politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » It was Team Corbyn who trashed the Big Tent

The BBC News presenters are grinning in a really stupid and inane way. They must be about to say something about the Royal Family.

taffys said:

Blimey. Boris junks immigration target. Rudd "entirely right in not committing to numbers because you don't want to disappoint people again"

Perhaps Boris's point is that the UK government right now doesn't have the power to commit itself until after Brexit.

Rudd will have no love for the immigration target, or even necessarily care.

But, May will know she will be in deep political trouble if she fails to deliver meaningful reductions post Brexit.

kle4 said:

DanSmith said:

Michael Crick ‏@MichaelLCrick 6m6 minutes ago
Mood at today's Labour NEC suggests high command worried Michael Foster's legal case on Corbyn standing without 51 nominations might succeed

another TWIST

What good does any of this do either side, honestly? For god's sake Corbyn, stand down and let McDonnell or Lewis or someone takeover, given all the crap they've spoken about not having a problem with the policies, for the most part, there's no way those two wouldn't get on the ballot as what excuse for not nominating them?

Corbyn will

Casino_Royale said:

david_herdson said:

John_M said:

Casino_Royale said:

ToryJim said:

SimonStClare said:

John_M said:

I think we can guess at why house prices are a problem.
ttps://twitter.com/montie/status/755413874975903744

Has Monty considered that the worst recession in our lifetime may have had something to do with that?

Also there's only so much of London &SE that is still OK to build on once you've excluded the Green Belt.

My local town is still the same size as it was during the 80s when I was growing up despite huge population increase. It hasn't seen anything like the expansion and development that occurred in the 60s and 70s, probably due to nimbyism.

To be honest, most towns could expand onto the next row of farmers fields around their fringes and provide hundreds of new decent homes in so doing.

People don't want to live in the provinces though. There are ~90k people in all of Monmouthshire. Bags of room for new houses. Not that much demand. House price inflation is running at ~3%.

Most people do live in the provinces and are a damn sight happier there than they would be in London or thereabouts.

London is a fucking shithole.

I live in the glorious English county of Hampshire.

That does condemn you to a Bunfight at Waterloo every night though.

Bedfordshire means you get eight glorious 12 car Thameslinks per hour and can get on from much of Central London without using the tube - and will have direct interchange with Crossrail at Farringdon.

Houseprices are dirt cheap too by south of England standards. £200-250k for a 3 bed house.

FPT

TheWhiteRabbit said:

PlatoSaid said:

Umm

Sadiq Khan is to introduce gender neutral toilets in London: https://t.co/geNK846qYN

Never really understood most opposition.

There are very many individual cubicles which are labelled with a gender (or perhaps a sex) but which are identical no matter what. We have plenty where I work.

I don't see why they couldn't be available for everyone.

I'm used to using disabled toilets, which are invariably unisex. I don't really understand the big deal about anyone else using unisex toilets either.

(Disabled toilets are great by the way. Means you can use the bogs at Stratford station, for instance, which would otherwise be on Sunil's list of "major train stations without public toilets". Suspect it is the busiest UK station without non-disabled toilets, though Sunil can likely correct me on that. They tend to have very little vandalism. Generally remarkably clean. Unlike the blokes' bogs I was once used to, no writing on the wall informing of me the sexual availability of local chaps - do women's loos have this too? Perhaps for chapesses rather than chaps? Or has it even died out in men's bogs, in this Age of Grindr?)

Casino_Royale said:

London is a fucking shithole.

Are you SURE CrossRail is the right project for you to be working on....??? It's not a giant new sewer system you've designed, is it?

williamglenn said:

rcs1000 said:

John_M said:

kle4 said:

Paristonda said:

John_M said:

Casino_Royale said:

ToryJim said:

SimonStClare said:

John_M said:

I think we can guess at why house prices are a problem.
ttps://twitter.com/montie/status/755413874975903744

Has Monty considered that the worst recession in our lifetime may have had something to do with that?

Also there's only so much of London &SE that is still OK to build on once you've excluded the Green Belt.

My local town is still the same size as it was during the 80s when I was growing up despite huge population increase. It hasn't seen anything like the expansion and development that occurred in the 60s and 70s, probably due to nimbyism.

To be honest, most towns could expand onto the next row of farmers fields around their fringes and provide hundreds of new decent homes in so doing.

People don't want to live in the provinces though. There are ~90k people in all of Monmouthshire. Bags of room for new houses. Not that much demand. House price inflation is running at ~3%.

Perhaps a truly federal Britain would be better placed to spread development around the country? Seems to me that federal countries like the US and Germany have a more equal distribution of big/important cities (NYC, LA, Miami, Chicago, Houston. Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich) - and therefore, a healthier population distribution - than unitary states like Britain and France, both massively and unhealthily dominated by their respective capitals.

Bit late for us to address being dominated by our Primary city - it's fluctuated, of course, but it has dominated for something like 1000 years.

Paris has a population of around 2 million. It's a village compared to London. A French village.

The metropolitan area is 12m. The city boundaries are drawn quite tightly.

Yes, only the area within the peripherique is real Paris. It would be like saying London ends at zone 2. Come to think of it, that's what many people believe.

Sounds reasonable to me: @Charles, @Cyclefree, I'm sure you agree

rcs1000 said:

Sounds reasonable to me: @Charles, @Cyclefree, I'm sure you agree

I wouldn't go so far as to include the whole of Zone 1.

kle4 said:

Paristonda said:

John_M said:

Casino_Royale said:

ToryJim said:

SimonStClare said:

John_M said:

I think we can guess at why house prices are a problem.
ttps://twitter.com/montie/status/755413874975903744

Has Monty considered that the worst recession in our lifetime may have had something to do with that?

Also there's only so much of London &SE that is still OK to build on once you've excluded the Green Belt.

My local town is still the same size as it was during the 80s when I was growing up despite huge population increase. It hasn't seen anything like the expansion and development that occurred in the 60s and 70s, probably due to nimbyism.

To be honest, most towns could expand onto the next row of farmers fields around their fringes and provide hundreds of new decent homes in so doing.

People don't want to live in the provinces though. There are ~90k people in all of Monmouthshire. Bags of room for new houses. Not that much demand. House price inflation is running at ~3%.

Perhaps a truly federal Britain would be better placed to spread development around the country? Seems to me that federal countries like the US and Germany have a more equal distribution of big/important cities (NYC, LA, Miami, Chicago, Houston. Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich) - and therefore, a healthier population distribution - than unitary states like Britain and France, both massively and unhealthily dominated by their respective capitals.

Bit late for us to address being dominated by our Primary city - it's fluctuated, of course, but it has dominated for something like 1000 years.

Dominated? Well maybe because of it being the centre of government and the law and where the railways (when they came along) started/ended. However, I not sure that the current dominant position of London and the SE is not a very new phenomena.

I think we do not have to go back too far to find when Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Glasgow and a whole host of other places had an economic contribution which together dwarfed that of London and the Home Counties.

I am outing TSE as Hugo Rifkind based on this tweet:

@hugorifkind:
"We will fight, and fight, and fight again, to save the party we love," quotes @DAaronovitch.
"S Club 7?" I say.
"Hugh Gaitskell," he says.

rcs1000 said:

williamglenn said:

rcs1000 said:

John_M said:

kle4 said:

Paristonda said:

John_M said:

Casino_Royale said:

ToryJim said:

SimonStClare said:

John_M said:

I think we can guess at why house prices are a problem.
ttps://twitter.com/montie/status/755413874975903744

Has Monty considered that the worst recession in our lifetime may have had something to do with that?

Also there's only so much of London &SE that is still OK to build on once you've excluded the Green Belt.

My local town is still the same size as it was during the 80s when I was growing up despite huge population increase. It hasn't seen anything like the expansion and development that occurred in the 60s and 70s, probably due to nimbyism.

To be honest, most towns could expand onto the next row of farmers fields around their fringes and provide hundreds of new decent homes in so doing.

People don't want to live in the provinces though. There are ~90k people in all of Monmouthshire. Bags of room for new houses. Not that much demand. House price inflation is running at ~3%.

Perhaps a truly federal Britain would be better placed to spread development around the country? Seems to me that federal countries like the US and Germany have a more equal distribution of big/important cities (NYC, LA, Miami, Chicago, Houston. Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich) - and therefore, a healthier population distribution - than unitary states like Britain and France, both massively and unhealthily dominated by their respective capitals.

Bit late for us to address being dominated by our Primary city - it's fluctuated, of course, but it has dominated for something like 1000 years.

Paris has a population of around 2 million. It's a village compared to London. A French village.

The metropolitan area is 12m. The city boundaries are drawn quite tightly.

Yes, only the area within the peripherique is real Paris. It would be like saying London ends at zone 2. Come to think of it, that's what many people believe.

Sounds reasonable to me: @Charles, @Cyclefree, I'm sure you agree

That's it. All your names are going on ze list.

HurstLlama said:

kle4 said:

Paristonda said:

John_M said:

Casino_Royale said:

ToryJim said:

SimonStClare said:

John_M said:

I think we can guess at why house prices are a problem.
ttps://twitter.com/montie/status/755413874975903744

Has Monty considered that the worst recession in our lifetime may have had something to do with that?

Also there's only so much of London &SE that is still OK to build on once you've excluded the Green Belt.

My local town is still the same size as it was during the 80s when I was growing up despite huge population increase. It hasn't seen anything like the expansion and development that occurred in the 60s and 70s, probably due to nimbyism.

To be honest, most towns could expand onto the next row of farmers fields around their fringes and provide hundreds of new decent homes in so doing.

People don't want to live in the provinces though. There are ~90k people in all of Monmouthshire. Bags of room for new houses. Not that much demand. House price inflation is running at ~3%.

Perhaps a truly federal Britain would be better placed to spread development around the country? Seems to me that federal countries like the US and Germany have a more equal distribution of big/important cities (NYC, LA, Miami, Chicago, Houston. Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich) - and therefore, a healthier population distribution - than unitary states like Britain and France, both massively and unhealthily dominated by their respective capitals.

Bit late for us to address being dominated by our Primary city - it's fluctuated, of course, but it has dominated for something like 1000 years.

Dominated? Well maybe because of it being the centre of government and the law and where the railways (when they came along) started/ended. However, I not sure that the current dominant position of London and the SE is not a very new phenomena.

I think we do not have to go back too far to find when Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Glasgow and a whole host of other places had an economic contribution which together dwarfed that of London and the Home Counties.

That you have to add them together to overcome London and the Home Counties I would think proves the point about domination - not as much as now, certainly, but of our cities it has been the primary one for a long time, even if at times other cities made a creditable job of their own, but I'm not sure if any of them have consistently done so. IIRC Norwich was one of the biggest places outside London in the 13th Century. I'd say being preeminent among the cities counts as dominant for the entire time. It just may not have been overbearingly so.

Paul_Bedfordshire said:

kle4 said:

williamglenn said:

rcs1000 said:

John_M said:

kle4 said:

Paristonda said:

John_M said:

Casino_Royale said:

ToryJim said:

SimonStClare said:

John_M said:

I think we can guess at why house prices are a problem.
ttps://twitter.com/montie/status/755413874975903744

Has Monty considered that the worst recession in our lifetime may have had something to do with that?

Also there's only so much of London &SE that is still OK to build on once you've excluded the Green Belt.

My local town is still the same size as it was during the 80s when I was growing up despite huge population increase. It hasn't seen anything like the expansion and development that occurred in the 60s and 70s, probably due to nimbyism.

To be honest, most towns could expand onto the next row of farmers fields around their fringes and provide hundreds of new decent homes in so doing.

People don't want to live in the provinces though. There are ~90k people in all of Monmouthshire. Bags of room for new houses. Not that much demand. House price inflation is running at ~3%.

Perhaps a truly federal Britain would be better placed to spread development around the country? Seems to me that federal countries like the US and Germany have a more equal distribution of big/important cities (NYC, LA, Miami, Chicago, Houston. Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich) - and therefore, a healthier population distribution - than unitary states like Britain and France, both massively and unhealthily dominated by their respective capitals.

Bit late for us to address being dominated by our Primary city - it's fluctuated, of course, but it has dominated for something like 1000 years.

Paris has a population of around 2 million. It's a village compared to London. A French village.

The metropolitan area is 12m. The city boundaries are drawn quite tightly.

Yes, only the area within the peripherique is real Paris. It would be like saying London ends at zone 2. Come to think of it, that's what many people believe.

I believe Mr Meeks has said the same thing.

Beyond zone 2 be dragons (or Brexit voters at least)

True England is found in our Market towns!

@GuidoFawkes: Rumour: Labour sources say Angela Eagle is pulling out

Sunil_Prasannan said:

MyBurningEars said:

FPT

TheWhiteRabbit said:

PlatoSaid said:

Umm

Sadiq Khan is to introduce gender neutral toilets in London: https://t.co/geNK846qYN

Never really understood most opposition.

There are very many individual cubicles which are labelled with a gender (or perhaps a sex) but which are identical no matter what. We have plenty where I work.

I don't see why they couldn't be available for everyone.

I'm used to using disabled toilets, which are invariably unisex. I don't really understand the big deal about anyone else using unisex toilets either.

(Disabled toilets are great by the way. Means you can use the bogs at Stratford station, for instance, which would otherwise be on Sunil's list of "major train stations without public toilets". Suspect it is the busiest UK station without non-disabled toilets, though Sunil can likely correct me on that. They tend to have very little vandalism. Generally remarkably clean. Unlike the blokes' bogs I was once used to, no writing on the wall informing of me the sexual availability of local chaps - do women's loos have this too? Perhaps for chapesses rather than chaps? Or has it even died out in men's bogs, in this Age of Grindr?)

St Pancras is the only main railway terminus in London with free bogs. Everywhere else seems to be 30p, or even 50p at Victoria FFS!

I was at Skegness yesterday*, but was surprised you had to leave the station cross the road to use the public toilets.

(*Um, before you ask, I did the Grantham to Skegness via Sleaford line).

Disabled toilets at Victoria are free to use, or were the last time I went. That's another pro.

At least the other major stations in London have loos, even if you need to pay for them. Are there any plans to install them in Stratford? I think there really ought to be, if only on public health grounds, and making it easier for e.g. our increasing number of older people to travel.

taffys said:

Londoners: move to Manchester!

It is a bit of a mystery why more businesses don;t relocate.

Aversion to incesssant rain?

@paulwaugh: Angela Eagle set to make statement any minute...

@PickardJE: The race to choose who gets beaten by Jeremy Corbyn again is turning into a real nail-biter.

Cyclefree said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

MyBurningEars said:

FPT

TheWhiteRabbit said:

PlatoSaid said:

Umm

Sadiq Khan is to introduce gender neutral toilets in London: https://t.co/geNK846qYN

Never really understood most opposition.

There are very many individual cubicles which are labelled with a gender (or perhaps a sex) but which are identical no matter what. We have plenty where I work.

I don't see why they couldn't be available for everyone.

I'm used to using disabled toilets, which are invariably unisex. I don't really understand the big deal about anyone else using unisex toilets either.

(Disabled toilets are great by the way. Means you can use the bogs at Stratford station, for instance, which would otherwise be on Sunil's list of "major train stations without public toilets". Suspect it is the busiest UK station without non-disabled toilets, though Sunil can likely correct me on that. They tend to have very little vandalism. Generally remarkably clean. Unlike the blokes' bogs I was once used to, no writing on the wall informing of me the sexual availability of local chaps - do women's loos have this too? Perhaps for chapesses rather than chaps? Or has it even died out in men's bogs, in this Age of Grindr?)

St Pancras is the only main railway terminus in London with free bogs. Everywhere else seems to be 30p, or even 50p at Victoria FFS!

I was at Skegness yesterday*, but was surprised you had to leave the station cross the road to use the public toilets.

(*Um, before you ask, I did the Grantham to Skegness via Sleaford line).

Ahem: the reason why I would prefer to use ladies' loos is because one cannot always be confident that the loos will be clean after they have been used by men.

Amen.

Scott_P said:

@paulwaugh: Angela Eagle set to make statement any minute...

Given the length of time it took her to officially declare, I guess that means we'll hear her statement in a week or so?

Cyclefree said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

MyBurningEars said:

FPT

TheWhiteRabbit said:

PlatoSaid said:

Umm

Sadiq Khan is to introduce gender neutral toilets in London: https://t.co/geNK846qYN

Never really understood most opposition.

There are very many individual cubicles which are labelled with a gender (or perhaps a sex) but which are identical no matter what. We have plenty where I work.

I don't see why they couldn't be available for everyone.

I'm used to using disabled toilets, which are invariably unisex. I don't really understand the big deal about anyone else using unisex toilets either.

(Disabled toilets are great by the way. Means you can use the bogs at Stratford station, for instance, which would otherwise be on Sunil's list of "major train stations without public toilets". Suspect it is the busiest UK station without non-disabled toilets, though Sunil can likely correct me on that. They tend to have very little vandalism. Generally remarkably clean. Unlike the blokes' bogs I was once used to, no writing on the wall informing of me the sexual availability of local chaps - do women's loos have this too? Perhaps for chapesses rather than chaps? Or has it even died out in men's bogs, in this Age of Grindr?)

St Pancras is the only main railway terminus in London with free bogs. Everywhere else seems to be 30p, or even 50p at Victoria FFS!

I was at Skegness yesterday*, but was surprised you had to leave the station cross the road to use the public toilets.

(*Um, before you ask, I did the Grantham to Skegness via Sleaford line).

Ahem: the reason why I would prefer to use ladies' loos is because one cannot always be confident that the loos will be clean after they have been used by men.

A cultural problem that we should tackle, not create discriminatory gender segregatory excretory chambers to avoid!

Scott_P said:

@GuidoFawkes: Rumour: Labour sources say Angela Eagle is pulling out

This would really piss me off, if true. She's the only one who had the balls to challenge in the first place. She may be useless though not noticeably more so than anyone else. But at least she had a bit of courage which is more than anyone else showed. But oh no: having done that the boys get to have the fight. Labour believes in equality, my arse!

PlatoSaid said:

Casino_Royale said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Royale, I agree.

Well, I shan't be popping corks whatever happens, but I'll believe we're out when we're out.

Nonsense. Of course should be opening the bubbly!

Now, what is Independence Day in that case? The 23rd June when votes were cast, the 24th when the result was declared or the day we officially leave the EU?

What a lovely problem to have? I'll certainly be awash with fizz when we finally do.

The Queen has two birthdays.

Surely Brexiteers can have three Independence Days.

That's five big holidays for Little England to take the people's mind off where to scavenge their next morsel of food.

Sunil:
[swaggering] I've visited EVERY station marked on that map, BTW. Taken me several years, mind

How was Perivale station?

Lowlander said:

Scott_P said:

@paulwaugh: Angela Eagle set to make statement any minute...

@PickardJE: The race to choose who gets beaten by Jeremy Corbyn again is turning into a real nail-biter.

But she's a WOMAN!

She has to win. She is a WOMAN!

2-0 to the "evil Tory SCUM"!

Cyclefree said:

Scott_P said:

@GuidoFawkes: Rumour: Labour sources say Angela Eagle is pulling out

This would really piss me off, if true. She's the only one who had the balls to challenge in the first place. She may be useless though not noticeably more so than anyone else. But at least she had a bit of courage which is more than anyone else showed. But oh no: having done that the boys get to have the fight. Labour believes in equality, my arse!

She pitched herself wrongly if she actually wanted to beat Corbyn among the membership. Whereas Owen Smith has been smarter, even if he'll probably end up just being discount Burnham.

@GerriPeev

Angela Eagle about to withdraw her fledgling candidacy for Labour leadership. Will possibly tell the party: 'I have no egrets'

PlatoSaid said:

Casino_Royale said:

Morris_Dancer said:

Mr. Royale, I agree.

Well, I shan't be popping corks whatever happens, but I'll believe we're out when we're out.

Nonsense. Of course should be opening the bubbly!

Now, what is Independence Day in that case? The 23rd June when votes were cast, the 24th when the result was declared or the day we officially leave the EU?

What a lovely problem to have? I'll certainly be awash with fizz when we finally do.

4th July is the DECLARATION of US independence in 1776, isn't it? Not the Treaty of Paris in 1783 when independence was recognised?.

kle4 said:

Scott_P said:

@paulwaugh: Angela Eagle set to make statement any minute...

Given the length of time it took her to officially declare, I guess that means we'll hear her statement in a week or so?

Cyclefree said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

MyBurningEars said:

FPT

TheWhiteRabbit said:

PlatoSaid said:

Umm

Sadiq Khan is to introduce gender neutral toilets in London: https://t.co/geNK846qYN

Never really understood most opposition.

There are very many individual cubicles which are labelled with a gender (or perhaps a sex) but which are identical no matter what. We have plenty where I work.

I don't see why they couldn't be available for everyone.

I'm used to using disabled toilets, which are invariably unisex. I don't really understand the big deal about anyone else using unisex toilets either.

(Disabled toilets are great by the way. Means you can use the bogs at Stratford station, for instance, which would otherwise be on Sunil's list of "major train stations without public toilets". Suspect it is the busiest UK station without non-disabled toilets, though Sunil can likely correct me on that. They tend to have very little vandalism. Generally remarkably clean. Unlike the blokes' bogs I was once used to, no writing on the wall informing of me the sexual availability of local chaps - do women's loos have this too? Perhaps for chapesses rather than chaps? Or has it even died out in men's bogs, in this Age of Grindr?)

St Pancras is the only main railway terminus in London with free bogs. Everywhere else seems to be 30p, or even 50p at Victoria FFS!

I was at Skegness yesterday*, but was surprised you had to leave the station cross the road to use the public toilets.

(*Um, before you ask, I did the Grantham to Skegness via Sleaford line).

Ahem: the reason why I would prefer to use ladies' loos is because one cannot always be confident that the loos will be clean after they have been used by men.

A cultural problem that we should tackle, not create discriminatory gender segregatory excretory chambers to avoid!

There's no discrimination involved. Just have loos for men and women. And have more for women. The queues for them are always enormous. We need more time. God only knows why men can't pee into a large bowl without also spraying everything else in sight but I'm damned if I'm going to clean up after random men in public in order to have a wee because the Mayor thinks the most important thing to do some two months after being elected is create gender neutral loos.

Tissue_Price said:

@GerriPeev

Angela Eagle about to withdraw her fledgling candidacy for Labour leadership. Will possibly tell the party: 'I have no egrets'

There are so many possibilities for this one.

The Eagle Disbanded.
Holed Eagle.
Eagle cries.

Cyclefree said:

Casino_Royale said:

AndyJS said:

I bet a lot of people using the London Underground are wishing that Crossrail with its air conditioning was already open.

Don't. I have to get on the jubalose line in 40 minutes.

Casino_Royale said:

david_herdson said:

John_M said:

Casino_Royale said:

ToryJim said:

SimonStClare said:

John_M said:

I think we can guess at why house prices are a problem.
ttps://twitter.com/montie/status/755413874975903744

Has Monty considered that the worst recession in our lifetime may have had something to do with that?

Also there's only so much of London &SE that is still OK to build on once you've excluded the Green Belt.

My local town is still the same size as it was during the 80s when I was growing up despite huge population increase. It hasn't seen anything like the expansion and development that occurred in the 60s and 70s, probably due to nimbyism.

To be honest, most towns could expand onto the next row of farmers fields around their fringes and provide hundreds of new decent homes in so doing.

People don't want to live in the provinces though. There are ~90k people in all of Monmouthshire. Bags of room for new houses. Not that much demand. House price inflation is running at ~3%.

Most people do live in the provinces and are a damn sight happier there than they would be in London or thereabouts.

London is a fucking shithole.

I live in the glorious English county of Hampshire.

Hampshire is indeed lovely. But I can bring you to my bit of London and show you somewhere glorious. On a day like today and in a few hours I will be sitting on my terrace having a drink and looking over London and at the glorious evening sky. The only sounds to be heard will be birds and ice clinking in a glass.

I suspect that sort of experience (with an equally good if less urban view) is available at much more of an affordable price in the provinces. But, nevertheless, I am curious as to (roughly) whereabouts in the great city you will be enjoying your drink,...?

kle4 said:

As a a loyal citizen of New Saxony, you and yours will get a reckoning one day, you had better believe it!

Dream on, Saxon boy! Your entire country is populated by soft southerners

Strangely, there's an organisation that campaigns to establish a sovereign Mercian state:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Mercia

Not sure about the national anthem though...

felix said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

Scott_P said:

@SophyRidgeSky: US journalist accuses Boris Johnson of "outright lies" and asks how people can trust him. Ouch.

That's rich coming from the land of Crooked Hillary

Exceptionally stupid comment - must be the unusual heat.

Yeah, man, But it's dry heat!

HurstLlama said:

AndyJS said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

AndyJS said:

I bet a lot of people using the London Underground are wishing that Crossrail with its air conditioning was already open.

Those Victorian and Edwardian tunnels really should have been built to main-line size diameter. One line did open in 1904 to main-line diameter, the Moorgate to Drayton Park line (part of British Rail, now operated by Great Northern, since 1976).

Didn't know that, interesting. They could shut each tube line down one by one and upgrade the tunnels, although they'd probably have to get the Sultan of Brunei to sponsor it.

Why should not the people who will benefit from the upgrades fork out the cash. Bung up the ticket prices to either pay for the improvements direct or fund the interest payments/return of capital on bonds issued for the purpose.

I haven't travelled on the tube for more than a decade and cannot see why anyone would want to. Whenever I am in Town (granted not often in the last couple of years) it has been a cab, a walk, or a driver up from Sussex to start with. The underground is just so disgustingly filthy, overcrowded and just bloody awful.

I mostly avoid the tube in summer. It's just about the right temperature in January and February, provided you're wearing shorts and a T-shirt.

The Eagle has crashed...

ToryJim said:

https://twitter.com/guardiananushka/status/755435904324476928

Damn, I had £30 on her.

Labour pick a straight, white man.

You could almost call him... "normal".

HurstLlama said:

Dominated? Well maybe because of it being the centre of government and the law and where the railways (when they came along) started/ended. However, I not sure that the current dominant position of London and the SE is not a very new phenomena.

I think we do not have to go back too far to find when Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Glasgow and a whole host of other places had an economic contribution which together dwarfed that of London and the Home Counties.

It is true that for about 150 years in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries London was primus inter pares rather than primus maximus as it now is.

However, it was always by far the largest city and had the largest economic contribution. Don't forget it was the world's largest port and most of the imports and exports of the country went through it. It was also the social hub of the land - comparatively unusually, it was the capital in pretty well every sphere from the get go, in a way that really only Paris of other European and even wider world cities was.

Throughout the Middle Ages from about 940 onwards even though London was not officially the capital of England until quite late on - I think it was Henry II who finally made it the permanent seat of government - what Londoners said went. They toppled kings (Henry III and VI) raised taxes differently, and were the target of all the key rebellions in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

It's a daft place to have a capital and major city but that is where it is and we are kind of stuck with it

nunu said:

Tissue_Price said:

Some actual numbers...

@GuardianAnushka 5m:

Hearing that Owen Smith is 25 MPs ahead. But Eagle is 7 MEPs ahead... Total difference 18...

Why the fuck are MEPs voting?

Labour rules count them for nomination purposes.

DavidL said:

AndyJS said:

If Owen Smith is the answer, what on earth is the question?

Who could be better than Corbyn?

I don't think he has a chance of beating Corbyn with the membership. Eagle might have.

Phew, honestly it wasn't a palpable error on my party

Sunil_Prasannan said:

Cyclefree said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

MyBurningEars said:

FPT

TheWhiteRabbit said:

PlatoSaid said:

Umm

Sadiq Khan is to introduce gender neutral toilets in London: https://t.co/geNK846qYN

Never really understood most opposition.

There are very many individual cubicles which are labelled with a gender (or perhaps a sex) but which are identical no matter what. We have plenty where I work.

I don't see why they couldn't be available for everyone.

I'm used to using disabled toilets, which are invariably unisex. I don't really understand the big deal about anyone else using unisex toilets either.

(Disabled toilets are great by the way. Means you can use the bogs at Stratford station, for instance, which would otherwise be on Sunil's list of "major train stations without public toilets". Suspect it is the busiest UK station without non-disabled toilets, though Sunil can likely correct me on that. They tend to have very little vandalism. Generally remarkably clean. Unlike the blokes' bogs I was once used to, no writing on the wall informing of me the sexual availability of local chaps - do women's loos have this too? Perhaps for chapesses rather than chaps? Or has it even died out in men's bogs, in this Age of Grindr?)

St Pancras is the only main railway terminus in London with free bogs. Everywhere else seems to be 30p, or even 50p at Victoria FFS!

I was at Skegness yesterday*, but was surprised you had to leave the station cross the road to use the public toilets.

(*Um, before you ask, I did the Grantham to Skegness via Sleaford line).

Ahem: the reason why I would prefer to use ladies' loos is because one cannot always be confident that the loos will be clean after they have been used by men.

I prefer urinals whenever available, you don't have to touch a toilet seat, door or lock with your hands

As I observed on previous thread, "gender neutral" = hermaphrodites only?

Pesto confirms Angela's perfume didn't have the right bouquet

https://twitter.com/peston/status/755437464177836032

Birmingham almost as hot as Islamabad today.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-england-36828787

DavidL said:

AndyJS said:

DavidL said:

AndyJS said:

If Owen Smith is the answer, what on earth is the question?

Who could be better than Corbyn?

I don't think he has a chance of beating Corbyn with the membership. Eagle might have.

But he's got one of those dangly things and Labour always vote for someone with one of them.

The "Labour members are a bunch of sexists" argument might be easier to make had they not selected women in the majority of open selections for the 2015 election.

@surbiton

A comment only a Londoner could make.

Whenever I hear the song 'maybe it's because I'm a Londoner/that I love London town' I'm tempted to agree because there's no reason other than habit to love an expensive, ugly, smelly, dirty, noisy, overcrowded wasteland like London. Anyone with any sense lives elsewhere.

I think I would rather live in Newport than London although admittedly it would be a close call. I'd take London over Cinderford but that's about the only place I'd like less than London.

IanB2 said:

Cyclefree said:

Casino_Royale said:

AndyJS said:

Casino_Royale said:

david_herdson said:

John_M said:

Casino_Royale said:

ToryJim said:

SimonStClare said:

John_M said:

London is a fucking shithole.

I live in the glorious English county of Hampshire.

Hampshire is indeed lovely. But I can bring you to my bit of London and show you somewhere glorious. On a day like today and in a few hours I will be sitting on my terrace having a drink and looking over London and at the glorious evening sky. The only sounds to be heard will be birds and ice clinking in a glass.

I suspect that sort of experience (with an equally good if less urban view) is available at much more of an affordable price in the provinces. But, nevertheless, I am curious as to (roughly) whereabouts in the great city you will be enjoying your drink,...?

West Hampstead. As I am on a hill I get fantastic views across London. And, particularly, of the evening sky. And because of our location when there are fly pasts down the Mall we can see those on the TV then rush upstairs and see them fly in front of us as they go out of London. Fireworks night is splendid. We get to see everyone else's fireworks, cheapskates that we are! You're probably right about the price now though not so much when I bought 26 years ago.

My little corner is surprisingly quiet, surrounded by trees and within 2 minutes walk there is a lot of green space and even more within 10 minutes walk away. But what I love above all about my street is that most people living here have been here for a long time. There is very little of that constant purchase/sale that you get in some other areas. And the housing is mixed: some renters and some housing association homes. So not all rich City types who are never there. It's ordinary - for London anyway (though even I could not afford to buy here now). There are lots of retreats and corners like this in London, though I can see why those not living here might think of it as a "fucking shithole". But it isn't.