Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Starmer also going to make a speech at which he will rule out a Labour government bringing back free movement with the EU as he further shifts to reassure 2019 Tory voters thinking of making the move to Labour next time
Hmmm. EEA and even a CU are going to be closed off by the main parties over the next few years then. Will be interesting to see if the LibDems can have any joy doubling down on being the “reverse UKIP”
Ruling out EEA membership is stupid. Ruling out CU membership is very sensible.
It seems like a strategic error from Starmer (unless he is lying - highly possible)
He may or may not bring back the Red Wall but he is giving up on all of Remainia
There is a huge opportunity here for the Lib Dems. For millions of people Brexit is still THE issue especially FoM. Remainers want it back
We want it all back, but it's not happening anytime soon, one of the reasons it is hard to be anything other than pessimistic about the country's prospects right now. There will be at least two general elections before anything other than incremental improvements in our relationship with the EU is on the cards. Realistically, we probably need another ten years of Leavers dying* and the economic costs of leaving mounting before Labour will risk putting EEA to the electorate.
* just demographic reality - I am not being morbid or taking any pleasure in it, before someone gets huffy.
Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Starmer also going to make a speech at which he will rule out a Labour government bringing back free movement with the EU as he further shifts to reassure 2019 Tory voters thinking of making the move to Labour next time
Hmmm. EEA and even a CU are going to be closed off by the main parties over the next few years then. Will be interesting to see if the LibDems can have any joy doubling down on being the “reverse UKIP”
Ruling out EEA membership is stupid. Ruling out CU membership is very sensible.
It seems like a strategic error from Starmer (unless he is lying - highly possible)
He may or may not bring back the Red Wall but he is giving up on all of Remainia
There is a huge opportunity here for the Lib Dems. For millions of people Brexit is still THE issue especially FoM. Remainers want it back
Not for me it ain't. Possibly the most extreme Europhile on PB and for me it's dead, gone mate, deaceased, to be no more.
Let's forget it. They wouldn't have us back anyway, and who should blame them?
To return is to join the euro. This would be an economic disaster. We should have nothing to do with it.
As a Remainer I would vote no to rejoining if that was the consequence.
I’m not talking about rejoining the EU!
We are talking about what Starmer said. Ruling out the SM and CU
Looks like Theresa May might have the last laugh after all. If Starmer wins the next general election Brexit will end up looking much like her ditched deal rather than Boris' even harder line deal or the EEA deal Remainers wanted
Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Starmer also going to make a speech at which he will rule out a Labour government bringing back free movement with the EU as he further shifts to reassure 2019 Tory voters thinking of making the move to Labour next time
Hmmm. EEA and even a CU are going to be closed off by the main parties over the next few years then. Will be interesting to see if the LibDems can have any joy doubling down on being the “reverse UKIP”
Ruling out EEA membership is stupid. Ruling out CU membership is very sensible.
It seems like a strategic error from Starmer (unless he is lying - highly possible)
He may or may not bring back the Red Wall but he is giving up on all of Remainia
There is a huge opportunity here for the Lib Dems. For millions of people Brexit is still THE issue especially FoM. Remainers want it back
Strategically to get elected it is vital for him.
He cannot become PM without winning back the redwall and he will not win back the redwall without ruling out free movement/EEA.
The LDs might make some extra gains in Remain seats if they become the only main UK wide party backing EEA but the LDs would back Starmer over Johnson as PM anyway
But this could lose Labour a bunch of seats in big cities. Especially london
Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Starmer also going to make a speech at which he will rule out a Labour government bringing back free movement with the EU as he further shifts to reassure 2019 Tory voters thinking of making the move to Labour next time
Hmmm. EEA and even a CU are going to be closed off by the main parties over the next few years then. Will be interesting to see if the LibDems can have any joy doubling down on being the “reverse UKIP”
Ruling out EEA membership is stupid. Ruling out CU membership is very sensible.
It seems like a strategic error from Starmer (unless he is lying - highly possible)
He may or may not bring back the Red Wall but he is giving up on all of Remainia
There is a huge opportunity here for the Lib Dems. For millions of people Brexit is still THE issue especially FoM. Remainers want it back
Strategically to get elected it is vital for him.
He cannot become PM without winning back the redwall and he will not win back the redwall without ruling out free movement/EEA.
The LDs might make some extra gains in Remain seats if they become the only main UK wide party backing EEA but the LDs would back Starmer over Johnson as PM anyway
But this could lose Labour a bunch of seats in big cities. Especially london
To whom - come election day who would your typical London Labour voter vote for - they ain't going to vote for Bozo...
The problem with the triple lock is not the concept but the application which leads to an unintended ratcheting up of pensions relative to everything else in the long term. Cumulative pensions since the lock began should be linked to the higher of cumulative prices and cumulative earnings,and never fall in an individual year. Basing the inrease on the highest in each individual year willi inevitably lead to pensions outpacing earnings significantly in times of volatility. If the triple lock was maintained for long enough in its current form then a pensioner would earn more than the average wage.
Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Starmer also going to make a speech at which he will rule out a Labour government bringing back free movement with the EU as he further shifts to reassure 2019 Tory voters thinking of making the move to Labour next time
Hmmm. EEA and even a CU are going to be closed off by the main parties over the next few years then. Will be interesting to see if the LibDems can have any joy doubling down on being the “reverse UKIP”
Ruling out EEA membership is stupid. Ruling out CU membership is very sensible.
It seems like a strategic error from Starmer (unless he is lying - highly possible)
He may or may not bring back the Red Wall but he is giving up on all of Remainia
There is a huge opportunity here for the Lib Dems. For millions of people Brexit is still THE issue especially FoM. Remainers want it back
Strategically to get elected it is vital for him.
He cannot become PM without winning back the redwall and he will not win back the redwall without ruling out free movement/EEA.
The LDs might make some extra gains in Remain seats if they become the only main UK wide party backing EEA but the LDs would back Starmer over Johnson as PM anyway
But this could lose Labour a bunch of seats in big cities. Especially london
To whom - come election day who would your typical London Labour voter vote for - they ain't going to vote for Bozo...
Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Why should Starmer involve himself in a fist-fight that doesn't directly concern him?
He may be useless, but in this case he is better off letting Shapps and the RMT beat lumps out of each other.
Only HYUFD and the Daily Mail believe this strike, which will be unpopular with the travelling public, is the work of the Labour party, so there is no point in reinforcing that lie.
Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Starmer also going to make a speech at which he will rule out a Labour government bringing back free movement with the EU as he further shifts to reassure 2019 Tory voters thinking of making the move to Labour next time
Hmmm. EEA and even a CU are going to be closed off by the main parties over the next few years then. Will be interesting to see if the LibDems can have any joy doubling down on being the “reverse UKIP”
Ruling out EEA membership is stupid. Ruling out CU membership is very sensible.
It seems like a strategic error from Starmer (unless he is lying - highly possible)
He may or may not bring back the Red Wall but he is giving up on all of Remainia
There is a huge opportunity here for the Lib Dems. For millions of people Brexit is still THE issue especially FoM. Remainers want it back
I think you're vastly overestimating the degree to which Remainers want to hand to Boris on a plate the opportunity to reignite the Brexit wars.
Yes, I think a removal of the red tape at the Irish Sea and Channel through closer trade and regulatory alignment is the plan for the next GE. EU/EEA Rejoining is for a bit further down the line.
Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Starmer also going to make a speech at which he will rule out a Labour government bringing back free movement with the EU as he further shifts to reassure 2019 Tory voters thinking of making the move to Labour next time
Hmmm. EEA and even a CU are going to be closed off by the main parties over the next few years then. Will be interesting to see if the LibDems can have any joy doubling down on being the “reverse UKIP”
Ruling out EEA membership is stupid. Ruling out CU membership is very sensible.
It seems like a strategic error from Starmer (unless he is lying - highly possible)
He may or may not bring back the Red Wall but he is giving up on all of Remainia
There is a huge opportunity here for the Lib Dems. For millions of people Brexit is still THE issue especially FoM. Remainers want it back
Strategically to get elected it is vital for him.
He cannot become PM without winning back the redwall and he will not win back the redwall without ruling out free movement/EEA.
The LDs might make some extra gains in Remain seats if they become the only main UK wide party backing EEA but the LDs would back Starmer over Johnson as PM anyway
But this could lose Labour a bunch of seats in big cities. Especially london
To whom - come election day who would your typical London Labour voter vote for - they ain't going to vote for Bozo...
In some city Remain seats like Cambridge, Hornsey and Wood Green, Islington, Bristol West, Manchester Withington etc the Tories were 3rd in 2019 behind Labour and the LDs or Greens. Though the LDs and Greens would give Starmer confidence and supply anyway
If the government can afford to pay billions for HS2 then they should have the money to pay the rail staff more.
What ridiculous Brownian bullshit. 🤦♂️
The government can have a sensible role to play in long-term investments in infrastructure that will take decades to go through.
Paying the day-to-day staff wages of private businesses though should fall upon those businesses customers.
Getting new track built is an "investment". Getting a new hospital built is an "investment". Increasing staff wages, paying the same nurses or signal staff or anyone else more is not "investing" in rails or the NHS etc
Regardless of what Brown liked to say. I'm disappointed to see you parroting such Brownian bullshit.
HS2 is a white elephant. Always was. Always will be.
Nope HS2 is only a white elephant if you don't understand the capacity it opens up to shift freight from road to rail.
For reference a new quarry route opened yesterday - 1 train replaces 100 daily lorries.
How many extra lorries and other traffic could be operating if we spent £100bn on new motorways instead though?
100 lorries per day doesn't sound like a big deal to be frank. The M6 carries hundreds of thousands of vehicles per day, not a hundred per day.
Cost, remember. Petrol/diesel. Plus drivers.
100 lorries = 100 Yorkie enthusiasts. PLus congestion at each end.
1 train = 2 drivers.
Indeed.
Fundamentally, the advantage of railways is a much lower coefficient of friction, as well as a resilient trackbed: they can carry far heavier loads for long distances for limited outlays of energy without chewing up the road service and with only a couple of members of staff.
When you add on top how regulated and signalled they are they are much safer too.
Absolutely fantastic for the days when the economy operated by needing tonnes of the same good like coal, going to the same destination, like the coal power plant.
Not so good for the modern economy. But that doesn't suit the agenda some people have to push.
Where do you think the hard core for your motorways comes from? Your Crossrail? Construction in London and the HC? Clue: there is precious little hard rock in the HC.
Have a look at the quarry materials flows. Merehead limestone, for instance.
As I said, if you want to shift large volumes of the same good along the same route, then absolutely rail can be great. There's a time and a place for rail.
But the problem is, post-coal, that its not as much, and not as often. Whereas roads, especially in the age of goods getting more complicated and smaller, are stretched well past their capacity.
Adding more rail routes is tinkering at the edges of freight capacity, because most freight doesn't want to be moved by rail. Adding more motorways would be truly transformative.
Not really - most freight is distributed via a hub and spoke system. Delivery to the hubs can be done via rail with lorries doing the last x miles...
And unless I'm missing something the one problem that still hasn't been solved in the post carbon future is fuelling of Lorries...
Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Starmer also going to make a speech at which he will rule out a Labour government bringing back free movement with the EU as he further shifts to reassure 2019 Tory voters thinking of making the move to Labour next time
Hmmm. EEA and even a CU are going to be closed off by the main parties over the next few years then. Will be interesting to see if the LibDems can have any joy doubling down on being the “reverse UKIP”
Ruling out EEA membership is stupid. Ruling out CU membership is very sensible.
It seems like a strategic error from Starmer (unless he is lying - highly possible)
He may or may not bring back the Red Wall but he is giving up on all of Remainia
There is a huge opportunity here for the Lib Dems. For millions of people Brexit is still THE issue especially FoM. Remainers want it back
Not for me it ain't. Possibly the most extreme Europhile on PB and for me it's dead, gone mate, deaceased, to be no more.
Let's forget it. They wouldn't have us back anyway, and who should blame them?
To return is to join the euro. This would be an economic disaster. We should have nothing to do with it.
As a Remainer I would vote no to rejoining if that was the consequence.
I’m not talking about rejoining the EU!
We are talking about what Starmer said. Ruling out the SM and CU
Looks like Theresa May might have the last laugh after all. If Starmer wins the next general election Brexit will end up looking much like her ditched deal rather than Boris' even harder line deal or the EEA deal Remainers wanted
A CU won’t be possible without lots of work to unlock various other trade deals, and a lot of EU good will whilst the opposition is saying “we’d immediately reverse it”. It won’t happen.
Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Starmer also going to make a speech at which he will rule out a Labour government bringing back free movement with the EU as he further shifts to reassure 2019 Tory voters thinking of making the move to Labour next time
Hmmm. EEA and even a CU are going to be closed off by the main parties over the next few years then. Will be interesting to see if the LibDems can have any joy doubling down on being the “reverse UKIP”
Ruling out EEA membership is stupid. Ruling out CU membership is very sensible.
It seems like a strategic error from Starmer (unless he is lying - highly possible)
He may or may not bring back the Red Wall but he is giving up on all of Remainia
There is a huge opportunity here for the Lib Dems. For millions of people Brexit is still THE issue especially FoM. Remainers want it back
Not for me it ain't. Possibly the most extreme Europhile on PB and for me it's dead, gone mate, deaceased, to be no more.
Let's forget it. They wouldn't have us back anyway, and who should blame them?
To return is to join the euro. This would be an economic disaster. We should have nothing to do with it.
As a Remainer I would vote no to rejoining if that was the consequence.
I’m not talking about rejoining the EU!
We are talking about what Starmer said. Ruling out the SM and CU
Depends on what kind of sophistry we want to employ: I cannot see how we rejoin the EEA. Via EFTA? Do they want us? But we could create a bilateral trading agreement with the EEA which encompasses the UK within it so that we can enjoy the same economic benefits as NI has. I cannot see how we rejoin the ECU. But we can create *a* customs union agreement with the ECU which draws us into it.
People should be used to this by now. We had to leave the EU to stop Turks coming here via their non-membership of the EU. But could then have *a* ECU deal like non-EU member Turkey once we left.
Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Sensible politics. Only idiots, Marxists and closet Marxists support this strike. Everyone is going to have to accept a drop in living standards for the time being, so why should certain segments of the population that are prepared to bully the rest of the population be immune?. Strikes are not going to help anyone, although I am sure Vladimir will be delighted his apologist union bosses are causing disruption in the UK .
This is why BigG unless he is against restoring the Triple Lock is a hypocrite
Link Pensioners increases to Public Sector pay increases backdated to 2010 then see the outcry
We received 3.1% this year and on the wider point the state pension is just £9,300 pa and for the majority of pensioners they have no other means of increasing their income as they age
However, I am very uncomfortable with an10% increase next year but for the majority of pensioners it will be an important due to the low rate of UK pensions
Hypocrite.
Vast majority of Pensioners are much better off than the working population certainly in Capital Terms
BigG "I want workers to take a 5% real terms pay cut but not people my age"
How many of these workers are on the state equivalent annual wage of £9,300
If the government can afford to pay billions for HS2 then they should have the money to pay the rail staff more.
What ridiculous Brownian bullshit. 🤦♂️
The government can have a sensible role to play in long-term investments in infrastructure that will take decades to go through.
Paying the day-to-day staff wages of private businesses though should fall upon those businesses customers.
Getting new track built is an "investment". Getting a new hospital built is an "investment". Increasing staff wages, paying the same nurses or signal staff or anyone else more is not "investing" in rails or the NHS etc
Regardless of what Brown liked to say. I'm disappointed to see you parroting such Brownian bullshit.
HS2 is a white elephant. Always was. Always will be.
Nope HS2 is only a white elephant if you don't understand the capacity it opens up to shift freight from road to rail.
For reference a new quarry route opened yesterday - 1 train replaces 100 daily lorries.
How many extra lorries and other traffic could be operating if we spent £100bn on new motorways instead though?
100 lorries per day doesn't sound like a big deal to be frank. The M6 carries hundreds of thousands of vehicles per day, not a hundred per day.
Cost, remember. Petrol/diesel. Plus drivers.
100 lorries = 100 Yorkie enthusiasts. PLus congestion at each end.
1 train = 2 drivers.
Indeed.
Fundamentally, the advantage of railways is a much lower coefficient of friction, as well as a resilient trackbed: they can carry far heavier loads for long distances for limited outlays of energy without chewing up the road service and with only a couple of members of staff.
When you add on top how regulated and signalled they are they are much safer too.
Absolutely fantastic for the days when the economy operated by needing tonnes of the same good like coal, going to the same destination, like the coal power plant.
Not so good for the modern economy. But that doesn't suit the agenda some people have to push.
Where do you think the hard core for your motorways comes from? Your Crossrail? Construction in London and the HC? Clue: there is precious little hard rock in the HC.
Have a look at the quarry materials flows. Merehead limestone, for instance.
As I said, if you want to shift large volumes of the same good along the same route, then absolutely rail can be great. There's a time and a place for rail.
But the problem is, post-coal, that its not as much, and not as often. Whereas roads, especially in the age of goods getting more complicated and smaller, are stretched well past their capacity.
Adding more rail routes is tinkering at the edges of freight capacity, because most freight doesn't want to be moved by rail. Adding more motorways would be truly transformative.
There’s room for both, but getting goods traffic off roads and onto trains can be useful in reducing overall traffic on the motorways.
For example, if containers landed at Southampton and Felixstowe could be moved by rail to a terminal somewhere around, say, East Midlands Airport, then picked up by lorry for local delivery, this would get thousands of lorries off the road network.
This is the sort of thing enabled by HS2, as it creates more paths for slower freight trains by getting faster passenger trains off the existing main lines.
You are right on your point about motorways being neglected though, there needs to be investment in renewing and widening, with particular attention to bottlenecks in the system.
Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Starmer also going to make a speech at which he will rule out a Labour government bringing back free movement with the EU as he further shifts to reassure 2019 Tory voters thinking of making the move to Labour next time
Hmmm. EEA and even a CU are going to be closed off by the main parties over the next few years then. Will be interesting to see if the LibDems can have any joy doubling down on being the “reverse UKIP”
Ruling out EEA membership is stupid. Ruling out CU membership is very sensible.
It seems like a strategic error from Starmer (unless he is lying - highly possible)
He may or may not bring back the Red Wall but he is giving up on all of Remainia
There is a huge opportunity here for the Lib Dems. For millions of people Brexit is still THE issue especially FoM. Remainers want it back
Strategically to get elected it is vital for him.
He cannot become PM without winning back the redwall and he will not win back the redwall without ruling out free movement/EEA.
The LDs might make some extra gains in Remain seats if they become the only main UK wide party backing EEA but the LDs would back Starmer over Johnson as PM anyway
But this could lose Labour a bunch of seats in big cities. Especially london
To whom - come election day who would your typical London Labour voter vote for - they ain't going to vote for Bozo...
In some city Remain seats like Cambridge, Hornsey and Wood Green, Islington, Bristol West etc the Tories were 3rd in 2019 behind Labour and the LDs or Greens
And in a hung Parliament were the Greens to win those constituencies exactly who are they going to support.
If the government can afford to pay billions for HS2 then they should have the money to pay the rail staff more.
What ridiculous Brownian bullshit. 🤦♂️
The government can have a sensible role to play in long-term investments in infrastructure that will take decades to go through.
Paying the day-to-day staff wages of private businesses though should fall upon those businesses customers.
Getting new track built is an "investment". Getting a new hospital built is an "investment". Increasing staff wages, paying the same nurses or signal staff or anyone else more is not "investing" in rails or the NHS etc
Regardless of what Brown liked to say. I'm disappointed to see you parroting such Brownian bullshit.
HS2 is a white elephant. Always was. Always will be.
Nope HS2 is only a white elephant if you don't understand the capacity it opens up to shift freight from road to rail.
For reference a new quarry route opened yesterday - 1 train replaces 100 daily lorries.
How many extra lorries and other traffic could be operating if we spent £100bn on new motorways instead though?
100 lorries per day doesn't sound like a big deal to be frank. The M6 carries hundreds of thousands of vehicles per day, not a hundred per day.
Cost, remember. Petrol/diesel. Plus drivers.
100 lorries = 100 Yorkie enthusiasts. PLus congestion at each end.
1 train = 2 drivers.
Indeed.
Fundamentally, the advantage of railways is a much lower coefficient of friction, as well as a resilient trackbed: they can carry far heavier loads for long distances for limited outlays of energy without chewing up the road service and with only a couple of members of staff.
When you add on top how regulated and signalled they are they are much safer too.
Absolutely fantastic for the days when the economy operated by needing tonnes of the same good like coal, going to the same destination, like the coal power plant.
Not so good for the modern economy. But that doesn't suit the agenda some people have to push.
Where do you think the hard core for your motorways comes from? Your Crossrail? Construction in London and the HC? Clue: there is precious little hard rock in the HC.
Have a look at the quarry materials flows. Merehead limestone, for instance.
As I said, if you want to shift large volumes of the same good along the same route, then absolutely rail can be great. There's a time and a place for rail.
But the problem is, post-coal, that its not as much, and not as often. Whereas roads, especially in the age of goods getting more complicated and smaller, are stretched well past their capacity.
Adding more rail routes is tinkering at the edges of freight capacity, because most freight doesn't want to be moved by rail. Adding more motorways would be truly transformative.
Not really - most freight is distributed via a hub and spoke system. Delivery to the hubs can be done via rail with lorries doing the last x miles...
And unless I'm missing something the one problem that still hasn't been solved in the post carbon future is fuelling of Lorries...
England is not a large country, for much of the country all the trade being done is the last x miles.
If the capacity demand for freight is there, why is freight rail falling as a share of freight, rather than rising? Why are motorways the ones stretched to triple the capacity they were designed for?
If motorways were idle and empty then sure, no reason to invest in more, but its just not the case.
Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Starmer also going to make a speech at which he will rule out a Labour government bringing back free movement with the EU as he further shifts to reassure 2019 Tory voters thinking of making the move to Labour next time
Hmmm. EEA and even a CU are going to be closed off by the main parties over the next few years then. Will be interesting to see if the LibDems can have any joy doubling down on being the “reverse UKIP”
Ruling out EEA membership is stupid. Ruling out CU membership is very sensible.
It seems like a strategic error from Starmer (unless he is lying - highly possible)
He may or may not bring back the Red Wall but he is giving up on all of Remainia
There is a huge opportunity here for the Lib Dems. For millions of people Brexit is still THE issue especially FoM. Remainers want it back
It might look like a tactical error, but strategic error it is not. This may well hand more votes to the LDs in the areas Labour has no chance in. LDs are his natural coalition partners. It is strategically very sensible
Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Sensible politics. Only idiots, Marxists and closet Marxists support this strike. Everyone is going to have to accept a drop in living standards for the time being, so why should certain segments of the population that are prepared to bully the rest of the population be immune?. Strikes are not going to help anyone, although I am sure Vladimir will be delighted his apologist union bosses are causing disruption in the UK .
I don’t “support the strikes” but I support the right to strike. Surely we all must do that, otherwise let’s just ban unions. My overriding view on rail sector unions is “I wish mine was that effective at looking after me”.
This is why BigG unless he is against restoring the Triple Lock is a hypocrite
Link Pensioners increases to Public Sector pay increases backdated to 2010 then see the outcry
Why 2010, why not link it back to earnings backdated to when the link with earnings was broken ?
Because Austerity doesnt impact Tory Pensioners and the link with earnings included private sector wages which arent taxpayer funded. Frozen public Sector Pay is the best way to enlighten Pensioners that their benefit monies doesnt grow on trees
No, but then pensioners were impacted when the link with earnings was broken in the first place. Taking a bit of selective data doesn't change that. Earning ran ahead of pensions during that time, the fact is that pensions are now closing that historic gap.
Why do you assume pensioners think money grows on trees BTW ?
Earnings ran ahead when today's pensioners were working.
Pensions are running ahead now today's pensioners are retired.
Today's pensioners fucked their elders, and fucked their grandchildren. But hey ho, lets keep giving ever more to the silver spooned generation.
Given the government is going to tear up restrictions on City bonuses I doubt most voters will be too bothered about a generous rise in the state pension
Another representation of the total failure of the EU to try and take business away from the City. That change alone should be worth a billion or two in income tax and employer NI.
If the government can afford to pay billions for HS2 then they should have the money to pay the rail staff more.
What ridiculous Brownian bullshit. 🤦♂️
The government can have a sensible role to play in long-term investments in infrastructure that will take decades to go through.
Paying the day-to-day staff wages of private businesses though should fall upon those businesses customers.
Getting new track built is an "investment". Getting a new hospital built is an "investment". Increasing staff wages, paying the same nurses or signal staff or anyone else more is not "investing" in rails or the NHS etc
Regardless of what Brown liked to say. I'm disappointed to see you parroting such Brownian bullshit.
HS2 is a white elephant. Always was. Always will be.
Nope HS2 is only a white elephant if you don't understand the capacity it opens up to shift freight from road to rail.
For reference a new quarry route opened yesterday - 1 train replaces 100 daily lorries.
How many extra lorries and other traffic could be operating if we spent £100bn on new motorways instead though?
100 lorries per day doesn't sound like a big deal to be frank. The M6 carries hundreds of thousands of vehicles per day, not a hundred per day.
Cost, remember. Petrol/diesel. Plus drivers.
100 lorries = 100 Yorkie enthusiasts. PLus congestion at each end.
1 train = 2 drivers.
Indeed.
Fundamentally, the advantage of railways is a much lower coefficient of friction, as well as a resilient trackbed: they can carry far heavier loads for long distances for limited outlays of energy without chewing up the road service and with only a couple of members of staff.
When you add on top how regulated and signalled they are they are much safer too.
Absolutely fantastic for the days when the economy operated by needing tonnes of the same good like coal, going to the same destination, like the coal power plant.
Not so good for the modern economy. But that doesn't suit the agenda some people have to push.
Where do you think the hard core for your motorways comes from? Your Crossrail? Construction in London and the HC? Clue: there is precious little hard rock in the HC.
Have a look at the quarry materials flows. Merehead limestone, for instance.
As I said, if you want to shift large volumes of the same good along the same route, then absolutely rail can be great. There's a time and a place for rail.
But the problem is, post-coal, that its not as much, and not as often. Whereas roads, especially in the age of goods getting more complicated and smaller, are stretched well past their capacity.
Adding more rail routes is tinkering at the edges of freight capacity, because most freight doesn't want to be moved by rail. Adding more motorways would be truly transformative.
There’s room for both, but getting goods traffic off roads and onto trains can be useful in reducing overall traffic on the motorways.
For example, if containers landed at Southampton and Felixstowe could be moved by rail to a terminal somewhere around, say, East Midlands Airport, then picked up by lorry for local delivery, this would get thousands of lorries off the road network.
This is the sort of thing enabled by HS2, as it creates more paths for slower freight trains by getting faster passenger trains off the existing main lines.
You are right on your point about motorways being neglected though, there needs to be investment in renewing and widening, with particular attention to bottlenecks in the system.
You're absolutely right that thousands of lorries could be dealt with that way.
But when stretches of motorway are dealing with hundreds of thousands of vehicles per day, that is pissing in the wind.
We need both. We should be investing in capacity for motorways, which are well past capacity and more capacity is needed - and investing in capacity in rail where it is needed. Capacity in rail is not a magical fix for capacity in roads, it won't even make a dent in the roads congestion.
Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Sensible politics. Only idiots, Marxists and closet Marxists support this strike. Everyone is going to have to accept a drop in living standards for the time being, so why should certain segments of the population that are prepared to bully the rest of the population be immune?. Strikes are not going to help anyone, although I am sure Vladimir will be delighted his apologist union bosses are causing disruption in the UK .
I don’t “support the strikes” but I support the right to strike. Surely we all must do that, otherwise let’s just ban unions. My overriding view on rail sector unions is “I wish mine was that effective at looking after me”.
I support the right to strike, but that doesn't mean one should not criticise them when they happen. The big problem with many unions is that they are still run by dinosaurs who think that their primary purpose is to show their machismo. They are still largely dominated by the far left, and they need to be called out for what they are.
If the government can afford to pay billions for HS2 then they should have the money to pay the rail staff more.
What ridiculous Brownian bullshit. 🤦♂️
The government can have a sensible role to play in long-term investments in infrastructure that will take decades to go through.
Paying the day-to-day staff wages of private businesses though should fall upon those businesses customers.
Getting new track built is an "investment". Getting a new hospital built is an "investment". Increasing staff wages, paying the same nurses or signal staff or anyone else more is not "investing" in rails or the NHS etc
Regardless of what Brown liked to say. I'm disappointed to see you parroting such Brownian bullshit.
HS2 is a white elephant. Always was. Always will be.
Nope HS2 is only a white elephant if you don't understand the capacity it opens up to shift freight from road to rail.
For reference a new quarry route opened yesterday - 1 train replaces 100 daily lorries.
How many extra lorries and other traffic could be operating if we spent £100bn on new motorways instead though?
100 lorries per day doesn't sound like a big deal to be frank. The M6 carries hundreds of thousands of vehicles per day, not a hundred per day.
Cost, remember. Petrol/diesel. Plus drivers.
100 lorries = 100 Yorkie enthusiasts. PLus congestion at each end.
1 train = 2 drivers.
Indeed.
Fundamentally, the advantage of railways is a much lower coefficient of friction, as well as a resilient trackbed: they can carry far heavier loads for long distances for limited outlays of energy without chewing up the road service and with only a couple of members of staff.
When you add on top how regulated and signalled they are they are much safer too.
Absolutely fantastic for the days when the economy operated by needing tonnes of the same good like coal, going to the same destination, like the coal power plant.
Not so good for the modern economy. But that doesn't suit the agenda some people have to push.
Where do you think the hard core for your motorways comes from? Your Crossrail? Construction in London and the HC? Clue: there is precious little hard rock in the HC.
Have a look at the quarry materials flows. Merehead limestone, for instance.
As I said, if you want to shift large volumes of the same good along the same route, then absolutely rail can be great. There's a time and a place for rail.
But the problem is, post-coal, that its not as much, and not as often. Whereas roads, especially in the age of goods getting more complicated and smaller, are stretched well past their capacity.
Adding more rail routes is tinkering at the edges of freight capacity, because most freight doesn't want to be moved by rail. Adding more motorways would be truly transformative.
Not really - most freight is distributed via a hub and spoke system. Delivery to the hubs can be done via rail with lorries doing the last x miles...
And unless I'm missing something the one problem that still hasn't been solved in the post carbon future is fuelling of Lorries...
England is not a large country, for much of the country all the trade being done is the last x miles.
If the capacity demand for freight is there, why is freight rail falling as a share of freight, rather than rising? Why are motorways the ones stretched to triple the capacity they were designed for?
If motorways were idle and empty then sure, no reason to invest in more, but its just not the case.
The capacity isn't there at the moment - Moving the fast trains to HS2 is how the capacity is added to the WCML...
Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Starmer also going to make a speech at which he will rule out a Labour government bringing back free movement with the EU as he further shifts to reassure 2019 Tory voters thinking of making the move to Labour next time
Hmmm. EEA and even a CU are going to be closed off by the main parties over the next few years then. Will be interesting to see if the LibDems can have any joy doubling down on being the “reverse UKIP”
Ruling out EEA membership is stupid. Ruling out CU membership is very sensible.
It seems like a strategic error from Starmer (unless he is lying - highly possible)
He may or may not bring back the Red Wall but he is giving up on all of Remainia
There is a huge opportunity here for the Lib Dems. For millions of people Brexit is still THE issue especially FoM. Remainers want it back
Strategically to get elected it is vital for him.
He cannot become PM without winning back the redwall and he will not win back the redwall without ruling out free movement/EEA.
The LDs might make some extra gains in Remain seats if they become the only main UK wide party backing EEA but the LDs would back Starmer over Johnson as PM anyway
But this could lose Labour a bunch of seats in big cities. Especially london
Yes but LD MPs in Remain seats would still back Starmer over Johnson as PM. Tory MPs in redwall seats wouldn't.
This policy confirms Starmer has given up on a Labour majority, he is just focused on becoming PM in a hung parliament with LD as well as Labour support
Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Sensible politics. Only idiots, Marxists and closet Marxists support this strike. Everyone is going to have to accept a drop in living standards for the time being, so why should certain segments of the population that are prepared to bully the rest of the population be immune?. Strikes are not going to help anyone, although I am sure Vladimir will be delighted his apologist union bosses are causing disruption in the UK .
I don’t “support the strikes” but I support the right to strike. Surely we all must do that, otherwise let’s just ban unions. My overriding view on rail sector unions is “I wish mine was that effective at looking after me”.
I support the right to strike, but that doesn't mean one should not criticise them when they happen. The big problem with many unions is that they are still run by dinosaurs who think that their primary purpose is to show their machismo. They are still largely dominated by the far left, and they need to be called out for what they are.
Perhaps. But the train unions seem to be have mostly succeeded in looking after their members’ interests, which is their job. Not necessarily the same thing as the national interest, but they are paid by the members. In that sense, they are objectively better than many peers.
I have been a Tory supporter since I was a child. My parents were as Tory as they come, our home hosted MP surgeries. Our front room was often piled high with election literature and envelopes. That is my dad in the photo.
Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Starmer also going to make a speech at which he will rule out a Labour government bringing back free movement with the EU as he further shifts to reassure 2019 Tory voters thinking of making the move to Labour next time
Hmmm. EEA and even a CU are going to be closed off by the main parties over the next few years then. Will be interesting to see if the LibDems can have any joy doubling down on being the “reverse UKIP”
Ruling out EEA membership is stupid. Ruling out CU membership is very sensible.
It seems like a strategic error from Starmer (unless he is lying - highly possible)
He may or may not bring back the Red Wall but he is giving up on all of Remainia
There is a huge opportunity here for the Lib Dems. For millions of people Brexit is still THE issue especially FoM. Remainers want it back
Not for me it ain't. Possibly the most extreme Europhile on PB and for me it's dead, gone mate, deaceased, to be no more.
Let's forget it. They wouldn't have us back anyway, and who should blame them?
To return is to join the euro. This would be an economic disaster. We should have nothing to do with it.
As a Remainer I would vote no to rejoining if that was the consequence.
I’m not talking about rejoining the EU!
We are talking about what Starmer said. Ruling out the SM and CU
Looks like Theresa May might have the last laugh after all. If Starmer wins the next general election Brexit will end up looking much like her ditched deal rather than Boris' even harder line deal or the EEA deal Remainers wanted
A CU won’t be possible without lots of work to unlock various other trade deals, and a lot of EU good will whilst the opposition is saying “we’d immediately reverse it”. It won’t happen.
It would also come at an eye-wateringly expensive annual cost. Not much less than full EU membership would be my guess.
If the government can afford to pay billions for HS2 then they should have the money to pay the rail staff more.
What ridiculous Brownian bullshit. 🤦♂️
The government can have a sensible role to play in long-term investments in infrastructure that will take decades to go through.
Paying the day-to-day staff wages of private businesses though should fall upon those businesses customers.
Getting new track built is an "investment". Getting a new hospital built is an "investment". Increasing staff wages, paying the same nurses or signal staff or anyone else more is not "investing" in rails or the NHS etc
Regardless of what Brown liked to say. I'm disappointed to see you parroting such Brownian bullshit.
HS2 is a white elephant. Always was. Always will be.
Nope HS2 is only a white elephant if you don't understand the capacity it opens up to shift freight from road to rail.
For reference a new quarry route opened yesterday - 1 train replaces 100 daily lorries.
How many extra lorries and other traffic could be operating if we spent £100bn on new motorways instead though?
100 lorries per day doesn't sound like a big deal to be frank. The M6 carries hundreds of thousands of vehicles per day, not a hundred per day.
Cost, remember. Petrol/diesel. Plus drivers.
100 lorries = 100 Yorkie enthusiasts. PLus congestion at each end.
1 train = 2 drivers.
Indeed.
Fundamentally, the advantage of railways is a much lower coefficient of friction, as well as a resilient trackbed: they can carry far heavier loads for long distances for limited outlays of energy without chewing up the road service and with only a couple of members of staff.
When you add on top how regulated and signalled they are they are much safer too.
Absolutely fantastic for the days when the economy operated by needing tonnes of the same good like coal, going to the same destination, like the coal power plant.
Not so good for the modern economy. But that doesn't suit the agenda some people have to push.
Where do you think the hard core for your motorways comes from? Your Crossrail? Construction in London and the HC? Clue: there is precious little hard rock in the HC.
Have a look at the quarry materials flows. Merehead limestone, for instance.
As I said, if you want to shift large volumes of the same good along the same route, then absolutely rail can be great. There's a time and a place for rail.
But the problem is, post-coal, that its not as much, and not as often. Whereas roads, especially in the age of goods getting more complicated and smaller, are stretched well past their capacity.
Adding more rail routes is tinkering at the edges of freight capacity, because most freight doesn't want to be moved by rail. Adding more motorways would be truly transformative.
Not really - most freight is distributed via a hub and spoke system. Delivery to the hubs can be done via rail with lorries doing the last x miles...
And unless I'm missing something the one problem that still hasn't been solved in the post carbon future is fuelling of Lorries...
England is not a large country, for much of the country all the trade being done is the last x miles.
If the capacity demand for freight is there, why is freight rail falling as a share of freight, rather than rising? Why are motorways the ones stretched to triple the capacity they were designed for?
If motorways were idle and empty then sure, no reason to invest in more, but its just not the case.
The capacity isn't there at the moment - Moving the fast trains to HS2 is how the capacity is added to the WCML...
The capacity was there in the past, and yet the share of freight being moved by rail has gone consistently down, and down, and down as we eliminated coal.
It is the road network which is bursting to capacity at hundreds of thousands of vehicles per day per stretch, not hundreds or thousands of them.
I have been a Tory supporter since I was a child. My parents were as Tory as they come, our home hosted MP surgeries. Our front room was often piled high with election literature and envelopes. That is my dad in the photo.
Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Starmer also going to make a speech at which he will rule out a Labour government bringing back free movement with the EU as he further shifts to reassure 2019 Tory voters thinking of making the move to Labour next time
Hmmm. EEA and even a CU are going to be closed off by the main parties over the next few years then. Will be interesting to see if the LibDems can have any joy doubling down on being the “reverse UKIP”
Ruling out EEA membership is stupid. Ruling out CU membership is very sensible.
It seems like a strategic error from Starmer (unless he is lying - highly possible)
He may or may not bring back the Red Wall but he is giving up on all of Remainia
There is a huge opportunity here for the Lib Dems. For millions of people Brexit is still THE issue especially FoM. Remainers want it back
I think you're vastly overestimating the degree to which Remainers want to hand to Boris on a plate the opportunity to reignite the Brexit wars.
Indeed. Leon pontificating on the views of 'Remainers' align neatly with Leon pontificating about France. He is largely ignorant of both.
For what it's worth, I only ever see 'Remainers' and 'Leavers' on PB – most of the country has long since moved on, since Brexit divided many if not most families and was therefore a painful episode that millions want to forget.
As for FOM, I don't see it retuning in the medium term. What might happen is a more liberal visa system to help fill acute labour shortages in London and its ilk, which would be up to the UK government and would not require EEA membership.
Links to the Parliamentary answer to the question of Triple Lock restoration.
I get the Pension next year but think its a disgrace its going up more than triple the rate being offered by HMG to railworkers nurses teachers and many others.
My suggestion of linking Pensions to Public Sector Pay backdated to 2010 would result in a 17% cut rather than a 10% rise
Yes - also, although it's a populist gesture, I think (and argued when in Parliament) that MP pay should bear a fixed relationship to average incomes (could be double or even triple, but fixed). That way, if things go splendidly, they share in the bounty, and if they vote for a squeeze, they share in the squeeze.
If the government can afford to pay billions for HS2 then they should have the money to pay the rail staff more.
What ridiculous Brownian bullshit. 🤦♂️
The government can have a sensible role to play in long-term investments in infrastructure that will take decades to go through.
Paying the day-to-day staff wages of private businesses though should fall upon those businesses customers.
Getting new track built is an "investment". Getting a new hospital built is an "investment". Increasing staff wages, paying the same nurses or signal staff or anyone else more is not "investing" in rails or the NHS etc
Regardless of what Brown liked to say. I'm disappointed to see you parroting such Brownian bullshit.
HS2 is a white elephant. Always was. Always will be.
Nope HS2 is only a white elephant if you don't understand the capacity it opens up to shift freight from road to rail.
For reference a new quarry route opened yesterday - 1 train replaces 100 daily lorries.
How many extra lorries and other traffic could be operating if we spent £100bn on new motorways instead though?
100 lorries per day doesn't sound like a big deal to be frank. The M6 carries hundreds of thousands of vehicles per day, not a hundred per day.
Cost, remember. Petrol/diesel. Plus drivers.
100 lorries = 100 Yorkie enthusiasts. PLus congestion at each end.
1 train = 2 drivers.
Indeed.
Fundamentally, the advantage of railways is a much lower coefficient of friction, as well as a resilient trackbed: they can carry far heavier loads for long distances for limited outlays of energy without chewing up the road service and with only a couple of members of staff.
When you add on top how regulated and signalled they are they are much safer too.
Absolutely fantastic for the days when the economy operated by needing tonnes of the same good like coal, going to the same destination, like the coal power plant.
Not so good for the modern economy. But that doesn't suit the agenda some people have to push.
Where do you think the hard core for your motorways comes from? Your Crossrail? Construction in London and the HC? Clue: there is precious little hard rock in the HC.
Have a look at the quarry materials flows. Merehead limestone, for instance.
As I said, if you want to shift large volumes of the same good along the same route, then absolutely rail can be great. There's a time and a place for rail.
But the problem is, post-coal, that its not as much, and not as often. Whereas roads, especially in the age of goods getting more complicated and smaller, are stretched well past their capacity.
Adding more rail routes is tinkering at the edges of freight capacity, because most freight doesn't want to be moved by rail. Adding more motorways would be truly transformative.
Not really - most freight is distributed via a hub and spoke system. Delivery to the hubs can be done via rail with lorries doing the last x miles...
And unless I'm missing something the one problem that still hasn't been solved in the post carbon future is fuelling of Lorries...
England is not a large country, for much of the country all the trade being done is the last x miles.
If the capacity demand for freight is there, why is freight rail falling as a share of freight, rather than rising? Why are motorways the ones stretched to triple the capacity they were designed for?
If motorways were idle and empty then sure, no reason to invest in more, but its just not the case.
The capacity isn't there at the moment - Moving the fast trains to HS2 is how the capacity is added to the WCML...
The capacity was there in the past, and yet the share of freight being moved by rail has gone consistently down, and down, and down as we eliminated coal.
It is the road network which is bursting to capacity at hundreds of thousands of vehicles per day per stretch, not hundreds or thousands of them.
You may not have noticed this but train passenger numbers doubled from 2000 to 2019 - and that was done by adding more passenger trains to the network.
If the government can afford to pay billions for HS2 then they should have the money to pay the rail staff more.
What ridiculous Brownian bullshit. 🤦♂️
The government can have a sensible role to play in long-term investments in infrastructure that will take decades to go through.
Paying the day-to-day staff wages of private businesses though should fall upon those businesses customers.
Getting new track built is an "investment". Getting a new hospital built is an "investment". Increasing staff wages, paying the same nurses or signal staff or anyone else more is not "investing" in rails or the NHS etc
Regardless of what Brown liked to say. I'm disappointed to see you parroting such Brownian bullshit.
HS2 is a white elephant. Always was. Always will be.
Nope HS2 is only a white elephant if you don't understand the capacity it opens up to shift freight from road to rail.
For reference a new quarry route opened yesterday - 1 train replaces 100 daily lorries.
How many extra lorries and other traffic could be operating if we spent £100bn on new motorways instead though?
100 lorries per day doesn't sound like a big deal to be frank. The M6 carries hundreds of thousands of vehicles per day, not a hundred per day.
Cost, remember. Petrol/diesel. Plus drivers.
100 lorries = 100 Yorkie enthusiasts. PLus congestion at each end.
1 train = 2 drivers.
Indeed.
Fundamentally, the advantage of railways is a much lower coefficient of friction, as well as a resilient trackbed: they can carry far heavier loads for long distances for limited outlays of energy without chewing up the road service and with only a couple of members of staff.
When you add on top how regulated and signalled they are they are much safer too.
Absolutely fantastic for the days when the economy operated by needing tonnes of the same good like coal, going to the same destination, like the coal power plant.
Not so good for the modern economy. But that doesn't suit the agenda some people have to push.
Where do you think the hard core for your motorways comes from? Your Crossrail? Construction in London and the HC? Clue: there is precious little hard rock in the HC.
Have a look at the quarry materials flows. Merehead limestone, for instance.
As I said, if you want to shift large volumes of the same good along the same route, then absolutely rail can be great. There's a time and a place for rail.
But the problem is, post-coal, that its not as much, and not as often. Whereas roads, especially in the age of goods getting more complicated and smaller, are stretched well past their capacity.
Adding more rail routes is tinkering at the edges of freight capacity, because most freight doesn't want to be moved by rail. Adding more motorways would be truly transformative.
There’s room for both, but getting goods traffic off roads and onto trains can be useful in reducing overall traffic on the motorways.
For example, if containers landed at Southampton and Felixstowe could be moved by rail to a terminal somewhere around, say, East Midlands Airport, then picked up by lorry for local delivery, this would get thousands of lorries off the road network.
This is the sort of thing enabled by HS2, as it creates more paths for slower freight trains by getting faster passenger trains off the existing main lines.
You are right on your point about motorways being neglected though, there needs to be investment in renewing and widening, with particular attention to bottlenecks in the system.
You're absolutely right that thousands of lorries could be dealt with that way.
But when stretches of motorway are dealing with hundreds of thousands of vehicles per day, that is pissing in the wind.
We need both. We should be investing in capacity for motorways, which are well past capacity and more capacity is needed - and investing in capacity in rail where it is needed. Capacity in rail is not a magical fix for capacity in roads, it won't even make a dent in the roads congestion.
It really could. Some of the obvious gaps in things like electrified lines would transform how we can transport stuff around the country. Plenty of new intermodal distribution hubs have been set up but no incentives to get companies located there to move goods by rail.
Similarly we can shift in bulk goods for cities like London from an out of town hub, unload them at Euston etc overnight and deliver in electric vans. Remove both big trucks and the plague of diesel vans from the roads.
And absolutely, build more roads as well. Start by completing the obvious half-built and unfinished schemes so that the benefits the part-built bits were supposed to deliver actually get delivered.
Links to the Parliamentary answer to the question of Triple Lock restoration.
I get the Pension next year but think its a disgrace its going up more than triple the rate being offered by HMG to railworkers nurses teachers and many others.
My suggestion of linking Pensions to Public Sector Pay backdated to 2010 would result in a 17% cut rather than a 10% rise
Yes - also, although it's a populist gesture, I think (and argued when in Parliament) that MP pay should bear a fixed relationship to average incomes (could be double or even triple, but fixed). That way, if things go splendidly, they share in the bounty, and if they vote for a squeeze, they share in the squeeze.
I rather like the Yes Minister wheeze of fixing then to a civil service pay band. Could be teachers/NHS etc. but makes them “feel” a squeeze quite directly.
The 10% “other” seems noteworthy. How much Reform/UKIP/abolish the assembly?
No tables yet but Reform and Green i'd guess, residual kipperism strong in Wales but not actual kippers. Abolish, Gwlad and UKIP might get 1 or 2 between them, reform and green 4 each?
Links to the Parliamentary answer to the question of Triple Lock restoration.
I get the Pension next year but think its a disgrace its going up more than triple the rate being offered by HMG to railworkers nurses teachers and many others.
My suggestion of linking Pensions to Public Sector Pay backdated to 2010 would result in a 17% cut rather than a 10% rise
Yes - also, although it's a populist gesture, I think (and argued when in Parliament) that MP pay should bear a fixed relationship to average incomes (could be double or even triple, but fixed). That way, if things go splendidly, they share in the bounty, and if they vote for a squeeze, they share in the squeeze.
I rather like the Yes Minister wheeze of fixing then to a civil service pay band. Could be teachers/NHS etc. but makes them “feel” a squeeze quite directly.
Good idea, MPs are public sector workers after all, not private sector
Something very strange and troubling seems to have happened in 2016 according to this FT graph:
Would want a longer time series and the equivalents for our rivals before I concluded anything.
Still somewhat disturbing given the super capital allowances Sunak brought in to give business investment a shot of adrenaline.
It just hasn't had much effect, and it ought to have done.
Irrespective of leave/remain and any Brexit impact in there, I think this links to our productive issues. Long term investment has always been our weakness and I think we need to do something fundamental around corporate governance and shareholder incentives.
This is why BigG unless he is against restoring the Triple Lock is a hypocrite
Link Pensioners increases to Public Sector pay increases backdated to 2010 then see the outcry
We received 3.1% this year and on the wider point the state pension is just £9,300 pa and for the majority of pensioners they have no other means of increasing their income as they age
However, I am very uncomfortable with an10% increase next year but for the majority of pensioners it will be an important due to the low rate of UK pensions
Hypocrite.
Vast majority of Pensioners are much better off than the working population certainly in Capital Terms
BigG "I want workers to take a 5% real terms pay cut but not people my age"
How many of these workers are on the state equivalent annual wage of £9,300
This is why BigG unless he is against restoring the Triple Lock is a hypocrite
Link Pensioners increases to Public Sector pay increases backdated to 2010 then see the outcry
We received 3.1% this year and on the wider point the state pension is just £9,300 pa and for the majority of pensioners they have no other means of increasing their income as they age
However, I am very uncomfortable with an10% increase next year but for the majority of pensioners it will be an important due to the low rate of UK pensions
Hypocrite.
Vast majority of Pensioners are much better off than the working population certainly in Capital Terms
BigG "I want workers to take a 5% real terms pay cut but not people my age"
How many of these workers are on the state equivalent annual wage of £9,300
Not relevant they have many more costs associated with employment.
After housing costs on average they will be much poorer than most Pensioners IMO
If the government can afford to pay billions for HS2 then they should have the money to pay the rail staff more.
What ridiculous Brownian bullshit. 🤦♂️
The government can have a sensible role to play in long-term investments in infrastructure that will take decades to go through.
Paying the day-to-day staff wages of private businesses though should fall upon those businesses customers.
Getting new track built is an "investment". Getting a new hospital built is an "investment". Increasing staff wages, paying the same nurses or signal staff or anyone else more is not "investing" in rails or the NHS etc
Regardless of what Brown liked to say. I'm disappointed to see you parroting such Brownian bullshit.
HS2 is a white elephant. Always was. Always will be.
Nope HS2 is only a white elephant if you don't understand the capacity it opens up to shift freight from road to rail.
For reference a new quarry route opened yesterday - 1 train replaces 100 daily lorries.
How many extra lorries and other traffic could be operating if we spent £100bn on new motorways instead though?
100 lorries per day doesn't sound like a big deal to be frank. The M6 carries hundreds of thousands of vehicles per day, not a hundred per day.
Cost, remember. Petrol/diesel. Plus drivers.
100 lorries = 100 Yorkie enthusiasts. PLus congestion at each end.
1 train = 2 drivers.
Indeed.
Fundamentally, the advantage of railways is a much lower coefficient of friction, as well as a resilient trackbed: they can carry far heavier loads for long distances for limited outlays of energy without chewing up the road service and with only a couple of members of staff.
When you add on top how regulated and signalled they are they are much safer too.
Absolutely fantastic for the days when the economy operated by needing tonnes of the same good like coal, going to the same destination, like the coal power plant.
Not so good for the modern economy. But that doesn't suit the agenda some people have to push.
Where do you think the hard core for your motorways comes from? Your Crossrail? Construction in London and the HC? Clue: there is precious little hard rock in the HC.
Have a look at the quarry materials flows. Merehead limestone, for instance.
As I said, if you want to shift large volumes of the same good along the same route, then absolutely rail can be great. There's a time and a place for rail.
But the problem is, post-coal, that its not as much, and not as often. Whereas roads, especially in the age of goods getting more complicated and smaller, are stretched well past their capacity.
Adding more rail routes is tinkering at the edges of freight capacity, because most freight doesn't want to be moved by rail. Adding more motorways would be truly transformative.
Not really - most freight is distributed via a hub and spoke system. Delivery to the hubs can be done via rail with lorries doing the last x miles...
And unless I'm missing something the one problem that still hasn't been solved in the post carbon future is fuelling of Lorries...
England is not a large country, for much of the country all the trade being done is the last x miles.
If the capacity demand for freight is there, why is freight rail falling as a share of freight, rather than rising? Why are motorways the ones stretched to triple the capacity they were designed for?
If motorways were idle and empty then sure, no reason to invest in more, but its just not the case.
The capacity isn't there at the moment - Moving the fast trains to HS2 is how the capacity is added to the WCML...
The capacity was there in the past, and yet the share of freight being moved by rail has gone consistently down, and down, and down as we eliminated coal.
It is the road network which is bursting to capacity at hundreds of thousands of vehicles per day per stretch, not hundreds or thousands of them.
You may not have noticed this but train passenger numbers doubled from 2000 to 2019 - and that was done by adding more passenger trains to the network.
I have noticed, which was a pretty inconsequential dent in overall passenger traffic, since over 80% of overall passenger traffic remains via road and not rail. You might also notice the population rose in that time as well.
Meanwhile what happened to motorway traffic in the same time? It went up in both freight and passengers, while the rails doubled in one yet halved in the other.
The simple reality is that roads are a far more useful investment, yet are neglected for purely ideological rather than economic reasons. If you're looking at capacity, then instead of a new WCML I'd be looking at a new M6 and M1 etc as alternatives to the existing ones, with different routes and that would double capacity for both freight and passengers by road which is the overwhelming proportion of both freight and passengers moved in this country.
Starmer in hiding and some of his mps are trying to hide their RMT connections while other PPS stand in open defiance of the leadership
Yesterday afternoon Labour York MP Rachael Maskell stood up to ask a point of order, after Grant Shapps had spent an hour having fun pointing out all the Labour MPs who stood up to ask questions in defence of the strikes, without declaring their interests after pocketing thousands from the RMT Union. Following the question session Maskell stood up to complain to the deputy speaker that this was very unfair:
“You will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that many members of the Labour party have a relationship with the trade unions that we are incredibly proud of, including with the RMT. The advice that I received from the Standards Commissioner ahead of that debate, and therefore ahead of today, stated under the requirements for declaration:
“Members are required, subject to the paragraphs below, to declare any financial interests which satisfy the test of relevance, including:
a) past financial interests (normally limited to those active within the last twelve months)”.
It is my recollection that the general election was two and a half years ago, so can you advise, Madam Deputy Speaker, on whether a declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests should keep being raised two and a half years after it has been made?”
To paraphrase Eleanor Laing’s no-nonsense response, she told MPs to present the whole truth when representing their union paymasters, not just try and get away without a declaration because of a small technicality in the members’ rule book.
If only Sebastian Fox and the Tory shills weren't lying when they said the RMT and Labour are in cahoots! Are the RMT affiliated to the party? No! Is Grant Shapps the one person that could have stopped the strike? Yes!
Have you seen the various clips of that idiot minister on TV last night? Embarrassing - for people like your good self who still parrots the Tory lie as a kind of muscle memory.
The RMT are funding some labour mps and what should embarrass labour is they are all over the place even trying to hide their sponsorship
Frankly I agree with Shapp's that HMG sets the parameters but it is upto the unions and employers to come to agreement on pay and modernisation including redundancies that are inevitable
Given that all rail companies have been nationalised and can't even fart let alone spend a single £ without Shapp's prior approval - Mr Shapp is playing games here.
I'm reminded of that day earlier on this year when Shapps announced his big integrated rail plan and Big G lapped it all up whereas those of us who use the railways a lot realised it was a load of bollocks.
A load of bollocks in what sense? I'm no fan of Grant Shapps / Michael Green but at least he has had the cojones to abolish the moronic franchising system – an international laughing stock – after decades of fiasco and farce.
They announced a series of exciting rail projects which were physically impossible (with the journey times quoted) and operationally impossible thanks to the huge gaps in the previously announced plans actually reducing instead of increasing capacity.
Not a single bit of work has been carried out by NR or outside consultants to flesh out the announced plans as actual proposals. Because the announcement was laughable bollocks. Same as when Chris Grayling was in the chair and used to propose that a "digital railway" was the non-building solution to the Castlefield Corridor bottleneck.
As for franchises, lets await what happens. Remember that the "nationalised" operators are operated by the private sector by direct edict from the DfT. Which is the same as when they were "privatised". Only when the entire framework is proposed for abolition can we consider awarding any credit. Which means Great British Railways being enacted. Spoiler alert - no work is being carried on on that either.
The abolition of franchising is not sufficient to sort out the railway, but it's a necessary first step. Regardless of the myriad holes in Shapps' strategy, at least he has had the cojones to rid of us of the Virgins, the Midland Mainlines, the Southerns and all the rest of the chiselling franchisees who embarrass the nation.
Just having one backside to kick – Great British Railways – will stop the pathetic blame game where everyone points the finger at each other for their daily cockups. And the absurd spectacle of regular renationalisations when it emerges that various franchisees can't cut it.
But he *hasn't* done that. All of the franchises still exist. They are all still operating. The difference is that (as an example) instead of Arriva - a private company - running the Northern Trains franchise, it is now run by OLR Rail - a consortium of private companies.
What GBR is proposed to do is to abolish the entire franchising system. But hasn't yet done so. And no progress is being made along the journey where that will actually happen. Instead we have the absolute worst set-up of all. All of the costs of the franchised* railway system with all of the anti-benefits of clueless bean counters in the DfT dictating every last detail and usually doing the opposite of what was needed.
*franchised, not privatised. Passenger railway operations were never privatised.
GBR doesn't launch until next year – so yes the franchises are still in place but won't be in 2023 – as was the plan from the start. Abolition doesn't necessarily mean 'abolition with immediate effect'.
The polling from Wales and nationally suggests partygate is now fully baked in. A by election hammering might lead to a temporary further dip/LD booster
Links to the Parliamentary answer to the question of Triple Lock restoration.
I get the Pension next year but think its a disgrace its going up more than triple the rate being offered by HMG to railworkers nurses teachers and many others.
My suggestion of linking Pensions to Public Sector Pay backdated to 2010 would result in a 17% cut rather than a 10% rise
Yes - also, although it's a populist gesture, I think (and argued when in Parliament) that MP pay should bear a fixed relationship to average incomes (could be double or even triple, but fixed). That way, if things go splendidly, they share in the bounty, and if they vote for a squeeze, they share in the squeeze.
I rather like the Yes Minister wheeze of fixing then to a civil service pay band. Could be teachers/NHS etc. but makes them “feel” a squeeze quite directly.
Good idea, MPs are public sector workers after all, not private sector
The other thing I’ve wondered about in the past is giving them a larger staff allowance to manage constituency work, but then cutting salaries and positively encouraging second jobs to inform their life experience. Parliament would need to sit less often, but the quality of what we got might improve.
I guess the answer is 'no', for as long as there are grifters and marks willing to part with their cash. There *is* a kernel of truthfulness and utility to cryptocurrency, but that makes it all the more appealing as a gimmick for the con artists.
Starmer in hiding and some of his mps are trying to hide their RMT connections while other PPS stand in open defiance of the leadership
Yesterday afternoon Labour York MP Rachael Maskell stood up to ask a point of order, after Grant Shapps had spent an hour having fun pointing out all the Labour MPs who stood up to ask questions in defence of the strikes, without declaring their interests after pocketing thousands from the RMT Union. Following the question session Maskell stood up to complain to the deputy speaker that this was very unfair:
“You will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that many members of the Labour party have a relationship with the trade unions that we are incredibly proud of, including with the RMT. The advice that I received from the Standards Commissioner ahead of that debate, and therefore ahead of today, stated under the requirements for declaration:
“Members are required, subject to the paragraphs below, to declare any financial interests which satisfy the test of relevance, including:
a) past financial interests (normally limited to those active within the last twelve months)”.
It is my recollection that the general election was two and a half years ago, so can you advise, Madam Deputy Speaker, on whether a declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests should keep being raised two and a half years after it has been made?”
To paraphrase Eleanor Laing’s no-nonsense response, she told MPs to present the whole truth when representing their union paymasters, not just try and get away without a declaration because of a small technicality in the members’ rule book.
If only Sebastian Fox and the Tory shills weren't lying when they said the RMT and Labour are in cahoots! Are the RMT affiliated to the party? No! Is Grant Shapps the one person that could have stopped the strike? Yes!
Have you seen the various clips of that idiot minister on TV last night? Embarrassing - for people like your good self who still parrots the Tory lie as a kind of muscle memory.
The RMT are funding some labour mps and what should embarrass labour is they are all over the place even trying to hide their sponsorship
Frankly I agree with Shapp's that HMG sets the parameters but it is upto the unions and employers to come to agreement on pay and modernisation including redundancies that are inevitable
Given that all rail companies have been nationalised and can't even fart let alone spend a single £ without Shapp's prior approval - Mr Shapp is playing games here.
I'm reminded of that day earlier on this year when Shapps announced his big integrated rail plan and Big G lapped it all up whereas those of us who use the railways a lot realised it was a load of bollocks.
A load of bollocks in what sense? I'm no fan of Grant Shapps / Michael Green but at least he has had the cojones to abolish the moronic franchising system – an international laughing stock – after decades of fiasco and farce.
They announced a series of exciting rail projects which were physically impossible (with the journey times quoted) and operationally impossible thanks to the huge gaps in the previously announced plans actually reducing instead of increasing capacity.
Not a single bit of work has been carried out by NR or outside consultants to flesh out the announced plans as actual proposals. Because the announcement was laughable bollocks. Same as when Chris Grayling was in the chair and used to propose that a "digital railway" was the non-building solution to the Castlefield Corridor bottleneck.
As for franchises, lets await what happens. Remember that the "nationalised" operators are operated by the private sector by direct edict from the DfT. Which is the same as when they were "privatised". Only when the entire framework is proposed for abolition can we consider awarding any credit. Which means Great British Railways being enacted. Spoiler alert - no work is being carried on on that either.
The abolition of franchising is not sufficient to sort out the railway, but it's a necessary first step. Regardless of the myriad holes in Shapps' strategy, at least he has had the cojones to rid of us of the Virgins, the Midland Mainlines, the Southerns and all the rest of the chiselling franchisees who embarrass the nation.
Just having one backside to kick – Great British Railways – will stop the pathetic blame game where everyone points the finger at each other for their daily cockups. And the absurd spectacle of regular renationalisations when it emerges that various franchisees can't cut it.
But he *hasn't* done that. All of the franchises still exist. They are all still operating. The difference is that (as an example) instead of Arriva - a private company - running the Northern Trains franchise, it is now run by OLR Rail - a consortium of private companies.
What GBR is proposed to do is to abolish the entire franchising system. But hasn't yet done so. And no progress is being made along the journey where that will actually happen. Instead we have the absolute worst set-up of all. All of the costs of the franchised* railway system with all of the anti-benefits of clueless bean counters in the DfT dictating every last detail and usually doing the opposite of what was needed.
*franchised, not privatised. Passenger railway operations were never privatised.
GBR doesn't launch until next year – so yes the franchises are still in place but won't be in 2023 – as was the plan from the start. Abolition doesn't necessarily mean 'abolition with immediate effect'.
Sadly that timetable - which was itself a slippage - will only slip back further. Being reported in the industry how nothing substantial is being done to actually turn GBR into an organisation with a structure which will deliver what it says on the tin.
North Shropshire was a 23k con Maj, almost entirely before partygate. Honiton is 24k. Why is there any doubt it goes lib dem on Thursday?
Because Lib Dems love a 'look how awesome we little guys are' David vs Goliath bullshit story so they make up crap about it being close and then a magical tidal wave of support over the last 48 hours as the little people flock to them and blue wall orange hammer miracles spontaneously occur nationwide. Having said that, North Salop was cos of out and out corruption , this is just a sad old boy having a tug at some boobies
Starmer in hiding and some of his mps are trying to hide their RMT connections while other PPS stand in open defiance of the leadership
Yesterday afternoon Labour York MP Rachael Maskell stood up to ask a point of order, after Grant Shapps had spent an hour having fun pointing out all the Labour MPs who stood up to ask questions in defence of the strikes, without declaring their interests after pocketing thousands from the RMT Union. Following the question session Maskell stood up to complain to the deputy speaker that this was very unfair:
“You will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that many members of the Labour party have a relationship with the trade unions that we are incredibly proud of, including with the RMT. The advice that I received from the Standards Commissioner ahead of that debate, and therefore ahead of today, stated under the requirements for declaration:
“Members are required, subject to the paragraphs below, to declare any financial interests which satisfy the test of relevance, including:
a) past financial interests (normally limited to those active within the last twelve months)”.
It is my recollection that the general election was two and a half years ago, so can you advise, Madam Deputy Speaker, on whether a declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests should keep being raised two and a half years after it has been made?”
To paraphrase Eleanor Laing’s no-nonsense response, she told MPs to present the whole truth when representing their union paymasters, not just try and get away without a declaration because of a small technicality in the members’ rule book.
If only Sebastian Fox and the Tory shills weren't lying when they said the RMT and Labour are in cahoots! Are the RMT affiliated to the party? No! Is Grant Shapps the one person that could have stopped the strike? Yes!
Have you seen the various clips of that idiot minister on TV last night? Embarrassing - for people like your good self who still parrots the Tory lie as a kind of muscle memory.
The RMT are funding some labour mps and what should embarrass labour is they are all over the place even trying to hide their sponsorship
Frankly I agree with Shapp's that HMG sets the parameters but it is upto the unions and employers to come to agreement on pay and modernisation including redundancies that are inevitable
Given that all rail companies have been nationalised and can't even fart let alone spend a single £ without Shapp's prior approval - Mr Shapp is playing games here.
I'm reminded of that day earlier on this year when Shapps announced his big integrated rail plan and Big G lapped it all up whereas those of us who use the railways a lot realised it was a load of bollocks.
A load of bollocks in what sense? I'm no fan of Grant Shapps / Michael Green but at least he has had the cojones to abolish the moronic franchising system – an international laughing stock – after decades of fiasco and farce.
They announced a series of exciting rail projects which were physically impossible (with the journey times quoted) and operationally impossible thanks to the huge gaps in the previously announced plans actually reducing instead of increasing capacity.
Not a single bit of work has been carried out by NR or outside consultants to flesh out the announced plans as actual proposals. Because the announcement was laughable bollocks. Same as when Chris Grayling was in the chair and used to propose that a "digital railway" was the non-building solution to the Castlefield Corridor bottleneck.
As for franchises, lets await what happens. Remember that the "nationalised" operators are operated by the private sector by direct edict from the DfT. Which is the same as when they were "privatised". Only when the entire framework is proposed for abolition can we consider awarding any credit. Which means Great British Railways being enacted. Spoiler alert - no work is being carried on on that either.
The abolition of franchising is not sufficient to sort out the railway, but it's a necessary first step. Regardless of the myriad holes in Shapps' strategy, at least he has had the cojones to rid of us of the Virgins, the Midland Mainlines, the Southerns and all the rest of the chiselling franchisees who embarrass the nation.
Just having one backside to kick – Great British Railways – will stop the pathetic blame game where everyone points the finger at each other for their daily cockups. And the absurd spectacle of regular renationalisations when it emerges that various franchisees can't cut it.
But he *hasn't* done that. All of the franchises still exist. They are all still operating. The difference is that (as an example) instead of Arriva - a private company - running the Northern Trains franchise, it is now run by OLR Rail - a consortium of private companies.
What GBR is proposed to do is to abolish the entire franchising system. But hasn't yet done so. And no progress is being made along the journey where that will actually happen. Instead we have the absolute worst set-up of all. All of the costs of the franchised* railway system with all of the anti-benefits of clueless bean counters in the DfT dictating every last detail and usually doing the opposite of what was needed.
*franchised, not privatised. Passenger railway operations were never privatised.
GBR doesn't launch until next year – so yes the franchises are still in place but won't be in 2023 – as was the plan from the start. Abolition doesn't necessarily mean 'abolition with immediate effect'.
Sadly that timetable - which was itself a slippage - will only slip back further. Being reported in the industry how nothing substantial is being done to actually turn GBR into an organisation with a structure which will deliver what it says on the tin.
It might slip but it literally says "from 2023" in the strategy document!
Don't get me wrong, I have no faith in this government to deliver it properly (or anything properly – they are incompetent). But, it's at least a good idea that will (eventually) rid us of franchising – an international embarrassment.
Links to the Parliamentary answer to the question of Triple Lock restoration.
I get the Pension next year but think its a disgrace its going up more than triple the rate being offered by HMG to railworkers nurses teachers and many others.
My suggestion of linking Pensions to Public Sector Pay backdated to 2010 would result in a 17% cut rather than a 10% rise
Yes - also, although it's a populist gesture, I think (and argued when in Parliament) that MP pay should bear a fixed relationship to average incomes (could be double or even triple, but fixed). That way, if things go splendidly, they share in the bounty, and if they vote for a squeeze, they share in the squeeze.
I rather like the Yes Minister wheeze of fixing then to a civil service pay band. Could be teachers/NHS etc. but makes them “feel” a squeeze quite directly.
Good idea, MPs are public sector workers after all, not private sector
The other thing I’ve wondered about in the past is giving them a larger staff allowance to manage constituency work, but then cutting salaries and positively encouraging second jobs to inform their life experience. Parliament would need to sit less often, but the quality of what we got might improve.
That would be good, if the MPs’ second jobs were unrelated to their role as MPs.
The problem is that so many MPs now are ‘Political Professionals”, who went straight from university into politics and have never had a job in the real world. They’d end up working in London as lobbyists or advisors on huge salaries, rather than get more of an understanding of their constituents. Just look at the jobs done now by former MPs.
If the government can afford to pay billions for HS2 then they should have the money to pay the rail staff more.
What ridiculous Brownian bullshit. 🤦♂️
The government can have a sensible role to play in long-term investments in infrastructure that will take decades to go through.
Paying the day-to-day staff wages of private businesses though should fall upon those businesses customers.
Getting new track built is an "investment". Getting a new hospital built is an "investment". Increasing staff wages, paying the same nurses or signal staff or anyone else more is not "investing" in rails or the NHS etc
Regardless of what Brown liked to say. I'm disappointed to see you parroting such Brownian bullshit.
HS2 is a white elephant. Always was. Always will be.
Nope HS2 is only a white elephant if you don't understand the capacity it opens up to shift freight from road to rail.
For reference a new quarry route opened yesterday - 1 train replaces 100 daily lorries.
How many extra lorries and other traffic could be operating if we spent £100bn on new motorways instead though?
100 lorries per day doesn't sound like a big deal to be frank. The M6 carries hundreds of thousands of vehicles per day, not a hundred per day.
Cost, remember. Petrol/diesel. Plus drivers.
100 lorries = 100 Yorkie enthusiasts. PLus congestion at each end.
1 train = 2 drivers.
Indeed.
Fundamentally, the advantage of railways is a much lower coefficient of friction, as well as a resilient trackbed: they can carry far heavier loads for long distances for limited outlays of energy without chewing up the road service and with only a couple of members of staff.
When you add on top how regulated and signalled they are they are much safer too.
Absolutely fantastic for the days when the economy operated by needing tonnes of the same good like coal, going to the same destination, like the coal power plant.
Not so good for the modern economy. But that doesn't suit the agenda some people have to push.
Where do you think the hard core for your motorways comes from? Your Crossrail? Construction in London and the HC? Clue: there is precious little hard rock in the HC.
Have a look at the quarry materials flows. Merehead limestone, for instance.
As I said, if you want to shift large volumes of the same good along the same route, then absolutely rail can be great. There's a time and a place for rail.
But the problem is, post-coal, that its not as much, and not as often. Whereas roads, especially in the age of goods getting more complicated and smaller, are stretched well past their capacity.
Adding more rail routes is tinkering at the edges of freight capacity, because most freight doesn't want to be moved by rail. Adding more motorways would be truly transformative.
Not really - most freight is distributed via a hub and spoke system. Delivery to the hubs can be done via rail with lorries doing the last x miles...
And unless I'm missing something the one problem that still hasn't been solved in the post carbon future is fuelling of Lorries...
England is not a large country, for much of the country all the trade being done is the last x miles.
If the capacity demand for freight is there, why is freight rail falling as a share of freight, rather than rising? Why are motorways the ones stretched to triple the capacity they were designed for?
If motorways were idle and empty then sure, no reason to invest in more, but its just not the case.
The capacity isn't there at the moment - Moving the fast trains to HS2 is how the capacity is added to the WCML...
The capacity was there in the past, and yet the share of freight being moved by rail has gone consistently down, and down, and down as we eliminated coal.
It is the road network which is bursting to capacity at hundreds of thousands of vehicles per day per stretch, not hundreds or thousands of them.
You may not have noticed this but train passenger numbers doubled from 2000 to 2019 - and that was done by adding more passenger trains to the network.
I have noticed, which was a pretty inconsequential dent in overall passenger traffic, since over 80% of overall passenger traffic remains via road and not rail. You might also notice the population rose in that time as well.
Meanwhile what happened to motorway traffic in the same time? It went up in both freight and passengers, while the rails doubled in one yet halved in the other.
The simple reality is that roads are a far more useful investment, yet are neglected for purely ideological rather than economic reasons. If you're looking at capacity, then instead of a new WCML I'd be looking at a new M6 and M1 etc as alternatives to the existing ones, with different routes and that would double capacity for both freight and passengers by road which is the overwhelming proportion of both freight and passengers moved in this country.
You can't say they are neglected for ideological reasons. An awful lot of money is spent on upgrades rather than new routes. There is no political appetite to build a new motorway. Up here we benefitted from the A90 Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route. Cambridgeshire and the Midlands benefitted from the A14 Huntingdon bypass. Both built as latest spec motorways (which no longer need hard shoulders) but have green signs and an A-number because motorways are bad.
Worse still is how rare these new not-motorways are. Instead of new they spend £bonkers squeezing narrow lanes onto existing motorway carriageways. Huge cost, huge disruption, limited benefit. What we need are replacement routes for these. Build the M31 to relieve the Heathrow quadrant of the M25. Build the M64 to relieve the West Midlands. etc etc
Checking in to say the government are wankers and don't know how to run the country
Emergency legislation against strikers - 1. Strike days must be consecutive, none of this five days of disruption for three days of strikes. 2. Strike pay loss to be calculated as 1/232 not 1/365. Also reduce employer pension contributions by 1/232. 3. Make incentivising strikes with pay over and above lost income illegal. 4. Accelerate automation of key infrastructure and dilute the pool of eligible workers by simplifying the remaining jobs.
1-3 can be done immediately with primary legislation, if that means the whole public sector goes on strike then so be it, they are doing it anyway so it won't make any difference. If the wankers want to strike then make it hurt.
This is why BigG unless he is against restoring the Triple Lock is a hypocrite
Link Pensioners increases to Public Sector pay increases backdated to 2010 then see the outcry
We received 3.1% this year and on the wider point the state pension is just £9,300 pa and for the majority of pensioners they have no other means of increasing their income as they age
However, I am very uncomfortable with an10% increase next year but for the majority of pensioners it will be an important due to the low rate of UK pensions
Hypocrite.
Vast majority of Pensioners are much better off than the working population certainly in Capital Terms
BigG "I want workers to take a 5% real terms pay cut but not people my age"
How many of these workers are on the state equivalent annual wage of £9,300
Something very strange and troubling seems to have happened in 2016 according to this FT graph:
Have they demonstrated that the assumed trend happened everywhere else? Otherwise not really relevant.
The UK business investment performance since the Brexit vote has been the weakest of the G7. Pre Brexit it was growing more strongly than most other G7 countries, having fallen the most after the GFC. The performance since 2016 been really bad, both compared to our peers and our prior performance.
On an unrelated topic I was trying to get a Pension estimate for next year
You can only get this Online if you have a current UK Passport unless you live in NI where a driving licence will suffice.
I waited for over an hour to speak to someone who is sending it out by post as cant send electonically.
The Govt Gateway requires 2 forms of ID to do anything one can be a P60 the other has to be a current passport for everyone in England Scotland and Wales.
Checking in to say the government are wankers and don't know how to run the country
Emergency legislation against strikers - 1. Strike days must be consecutive, none of this five days of disruption for three days of strikes. 2. Strike pay loss to be calculated as 1/232 not 1/365. Also reduce employer pension contributions by 1/232. 3. Make incentivising strikes with pay over and above lost income illegal. 4. Accelerate automation of key infrastructure and dilute the pool of eligible workers by simplifying the remaining jobs.
1-3 can be done immediately with primary legislation, if that means the whole public sector goes on strike then so be it, they are doing it anyway so it won't make any difference. If the wankers want to strike then make it hurt.
2 would muck around with lots of other pay definitions in law.
3 is not a thing you could legislate for. How can you stop one person/organisation giving another cash?
Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Sensible politics. Only idiots, Marxists and closet Marxists support this strike.
Have you seen a Poll?
Even GB News reporter on the ground had to admit most people were sympathetic
I see at least one idiot opposes the strike and thinks that the 89% of railway workers are Marxists. or closet Marxists.
35 in support 49 against per YouGov, however Strongly support 12 vs Strongly oppose 26. Marginal plurality against the strikes, 2 to 1 with strong opinion against. Feelings very split
If the WCML is at capacity then a new line may make sense.
The M1 and M6 absolutely are at capacity, and I believe carry an order of magnitude more than the WCML. So a new M1 and M6 absolutely ought to make sense, using the same logic.
I wonder how much a new M1 and M6 would cost, versus HS2. And what the capacity of the existing and a new M1 and M6 (supplementing the existing M1 and M6, albeit probably on a somewhat different route) would be versus the capacity of HS2/WCML.
Why should we build a new HS2 to relieve pressure on the WCML, but not build a new M1 or M6? And I don't mean the M6 Toll, a tiny little road, I mean full thing, from the South to past Preston at least, where the capacity is regularly past what it was built for already. If not all the way to Scotland.
And like was said about HS2, if you're building a new line, may as well build it to best modern standards. So a new M1 and M6 could be built with modern digital standards from the start, safety investment for lay-bys etc and have 4 or 5 lanes each way from the start for the entire route. Supplementing of course the existing motorway network, because new roads all the way.
On an unrelated topic I was trying to get a Pension estimate for next year
You can only get this Online if you have a current UK Passport unless you live in NI where a driving licence will suffice.
I waited for over an hour to speak to someone who is sending it out by post as cant send electonically.
The Govt Gateway requires 2 forms of ID to do anything one can be a P60 the other has to be a current passport for everyone in England Scotland and Wales.
Madness
Because we don't have ID cards passports have become the defacto form of proof of residency / right to work.
As I pointed out earlier this week that means come October if you haven't got a passport there will be whole sectors of work where people without passports just won't be able to get work because company's will insist on 3rd party online right to work checks.
Checking in to say the government are wankers and don't know how to run the country
Emergency legislation against strikers - 1. Strike days must be consecutive, none of this five days of disruption for three days of strikes. 2. Strike pay loss to be calculated as 1/232 not 1/365. Also reduce employer pension contributions by 1/232. 3. Make incentivising strikes with pay over and above lost income illegal. 4. Accelerate automation of key infrastructure and dilute the pool of eligible workers by simplifying the remaining jobs.
1-3 can be done immediately with primary legislation, if that means the whole public sector goes on strike then so be it, they are doing it anyway so it won't make any difference. If the wankers want to strike then make it hurt.
2 would muck around with lots of other pay definitions in law.
3 is not a thing you could legislate for. How can you stop one person/organisation giving another cash?
That excuse for point 2 is why we have this idiotic disconnect and I'm not sure it would anyway, it's a one line change from 1/365 to 1/232.
3. Of course you can, in the UK primary legislation rules all.
Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Starmer also going to make a speech at which he will rule out a Labour government bringing back free movement with the EU as he further shifts to reassure 2019 Tory voters thinking of making the move to Labour next time
Hmmm. EEA and even a CU are going to be closed off by the main parties over the next few years then. Will be interesting to see if the LibDems can have any joy doubling down on being the “reverse UKIP”
Ruling out EEA membership is stupid. Ruling out CU membership is very sensible.
It seems like a strategic error from Starmer (unless he is lying - highly possible)
He may or may not bring back the Red Wall but he is giving up on all of Remainia
There is a huge opportunity here for the Lib Dems. For millions of people Brexit is still THE issue especially FoM. Remainers want it back
Strategically to get elected it is vital for him.
He cannot become PM without winning back the redwall and he will not win back the redwall without ruling out free movement/EEA.
The LDs might make some extra gains in Remain seats if they become the only main UK wide party backing EEA but the LDs would back Starmer over Johnson as PM anyway
But this could lose Labour a bunch of seats in big cities. Especially london
Yes but LD MPs in Remain seats would still back Starmer over Johnson as PM. Tory MPs in redwall seats wouldn't.
This policy confirms Starmer has given up on a Labour majority, he is just focused on becoming PM in a hung parliament with LD as well as Labour support
Though without Scotland, that was always pretty likely.
As for the Eurostuff, it was always likely that 2024-9 was going to be about (try to) "make Brexit work by diluting it a bit". And then a bit more and a bit more.
I know it's awfully bad manners for the government to try to launch another Brexit war and the rest of us not turn up, but sometimes the best thing to do is sit and wait.
If the WCML is at capacity then a new line may make sense.
The M1 and M6 absolutely are at capacity, and I believe carry an order of magnitude more than the WCML. So a new M1 and M6 absolutely ought to make sense, using the same logic.
I wonder how much a new M1 and M6 would cost, versus HS2. And what the capacity of the existing and a new M1 and M6 (supplementing the existing M1 and M6, albeit probably on a somewhat different route) would be versus the capacity of HS2/WCML.
Why should we build a new HS2 to relieve pressure on the WCML, but not build a new M1 or M6? And I don't mean the M6 Toll, a tiny little road, I mean full thing, from the South to past Preston at least, where the capacity is regularly past what it was built for already. If not all the way to Scotland.
And like was said about HS2, if you're building a new line, may as well build it to best modern standards. So a new M1 and M6 could be built with modern digital standards from the start, safety investment for lay-bys etc and have 4 or 5 lanes each way from the start for the entire route. Supplementing of course the existing motorway network, because new roads all the way.
Good luck getting that Bill through Parliament.
More seriously, as we move to EVs I do think it is true that building roads will be less controversial.
Checking in to say the government are wankers and don't know how to run the country
Emergency legislation against strikers - 1. Strike days must be consecutive, none of this five days of disruption for three days of strikes. 2. Strike pay loss to be calculated as 1/232 not 1/365. Also reduce employer pension contributions by 1/232. 3. Make incentivising strikes with pay over and above lost income illegal. 4. Accelerate automation of key infrastructure and dilute the pool of eligible workers by simplifying the remaining jobs.
1-3 can be done immediately with primary legislation, if that means the whole public sector goes on strike then so be it, they are doing it anyway so it won't make any difference. If the wankers want to strike then make it hurt.
Checking in to say the government are wankers and don't know how to run the country
Emergency legislation against strikers - 1. Strike days must be consecutive, none of this five days of disruption for three days of strikes. 2. Strike pay loss to be calculated as 1/232 not 1/365. Also reduce employer pension contributions by 1/232. 3. Make incentivising strikes with pay over and above lost income illegal. 4. Accelerate automation of key infrastructure and dilute the pool of eligible workers by simplifying the remaining jobs.
1-3 can be done immediately with primary legislation, if that means the whole public sector goes on strike then so be it, they are doing it anyway so it won't make any difference. If the wankers want to strike then make it hurt.
2 would muck around with lots of other pay definitions in law.
3 is not a thing you could legislate for. How can you stop one person/organisation giving another cash?
That excuse for point 2 is why we have this idiotic disconnect and I'm not sure it would anyway, it's a one line change from 1/365 to 1/232.
3. Of course you can, in the UK primary legislation rules all.
You’re showing your ignorance. Go on then - how would you draft 3 without preventing anyone other than state sanctioned entities transferring cash to each other? It’s not possible.
If the government can afford to pay billions for HS2 then they should have the money to pay the rail staff more.
What ridiculous Brownian bullshit. 🤦♂️
The government can have a sensible role to play in long-term investments in infrastructure that will take decades to go through.
Paying the day-to-day staff wages of private businesses though should fall upon those businesses customers.
Getting new track built is an "investment". Getting a new hospital built is an "investment". Increasing staff wages, paying the same nurses or signal staff or anyone else more is not "investing" in rails or the NHS etc
Regardless of what Brown liked to say. I'm disappointed to see you parroting such Brownian bullshit.
HS2 is a white elephant. Always was. Always will be.
Nope HS2 is only a white elephant if you don't understand the capacity it opens up to shift freight from road to rail.
For reference a new quarry route opened yesterday - 1 train replaces 100 daily lorries.
How many extra lorries and other traffic could be operating if we spent £100bn on new motorways instead though?
100 lorries per day doesn't sound like a big deal to be frank. The M6 carries hundreds of thousands of vehicles per day, not a hundred per day.
Cost, remember. Petrol/diesel. Plus drivers.
100 lorries = 100 Yorkie enthusiasts. PLus congestion at each end.
1 train = 2 drivers.
Indeed.
Fundamentally, the advantage of railways is a much lower coefficient of friction, as well as a resilient trackbed: they can carry far heavier loads for long distances for limited outlays of energy without chewing up the road service and with only a couple of members of staff.
When you add on top how regulated and signalled they are they are much safer too.
Absolutely fantastic for the days when the economy operated by needing tonnes of the same good like coal, going to the same destination, like the coal power plant.
Not so good for the modern economy. But that doesn't suit the agenda some people have to push.
Where do you think the hard core for your motorways comes from? Your Crossrail? Construction in London and the HC? Clue: there is precious little hard rock in the HC.
Have a look at the quarry materials flows. Merehead limestone, for instance.
As I said, if you want to shift large volumes of the same good along the same route, then absolutely rail can be great. There's a time and a place for rail.
But the problem is, post-coal, that its not as much, and not as often. Whereas roads, especially in the age of goods getting more complicated and smaller, are stretched well past their capacity.
Adding more rail routes is tinkering at the edges of freight capacity, because most freight doesn't want to be moved by rail. Adding more motorways would be truly transformative.
Not really - most freight is distributed via a hub and spoke system. Delivery to the hubs can be done via rail with lorries doing the last x miles...
And unless I'm missing something the one problem that still hasn't been solved in the post carbon future is fuelling of Lorries...
England is not a large country, for much of the country all the trade being done is the last x miles.
If the capacity demand for freight is there, why is freight rail falling as a share of freight, rather than rising? Why are motorways the ones stretched to triple the capacity they were designed for?
If motorways were idle and empty then sure, no reason to invest in more, but its just not the case.
The capacity isn't there at the moment - Moving the fast trains to HS2 is how the capacity is added to the WCML...
The capacity was there in the past, and yet the share of freight being moved by rail has gone consistently down, and down, and down as we eliminated coal.
It is the road network which is bursting to capacity at hundreds of thousands of vehicles per day per stretch, not hundreds or thousands of them.
You may not have noticed this but train passenger numbers doubled from 2000 to 2019 - and that was done by adding more passenger trains to the network.
I have noticed, which was a pretty inconsequential dent in overall passenger traffic, since over 80% of overall passenger traffic remains via road and not rail. You might also notice the population rose in that time as well.
Meanwhile what happened to motorway traffic in the same time? It went up in both freight and passengers, while the rails doubled in one yet halved in the other.
The simple reality is that roads are a far more useful investment, yet are neglected for purely ideological rather than economic reasons. If you're looking at capacity, then instead of a new WCML I'd be looking at a new M6 and M1 etc as alternatives to the existing ones, with different routes and that would double capacity for both freight and passengers by road which is the overwhelming proportion of both freight and passengers moved in this country.
You can't say they are neglected for ideological reasons. An awful lot of money is spent on upgrades rather than new routes. There is no political appetite to build a new motorway. Up here we benefitted from the A90 Aberdeen Western Peripheral Route. Cambridgeshire and the Midlands benefitted from the A14 Huntingdon bypass. Both built as latest spec motorways (which no longer need hard shoulders) but have green signs and an A-number because motorways are bad.
Worse still is how rare these new not-motorways are. Instead of new they spend £bonkers squeezing narrow lanes onto existing motorway carriageways. Huge cost, huge disruption, limited benefit. What we need are replacement routes for these. Build the M31 to relieve the Heathrow quadrant of the M25. Build the M64 to relieve the West Midlands. etc etc
I agree with you. Stop pissing about trying to squeeze another bit onto existing road, build a new one. Because capacity has been breached well past where it was.
eek and others who love HS2 constantly bang on about capacity, but capacity is the issue with motorways and then some. So where are the new lines of motorways? Not widenings, not alternatives, not small quadrants. Entire full routes, as are proposed with HS2.
New motorways ought to be built all the way from London to Newcastle in the East, and Preston or similar in the West, then onto Scotland. And similar new motorways wherever needed, I've suggested before an "M580" which would remove a lot of congestion from the M62.
Links to the Parliamentary answer to the question of Triple Lock restoration.
I get the Pension next year but think its a disgrace its going up more than triple the rate being offered by HMG to railworkers nurses teachers and many others.
My suggestion of linking Pensions to Public Sector Pay backdated to 2010 would result in a 17% cut rather than a 10% rise
Yes - also, although it's a populist gesture, I think (and argued when in Parliament) that MP pay should bear a fixed relationship to average incomes (could be double or even triple, but fixed). That way, if things go splendidly, they share in the bounty, and if they vote for a squeeze, they share in the squeeze.
I rather like the Yes Minister wheeze of fixing then to a civil service pay band. Could be teachers/NHS etc. but makes them “feel” a squeeze quite directly.
Good idea, MPs are public sector workers after all, not private sector
The other thing I’ve wondered about in the past is giving them a larger staff allowance to manage constituency work, but then cutting salaries and positively encouraging second jobs to inform their life experience. Parliament would need to sit less often, but the quality of what we got might improve.
That would be good, if the MPs’ second jobs were unrelated to their role as MPs.
The problem is that so many MPs now are ‘Political Professionals”, who went straight from university into politics and have never had a job in the real world. They’d end up working in London as lobbyists or advisors on huge salaries, rather than get more of an understanding of their constituents. Just look at the jobs done now by former MPs.
Indeed, plenty of MPs now went from school to study politics/PPE at university, then worked for a Minister or MP as a SPAD or researcher, or for party HQ or a think tank or trade union, then got a parliamentary seat. Politics is all they know
Checking in to say the government are wankers and don't know how to run the country
Emergency legislation against strikers - 1. Strike days must be consecutive, none of this five days of disruption for three days of strikes. 2. Strike pay loss to be calculated as 1/232 not 1/365. Also reduce employer pension contributions by 1/232. 3. Make incentivising strikes with pay over and above lost income illegal. 4. Accelerate automation of key infrastructure and dilute the pool of eligible workers by simplifying the remaining jobs.
1-3 can be done immediately with primary legislation, if that means the whole public sector goes on strike then so be it, they are doing it anyway so it won't make any difference. If the wankers want to strike then make it hurt.
2 would muck around with lots of other pay definitions in law.
3 is not a thing you could legislate for. How can you stop one person/organisation giving another cash?
That excuse for point 2 is why we have this idiotic disconnect and I'm not sure it would anyway, it's a one line change from 1/365 to 1/232.
3. Of course you can, in the UK primary legislation rules all.
You’re showing your ignorance. Go on then - how would you draft 3 without preventing anyone other than state sanctioned entities transferring cash to each other? It’s not possible.
"Strike pay must not exceed lost salaried income" it's really not that difficult.
Checking in to say the government are wankers and don't know how to run the country
Emergency legislation against strikers - 1. Strike days must be consecutive, none of this five days of disruption for three days of strikes. 2. Strike pay loss to be calculated as 1/232 not 1/365. Also reduce employer pension contributions by 1/232. 3. Make incentivising strikes with pay over and above lost income illegal. 4. Accelerate automation of key infrastructure and dilute the pool of eligible workers by simplifying the remaining jobs.
1-3 can be done immediately with primary legislation, if that means the whole public sector goes on strike then so be it, they are doing it anyway so it won't make any difference. If the wankers want to strike then make it hurt.
If the WCML is at capacity then a new line may make sense.
The M1 and M6 absolutely are at capacity, and I believe carry an order of magnitude more than the WCML. So a new M1 and M6 absolutely ought to make sense, using the same logic.
I wonder how much a new M1 and M6 would cost, versus HS2. And what the capacity of the existing and a new M1 and M6 (supplementing the existing M1 and M6, albeit probably on a somewhat different route) would be versus the capacity of HS2/WCML.
Why should we build a new HS2 to relieve pressure on the WCML, but not build a new M1 or M6? And I don't mean the M6 Toll, a tiny little road, I mean full thing, from the South to past Preston at least, where the capacity is regularly past what it was built for already. If not all the way to Scotland.
And like was said about HS2, if you're building a new line, may as well build it to best modern standards. So a new M1 and M6 could be built with modern digital standards from the start, safety investment for lay-bys etc and have 4 or 5 lanes each way from the start for the entire route. Supplementing of course the existing motorway network, because new roads all the way.
Good luck getting that Bill through Parliament.
More seriously, as we move to EVs I do think it is true that building roads will be less controversial.
It will probably be as difficult to get through Parliament as HS2 was - but it would add far more capacity, do far more for the economy, and relieve far more congestion.
The benefits for a new M1 and new M6 would massively outstrip any benefits for increased capacity HS2 brings. I have absolutely no idea how much it would cost, but I imagine it would be comparable to HS2.
On an unrelated topic I was trying to get a Pension estimate for next year
You can only get this Online if you have a current UK Passport unless you live in NI where a driving licence will suffice.
I waited for over an hour to speak to someone who is sending it out by post as cant send electonically.
The Govt Gateway requires 2 forms of ID to do anything one can be a P60 the other has to be a current passport for everyone in England Scotland and Wales.
Madness
Because we don't have ID cards passports have become the defacto form of proof of residency / right to work.
As I pointed out earlier this week that means come October if you haven't got a passport there will be whole sectors of work where people without passports just won't be able to get work because company's will insist on 3rd party online right to work checks.
We don't have ID cards. So are making passports de facto compulsory. Therefore we will continue to not have ID cards. Huzzah!
Poor Politics from Starmer banning Shadow Ministers and PPS's from RMT picket lines.
Labour are either on the side of the workers or the bosses (Tory Govt) in this Trade dispute.
If its not the former whats the point of Labour
Voters who are siding with the bosses are predominantly not going to vote Labour anyway.
Labour voters who are with the workers will see SKS as a weak boring sit on the fence merchant* and see Labour as abandoning workers even more.
*Which of course he is.
Sensible politics. Only idiots, Marxists and closet Marxists support this strike.
Have you seen a Poll?
Even GB News reporter on the ground had to admit most people were sympathetic
I see at least one idiot opposes the strike and thinks that the 89% of railway workers are Marxists. or closet Marxists.
35 in support 49 against per YouGov, however Strongly support 12 vs Strongly oppose 26. Marginal plurality against the strikes, 2 to 1 with strong opinion against. Feelings very split
Split on party lines, 74% of Conservative voters oppose the strikes, 59% of Labour voters back the strikes.
LD voters marginally opposed, 49% against to 38% for
On an unrelated topic I was trying to get a Pension estimate for next year
You can only get this Online if you have a current UK Passport unless you live in NI where a driving licence will suffice.
I waited for over an hour to speak to someone who is sending it out by post as cant send electonically.
The Govt Gateway requires 2 forms of ID to do anything one can be a P60 the other has to be a current passport for everyone in England Scotland and Wales.
Madness
Because we don't have ID cards passports have become the defacto form of proof of residency / right to work.
As I pointed out earlier this week that means come October if you haven't got a passport there will be whole sectors of work where people without passports just won't be able to get work because company's will insist on 3rd party online right to work checks.
I was told yesterday HMRC have "now been granted access to the driving license database and will be able to use that as a Government Gateway validation soon"
When i aske them to define soon she said hopefully by October.
Checking in to say the government are wankers and don't know how to run the country
Emergency legislation against strikers - 1. Strike days must be consecutive, none of this five days of disruption for three days of strikes. 2. Strike pay loss to be calculated as 1/232 not 1/365. Also reduce employer pension contributions by 1/232. 3. Make incentivising strikes with pay over and above lost income illegal. 4. Accelerate automation of key infrastructure and dilute the pool of eligible workers by simplifying the remaining jobs.
1-3 can be done immediately with primary legislation, if that means the whole public sector goes on strike then so be it, they are doing it anyway so it won't make any difference. If the wankers want to strike then make it hurt.
2 would muck around with lots of other pay definitions in law.
3 is not a thing you could legislate for. How can you stop one person/organisation giving another cash?
That excuse for point 2 is why we have this idiotic disconnect and I'm not sure it would anyway, it's a one line change from 1/365 to 1/232.
3. Of course you can, in the UK primary legislation rules all.
You’re showing your ignorance. Go on then - how would you draft 3 without preventing anyone other than state sanctioned entities transferring cash to each other? It’s not possible.
Edit - not possible in an enforceable way.
There is already serious legislation about who can pay whom and for what, in order to prevent fraud, tax evasion etc
Checking in to say the government are wankers and don't know how to run the country
Emergency legislation against strikers - 1. Strike days must be consecutive, none of this five days of disruption for three days of strikes. 2. Strike pay loss to be calculated as 1/232 not 1/365. Also reduce employer pension contributions by 1/232. 3. Make incentivising strikes with pay over and above lost income illegal. 4. Accelerate automation of key infrastructure and dilute the pool of eligible workers by simplifying the remaining jobs.
1-3 can be done immediately with primary legislation, if that means the whole public sector goes on strike then so be it, they are doing it anyway so it won't make any difference. If the wankers want to strike then make it hurt.
2 would muck around with lots of other pay definitions in law.
3 is not a thing you could legislate for. How can you stop one person/organisation giving another cash?
That excuse for point 2 is why we have this idiotic disconnect and I'm not sure it would anyway, it's a one line change from 1/365 to 1/232.
3. Of course you can, in the UK primary legislation rules all.
You’re showing your ignorance. Go on then - how would you draft 3 without preventing anyone other than state sanctioned entities transferring cash to each other? It’s not possible.
"Strike pay must not exceed lost salaried income" it's really not that difficult.
You’re missing the point…
They would get another chunk of cash as a random gift to make up the difference. You can’t stop one person or entity giving another cash easily in a free society. You’ve never had to think about drafting enforceable legislation or rules have you? Nothing to be ashamed of, you just need to understand it’s not trivial.
Comments
* just demographic reality - I am not being morbid or taking any pleasure in it, before someone gets huffy.
Excellent podcast from Bari Weiss, just released;
“Is crypto over? A debate”
Well worth an hour or so of your time, imo.
https://www.honestlypod.com/podcast/episode/247cc6c3/is-crypto-over-a-debate
https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/world-news/957130/swimmers-face-ps645-fine-for-peeing-in-the-sea
Don't go to Weego.
I'd have thought they need this more on the Mediterranean coast.
Cumulative pensions since the lock began should be linked to the higher of cumulative prices and cumulative earnings,and never fall in an individual year. Basing the inrease on the highest in each individual year willi inevitably lead to pensions outpacing earnings significantly in times of volatility. If the triple lock was maintained for long enough in its current form then a pensioner would earn more than the average wage.
For a more honest chart, try this one.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1274832/uk-business-investment/
Choosing 2009 as the baseline is truly dishonest.
He may be useless, but in this case he is better off letting Shapps and the RMT beat lumps out of each other.
Only HYUFD and the Daily Mail believe this strike, which will be unpopular with the travelling public, is the work of the Labour party, so there is no point in reinforcing that lie.
And unless I'm missing something the one problem that still hasn't been solved in the post carbon future is fuelling of Lorries...
I cannot see how we rejoin the EEA. Via EFTA? Do they want us? But we could create a bilateral trading agreement with the EEA which encompasses the UK within it so that we can enjoy the same economic benefits as NI has.
I cannot see how we rejoin the ECU. But we can create *a* customs union agreement with the ECU which draws us into it.
People should be used to this by now. We had to leave the EU to stop Turks coming here via their non-membership of the EU. But could then have *a* ECU deal like non-EU member Turkey once we left.
For example, if containers landed at Southampton and Felixstowe could be moved by rail to a terminal somewhere around, say, East Midlands Airport, then picked up by lorry for local delivery, this would get thousands of lorries off the road network.
This is the sort of thing enabled by HS2, as it creates more paths for slower freight trains by getting faster passenger trains off the existing main lines.
You are right on your point about motorways being neglected though, there needs to be investment in renewing and widening, with particular attention to bottlenecks in the system.
It isn't Bozo....
If the capacity demand for freight is there, why is freight rail falling as a share of freight, rather than rising? Why are motorways the ones stretched to triple the capacity they were designed for?
If motorways were idle and empty then sure, no reason to invest in more, but its just not the case.
RMT union's General Secretary Mick Lynch got a little flustered explaining why...
https://twitter.com/KayBurley/status/1539166310227116034
Mick Lynch is good value. Oddest thing here is Burley posting her own car crash and projecting the flusteredness on to him.
But when stretches of motorway are dealing with hundreds of thousands of vehicles per day, that is pissing in the wind.
We need both. We should be investing in capacity for motorways, which are well past capacity and more capacity is needed - and investing in capacity in rail where it is needed. Capacity in rail is not a magical fix for capacity in roads, it won't even make a dent in the roads congestion.
This policy confirms Starmer has given up on a Labour majority, he is just focused on becoming PM in a hung parliament with LD as well as Labour support
https://tfl.gov.uk/tube-dlr-overground/status/#line-elizabeth
I may not like the unions, but he was utterly calm and composed the entire time.
Welsh Westminster voting intention:
LAB: 41% (-)
CON: 26% (-)
PC: 16% (+3)
LDEM: 7% (-)
via @YouGov, 12 - 16 Jun
Chgs. w/ Mar
https://t.co/DIILimlvOa
It is the road network which is bursting to capacity at hundreds of thousands of vehicles per day per stretch, not hundreds or thousands of them.
Predicts recession. Doesn't buy the temporary inflation line.
For what it's worth, I only ever see 'Remainers' and 'Leavers' on PB – most of the country has long since moved on, since Brexit divided many if not most families and was therefore a painful episode that millions want to forget.
As for FOM, I don't see it retuning in the medium term. What might happen is a more liberal visa system to help fill acute labour shortages in London and its ilk, which would be up to the UK government and would not require EEA membership.
It just hasn't had much effect, and it ought to have done.
Similarly we can shift in bulk goods for cities like London from an out of town hub, unload them at Euston etc overnight and deliver in electric vans. Remove both big trucks and the plague of diesel vans from the roads.
And absolutely, build more roads as well. Start by completing the obvious half-built and unfinished schemes so that the benefits the part-built bits were supposed to deliver actually get delivered.
After housing costs on average they will be much poorer than most Pensioners IMO
Meanwhile what happened to motorway traffic in the same time? It went up in both freight and passengers, while the rails doubled in one yet halved in the other.
The simple reality is that roads are a far more useful investment, yet are neglected for purely ideological rather than economic reasons. If you're looking at capacity, then instead of a new WCML I'd be looking at a new M6 and M1 etc as alternatives to the existing ones, with different routes and that would double capacity for both freight and passengers by road which is the overwhelming proportion of both freight and passengers moved in this country.
And points out he's been personally given £1100 in cost of living grants.
NFTs seem to be running their course though.
Having said that, North Salop was cos of out and out corruption , this is just a sad old boy having a tug at some boobies
Even GB News reporter on the ground had to admit most people were sympathetic
I see at least one idiot opposes the strike and thinks that the 89% of railway workers are Marxists. or closet Marxists.
Don't get me wrong, I have no faith in this government to deliver it properly (or anything properly – they are incompetent). But, it's at least a good idea that will (eventually) rid us of franchising – an international embarrassment.
The problem is that so many MPs now are ‘Political Professionals”, who went straight from university into politics and have never had a job in the real world. They’d end up working in London as lobbyists or advisors on huge salaries, rather than get more of an understanding of their constituents. Just look at the jobs done now by former MPs.
Worse still is how rare these new not-motorways are. Instead of new they spend £bonkers squeezing narrow lanes onto existing motorway carriageways. Huge cost, huge disruption, limited benefit. What we need are replacement routes for these. Build the M31 to relieve the Heathrow quadrant of the M25. Build the M64 to relieve the West Midlands. etc etc
Emergency legislation against strikers -
1. Strike days must be consecutive, none of this five days of disruption for three days of strikes.
2. Strike pay loss to be calculated as 1/232 not 1/365. Also reduce employer pension contributions by 1/232.
3. Make incentivising strikes with pay over and above lost income illegal.
4. Accelerate automation of key infrastructure and dilute the pool of eligible workers by simplifying the remaining jobs.
1-3 can be done immediately with primary legislation, if that means the whole public sector goes on strike then so be it, they are doing it anyway so it won't make any difference. If the wankers want to strike then make it hurt.
You can only get this Online if you have a current UK Passport unless you live in NI where a driving licence will suffice.
I waited for over an hour to speak to someone who is sending it out by post as cant send electonically.
The Govt Gateway requires 2 forms of ID to do anything one can be a P60 the other has to be a current passport for everyone in England Scotland and Wales.
Madness
3 is not a thing you could legislate for. How can you stop one person/organisation giving another cash?
Marginal plurality against the strikes, 2 to 1 with strong opinion against.
Feelings very split
The M1 and M6 absolutely are at capacity, and I believe carry an order of magnitude more than the WCML. So a new M1 and M6 absolutely ought to make sense, using the same logic.
I wonder how much a new M1 and M6 would cost, versus HS2. And what the capacity of the existing and a new M1 and M6 (supplementing the existing M1 and M6, albeit probably on a somewhat different route) would be versus the capacity of HS2/WCML.
Why should we build a new HS2 to relieve pressure on the WCML, but not build a new M1 or M6? And I don't mean the M6 Toll, a tiny little road, I mean full thing, from the South to past Preston at least, where the capacity is regularly past what it was built for already. If not all the way to Scotland.
And like was said about HS2, if you're building a new line, may as well build it to best modern standards. So a new M1 and M6 could be built with modern digital standards from the start, safety investment for lay-bys etc and have 4 or 5 lanes each way from the start for the entire route. Supplementing of course the existing motorway network, because new roads all the way.
EXC: Boris Johnson is concerned Zelensky is being pressured into agreeing a “s*****” peace deal with Russia because allies are getting tired of war
He will push Germany, France + others to strengthen support at G7 / Nato talks next week. Source tells me a “big fight” is looming
https://twitter.com/benrileysmith/status/1539229404882157570
He was a much better Health Secretary than Alun Milburn
As I pointed out earlier this week that means come October if you haven't got a passport there will be whole sectors of work where people without passports just won't be able to get work because company's will insist on 3rd party online right to work checks.
3. Of course you can, in the UK primary legislation rules all.
As for the Eurostuff, it was always likely that 2024-9 was going to be about (try to) "make Brexit work by diluting it a bit". And then a bit more and a bit more.
I know it's awfully bad manners for the government to try to launch another Brexit war and the rest of us not turn up, but sometimes the best thing to do is sit and wait.
More seriously, as we move to EVs I do think it is true that building roads will be less controversial.
Edit - not possible in an enforceable way.
eek and others who love HS2 constantly bang on about capacity, but capacity is the issue with motorways and then some. So where are the new lines of motorways? Not widenings, not alternatives, not small quadrants. Entire full routes, as are proposed with HS2.
New motorways ought to be built all the way from London to Newcastle in the East, and Preston or similar in the West, then onto Scotland. And similar new motorways wherever needed, I've suggested before an "M580" which would remove a lot of congestion from the M62.
The benefits for a new M1 and new M6 would massively outstrip any benefits for increased capacity HS2 brings. I have absolutely no idea how much it would cost, but I imagine it would be comparable to HS2.
So are making passports de facto compulsory.
Therefore we will continue to not have ID cards.
Huzzah!
LD voters marginally opposed, 49% against to 38% for
https://yougov.co.uk/topics/economy/survey-results/daily/2022/06/08/d6f7e/3
When i aske them to define soon she said hopefully by October.
Which October i didnt ask foolishly
They would get another chunk of cash as a random gift to make up the difference. You can’t stop one person or entity giving another cash easily in a free society. You’ve never had to think about drafting enforceable legislation or rules have you? Nothing to be ashamed of, you just need to understand it’s not trivial.