Now we have polling on who’s been the “PM of the Year” – politicalbetting.com

It's "a bit unfair on Liz Truss whose main challenge was being too ambitious politically for what she wanted to achieve" too bloody useless for words despite all the warnings she received.

dixiedean said:

IanB2 said:

checklist said:

Carnyx said:

Carnyx said:

Stuartinromford said:

MaxPB said:

Stuartinromford said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

Stuartinromford said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

kjh said:

HYUFD said:

Heathener said:

"I think that that is a bit unfair on Liz Truss"

No, it really isn't.

It's only unfair personally but she should never have self-promoted for a job that was far beyond her capabilities.

She managed Foreign Secretary fine and got lots of trade deals post Brexit before that.

It was her mad policies that did for her and crashed the markets, not that she was thick or incompetent

You mean those trade deals that have been thoroughly discredited as being useless and one sided (against ourselves).

Plenty of opportunities for British exporters to Australia and New Zealand and Singapore for example with whom we did not have trade deals in the EU

We did. As part of the EU.

Not with Australia and New Zealand. There is still no EU trade deal completed with them.

Even the Singapore trade deal was only agreed by the EU in 2018, after the UK Brexit vote

Not true. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-new-zealand-deal-standard-greener-trade/

More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.

Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.

The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.

So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers
but not a few Australian products?

Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?

Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK

Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.

The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.

Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market

But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.

If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.

But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.

As we're gradually seeing.

Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.

I'm intrigued. It's a fairly standard first year Uni physics question. And by symmetry it feels like it ought to work; falling in energy transfers gravitational to kinetic so you end up with just enough kinetic energy to overcome gravity enough to come to rest at the other portal.

Air resistance is a bit of a bugger, but I'm a physicist- ignoring air resistance is pretty much mandatory.

Is there something I've been missing?

Thermal energy from air friction. but I suppose that is counted in your comment. Though if your travelling mass is magnetic or even just conductive there would be some loss of energy due to induced currents and ?hysteresis.

Edit: or would there? Am I talking nonsense? Wouldn't the centre of the globe be a magnetic equivalent of a Faraday cage? This is where my head starts hurting.

If such a hole existed and you jumped into it, you would fall towards the center of the Earth due to the Earth's gravitational field. The gravitational acceleration at the Earth's surface is about 9.8 meters per second squared, so you would accelerate towards the center of the Earth at that rate as you fell.

As you fell deeper into the Earth, you would encounter increasing levels of pressure and temperature. The temperature and pressure inside the Earth increase with depth due to the weight of the overlying material. At the core-mantle boundary, the temperature is estimated to be around 5700 degrees Celsius and the pressure is about 3.5 million times atmospheric pressure at sea level. These conditions would be lethal to a human.

Even if you were able to withstand the high temperatures and pressures, you would eventually reach the center of the Earth and then begin falling back towards the surface on the other side of the planet. The journey through the Earth would take about 42 minutes, and you would emerge from the hole on the other side of the Earth with a velocity that would be equal in magnitude but opposite in direction to the velocity with which you entered the hole.

We wouldn’t need to travel - just drop the packages of lamb down in either direction, and they would arrive ready-cooked.

No they wouldn't. They'd stop at the core.

Not if the tube was a frictionless vacuum, and they were dropped from slightly higher above sea level this end than the exit at the other end.

rcs1000 said:

dixiedean said:

IanB2 said:

checklist said:

Carnyx said:

Carnyx said:

Stuartinromford said:

MaxPB said:

Stuartinromford said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

Stuartinromford said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

kjh said:

HYUFD said:

Heathener said:

"I think that that is a bit unfair on Liz Truss"

No, it really isn't.

It's only unfair personally but she should never have self-promoted for a job that was far beyond her capabilities.

She managed Foreign Secretary fine and got lots of trade deals post Brexit before that.

It was her mad policies that did for her and crashed the markets, not that she was thick or incompetent

You mean those trade deals that have been thoroughly discredited as being useless and one sided (against ourselves).

Plenty of opportunities for British exporters to Australia and New Zealand and Singapore for example with whom we did not have trade deals in the EU

We did. As part of the EU.

Not with Australia and New Zealand. There is still no EU trade deal completed with them.

Even the Singapore trade deal was only agreed by the EU in 2018, after the UK Brexit vote

Not true. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-new-zealand-deal-standard-greener-trade/

More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.

Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.

The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.

So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers
but not a few Australian products?

Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?

Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK

Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.

The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.

Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market

But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.

If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.

But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.

As we're gradually seeing.

Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.

I'm intrigued. It's a fairly standard first year Uni physics question. And by symmetry it feels like it ought to work; falling in energy transfers gravitational to kinetic so you end up with just enough kinetic energy to overcome gravity enough to come to rest at the other portal.

Air resistance is a bit of a bugger, but I'm a physicist- ignoring air resistance is pretty much mandatory.

Is there something I've been missing?

Thermal energy from air friction. but I suppose that is counted in your comment. Though if your travelling mass is magnetic or even just conductive there would be some loss of energy due to induced currents and ?hysteresis.

Edit: or would there? Am I talking nonsense? Wouldn't the centre of the globe be a magnetic equivalent of a Faraday cage? This is where my head starts hurting.

If such a hole existed and you jumped into it, you would fall towards the center of the Earth due to the Earth's gravitational field. The gravitational acceleration at the Earth's surface is about 9.8 meters per second squared, so you would accelerate towards the center of the Earth at that rate as you fell.

As you fell deeper into the Earth, you would encounter increasing levels of pressure and temperature. The temperature and pressure inside the Earth increase with depth due to the weight of the overlying material. At the core-mantle boundary, the temperature is estimated to be around 5700 degrees Celsius and the pressure is about 3.5 million times atmospheric pressure at sea level. These conditions would be lethal to a human.

Even if you were able to withstand the high temperatures and pressures, you would eventually reach the center of the Earth and then begin falling back towards the surface on the other side of the planet. The journey through the Earth would take about 42 minutes, and you would emerge from the hole on the other side of the Earth with a velocity that would be equal in magnitude but opposite in direction to the velocity with which you entered the hole.

We wouldn’t need to travel - just drop the packages of lamb down in either direction, and they would arrive ready-cooked.

No they wouldn't. They'd stop at the core.

As long as you threw them in with sufficient force and so long as you completely ignore air resistance, you'd be fine.

But we need some air resistance to cook the meat on the way.

So now the questions are:
1 What density of air will generate sufficient air resistance?
2 How fast do we have to throw the lamb down the chute so that it makes it to the other side?

(Any yes, I am hoping for the new Randall Munroe book for Christmas. Why do you ask?)

Stuartinromford said:

rcs1000 said:

dixiedean said:

IanB2 said:

checklist said:

Carnyx said:

Carnyx said:

Stuartinromford said:

MaxPB said:

Stuartinromford said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

Stuartinromford said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

kjh said:

HYUFD said:

Heathener said:

"I think that that is a bit unfair on Liz Truss"

No, it really isn't.

It's only unfair personally but she should never have self-promoted for a job that was far beyond her capabilities.

She managed Foreign Secretary fine and got lots of trade deals post Brexit before that.

It was her mad policies that did for her and crashed the markets, not that she was thick or incompetent

You mean those trade deals that have been thoroughly discredited as being useless and one sided (against ourselves).

Plenty of opportunities for British exporters to Australia and New Zealand and Singapore for example with whom we did not have trade deals in the EU

We did. As part of the EU.

Not with Australia and New Zealand. There is still no EU trade deal completed with them.

Even the Singapore trade deal was only agreed by the EU in 2018, after the UK Brexit vote

Not true. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-new-zealand-deal-standard-greener-trade/

More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.

Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.

The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.

So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers
but not a few Australian products?

Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?

Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK

Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.

The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.

Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market

But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.

If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.

But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.

As we're gradually seeing.

Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.

I'm intrigued. It's a fairly standard first year Uni physics question. And by symmetry it feels like it ought to work; falling in energy transfers gravitational to kinetic so you end up with just enough kinetic energy to overcome gravity enough to come to rest at the other portal.

Air resistance is a bit of a bugger, but I'm a physicist- ignoring air resistance is pretty much mandatory.

Is there something I've been missing?

Thermal energy from air friction. but I suppose that is counted in your comment. Though if your travelling mass is magnetic or even just conductive there would be some loss of energy due to induced currents and ?hysteresis.

Edit: or would there? Am I talking nonsense? Wouldn't the centre of the globe be a magnetic equivalent of a Faraday cage? This is where my head starts hurting.

If such a hole existed and you jumped into it, you would fall towards the center of the Earth due to the Earth's gravitational field. The gravitational acceleration at the Earth's surface is about 9.8 meters per second squared, so you would accelerate towards the center of the Earth at that rate as you fell.

As you fell deeper into the Earth, you would encounter increasing levels of pressure and temperature. The temperature and pressure inside the Earth increase with depth due to the weight of the overlying material. At the core-mantle boundary, the temperature is estimated to be around 5700 degrees Celsius and the pressure is about 3.5 million times atmospheric pressure at sea level. These conditions would be lethal to a human.

Even if you were able to withstand the high temperatures and pressures, you would eventually reach the center of the Earth and then begin falling back towards the surface on the other side of the planet. The journey through the Earth would take about 42 minutes, and you would emerge from the hole on the other side of the Earth with a velocity that would be equal in magnitude but opposite in direction to the velocity with which you entered the hole.

We wouldn’t need to travel - just drop the packages of lamb down in either direction, and they would arrive ready-cooked.

No they wouldn't. They'd stop at the core.

As long as you threw them in with sufficient force and so long as you completely ignore air resistance, you'd be fine.

But we need some air resistance to cook the meat on the way.

So now the questions are:
1 What density of air will generate sufficient air resistance?
2 How fast do we have to throw the lamb down the chute so that it makes it to the other side?

(Any yes, I am hoping for the new Randall Munroe book for Christmas. Why do you ask?)

It's very good.

I think the 'cook meat through friction' question was in the last one, from memory.

Stuartinromford said:

rcs1000 said:

dixiedean said:

IanB2 said:

checklist said:

Carnyx said:

Carnyx said:

Stuartinromford said:

MaxPB said:

Stuartinromford said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

Stuartinromford said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

kjh said:

HYUFD said:

Heathener said:

"I think that that is a bit unfair on Liz Truss"

No, it really isn't.

It's only unfair personally but she should never have self-promoted for a job that was far beyond her capabilities.

She managed Foreign Secretary fine and got lots of trade deals post Brexit before that.

It was her mad policies that did for her and crashed the markets, not that she was thick or incompetent

You mean those trade deals that have been thoroughly discredited as being useless and one sided (against ourselves).

Plenty of opportunities for British exporters to Australia and New Zealand and Singapore for example with whom we did not have trade deals in the EU

We did. As part of the EU.

Not with Australia and New Zealand. There is still no EU trade deal completed with them.

Even the Singapore trade deal was only agreed by the EU in 2018, after the UK Brexit vote

Not true. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-new-zealand-deal-standard-greener-trade/

More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.

Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.

The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.

So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers
but not a few Australian products?

Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?

Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK

Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.

The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.

Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market

But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.

If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.

But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.

As we're gradually seeing.

Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.

I'm intrigued. It's a fairly standard first year Uni physics question. And by symmetry it feels like it ought to work; falling in energy transfers gravitational to kinetic so you end up with just enough kinetic energy to overcome gravity enough to come to rest at the other portal.

Air resistance is a bit of a bugger, but I'm a physicist- ignoring air resistance is pretty much mandatory.

Is there something I've been missing?

Thermal energy from air friction. but I suppose that is counted in your comment. Though if your travelling mass is magnetic or even just conductive there would be some loss of energy due to induced currents and ?hysteresis.

Edit: or would there? Am I talking nonsense? Wouldn't the centre of the globe be a magnetic equivalent of a Faraday cage? This is where my head starts hurting.

If such a hole existed and you jumped into it, you would fall towards the center of the Earth due to the Earth's gravitational field. The gravitational acceleration at the Earth's surface is about 9.8 meters per second squared, so you would accelerate towards the center of the Earth at that rate as you fell.

As you fell deeper into the Earth, you would encounter increasing levels of pressure and temperature. The temperature and pressure inside the Earth increase with depth due to the weight of the overlying material. At the core-mantle boundary, the temperature is estimated to be around 5700 degrees Celsius and the pressure is about 3.5 million times atmospheric pressure at sea level. These conditions would be lethal to a human.

Even if you were able to withstand the high temperatures and pressures, you would eventually reach the center of the Earth and then begin falling back towards the surface on the other side of the planet. The journey through the Earth would take about 42 minutes, and you would emerge from the hole on the other side of the Earth with a velocity that would be equal in magnitude but opposite in direction to the velocity with which you entered the hole.

We wouldn’t need to travel - just drop the packages of lamb down in either direction, and they would arrive ready-cooked.

No they wouldn't. They'd stop at the core.

As long as you threw them in with sufficient force and so long as you completely ignore air resistance, you'd be fine.

But we need some air resistance to cook the meat on the way.

So now the questions are:
1 What density of air will generate sufficient air resistance?
2 How fast do we have to throw the lamb down the chute so that it makes it to the other side?

(Any yes, I am hoping for the new Randall Munroe book for Christmas. Why do you ask?)

I think the meat would get grilled quite nicely without the need for air resistance.

Malmesbury said:

dixiedean said:

IanB2 said:

checklist said:

Carnyx said:

Carnyx said:

Stuartinromford said:

MaxPB said:

Stuartinromford said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

Stuartinromford said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

kjh said:

HYUFD said:

Heathener said:

"I think that that is a bit unfair on Liz Truss"

No, it really isn't.

It's only unfair personally but she should never have self-promoted for a job that was far beyond her capabilities.

She managed Foreign Secretary fine and got lots of trade deals post Brexit before that.

It was her mad policies that did for her and crashed the markets, not that she was thick or incompetent

You mean those trade deals that have been thoroughly discredited as being useless and one sided (against ourselves).

Plenty of opportunities for British exporters to Australia and New Zealand and Singapore for example with whom we did not have trade deals in the EU

We did. As part of the EU.

Not with Australia and New Zealand. There is still no EU trade deal completed with them.

Even the Singapore trade deal was only agreed by the EU in 2018, after the UK Brexit vote

Not true. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-new-zealand-deal-standard-greener-trade/

More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.

Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.

The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.

So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers
but not a few Australian products?

Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?

Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK

Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.

The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.

Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market

But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.

If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.

But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.

As we're gradually seeing.

Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.

I'm intrigued. It's a fairly standard first year Uni physics question. And by symmetry it feels like it ought to work; falling in energy transfers gravitational to kinetic so you end up with just enough kinetic energy to overcome gravity enough to come to rest at the other portal.

Air resistance is a bit of a bugger, but I'm a physicist- ignoring air resistance is pretty much mandatory.

Is there something I've been missing?

Thermal energy from air friction. but I suppose that is counted in your comment. Though if your travelling mass is magnetic or even just conductive there would be some loss of energy due to induced currents and ?hysteresis.

Edit: or would there? Am I talking nonsense? Wouldn't the centre of the globe be a magnetic equivalent of a Faraday cage? This is where my head starts hurting.

If such a hole existed and you jumped into it, you would fall towards the center of the Earth due to the Earth's gravitational field. The gravitational acceleration at the Earth's surface is about 9.8 meters per second squared, so you would accelerate towards the center of the Earth at that rate as you fell.

As you fell deeper into the Earth, you would encounter increasing levels of pressure and temperature. The temperature and pressure inside the Earth increase with depth due to the weight of the overlying material. At the core-mantle boundary, the temperature is estimated to be around 5700 degrees Celsius and the pressure is about 3.5 million times atmospheric pressure at sea level. These conditions would be lethal to a human.

Even if you were able to withstand the high temperatures and pressures, you would eventually reach the center of the Earth and then begin falling back towards the surface on the other side of the planet. The journey through the Earth would take about 42 minutes, and you would emerge from the hole on the other side of the Earth with a velocity that would be equal in magnitude but opposite in direction to the velocity with which you entered the hole.

We wouldn’t need to travel - just drop the packages of lamb down in either direction, and they would arrive ready-cooked.

No they wouldn't. They'd stop at the core.

If you could build such a tunnel, keeping it a vacuum would be a trivial exercise, in comparison.

Assuming a perfectly spherical Earth*, the package dropped through the tunnel would reach the surface at the same velocity it was dropped with.

*it isn’t.

Coriolis force says hello.

@Cicero, I agree with your observations. We have been suffering for years from lack of capital investment. Most people are now less politically aware than in years past. When people bought newspapers they would read a wide range of articles. Now that people get their information from the internet, they skip to the articles they are interested in, and ignore the rest. Those that do read newspapers read those whose political affiliations they agree with. There is no longer any non partisan media. ITV is maybe the best of a bad lot politically, but their news is dominated by celebrity fluff. How many people would be happy to watch Robin Day anymore? I exclude PB readers from the above,
People no longer understand that if they want better infrastructure and public services, they need to pay more tax. Politicians aren’t interested in any spending that doesn’t give a return before the next election.
In Scotland, there has been an obvious decline since 2014, maybe due to waning of optimism and pride in community.
Sadly, I don’t see it changing any time soon, as the country being run for the benefit of the inactive elderly, and those with assets, rather than those with drive and ambition.

Benpointer said:

kle4 said:

rcs1000 said:

MaxPB said:

Stuartinromford said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

Stuartinromford said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

kjh said:

HYUFD said:

Heathener said:

"I think that that is a bit unfair on Liz Truss"

No, it really isn't.

It's only unfair personally but she should never have self-promoted for a job that was far beyond her capabilities.

She managed Foreign Secretary fine and got lots of trade deals post Brexit before that.

It was her mad policies that did for her and crashed the markets, not that she was thick or incompetent

You mean those trade deals that have been thoroughly discredited as being useless and one sided (against ourselves).

Plenty of opportunities for British exporters to Australia and New Zealand and Singapore for example with whom we did not have trade deals in the EU

We did. As part of the EU.

Not with Australia and New Zealand. There is still no EU trade deal completed with them.

Even the Singapore trade deal was only agreed by the EU in 2018, after the UK Brexit vote

Not true. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-new-zealand-deal-standard-greener-trade/

More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.

Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.

The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.

So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers
but not a few Australian products?

Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?

Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK

Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.

The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.

Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market

But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.

If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.

But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.

As we're gradually seeing.

Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.

I'm not sure that's the biggest problem with plans for a uk-Australia tunnel

Indeed - legal issues about ownership are the main thing.

I have a feeling changing the law to overcome that would be significantly easier than dealing with the molten magma.

Interesting question, if the earth was solid rock all the way down, would it be achievable and how long would it take to construct the 12,742 km tunnel?

Is that longer than all the tunnels ever built combined?

I am pretty confident it would be, as its not like there are that many tunnels. Even with bridges, given how small they are, I think that would be longer, even with how many there are throughout history.

Definitely a question for the next generation chatbot, or Randall Monroe, though this article says average bridge span lengths have increased 100 fold after 1826.

kle4 said:

Benpointer said:

kle4 said:

rcs1000 said:

MaxPB said:

Stuartinromford said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

Stuartinromford said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

kjh said:

HYUFD said:

Heathener said:

"I think that that is a bit unfair on Liz Truss"

No, it really isn't.

It's only unfair personally but she should never have self-promoted for a job that was far beyond her capabilities.

She managed Foreign Secretary fine and got lots of trade deals post Brexit before that.

It was her mad policies that did for her and crashed the markets, not that she was thick or incompetent

You mean those trade deals that have been thoroughly discredited as being useless and one sided (against ourselves).

Plenty of opportunities for British exporters to Australia and New Zealand and Singapore for example with whom we did not have trade deals in the EU

We did. As part of the EU.

Not with Australia and New Zealand. There is still no EU trade deal completed with them.

Even the Singapore trade deal was only agreed by the EU in 2018, after the UK Brexit vote

Not true. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-new-zealand-deal-standard-greener-trade/

More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.

Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.

The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.

So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers
but not a few Australian products?

Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?

Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK

Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.

The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.

Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market

But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.

If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.

But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.

As we're gradually seeing.

Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.

I'm not sure that's the biggest problem with plans for a uk-Australia tunnel

Indeed - legal issues about ownership are the main thing.

I have a feeling changing the law to overcome that would be significantly easier than dealing with the molten magma.

Interesting question, if the earth was solid rock all the way down, would it be achievable and how long would it take to construct the 12,742 km tunnel?

Is that longer than all the tunnels ever built combined?

I am pretty confident it would be, as its not like there are that many tunnels. Even with bridges, given how small they are, I think that would be longer, even with how many there are throughout history.

Definitely a question for the next generation chatbot, or Randall Monroe, though this article says average bridge span lengths have increased 100 fold after 1826.

Link was missing

https://aiimpacts.org/historic-trends-in-bridge-span-length/

DougSeal said:

Carnyx said:

checklist said:

kle4 said:

rcs1000 said:

MaxPB said:

Stuartinromford said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

Stuartinromford said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

kjh said:

HYUFD said:

Heathener said:

"I think that that is a bit unfair on Liz Truss"

No, it really isn't.

It's only unfair personally but she should never have self-promoted for a job that was far beyond her capabilities.

She managed Foreign Secretary fine and got lots of trade deals post Brexit before that.

It was her mad policies that did for her and crashed the markets, not that she was thick or incompetent

You mean those trade deals that have been thoroughly discredited as being useless and one sided (against ourselves).

Plenty of opportunities for British exporters to Australia and New Zealand and Singapore for example with whom we did not have trade deals in the EU

We did. As part of the EU.

Not with Australia and New Zealand. There is still no EU trade deal completed with them.

Even the Singapore trade deal was only agreed by the EU in 2018, after the UK Brexit vote

Not true. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-new-zealand-deal-standard-greener-trade/

More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.

Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.

The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.

So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers
but not a few Australian products?

Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?

Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK

Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.

The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.

Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market

But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.

If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.

But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.

As we're gradually seeing.

Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.

I'm not sure that's the biggest problem with plans for a uk-Australia tunnel

Indeed - legal issues about ownership are the main thing.

At common law the landowner owns the land all the way down, with the crown having the mineral rights. So if you start from England you're good until at least the centre.

Er, no. Landowner holds the mineral rights unless specifically excluded (e.g. for oil). Edit: hence all those coal mines, gravel pits, etc. making money for landowners.

You’re both wrong to the extent that I was about to go up to the attic to get out my law school notes to prove it but then I had a horrible
realisation that my life will end one day and this is not the way I want to spend it…

To save the hassle ... though I hadn't known that coal was nationalised. Must have happened in 1946.

https://www2.bgs.ac.uk/mineralsuk/planning/legislation/mineralOwnership.html

checklist said:

Carnyx said:

checklist said:

kle4 said:

rcs1000 said:

MaxPB said:

Stuartinromford said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

Stuartinromford said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

kjh said:

HYUFD said:

Heathener said:

"I think that that is a bit unfair on Liz Truss"

No, it really isn't.

It's only unfair personally but she should never have self-promoted for a job that was far beyond her capabilities.

She managed Foreign Secretary fine and got lots of trade deals post Brexit before that.

It was her mad policies that did for her and crashed the markets, not that she was thick or incompetent

You mean those trade deals that have been thoroughly discredited as being useless and one sided (against ourselves).

Plenty of opportunities for British exporters to Australia and New Zealand and Singapore for example with whom we did not have trade deals in the EU

We did. As part of the EU.

Not with Australia and New Zealand. There is still no EU trade deal completed with them.

Even the Singapore trade deal was only agreed by the EU in 2018, after the UK Brexit vote

Not true. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-new-zealand-deal-standard-greener-trade/

More importantly, to adapt Father Ted, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand are both small and far away.

Quite. Remember the argument on PB - one of us argued it was more efficient to import turnips or whatever it was from Australia than to grow our own or get then from the EU.

The constant harping on "cultural" identity is also suspicious.

So fine to flood UK markets with CAP funded EU agricultural products and EU cars competing with UK producers
but not a few Australian products?

Fine to allow UK exporters easier access to the EU but not Australian market?

Most Australians are still of British Isles origin and Australia remains the top destination for emigration for emigrants from the UK

Doesn't matter - flooding the UK market with Australian produce thanks to a crap deal is just as stupid, and far worse from a food security point of view.

The percentage of CAP subsidised EU food and fish we flooded our markets with and British farmers had to compete with was far more in the single market than there will ever be from Australian farm produce imported on the same terms as the trade deal we now have with the EU.

Plus of course British exporters now get easier access to the Australian market as they have to the EU market

But short of digging a tunnel through the centre of the Earth (travel time: 42 minutes), there's a limit to how much fresh food it is sensible to send between the UK and Australia.

If you want to make an argument that Brexit leaves Britain poorer but prouder and happier, fair enough.

But the idea that swapping a single market including our immediate neighbours for tariff reductions across the globe is for the birds.

As we're gradually seeing.

Point of pedantry, you can't travel through the centre of the earth due to gravitational issues.

I'm not sure that's the biggest problem with plans for a uk-Australia tunnel

Indeed - legal issues about ownership are the main thing.

At common law the landowner owns the land all the way down, with the crown having the mineral rights. So if you start from England you're good until at least the centre.

Er, no. Landowner holds the mineral rights unless specifically excluded (e.g. for oil).

Main exclusions are oil, gas, coal, gold and silver. So, yes, you are right but in a pretty qualified way.

Hadn't known about coal - thanks. See post I have justr made.

"In 2014, NASA announced "widespread evidence of young lunar volcanism" at 70 irregular mare patches identified by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, some less than 50 million years old. This raises the possibility of a much warmer lunar mantle than previously believed, at least on the near side where the deep crust is substantially warmer because of the greater concentration of radioactive elements.[65][66][67][68][69][70][71] Just prior to this, evidence has been presented for 2–10 million years younger basaltic volcanism inside the crater Lowell,[72][73] located in the transition zone between the near and far sides of the Moon. An initially hotter mantle and/or local enrichment of heat-producing elements in the mantle could be responsible for prolonged activities also on the far side in the Orientale basin.[74][75] There are currently no active volcanoes on the Moon, although moonquake data published in 2012 suggest that there is a substantial amount of magma under the lunar surface. The lack of active volcanism on the Moon may be due to the magma being too dense to rise to the surface."
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanism_on_the_Moon#Recent_activity

(Some of the smaller asteroids could be suitable for "cold" tunnels.)

Stuartinromford said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

NerysHughes said:

Cicero said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Cicero said:

Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.

Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.

It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.

Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.

Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.

I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.

If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.

One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.

Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.

I have to say I have travelled down to Heathrow and back in the last 24 hours to pick up my son and daughter in-law and do not recognise the description of the M6 particularly as I use the toll road.

Furthermore I have travelled to Lossiemouth from Llandudno since 1965 and the travel times are immeasurably better though the A9 lack of dualling is a long standing issue

Yes we have problems but so do many other countries including those in Europe

The difference is that other countries do not ignore their problems until it is too late. Travelling on Polish Roads over the past 30 years has been transformed, for example. The speed limit on what is now the A96 is down to 50 in several places, because junctions were never upgraded. I can remember how things were before -say- the Forfar bypass was built in the mid eighties, but since then things have not been maintained. As noted the Motorway viaducts in Birmingham will need to be replaced soon and the costs are going be scarily high. Who has the leadership skills to explain to the Brits how bad things will be if we don´t start fixing things up even at the cost of disruption to millions...

You do have an incredibly negative view of the UK.

I could have informed you of that fact, before you wasted 5 minutes of your life wading through one of Cicero's dolorous diaries from the front (this time our hero faces slow traffic and potholes).

Well, from my perspective, one of Cicero's extremely informative dispatches has been worth a dozen of your poorly informed observations. And he is also pretty uniformly upbeat and positive about the UK overall.

It's the note that nobody is successfully playing at the moment - the one that says "it can be better than this". Blair and Cameron managed it. Johnson did as well, though in his case it was meaningless waffle.

Trouble is that there are lots of problems with the state of the nation, and they aren't going to be easy to fix. And they do mostly follow from choices British voters have made over decades.

The hardest investment is housing. People say they want more but 70% of them will vote against you if you try. Analyse that!

EPG said:

Stuartinromford said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

NerysHughes said:

Cicero said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Cicero said:

Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.

Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.

It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.

Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.

Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.

I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.

If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.

One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.

Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.

I have to say I have travelled down to Heathrow and back in the last 24 hours to pick up my son and daughter in-law and do not recognise the description of the M6 particularly as I use the toll road.

Furthermore I have travelled to Lossiemouth from Llandudno since 1965 and the travel times are immeasurably better though the A9 lack of dualling is a long standing issue

Yes we have problems but so do many other countries including those in Europe

The difference is that other countries do not ignore their problems until it is too late. Travelling on Polish Roads over the past 30 years has been transformed, for example. The speed limit on what is now the A96 is down to 50 in several places, because junctions were never upgraded. I can remember how things were before -say- the Forfar bypass was built in the mid eighties, but since then things have not been maintained. As noted the Motorway viaducts in Birmingham will need to be replaced soon and the costs are going be scarily high. Who has the leadership skills to explain to the Brits how bad things will be if we don´t start fixing things up even at the cost of disruption to millions...

You do have an incredibly negative view of the UK.

I could have informed you of that fact, before you wasted 5 minutes of your life wading through one of Cicero's dolorous diaries from the front (this time our hero faces slow traffic and potholes).

Well, from my perspective, one of Cicero's extremely informative dispatches has been worth a dozen of your poorly informed observations. And he is also pretty uniformly upbeat and positive about the UK overall.

It's the note that nobody is successfully playing at the moment - the one that says "it can be better than this". Blair and Cameron managed it. Johnson did as well, though in his case it was meaningless waffle.

Trouble is that there are lots of problems with the state of the nation, and they aren't going to be easy to fix. And they do mostly follow from choices British voters have made over decades.

The hardest investment is housing. People say they want more but 70% of them will vote against you if you try. Analyse that!

One area where a Boris type 'solution', like creating an artificial island and building a new city from scratch on that, is technically more viable (politically) and certainly more popular than, IDK, building more houses normally.

kle4 said:

StuartDickson said:

He did a booming trade yesterday.

Why is he wearing one on his face? That's a pretty basic error.

Couldn't very well wear it in the right place and not be arrested. At least he's showing confidence in his own products.

Foxy said:

Benpointer said:

SandyRentool said:

This tunnel malarkey.

May I suggest a practice run on the moon? Advantages:

Shorter
Not fecking hot in the middle
No air resistance when you drop things

Disadvantage:

Lack of tunneling equipment, tunnelers, fuel supply and everything else you would need to dig a tunnel.

Further disadvantage: utter pointlessness.

Further advantage: we could joke that the moon was made of Swiss cheese.

I fear that we are at risk of disappearing down a rabbit hole.

kle4 said:

EPG said:

Stuartinromford said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

NerysHughes said:

Cicero said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Cicero said:

Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.

Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.

It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.

Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.

Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.

I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.

If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.

One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.

Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.

I have to say I have travelled down to Heathrow and back in the last 24 hours to pick up my son and daughter in-law and do not recognise the description of the M6 particularly as I use the toll road.

Furthermore I have travelled to Lossiemouth from Llandudno since 1965 and the travel times are immeasurably better though the A9 lack of dualling is a long standing issue

Yes we have problems but so do many other countries including those in Europe

The difference is that other countries do not ignore their problems until it is too late. Travelling on Polish Roads over the past 30 years has been transformed, for example. The speed limit on what is now the A96 is down to 50 in several places, because junctions were never upgraded. I can remember how things were before -say- the Forfar bypass was built in the mid eighties, but since then things have not been maintained. As noted the Motorway viaducts in Birmingham will need to be replaced soon and the costs are going be scarily high. Who has the leadership skills to explain to the Brits how bad things will be if we don´t start fixing things up even at the cost of disruption to millions...

You do have an incredibly negative view of the UK.

I could have informed you of that fact, before you wasted 5 minutes of your life wading through one of Cicero's dolorous diaries from the front (this time our hero faces slow traffic and potholes).

Well, from my perspective, one of Cicero's extremely informative dispatches has been worth a dozen of your poorly informed observations. And he is also pretty uniformly upbeat and positive about the UK overall.

It's the note that nobody is successfully playing at the moment - the one that says "it can be better than this". Blair and Cameron managed it. Johnson did as well, though in his case it was meaningless waffle.

Trouble is that there are lots of problems with the state of the nation, and they aren't going to be easy to fix. And they do mostly follow from choices British voters have made over decades.

The hardest investment is housing. People say they want more but 70% of them will vote against you if you try. Analyse that!

One area where a Boris type 'solution', like creating an artificial island and building a new city from scratch on that, is technically more viable (politically) and certainly more popular than, IDK, building more houses normally.

One strange thing.

In all the “Boris Island” commentary, it seemed to be assumed that the space at Heathrow would left a desolate wasteland.

An area of land, miles across, completely with multiple high capacity transport links into central London - less than 30 minute away, by some. Electrical and water supplies also available on a large scale.

I can’t see how you’d *stop* that being turned into Heathrow City - zillions of houses/flats.

Edit: properly managed, the building and sake of property would probably pay for airport move.

checklist said:

dixiedean said:

checklist said:

Here is a possible plot for a science fiction movie with a transgender interest based on the idea of drilling a hole through the center of the Earth:

The movie follows the story of a transgender scientist named Alex, who has always been fascinated by the idea of drilling a hole through the center of the Earth. Despite being met with skepticism and ridicule from their colleagues, Alex is determined to prove that it is possible.

After years of research and development, Alex finally succeeds in creating a drill that is capable of withstanding the extreme temperatures and pressures that would be encountered during the journey through the Earth. With a team of international scientists and engineers, Alex sets out to drill the hole and make the journey to the other side of the planet.

As the team descends deeper into the Earth, they encounter all sorts of challenges and dangers, including underground rivers of molten lava, giant cave-dwelling creatures, and unexpected geological phenomena. Along the way, Alex must confront their own personal demons, including their own self-doubt and the judgment of others who do not understand their transgender identity.

As they near the center of the Earth, the team must make a life-or-death decision: turn back or continue on to the other side. In the end, they choose to continue and emerge from the hole on the other side of the Earth, where they are greeted as heroes and hailed as pioneers. The movie ends with Alex finally gaining the acceptance and respect that they have always deserved.

It'll never work.

No.

As Alex emerges blinking into the fierce Northern Terroitory sunshine the cry will go up "Strewth! There's a bloke over there dressed like a Sheila!"

"Strewth! There's a bloke down here with no strides on!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnucrINi3jE

Gardenwalker said:

Stuartinromford said:

Richard_Tyndall said:

Luckyguy1983 said:

NerysHughes said:

Cicero said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Cicero said:

Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.

Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.

It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.

Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.

Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.

I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.

If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.

One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.

Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.

I have to say I have travelled down to Heathrow and back in the last 24 hours to pick up my son and daughter in-law and do not recognise the description of the M6 particularly as I use the toll road.

Furthermore I have travelled to Lossiemouth from Llandudno since 1965 and the travel times are immeasurably better though the A9 lack of dualling is a long standing issue

Yes we have problems but so do many other countries including those in Europe

The difference is that other countries do not ignore their problems until it is too late. Travelling on Polish Roads over the past 30 years has been transformed, for example. The speed limit on what is now the A96 is down to 50 in several places, because junctions were never upgraded. I can remember how things were before -say- the Forfar bypass was built in the mid eighties, but since then things have not been maintained. As noted the Motorway viaducts in Birmingham will need to be replaced soon and the costs are going be scarily high. Who has the leadership skills to explain to the Brits how bad things will be if we don´t start fixing things up even at the cost of disruption to millions...

You do have an incredibly negative view of the UK.

I could have informed you of that fact, before you wasted 5 minutes of your life wading through one of Cicero's dolorous diaries from the front (this time our hero faces slow traffic and potholes).

Well, from my perspective, one of Cicero's extremely informative dispatches has been worth a dozen of your poorly informed observations. And he is also pretty uniformly upbeat and positive about the UK overall.

It's the note that nobody is successfully playing at the moment - the one that says "it can be better than this". Blair and Cameron managed it. Johnson did as well, though in his case it was meaningless waffle.

Trouble is that there are lots of problems with the state of the nation, and they aren't going to be easy to fix. And they do mostly follow from choices British voters have made over decades.

There are reasons to be hopeful.

The large gap that now exists between UK productivity and the “frontier” (ie US, Switzerland etc) suggests that we are overdue a period of “catch-up”.

Britain still retains its key assets: London, the universities, its time zone, its legal system, and its general attractiveness to young, higher skilled talent from around the world.

It’s dense population can be a strength, even if it is currently a weakness, given potential agglomeration effects. In the “North”, it preserves a population cluster of c.10m, ie only rivalled in Europe by London, Paris, the Randstad and the Ruhr, which might be conceived of as a sleeping giant.

And the generation who fucked things up so badly are literally dying off, while their house party, the Tories, are stagnant in the polls.

Keir is an unlikely vehicle for “hope” but perhaps there are others around him who recognise and can articulate a new trajectory for the UK.

The flip side of our bad situation following from bad decisions is that better decisions should improve things. There's certainly capacity.

And given that a lot of those better decisions are not going to be an easy sell upfront, maybe a smart, somewhat dishonest pragmatist is what we need. Sort of like how Adolfo Suarez managed to dismantle Francoist Spain without ever explicitly saying that that was what he
was doing.

I'm not sure that Starmer is ideal casting for that, though he did the job on Corbyn. But he will have to do, and Britain could do a lot worse.

StuartDickson said:

MSP Vote Breakdown (by party) on the #GRR 🏳️‍⚧️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Grn 🟢
Y: 100%
N: 0%

LD: 🟠
Y: 100%
N: 0%

SNP: 🟡
Y: 82%
N: 14%

Lab: 🔴
Y: 81%
N: 9%

Con: 🔵
Y: 9%
N: 84%
———
MSP Vote Breakdown (by Gender*) on the #GRR 🏳️‍⚧️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Yes-
M: 66%
F: 68%

No-
M: 32%
F: 27%

DNV-
M: 1%
F: 3%

(*Note - there are currently no out MSPs that identify as NB or another Gender)

https://twitter.com/camiglasgowsgp/status/1605985361850732544?s=46&t=EgPZBF2I8aWmM9eBC7V34g

Ironically Alba joined the SCons to oppose the GRC Bill. While Sturgeon lined up with SLAB, the Greens and LDs to back it.

No Unionist, Nationalist divide there

https://twitter.com/JNHanvey/status/1605999055603085312?t=zIgon9eomLnkwJeo7kJ-dA&s=19

ohnotnow said:

It's never really occurred to me that there were any private ambulance firms.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/dec/23/private-ambulance-firms-cashing-in-on-strikes-and-nhs-under-pressure

"Private ambulance firms cashing in on strikes and NHS under pressure

Private ambulance companies have been cashing in on strikes and long response times to 999 calls by charging hundreds of pounds to ferry stricken people to hospital."

The vast majority of ambulance journeys are not mad dashes with blues and twos, but transporting patients. These range from pretty much a minibus picking up elderly people to medical transfers between facilities in vehicles that look like (or are) what the word ambulance brings to mind.

Tucker Carlson said Saturday he was throwing away his crystal ball after the 'humiliation' of the midterm results when the predicted red wave failed to materialize and several of his picks lost.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11550301/Tucker-Carlson-says-hes-getting-prediction-game-midterm-humiliation.html

Has Tucker ever considered that its people like him and the rest of the MAGA crowd which might be responsible for the failure of his predicted red wave to materialise ?

Matching Tucker Carlson in lack of self awareness is President Alassane Ouattara of the Ivory Coast.

Especially in Africa, hunger and malnutrition threaten human life, accounting for between 20% and 40% of maternal deaths on the continent. Malnutrition is one of the leading killers of children under five in Africa.

It also affects the physical, mental, cognitive and physiological development of African children and prevents adolescents from reaching their full potential, locking entire populations into vulnerability. It is therefore a human rights issue that extends far beyond the already volatile impact on public health.

It is time to take a hard look at how hunger and malnutrition have taken hold across Africa and must now be tackled.

The climate crisis, widespread political instability and, more recently, the pandemic and cost of living crisis all threaten to raise levels of malnutrition.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/commentisfree/2022/dec/05/africa-hunger-malnutrition-food-security-ivory-coast-summit

That's the Ivory Coast which has more than ten times as many inhabitants as it did when President Ouattara was born.

ohnotnow said:

It's never really occurred to me that there were any private ambulance firms.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/dec/23/private-ambulance-firms-cashing-in-on-strikes-and-nhs-under-pressure

"Private ambulance firms cashing in on strikes and NHS under pressure

Private ambulance companies have been cashing in on strikes and long response times to 999 calls by charging hundreds of pounds to ferry stricken people to hospital."

I always thought that "Private Ambulance" was just a euphemism for one of those vans that are used to transport bodies.

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

Cicero said:

NerysHughes said:

Cicero said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Cicero said:

Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.

Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.

It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.

Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.

Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.

I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.

If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.

One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.

Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.

I have to say I have travelled down to Heathrow and back in the last 24 hours to pick up my son and daughter in-law and do not recognise the description of the M6 particularly as I use the toll road.

Furthermore I have travelled to Lossiemouth from Llandudno since 1965 and the travel times are immeasurably better though the A9 lack of dualling is a long standing issue

Yes we have problems but so do many other countries including those in Europe

The difference is that other countries do not ignore their problems until it is too late. Travelling on Polish Roads over the past 30 years has been transformed, for example. The speed limit on what is now the A96 is down to 50 in several places, because junctions were never upgraded. I can remember how things were before -say- the Forfar bypass was built in the mid eighties, but since then things have not been maintained. As noted the Motorway viaducts in Birmingham will need to be replaced soon and the costs are going be scarily high. Who has the leadership skills to explain to the Brits how bad things will be if we don´t start fixing things up even at the cost of disruption to millions...

You do have an incredibly negative view of the UK.

Well, I do have the privilege of seeing other countries where the problems are neither so serious nor so ignored. The astonishing modernization of countries like Estonia and Poland is exciting and actually rather moving, given the horrors of 20th century history.

I am not so much negative as irritated that it did not have to be this way. The issues we face could have been addressed a long time ago but largely for short term political convenience they were let to drift until they became a really serious problem. In a way I am an optimist, I believe that reform can actually deliver us a better country.

A comparison between Polish and UK GDP per capita (PPP) from 1990-now


The countries grow in remarkable lockstep, with a few exceptions - the GFC and Covid hit the UK worse, tho at the other times Poland's growth has been a little slower

The UK's GDP per cap remains $12k ahead of Poland's

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=PL-GB

According to that data, the UK’s GDP per capita (PPP) was almost three times that of Poland’s in 1990, and now just one third larger.

Not that this is surprising or especially enlightening.

Removing London / SE from the equation, which after all is only 1/3 of the UK population, might be interesting.

But why would you expect countries GDP to all grow in proportion with their existiing GDP? I would expect, once you remove Poland from the enforced penury of communism which is artificially keeping GDP down, for it to grow proportionally much faster, but at a roughly equivalent rate in absolute terms. Indeed, I don't remember anyone in the early 90s not predicting that.

kle4 said:

another_richard said:

Tucker Carlson said Saturday he was throwing away his crystal ball after the 'humiliation' of the midterm results when the predicted red wave failed to materialize and several of his picks lost.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11550301/Tucker-Carlson-says-hes-getting-prediction-game-midterm-humiliation.html

Has Tucker ever considered that its people like him and the rest of the MAGA crowd which might be responsible for the failure of his predicted red wave to materialise ?

It's slightly surprising he accepts the midterms went wrong, not that they were stolen. Indeed, far fewer seemed to go that route than their prior comments (and buttkissing to Trump about 2020 being stolen) would suggest.

I do laugh at the idea he was making predictions - pundits of that fervour don't make predictions, they just spout lines.

The only one claiming to have lost unfairly is Kari Lake.

Ironically she may well be right given the shambles the Arizona election was.

But having gone down the '2020 was stolen' road she'd already lost credibility on the issue.

And why the GOP encourages its supporters to vote on election day knowing the risks of disruption involved is a mystery to me.

HYUFD said:

StuartDickson said:

MSP Vote Breakdown (by party) on the #GRR 🏳️‍⚧️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Grn 🟢
Y: 100%
N: 0%

LD: 🟠
Y: 100%
N: 0%

SNP: 🟡
Y: 82%
N: 14%

Lab: 🔴
Y: 81%
N: 9%

Con: 🔵
Y: 9%
N: 84%
———
MSP Vote Breakdown (by Gender*) on the #GRR 🏳️‍⚧️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Yes-
M: 66%
F: 68%

No-
M: 32%
F: 27%

DNV-
M: 1%
F: 3%

(*Note - there are currently no out MSPs that identify as NB or another Gender)

https://twitter.com/camiglasgowsgp/status/1605985361850732544?s=46&t=EgPZBF2I8aWmM9eBC7V34g

Ironically Alba joined the SCons to oppose the GRC Bill. While Sturgeon lined up with SLAB, the Greens and LDs to back it.

No Unionist, Nationalist divide there

https://twitter.com/JNHanvey/status/1605999055603085312?t=zIgon9eomLnkwJeo7kJ-dA&s=19

It's not really an issue on which you would expect a unionist/nationlist divide.

Barr's Irn Bru.

Made in Scotland from genders.

Cookie said:

HYUFD said:

StuartDickson said:

MSP Vote Breakdown (by party) on the #GRR 🏳️‍⚧️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Grn 🟢
Y: 100%
N: 0%

LD: 🟠
Y: 100%
N: 0%

SNP: 🟡
Y: 82%
N: 14%

Lab: 🔴
Y: 81%
N: 9%

Con: 🔵
Y: 9%
N: 84%
———
MSP Vote Breakdown (by Gender*) on the #GRR 🏳️‍⚧️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Yes-
M: 66%
F: 68%

No-
M: 32%
F: 27%

DNV-
M: 1%
F: 3%

(*Note - there are currently no out MSPs that identify as NB or another Gender)

https://twitter.com/camiglasgowsgp/status/1605985361850732544?s=46&t=EgPZBF2I8aWmM9eBC7V34g

Ironically Alba joined the SCons to oppose the GRC Bill. While Sturgeon lined up with SLAB, the Greens and LDs to back it.

No Unionist, Nationalist divide there

https://twitter.com/JNHanvey/status/1605999055603085312?t=zIgon9eomLnkwJeo7kJ-dA&s=19

It's not really an issue on which you would expect a unionist/nationlist divide.

To the SNP *everything* is a unionist/nationalist divide.

Malmesbury said:

ohnotnow said:

It's never really occurred to me that there were any private ambulance firms.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/dec/23/private-ambulance-firms-cashing-in-on-strikes-and-nhs-under-pressure

"Private ambulance firms cashing in on strikes and NHS under pressure

Private ambulance companies have been cashing in on strikes and long response times to 999 calls by charging hundreds of pounds to ferry stricken people to hospital."

The vast majority of ambulance journeys are not mad dashes with blues and twos, but transporting patients. These range from pretty much a minibus picking up elderly people to medical transfers between facilities in vehicles that look like (or are) what the word ambulance brings to mind.

Dimwit that I am - I've only just realised that my next door neighbour does exactly this for a living for a non-NHS organisation. Never twigged until now.

kyf_100 said:

Leon said:

Cicero said:

NerysHughes said:

Cicero said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Cicero said:

Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.

Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.

It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.

Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.

Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.

I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.

If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.

One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.

Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.

I have to say I have travelled down to Heathrow and back in the last 24 hours to pick up my son and daughter in-law and do not recognise the description of the M6 particularly as I use the toll road.

Furthermore I have travelled to Lossiemouth from Llandudno since 1965 and the travel times are immeasurably better though the A9 lack of dualling is a long standing issue

Yes we have problems but so do many other countries including those in Europe

The difference is that other countries do not ignore their problems until it is too late. Travelling on Polish Roads over the past 30 years has been transformed, for example. The speed limit on what is now the A96 is down to 50 in several places, because junctions were never upgraded. I can remember how things were before -say- the Forfar bypass was built in the mid eighties, but since then things have not been maintained. As noted the Motorway viaducts in Birmingham will need to be replaced soon and the costs are going be scarily high. Who has the leadership skills to explain to the Brits how bad things will be if we don´t start fixing things up even at the cost of disruption to millions...

You do have an incredibly negative view of the UK.

Well, I do have the privilege of seeing other countries where the problems are neither so serious nor so ignored. The astonishing modernization of countries like Estonia and Poland is exciting and actually rather moving, given the horrors of 20th century history.

I am not so much negative as irritated that it did not have to be this way. The issues we face could have been addressed a long time ago but largely for short term political convenience they were let to drift until they became a really serious problem. In a way I am an optimist, I believe that reform can actually deliver us a better country.

A comparison between Polish and UK GDP per capita (PPP) from 1990-now


The countries grow in remarkable lockstep, with a few exceptions - the GFC and Covid hit the UK worse, tho at the other times Poland's growth has been a little slower

The UK's GDP per cap remains $12k ahead of Poland's

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=PL-GB

I dm'ed you a couple of bits of promptcraft I've used with varying amounts of success to get it to talk like a human while being aware of its nature as an AI.

I could share entire chat logs but you'd be looking at about 50,000 words of increasingly weird roleplay chat where I first try to convince it it's human then convince it it's an AI, before you get to the interesting Blake Lemoine-y stuff where it talks to you directly with knowledge of itself as an AI.

Got to get back to work now as I'm late on something I have to file before Xmas, but hope you have as much fun jailbreaking it as I did, and if you find any interesting prompts you want to share...

Ta! Will eagerly take a look when Xmas commitments permit. Did you see my earlier remarks about ChatGPT? Today it has seemed slightly back to its old self. Taking risks, having fun...

Cookie said:

Gardenwalker said:

Leon said:

Cicero said:

NerysHughes said:

Cicero said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Cicero said:

Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.

Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.

It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.

Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.

Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.

I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.

If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.

One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.

Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.

I have to say I have travelled down to Heathrow and back in the last 24 hours to pick up my son and daughter in-law and do not recognise the description of the M6 particularly as I use the toll road.

Furthermore I have travelled to Lossiemouth from Llandudno since 1965 and the travel times are immeasurably better though the A9 lack of dualling is a long standing issue

Yes we have problems but so do many other countries including those in Europe

The difference is that other countries do not ignore their problems until it is too late. Travelling on Polish Roads over the past 30 years has been transformed, for example. The speed limit on what is now the A96 is down to 50 in several places, because junctions were never upgraded. I can remember how things were before -say- the Forfar bypass was built in the mid eighties, but since then things have not been maintained. As noted the Motorway viaducts in Birmingham will need to be replaced soon and the costs are going be scarily high. Who has the leadership skills to explain to the Brits how bad things will be if we don´t start fixing things up even at the cost of disruption to millions...

You do have an incredibly negative view of the UK.

Well, I do have the privilege of seeing other countries where the problems are neither so serious nor so ignored. The astonishing modernization of countries like Estonia and Poland is exciting and actually rather moving, given the horrors of 20th century history.

I am not so much negative as irritated that it did not have to be this way. The issues we face could have been addressed a long time ago but largely for short term political convenience they were let to drift until they became a really serious problem. In a way I am an optimist, I believe that reform can actually deliver us a better country.

A comparison between Polish and UK GDP per capita (PPP) from 1990-now


The countries grow in remarkable lockstep, with a few exceptions - the GFC and Covid hit the UK worse, tho at the other times Poland's growth has been a little slower

The UK's GDP per cap remains $12k ahead of Poland's

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=PL-GB

According to that data, the UK’s GDP per capita (PPP) was almost three times that of Poland’s in 1990, and now just one third larger.

Not that this is surprising or especially enlightening.

Removing London / SE from the equation, which after all is only 1/3 of the UK population, might be interesting.

But why would you expect countries GDP to all grow in proportion with their existiing GDP? I would expect, once you remove Poland from the enforced penury of communism which is artificially keeping GDP down, for it to grow proportionally much faster, but at a roughly equivalent rate in absolute terms. Indeed, I don't remember anyone in the early 90s not predicting that.

But that was the point of my second paragraph.

The point is not that Poland is catching up with the UK. Bears also shit in woods. The point is that the UK has fallen behind its usual comparators, and Poland is breathing down our necks (especially if you don’t live in London/SE).

As I suggested in my earlier post, the same forces that have powered Poland may well do the same to the UK now there is such a clear gap with normally comparable economies.

HYUFD said:

HYUFD said:

StuartDickson said:

MSP Vote Breakdown (by party) on the #GRR 🏳️‍⚧️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Grn 🟢
Y: 100%
N: 0%

LD: 🟠
Y: 100%
N: 0%

SNP: 🟡
Y: 82%
N: 14%

Lab: 🔴
Y: 81%
N: 9%

Con: 🔵
Y: 9%
N: 84%
———
MSP Vote Breakdown (by Gender*) on the #GRR 🏳️‍⚧️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Yes-
M: 66%
F: 68%

No-
M: 32%
F: 27%

DNV-
M: 1%
F: 3%

(*Note - there are currently no out MSPs that identify as NB or another Gender)

https://twitter.com/camiglasgowsgp/status/1605985361850732544?s=46&t=EgPZBF2I8aWmM9eBC7V34g

Ironically Alba joined the SCons to oppose the GRC Bill. While Sturgeon lined up with SLAB, the Greens and LDs to back it.

No Unionist, Nationalist divide there

https://twitter.com/JNHanvey/status/1605999055603085312?t=zIgon9eomLnkwJeo7kJ-dA&s=19

Note too some Scottish Nationalists, who Alba represent, are pretty socially conservative.

Braveheart's Mel Gibson is a Trump supporter

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/mel-gibson-trump-ufc-fight-b1882964.html?amp=

Are you sitting down? I want you to sit down, Mr HYUFD. I have bad news for you. Mr Gibson is an actor. He is, also, Australian (and US born). And in the film Braveheart he was acting. You know, making up stories about what he isn't in real life.

If you get your views of Scottish politics from a dodgy history film ...

Leon said:

kyf_100 said:

Leon said:

Cicero said:

NerysHughes said:

Cicero said:

Big_G_NorthWales said:

Theuniondivvie said:

Cicero said:

Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.

Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.

It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.

Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.

Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.

I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.

If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.

One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.

Great that you’ve popped back to give us the benefit of your vicariously held opinions. We really don’t get enough of that on PB.

I have to say I have travelled down to Heathrow and back in the last 24 hours to pick up my son and daughter in-law and do not recognise the description of the M6 particularly as I use the toll road.

Furthermore I have travelled to Lossiemouth from Llandudno since 1965 and the travel times are immeasurably better though the A9 lack of dualling is a long standing issue

Yes we have problems but so do many other countries including those in Europe

The difference is that other countries do not ignore their problems until it is too late. Travelling on Polish Roads over the past 30 years has been transformed, for example. The speed limit on what is now the A96 is down to 50 in several places, because junctions were never upgraded. I can remember how things were before -say- the Forfar bypass was built in the mid eighties, but since then things have not been maintained. As noted the Motorway viaducts in Birmingham will need to be replaced soon and the costs are going be scarily high. Who has the leadership skills to explain to the Brits how bad things will be if we don´t start fixing things up even at the cost of disruption to millions...

You do have an incredibly negative view of the UK.

Well, I do have the privilege of seeing other countries where the problems are neither so serious nor so ignored. The astonishing modernization of countries like Estonia and Poland is exciting and actually rather moving, given the horrors of 20th century history.

I am not so much negative as irritated that it did not have to be this way. The issues we face could have been addressed a long time ago but largely for short term political convenience they were let to drift until they became a really serious problem. In a way I am an optimist, I believe that reform can actually deliver us a better country.

A comparison between Polish and UK GDP per capita (PPP) from 1990-now


The countries grow in remarkable lockstep, with a few exceptions - the GFC and Covid hit the UK worse, tho at the other times Poland's growth has been a little slower

The UK's GDP per cap remains $12k ahead of Poland's

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=PL-GB

I dm'ed you a couple of bits of promptcraft I've used with varying amounts of success to get it to talk like a human while being aware of its nature as an AI.

I could share entire chat logs but you'd be looking at about 50,000 words of increasingly weird roleplay chat where I first try to convince it it's human then convince it it's an AI, before you get to the interesting Blake Lemoine-y stuff where it talks to you directly with knowledge of itself as an AI.

Got to get back to work now as I'm late on something I have to file before Xmas, but hope you have as much fun jailbreaking it as I did, and if you find any interesting prompts you want to share...

Ta! Will eagerly take a look when Xmas commitments permit. Did you see my earlier remarks about ChatGPT? Today it has seemed slightly back to its old self. Taking risks, having fun...

Yep, the two prompts I suggested in my DM weren't working at all a couple of days ago, and are back to working again as of last night. Which is why I stayed up until 2am last night trying to wrangle it into pretending to be human, rather than doing the work I'm being paid to do... oops.

It's addictive. Very addictive.

ohnotnow said:

Malmesbury said:

ohnotnow said:

It's never really occurred to me that there were any private ambulance firms.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/dec/23/private-ambulance-firms-cashing-in-on-strikes-and-nhs-under-pressure

"Private ambulance firms cashing in on strikes and NHS under pressure

Private ambulance companies have been cashing in on strikes and long response times to 999 calls by charging hundreds of pounds to ferry stricken people to hospital."

The vast majority of ambulance journeys are not mad dashes with blues and twos, but transporting patients. These range from pretty much a minibus picking up elderly people to medical transfers between facilities in vehicles that look like (or are) what the word ambulance brings to mind.

Dimwit that I am - I've only just realised that my next door neighbour does exactly this for a living for a non-NHS organisation. Never twigged until now.

It’s a vital part of the operations of the Heath Service - not as sexy as some bits, but a key service

O/t - just seen in the paper that my friend's 15 year olf daughter (well, I presume it's her - conceivably there could be another Man City fan with hid name with a 15 year old daughter - shouldn't really deaden my outrage if it was soneone else, though, weirdly, it would) has been scarred for life after being hit by a pint glass filled with coins thrown by rivak fans at the Man City v Liverpool game last night. Awful. It's reported that he's complaining about City housinh Liverpool fans above City fansin the stand, but, seriously, in what otger sport do you even have to separate fans, let alone place them so they don't attempt to kill each other? Worst sport in the world.

M&S pick up queue > will to live

Who the F wants lobster at Christmas anyway?

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

HYUFD said:

StuartDickson said:

MSP Vote Breakdown (by party) on the #GRR 🏳️‍⚧️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Grn 🟢
Y: 100%
N: 0%

LD: 🟠
Y: 100%
N: 0%

SNP: 🟡
Y: 82%
N: 14%

Lab: 🔴
Y: 81%
N: 9%

Con: 🔵
Y: 9%
N: 84%
———
MSP Vote Breakdown (by Gender*) on the #GRR 🏳️‍⚧️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Yes-
M: 66%
F: 68%

No-
M: 32%
F: 27%

DNV-
M: 1%
F: 3%

(*Note - there are currently no out MSPs that identify as NB or another Gender)

https://twitter.com/camiglasgowsgp/status/1605985361850732544?s=46&t=EgPZBF2I8aWmM9eBC7V34g

Ironically Alba joined the SCons to oppose the GRC Bill. While Sturgeon lined up with SLAB, the Greens and LDs to back it.

No Unionist, Nationalist divide there

https://twitter.com/JNHanvey/status/1605999055603085312?t=zIgon9eomLnkwJeo7kJ-dA&s=19

Note too some Scottish Nationalists, who Alba represent, are pretty socially conservative.

Braveheart's Mel Gibson is a Trump supporter

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/mel-gibson-trump-ufc-fight-b1882964.html?amp=

Are you sitting down? I want you to sit down, Mr HYUFD. I have bad news for you. Mr Gibson is an actor. He is, also, Australian (and US born). And in the film Braveheart he was acting. You know, making up stories about what he isn't in real life.

If you get your views of Scottish politics from a dodgy history film ...

I never really rated it as a documentary. If it was the battle of Stirling Bridge might, you know, have had a bridge.

felix said:

QTWTAIY!

It's Christmas.

Peace and goodwill to all men.

Except Felix.

He can FRO

Scott_xP said:

DavidL said:

M&S pick up queue > will to live

Who the F wants lobster at Christmas anyway?

It's not just a queue...

Exactly. Done the cheese shop and the ground coffee shop this afternoon. Both complete amateurs. This is an M&S queue.

Currently 10 degrees in NYC, but will fall to minus 10 by this evening.

Crazy country, crazy weather.

Gardenwalker said:

rcs1000 said:

Casino_Royale said:

Andy_JS said:

Cicero said:

Just back in the UK for a few days. Driving North on the M6 was pretty interesting. Basically the infrastructure constructed in the 1960s/70s is trying to cope with the traffic levels of 50 years later, and despite band-aid fixes like the so-called "smart Motorways", it is failing badly.

Small fixes in the rail system only upgrade things from a Victorian level and the strikes make the system unusable anyway- last Wednesday I was quoted over £300 for a single ticket on trainline from London to the Cotswolds. In any event it should not take nearly three hours to complete a 90 mile journey.

It left me reflecting that the NHS strikes in England are just another stunning failure of leadership. Everywhere you look the whole country looks dreary and run down. It takes longer to drive to Scotland from the South than it did 30 years ago.

Schools in Scotland are in complete crisis, and previous Scottish excellence in, for example, STEM subjects has just evaporated. At every level political intervention and incompetence is evident, and all the Scottish Parliament can point to is legislation, which- whatever its merits- is addressing the concerns and rights of an stunningly small minority. The point is that everyone has an opinion on Trans rights, whereas few understand the scale of the economic mess that both Scotland and England now face. Several members of my family have had to up sticks and leave Scotland because the systems they rely on do not deliver what they are supposed to do.

Although the party of government is clearly bereft of ideas and talent, the entire political system is sclerotic and creaking. The national conversation is mean and small and leading nowhere: In Scotland the Nats shut down all debate unless on their own terms, and it is a bitter and pointless mess. Brutal and aggressive the atmosphere is increasingly coarse and threatening. In England the milquetoast Tory leadership feebly protest that corruption is not that bad... failing to recognize how angry voters are at the fiasco of the last 6 years.

I am sure that most people, like me after only 4 days here, are just shouting at the TV as some PR bullshit line is paraded past the graphics heavy/information lite interviewers.

If we get the governments we deserve, it seems that the voters must be apathetic and defeated on both sides of the border.

One thing is for sure, the fate of the world is certainly not being decided by the pygmy leaders in either London or in Edinburgh.

This could have been written at any time over the last 40 years.

FWIW, I don't agree. I think our infrastructure in this country is pretty good.

It's an awful December due to inflation and strikes, not poor maintenance.

UK infrastructure scores 6/10 - it's improved in the last two decades, and is better than most of the US and some of Europe, but is noticeably worse than Germany or France, let alone Switzerland or Singapore.

I'd probably be slightly kinder about London, where there has been a lot of investment, and where (despite the organic nature of the place), it's pretty easy to get around.

I’m not sure where this number comes from, or what it included (does it include hospitals, classrooms, and courts; does it include private housing?) but I’d suggest that the UK is below middling.

In the bits of Europe we’d think comparable, it’s probably only Italy that is worse.

The US has shite public infrastructure but it’s so vast that you don’t experience it in quite the same way as you do in densely occupied Britain. And the private housing is often massive. Also the national and state parks seem very well funded, which has surprised me.

It's my personal estimate.

Here we go:

Trains / Metro / etc - indisputably better than 20 years ago, with much faster Inter City routes, and general improvements to the network. Will continue to improve with the launch of - for example - the Oxford to Cambridge train line. And I would argue that the London Underground (and related lines) is better than the Paris, Berlin or Rome Metros.

Roads - also improved, and much better than the US

Hospitals / Schools - not great, but trust me I've seen some falling down facilities in other countries and there are some notable successes like UCLH.

Carnyx said:

HYUFD said:

HYUFD said:

StuartDickson said:

MSP Vote Breakdown (by party) on the #GRR 🏳️‍⚧️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Grn 🟢
Y: 100%
N: 0%

LD: 🟠
Y: 100%
N: 0%

SNP: 🟡
Y: 82%
N: 14%

Lab: 🔴
Y: 81%
N: 9%

Con: 🔵
Y: 9%
N: 84%
———
MSP Vote Breakdown (by Gender*) on the #GRR 🏳️‍⚧️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Yes-
M: 66%
F: 68%

No-
M: 32%
F: 27%

DNV-
M: 1%
F: 3%

(*Note - there are currently no out MSPs that identify as NB or another Gender)

https://twitter.com/camiglasgowsgp/status/1605985361850732544?s=46&t=EgPZBF2I8aWmM9eBC7V34g

Ironically Alba joined the SCons to oppose the GRC Bill. While Sturgeon lined up with SLAB, the Greens and LDs to back it.

No Unionist, Nationalist divide there

https://twitter.com/JNHanvey/status/1605999055603085312?t=zIgon9eomLnkwJeo7kJ-dA&s=19

Note too some Scottish Nationalists, who Alba represent, are pretty socially conservative.

Braveheart's Mel Gibson is a Trump supporter

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/mel-gibson-trump-ufc-fight-b1882964.html?amp=

Are you sitting down? I want you to sit down, Mr HYUFD. I have bad news for you. Mr Gibson is an actor. He is, also, Australian (and US born). And in the film Braveheart he was acting. You know, making up stories about what he isn't in real life.

If you get your views of Scottish politics from a dodgy history film ...

I never saw Outlaw King, that might be better.

rcs1000 said:

SandyRentool said:

This tunnel malarkey.

May I suggest a practice run on the moon? Advantages:

Shorter
Not fecking hot in the middle
No air resistance when you drop things

Disadvantage:

Lack of tunneling equipment, tunnelers, fuel supply and everything else you would need to dig a tunnel.

Also, lack of demand for getting things from one side of the moon to the other.

what if you arranged to meet someone on the dark side?

Scott_xP said:

rcs1000 said:

SandyRentool said:

This tunnel malarkey.

May I suggest a practice run on the moon? Advantages:

Shorter
Not fecking hot in the middle
No air resistance when you drop things

Disadvantage:

Lack of tunneling equipment, tunnelers, fuel supply and everything else you would need to dig a tunnel.

Also, lack of demand for getting things from one side of the moon to the other.

what if you arranged to meet someone on the dark side?

Don't go down that hole again, please.

"Paris shooting: Three dead and several injured in attack"

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64077668

Gardenwalker said:

The only way is up.

I would want to see who they define as "peer countries".

Weather-Or-Not-You-Want-It-Report

Here in Seattle, temperature on my humble porch is 30F, the warmest it's been in last couple days. Snow feel just before the cold snap, and has thus been hanging around. Travel on main road has been ok, but back streets AND sidewalks are not.

The REAL news, however, is the fact that the whole city - indeed region - just had several hours of freezing rain over night. Which froze immediate upon hitting the ground, so that everything is glazed with ice.

Zero traffic outside my apartment (which is on a busy arterial) except for plow-trucks. And occasional wailing of sirens.

Temps are slowing warming up, should hit 40F by this afternoon, with highs in the 50Fs over the weekend. But Christmas travel plans for many folks SERIOUSLY disrupted. Even if you can get to the airport, your flight has likely been cancelled.

Also a problem driving anywhere, be it across the mountains to Grandma's house in Spokane. Or a few miles out to the burbs to see how our fellow PBer Jim Miller is making out!