Labour has a bigger problem in seeking power than Scotland: the Midlands…. – politicalbetting.com

FrancisUrquhart said:

Philip_Thompson said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

Theuniondivvie said:

For you the Culture War is over.

https://twitter.com/barbarasutton15/status/1395304002334699521?s=21

That makes me uneasy. None of the explanations that spring to mind are innocent.

Why? Home Secretary observing implementation of Home Office policy?

It has the air of mob boss wishing to witness at close quarters the 'debriefing' of the 'rat'.

The 'rat' is an alleged criminal gangster making money on others misery.

Where do your sympathies lie?

I love all the screeching about how dare the authorities remove the two Indians illegal immigrants on an Islamic holy day.....and they turn out to two Sikhs. So essentially people are arguing you can't deport an individual from a nominally Christian country on the holy day of a different religion that has nothing to do with those being deported. Interesting logic.

MaxPB said:

Lol, Rhodes doesn't fall. Oriel College decline to do so because of expense and regulatory concerns, especially given that the culture secretary has an effective veto over its removal now.

Expect Twitter go go mental over it, I wonder whether Labour will fall into this trap as well or if they'll manage to sidestep it by not saying anything. We know the Tories will celebrate it especially given that Oriel have cited regulatory issues as the major reason to not do it.

Leon said:

Theuniondivvie said:

For you the Culture War is over.

https://twitter.com/barbarasutton15/status/1395304002334699521?s=21

Priti Patel is one of those: an attractive woman with an absolutely massive arse. She gives me the horn of dilemma

FrancisUrquhart said:

Philip_Thompson said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

Theuniondivvie said:

For you the Culture War is over.

https://twitter.com/barbarasutton15/status/1395304002334699521?s=21

That makes me uneasy. None of the explanations that spring to mind are innocent.

Why? Home Secretary observing implementation of Home Office policy?

It has the air of mob boss wishing to witness at close quarters the 'debriefing' of the 'rat'.

The 'rat' is an alleged criminal gangster making money on others misery.

Where do your sympathies lie?

I love all the screeching about how dare the authorities remove the two Indians illegal immigrants on an Islamic holy day.....and they turn out to two Sikhs. So essentially people are arguing you can't deport an individual from a nominally Christian country on the holy day of a different religion that has nothing to do with those being deported. Interesting logic.

MaxPB said:

Lol, Rhodes doesn't fall. Oriel College decline to do so because of expense and regulatory concerns, especially given that the culture secretary has an effective veto over its removal now.

Expect Twitter go go mental over it, I wonder whether Labour will fall into this trap as well or if they'll manage to sidestep it by not saying anything. We know the Tories will celebrate it especially given that Oriel have cited regulatory issues as the major reason to not do it.

Casino_Royale said:

Leon said:

Theuniondivvie said:

For you the Culture War is over.

https://twitter.com/barbarasutton15/status/1395304002334699521?s=21

Priti Patel is one of those: an attractive woman with an absolutely massive arse. She gives me the horn of dilemma

Not that I want to get too red-blooded here but Priti strikes me as someone who's just... not that interested in all that.

FrancisUrquhart said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Philip_Thompson said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

Theuniondivvie said:

For you the Culture War is over.

https://twitter.com/barbarasutton15/status/1395304002334699521?s=21

That makes me uneasy. None of the explanations that spring to mind are innocent.

Why? Home Secretary observing implementation of Home Office policy?

It has the air of mob boss wishing to witness at close quarters the 'debriefing' of the 'rat'.

The 'rat' is an alleged criminal gangster making money on others misery.

Where do your sympathies lie?

I love all the screeching about how dare the authorities remove the two Indians illegal immigrants on an Islamic holy day.....and they turn out to two Sikhs. So essentially people are arguing you can't deport an individual from a nominally Christian country on the holy day of a different religion that has nothing to do with those being deported. Interesting logic.

For those doing the screeching, no deportation can ever be morally justified.

Or they need to go on some unconscious bias training? They saw two brown skinned people and thought they were Muslims?

TOPPING said:

Ok I just googled @Dura's suggestion.

Me. Without a doubt.

YBarddCwsc said:

Pulpstar said:

Labour might win Batley but heading into a pub and asking "Will you be voting for Jo Cox's sister" - which is about what the ConHome chap did is going to elicit a bias response.
Most voters will have no idea who she is.

It is a hard call for Labour, IMO

Kim Leadbetter appears a very capable, personable candidate with local roots. She has a unifying appeal with "More in Common". And David Herdson speaks very highly of her.

But, she has no political experience (was she even a member of the Labour party before deciding to put her name forward ?)

This is likely to be a messy by-election and (at the risk of echoing Gordon Brown), this is no time for a novice. She is likely to receive much more scrutiny and even hostility as a political candidate than she has ever experienced before in running local charity.

Hard call ... Labour need a very safe pair of hands.

Carnyx said:

Casino_Royale said:

MaxPB said:

Lol, Rhodes doesn't fall. Oriel College decline to do so because of expense and regulatory concerns, especially given that the culture secretary has an effective veto over its removal now.

Expect Twitter go go mental over it, I wonder whether Labour will fall into this trap as well or if they'll manage to sidestep it by not saying anything. We know the Tories will celebrate it especially given that Oriel have cited regulatory issues as the major reason to not do it.

Do you have a link?

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/may/20/cecil-rhodes-statue-will-not-be-removed-for-now-says-oxford-oriel-college

(there's something else somewhere on the Graun website)

FrancisUrquhart said:

Got to love the old vox pops...they asked a lady about what she thought about the government plans for Great British Railways and she witters on about remembering BR, how the trains didn't run on time, was all a bit shit, but does a 180 and says but I am glad we are going back to that.

justin124 said:

Sean_F said:

A good article, and it’s striking just how far the Midlands has shifted. Traditional marginal seats like Burton, Nuneaton, N W Leics are now very solidly Conservative.

The reverse is middle class urban and university seats shifting left at a rate of knots, and not just left, but far left. One could imagine the Greens eventually gaining some from Labour.

Sean_F said:

A good article, and it’s striking just how far the Midlands has shifted. Traditional marginal seats like Burton, Nuneaton, N W Leics are now very solidly Conservative.

The reverse is middle class urban and university seats shifting left at a rate of knots, and not just left, but far left. One could imagine the Greens eventually gaining some from Labour.

Though seats suchas Gedling, Wolverhampton SW and Edgbaston are far less Tory than in the past. Ken Clarke's retirement might see Rushcliffe drift the same way.

Richard_Tyndall said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Cookie said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Phil said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Cookie said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Sandpit said:

Casino_Royale said:

Fishing said:

Casino_Royale said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Fishing said:

On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).

So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.

Cars are probably a big one.

For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.

If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?

I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.

Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.

I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.

I think I've said on here before that the Conservatives are on a hiding to nothing if they think cold homes, no more foreign holidays and bland diets are a vote winner.

We only go green with lots of innovative new technology that enhances choice and makes people's lives better.

Yes, and they also need to make the case for positive innovative greenery, as opposed to the greenery proposed by those on the left that is mostly negative and destroying of economic activity.

As we move to zero-emission cars, having suburban people move about via cars in tree-lined streets is going to be very environmentally friendly.

Indeed if we're using net zero fuel then I wonder whether clean cars moving about in spacious tree-lined streets will be cleaner than trams in concrete jungles.

Unlikely.
Electric cars solve the problem of NO2 emissions and reduce carbon emissions (though carbon is remarkably complex!). OTOH, they increase the emissions of some particulates, and there are also issues around, especially, lithium extraction for batteries.
Basically, however you're doing it, you are, per passenger, moving a lot more weight and having to work a lot harder against friction if you're moving people by cars than if you're moving people by mass transit.
You're also occupying far more road space.
I'm not denying that electric cars are a big step forward, but they are not a panacea to all our urban transport travails.
The point about spacious tree-lined streets is key - we can only really get these streets if we reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets. For which we need improvements in the provision of non-car modes (including walking - see 'spacious tree-lined streets'.
This can be done without taking a heavy handed, hardline anti-car approach.

One big thing electric cars do give us when we are trying to make streets a nicer place to be is a massive reduction in noise. It's much more pleasant to be in a street with electric cars humming silently past you than being shouted at by an internal combustion engine. It does present issues crossing the road though - it's amazing how much we use sound as an indication that nothing is coming when we cross. We will get used to it soon enough though.

We don't need to reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets, we can build more and bigger streets.

Have more undeveloped fields developed and built on. You can have buildings for housing, trees for the environment, roads for moving, buildings for businesses etc - rather than fields for animals to wander on that our economically irrelevant and could be imported from New Zealand instead.

More streets means more space dedicated to cars instead of the things people actually want - shops, restaurants, libraries, housing & all that stuff. The problem with allocating all that space is that you turn walkable places where you could live & get access to all the amenities you need on foot or by bicycle into car-dependent suburbs. In a car-dependent ’urb it’s impossible to live without a car, because so much space has been given over to cars that you can’t get anywhere without using one, whether you like it or not. Even travelling short distances that many people would be happy to walk becomes impossible once enough space has been given over to cars, because the roads become so wide that crossing them becomes an exercise in taking your life in your hands.

This is not a model of development that actually leads to a great deal of happiness - individually we all like the idea of the large garden /and/ the wide streets on which we can drive where-ever we want, but the net effect when everyone does that is to destroy the very places we inhabit.

The country is not short of space.

70% of UK land is used for agriculture.
Agriculture is 0.61% of UK GDP.

Personally I find dedicating 70% of land to 0.61% of GDP to be rather inefficient - what about you?

I don't think that's a particularly strong argument. We don't allocate land dependent on GDP, otherwise the country would be covered in office blocks. We keep country agricultural because we value green space.

We shouldn't.

I sometimes think you’d be happier moving to Coruscant. No green space, big buildings everywhere, the best political intrigue in the galaxy...

That's what those advocating piling people high in cities, while we keep the countryside (or "their view") unspoilt want. That's the opposite of what I am proposing.

I am saying there should be more green space, more trees, more gardens, more parks where people LIVE, not just in fields that nobody ever goes to, are totally uneconomic, and are only ever seen from the sky.

Besides I've said all along if you want an unspoilt view then buy your view. Not one person has come up with an objection to that.

I agree that we have too much ordinary under-utilised scrub or pasture land that could be much better used, rather than being mechanically mowed. Far too great a distance between hedgerows and those that are there, cut far too frequently and aggressively.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean concreting over with roads, houses with patios. We have a shortage of housing in some parts of the country. But just about everywhere we have a shortage of quality hedgerow, woodland, wetland and wildflower meadow, all of which are important from a biodiversity and carbon perspective.

Your complete disinterest in this with a sole focus on building building building is completely at odds with the direction of both politicians and the public mood.

If building is so at odds why is there so much demand for housing? Why are prices so high? Why do new houses get bought from the plots before they're even built and have people moving in the day they're ready?

It's at odds with the selfish shits who want unspoilt views but don't want to pay to buy those views. Again, if you buy your own view then that's it, discussion over, if you don't then jog on.

I have done so.

Fantastic. That's the free market solution.

Now if you get a tempting offer that says I will give you ££££ for some of that land to be built on, then in my view that should be between you as the owner and the prospective buyers. Nobody else.

I am paying with my own money to boost biodiversity on some poorly managed land that is not particularly suitable for housing for a number of reasons. It is not a scaleable answer to the problem.

Like you I am using almost all of my spare money In reverting paddock to flower meadow and open woodland to improve biodiversity. My land serves as an important bridge between two nature reserves so I am getting a lot of advice from the Lincs Wildlife Trust on how to do things.

Sadly it strikes me that Philip displays an astonishing degree of almost wilful ignorance of the importance of proper non-agricultural countryside in his desperate desire for never ending development. And that is the issue - in his world it really is never ending and nothing can stand in the way of building. It is a genuinely stupid philosophy.

Richard_Tyndall said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Cookie said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Phil said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Cookie said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Sandpit said:

Casino_Royale said:

Fishing said:

Casino_Royale said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Fishing said:

On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).

So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.

Cars are probably a big one.

For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.

If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?

I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.

Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.

I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.

I think I've said on here before that the Conservatives are on a hiding to nothing if they think cold homes, no more foreign holidays and bland diets are a vote winner.

We only go green with lots of innovative new technology that enhances choice and makes people's lives better.

Yes, and they also need to make the case for positive innovative greenery, as opposed to the greenery proposed by those on the left that is mostly negative and destroying of economic activity.

As we move to zero-emission cars, having suburban people move about via cars in tree-lined streets is going to be very environmentally friendly.

Indeed if we're using net zero fuel then I wonder whether clean cars moving about in spacious tree-lined streets will be cleaner than trams in concrete jungles.

Unlikely.
Electric cars solve the problem of NO2 emissions and reduce carbon emissions (though carbon is remarkably complex!). OTOH, they increase the emissions of some particulates, and there are also issues around, especially, lithium extraction for batteries.
Basically, however you're doing it, you are, per passenger, moving a lot more weight and having to work a lot harder against friction if you're moving people by cars than if you're moving people by mass transit.
You're also occupying far more road space.
I'm not denying that electric cars are a big step forward, but they are not a panacea to all our urban transport travails.
The point about spacious tree-lined streets is key - we can only really get these streets if we reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets. For which we need improvements in the provision of non-car modes (including walking - see 'spacious tree-lined streets'.
This can be done without taking a heavy handed, hardline anti-car approach.

One big thing electric cars do give us when we are trying to make streets a nicer place to be is a massive reduction in noise. It's much more pleasant to be in a street with electric cars humming silently past you than being shouted at by an internal combustion engine. It does present issues crossing the road though - it's amazing how much we use sound as an indication that nothing is coming when we cross. We will get used to it soon enough though.

We don't need to reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets, we can build more and bigger streets.

Have more undeveloped fields developed and built on. You can have buildings for housing, trees for the environment, roads for moving, buildings for businesses etc - rather than fields for animals to wander on that our economically irrelevant and could be imported from New Zealand instead.

More streets means more space dedicated to cars instead of the things people actually want - shops, restaurants, libraries, housing & all that stuff. The problem with allocating all that space is that you turn walkable places where you could live & get access to all the amenities you need on foot or by bicycle into car-dependent suburbs. In a car-dependent ’urb it’s impossible to live without a car, because so much space has been given over to cars that you can’t get anywhere without using one, whether you like it or not. Even travelling short distances that many people would be happy to walk becomes impossible once enough space has been given over to cars, because the roads become so wide that crossing them becomes an exercise in taking your life in your hands.

This is not a model of development that actually leads to a great deal of happiness - individually we all like the idea of the large garden /and/ the wide streets on which we can drive where-ever we want, but the net effect when everyone does that is to destroy the very places we inhabit.

The country is not short of space.

70% of UK land is used for agriculture.
Agriculture is 0.61% of UK GDP.

Personally I find dedicating 70% of land to 0.61% of GDP to be rather inefficient - what about you?

I don't think that's a particularly strong argument. We don't allocate land dependent on GDP, otherwise the country would be covered in office blocks. We keep country agricultural because we value green space.

We shouldn't.

I sometimes think you’d be happier moving to Coruscant. No green space, big buildings everywhere, the best political intrigue in the galaxy...

That's what those advocating piling people high in cities, while we keep the countryside (or "their view") unspoilt want. That's the opposite of what I am proposing.

I am saying there should be more green space, more trees, more gardens, more parks where people LIVE, not just in fields that nobody ever goes to, are totally uneconomic, and are only ever seen from the sky.

Besides I've said all along if you want an unspoilt view then buy your view. Not one person has come up with an objection to that.

I agree that we have too much ordinary under-utilised scrub or pasture land that could be much better used, rather than being mechanically mowed. Far too great a distance between hedgerows and those that are there, cut far too frequently and aggressively.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean concreting over with roads, houses with patios. We have a shortage of housing in some parts of the country. But just about everywhere we have a shortage of quality hedgerow, woodland, wetland and wildflower meadow, all of which are important from a biodiversity and carbon perspective.

Your complete disinterest in this with a sole focus on building building building is completely at odds with the direction of both politicians and the public mood.

If building is so at odds why is there so much demand for housing? Why are prices so high? Why do new houses get bought from the plots before they're even built and have people moving in the day they're ready?

It's at odds with the selfish shits who want unspoilt views but don't want to pay to buy those views. Again, if you buy your own view then that's it, discussion over, if you don't then jog on.

I have done so.

Fantastic. That's the free market solution.

Now if you get a tempting offer that says I will give you ££££ for some of that land to be built on, then in my view that should be between you as the owner and the prospective buyers. Nobody else.

I am paying with my own money to boost biodiversity on some poorly managed land that is not particularly suitable for housing for a number of reasons. It is not a scaleable answer to the problem.

Like you I am using almost all of my spare money In reverting paddock to flower meadow and open woodland to improve biodiversity. My land serves as an important bridge between two nature reserves so I am getting a lot of advice from the Lincs Wildlife Trust on how to do things.

Sadly it strikes me that Philip displays an astonishing degree of almost wilful ignorance of the importance of proper non-agricultural countryside in his desperate desire for never ending development. And that is the issue - in his world it really is never ending and nothing can stand in the way of building. It is a genuinely stupid philosophy.

Theuniondivvie said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Philip_Thompson said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

Theuniondivvie said:

For you the Culture War is over.

https://twitter.com/barbarasutton15/status/1395304002334699521?s=21

That makes me uneasy. None of the explanations that spring to mind are innocent.

Why? Home Secretary observing implementation of Home Office policy?

It has the air of mob boss wishing to witness at close quarters the 'debriefing' of the 'rat'.

The 'rat' is an alleged criminal gangster making money on others misery.

Where do your sympathies lie?

I love all the screeching about how dare the authorities remove the two Indians illegal immigrants on an Islamic holy day.....and they turn out to two Sikhs. So essentially people are arguing you can't deport an individual from a nominally Christian country on the holy day of a different religion that has nothing to do with those being deported. Interesting logic.

For those doing the screeching, no deportation can ever be morally justified.

Or they need to go on some unconscious bias training? They saw two brown skinned people and thought they were Muslims?

I was there and folk knew they were Sikhs from the get go, what with them being neighbours and all. At the end of the stand off the 2 guys were escorted to the local mosque just in case the heavies did a double cross; amazing how people of different religions can stick together in the face of pricks in uniforms.

Richard_Tyndall said:

MattW said:

Fishing said:

Casino_Royale said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Fishing said:

On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).

So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.

Cars are probably a big one.

For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.

If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?

I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.

Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.

I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.

Which green targets are the unrealistic ones?

Getting rid of all new Petrol and diesel cars by 2035. I am not sure anyone has yet clocked what a massive change that will mean to our lives unless we start to see some of these technological breakthroughs we are promised.

Scott_xP said:

Boris Johnson’s spokesman says "Great British Railways” will only operate in… England.
https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1395341389693693956

Casino_Royale said:

I think all new undergraduates to Oriel College should simply be required to watch Rhodes: The Life The Legend.

Theuniondivvie said:

Carnyx said:

Casino_Royale said:

MaxPB said:

Lol, Rhodes doesn't fall. Oriel College decline to do so because of expense and regulatory concerns, especially given that the culture secretary has an effective veto over its removal now.

Expect Twitter go go mental over it, I wonder whether Labour will fall into this trap as well or if they'll manage to sidestep it by not saying anything. We know the Tories will celebrate it especially given that Oriel have cited regulatory issues as the major reason to not do it.

Do you have a link?

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/may/20/cecil-rhodes-statue-will-not-be-removed-for-now-says-oxford-oriel-college

(there's something else somewhere on the Graun website)

For now?
Sounds quite blackmaily to me, just keep those £100m chunks coming and your precious statue will be fine..

BluestBlue said:

Mexicanpete said:

BluestBlue said:

kinabalu said:

BluestBlue said:

Jonathan said:

Alistair said:

Jonathan said:

The curious thing about the Tories implementing UKIP or Labour policies they previously bitterly opposed or spending money like it's water is that none of their traditional supporters seem to care at all. They seem quite happy. Weird.

It's because the Conservatives primary motivation is winning and rubbing their opponents faces in it.

They laugh at their opposition's principles and continue to remain in power.

What is the point of power for if it means doing things that you were against five minutes ago?

The Thatcherite right is clearly dead in British politics.

Despite the name, the Conservative Party is not some kind of historical re-enactment society; it adapts its tactics and strategy to the current circumstances while always holding to its most fundamental priorities: to keep socialists out of power, and to conserve as much as can be conserved while achieving that goal. To have offered the nation a purely Thatcherite economic prospectus in the context of 2019 would have been the best way to propel Jeremy Corbyn into power, and as such would have been a profoundly un-Conservative thing to do.

Labour, by contrast, is remarkably backward-looking. The left look back to Attlee as their supreme model; the right look not only to Blairism for victory, but as Lord Adonis asserted just a few days ago, to Blair himself (!). The party of progress and solidarity is paradoxically stuck in the past and fatally riven; Conservatives stick together and look to the future.

Yes. But you're dressing up vice as a virtue.

What's good for the Conservatives is good for Britain because Labour are bad for Britain, so the Conservatives sacred duty is to win elections and keep out Labour who are very bad for Britain. Therefore whatever the Conservatives do to win elections and stay in power is not only good for them, it is by definition extremely good for Britain.

This is the logic of the ultra partisan. And it's impeccable on its own terms.

That is a most excellent summary indeed, and pretty much where the nation is right now.

Here's the Labour version:

What's good for Labour is good for Britain because the Tories are bad for Britain, so Labour's sacred duty is to win elections and keep out the Tories who are very bad for Britain. Unless that means compromising one micron with Blairites/Brownites/Soft Left/Blue Labour/Corbynites/Starmerites/reality, in which case our faction must maintain absolute ideological purity and if the Tories get in again then who cares anyway at least they'll keep our taxes down...

Blue, I was with you all the way until " if the Tories get in again then who cares anyway at least they'll keep our taxes down". Have you not been paying attention to Government spending (actuality and proposals) since December 2019. Unless we get rampant inflation and the debt pays for itself, I suspect we will need tax rises, and enormous ones too, from government irrespective of stripe.

What might have happened since December 2019 to require enormous Government spending across the world, I wonder? Nonetheless, I strongly suspect that the Tories will levy less in tax to pay for a global pandemic than Labour would have levied had one never existed at all.

Philip_Thompson said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Cookie said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Phil said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Cookie said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Sandpit said:

Casino_Royale said:

Fishing said:

Casino_Royale said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Fishing said:

On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).

So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.

Cars are probably a big one.

For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.

If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?

I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.

Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.

I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.

I think I've said on here before that the Conservatives are on a hiding to nothing if they think cold homes, no more foreign holidays and bland diets are a vote winner.

We only go green with lots of innovative new technology that enhances choice and makes people's lives better.

Yes, and they also need to make the case for positive innovative greenery, as opposed to the greenery proposed by those on the left that is mostly negative and destroying of economic activity.

As we move to zero-emission cars, having suburban people move about via cars in tree-lined streets is going to be very environmentally friendly.

Indeed if we're using net zero fuel then I wonder whether clean cars moving about in spacious tree-lined streets will be cleaner than trams in concrete jungles.

Unlikely.
Electric cars solve the problem of NO2 emissions and reduce carbon emissions (though carbon is remarkably complex!). OTOH, they increase the emissions of some particulates, and there are also issues around, especially, lithium extraction for batteries.
Basically, however you're doing it, you are, per passenger, moving a lot more weight and having to work a lot harder against friction if you're moving people by cars than if you're moving people by mass transit.
You're also occupying far more road space.
I'm not denying that electric cars are a big step forward, but they are not a panacea to all our urban transport travails.
The point about spacious tree-lined streets is key - we can only really get these streets if we reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets. For which we need improvements in the provision of non-car modes (including walking - see 'spacious tree-lined streets'.
This can be done without taking a heavy handed, hardline anti-car approach.

One big thing electric cars do give us when we are trying to make streets a nicer place to be is a massive reduction in noise. It's much more pleasant to be in a street with electric cars humming silently past you than being shouted at by an internal combustion engine. It does present issues crossing the road though - it's amazing how much we use sound as an indication that nothing is coming when we cross. We will get used to it soon enough though.

We don't need to reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets, we can build more and bigger streets.

Have more undeveloped fields developed and built on. You can have buildings for housing, trees for the environment, roads for moving, buildings for businesses etc - rather than fields for animals to wander on that our economically irrelevant and could be imported from New Zealand instead.

More streets means more space dedicated to cars instead of the things people actually want - shops, restaurants, libraries, housing & all that stuff. The problem with allocating all that space is that you turn walkable places where you could live & get access to all the amenities you need on foot or by bicycle into car-dependent suburbs. In a car-dependent ’urb it’s impossible to live without a car, because so much space has been given over to cars that you can’t get anywhere without using one, whether you like it or not. Even travelling short distances that many people would be happy to walk becomes impossible once enough space has been given over to cars, because the roads become so wide that crossing them becomes an exercise in taking your life in your hands.

This is not a model of development that actually leads to a great deal of happiness - individually we all like the idea of the large garden /and/ the wide streets on which we can drive where-ever we want, but the net effect when everyone does that is to destroy the very places we inhabit.

The country is not short of space.

70% of UK land is used for agriculture.
Agriculture is 0.61% of UK GDP.

Personally I find dedicating 70% of land to 0.61% of GDP to be rather inefficient - what about you?

I don't think that's a particularly strong argument. We don't allocate land dependent on GDP, otherwise the country would be covered in office blocks. We keep country agricultural because we value green space.

We shouldn't.

I sometimes think you’d be happier moving to Coruscant. No green space, big buildings everywhere, the best political intrigue in the galaxy...

That's what those advocating piling people high in cities, while we keep the countryside (or "their view") unspoilt want. That's the opposite of what I am proposing.

I am saying there should be more green space, more trees, more gardens, more parks where people LIVE, not just in fields that nobody ever goes to, are totally uneconomic, and are only ever seen from the sky.

Besides I've said all along if you want an unspoilt view then buy your view. Not one person has come up with an objection to that.

I agree that we have too much ordinary under-utilised scrub or pasture land that could be much better used, rather than being mechanically mowed. Far too great a distance between hedgerows and those that are there, cut far too frequently and aggressively.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean concreting over with roads, houses with patios. We have a shortage of housing in some parts of the country. But just about everywhere we have a shortage of quality hedgerow, woodland, wetland and wildflower meadow, all of which are important from a biodiversity and carbon perspective.

Your complete disinterest in this with a sole focus on building building building is completely at odds with the direction of both politicians and the public mood.

If building is so at odds why is there so much demand for housing? Why are prices so high? Why do new houses get bought from the plots before they're even built and have people moving in the day they're ready?

It's at odds with the selfish shits who want unspoilt views but don't want to pay to buy those views. Again, if you buy your own view then that's it, discussion over, if you don't then jog on.

I have done so.

Fantastic. That's the free market solution.

Now if you get a tempting offer that says I will give you ££££ for some of that land to be built on, then in my view that should be between you as the owner and the prospective buyers. Nobody else.

I am paying with my own money to boost biodiversity on some poorly managed land that is not particularly suitable for housing for a number of reasons. It is not a scaleable answer to the problem.

Like you I am using almost all of my spare money In reverting paddock to flower meadow and open woodland to improve biodiversity. My land serves as an important bridge between two nature reserves so I am getting a lot of advice from the Lincs Wildlife Trust on how to do things.

Sadly it strikes me that Philip displays an astonishing degree of almost wilful ignorance of the importance of proper non-agricultural countryside in his desperate desire for never ending development. And that is the issue - in his world it really is never ending and nothing can stand in the way of building. It is a genuinely stupid philosophy.

I have no objection to non-agricultural countryside.

I just don't think its necessary to maintain 70% of land in this country as agricultural countryside.

Nor do I agree with abusing the green belt, not to maintain the countryside, but instead as a weapon to keep houses unaffordable.

The green belt today is twice the size of the green belt in 1979, despite the fact that we have many more population needing housing now so it would be logical to have a smaller belt not a bigger one.

Mexicanpete said:

YBarddCwsc said:

Pulpstar said:

Labour might win Batley but heading into a pub and asking "Will you be voting for Jo Cox's sister" - which is about what the ConHome chap did is going to elicit a bias response.
Most voters will have no idea who she is.

It is a hard call for Labour, IMO

Kim Leadbetter appears a very capable, personable candidate with local roots. She has a unifying appeal with "More in Common". And David Herdson speaks very highly of her.

But, she has no political experience (was she even a member of the Labour party before deciding to put her name forward ?)

This is likely to be a messy by-election and (at the risk of echoing Gordon Brown), this is no time for a novice. She is likely to receive much more scrutiny and even hostility as a political candidate than she has ever experienced before in running local charity.

Hard call ... Labour need a very safe pair of hands.

I'm scratching my head, but no, I can't think of that safe pair of hands.

My temptation would be give Pidcock another try out, when she sinks without trace, hopefully that will be her done for eternity.

Mexicanpete said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

MattW said:

Fishing said:

Casino_Royale said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Fishing said:

On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).

So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.

Cars are probably a big one.

For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.

If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?

I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.

Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.

I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.

Which green targets are the unrealistic ones?

Getting rid of all new Petrol and diesel cars by 2035. I am not sure anyone has yet clocked what a massive change that will mean to our lives unless we start to see some of these technological breakthroughs we are promised.

Haven't you just given the Government the benefit of another 5 years to achieve their unrealistic target? 2030?

FrancisUrquhart said:

Got to love the old vox pops...they asked a lady about what she thought about the government plans for Great British Railways and she witters on about remembering BR, how the trains didn't run on time, was all a bit shit, but does a 180 and says but I am glad we are going back to that.

SandyRentool said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Got to love the old vox pops...they asked a lady about what she thought about the government plans for Great British Railways and she witters on about remembering BR, how the trains didn't run on time, was all a bit shit, but does a 180 and says but I am glad we are going back to that.

Then there's the guy saying that he doesn't see the results of any of the investment - while standing in front of a station served by a fleet of brand new trains.

Mexicanpete said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Cookie said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Phil said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Cookie said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Sandpit said:

Casino_Royale said:

Fishing said:

Casino_Royale said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Fishing said:

On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).

So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.

Cars are probably a big one.

For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.

If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?

I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.

Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.

I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.

I think I've said on here before that the Conservatives are on a hiding to nothing if they think cold homes, no more foreign holidays and bland diets are a vote winner.

We only go green with lots of innovative new technology that enhances choice and makes people's lives better.

Yes, and they also need to make the case for positive innovative greenery, as opposed to the greenery proposed by those on the left that is mostly negative and destroying of economic activity.

As we move to zero-emission cars, having suburban people move about via cars in tree-lined streets is going to be very environmentally friendly.

Indeed if we're using net zero fuel then I wonder whether clean cars moving about in spacious tree-lined streets will be cleaner than trams in concrete jungles.

Unlikely.
Electric cars solve the problem of NO2 emissions and reduce carbon emissions (though carbon is remarkably complex!). OTOH, they increase the emissions of some particulates, and there are also issues around, especially, lithium extraction for batteries.
Basically, however you're doing it, you are, per passenger, moving a lot more weight and having to work a lot harder against friction if you're moving people by cars than if you're moving people by mass transit.
You're also occupying far more road space.
I'm not denying that electric cars are a big step forward, but they are not a panacea to all our urban transport travails.
The point about spacious tree-lined streets is key - we can only really get these streets if we reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets. For which we need improvements in the provision of non-car modes (including walking - see 'spacious tree-lined streets'.
This can be done without taking a heavy handed, hardline anti-car approach.

One big thing electric cars do give us when we are trying to make streets a nicer place to be is a massive reduction in noise. It's much more pleasant to be in a street with electric cars humming silently past you than being shouted at by an internal combustion engine. It does present issues crossing the road though - it's amazing how much we use sound as an indication that nothing is coming when we cross. We will get used to it soon enough though.

We don't need to reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets, we can build more and bigger streets.

Have more undeveloped fields developed and built on. You can have buildings for housing, trees for the environment, roads for moving, buildings for businesses etc - rather than fields for animals to wander on that our economically irrelevant and could be imported from New Zealand instead.

More streets means more space dedicated to cars instead of the things people actually want - shops, restaurants, libraries, housing & all that stuff. The problem with allocating all that space is that you turn walkable places where you could live & get access to all the amenities you need on foot or by bicycle into car-dependent suburbs. In a car-dependent ’urb it’s impossible to live without a car, because so much space has been given over to cars that you can’t get anywhere without using one, whether you like it or not. Even travelling short distances that many people would be happy to walk becomes impossible once enough space has been given over to cars, because the roads become so wide that crossing them becomes an exercise in taking your life in your hands.

This is not a model of development that actually leads to a great deal of happiness - individually we all like the idea of the large garden /and/ the wide streets on which we can drive where-ever we want, but the net effect when everyone does that is to destroy the very places we inhabit.

The country is not short of space.

70% of UK land is used for agriculture.
Agriculture is 0.61% of UK GDP.

Personally I find dedicating 70% of land to 0.61% of GDP to be rather inefficient - what about you?

I don't think that's a particularly strong argument. We don't allocate land dependent on GDP, otherwise the country would be covered in office blocks. We keep country agricultural because we value green space.

We shouldn't.

I sometimes think you’d be happier moving to Coruscant. No green space, big buildings everywhere, the best political intrigue in the galaxy...

That's what those advocating piling people high in cities, while we keep the countryside (or "their view") unspoilt want. That's the opposite of what I am proposing.

I am saying there should be more green space, more trees, more gardens, more parks where people LIVE, not just in fields that nobody ever goes to, are totally uneconomic, and are only ever seen from the sky.

Besides I've said all along if you want an unspoilt view then buy your view. Not one person has come up with an objection to that.

I agree that we have too much ordinary under-utilised scrub or pasture land that could be much better used, rather than being mechanically mowed. Far too great a distance between hedgerows and those that are there, cut far too frequently and aggressively.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean concreting over with roads, houses with patios. We have a shortage of housing in some parts of the country. But just about everywhere we have a shortage of quality hedgerow, woodland, wetland and wildflower meadow, all of which are important from a biodiversity and carbon perspective.

Your complete disinterest in this with a sole focus on building building building is completely at odds with the direction of both politicians and the public mood.

If building is so at odds why is there so much demand for housing? Why are prices so high? Why do new houses get bought from the plots before they're even built and have people moving in the day they're ready?

It's at odds with the selfish shits who want unspoilt views but don't want to pay to buy those views. Again, if you buy your own view then that's it, discussion over, if you don't then jog on.

I have done so.

Fantastic. That's the free market solution.

Now if you get a tempting offer that says I will give you ££££ for some of that land to be built on, then in my view that should be between you as the owner and the prospective buyers. Nobody else.

I am paying with my own money to boost biodiversity on some poorly managed land that is not particularly suitable for housing for a number of reasons. It is not a scaleable answer to the problem.

Like you I am using almost all of my spare money In reverting paddock to flower meadow and open woodland to improve biodiversity. My land serves as an important bridge between two nature reserves so I am getting a lot of advice from the Lincs Wildlife Trust on how to do things.

Sadly it strikes me that Philip displays an astonishing degree of almost wilful ignorance of the importance of proper non-agricultural countryside in his desperate desire for never ending development. And that is the issue - in his world it really is never ending and nothing can stand in the way of building. It is a genuinely stupid philosophy.

I think nurseryman Thompson's idea is; plant small private houses and watch the Conservative votes grow.

MarqueeMark said:

Endillion said:

MarqueeMark said:

Endillion said:

My goodness, but Mark clearly enjoyed writing this one.

Res ipsa loquitur....

I suspect I will have more fun writing the follow-up piece: where the hell does Labour draw its battle lines for the next election?

Yes, I look forward to it. I can't deny I also enjoyed reading this one, but it does feel a tad hubristic.

I like to think it was rather a bookend to the "Boris = Brexit bad man: boooo!" threads we see here too often.

I grew up in Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire. I don't recognise the political geography there now. Same across the West Midlands. I just thought it worth exploring how far that change has moved the goalposts for Labour. They now don't even seem to be on the playing surface over much of the Midlands. Yes, that can change - but it seems to be Labour waiting for the Tories to spontaneously combust, rather than anything more proactive.

Richard_Tyndall said:

MattW said:

Fishing said:

Casino_Royale said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Fishing said:

On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).

So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.

Cars are probably a big one.

For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.

If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?

I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.

Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.

I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.

Which green targets are the unrealistic ones?

Getting rid of all new Petrol and diesel cars by 2035. I am not sure anyone has yet clocked what a massive change that will mean to our lives unless we start to see some of these technological breakthroughs we are promised.

Anabobazina said:

tlg86 said:

Gallowgate said:

Scott_xP said:

Boris Johnson’s spokesman says "Great British Railways” will only operate in… England.
https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1395341389693693956

That's actually a bit of a shame really. Would have been nice to have a GB-wide system.

That's devolution for you. In fact, it will probably only be the "DfT TOCs", so not London Overground, TfL Rail, Merseyrail, ScotRail, Caledonian Sleeper and TfW Rail.

Well yes, as ScotRail is being renationalised – to the Scottish Government and TfL is already nationalised (and indeed was never privatised in the first place). Ditto NI Rail.

I'm not sure what the problem is? It's an English railway that serves some stations in Scotland and Wales. This is entirely normal – TGV (France) and Trentitalia (Italy) are nationalised railways that – guess what? – cross borders.

People aren't going to be kicked out at the banks of the Tweed and told to continue their journey by river raft.

Anabobazina said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Got to love the old vox pops...they asked a lady about what she thought about the government plans for Great British Railways and she witters on about remembering BR, how the trains didn't run on time, was all a bit shit, but does a 180 and says but I am glad we are going back to that.

The public want one arse to kick, where the government cannot hide from responsibility, and a load of chiselling franchisees can't just blame each other for their failings. They want an integrated system of ticketing rather than an absurd one which prevents you travelling on a different train because it's run by a different 'company' – even though they are all subsidised by the taxpayer, who also pays for the track they run on.

Franchising has been a three-decade long farce and an embarrassment to this country, the pioneer of rail. We need a single railway run under a single public-facing brand that is accountable to the taxpayers who fund it.

No surprise that the idea will be massively popular with the public, despite the niche views expressed furiously on PB from people who have seemingly no interest, understanding or experience of using the railway.

Richard_Tyndall said:

justin124 said:

Sean_F said:

A good article, and it’s striking just how far the Midlands has shifted. Traditional marginal seats like Burton, Nuneaton, N W Leics are now very solidly Conservative.

The reverse is middle class urban and university seats shifting left at a rate of knots, and not just left, but far left. One could imagine the Greens eventually gaining some from Labour.

Sean_F said:

A good article, and it’s striking just how far the Midlands has shifted. Traditional marginal seats like Burton, Nuneaton, N W Leics are now very solidly Conservative.

The reverse is middle class urban and university seats shifting left at a rate of knots, and not just left, but far left. One could imagine the Greens eventually gaining some from Labour.

Though seats suchas Gedling, Wolverhampton SW and Edgbaston are far less Tory than in the past. Ken Clarke's retirement might see Rushcliffe drift the same way.

Gedling has moved more, rather than less, Conservative. It was solidly Labour from 1997 to 2019.

Richard_Tyndall said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Cookie said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Phil said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Cookie said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Sandpit said:

Casino_Royale said:

Fishing said:

Casino_Royale said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Fishing said:

On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).

So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.

Cars are probably a big one.

For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.

If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?

I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.

Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.

I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.

I think I've said on here before that the Conservatives are on a hiding to nothing if they think cold homes, no more foreign holidays and bland diets are a vote winner.

We only go green with lots of innovative new technology that enhances choice and makes people's lives better.

Yes, and they also need to make the case for positive innovative greenery, as opposed to the greenery proposed by those on the left that is mostly negative and destroying of economic activity.

As we move to zero-emission cars, having suburban people move about via cars in tree-lined streets is going to be very environmentally friendly.

Indeed if we're using net zero fuel then I wonder whether clean cars moving about in spacious tree-lined streets will be cleaner than trams in concrete jungles.

Unlikely.
Electric cars solve the problem of NO2 emissions and reduce carbon emissions (though carbon is remarkably complex!). OTOH, they increase the emissions of some particulates, and there are also issues around, especially, lithium extraction for batteries.
Basically, however you're doing it, you are, per passenger, moving a lot more weight and having to work a lot harder against friction if you're moving people by cars than if you're moving people by mass transit.
You're also occupying far more road space.
I'm not denying that electric cars are a big step forward, but they are not a panacea to all our urban transport travails.
The point about spacious tree-lined streets is key - we can only really get these streets if we reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets. For which we need improvements in the provision of non-car modes (including walking - see 'spacious tree-lined streets'.
This can be done without taking a heavy handed, hardline anti-car approach.

One big thing electric cars do give us when we are trying to make streets a nicer place to be is a massive reduction in noise. It's much more pleasant to be in a street with electric cars humming silently past you than being shouted at by an internal combustion engine. It does present issues crossing the road though - it's amazing how much we use sound as an indication that nothing is coming when we cross. We will get used to it soon enough though.

We don't need to reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets, we can build more and bigger streets.

Have more undeveloped fields developed and built on. You can have buildings for housing, trees for the environment, roads for moving, buildings for businesses etc - rather than fields for animals to wander on that our economically irrelevant and could be imported from New Zealand instead.

More streets means more space dedicated to cars instead of the things people actually want - shops, restaurants, libraries, housing & all that stuff. The problem with allocating all that space is that you turn walkable places where you could live & get access to all the amenities you need on foot or by bicycle into car-dependent suburbs. In a car-dependent ’urb it’s impossible to live without a car, because so much space has been given over to cars that you can’t get anywhere without using one, whether you like it or not. Even travelling short distances that many people would be happy to walk becomes impossible once enough space has been given over to cars, because the roads become so wide that crossing them becomes an exercise in taking your life in your hands.

This is not a model of development that actually leads to a great deal of happiness - individually we all like the idea of the large garden /and/ the wide streets on which we can drive where-ever we want, but the net effect when everyone does that is to destroy the very places we inhabit.

The country is not short of space.

70% of UK land is used for agriculture.
Agriculture is 0.61% of UK GDP.

Personally I find dedicating 70% of land to 0.61% of GDP to be rather inefficient - what about you?

I don't think that's a particularly strong argument. We don't allocate land dependent on GDP, otherwise the country would be covered in office blocks. We keep country agricultural because we value green space.

We shouldn't.

I sometimes think you’d be happier moving to Coruscant. No green space, big buildings everywhere, the best political intrigue in the galaxy...

That's what those advocating piling people high in cities, while we keep the countryside (or "their view") unspoilt want. That's the opposite of what I am proposing.

I am saying there should be more green space, more trees, more gardens, more parks where people LIVE, not just in fields that nobody ever goes to, are totally uneconomic, and are only ever seen from the sky.

Besides I've said all along if you want an unspoilt view then buy your view. Not one person has come up with an objection to that.

I agree that we have too much ordinary under-utilised scrub or pasture land that could be much better used, rather than being mechanically mowed. Far too great a distance between hedgerows and those that are there, cut far too frequently and aggressively.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean concreting over with roads, houses with patios. We have a shortage of housing in some parts of the country. But just about everywhere we have a shortage of quality hedgerow, woodland, wetland and wildflower meadow, all of which are important from a biodiversity and carbon perspective.

Your complete disinterest in this with a sole focus on building building building is completely at odds with the direction of both politicians and the public mood.

If building is so at odds why is there so much demand for housing? Why are prices so high? Why do new houses get bought from the plots before they're even built and have people moving in the day they're ready?

It's at odds with the selfish shits who want unspoilt views but don't want to pay to buy those views. Again, if you buy your own view then that's it, discussion over, if you don't then jog on.

I have done so.

Fantastic. That's the free market solution.

Now if you get a tempting offer that says I will give you ££££ for some of that land to be built on, then in my view that should be between you as the owner and the prospective buyers. Nobody else.

I am paying with my own money to boost biodiversity on some poorly managed land that is not particularly suitable for housing for a number of reasons. It is not a scaleable answer to the problem.

Like you I am using almost all of my spare money In reverting paddock to flower meadow and open woodland to improve biodiversity. My land serves as an important bridge between two nature reserves so I am getting a lot of advice from the Lincs Wildlife Trust on how to do things.

Sadly it strikes me that Philip displays an astonishing degree of almost wilful ignorance of the importance of proper non-agricultural countryside in his desperate desire for never ending development. And that is the issue - in his world it really is never ending and nothing can stand in the way of building. It is a genuinely stupid philosophy.

I have no objection to non-agricultural countryside.

I just don't think its necessary to maintain 70% of land in this country as agricultural countryside.

Nor do I agree with abusing the green belt, not to maintain the countryside, but instead as a weapon to keep houses unaffordable.

The green belt today is twice the size of the green belt in 1979, despite the fact that we have many more population needing housing now so it would be logical to have a smaller belt not a bigger one.

Since 1995 there has actually been a drop in Green Belt land 37,000 hectares.

Anabobazina said:

Scott_xP said:

Boris Johnson’s spokesman says "Great British Railways” will only operate in… England.
https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1395341389693693956

Not true. It is an English railway based in England, but services will enter Scotland and Wales in the same way that the TGV serves stations in Italy.

Leon said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Theuniondivvie said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Sandpit said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Philip_Thompson said:

kinabalu said:

Malmesbury said:

kinabalu said:

Theuniondivvie said:

For you the Culture War is over.

https://twitter.com/barbarasutton15/status/1395304002334699521?s=21

That makes me uneasy. None of the explanations that spring to mind are innocent.

Why? Home Secretary observing implementation of Home Office policy?

It has the air of mob boss wishing to witness at close quarters the 'debriefing' of the 'rat'.

The 'rat' is an alleged criminal gangster making money on others misery.

Where do your sympathies lie?

I love all the screeching about how dare the authorities remove the two Indians illegal immigrants on an Islamic holy day.....and they turn out to two Sikhs. So essentially people are arguing you can't deport an individual from a nominally Christian country on the holy day of a different religion that has nothing to do with those being deported. Interesting logic.

For those doing the screeching, no deportation can ever be morally justified.

Or they need to go on some unconscious bias training? They saw two brown skinned people and thought they were Muslims?

I was there and folk knew they were Sikhs from the get go, what with them being neighbours and all. At the end of the stand off the 2 guys were escorted to the local mosque just in case the heavies did a double cross; amazing how people of different religions can stick together in the face of pricks in uniforms.

I was talking about people on social media. There was lots of people banging on about what an outrage it was to deport somebody on such a holy day for Muslims.

Including genius Nats like this:


"Rob Perry
@docrobperry

For anyone who doesn’t follow Scottish affairs, this is the Glasgow public preventing a Muslim family from being deported. On Eid."

https://twitter.com/docrobperry/status/1392875349545992194?s=20

50,000 likes. Incredibly, he hasn't deleted it. They all look the same to him

This Labour MP is no better

"Nadia Whittome MP

May 13
This is what solidarity looks like.

When the Home Office carried out an immigration raid on two Muslim men during Eid, the people of Glasgow got their neighbours released.

Don’t let anyone tell you direct action doesn’t work."

https://twitter.com/NadiaWhittomeMP/status/1392944666073616390?s=20

If you want a proper display of pointless, vacuous, Woke-frenzied virtue signalling, it is hard to do better than this. They didn't even check if they were Muslim, they didn't give a fuck. All about looking good on social media, braying about the evil English Tories, then briskly move on. Cringe

And theuniondivvie was THERE, in his funny little shorts, wet-dreaming of 1968 in Paris, from the grey pavements of Glasgow

SandyRentool said:

We have just been advised that hybrid working will be the new normal going forward, with staff in the office, on average, 50% of the time.

Richard_Tyndall said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Cookie said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Phil said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Cookie said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Sandpit said:

Casino_Royale said:

Fishing said:

Casino_Royale said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Fishing said:

On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).

So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.

Cars are probably a big one.

For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.

If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?

I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.

Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.

I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.

I think I've said on here before that the Conservatives are on a hiding to nothing if they think cold homes, no more foreign holidays and bland diets are a vote winner.

We only go green with lots of innovative new technology that enhances choice and makes people's lives better.

Yes, and they also need to make the case for positive innovative greenery, as opposed to the greenery proposed by those on the left that is mostly negative and destroying of economic activity.

As we move to zero-emission cars, having suburban people move about via cars in tree-lined streets is going to be very environmentally friendly.

Indeed if we're using net zero fuel then I wonder whether clean cars moving about in spacious tree-lined streets will be cleaner than trams in concrete jungles.

Unlikely.
Electric cars solve the problem of NO2 emissions and reduce carbon emissions (though carbon is remarkably complex!). OTOH, they increase the emissions of some particulates, and there are also issues around, especially, lithium extraction for batteries.
Basically, however you're doing it, you are, per passenger, moving a lot more weight and having to work a lot harder against friction if you're moving people by cars than if you're moving people by mass transit.
You're also occupying far more road space.
I'm not denying that electric cars are a big step forward, but they are not a panacea to all our urban transport travails.
The point about spacious tree-lined streets is key - we can only really get these streets if we reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets. For which we need improvements in the provision of non-car modes (including walking - see 'spacious tree-lined streets'.
This can be done without taking a heavy handed, hardline anti-car approach.

One big thing electric cars do give us when we are trying to make streets a nicer place to be is a massive reduction in noise. It's much more pleasant to be in a street with electric cars humming silently past you than being shouted at by an internal combustion engine. It does present issues crossing the road though - it's amazing how much we use sound as an indication that nothing is coming when we cross. We will get used to it soon enough though.

We don't need to reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets, we can build more and bigger streets.

Have more undeveloped fields developed and built on. You can have buildings for housing, trees for the environment, roads for moving, buildings for businesses etc - rather than fields for animals to wander on that our economically irrelevant and could be imported from New Zealand instead.

More streets means more space dedicated to cars instead of the things people actually want - shops, restaurants, libraries, housing & all that stuff. The problem with allocating all that space is that you turn walkable places where you could live & get access to all the amenities you need on foot or by bicycle into car-dependent suburbs. In a car-dependent ’urb it’s impossible to live without a car, because so much space has been given over to cars that you can’t get anywhere without using one, whether you like it or not. Even travelling short distances that many people would be happy to walk becomes impossible once enough space has been given over to cars, because the roads become so wide that crossing them becomes an exercise in taking your life in your hands.

This is not a model of development that actually leads to a great deal of happiness - individually we all like the idea of the large garden /and/ the wide streets on which we can drive where-ever we want, but the net effect when everyone does that is to destroy the very places we inhabit.

The country is not short of space.

70% of UK land is used for agriculture.
Agriculture is 0.61% of UK GDP.

Personally I find dedicating 70% of land to 0.61% of GDP to be rather inefficient - what about you?

I don't think that's a particularly strong argument. We don't allocate land dependent on GDP, otherwise the country would be covered in office blocks. We keep country agricultural because we value green space.

We shouldn't.

I sometimes think you’d be happier moving to Coruscant. No green space, big buildings everywhere, the best political intrigue in the galaxy...

That's what those advocating piling people high in cities, while we keep the countryside (or "their view") unspoilt want. That's the opposite of what I am proposing.

I am saying there should be more green space, more trees, more gardens, more parks where people LIVE, not just in fields that nobody ever goes to, are totally uneconomic, and are only ever seen from the sky.

Besides I've said all along if you want an unspoilt view then buy your view. Not one person has come up with an objection to that.

I agree that we have too much ordinary under-utilised scrub or pasture land that could be much better used, rather than being mechanically mowed. Far too great a distance between hedgerows and those that are there, cut far too frequently and aggressively.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean concreting over with roads, houses with patios. We have a shortage of housing in some parts of the country. But just about everywhere we have a shortage of quality hedgerow, woodland, wetland and wildflower meadow, all of which are important from a biodiversity and carbon perspective.

Your complete disinterest in this with a sole focus on building building building is completely at odds with the direction of both politicians and the public mood.

If building is so at odds why is there so much demand for housing? Why are prices so high? Why do new houses get bought from the plots before they're even built and have people moving in the day they're ready?

It's at odds with the selfish shits who want unspoilt views but don't want to pay to buy those views. Again, if you buy your own view then that's it, discussion over, if you don't then jog on.

I have done so.

Fantastic. That's the free market solution.

Now if you get a tempting offer that says I will give you ££££ for some of that land to be built on, then in my view that should be between you as the owner and the prospective buyers. Nobody else.

I am paying with my own money to boost biodiversity on some poorly managed land that is not particularly suitable for housing for a number of reasons. It is not a scaleable answer to the problem.

Like you I am using almost all of my spare money In reverting paddock to flower meadow and open woodland to improve biodiversity. My land serves as an important bridge between two nature reserves so I am getting a lot of advice from the Lincs Wildlife Trust on how to do things.

Sadly it strikes me that Philip displays an astonishing degree of almost wilful ignorance of the importance of proper non-agricultural countryside in his desperate desire for never ending development. And that is the issue - in his world it really is never ending and nothing can stand in the way of building. It is a genuinely stupid philosophy.

RochdalePioneers said:

Anabobazina said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Got to love the old vox pops...they asked a lady about what she thought about the government plans for Great British Railways and she witters on about remembering BR, how the trains didn't run on time, was all a bit shit, but does a 180 and says but I am glad we are going back to that.

The public want one arse to kick, where the government cannot hide from responsibility, and a load of chiselling franchisees can't just blame each other for their failings. They want an integrated system of ticketing rather than an absurd one which prevents you travelling on a different train because it's run by a different 'company' – even though they are all subsidised by the taxpayer, who also pays for the track they run on.

Franchising has been a three-decade long farce and an embarrassment to this country, the pioneer of rail. We need a single railway run under a single public-facing brand that is accountable to the taxpayers who fund it.

No surprise that the idea will be massively popular with the public, despite the niche views expressed furiously on PB from people who have seemingly no interest, understanding or experience of using the railway.

It has ended up as one of those "well you wouldn't start from here" problems. Everyone got that it was stupid, but how do you fix it? Hello Ms Passenger Customer. You want to go from A to B? OK, here are 43 different tickets you could buy most of which seem arbitrary and strange with their rules. Better still as you travel you will find staff who disagree with the rules and try to confuse you more. Finally you as a taxpayer will pay vast sums in subsidy to pay for all the bureaucracy.

The only thing that worries me about the new plan is that DafT are going to have even more power than they already have. They are a significant part of the current problems, having Great British Railways run commercially at arms length would have been preferable to bringing everything to be run in house by muppets.

FrancisUrquhart said:

Elon Musk UK visit drives Tesla factory rumours

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57185806

Do billionaires not have to quarantine?

noneoftheabove said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

moonshine said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Cookie said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Phil said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Cookie said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Sandpit said:

Casino_Royale said:

Fishing said:

Casino_Royale said:

Philip_Thompson said:

Fishing said:

On topic, an interesting article. It raises the question of whether there are any Midlands-specific policies that Labour can adopt. Backing, or at least accepting, Brexit is one. The Midlands is car-dependent, so maybe building more roads? House prices aren't as high as in the south, so housebuilding probably wouldn't work. Embracing the flag has been insincere and embarassing. And regional aid would probably not work either as it's not as deprived as the north (and I imagine the parts that are, vote Labour anyway).

So I don't think there's a magic bullet for Labour here, certainly not under Starmer.

Cars are probably a big one.

For years now all Labour wants to talk about are the railways. In one way the Tories sorting out the railways may be self-harming politically, since the more Labour talks about railways, the more Labour is just talking to them in cities.

If you drive around, but one party only wants to talk about public transport and acts like the very notion of driving is evil, then what does that say about what that party thinks about you?

I can say with experience that anti-car sentiment is very strong at the top of the public sector and within transportation.

Part of that is self-interest, of course. The latest is to major on the fact that electric cars will still be very bad for pollution due to the Oslo Effect of tyre and brake friction particulates and road dust emissions; tail pipe gas being only about 50-60% of it.

I get the impression that ditching the unrealistic green targets would be very popular outside London. Or at least implementing them by forcing people to stop driving and get their boilers changed when they work fine will be extremely unpopular. I just wonder which country will be the first to break the collective hysteria.

I think I've said on here before that the Conservatives are on a hiding to nothing if they think cold homes, no more foreign holidays and bland diets are a vote winner.

We only go green with lots of innovative new technology that enhances choice and makes people's lives better.

Yes, and they also need to make the case for positive innovative greenery, as opposed to the greenery proposed by those on the left that is mostly negative and destroying of economic activity.

As we move to zero-emission cars, having suburban people move about via cars in tree-lined streets is going to be very environmentally friendly.

Indeed if we're using net zero fuel then I wonder whether clean cars moving about in spacious tree-lined streets will be cleaner than trams in concrete jungles.

Unlikely.
Electric cars solve the problem of NO2 emissions and reduce carbon emissions (though carbon is remarkably complex!). OTOH, they increase the emissions of some particulates, and there are also issues around, especially, lithium extraction for batteries.
Basically, however you're doing it, you are, per passenger, moving a lot more weight and having to work a lot harder against friction if you're moving people by cars than if you're moving people by mass transit.
You're also occupying far more road space.
I'm not denying that electric cars are a big step forward, but they are not a panacea to all our urban transport travails.
The point about spacious tree-lined streets is key - we can only really get these streets if we reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets. For which we need improvements in the provision of non-car modes (including walking - see 'spacious tree-lined streets'.
This can be done without taking a heavy handed, hardline anti-car approach.

One big thing electric cars do give us when we are trying to make streets a nicer place to be is a massive reduction in noise. It's much more pleasant to be in a street with electric cars humming silently past you than being shouted at by an internal combustion engine. It does present issues crossing the road though - it's amazing how much we use sound as an indication that nothing is coming when we cross. We will get used to it soon enough though.

We don't need to reduce the volume of traffic on our urban streets, we can build more and bigger streets.

Have more undeveloped fields developed and built on. You can have buildings for housing, trees for the environment, roads for moving, buildings for businesses etc - rather than fields for animals to wander on that our economically irrelevant and could be imported from New Zealand instead.

More streets means more space dedicated to cars instead of the things people actually want - shops, restaurants, libraries, housing & all that stuff. The problem with allocating all that space is that you turn walkable places where you could live & get access to all the amenities you need on foot or by bicycle into car-dependent suburbs. In a car-dependent ’urb it’s impossible to live without a car, because so much space has been given over to cars that you can’t get anywhere without using one, whether you like it or not. Even travelling short distances that many people would be happy to walk becomes impossible once enough space has been given over to cars, because the roads become so wide that crossing them becomes an exercise in taking your life in your hands.

This is not a model of development that actually leads to a great deal of happiness - individually we all like the idea of the large garden /and/ the wide streets on which we can drive where-ever we want, but the net effect when everyone does that is to destroy the very places we inhabit.

The country is not short of space.

70% of UK land is used for agriculture.
Agriculture is 0.61% of UK GDP.

Personally I find dedicating 70% of land to 0.61% of GDP to be rather inefficient - what about you?

I don't think that's a particularly strong argument. We don't allocate land dependent on GDP, otherwise the country would be covered in office blocks. We keep country agricultural because we value green space.

We shouldn't.

I sometimes think you’d be happier moving to Coruscant. No green space, big buildings everywhere, the best political intrigue in the galaxy...

That's what those advocating piling people high in cities, while we keep the countryside (or "their view") unspoilt want. That's the opposite of what I am proposing.

I am saying there should be more green space, more trees, more gardens, more parks where people LIVE, not just in fields that nobody ever goes to, are totally uneconomic, and are only ever seen from the sky.

Besides I've said all along if you want an unspoilt view then buy your view. Not one person has come up with an objection to that.

I agree that we have too much ordinary under-utilised scrub or pasture land that could be much better used, rather than being mechanically mowed. Far too great a distance between hedgerows and those that are there, cut far too frequently and aggressively.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean concreting over with roads, houses with patios. We have a shortage of housing in some parts of the country. But just about everywhere we have a shortage of quality hedgerow, woodland, wetland and wildflower meadow, all of which are important from a biodiversity and carbon perspective.

Your complete disinterest in this with a sole focus on building building building is completely at odds with the direction of both politicians and the public mood.

If building is so at odds why is there so much demand for housing? Why are prices so high? Why do new houses get bought from the plots before they're even built and have people moving in the day they're ready?

It's at odds with the selfish shits who want unspoilt views but don't want to pay to buy those views. Again, if you buy your own view then that's it, discussion over, if you don't then jog on.

I have done so.

Fantastic. That's the free market solution.

Now if you get a tempting offer that says I will give you ££££ for some of that land to be built on, then in my view that should be between you as the owner and the prospective buyers. Nobody else.

I am paying with my own money to boost biodiversity on some poorly managed land that is not particularly suitable for housing for a number of reasons. It is not a scaleable answer to the problem.

Like you I am using almost all of my spare money In reverting paddock to flower meadow and open woodland to improve biodiversity. My land serves as an important bridge between two nature reserves so I am getting a lot of advice from the Lincs Wildlife Trust on how to do things.

Sadly it strikes me that Philip displays an astonishing degree of almost wilful ignorance of the importance of proper non-agricultural countryside in his desperate desire for never ending development. And that is the issue - in his world it really is never ending and nothing can stand in the way of building. It is a genuinely stupid philosophy.

I have no objection to non-agricultural countryside.

I just don't think its necessary to maintain 70% of land in this country as agricultural countryside.

Nor do I agree with abusing the green belt, not to maintain the countryside, but instead as a weapon to keep houses unaffordable.

The green belt today is twice the size of the green belt in 1979, despite the fact that we have many more population needing housing now so it would be logical to have a smaller belt not a bigger one.

Since 1995 there has actually been a drop in Green Belt land 37,000 hectares.

So more than doubled between 1979 and 1995 and a 2% drop since 1995?

On this one the more than doubling wins as the more relevant stat!

noneoftheabove said:

SandyRentool said:

We have just been advised that hybrid working will be the new normal going forward, with staff in the office, on average, 50% of the time.

Not like they picked 50% out of the air as they did not have a clue what the right percentage should be. Not at all, no......

FrancisUrquhart said:

Scott_xP said:

Boris Johnson’s spokesman says "Great British Railways” will only operate in… England.
https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1395341389693693956

Its not quite true....its true in relation to ticketing, but infrastructure is UK wide.

https://www.thenational.scot/news/19316252.great-british-railways-tory-plan-sparks-scottish-government-anger/

RochdalePioneers said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

Scott_xP said:

Boris Johnson’s spokesman says "Great British Railways” will only operate in… England.
https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1395341389693693956

Its not quite true....its true in relation to ticketing, but infrastructure is UK wide.

https://www.thenational.scot/news/19316252.great-british-railways-tory-plan-sparks-scottish-government-anger/

GB-wide. Network Rail does not cover Northern Ireland. Its future control over chunks of Wales, Merseyside and all of Scotland also looks increasingly tenuous. This is Great English Railways but we can't call it that.

MarqueeMark said:

Endillion said:

MarqueeMark said:

Endillion said:

My goodness, but Mark clearly enjoyed writing this one.

Res ipsa loquitur....

I suspect I will have more fun writing the follow-up piece: where the hell does Labour draw its battle lines for the next election?

Yes, I look forward to it. I can't deny I also enjoyed reading this one, but it does feel a tad hubristic.

I like to think it was rather a bookend to the "Boris = Brexit bad man: boooo!" threads we see here too often.

I grew up in Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire. I don't recognise the political geography there now. Same across the West Midlands. I just thought it worth exploring how far that change has moved the goalposts for Labour. They now don't even seem to be on the playing surface over much of the Midlands. Yes, that can change - but it seems to be Labour waiting for the Tories to spontaneously combust, rather than anything more proactive.