win for the LibDems but was fairly common in Margaret Thatchers mid-terms. Remember Shirley Williams and Crosby overturning something like a 19,000 majority. She lost the seat back to the Tories. Incidentally how does this seat do in the boundary changes?
I hope all the happy remainers who voted LibDem yesterday ask their shiny new LibDem MP what good she is doing as the HS2 bulldozers go straight through their villages. No doubt Ed Davey will follow the road of his predecessors and be gone the day after the next General Election.
If I were Johnson I would reroute HS2 straight through the villages and build some fuck off big social housing estates there. Pour encourager les autres
Does anyone want this bloody HS2?
Only those who are nowhere near it.
My brother had a rare office day yesterday in the Smoke. Train half full even at rush hour, and plenty of spare seats.
We may need to consider that railways will not return to the days BC, and revise plans.
At my large firm, it is rare to hear anyone talk of wanting to return 5 days a week. TWT (Tues, Wed, Thu) seems popular with the extroverts that live in London and the surrounds. Out of towners or those with smaller kids take the view of “I’ll come in once or twice a fortnight”.
One of the major drivers of HS2 was to allow a massive increase of seats on commuter trains from the likes of Milton Keynes, which could triple depending on pathway choices. I just don’t see the demand will be there for that ever again.
Conversely, I think demand for longer distance rail travel will be stronger than ever, as 30-50 somethings that previously grouped around London have scattered around the country for cheaper house prices and proximity to extended family.
Complex it is. But there’s no appetite in government to even start thinking about all this. Instead it’s just “let’s concrete the south east green belt and build a London commuter relief line”.
The Government, to their credit, are building a new railway line up into Northumberland through to Blyth from Newcastle that on all accounts is fairly popular.
However the capacity of the tracks around Newcastle means that the maximum number of trains that can run will be 2 per hour.
More money for upgrades pls?
Ps can we also have the A1 dualed to the Scottish Border
The 2 trains an hour aren't due to capacity issues round Newcastle it's due to capacity issues on the line itself. which will be single track in a number of places so needs passing loops.
I have to double check but I don't think the proposed route touches the ECML at all which is now definitely a problem as the new First Group Edinburgh services have screwed everything else up as everywhere North of York will be at capacity even after a whole set of changes.
Are you sure? My understanding was it was capacity issues at Newcastle Central and to increase it would need 4 lines (rather than 3) from Chester Le Street to Longbenton
Why cant pensioners have a generous but means tested element to Universal Credit? If you’re rich, great — enjoy it. If you’re not, we’ll look after you.
They already do - Pension Credit.
I mean instead of the state pension
Good grief. Mess with the state pension at your peril.
Assuming your aim is to raise more from the over 65s, I'd go with different (higher) income tax rates for the over 65s and possibly remove NI contribution exemption too.
I just don’t see why someone with a million pound private pension needs, or should have, the state pension
Because they've paid for it and because all benefits should be universal and then they'll pay taxes on it anyway.
Means-tested benefits create the poverty trap so why encourage that?
Is this what they meant by Singapore-on-the-Thames?
A British man was arrested and now faces up to six months in prison in Singapore after he was filmed on a train without a mask.
Father-of-two Benjamin Glynn, 39, claims his passport has been confiscated and he has unable to return to the UK with his family whilst he awaits trial.
Mr Glynn, who says he believes masks are pointless and fail to protect people from contracting Covid, wasn't wearing a face-covering he took a train home from work in the South East Asian citystate last month, where they are mandatory.
Unbeknown to him, he was secretly filmed by a fellow commuter who then put the clip on social media.
That led to officers arresting him just hours later.
After 28 hours in a cell, Benjamin, from Helmsley, North Yorkshire, was charged with a public nuisance offence.
Benjamin's passport was confiscated, meaning he couldn't return to the UK as planned with his partner and two children - aged five and two.
He also lost a new job he was due to start in the UK and fears he could have to spend as much as 12 months on bail before his trial.
Why cant pensioners have a generous but means tested element to Universal Credit? If you’re rich, great — enjoy it. If you’re not, we’ll look after you.
They already do - Pension Credit.
I mean instead of the state pension
Good grief. Mess with the state pension at your peril.
Assuming your aim is to raise more from the over 65s, I'd go with different (higher) income tax rates for the over 65s and possibly remove NI contribution exemption too.
I just don’t see why someone with a million pound private pension needs, or should have, the state pension
I disagree because I in general support universal benefits rather than means tested benefits. So we won't agree on this.
I’d be with you if it was cheaper, which is often argued
Why cant pensioners have a generous but means tested element to Universal Credit? If you’re rich, great — enjoy it. If you’re not, we’ll look after you.
They already do - Pension Credit.
I mean instead of the state pension
Good grief. Mess with the state pension at your peril.
Assuming your aim is to raise more from the over 65s, I'd go with different (higher) income tax rates for the over 65s and possibly remove NI contribution exemption too.
I just don’t see why someone with a million pound private pension needs, or should have, the state pension
Because they've paid for it and because all benefits should be universal and then they'll pay taxes on it anyway.
Means-tested benefits create the poverty trap so why encourage that?
Actually I’m paying for it. What they paid for was general government spending at the time.
Is this what they meant by Singapore-on-the-Thames?
A British man was arrested and now faces up to six months in prison in Singapore after he was filmed on a train without a mask.
Father-of-two Benjamin Glynn, 39, claims his passport has been confiscated and he has unable to return to the UK with his family whilst he awaits trial.
Mr Glynn, who says he believes masks are pointless and fail to protect people from contracting Covid, wasn't wearing a face-covering he took a train home from work in the South East Asian citystate last month, where they are mandatory.
Unbeknown to him, he was secretly filmed by a fellow commuter who then put the clip on social media.
That led to officers arresting him just hours later.
After 28 hours in a cell, Benjamin, from Helmsley, North Yorkshire, was charged with a public nuisance offence.
Benjamin's passport was confiscated, meaning he couldn't return to the UK as planned with his partner and two children - aged five and two.
He also lost a new job he was due to start in the UK and fears he could have to spend as much as 12 months on bail before his trial.
For me this was the ultimate NIMBY by-election. HS2 was the overriding factor. You just need to drive through the constituency to see protests everywhere. Tories are delivering HS2 and they were going to get punished.
The LDs did their normal approach of saying completely different things in different parts of the country to win. Candidate was massively against HS2 in C&A but her party is massively for it.
The Tory agenda of levelling up places in the North, one part of which is building HS2, has a downside. The loss of C&A was the embodiment of that.
For Labour the result is worse than the Tories. They are still losing votes in the North but their supporters in the South are prepared to vote LD instead to stop the Tories. Where do they get their votes from now?
The big question for me is what would happen in a GE? As we all know, by-elections are very different. In the South will Labour voters and previous Tory voters be prepared to vote LD then? At the last GE there were many voters in the South who would have voted LD but they were so terrified of Corbyn getting in that they couldn't risk it. For all SKS faults he isn't seen as a threat in the Home Counties quite like Corbyn was. My mother is in Wokingham and really dislikes Redwood but wasn't going to risk Corbyn in 2019. At the next GE she might be tempted to go LD. So SKS's de-toxification of Labour just helps the LDs in the South.
B&S will be very interesting to get some more details of what is happening in the North. Right now the Tories are in danger at the next GE of losing a host of Remainerland seats to the LDs. If the Tories continue to make progress in the North then it would probably equal-out. In that scenario, Labour will be the only losers.
Since the Brexit vote the political landscape in this country has been massively changing. I think we are only half-way through it and the next 5 years will be very interesting, particularly the next GE.
A shift of Conservative votes from South to North doesn't just equal-out it makes the Conservative vote more efficient.
A mirror of Labour's complacency in the Noughties.
Do any PBers actually do anything different when they have a nice win ?
Its just more money in a pot to me.
Interesting question. Milton Friedman's permanent income theory argues that the windfall increases your capital and that you would increase your consumption spending by the income derived from it, say ~ five percent, in all future years. So your bigger pot should diminish gradually over time.
Every time I win over £50 I put half of my winnings into my SIPP alongside my regular monthly contributions. The other half and remaining stake money are used for future betting. Yesterday I won £70 at Royal Ascot so last night £35 went towards making my retirement more comfortable. Keeping stakes small today, pouring rain forecast to last all day so loads of non-runners everywhere not just at the Royal meeting.
What do you gamble on in the SIPP though? I tend to buy "learning shares " just mainly because it inspires me- eg Pearson, Informa, RELX ,Unite (student landlord)
Do any PBers actually do anything different when they have a nice win ?
Its just more money in a pot to me.
Interesting question. Milton Friedman's permanent income theory argues that the windfall increases your capital and that you would increase your consumption spending by the income derived from it, say ~ five percent, in all future years. So your bigger pot should diminish gradually over time.
Every time I win over £50 I put half of my winnings into my SIPP alongside my regular monthly contributions. The other half and remaining stake money are used for future betting. Yesterday I won £70 at Royal Ascot so last night £35 went towards making my retirement more comfortable. Keeping stakes small today, pouring rain forecast to last all day so loads of non-runners everywhere not just at the Royal meeting.
Milty's theory assumes a one-off windfall. But to adapt it to your situation in which you make a series of bets one should consider just the *surprise* element in your winnings as the windfall. It seems that for you the surprise element is half of anything over £50. This would seem to imply that you typically bet at odds of around 2:1. Is that so?
I really do love Brits who go overseas and ignore local laws.
I live in the city where Brit tourists are most likely to be arrested!
Ignoring local laws when abroad, especially doing it as a point of principle, is a bloody stupid thing to do. Unless you like prison food and want a free flight home.
Aaron Bastani @AaronBastani · 4m Of course Labour’s vote in Chesham and Amersham collapsed because of tactical voting. However, 1.6% is the lowest it has EVER polled in a by-election. What is more this is *exactly* the sort of seat Starmer is meant to appeal to.
The excuses need to stop.
Starmer could stop acting like Johnson's fag at Eton. That would be a start
Why cant pensioners have a generous but means tested element to Universal Credit? If you’re rich, great — enjoy it. If you’re not, we’ll look after you.
They already do - Pension Credit.
I mean instead of the state pension
Good grief. Mess with the state pension at your peril.
Assuming your aim is to raise more from the over 65s, I'd go with different (higher) income tax rates for the over 65s and possibly remove NI contribution exemption too.
I just don’t see why someone with a million pound private pension needs, or should have, the state pension
This is all well and good but so long as national insurance remains separate to income tax, means tested state pensions don’t work.
By the way, a million pound SIPP at retirement does not equal a life of luxury for a two person household, if the state pensions are removed from them.
Tell you what I’d do. I’d take some of the lovely funny money the BoE have kindly been printing to stop gilt yields ballooning. And I’d pump it into junior sipps for the 0-18 year olds. Every year. £3600.
£20bn a year of funny money to fix the intergenerational wealth gap caused by QE since 2008.
Anecdotes and insight into the C&A voter psychology from a colleague who lives there:
"Proud to say I was one of the 21,517 who went out in the pissing rain last night to deliver an emphatic victory and strong message to both Conservative and Labour parties!
The local Tory campaign was dreadful / non-existent
the candidate was a former Ford middle manager (or similar) and we received a letter from Rishi Sunak telling us to vote for him
the Labour candidate didn't even have an official Labour email account ... she'd set up Labour4Amersham@gmail.com (or similar)
Lib Dems were out knocking on doors virtually every day for the last month, and engaging in sensible conversation about local issues that matter: (1) HS2 destroying our countryside, and (2) Tory planning policies to build on green belt (and destroy our countryside)"
He's very much the classic voter for a constituency like this: highly educated, senior role in the city (economist), commuting into London but WFH since the pandemic, would traditionally have been a pro-EU Tory I expect.
It does reinforce the fact that planning and HS2 were big things here.
Working in the city I know a fair few of these kinds of ex-Tories. They seem to hate Boris Johnson a lot more than lifelong Labour supporters like me do. I think the Tories have probably lost these people for good. I would guess that they're significantly outnumbered by the Leave voters they've gained in exchange, right now at least. But one day the Tories might come to regret throwing away their support so casually. I don't think they're coming back.
Do any PBers actually do anything different when they have a nice win ?
Its just more money in a pot to me.
Interesting question. Milton Friedman's permanent income theory argues that the windfall increases your capital and that you would increase your consumption spending by the income derived from it, say ~ five percent, in all future years. So your bigger pot should diminish gradually over time.
Every time I win over £50 I put half of my winnings into my SIPP alongside my regular monthly contributions. The other half and remaining stake money are used for future betting. Yesterday I won £70 at Royal Ascot so last night £35 went towards making my retirement more comfortable. Keeping stakes small today, pouring rain forecast to last all day so loads of non-runners everywhere not just at the Royal meeting.
Milty's theory assumes a one-off windfall. But to adapt it to your situation in which you make a series of bets one should consider just the *surprise* element in your winnings as the windfall. It seems that for you the surprise element is half of anything over £50. This would seem to imply that you typically bet at odds of around 2:1. Is that so?
No I bet in multiples and I also do forecasts and tricasts. The Tote equivalent of the tricast, the Trifecta can pay an enormous dividend in the big handicaps, they are very hard to pull off though, I did get one for £900 last October. Yesterday I had 3 EW places in an EW lucky 31 and 1 winner in a win lucky 15.
The NIMBYs of C&A might vote for LDs who are both for and against HS2, for and against house building etc but will the former Tory south vote for government by the SNP?
Traditionally, no, however there is a significant and growing number of English voters who are transitioning to a "Please Fuck Off As Soon As Possible" position on Scottish independence.
Why cant pensioners have a generous but means tested element to Universal Credit? If you’re rich, great — enjoy it. If you’re not, we’ll look after you.
They already do - Pension Credit.
I mean instead of the state pension
Good grief. Mess with the state pension at your peril.
Assuming your aim is to raise more from the over 65s, I'd go with different (higher) income tax rates for the over 65s and possibly remove NI contribution exemption too.
I just don’t see why someone with a million pound private pension needs, or should have, the state pension
Because they've paid for it and because all benefits should be universal and then they'll pay taxes on it anyway.
Means-tested benefits create the poverty trap so why encourage that?
That is not true. They have not paid for it. At least not in the way most people think.
It was made clear right back when the state pension was introduced that you are not paying into a pot for your own retirement. You are paying to provide a pension for those who are already retired with the hope that by the time it is your turn the system will still be there and sufficiently funded to able to support your own pension.
We should start to view pensions far more like social security - something that is there to catch you if you fall but is not there just to give you a bit of extra spending cash if you can already afford to live by your own means.
I think the only party that can be in any way happy with that result is the Lib Dems. For them, it’s perfect. A landslide in a remainery seat with a campaign on local issues is the Grimond strategy successfully modernised. Lots of lovely publicity. A new MP increasing their parliamentary strength by 8%. Ed Davey’s recent strategy vindicated. Plenty of similar seats to target for next time.
But the Tories - lost the seat (nuff said) Greens - nowhere at all, so much for being a repository for ex-Labour votes Labour - did worse than the Greens in a seat where they were second less than five years ago. RefUK - did worse than Labour. That is surely the end of them as a party.
Not often you get such a binary result. Usually one party tries to spin some positive out of a defeat. Even ridiculously (Hazel Blears springs to mind). Nobody can do that here.
What's happening in the south is that non-Tory voters are largely unpartisan these days, spurred on by the lack of noticable policy by any of the non-Tory parties. The visceral Labour anti-LD vote post-coalition has almost disappeared, as rcs1000 points out, and conversely non-Tories are willing to vote Labour (which at a micro-level is why I'm a councillor in a ward that hasn't been Labour for 20 years). Davey and SKS both seem neither scary nor ridiculous, and if there are important policy differences between them they aren't telling us about them.
In the north, there is a degree of anti-Labour voting from people fed up with Labour after decades of party complacency. Being unobjectionable like SKS isn't enough there. That will remain a problem in B&S (plus the surprising pro-Palestinian revolt which Owen Jones reported the other day - a case where the Corbyn->SKS switch has caused problems) - Labour needs to mean something concrete again to recover there. If we succeed in that, then clearly the Tories have a strategic problem, especially if there is an understanding between Labour and LDs on where to fight hard.
Thanks good post.
I think an indication of how and whether Lab are getting there is for you, or anyone, to write such a sober analysis on Lab's current electoral prospects without using the word "Palestinian".
It is an issue for some. Palestine car flags are not unusual in parts of Leicester.
Though when I went down to London last Saturday there were a bunch of youngsters waving Israel flags from a bridge over the M1 in North London.
I am not sure we need either.
It is an issue for some. The question is: should it be an issue for a British political party?
Do any PBers actually do anything different when they have a nice win ?
Its just more money in a pot to me.
Interesting question. Milton Friedman's permanent income theory argues that the windfall increases your capital and that you would increase your consumption spending by the income derived from it, say ~ five percent, in all future years. So your bigger pot should diminish gradually over time.
Every time I win over £50 I put half of my winnings into my SIPP alongside my regular monthly contributions. The other half and remaining stake money are used for future betting. Yesterday I won £70 at Royal Ascot so last night £35 went towards making my retirement more comfortable. Keeping stakes small today, pouring rain forecast to last all day so loads of non-runners everywhere not just at the Royal meeting.
What do you gamble on in the SIPP though? I tend to buy "learning shares " just mainly because it inspires me- eg Pearson, Informa, RELX ,Unite (student landlord)
Best I've done is buy BT shares at 97p last year. they're now £2. most of it is invested in funds and utility companies.
Not sure C&A tells us anything about Batley. Pretty different worlds frankly.
Indeed.
But it's amusing if in a Con/LD seat the LD can take it, while in a Lab/Con seat, Lab not only were to lose it but come third.
Labour are getting squeezed, outside London and Wales and the biggest cities in the South Remainers are going LD (and a few to the Greens) and in the North and Midlands Leavers are going Tory
Starmer needs the plums to say, unequivocally, that Labour, as a party, believes Brexit is a catastrophic error. If that leads to losing more red wall seats (including my own, and I don't particularly have a Tory MP) then, sadly, that is a symptom of politics shifting to a Leave/Remain divide.
Because Labour are trying to ignore Brexit, and pleasing no-one. They're not Brexity enough for Leavers, everyone knows there's no conviction, and repelling Remainers for not being anti-Brexit enough.
The Tories have screwed Labour good and proper. Their austerity pissed the Red Wall off, then blamed a lot of it on forrins (so many people up here think they can't get a doctor's appointment for weeks because we're swamped with immigrants, esp Muslim immigrants), the two Leave campaigns promised everything to everyone. It's shameless, opportunistic. mendacious and brilliant.
And yes, the Remain campaign was shite. But, ultimately, it was headed by Tories. So it couldn't say stuff like, for example, 'Don't vote Leave 'cos the Tories will, given half a chance, take an axe to worker's rights the EU protects' or 'Don't vote Leave cos, given half a chance, the Tories will go for Thatcherism on steroids and happily lay waste to things like the fishing industry', because it was ultimately headed by... Tories.
Vote Leave’s Paul Stephenson: "If any other of the leadership contenders had been leader of the Labour Party, then we would have lost."
Also, and I remember this being a turning point on PB, on David Cameron’s negotiations: “It was pivotal. Had they just come out and said 'the EU isn’t perfect, but for these reasons it's the right thing to do,' I think they could have won it."
For me this was the ultimate NIMBY by-election. HS2 was the overriding factor. You just need to drive through the constituency to see protests everywhere. Tories are delivering HS2 and they were going to get punished.
The LDs did their normal approach of saying completely different things in different parts of the country to win. Candidate was massively against HS2 in C&A but her party is massively for it.
The Tory agenda of levelling up places in the North, one part of which is building HS2, has a downside. The loss of C&A was the embodiment of that.
For Labour the result is worse than the Tories. They are still losing votes in the North but their supporters in the South are prepared to vote LD instead to stop the Tories. Where do they get their votes from now?
The big question for me is what would happen in a GE? As we all know, by-elections are very different. In the South will Labour voters and previous Tory voters be prepared to vote LD then? At the last GE there were many voters in the South who would have voted LD but they were so terrified of Corbyn getting in that they couldn't risk it. For all SKS faults he isn't seen as a threat in the Home Counties quite like Corbyn was. My mother is in Wokingham and really dislikes Redwood but wasn't going to risk Corbyn in 2019. At the next GE she might be tempted to go LD. So SKS's de-toxification of Labour just helps the LDs in the South.
B&S will be very interesting to get some more details of what is happening in the North. Right now the Tories are in danger at the next GE of losing a host of Remainerland seats to the LDs. If the Tories continue to make progress in the North then it would probably equal-out. In that scenario, Labour will be the only losers.
Since the Brexit vote the political landscape in this country has been massively changing. I think we are only half-way through it and the next 5 years will be very interesting, particularly the next GE.
Agree on most of that Alistair, especially your last para.
My take on C&A is that the core Tory vote stayed at home because of four things they are pissed off about, which will be replicated across the south unless the Tories address them:
1. Planning / Development - HS2, home building on the green belt. Tory voters don't want massive Wimpey estates swamping the countryside and feel powerless with local plans to do anything about it. Ditto new rail lines with questionable economic benefits. 2. COVID - Tory voters have had enough and are dismayed at how unconservative the government is behaving. They worry about the economic damage and the bill to come and they worry about what kind of country we are bequeathing to children / grand-children. 3. Green stuff - Tory voters are very sceptical about the justification for the Green agenda and worry they are going to be forced to pay for it. 4. Woke stuff - this has gone beyond a joke for Tory voters who want politicians to clamp down hard on it.
Political party positions on these 4 issues will play a big part in the next GE - it's going to be a divide based on Remainer / Brexit mindsets IMO ... and you're right that Labour doesn't have a strong brand in that debate.
Do any PBers actually do anything different when they have a nice win ?
Its just more money in a pot to me.
Interesting question. Milton Friedman's permanent income theory argues that the windfall increases your capital and that you would increase your consumption spending by the income derived from it, say ~ five percent, in all future years. So your bigger pot should diminish gradually over time.
Every time I win over £50 I put half of my winnings into my SIPP alongside my regular monthly contributions. The other half and remaining stake money are used for future betting. Yesterday I won £70 at Royal Ascot so last night £35 went towards making my retirement more comfortable. Keeping stakes small today, pouring rain forecast to last all day so loads of non-runners everywhere not just at the Royal meeting.
Milty's theory assumes a one-off windfall. But to adapt it to your situation in which you make a series of bets one should consider just the *surprise* element in your winnings as the windfall. It seems that for you the surprise element is half of anything over £50. This would seem to imply that you typically bet at odds of around 2:1. Is that so?
No I bet in multiples and I also do forecasts and tricasts. The Tote equivalent of the tricast, the Trifecta can pay an enormous dividend in the big handicaps, they are very hard to pull off though, I did get one for £900 last October. Yesterday I had 3 EW places in an EW lucky 31 and 1 winner in a win lucky 15.
You're clearly a serious punter and my comment was quatsch.
Morning all. No doubt the PB Europhiles and LibDems wil be hailing the end of the Conservative Government. This result is a good mid-term win for the LibDems but was fairly common in Margaret Thatchers mid-terms. Remember Shirley Williams and Crosby overturning something like a 19,000 majority. She lost the seat back to the Tories. Incidentally how does this seat do in the boundary changes?
I hope all the happy remainers who voted LibDem yesterday ask their shiny new LibDem MP what good she is doing as the HS2 bulldozers go straight through their villages. No doubt Ed Davey will follow the road of his predecessors and be gone the day after the next General Election.
If I were Johnson I would reroute HS2 straight through the villages and build some fuck off big social housing estates there. Pour encourager les autres
Does anyone want this bloody HS2?
Only those who are nowhere near it.
My brother had a rare office day yesterday in the Smoke. Train half full even at rush hour, and plenty of spare seats.
We may need to consider that railways will not return to the days BC, and revise plans.
At my large firm, it is rare to hear anyone talk of wanting to return 5 days a week. TWT (Tues, Wed, Thu) seems popular with the extroverts that live in London and the surrounds. Out of towners or those with smaller kids take the view of “I’ll come in once or twice a fortnight”.
One of the major drivers of HS2 was to allow a massive increase of seats on commuter trains from the likes of Milton Keynes, which could triple depending on pathway choices. I just don’t see the demand will be there for that ever again.
Conversely, I think demand for longer distance rail travel will be stronger than ever, as 30-50 somethings that previously grouped around London have scattered around the country for cheaper house prices and proximity to extended family.
Complex it is. But there’s no appetite in government to even start thinking about all this. Instead it’s just “let’s concrete the south east green belt and build a London commuter relief line”.
The Government, to their credit, are building a new railway line up into Northumberland through to Blyth from Newcastle that on all accounts is fairly popular.
However the capacity of the tracks around Newcastle means that the maximum number of trains that can run will be 2 per hour.
More money for upgrades pls?
Ps can we also have the A1 dualed to the Scottish Border
The 2 trains an hour aren't due to capacity issues round Newcastle it's due to capacity issues on the line itself. which will be single track in a number of places so needs passing loops.
I have to double check but I don't think the proposed route touches the ECML at all which is now definitely a problem as the new First Group Edinburgh services have screwed everything else up as everywhere North of York will be at capacity even after a whole set of changes.
As I see it, investment required across the country will take a generation. There has been huge investment in rail since we dropped BR into history where it belongs, but there is still a huge job of work to do.
The amount for HS2 (especially if we ignore the billions being tipped into holes in the ground to keep the Nimbies of the SE onside) is really quite small.
One small point of interest is that we always had a very extensive rail network pre-Beeching, and he was probably right to cut a lot of it. Compare total network length for UK vs Italy vs Spain, and they are all about the same. Germany and France are larger countries. Where we are behind is on electrification.
Anecdotes and insight into the C&A voter psychology from a colleague who lives there:
"Proud to say I was one of the 21,517 who went out in the pissing rain last night to deliver an emphatic victory and strong message to both Conservative and Labour parties!
The local Tory campaign was dreadful / non-existent
the candidate was a former Ford middle manager (or similar) and we received a letter from Rishi Sunak telling us to vote for him
the Labour candidate didn't even have an official Labour email account ... she'd set up Labour4Amersham@gmail.com (or similar)
Lib Dems were out knocking on doors virtually every day for the last month, and engaging in sensible conversation about local issues that matter: (1) HS2 destroying our countryside, and (2) Tory planning policies to build on green belt (and destroy our countryside)"
He's very much the classic voter for a constituency like this: highly educated, senior role in the city (economist), commuting into London but WFH since the pandemic, would traditionally have been a pro-EU Tory I expect.
It does reinforce the fact that planning and HS2 were big things here.
Working in the city I know a fair few of these kinds of ex-Tories. They seem to hate Boris Johnson a lot more than lifelong Labour supporters like me do. I think the Tories have probably lost these people for good. I would guess that they're significantly outnumbered by the Leave voters they've gained in exchange, right now at least. But one day the Tories might come to regret throwing away their support so casually. I don't think they're coming back.
So, about that new political era. I can't for the life of me see how Labour recover in any of the following: southern shire towns like Swindon, northern leave towns like Hartlepool, or Scottish burghs like Kirkcaldy. The Tories sweep up the leave WWC angry vote in England. The SNP sweep up Scotland. Wales remains largely Labour with pockets of blue and green. And anywhere south of the Midlands?
If the Tories are unpopular in their old heartlands, the LibDems will reclaim lost territories. With the Greens already having supplanted Labour as the party du jour in places like Brighton, Bristol and Norwich.
I had not been aware that Stop Funding Hate had had a grant of 50k from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.
Perhaps we will now see the end of Stop Funding Hate, after their suicidal antics over GB News.
Perhaps. But I bet there's dozens of these Marxist pressure groups sucking at the public or semi-public teat.
There are. Black Lives Matter being perhaps the worst example, but the capture of many of these groups by this ideology is endless.
The civil service should do a woke watch style evaluation of them; they should only get public funding if they are committed to free debate and a plurality of views on contentious social issues.
On the other hand my employer has stated it now expects the next stage of relaxation of restrictions to go ahead and have issued our 60 day notice for a "potential and part time" return to office
My first opportunity to comment this morning! And whilst I am not a LD, as Mrs T once said when I was a very young man "just rejoice at that news"!
Just possibly, there is a good chance that the days of Johnsonian populism are numbered. For those of us that believe in honest, right of centre politics that is a very good thing if it is so. The Conservatives need to regroup, get some serious grown-ups in and get rid of the clown. Otherwise we might be looking at a Labour-LD coalition after next GE.
Morning all. No doubt the PB Europhiles and LibDems wil be hailing the end of the Conservative Government. This result is a good mid-term win for the LibDems but was fairly common in Margaret Thatchers mid-terms. Remember Shirley Williams and Crosby overturning something like a 19,000 majority. She lost the seat back to the Tories. Incidentally how does this seat do in the boundary changes?
I hope all the happy remainers who voted LibDem yesterday ask their shiny new LibDem MP what good she is doing as the HS2 bulldozers go straight through their villages. No doubt Ed Davey will follow the road of his predecessors and be gone the day after the next General Election.
If I were Johnson I would reroute HS2 straight through the villages and build some fuck off big social housing estates there. Pour encourager les autres
Does anyone want this bloody HS2?
Only those who are nowhere near it.
My brother had a rare office day yesterday in the Smoke. Train half full even at rush hour, and plenty of spare seats.
We may need to consider that railways will not return to the days BC, and revise plans.
I am currently on a deserted peak time train from London to Newbury.
Only one other person in the carriage.
Mind you he isn't looking as ridiculous as I do
Ascot?
I am going surfing. Owing to a premature withdrawal on my part my c & a winnings will cover about 40% of my Bude Town Council carpark ticket.
Paraphrasing the the Duke of Wellington "Believe me, nothing except a wager lost can be half so melancholy as a small wager won:"
Why cant pensioners have a generous but means tested element to Universal Credit? If you’re rich, great — enjoy it. If you’re not, we’ll look after you.
They already do - Pension Credit.
I mean instead of the state pension
Good grief. Mess with the state pension at your peril.
Assuming your aim is to raise more from the over 65s, I'd go with different (higher) income tax rates for the over 65s and possibly remove NI contribution exemption too.
I just don’t see why someone with a million pound private pension needs, or should have, the state pension
Because they've paid for it and because all benefits should be universal and then they'll pay taxes on it anyway.
Means-tested benefits create the poverty trap so why encourage that?
That is not true. They have not paid for it. At least not in the way most people think.
It was made clear right back when the state pension was introduced that you are not paying into a pot for your own retirement. You are paying to provide a pension for those who are already retired with the hope that by the time it is your turn the system will still be there and sufficiently funded to able to support your own pension.
We should start to view pensions far more like social security - something that is there to catch you if you fall but is not there just to give you a bit of extra spending cash if you can already afford to live by your own means.
I agree. I am particularly galled by the idea that some public sector employees are on massive index linked pensions and receive the state pension. It is ridiculous. Universal child benefit was removed, so should universal pensions. Better give it to the young who need it more.
Anecdotes and insight into the C&A voter psychology from a colleague who lives there:
"Proud to say I was one of the 21,517 who went out in the pissing rain last night to deliver an emphatic victory and strong message to both Conservative and Labour parties!
The local Tory campaign was dreadful / non-existent
the candidate was a former Ford middle manager (or similar) and we received a letter from Rishi Sunak telling us to vote for him
the Labour candidate didn't even have an official Labour email account ... she'd set up Labour4Amersham@gmail.com (or similar)
Lib Dems were out knocking on doors virtually every day for the last month, and engaging in sensible conversation about local issues that matter: (1) HS2 destroying our countryside, and (2) Tory planning policies to build on green belt (and destroy our countryside)"
He's very much the classic voter for a constituency like this: highly educated, senior role in the city (economist), commuting into London but WFH since the pandemic, would traditionally have been a pro-EU Tory I expect.
It does reinforce the fact that planning and HS2 were big things here.
Working in the city I know a fair few of these kinds of ex-Tories. They seem to hate Boris Johnson a lot more than lifelong Labour supporters like me do. I think the Tories have probably lost these people for good. I would guess that they're significantly outnumbered by the Leave voters they've gained in exchange, right now at least. But one day the Tories might come to regret throwing away their support so casually. I don't think they're coming back.
I am a life long Tory voter, and one time activist but am appalled by Boris Johnson. I will not vote Tory while he has the inappropriate title "leader". I voted Labour for the first time at the recent local elections.
If in the very unlikely event the very right wing membership put someone more sensible in place I would vote Tory again. The problem is that the Tory party used to be a coalition of people who were centrists through to right wing but sensible folk, and then the swivel eyed reactionary right. Sadly the latter group now have control, and the centrists have largely left. I am not sure the extremists will relinquish control easily
Comments
Means-tested benefits create the poverty trap so why encourage that?
Read this thread to learn the real reason why the libdems won.
Hint: the tory majority is not in peril come the next GE
NEW THREAD
I am not wearing a mask.
Is anyone else picking up on this July 5th new date or have we done that? Nick Ferrari was all over it this morning.
Ignoring local laws when abroad, especially doing it as a point of principle, is a bloody stupid thing to do. Unless you like prison food and want a free flight home.
By the way, a million pound SIPP at retirement does not equal a life of luxury for a two person household, if the state pensions are removed from them.
Tell you what I’d do. I’d take some of the lovely funny money the BoE have kindly been printing to stop gilt yields ballooning. And I’d pump it into junior sipps for the 0-18 year olds. Every year. £3600.
£20bn a year of funny money to fix the intergenerational wealth gap caused by QE since 2008.
Current risk of new daily COVID infection
in the unvaccinated: 1 in 2,093
after 1 vaccine dose: 1 in 5,508
after 2 vaccine doses : 1 in 16,101
https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/vaccines-hold-back-the-tide-as-latest-wave-shows-signs-of-approaching-peak
And confirms other data.
One dose gives about 65% protection against symptomatic infection and two doses give about 85% protection against symptomatic infection.
I would guess that they're significantly outnumbered by the Leave voters they've gained in exchange, right now at least. But one day the Tories might come to regret throwing away their support so casually. I don't think they're coming back.
The Tote equivalent of the tricast, the Trifecta can pay an enormous dividend in the big handicaps, they are very hard to pull off though, I did get one for £900 last October.
Yesterday I had 3 EW places in an EW lucky 31 and 1 winner in a win lucky 15.
Source: Daily Mail Comments section.
It was made clear right back when the state pension was introduced that you are not paying into a pot for your own retirement. You are paying to provide a pension for those who are already retired with the hope that by the time it is your turn the system will still be there and sufficiently funded to able to support your own pension.
We should start to view pensions far more like social security - something that is there to catch you if you fall but is not there just to give you a bit of extra spending cash if you can already afford to live by your own means.
For the avoidance of doubt, the answer is no.
And no, we don’t need either.
Because Labour are trying to ignore Brexit, and pleasing no-one. They're not Brexity enough for Leavers, everyone knows there's no conviction, and repelling Remainers for not being anti-Brexit enough.
The Tories have screwed Labour good and proper. Their austerity pissed the Red Wall off, then blamed a lot of it on forrins (so many people up here think they can't get a doctor's appointment for weeks because we're swamped with immigrants, esp Muslim immigrants), the two Leave campaigns promised everything to everyone. It's shameless, opportunistic. mendacious and brilliant.
And yes, the Remain campaign was shite. But, ultimately, it was headed by Tories. So it couldn't say stuff like, for example, 'Don't vote Leave 'cos the Tories will, given half a chance, take an axe to worker's rights the EU protects' or 'Don't vote Leave cos, given half a chance, the Tories will go for Thatcherism on steroids and happily lay waste to things like the fishing industry', because it was ultimately headed by... Tories.
https://twitter.com/jack_blanchard_/status/1405803578527256578?s=21
Vote Leave’s Paul Stephenson:
"If any other of the leadership contenders had been leader of the Labour Party, then we would have lost."
Also, and I remember this being a turning point on PB, on David Cameron’s negotiations:
“It was pivotal. Had they just come out and said 'the EU isn’t perfect, but for these reasons it's the right thing to do,' I think they could have won it."
My take on C&A is that the core Tory vote stayed at home because of four things they are pissed off about, which will be replicated across the south unless the Tories address them:
1. Planning / Development - HS2, home building on the green belt. Tory voters don't want massive Wimpey estates swamping the countryside and feel powerless with local plans to do anything about it. Ditto new rail lines with questionable economic benefits.
2. COVID - Tory voters have had enough and are dismayed at how unconservative the government is behaving. They worry about the economic damage and the bill to come and they worry about what kind of country we are bequeathing to children / grand-children.
3. Green stuff - Tory voters are very sceptical about the justification for the Green agenda and worry they are going to be forced to pay for it.
4. Woke stuff - this has gone beyond a joke for Tory voters who want politicians to clamp down hard on it.
Political party positions on these 4 issues will play a big part in the next GE - it's going to be a divide based on Remainer / Brexit mindsets IMO ... and you're right that Labour doesn't have a strong brand in that debate.
The amount for HS2 (especially if we ignore the billions being tipped into holes in the ground to keep the Nimbies of the SE onside) is really quite small.
One small point of interest is that we always had a very extensive rail network pre-Beeching, and he was probably right to cut a lot of it. Compare total network length for UK vs Italy vs Spain, and they are all about the same. Germany and France are larger countries. Where we are behind is on electrification.
If the Tories are unpopular in their old heartlands, the LibDems will reclaim lost territories. With the Greens already having supplanted Labour as the party du jour in places like Brighton, Bristol and Norwich.
The civil service should do a woke watch style evaluation of them; they should only get public funding if they are committed to free debate and a plurality of views on contentious social issues.
Hmm - what does this say about July 19th......
On the other hand my employer has stated it now expects the next stage of relaxation of restrictions to go ahead and have issued our 60 day notice for a "potential and part time" return to office
Just possibly, there is a good chance that the days of Johnsonian populism are numbered. For those of us that believe in honest, right of centre politics that is a very good thing if it is so. The Conservatives need to regroup, get some serious grown-ups in and get rid of the clown. Otherwise we might be looking at a Labour-LD coalition after next GE.
A week is a very long time in politics!
says the lord of the £5 bet.....
If in the very unlikely event the very right wing membership put someone more sensible in place I would vote Tory again. The problem is that the Tory party used to be a coalition of people who were centrists through to right wing but sensible folk, and then the swivel eyed reactionary right. Sadly the latter group now have control, and the centrists have largely left. I am not sure the extremists will relinquish control easily