The LDs step up the tactical squeeze on LAB voters in Devon – politicalbetting.com

Malmesbury said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Carnyx said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Casino_Royale said:

Carnyx said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

StuartDickson said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

One point made by a colleague.

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.

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

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...

BEV HGVs are on the way - the continually reducing cost of batteries and increasing production volumes are now making them viable.

For 400+ miles a day or short distances... Scania are focussing on less than 200 miles a day...

RochdalePioneers said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

Carnyx said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

RochdalePioneers said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Carnyx said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Casino_Royale said:

Carnyx said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

StuartDickson said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

One point made by a colleague.

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.

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

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.

NIMBYism means the odds of getting a new motorway is now zero.

See for example the the M4 relief road (yes I know it's in Wales but its the first example that came into my head)

And with that attitude NIMBYism should have killed HS2 too. Why didn't it, considering the economic demand for HS2 is considerably less than M1-2 and M6-2 or whatever you want to call them would bring.

Because on some level people like trains and don't like Motorways.

Also HS2 started in a different era - by the time the current focus on NIMBYism had arrived most of the bits of HS2 that are being built had been bought up and at the very least budgeted for.

I would argue NIMBYism has been around since at least the 1970s.

"The Greater London Council's policy for the shape of London went to public inquiry in 1970, and its monolithic motorway plans came under detailed scrutiny for the first time. The Greater London Development Plan Inquiry was to become the longest planning inquiry in British history - and marked the start of the end for urban motorways in the capital.

"The inquiry had been fully expected for some years. GLC publicity from the mid-1960s had reassured Londoners that it meant anybody could raise an objection and that "nothing can just slip through". It was convened in July 1970 under Frank Layfield QC, a leading expert on planning law.

"Among the objections to high-rise buildings, open space policy and waste disposal, one subject took up more time than any other, accounting for more heated debate, disagreement and animosity than anything else. 30,000 objections to the GLDP were received, and three quarters of them related to the GLC's motorway plans. Everyone, it seemed, had something to say about the Ringways."


https://www.roads.org.uk/index.php/ringways/the-end

Where they went wrong was building the Westway before the rest of the network had the go-ahead. Not actually part of the Ringways plan, the Westway was so appalling both in terms of what it did to those communities and the way the GLC told the people who were now breathing in fumes from the motorway 10 ft from their bedroom window to do one.




What they should have done: assemble Road Construction Units and start building all 4 flanks of Ringway One simultaneously. That way by the time people realised just how catastrophic this would be it was both too late to stop R1 but required Ringway 2 and the various arterial links for the roads already built to have any purpose...

Indeed. Yet somehow, the M1 was built all the way in to Staples Corner with scarcely an objection raised!

And in the 1990s swathes of Leyton, Leytonstone and Wanstead were flattened to make way for the A12 "M11 Link Road". Which begs the question, if it was OK to build that particular road at that particular time, why not the others?

https://www.roads.org.uk/index.php/ringways/northern/m11

Did different kinds of people live in the different areas? E.g. middle class articulate Nimbiers versus fringe types?

Hmmm.... well, the cynic in me thinks the M11's original planned route through Snaresbrook (ie. a direct line from M11 J4 through to Leytonstone) was avoided because it was Tory-voting back then, whereas Leyton and Leytonstone were and still are Labour...

The M11 starting at the Angel Islington as planned. That should be our campaign!

Actually, that was Abercrombie's radial route 7 (aka. the A12 extension)! The M11 was always planned to end on R1 at Hackney Wick, the A12 extension heading from there through Victoria Park and Hackney.

Mexicanpete said:

MaxPB said:

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.

Notwithstanding the legitimacy of these strikes, should you be allowed to withdraw your labour in the event of what you considered to be substantially bad, but nonetheless legal behaviour by your employer?

Surely the right to withdraw one's labour is a fundamental civil right, certainly for libertarian conservatives.

Indeed. It is called 'resignation'.

With current levels of employment law, there is no need for protections for striking workers.

Sunil_Prasannan said:

Leon said:

Stuartinromford said:

HYUFD said:

Leon said:

HYUFD said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

biggles said:

HYUFD said:

bigjohnowls said:

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

https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1538771495522078721?s=20&t=JsNNZFf22vjq8PgHbCpHew

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.

Except, if Starmer wants the support of the LDs and SNP to become PM with NOM, the price will probably be SM and CU, so STFU*


*I don’t really mean that, I just carried away with all the acronyms. My main point is good, tho

Thought you might find this interesting:

https://www.roads.org.uk/index.php/ringways/ringway1/camden-town-bypass

My God, they would have destroyed Camden

If it weren’t for the fact that they are all dead, I would quite like show trials and summary executions of several thousand UK architects and town planners active from 1950-1990, for the atrocities they have wrought, and the neighborhoods they DID destroy

OnlyLivingBoy said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

MattW said:

OnlyLivingBoy said:

MattW said:

Benpointer said:

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.

You have data for say 2016-2021?

Yes.

Pre-Brexit it was growing more strongly from what baseline?

The FT dodgy chart is dodgy because it chooses 2009 as the baseline, multiple people have already pointed that out. Picking 1997 as the baseline the chart looks completely different unsurprisingly and it becomes clear than 2009 was the aberration and not 2016.

Not really. 2009 is a reasonable point to start because it is the start of the recovery, and the point of the chart is to contrast pre 2016 with post 2016, so going back a full 20 years pre 2016 obscures the point the chart is making.
If you go back and read what I said, I pointed out that UK business investment fell more than its peers after the GFC, and so was growing back more strongly from a lower base. It continued to grow during 2012-15 when the Eurozone crisis caused it to fall in Italy and stagnate in France and Germany. Then after the Brexit vote it suddenly stopped growing in the UK while it kept rising everywhere else. It fell further after Covid in the UK, Japan and Canada but has recovered to pre Covid levels or above elsewhere else in the G7.
The UK's performance since the Brexit vote has been bad, you cannot spin it away

2009 is not a reasonable point to start because all you're measuring is how much it fell during the crash (which is subsequently recovered), as opposed to how much its actually grown.

From 1997 shows a clear trend of growth outside of recessions (eg 2009 and 2020) and you can draw a trend line from 1997 to 2016-19 being back at trend. But if you start the trendline at 2009 then obviously the trendline should expect the recovery to keep going to infinity and beyond which isn't possible.

Wherever you draw the line from it will show positive trend growth pre Brexit vote followed by flat post 2016 with a fall after Covid. And that looks different to every other country in the G7. Something happened in mid 2016 that caused businesses in the UK suddenly to stop investing while businesses in the rest of the G7 kept investing. It's not hard to figure out what that something was.

Bollocks.

Do a chart over the long term, rather than cherrypicking the trough in the middle of the recession, and it shows no such thing.

UK investment was at around record high levels 2016-2019 but that doesn't suit your agenda.

Try doing a multinational long term chart that

CorrectHorseBattery said:

Starmer's Labour is entirely cynical and about achieving power.

Good, we've not had that since 2005

Absolutely agreed.

Starmer, as I've said for a while, has absolutely no principles and is utterly shameless and cynical. He's Labours Boris Johnson, only he fits his clothes and has no charisma; unlike his predecessor who was a dinosaur with the same anti western, anti Jewish and anti capitalist principles today as he had in the 1970s.

Whether you want a shameless unprincipled cynical politicians like Boris or Starmer, or dogmatic dinosaurs like Corbyn, or something in-between is another question.

Dura_Ace said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Sandpit said:

LostPassword said:

Word is that German self-propelled artillery has now arrived in Ukraine.

https://twitter.com/IAPonomarenko/status/1539240601752940550

Wow, let’s hope that Scholz got worried by what the rest of the G7 were going to say to him.

More where that came from, please. Lots more.

I wonder if they’ll be operating alongside UK SPGs?

They didn't send any AS90 in the end but Baldy Ben certainly "looked at the idea" which must really shit up the Russians.

It was just announced to generate a flurry of headlines then quietly shelved. This can be of no surprise to anyone familiar with the Johnson process.

UK is the process of sending 20+ M109s acquired from Belgium. It is almost certainly from the same supplier who sold M109s previously to Ukraine - they bought the entire stock of Belgium M109s when the Belgian Army retired them.

https://militaryleak.com/2022/06/21/uk-to-provide-ukraine-with-ex-belgian-m109a4-be-self-propelled-howitzers/

That's in addition to the MLRS heavy rocket artillery being sent.

Sandpit said:

Scott_xP said:

BoZO terrified "his" war will end...

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

The PM is right to be concerned.

Scholz in particular, has been unwavering in his recent support for imports of Russian gas, over being seen to arm Ukraine.

Things aren't going too well on the Ukraine PR front.

Allowing Ukrainian corruption to get an airing by blaming the EU for bringing it up was not smart politics. All they needed to do was say 'we're working on it and we will of course aim to meet the standards required by the EU as soon as possible'

Their closeness to Boris Johnson will also not be playing well. Certainly not in the UK where he's as popular as a sauteed toad but more widely across Europe

If Ukraine lose their whiter than white status the help for their war effort will crumble as quickly as it built up.

eek said:

Malmesbury said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Carnyx said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Casino_Royale said:

Carnyx said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

StuartDickson said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

One point made by a colleague.

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.

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

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...

BEV HGVs are on the way - the continually reducing cost of batteries and increasing production volumes are now making them viable.

For 400+ miles a day or short distances... Scania are focussing on less than 200 miles a day...

That would cover the vast majority of HGV movements in the UK.

Leon said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

Leon said:

Stuartinromford said:

HYUFD said:

Leon said:

HYUFD said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

biggles said:

HYUFD said:

bigjohnowls said:

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

https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1538771495522078721?s=20&t=JsNNZFf22vjq8PgHbCpHew

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.

Except, if Starmer wants the support of the LDs and SNP to become PM with NOM, the price will probably be SM and CU, so STFU*


*I don’t really mean that, I just carried away with all the acronyms. My main point is good, tho

Thought you might find this interesting:

https://www.roads.org.uk/index.php/ringways/ringway1/camden-town-bypass

My God, they would have destroyed Camden

If it weren’t for the fact that they are all dead, I would quite like show trials and summary executions of several thousand UK architects and town planners active from 1950-1990, for the atrocities they have wrought, and the neighborhoods they DID destroy

Lightweight.

If disinterment and postumous execution was good enough for Oliver Cromwell, it's good enough for 1950s town planners.

Mortimer said:

DavidL said:

CorrectHorseBattery said:

Backing the strikes is a disaster for Labour.

Not sure I agree. Sarwar's tweet said this:

"Solidarity with those on the picket lines.

This is a crisis entirely of the Government’s making.

The workers don’t want strikes. The unions don’t want strikes. The public don’t want strikes.

They demand better."

If softy Tories like me agree with this (and I do) I think Boris has called this wrong.

The majority of my Labour voting friends are incensed by these strikes. Not one of them has mentioned the government.

I use the trains a lot and have overhead numerous conversations about it recently. Train users are in no way sympathetic with the strikes.

Too many Labour MPs are stuck in the Aggy Marxist phase. Starmer is doing the right thing IMO. If he sacked a few minister who appeared on pickets he would look decisive.

It may be different in different parts of the country. In Edinburgh my pals have blamed the management and government (they don't really distinguish) for not taking the negotiations seriously enough. Personally, I go a bit further and am of the view that the government was desperate to get into a battle with a trade union to show how tough they are and that Labour hasn't changed.

I certainly received bits of correspondence from CCHQ about "labour's strikes" referring back to the winter of discontent, something you need to be pushing 60 to have a good memory of. I did not find it persuasive but it certainly showed motive.

Leon said:

HYUFD said:

Leon said:

Stuartinromford said:

HYUFD said:

Leon said:

HYUFD said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

biggles said:

HYUFD said:

bigjohnowls said:

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

https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1538771495522078721?s=20&t=JsNNZFf22vjq8PgHbCpHew

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.

Except, if Starmer wants the support of the LDs and SNP to become PM with NOM, the price will probably be SM and CU, so STFU*


*I don’t really mean that, I just carried away with all the acronyms. My main point is good, tho

I doubt Starmer would then be that bothered if he had to concede SM in a hung parliament then which he could blame on the LDs or SNP having already won enough redwall seats back from the Tories to become PM.

Though it would offer an opportunity for the Tory Leader of the Opposition in Leave areas if the Labour minority government propped up by the LDs and/or SNP restored free movement

You underestimate my estimate of Starmer’s plan

This is what Starmer WANTS. He can honestly say to the British people “a Labour government will not rejoin the SM and will not restore FoM”, and thus grab back the Red Wall, in the full knowledge that as a NOM PM the Libs and Nats will demand SM and FoM and he will, ever so reluctantly, have to agree, thus keeping his promise but also getting SM. It’s a bit like Cameron relying on the Lib dems to make sure he didn’t have to offer a referendum on the EU, although that went somewhat awry in 2015 when he accidentally got a majority

That would be an extremely stupid idea. As the Lib Dems discovered with tuition fees, being in coalition doesn't give you any sort of cover if you break a key manifesto pledge, even if the coalition dynamic gives you no choice. Labour will get nowhere playing around with EU stuff, and I suspect Starmer is desperate for the issue never to be revisited during his political lifetime.

Stuartinromford said:

Leon said:

Sunil_Prasannan said:

Leon said:

Stuartinromford said:

HYUFD said:

Leon said:

HYUFD said:

Leon said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

biggles said:

HYUFD said:

bigjohnowls said:

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

https://twitter.com/thetimes/status/1538771495522078721?s=20&t=JsNNZFf22vjq8PgHbCpHew

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.

Except, if Starmer wants the support of the LDs and SNP to become PM with NOM, the price will probably be SM and CU, so STFU*


*I don’t really mean that, I just carried away with all the acronyms. My main point is good, tho

Thought you might find this interesting:

https://www.roads.org.uk/index.php/ringways/ringway1/camden-town-bypass

My God, they would have destroyed Camden

If it weren’t for the fact that they are all dead, I would quite like show trials and summary executions of several thousand UK architects and town planners active from 1950-1990, for the atrocities they have wrought, and the neighborhoods they DID destroy

Lightweight.

If disinterment and postumous execution was good enough for Oliver Cromwell, it's good enough for 1950s town planners.

When I become unDictator, there will be a cabinet level post for Minister for Destruction of Award Winning Architecture.

Is it any surprise that Tiverton’s local Conservative Party might vote for the Lib Dems? | @TanyaGold1 reports on the Tiverton and Honiton by-election https://unherd.com/2022/06/the-tories-deserve-to-lose-tiverton/

Malmesbury said:

Leon said:

IshmaelZ said:

Sandpit said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Carnyx said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Casino_Royale said:

Carnyx said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

StuartDickson said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

One point made by a colleague.

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.

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

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.

Lets use an M62 example but over the Pennines instead. The M67 was supposed to connect to the Manchester Inner Ring motorway near the Apollo. Cancelled. The other end was supposed to extend over the Pennines to meet the M1 north of Meadowhall and was further proposed to reach the A1 at Barnsdale Bar. Cancelled.

Entertainingly even the piddly Mottram / Tintwistle bypass can't get built because of the risk that it makes Woodhead more attractive as a crossing. Because the M67 / M60 junction can't cope with more traffic nor would the M60 to either side.

So we get stuck with the M62. Which takes all its own traffic. Plus from the cancelled M67 and M64 further south. Plus from the lack of a high quality road any further north (like a dualled A66)

They should dig a dual-carriageway tunnel under the Snake Pass - and leave that twisty piece of road as a private English Nurburgring for the petrol heads, once everyone else has crappy electric appliances on their driveways.

Driving round Sicily I was stunned by the road engineering (viaducts and tunnels). I'm guessing that's what EU membership gets you

There are, erm, “particular cultural reasons” why Sicily gets an awful lot of money spent on infrastructure, compared to other equally or even more impoverished areas of Italy, which often get little

The crumbling concrete caused by cheating on the materials is a feature, not a bug. Since the repair contracts.....

Malmesbury said:

Leon said:

IshmaelZ said:

Sandpit said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Carnyx said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Casino_Royale said:

Carnyx said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

StuartDickson said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

One point made by a colleague.

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.

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

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.

Lets use an M62 example but over the Pennines instead. The M67 was supposed to connect to the Manchester Inner Ring motorway near the Apollo. Cancelled. The other end was supposed to extend over the Pennines to meet the M1 north of Meadowhall and was further proposed to reach the A1 at Barnsdale Bar. Cancelled.

Entertainingly even the piddly Mottram / Tintwistle bypass can't get built because of the risk that it makes Woodhead more attractive as a crossing. Because the M67 / M60 junction can't cope with more traffic nor would the M60 to either side.

So we get stuck with the M62. Which takes all its own traffic. Plus from the cancelled M67 and M64 further south. Plus from the lack of a high quality road any further north (like a dualled A66)

They should dig a dual-carriageway tunnel under the Snake Pass - and leave that twisty piece of road as a private English Nurburgring for the petrol heads, once everyone else has crappy electric appliances on their driveways.

Driving round Sicily I was stunned by the road engineering (viaducts and tunnels). I'm guessing that's what EU membership gets you

There are, erm, “particular cultural reasons” why Sicily gets an awful lot of money spent on infrastructure, compared to other equally or even more impoverished areas of Italy, which often get little

The crumbling concrete caused by cheating on the materials is a feature, not a bug. Since the repair contracts.....

Yes

My favourites are the motorways that go nowhere. They start with great flamboyance, proceed for 2km, then just stop, sometimes in mid air. A flyover will be left hanging in the blue Sicilian sky

Clearly someone skimmed their cream, and decided that was it, and off they went

Calabria is even crazier. There the local Mafia - the ‘Ndrangheta, much richer and more powerful than the Cosa Nostra - don’t want any roads at ALL, especially around Plati, in case someone feels like having a look around

The roads in the Aspromonte must be the worst in Western Europe

wooliedyed said:

DavidL said:

Mortimer said:

DavidL said:

CorrectHorseBattery said:

Backing the strikes is a disaster for Labour.

Not sure I agree. Sarwar's tweet said this:

"Solidarity with those on the picket lines.

This is a crisis entirely of the Government’s making.

The workers don’t want strikes. The unions don’t want strikes. The public don’t want strikes.

They demand better."

If softy Tories like me agree with this (and I do) I think Boris has called this wrong.

The majority of my Labour voting friends are incensed by these strikes. Not one of them has mentioned the government.

I use the trains a lot and have overhead numerous conversations about it recently. Train users are in no way sympathetic with the strikes.

Too many Labour MPs are stuck in the Aggy Marxist phase. Starmer is doing the right thing IMO. If he sacked a few minister who appeared on pickets he would look decisive.

It may be different in different parts of the country. In Edinburgh my pals have blamed the management and government (they don't really distinguish) for not taking the negotiations seriously enough. Personally, I go a bit further and am of the view that the government was desperate to get into a battle with a trade union to show how tough they are and that Labour hasn't changed.

I certainly received bits of correspondence from CCHQ about "labour's strikes" referring back to the winter of discontent, something you need to be pushing 60 to have a good memory of. I did not find it persuasive but it certainly showed motive.

Bozmafoz is setting up for a who governs cut and run this year.

Didn't work for Ted Heath, did it?

wooliedyed said:

DavidL said:

Mortimer said:

DavidL said:

CorrectHorseBattery said:

Backing the strikes is a disaster for Labour.

Not sure I agree. Sarwar's tweet said this:

"Solidarity with those on the picket lines.

This is a crisis entirely of the Government’s making.

The workers don’t want strikes. The unions don’t want strikes. The public don’t want strikes.

They demand better."

If softy Tories like me agree with this (and I do) I think Boris has called this wrong.

The majority of my Labour voting friends are incensed by these strikes. Not one of them has mentioned the government.

I use the trains a lot and have overhead numerous conversations about it recently. Train users are in no way sympathetic with the strikes.

Too many Labour MPs are stuck in the Aggy Marxist phase. Starmer is doing the right thing IMO. If he sacked a few minister who appeared on pickets he would look decisive.

It may be different in different parts of the country. In Edinburgh my pals have blamed the management and government (they don't really distinguish) for not taking the negotiations seriously enough. Personally, I go a bit further and am of the view that the government was desperate to get into a battle with a trade union to show how tough they are and that Labour hasn't changed.

I certainly received bits of correspondence from CCHQ about "labour's strikes" referring back to the winter of discontent, something you need to be pushing 60 to have a good memory of. I did not find it persuasive but it certainly showed motive.

Bozmafoz is setting up for a who governs cut and run this year.

Add that to my list of things PB always predicts but don't happen.

Scott_xP said:

Is it any surprise that Tiverton’s local Conservative Party might vote for the Lib Dems? | @TanyaGold1 reports on the Tiverton and Honiton by-election https://unherd.com/2022/06/the-tories-deserve-to-lose-tiverton/

Interesting comment at the end that they cant find the 'purity of anger' that was evident in N Shropshire.
Maybe it IS close

Foxy said:

wooliedyed said:

DavidL said:

Mortimer said:

DavidL said:

CorrectHorseBattery said:

Backing the strikes is a disaster for Labour.

Not sure I agree. Sarwar's tweet said this:

"Solidarity with those on the picket lines.

This is a crisis entirely of the Government’s making.

The workers don’t want strikes. The unions don’t want strikes. The public don’t want strikes.

They demand better."

If softy Tories like me agree with this (and I do) I think Boris has called this wrong.

The majority of my Labour voting friends are incensed by these strikes. Not one of them has mentioned the government.

I use the trains a lot and have overhead numerous conversations about it recently. Train users are in no way sympathetic with the strikes.

Too many Labour MPs are stuck in the Aggy Marxist phase. Starmer is doing the right thing IMO. If he sacked a few minister who appeared on pickets he would look decisive.

It may be different in different parts of the country. In Edinburgh my pals have blamed the management and government (they don't really distinguish) for not taking the negotiations seriously enough. Personally, I go a bit further and am of the view that the government was desperate to get into a battle with a trade union to show how tough they are and that Labour hasn't changed.

I certainly received bits of correspondence from CCHQ about "labour's strikes" referring back to the winter of discontent, something you need to be pushing 60 to have a good memory of. I did not find it persuasive but it certainly showed motive.

Bozmafoz is setting up for a who governs cut and run this year.

Didn't work for Ted Heath, did it?

No. As i posted a few days ago
Who governs 2.....
Still not you

wooliedyed said:

Foxy said:

wooliedyed said:

DavidL said:

Mortimer said:

DavidL said:

CorrectHorseBattery said:

Backing the strikes is a disaster for Labour.

Not sure I agree. Sarwar's tweet said this:

"Solidarity with those on the picket lines.

This is a crisis entirely of the Government’s making.

The workers don’t want strikes. The unions don’t want strikes. The public don’t want strikes.

They demand better."

If softy Tories like me agree with this (and I do) I think Boris has called this wrong.

The majority of my Labour voting friends are incensed by these strikes. Not one of them has mentioned the government.

I use the trains a lot and have overhead numerous conversations about it recently. Train users are in no way sympathetic with the strikes.

Too many Labour MPs are stuck in the Aggy Marxist phase. Starmer is doing the right thing IMO. If he sacked a few minister who appeared on pickets he would look decisive.

It may be different in different parts of the country. In Edinburgh my pals have blamed the management and government (they don't really distinguish) for not taking the negotiations seriously enough. Personally, I go a bit further and am of the view that the government was desperate to get into a battle with a trade union to show how tough they are and that Labour hasn't changed.

I certainly received bits of correspondence from CCHQ about "labour's strikes" referring back to the winter of discontent, something you need to be pushing 60 to have a good memory of. I did not find it persuasive but it certainly showed motive.

Bozmafoz is setting up for a who governs cut and run this year.

Didn't work for Ted Heath, did it?

No. As i posted a few days ago
Who governs 2.....
Still not you

Just cant see it.

Roger said:

Sandpit said:

Scott_xP said:

BoZO terrified "his" war will end...

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

The PM is right to be concerned.

Scholz in particular, has been unwavering in his recent support for imports of Russian gas, over being seen to arm Ukraine.

Things aren't going too well on the Ukraine PR front.

Allowing Ukrainian corruption to get an airing by blaming the EU for bringing it up was not smart politics. All they needed to do was say 'we're working on it and we will of course aim to meet the standards required by the EU as soon as possible'

Their closeness to Boris Johnson will also not be playing well. Certainly not in the UK where he's as popular as a sauteed toad but more widely across Europe

If Ukraine lose their whiter than white status the help for their war effort will crumble as quickly as it built up.

Putin speaks

MISTY said:

Anabobazina said:

Foxy said:

TimS said:

CorrectHorseBattery said:

Backing the strikes is a disaster for Labour.

Focusing on the need to negotiate is the best approach.

Which is very much what Mick Lynch has been asking for.

What an unexpected media star Lynch is, absolutely unflappable and reasonable in his approach, with just the right hint of humour, and willing to call out Ministers lies for what they are.

He is a very formidable presence, I can see why the Tory ministers go pale at the sight of him in the studio.

Indeed. Once the late, great Sir Bob Crow left us, it wasn't at all clear that he could ever be replaced. Lynch looks to be up to the measure of the man.

In the 1984/85 Miners' strike, Scargill often outshone the NCB chief, Ian MacGregor, in arguments.

Indeed. Some people have suggested that Scargill was one of the last of the great orators in public meetings in the old British tradition.

Leon said:

Malmesbury said:

Leon said:

IshmaelZ said:

Sandpit said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Carnyx said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Casino_Royale said:

Carnyx said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

StuartDickson said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

One point made by a colleague.

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.

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

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.

Lets use an M62 example but over the Pennines instead. The M67 was supposed to connect to the Manchester Inner Ring motorway near the Apollo. Cancelled. The other end was supposed to extend over the Pennines to meet the M1 north of Meadowhall and was further proposed to reach the A1 at Barnsdale Bar. Cancelled.

Entertainingly even the piddly Mottram / Tintwistle bypass can't get built because of the risk that it makes Woodhead more attractive as a crossing. Because the M67 / M60 junction can't cope with more traffic nor would the M60 to either side.

So we get stuck with the M62. Which takes all its own traffic. Plus from the cancelled M67 and M64 further south. Plus from the lack of a high quality road any further north (like a dualled A66)

They should dig a dual-carriageway tunnel under the Snake Pass - and leave that twisty piece of road as a private English Nurburgring for the petrol heads, once everyone else has crappy electric appliances on their driveways.

Driving round Sicily I was stunned by the road engineering (viaducts and tunnels). I'm guessing that's what EU membership gets you

There are, erm, “particular cultural reasons” why Sicily gets an awful lot of money spent on infrastructure, compared to other equally or even more impoverished areas of Italy, which often get little

The crumbling concrete caused by cheating on the materials is a feature, not a bug. Since the repair contracts.....

Yes

My favourites are the motorways that go nowhere. They start with great flamboyance, proceed for 2km, then just stop, sometimes in mid air. A flyover will be left hanging in the blue Sicilian sky

Clearly someone skimmed their cream, and decided that was it, and off they went

Calabria is even crazier. There the local Mafia - the ‘Ndrangheta, much richer and more powerful than the Cosa Nostra - don’t want any roads at ALL, especially around Plati, in case someone feels like having a look around

The roads in the Aspromonte must be the worst in Western Europe

There used to be a great road which suddenly ended in mid-air. In Capetown.

Leon said:

Malmesbury said:

Leon said:

IshmaelZ said:

Sandpit said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Carnyx said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Casino_Royale said:

Carnyx said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

StuartDickson said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

One point made by a colleague.

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.

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

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.

Lets use an M62 example but over the Pennines instead. The M67 was supposed to connect to the Manchester Inner Ring motorway near the Apollo. Cancelled. The other end was supposed to extend over the Pennines to meet the M1 north of Meadowhall and was further proposed to reach the A1 at Barnsdale Bar. Cancelled.

Entertainingly even the piddly Mottram / Tintwistle bypass can't get built because of the risk that it makes Woodhead more attractive as a crossing. Because the M67 / M60 junction can't cope with more traffic nor would the M60 to either side.

So we get stuck with the M62. Which takes all its own traffic. Plus from the cancelled M67 and M64 further south. Plus from the lack of a high quality road any further north (like a dualled A66)

They should dig a dual-carriageway tunnel under the Snake Pass - and leave that twisty piece of road as a private English Nurburgring for the petrol heads, once everyone else has crappy electric appliances on their driveways.

Driving round Sicily I was stunned by the road engineering (viaducts and tunnels). I'm guessing that's what EU membership gets you

There are, erm, “particular cultural reasons” why Sicily gets an awful lot of money spent on infrastructure, compared to other equally or even more impoverished areas of Italy, which often get little

The crumbling concrete caused by cheating on the materials is a feature, not a bug. Since the repair contracts.....

Yes

My favourites are the motorways that go nowhere. They start with great flamboyance, proceed for 2km, then just stop, sometimes in mid air.

The West Cross Route (ex-M41) says hello, all one mile of it!
https://www.roads.org.uk/ringways/ringway1/west-cross-route

CorrectHorseBattery said:

If nurses and doctors join this strike BoJo loses the country IMHO

Nurses, certainly.
Doctors, not so sure. Particularly GPs.

Pulpstar said:

CorrectHorseBattery said:

If nurses and doctors join this strike BoJo loses the country IMHO

Nurses, certainly.
Doctors, not so sure. Particularly GPs.

GPs are just a myth these days. They haven't existed in physical form since March 2020.

wooliedyed said:

turbotubbs said:

wooliedyed said:

Foxy said:

wooliedyed said:

DavidL said:

Mortimer said:

DavidL said:

CorrectHorseBattery said:

Backing the strikes is a disaster for Labour.

Not sure I agree. Sarwar's tweet said this:

"Solidarity with those on the picket lines.

This is a crisis entirely of the Government’s making.

The workers don’t want strikes. The unions don’t want strikes. The public don’t want strikes.

They demand better."

If softy Tories like me agree with this (and I do) I think Boris has called this wrong.

The majority of my Labour voting friends are incensed by these strikes. Not one of them has mentioned the government.

I use the trains a lot and have overhead numerous conversations about it recently. Train users are in no way sympathetic with the strikes.

Too many Labour MPs are stuck in the Aggy Marxist phase. Starmer is doing the right thing IMO. If he sacked a few minister who appeared on pickets he would look decisive.

It may be different in different parts of the country. In Edinburgh my pals have blamed the management and government (they don't really distinguish) for not taking the negotiations seriously enough. Personally, I go a bit further and am of the view that the government was desperate to get into a battle with a trade union to show how tough they are and that Labour hasn't changed.

I certainly received bits of correspondence from CCHQ about "labour's strikes" referring back to the winter of discontent, something you need to be pushing 60 to have a good memory of. I did not find it persuasive but it certainly showed motive.

Bozmafoz is setting up for a who governs cut and run this year.

Didn't work for Ted Heath, did it?

No. As i posted a few days ago
Who governs 2.....
Still not you

Just cant see it.

From Johnsons point of view, he either gets his 8 to 10 years in charge or the whole thing can crash and burn. So he tries to manufacture a poll lead by conference season via summer of discontent, revamped brexit wars and some woke worries and goes for it. Theres nothing but headwinds into late 2024, boundary changes are possibly good but unpredictable (andany advantage undine by a 1% swing) and if hes going down, do it on his terms fighting his battle.
He doesnt give a shit about the long term for the tories or the country. Just his future.

Its a theory, except I think with up to 2.5 years left (Jan 2025) and a majority in the 70's (assuming losses on Thursday), he can wait for something to turn up. Now we may be of the opinion that the country is more f$cked than a certain posters favourite fantasy but that's not to say that those at the top see it that way. They may feel that the current poll situation is down to partygate and the CoL crisis. Its not impossible that inflation starts to come down by the end of the year and into 2023 it may approach more normal levels. Peace in Ukraine may result in a better global environment.

I think realistically if the Tories tried to engineer a grudge election and went in say October this year, partygate is too fresh and they will be swamped, and rightly so. So although I want that as an outcome, I don't think it will happen.

CorrectHorseBattery said:

If nurses and doctors join this strike BoJo loses the country IMHO

More likely a ban on covering staff vacancies and voluntary overtime. Cover would collapse within days, there being neither slack nor flexibility in post Hunt rotas.

OldKingCole said:

Leon said:

Malmesbury said:

Leon said:

IshmaelZ said:

Sandpit said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Carnyx said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Casino_Royale said:

Carnyx said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

StuartDickson said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

One point made by a colleague.

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.

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

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.

Lets use an M62 example but over the Pennines instead. The M67 was supposed to connect to the Manchester Inner Ring motorway near the Apollo. Cancelled. The other end was supposed to extend over the Pennines to meet the M1 north of Meadowhall and was further proposed to reach the A1 at Barnsdale Bar. Cancelled.

Entertainingly even the piddly Mottram / Tintwistle bypass can't get built because of the risk that it makes Woodhead more attractive as a crossing. Because the M67 / M60 junction can't cope with more traffic nor would the M60 to either side.

So we get stuck with the M62. Which takes all its own traffic. Plus from the cancelled M67 and M64 further south. Plus from the lack of a high quality road any further north (like a dualled A66)

They should dig a dual-carriageway tunnel under the Snake Pass - and leave that twisty piece of road as a private English Nurburgring for the petrol heads, once everyone else has crappy electric appliances on their driveways.

Driving round Sicily I was stunned by the road engineering (viaducts and tunnels). I'm guessing that's what EU membership gets you

There are, erm, “particular cultural reasons” why Sicily gets an awful lot of money spent on infrastructure, compared to other equally or even more impoverished areas of Italy, which often get little

The crumbling concrete caused by cheating on the materials is a feature, not a bug. Since the repair contracts.....

Yes

My favourites are the motorways that go nowhere. They start with great flamboyance, proceed for 2km, then just stop, sometimes in mid air. A flyover will be left hanging in the blue Sicilian sky

Clearly someone skimmed their cream, and decided that was it, and off they went

Calabria is even crazier. There the local Mafia - the ‘Ndrangheta, much richer and more powerful than the Cosa Nostra - don’t want any roads at ALL, especially around Plati, in case someone feels like having a look around

The roads in the Aspromonte must be the worst in Western Europe

There used to be a great road which suddenly ended in mid-air. In Capetown.

There’s a 12-lane motorway near me that just stops with a bridge over another motorway. Maybe in the future, they’ll finish it off. (25.0418890, 55.2007604)

In the UK, the one I always remembered was the M74, that inexplicably stopped short of Glasgow. They finally finished it a few years ago.

turbotubbs said:

wooliedyed said:

turbotubbs said:

wooliedyed said:

Foxy said:

wooliedyed said:

DavidL said:

Mortimer said:

DavidL said:

CorrectHorseBattery said:

Backing the strikes is a disaster for Labour.

Not sure I agree. Sarwar's tweet said this:

"Solidarity with those on the picket lines.

This is a crisis entirely of the Government’s making.

The workers don’t want strikes. The unions don’t want strikes. The public don’t want strikes.

They demand better."

If softy Tories like me agree with this (and I do) I think Boris has called this wrong.

The majority of my Labour voting friends are incensed by these strikes. Not one of them has mentioned the government.

I use the trains a lot and have overhead numerous conversations about it recently. Train users are in no way sympathetic with the strikes.

Too many Labour MPs are stuck in the Aggy Marxist phase. Starmer is doing the right thing IMO. If he sacked a few minister who appeared on pickets he would look decisive.

It may be different in different parts of the country. In Edinburgh my pals have blamed the management and government (they don't really distinguish) for not taking the negotiations seriously enough. Personally, I go a bit further and am of the view that the government was desperate to get into a battle with a trade union to show how tough they are and that Labour hasn't changed.

I certainly received bits of correspondence from CCHQ about "labour's strikes" referring back to the winter of discontent, something you need to be pushing 60 to have a good memory of. I did not find it persuasive but it certainly showed motive.

Bozmafoz is setting up for a who governs cut and run this year.

Didn't work for Ted Heath, did it?

No. As i posted a few days ago
Who governs 2.....
Still not you

Just cant see it.

From Johnsons point of view, he either gets his 8 to 10 years in charge or the whole thing can crash and burn. So he tries to manufacture a poll lead by conference season via summer of discontent, revamped brexit wars and some woke worries and goes for it. Theres nothing but headwinds into late 2024, boundary changes are possibly good but unpredictable (andany advantage undine by a 1% swing) and if hes going down, do it on his terms fighting his battle.
He doesnt give a shit about the long term for the tories or the country. Just his future.

Its a theory, except I think with up to 2.5 years left (Jan 2025) and a majority in the 70's (assuming losses on Thursday), he can wait for something to turn up. Now we may be of the opinion that the country is more f$cked than a certain posters favourite fantasy but that's not to say that those at the top see it that way. They may feel that the current poll situation is down to partygate and the CoL crisis. Its not impossible that inflation starts to come down by the end of the year and into 2023 it may approach more normal levels. Peace in Ukraine may result in a better global environment.

I think realistically if the Tories tried to engineer a grudge election and went in say October this year, partygate is too fresh and they will be swamped, and rightly so. So although I want that as an outcome, I don't think it will happen.

Im not 100% convinced he will but i am 100% convinced hes setting up the circs to have that option

turbotubbs said:

wooliedyed said:

Pulpstar said:

CorrectHorseBattery said:

If nurses and doctors join this strike BoJo loses the country IMHO

Nurses, certainly.
Doctors, not so sure. Particularly GPs.

GPs are just a myth these days. They haven't existed in physical form since March 2020.

Not really true. I had an appointment with one in the flesh 6 weeks ago, after an e-consult and phone call on the same day.

Some surgeries have let themselves down, others less so.

Hyperbole on my part for giggles. Round here the surgeries have tended towards shite however.

Leon said:

Malmesbury said:

Leon said:

Malmesbury said:

Leon said:

IshmaelZ said:

Sandpit said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Carnyx said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Casino_Royale said:

Carnyx said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

StuartDickson said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

One point made by a colleague.

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.

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

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.

Lets use an M62 example but over the Pennines instead. The M67 was supposed to connect to the Manchester Inner Ring motorway near the Apollo. Cancelled. The other end was supposed to extend over the Pennines to meet the M1 north of Meadowhall and was further proposed to reach the A1 at Barnsdale Bar. Cancelled.

Entertainingly even the piddly Mottram / Tintwistle bypass can't get built because of the risk that it makes Woodhead more attractive as a crossing. Because the M67 / M60 junction can't cope with more traffic nor would the M60 to either side.

So we get stuck with the M62. Which takes all its own traffic. Plus from the cancelled M67 and M64 further south. Plus from the lack of a high quality road any further north (like a dualled A66)

They should dig a dual-carriageway tunnel under the Snake Pass - and leave that twisty piece of road as a private English Nurburgring for the petrol heads, once everyone else has crappy electric appliances on their driveways.

Driving round Sicily I was stunned by the road engineering (viaducts and tunnels). I'm guessing that's what EU membership gets you

There are, erm, “particular cultural reasons” why Sicily gets an awful lot of money spent on infrastructure, compared to other equally or even more impoverished areas of Italy, which often get little

The crumbling concrete caused by cheating on the materials is a feature, not a bug. Since the repair contracts.....

Yes

My favourites are the motorways that go nowhere. They start with great flamboyance, proceed for 2km, then just stop, sometimes in mid air. A flyover will be left hanging in the blue Sicilian sky

Clearly someone skimmed their cream, and decided that was it, and off they went

Calabria is even crazier. There the local Mafia - the ‘Ndrangheta, much richer and more powerful than the Cosa Nostra - don’t want any roads at ALL, especially around Plati, in case someone feels like having a look around

The roads in the Aspromonte must be the worst in Western Europe

I am trying to remember who said that while some shit where they live, only the ‘Ndrangheta would think to make it their business plan.

That was before the Mexican Drug cartels did their thing, of course.

i once drove into Plati, by accident, and immediately sensed an “atmos”. A really bad hostile atmos. Everyone staring

So I drove out fast and as I exited small children threw rocks at me

Once I was safely out of town, struck with curiosity, I pulled over and opened my phone and googled “Plati” and read THIS


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platì

You should have stuck around.

I am sure the PB crowd-fund to secure your release would be up to at least £3.51 by now.

IanB2 said:

Leon said:

Malmesbury said:

Leon said:

Malmesbury said:

Leon said:

IshmaelZ said:

Sandpit said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

RochdalePioneers said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Carnyx said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

Casino_Royale said:

Carnyx said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

eek said:

StuartDickson said:

BartholomewRoberts said:

TheScreamingEagles said:

One point made by a colleague.

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.

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

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.

Lets use an M62 example but over the Pennines instead. The M67 was supposed to connect to the Manchester Inner Ring motorway near the Apollo. Cancelled. The other end was supposed to extend over the Pennines to meet the M1 north of Meadowhall and was further proposed to reach the A1 at Barnsdale Bar. Cancelled.

Entertainingly even the piddly Mottram / Tintwistle bypass can't get built because of the risk that it makes Woodhead more attractive as a crossing. Because the M67 / M60 junction can't cope with more traffic nor would the M60 to either side.

So we get stuck with the M62. Which takes all its own traffic. Plus from the cancelled M67 and M64 further south. Plus from the lack of a high quality road any further north (like a dualled A66)

They should dig a dual-carriageway tunnel under the Snake Pass - and leave that twisty piece of road as a private English Nurburgring for the petrol heads, once everyone else has crappy electric appliances on their driveways.

Driving round Sicily I was stunned by the road engineering (viaducts and tunnels). I'm guessing that's what EU membership gets you

There are, erm, “particular cultural reasons” why Sicily gets an awful lot of money spent on infrastructure, compared to other equally or even more impoverished areas of Italy, which often get little

The crumbling concrete caused by cheating on the materials is a feature, not a bug. Since the repair contracts.....

Yes

My favourites are the motorways that go nowhere. They start with great flamboyance, proceed for 2km, then just stop, sometimes in mid air. A flyover will be left hanging in the blue Sicilian sky

Clearly someone skimmed their cream, and decided that was it, and off they went

Calabria is even crazier. There the local Mafia - the ‘Ndrangheta, much richer and more powerful than the Cosa Nostra - don’t want any roads at ALL, especially around Plati, in case someone feels like having a look around

The roads in the Aspromonte must be the worst in Western Europe

I am trying to remember who said that while some shit where they live, only the ‘Ndrangheta would think to make it their business plan.

That was before the Mexican Drug cartels did their thing, of course.

i once drove into Plati, by accident, and immediately sensed an “atmos”. A really bad hostile atmos. Everyone staring

So I drove out fast and as I exited small children threw rocks at me

Once I was safely out of town, struck with curiosity, I pulled over and opened my phone and googled “Plati” and read THIS


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platì

You should have stuck around.

I am sure the PB crowd-fund to secure your release would be up to at least £3.51 by now.

Or a litre of unleaded as its soon to be known.

DavidL said:

CorrectHorseBattery said:

Backing the strikes is a disaster for Labour.

Not sure I agree. Sarwar's tweet said this:

"Solidarity with those on the picket lines.

This is a crisis entirely of the Government’s making.

The workers don’t want strikes. The unions don’t want strikes. The public don’t want strikes.

They demand better."

If softy Tories like me agree with this (and I do) I think Boris has called this wrong.

If the workers and the unions didn't want a strike, they wouldn't have a strike.

fitalass said:

Could you imagine the outcry from the UK media if Westminster Government Ministers tried to claim this..

Twitter
Conor Matchett@conor_matchett
EXCLUSIVE: 'Not in public interest' to disclose misconduct probe outcomes against SNP ministers, including Fergus Ewing

Ministers now claiming the outcome of any misconduct complaint against them should not be made public, whether it is upheld or not.

https://twitter.com/conor_matchett/status/1539147986965512193

Conor Matchett@conor_matchett·7h
Replying to
@conor_matchett
The SNP called on Number 10 to publish its report into bullying allegations against Priti Patel as "a step towards clamping down on a wider pattern of behaviour"

No need to imagine. Boris has proposed the same. Just mostly failed to implement it.

MISTY said:

Leon said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Roger said:

Sandpit said:

Scott_xP said:

BoZO terrified "his" war will end...

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

The PM is right to be concerned.

Scholz in particular, has been unwavering in his recent support for imports of Russian gas, over being seen to arm Ukraine.

Things aren't going too well on the Ukraine PR front.

Allowing Ukrainian corruption to get an airing by blaming the EU for bringing it up was not smart politics. All they needed to do was say 'we're working on it and we will of course aim to meet the standards required by the EU as soon as possible'

Their closeness to Boris Johnson will also not be playing well. Certainly not in the UK where he's as popular as a sauteed toad but more widely across Europe

If Ukraine lose their whiter than white status the help for their war effort will crumble as quickly as it built up.

Putin speaks

What is it with Old Lefties who are barely able to disguise their desire for Ukraine to lose?

UGH

It isn't just the left.

Trumpist Republicans are completely against this war and detest Biden's 40bn funding for Ukraine.

To be fair pre-Zelensky Ukraine wasn't necessarily a shining beacon of democracy! And during WWII Ukrainians could be found in some compromising places!

MISTY said:

Leon said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Roger said:

Sandpit said:

Scott_xP said:

BoZO terrified "his" war will end...

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

The PM is right to be concerned.

Scholz in particular, has been unwavering in his recent support for imports of Russian gas, over being seen to arm Ukraine.

Things aren't going too well on the Ukraine PR front.

Allowing Ukrainian corruption to get an airing by blaming the EU for bringing it up was not smart politics. All they needed to do was say 'we're working on it and we will of course aim to meet the standards required by the EU as soon as possible'

Their closeness to Boris Johnson will also not be playing well. Certainly not in the UK where he's as popular as a sauteed toad but more widely across Europe

If Ukraine lose their whiter than white status the help for their war effort will crumble as quickly as it built up.

Putin speaks

What is it with Old Lefties who are barely able to disguise their desire for Ukraine to lose?

UGH

It isn't just the left.

Trumpist Republicans are completely against this war and detest Biden's 40bn funding for Ukraine.

That doesn't mean they have a desire for Ukraine to lose though.

OldKingCole said:

MISTY said:

Leon said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Roger said:

Sandpit said:

Scott_xP said:

BoZO terrified "his" war will end...

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

The PM is right to be concerned.

Scholz in particular, has been unwavering in his recent support for imports of Russian gas, over being seen to arm Ukraine.

Things aren't going too well on the Ukraine PR front.

Allowing Ukrainian corruption to get an airing by blaming the EU for bringing it up was not smart politics. All they needed to do was say 'we're working on it and we will of course aim to meet the standards required by the EU as soon as possible'

Their closeness to Boris Johnson will also not be playing well. Certainly not in the UK where he's as popular as a sauteed toad but more widely across Europe

If Ukraine lose their whiter than white status the help for their war effort will crumble as quickly as it built up.

Putin speaks

What is it with Old Lefties who are barely able to disguise their desire for Ukraine to lose?

UGH

It isn't just the left.

Trumpist Republicans are completely against this war and detest Biden's 40bn funding for Ukraine.

To be fair pre-Zelensky Ukraine wasn't necessarily a shining beacon of democracy! And during WWII Ukrainians could be found in some compromising places!

Both of those arguments are specious and actually make me rather angry.

MISTY said:

OldKingCole said:

MISTY said:

Leon said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Roger said:

Sandpit said:

Scott_xP said:

BoZO terrified "his" war will end...

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

The PM is right to be concerned.

Scholz in particular, has been unwavering in his recent support for imports of Russian gas, over being seen to arm Ukraine.

Things aren't going too well on the Ukraine PR front.

Allowing Ukrainian corruption to get an airing by blaming the EU for bringing it up was not smart politics. All they needed to do was say 'we're working on it and we will of course aim to meet the standards required by the EU as soon as possible'

Their closeness to Boris Johnson will also not be playing well. Certainly not in the UK where he's as popular as a sauteed toad but more widely across Europe

If Ukraine lose their whiter than white status the help for their war effort will crumble as quickly as it built up.

Putin speaks

What is it with Old Lefties who are barely able to disguise their desire for Ukraine to lose?

UGH

It isn't just the left.

Trumpist Republicans are completely against this war and detest Biden's 40bn funding for Ukraine.

To be fair pre-Zelensky Ukraine wasn't necessarily a shining beacon of democracy! And during WWII Ukrainians could be found in some compromising places!

I read a tweet recently the main political opposition in Ukraine has been banned? not sure what's going on there.

One small one has. For supporting the Special Military Operation, ie treason.

noneoftheabove said:

wooliedyed said:

Updated YouGov for BJO
Britons tend to oppose the rail workers strikes taking place this week

All Britons
Support 37% / Oppose 45%

Con voters
Support 18% / Oppose 72%

Lab voters
Support 65% / Oppose 18%

https://t.co/0J86iNrRWO https://t.co/KHoARzP4tj

Strong Support/Oppose now at 14/27

Interesting. I find a lot of polling difficult as read the questions way too literally. I don't really support the strikes taking place - I want there to be a resolution instead. But I very clearly blame the government, not the unions or even the rail bosses with impossible budgets to reconcile.

An interesting polling question would be something like:

"Do you think the government has done enough to seek to resolve the rail dispute and prevent the strikes taking place?".

I suspect the answer would be a resounding 'no', even from many folk totally opposed to the strikes.