Per The Times: "Starmer: I'll build houses on the green belt"
Irrespective of the actual merits, politically is this bold outflanking, or reckless politics?
As per the FT: “A generation and its hopes are being blocked by those who — more often than not — enjoy the secure homes and jobs that they’re denying to others,” Starmer will say.
“Mark my words: we will take on planning reform. We’ll bring back local housing targets. We’ll streamline the process for national infrastructure projects and commercial development and we’ll remove the veto used by big landowners to stop shovels hitting the ground.”
I think it's outflanking the Tories on growth. It'll lose some nimby votes but that's not where most Labour targets are and you need to take on vested interests to move the country forward.
Nice to some Labour policy, and one that is in the right direction.
This feels like an area where there is a big divide between Labour and the Lib Dems.
If the interview on BBC 1 is anything to go by he was talking about common sense in decisions. He gave the example of building on a playing field not in the greenbelt but not building on a carpark in the greenbelt. We have exactly that issue around here. Our village was taken out of the greenbelt. Building is rampant without any additional infrastructure to support it, yet on the edge of the village, in the green belt, a street of houses has a gap between 2 houses that can't be built on. It is an obvious building plot, with no other use. Bonkers.
I have noticed recently a number of new build houses on what were previously pub car parks, obviously no longer required in this day and age
Presumably pub turned into accomodation. Shame to lose a pub. Our local has gone into adminstration. Has been closed for a month or so, so far. Hope it opens again and not built on.
Not proposing building on car parks if they serve a purpose obviously, just the barmy situation that green land not in the greenbelt gets built on and brownfield sites in the greenbelt don't regardless of the specific circumstances.
In Lib/Lab/Green Godalming (south of Guildford) we proposed to build housing on part of a very central car park, and replace the lost spaces with a multi-storey. I thought it was a no-brainer - lots of nice new homes in walking distance of the shops and the river, and what can be more brownfield than a car park?
Wrong. The nearly moribund local Tories roused themselves to a spectacular campaign. "SAVE OUR CAR PARK" letters to every home. Jeremy Hunt weighed in. Tories stood on the High Street collecting signatures. The clear (false) impression was that we were reducing the number of parking spaces. Several high street shops complained that they'd lose custom as a result (whereas in fact they'd have had more local custom), so the Tories could add a second string to the bow: "SAVE OUR HIGH STREET". As the consultation proceeded, we found "No" votes outweighing the "yes" votes by 10-1.
We surrendered, and the houses won't be built. It didn't do the Tories any strategic good in this month's election - they lost all but two seats on the Town Council, making them the 4th largest party. But they could console themselves by saying truthfully that they'd fought a very effective single-issue campaign.
I still think it was an excellent idea, foiled by unscrupulous opposition. But it's an example of how people react against change.
The whole parking thing is an example of thick-eared British refusal to learn from other counties. We set up so many false dichotomies in this country, rather like the Americans. Either do things the (inefficient) way we've always done them, or go 180 degrees to some imagined strawman socialist/fascist dystopia, without stopping along the way to consider the many effective ways our close European neighbours have done things for years.
Visit any reasonable sized French, Belgian, German or Swiss town in your car and you'll notice entrance signs to very nicely appointed, conveniently sited underground car parks. Often multiple levels, secure and with nice colour coding and non-urinous lifts to the surface. They are usually on the edge of a central traffic-limited zone (which incidentally will be full of pleasant narrow streets that are mainly pedestrian but allow the occasional resident to drive through, rather than windswept boulevards of poundland and charity shops with fast food wrappers drifting in the breeze). And the parking will of course be a fraction of the cost of a bog standard UK pay and display.
But we don't consider the pretty obvious solution of underground parking do we, except in private waterfront newbuilds in East London. No, we pose a choice between vast concrete savannas of grazing SUVs, or an absolute ban on vehicles and a park and ride 10 miles out of town.
My favourite Park and Ride is Craibstone near Aberdeen Airport. Built for a mere £15m it has zero buses actually calling there. A short distance from the airport it also fails to be cheap / free parking as there is a 36 hour restriction...
Use the one at Kingswells. It has an exellent bus service and loads of space. It is being used a lot of the time as overflow carpark for all the businesses in the area but still has loads of space and is surprisingly well used - at least the buses seem to doa good trade.
We dont have an industrial policy so nobody fights our corner for jobs and investment.
BoZo had an industrial policy.
"Fuck business" as I recall
For once Bozo was telling the truth ! And the Brexiters go to economist Minford said Brexit would decimate manufacturing and agriculture so another correct prediction!
Anyone who still thinks Brexit was a good idea needs to seek help !
hmmm
perhaps it the people who cant get over a vote from 7 years ago who need the help. Political PTSD.
Remainers were on the right side of history! Brexit is an unmitigated disaster , even its chief cheerleader Farage said it has failed!
LOL oh really
have we millions of unemployed, has the economy collapsed , are we all eating grass ?
Any impact has been dwarfed by Covid and Putin, we're in a new world get over it,
How it started: "sunlit uplands", "we hold all the cards" How it's going: "are we all eating grass?" 😂
Still in 2016 I see. Two campaigns who lied though their teeth and you believed them both.
I can see why the bus won.
Ha ha. For what it's worth I didn't really believe either campaign, but being an economist who does economic forecasting for a living it was pretty obvious to me that Brexit would make the UK poorer, and so it has transpired.
why not go out and get a real job , economists are only ever in the situation the bulk of their forecasts are wrong,
I'll stick with my job thanks, it may not be "real" but the money I get for advising folk who manage over $20bn of assets certainly is.
So you advise, you dont make the calls ?
No I'm not a trader. If I was I'd be paid serious money. I'm more interested in the underlying economics, could do without the stress and I don't have a hankering to be properly rich so it suits me to stick with the analysis side of things.
Per The Times: "Starmer: I'll build houses on the green belt"
Irrespective of the actual merits, politically is this bold outflanking, or reckless politics?
As per the FT: “A generation and its hopes are being blocked by those who — more often than not — enjoy the secure homes and jobs that they’re denying to others,” Starmer will say.
“Mark my words: we will take on planning reform. We’ll bring back local housing targets. We’ll streamline the process for national infrastructure projects and commercial development and we’ll remove the veto used by big landowners to stop shovels hitting the ground.”
I think it's outflanking the Tories on growth. It'll lose some nimby votes but that's not where most Labour targets are and you need to take on vested interests to move the country forward.
Nice to some Labour policy, and one that is in the right direction.
This feels like an area where there is a big divide between Labour and the Lib Dems.
If the interview on BBC 1 is anything to go by he was talking about common sense in decisions. He gave the example of building on a playing field not in the greenbelt but not building on a carpark in the greenbelt. We have exactly that issue around here. Our village was taken out of the greenbelt. Building is rampant without any additional infrastructure to support it, yet on the edge of the village, in the green belt, a street of houses has a gap between 2 houses that can't be built on. It is an obvious building plot, with no other use. Bonkers.
I have noticed recently a number of new build houses on what were previously pub car parks, obviously no longer required in this day and age
Presumably pub turned into accomodation. Shame to lose a pub. Our local has gone into adminstration. Has been closed for a month or so, so far. Hope it opens again and not built on.
Not proposing building on car parks if they serve a purpose obviously, just the barmy situation that green land not in the greenbelt gets built on and brownfield sites in the greenbelt don't regardless of the specific circumstances.
In Lib/Lab/Green Godalming (south of Guildford) we proposed to build housing on part of a very central car park, and replace the lost spaces with a multi-storey. I thought it was a no-brainer - lots of nice new homes in walking distance of the shops and the river, and what can be more brownfield than a car park?
Wrong. The nearly moribund local Tories roused themselves to a spectacular campaign. "SAVE OUR CAR PARK" letters to every home. Jeremy Hunt weighed in. Tories stood on the High Street collecting signatures. The clear (false) impression was that we were reducing the number of parking spaces. Several high street shops complained that they'd lose custom as a result (whereas in fact they'd have had more local custom), so the Tories could add a second string to the bow: "SAVE OUR HIGH STREET". As the consultation proceeded, we found "No" votes outweighing the "yes" votes by 10-1.
We surrendered, and the houses won't be built. It didn't do the Tories any strategic good in this month's election - they lost all but two seats on the Town Council, making them the 4th largest party. But they could console themselves by saying truthfully that they'd fought a very effective single-issue campaign.
I still think it was an excellent idea, foiled by unscrupulous opposition. But it's an example of how people react against change.
The whole parking thing is an example of thick-eared British refusal to learn from other counties. We set up so many false dichotomies in this country, rather like the Americans. Either do things the (inefficient) way we've always done them, or go 180 degrees to some imagined strawman socialist/fascist dystopia, without stopping along the way to consider the many effective ways our close European neighbours have done things for years.
Visit any reasonable sized French, Belgian, German or Swiss town in your car and you'll notice entrance signs to very nicely appointed, conveniently sited underground car parks. Often multiple levels, secure and with nice colour coding and non-urinous lifts to the surface. They are usually on the edge of a central traffic-limited zone (which incidentally will be full of pleasant narrow streets that are mainly pedestrian but allow the occasional resident to drive through, rather than windswept boulevards of poundland and charity shops with fast food wrappers drifting in the breeze). And the parking will of course be a fraction of the cost of a bog standard UK pay and display.
But we don't consider the pretty obvious solution of underground parking do we, except in private waterfront newbuilds in East London. No, we pose a choice between vast concrete savannas of grazing SUVs, or an absolute ban on vehicles and a park and ride 10 miles out of town.
My favourite Park and Ride is Craibstone near Aberdeen Airport. Built for a mere £15m it has zero buses actually calling there. A short distance from the airport it also fails to be cheap / free parking as there is a 36 hour restriction...
Use the one at Kingswells. It has an exellent bus service and loads of space. It is being used a lot of the time as overflow carpark for all the businesses in the area but still has loads of space and is surprisingly well used - at least the buses seem to doa good trade.
I don't need P&R. I'm just pointing to the insanity of building a £15m car park near an airport and then not letting anyone use it.
We dont have an industrial policy so nobody fights our corner for jobs and investment.
BoZo had an industrial policy.
"Fuck business" as I recall
For once Bozo was telling the truth ! And the Brexiters go to economist Minford said Brexit would decimate manufacturing and agriculture so another correct prediction!
Anyone who still thinks Brexit was a good idea needs to seek help !
hmmm
perhaps it the people who cant get over a vote from 7 years ago who need the help. Political PTSD.
Remainers were on the right side of history! Brexit is an unmitigated disaster , even its chief cheerleader Farage said it has failed!
LOL oh really
have we millions of unemployed, has the economy collapsed , are we all eating grass ?
Any impact has been dwarfed by Covid and Putin, we're in a new world get over it,
How it started: "sunlit uplands", "we hold all the cards" How it's going: "are we all eating grass?" 😂
There's something quiet poetic about "eating grass on the sunlit uplands".
Perfect for a nice May morning.
Our grass is out of control thanks to No Mow May, plenty to chow down on if the Brexit dividend keeps failing to materialise. A lovely May morning to be WFH in the garden office, looking out at the roses and poppies and the last of the tulips and listening to the birds singing in sunny SE London.
No Mow May results in No Lawn June and July. Takes an age to recover. There are better ways to help wildlife than hope a bit of clover pops up for a month. (Spoiler: it probably won't...)
Even as I wrote it I knew that someone on PB would disapprove of No Mow May.
Bear in mind that I know MM has a very keen and active interest in the study and conservation of insects (particularly moths) and as such I am inclined to take his opinion on this seriously. I will look into it more as I have also been following No Mow May and am interested in alternative views on this.
Per The Times: "Starmer: I'll build houses on the green belt"
Irrespective of the actual merits, politically is this bold outflanking, or reckless politics?
As per the FT: “A generation and its hopes are being blocked by those who — more often than not — enjoy the secure homes and jobs that they’re denying to others,” Starmer will say.
“Mark my words: we will take on planning reform. We’ll bring back local housing targets. We’ll streamline the process for national infrastructure projects and commercial development and we’ll remove the veto used by big landowners to stop shovels hitting the ground.”
I think it's outflanking the Tories on growth. It'll lose some nimby votes but that's not where most Labour targets are and you need to take on vested interests to move the country forward.
Nice to some Labour policy, and one that is in the right direction.
This feels like an area where there is a big divide between Labour and the Lib Dems.
If the interview on BBC 1 is anything to go by he was talking about common sense in decisions. He gave the example of building on a playing field not in the greenbelt but not building on a carpark in the greenbelt. We have exactly that issue around here. Our village was taken out of the greenbelt. Building is rampant without any additional infrastructure to support it, yet on the edge of the village, in the green belt, a street of houses has a gap between 2 houses that can't be built on. It is an obvious building plot, with no other use. Bonkers.
I have noticed recently a number of new build houses on what were previously pub car parks, obviously no longer required in this day and age
Presumably pub turned into accomodation. Shame to lose a pub. Our local has gone into adminstration. Has been closed for a month or so, so far. Hope it opens again and not built on.
Not proposing building on car parks if they serve a purpose obviously, just the barmy situation that green land not in the greenbelt gets built on and brownfield sites in the greenbelt don't regardless of the specific circumstances.
In Lib/Lab/Green Godalming (south of Guildford) we proposed to build housing on part of a very central car park, and replace the lost spaces with a multi-storey. I thought it was a no-brainer - lots of nice new homes in walking distance of the shops and the river, and what can be more brownfield than a car park?
Wrong. The nearly moribund local Tories roused themselves to a spectacular campaign. "SAVE OUR CAR PARK" letters to every home. Jeremy Hunt weighed in. Tories stood on the High Street collecting signatures. The clear (false) impression was that we were reducing the number of parking spaces. Several high street shops complained that they'd lose custom as a result (whereas in fact they'd have had more local custom), so the Tories could add a second string to the bow: "SAVE OUR HIGH STREET". As the consultation proceeded, we found "No" votes outweighing the "yes" votes by 10-1.
We surrendered, and the houses won't be built. It didn't do the Tories any strategic good in this month's election - they lost all but two seats on the Town Council, making them the 4th largest party. But they could console themselves by saying truthfully that they'd fought a very effective single-issue campaign.
I still think it was an excellent idea, foiled by unscrupulous opposition. But it's an example of how people react against change.
The whole parking thing is an example of thick-eared British refusal to learn from other counties. We set up so many false dichotomies in this country, rather like the Americans. Either do things the (inefficient) way we've always done them, or go 180 degrees to some imagined strawman socialist/fascist dystopia, without stopping along the way to consider the many effective ways our close European neighbours have done things for years.
Visit any reasonable sized French, Belgian, German or Swiss town in your car and you'll notice entrance signs to very nicely appointed, conveniently sited underground car parks. Often multiple levels, secure and with nice colour coding and non-urinous lifts to the surface. They are usually on the edge of a central traffic-limited zone (which incidentally will be full of pleasant narrow streets that are mainly pedestrian but allow the occasional resident to drive through, rather than windswept boulevards of poundland and charity shops with fast food wrappers drifting in the breeze). And the parking will of course be a fraction of the cost of a bog standard UK pay and display.
But we don't consider the pretty obvious solution of underground parking do we, except in private waterfront newbuilds in East London. No, we pose a choice between vast concrete savannas of grazing SUVs, or an absolute ban on vehicles and a park and ride 10 miles out of town.
I agree with this, both in terms of sentiment (learning from the rest of the world) and the specifics of car parks. But it is worth pointing out that one of the issues is that building underground for these sorts of projects is very expensive compared to building up and one of the reasons no one does it is because no one is willing to invest the private capital to do it.
Yes, which brings us to one of the other British diseases: centralism and a lack of devolution to towns and cities. The reason your average French or Belgian town has a nice shiny underground car park is because the municipality voted to fund and build it, with local money from municipal taxpayers. If it's a big one they might have applied for a grant from central or regional government, or even in some cases the EU, but the decision was local. It might once up and running be run by something like Vinci but it was conceived based on demand and town planning.
Same with the weekly markets, the town festivals, e-bike hire and various other things these towns are able to sort out on their own.
We dont have an industrial policy so nobody fights our corner for jobs and investment.
BoZo had an industrial policy.
"Fuck business" as I recall
For once Bozo was telling the truth ! And the Brexiters go to economist Minford said Brexit would decimate manufacturing and agriculture so another correct prediction!
Anyone who still thinks Brexit was a good idea needs to seek help !
hmmm
perhaps it the people who cant get over a vote from 7 years ago who need the help. Political PTSD.
Remainers were on the right side of history! Brexit is an unmitigated disaster , even its chief cheerleader Farage said it has failed!
LOL oh really
have we millions of unemployed, has the economy collapsed , are we all eating grass ?
Any impact has been dwarfed by Covid and Putin, we're in a new world get over it,
How it started: "sunlit uplands", "we hold all the cards" How it's going: "are we all eating grass?" 😂
Still in 2016 I see. Two campaigns who lied though their teeth and you believed them both.
I can see why the bus won.
Ha ha. For what it's worth I didn't really believe either campaign, but being an economist who does economic forecasting for a living it was pretty obvious to me that Brexit would make the UK poorer, and so it has transpired.
why not go out and get a real job , economists are only ever in the situation the bulk of their forecasts are wrong,
I'll stick with my job thanks, it may not be "real" but the money I get for advising folk who manage over $20bn of assets certainly is.
So you advise, you dont make the calls ?
No I'm not a trader. If I was I'd be paid serious money. I'm more interested in the underlying economics, could do without the stress and I don't have a hankering to be properly rich so it suits me to stick with the analysis side of things.
Well good luck with it as you say sometimes the stress isnt worth it. Ive just buried a banker friend last week heart attack at 60 mostly stress induced.
Per The Times: "Starmer: I'll build houses on the green belt"
Irrespective of the actual merits, politically is this bold outflanking, or reckless politics?
As per the FT: “A generation and its hopes are being blocked by those who — more often than not — enjoy the secure homes and jobs that they’re denying to others,” Starmer will say.
“Mark my words: we will take on planning reform. We’ll bring back local housing targets. We’ll streamline the process for national infrastructure projects and commercial development and we’ll remove the veto used by big landowners to stop shovels hitting the ground.”
I think it's outflanking the Tories on growth. It'll lose some nimby votes but that's not where most Labour targets are and you need to take on vested interests to move the country forward.
Nice to some Labour policy, and one that is in the right direction.
This feels like an area where there is a big divide between Labour and the Lib Dems.
If the interview on BBC 1 is anything to go by he was talking about common sense in decisions. He gave the example of building on a playing field not in the greenbelt but not building on a carpark in the greenbelt. We have exactly that issue around here. Our village was taken out of the greenbelt. Building is rampant without any additional infrastructure to support it, yet on the edge of the village, in the green belt, a street of houses has a gap between 2 houses that can't be built on. It is an obvious building plot, with no other use. Bonkers.
I have noticed recently a number of new build houses on what were previously pub car parks, obviously no longer required in this day and age
Presumably pub turned into accomodation. Shame to lose a pub. Our local has gone into adminstration. Has been closed for a month or so, so far. Hope it opens again and not built on.
Not proposing building on car parks if they serve a purpose obviously, just the barmy situation that green land not in the greenbelt gets built on and brownfield sites in the greenbelt don't regardless of the specific circumstances.
In Lib/Lab/Green Godalming (south of Guildford) we proposed to build housing on part of a very central car park, and replace the lost spaces with a multi-storey. I thought it was a no-brainer - lots of nice new homes in walking distance of the shops and the river, and what can be more brownfield than a car park?
Wrong. The nearly moribund local Tories roused themselves to a spectacular campaign. "SAVE OUR CAR PARK" letters to every home. Jeremy Hunt weighed in. Tories stood on the High Street collecting signatures. The clear (false) impression was that we were reducing the number of parking spaces. Several high street shops complained that they'd lose custom as a result (whereas in fact they'd have had more local custom), so the Tories could add a second string to the bow: "SAVE OUR HIGH STREET". As the consultation proceeded, we found "No" votes outweighing the "yes" votes by 10-1.
We surrendered, and the houses won't be built. It didn't do the Tories any strategic good in this month's election - they lost all but two seats on the Town Council, making them the 4th largest party. But they could console themselves by saying truthfully that they'd fought a very effective single-issue campaign.
I still think it was an excellent idea, foiled by unscrupulous opposition. But it's an example of how people react against change.
The whole parking thing is an example of thick-eared British refusal to learn from other counties. We set up so many false dichotomies in this country, rather like the Americans. Either do things the (inefficient) way we've always done them, or go 180 degrees to some imagined strawman socialist/fascist dystopia, without stopping along the way to consider the many effective ways our close European neighbours have done things for years.
Visit any reasonable sized French, Belgian, German or Swiss town in your car and you'll notice entrance signs to very nicely appointed, conveniently sited underground car parks. Often multiple levels, secure and with nice colour coding and non-urinous lifts to the surface. They are usually on the edge of a central traffic-limited zone (which incidentally will be full of pleasant narrow streets that are mainly pedestrian but allow the occasional resident to drive through, rather than windswept boulevards of poundland and charity shops with fast food wrappers drifting in the breeze). And the parking will of course be a fraction of the cost of a bog standard UK pay and display.
But we don't consider the pretty obvious solution of underground parking do we, except in private waterfront newbuilds in East London. No, we pose a choice between vast concrete savannas of grazing SUVs, or an absolute ban on vehicles and a park and ride 10 miles out of town.
I agree with this, both in terms of sentiment (learning from the rest of the world) and the specifics of car parks. But it is worth pointing out that one of the issues is that building underground for these sorts of projects is very expensive compared to building up and one of the reasons no one does it is because no one is willing to invest the private capital to do it.
Yes, which brings us to one of the other British diseases: centralism and a lack of devolution to towns and cities. The reason your average French or Belgian town has a nice shiny underground car park is because the municipality voted to fund and build it, with local money from municipal taxpayers. If it's a big one they might have applied for a grant from central or regional government, or even in some cases the EU, but the decision was local. It might once up and running be run by something like Vinci but it was conceived based on demand and town planning.
Same with the weekly markets, the town festivals, e-bike hire and various other things these towns are able to sort out on their own.
Again, not a thing there I disagree with. I was going to say something similar about this being in the remit of local councils to change but was not sure how firm my ground was on this.
Per The Times: "Starmer: I'll build houses on the green belt"
Irrespective of the actual merits, politically is this bold outflanking, or reckless politics?
As per the FT: “A generation and its hopes are being blocked by those who — more often than not — enjoy the secure homes and jobs that they’re denying to others,” Starmer will say.
“Mark my words: we will take on planning reform. We’ll bring back local housing targets. We’ll streamline the process for national infrastructure projects and commercial development and we’ll remove the veto used by big landowners to stop shovels hitting the ground.”
I think it's outflanking the Tories on growth. It'll lose some nimby votes but that's not where most Labour targets are and you need to take on vested interests to move the country forward.
Nice to some Labour policy, and one that is in the right direction.
This feels like an area where there is a big divide between Labour and the Lib Dems.
If the interview on BBC 1 is anything to go by he was talking about common sense in decisions. He gave the example of building on a playing field not in the greenbelt but not building on a carpark in the greenbelt. We have exactly that issue around here. Our village was taken out of the greenbelt. Building is rampant without any additional infrastructure to support it, yet on the edge of the village, in the green belt, a street of houses has a gap between 2 houses that can't be built on. It is an obvious building plot, with no other use. Bonkers.
I have noticed recently a number of new build houses on what were previously pub car parks, obviously no longer required in this day and age
Presumably pub turned into accomodation. Shame to lose a pub. Our local has gone into adminstration. Has been closed for a month or so, so far. Hope it opens again and not built on.
Not proposing building on car parks if they serve a purpose obviously, just the barmy situation that green land not in the greenbelt gets built on and brownfield sites in the greenbelt don't regardless of the specific circumstances.
In Lib/Lab/Green Godalming (south of Guildford) we proposed to build housing on part of a very central car park, and replace the lost spaces with a multi-storey. I thought it was a no-brainer - lots of nice new homes in walking distance of the shops and the river, and what can be more brownfield than a car park?
Wrong. The nearly moribund local Tories roused themselves to a spectacular campaign. "SAVE OUR CAR PARK" letters to every home. Jeremy Hunt weighed in. Tories stood on the High Street collecting signatures. The clear (false) impression was that we were reducing the number of parking spaces. Several high street shops complained that they'd lose custom as a result (whereas in fact they'd have had more local custom), so the Tories could add a second string to the bow: "SAVE OUR HIGH STREET". As the consultation proceeded, we found "No" votes outweighing the "yes" votes by 10-1.
We surrendered, and the houses won't be built. It didn't do the Tories any strategic good in this month's election - they lost all but two seats on the Town Council, making them the 4th largest party. But they could console themselves by saying truthfully that they'd fought a very effective single-issue campaign.
I still think it was an excellent idea, foiled by unscrupulous opposition. But it's an example of how people react against change.
The whole parking thing is an example of thick-eared British refusal to learn from other counties. We set up so many false dichotomies in this country, rather like the Americans. Either do things the (inefficient) way we've always done them, or go 180 degrees to some imagined strawman socialist/fascist dystopia, without stopping along the way to consider the many effective ways our close European neighbours have done things for years.
Visit any reasonable sized French, Belgian, German or Swiss town in your car and you'll notice entrance signs to very nicely appointed, conveniently sited underground car parks. Often multiple levels, secure and with nice colour coding and non-urinous lifts to the surface. They are usually on the edge of a central traffic-limited zone (which incidentally will be full of pleasant narrow streets that are mainly pedestrian but allow the occasional resident to drive through, rather than windswept boulevards of poundland and charity shops with fast food wrappers drifting in the breeze). And the parking will of course be a fraction of the cost of a bog standard UK pay and display.
But we don't consider the pretty obvious solution of underground parking do we, except in private waterfront newbuilds in East London. No, we pose a choice between vast concrete savannas of grazing SUVs, or an absolute ban on vehicles and a park and ride 10 miles out of town.
My favourite Park and Ride is Craibstone near Aberdeen Airport. Built for a mere £15m it has zero buses actually calling there. A short distance from the airport it also fails to be cheap / free parking as there is a 36 hour restriction...
Use the one at Kingswells. It has an exellent bus service and loads of space. It is being used a lot of the time as overflow carpark for all the businesses in the area but still has loads of space and is surprisingly well used - at least the buses seem to doa good trade.
I don't need P&R. I'm just pointing to the insanity of building a £15m car park near an airport and then not letting anyone use it.
It is strange. Particularly given that I have generally found the bus services in Aberdeen to be pretty good, well directed and well used.
That is from an article from 3 years ago and if Yes can't even win young Scots again like it did in 2014 then it has no chance
Will be even higher by now.
Doubtful. People tend not to consider the fundamentals nearly enough on questions like independence and there will be a substantial drift from "Yes" to "No" of voters who prefer Der Størmer to Useless.
If that substantial shift is going to happen there’s no sign of it yet, indeed the current meme among hacks is that Indy support is ‘decoupling’ from support for the SNP. Of course the Tories would publicly execute several dozen MPs to be on 38% (the SNP Westminster number in the latest Scotland only poll).
The red line heading above the green = no independence.
Peak Nat was when Boris/Truss were at the peak of their powers, which pushed Scots toward independence.
The future dynamic is either a Major-esque Sunak narrow win or more likely a Starmer led Gov't which are both preferred in Scotland compared to the Boris show. So the votes that count won't get indy over the line.
In the days that I worked from home, I found it much better, and more productive, to get up very early. I could get a considerable amount of work done before the telephone calls (no emails in those days). 6am to 9am, even allowing for breakfast, I could finish all yesterdays correspondence and start on today’s!
You were more productive, or you merely worked longer hours? One of the benefits for employers of WFH is the number of mugs (like me) donating free overtime.
We dont have an industrial policy so nobody fights our corner for jobs and investment.
BoZo had an industrial policy.
"Fuck business" as I recall
For once Bozo was telling the truth ! And the Brexiters go to economist Minford said Brexit would decimate manufacturing and agriculture so another correct prediction!
Anyone who still thinks Brexit was a good idea needs to seek help !
hmmm
perhaps it the people who cant get over a vote from 7 years ago who need the help. Political PTSD.
You've been discussing just this morning how we're failing to deal with the consequences if the vote. 'Get over it' isn't an adequate response to the problems it has posed.
We dont have an industrial policy so nobody fights our corner for jobs and investment.
BoZo had an industrial policy.
"Fuck business" as I recall
For once Bozo was telling the truth ! And the Brexiters go to economist Minford said Brexit would decimate manufacturing and agriculture so another correct prediction!
Anyone who still thinks Brexit was a good idea needs to seek help !
hmmm
perhaps it the people who cant get over a vote from 7 years ago who need the help. Political PTSD.
Remainers were on the right side of history! Brexit is an unmitigated disaster , even its chief cheerleader Farage said it has failed!
LOL oh really
have we millions of unemployed, has the economy collapsed , are we all eating grass ?
Any impact has been dwarfed by Covid and Putin, we're in a new world get over it,
How it started: "sunlit uplands", "we hold all the cards" How it's going: "are we all eating grass?" 😂
There's something quiet poetic about "eating grass on the sunlit uplands".
We dont have an industrial policy so nobody fights our corner for jobs and investment.
BoZo had an industrial policy.
"Fuck business" as I recall
For once Bozo was telling the truth ! And the Brexiters go to economist Minford said Brexit would decimate manufacturing and agriculture so another correct prediction!
Anyone who still thinks Brexit was a good idea needs to seek help !
hmmm
perhaps it the people who cant get over a vote from 7 years ago who need the help. Political PTSD.
Remainers were on the right side of history! Brexit is an unmitigated disaster , even its chief cheerleader Farage said it has failed!
LOL oh really
have we millions of unemployed, has the economy collapsed , are we all eating grass ?
Any impact has been dwarfed by Covid and Putin, we're in a new world get over it,
How it started: "sunlit uplands", "we hold all the cards" How it's going: "are we all eating grass?" 😂
Still in 2016 I see. Two campaigns who lied though their teeth and you believed them both.
I can see why the bus won.
Ha ha. For what it's worth I didn't really believe either campaign, but being an economist who does economic forecasting for a living it was pretty obvious to me that Brexit would make the UK poorer, and so it has transpired.
why not go out and get a real job , economists are only ever in the situation the bulk of their forecasts are wrong,
That is from an article from 3 years ago and if Yes can't even win young Scots again like it did in 2014 then it has no chance
Will be even higher by now.
Doubtful. People tend not to consider the fundamentals nearly enough on questions like independence and there will be a substantial drift from "Yes" to "No" of voters who prefer Der Størmer to Useless.
If that substantial shift is going to happen there’s no sign of it yet, indeed the current meme among hacks is that Indy support is ‘decoupling’ from support for the SNP. Of course the Tories would publicly execute several dozen MPs to be on 38% (the SNP Westminster number in the latest Scotland only poll).
The red line heading above the green = no independence.
Peak Nat was when Boris/Truss were at the peak of their powers, which pushed Scots toward independence.
The future dynamic is either a Major-esque Sunak narrow win or more likely a Starmer led Gov't which are both preferred in Scotland compared to the Boris show. So the votes that count won't get indy over the line.
Well, we obviously have different views of what is a ‘substantial shift’. The gap between Yes and No being similar to what it was for much longer periods since 2014 doesn’t really seem like tectonic plate territory to me.
If one ignores a couple of Scotch sub samples that were so fascinating to PB I still don’t see any sign of a mad rush to Starmerisn, in fact I ‘m genuinely interested to see how Labour sell their record north of the border in the run up to a GE. Headlines like this won’t help.
That is from an article from 3 years ago and if Yes can't even win young Scots again like it did in 2014 then it has no chance
Will be even higher by now.
Doubtful. People tend not to consider the fundamentals nearly enough on questions like independence and there will be a substantial drift from "Yes" to "No" of voters who prefer Der Størmer to Useless.
If that substantial shift is going to happen there’s no sign of it yet, indeed the current meme among hacks is that Indy support is ‘decoupling’ from support for the SNP. Of course the Tories would publicly execute several dozen MPs to be on 38% (the SNP Westminster number in the latest Scotland only poll).
The red line heading above the green = no independence.
Peak Nat was when Boris/Truss were at the peak of their powers, which pushed Scots toward independence.
The future dynamic is either a Major-esque Sunak narrow win or more likely a Starmer led Gov't which are both preferred in Scotland compared to the Boris show. So the votes that count won't get indy over the line.
Well, we obviously have different views of what is a ‘substantial shift’. The gap between Yes and No being similar to what it was for much longer periods since 2014 doesn’t really seem like tectonic plate territory to me.
If one ignores a couple of Scotch sub samples that were so fascinating to PB I still don’t see any sign of a mad rush to Starmerisn, in fact I ‘m genuinely interested to see how Labour sell their record north of the border in the run up to a GE. Headlines like this won’t help.
Swing voters in Scotland will like the fact Starmer is now pushing law and order, only left wing Nats will back the SNP stance
Was BritishVolt not going to be a battery factory? That could be revived, Vauxhall could invest, the Government would have to grease the wheels, but we piss money at a lot of less worthwhile things.
Ah yes. Subsidies for British firms funded by British taxpayers to ensure they remain competitive. Very good. Very Conservative.
The poster in question is always bemoaning the post-Truss declinism of the current government, yet he is now endorsing the consummate 1970s declinism of 'picking winners', so beloved of Harold Wilson and Sunny Jim. The British Right is in intellectual free-fall.
The thing is, industrial policy has worked in Germany for many decades. Industrial strategy is also about long-term invesment as much as "picking winners", which we have been singularly awful at.
It has to be said certain City interests have always been keen to the raise this issue of 1970's industrial failure ( also linked to feudal management and obstreperous Unions ) because it obscures this other issue of short-term investment, as well as an excessively laissez-faire approach to key strategic national interests, over the last 30 years, up to and including issues like nuclear power generation, and to an extent unmatched almost anywhere else in the Western world.
It is an open question as to whether it was industrial policy as is commonly understood (i.e. picking and favouring winning sectors and companies and protecting them) that worked in Germany, or microeconomic policy more broadly, such as an excellent education and apprenticeship system, good infrastructure, more pro-growth planning laws than here and macroeconomic policy that emphasised low inflation. (Also of course cheap Russian gas from the 80s until last year).
I'd give the latter factors much more weight, and I haven't worked in the City in quite a few years.
Absolutely. Industrial policy does not mean 'picking winners'. That's a nonsense argument which dates back to the nonsense industrial policies of the Labour governments of the 1970s.
Germany doesn't, generally, pick winners.
The closest recently I can think of was Merkel pushing the Tesla factory near Berlin.
This was seen in large chucks of the German motor industry as putting on a particularly nasty pair of brass knuckles, punching them in the gut, all while singing "How Do You Like Me Now" by The Heavy.
It's certainly had an effect - on a recent visit to Hamburg, 1 in 4 taxis was a Tesla 3. The rest were the usual big, slightly old Mercs.
The German car industry is, like the UK based industry, wanting to avoid investment in battery plants. It's not their thing, they want to outsource it to China.
The problem is that it involves lots of investment, smallish margins, its hard work to manage and keep up with. Not much time for trebles in the boardroom, when you are doing that.
The fashion for building mass battery factories in the developed world was started by a certain business man (not named for trigger value). He was described as insane for doing so. But it is a big part of why the margins on the vehicles his company sells are so high.
My suggestion on this was to offer a bounty per battery cell produced in the UK. Percentage of max bounty based on the value added in the UK.
The big advantage of this approach is that it requires no money down. The factories will take 5-10 years to build. The government will be paying out a decade from now.
"The fashion for building mass battery factories in the developed world was started by a certain business man (not named for trigger value)"
A plant actually built and largely financed by Panasonic, and which used Panasonic tech. ...
Which was part of a process.
The first step was to buy the entire production from just-obsolete* Panasonic plants in the Far East.
The second step was to build a plant onshore, in partnership with Panasonic
The third step was to use the know how... acquired from the partnership with Panasonic to build their own plants.
This is the process that China has used, methodically, to pull chunks of the supply chain in.
It also is worth considering the laughable BritVolt business plan, in comparison. Build a factory and batteries will happen. No stinking expertise required.
*Last year or the year before's cell designs are always cheap and much more reliable than the bleeding edge ones.
That is from an article from 3 years ago and if Yes can't even win young Scots again like it did in 2014 then it has no chance
Will be even higher by now.
Doubtful. People tend not to consider the fundamentals nearly enough on questions like independence and there will be a substantial drift from "Yes" to "No" of voters who prefer Der Størmer to Useless.
If that substantial shift is going to happen there’s no sign of it yet, indeed the current meme among hacks is that Indy support is ‘decoupling’ from support for the SNP. Of course the Tories would publicly execute several dozen MPs to be on 38% (the SNP Westminster number in the latest Scotland only poll).
The red line heading above the green = no independence.
Peak Nat was when Boris/Truss were at the peak of their powers, which pushed Scots toward independence.
The future dynamic is either a Major-esque Sunak narrow win or more likely a Starmer led Gov't which are both preferred in Scotland compared to the Boris show. So the votes that count won't get indy over the line.
What that chart clearly demonstrates to me is that people can swing between Yes and No relatively easily. In short, the issue remains in flux. And likely would continue to do so even during a theoretical 2ndref campaign should that happen.
There is an obvious middle ground to pitch. An independent Scotland plans to join the EU as quickly as possible - independence within a series of boundaries set by a collective.
We could do the same inside a federal UK. Allow the home nations the power to set their own taxes and domestic policies. Only federal taxes, defence and foreign affairs remain in Westminster. Scotland would then be free to do what it wants - as would England.
An example. We can easily manage things like migration by allowing the paranoids south of the wall to impose things like ID cards for access to services and jobs. Scotland can then have an open migration without upsetting things in the UK, as a non-ID'd migrant to Scotland would not be able to work or get stuff in England.
Transform the UK so that it actually works, then come back and ask the independence question. When Scotland is largely dragged around by English voters who in recent times have held non-British values, I can understand the drive towards separation. But make the UK actually work as a modern multi-national state? Very different.
We dont have an industrial policy so nobody fights our corner for jobs and investment.
BoZo had an industrial policy.
"Fuck business" as I recall
For once Bozo was telling the truth ! And the Brexiters go to economist Minford said Brexit would decimate manufacturing and agriculture so another correct prediction!
Anyone who still thinks Brexit was a good idea needs to seek help !
hmmm
perhaps it the people who cant get over a vote from 7 years ago who need the help. Political PTSD.
Remainers were on the right side of history! Brexit is an unmitigated disaster , even its chief cheerleader Farage said it has failed!
LOL oh really
have we millions of unemployed, has the economy collapsed , are we all eating grass ?
Any impact has been dwarfed by Covid and Putin, we're in a new world get over it,
How it started: "sunlit uplands", "we hold all the cards" How it's going: "are we all eating grass?" 😂
There's something quiet poetic about "eating grass on the sunlit uplands".
Perfect for a nice May morning.
Our grass is out of control thanks to No Mow May, plenty to chow down on if the Brexit dividend keeps failing to materialise. A lovely May morning to be WFH in the garden office, looking out at the roses and poppies and the last of the tulips and listening to the birds singing in sunny SE London.
No Mow May results in No Lawn June and July. Takes an age to recover. There are better ways to help wildlife than hope a bit of clover pops up for a month. (Spoiler: it probably won't...)
Even as I wrote it I knew that someone on PB would disapprove of No Mow May.
Do it if you want. I don't "disapprove" so much as think it is for most a gesture, on previously manicured mono-culture lawns that just look terrible for weeks after that first mowing in June. If you really want to help wildlife, plant specific areas of your garden for them. Alternatively, just leave a wild area all year round.
Was BritishVolt not going to be a battery factory? That could be revived, Vauxhall could invest, the Government would have to grease the wheels, but we piss money at a lot of less worthwhile things.
Ah yes. Subsidies for British firms funded by British taxpayers to ensure they remain competitive. Very good. Very Conservative.
The poster in question is always bemoaning the post-Truss declinism of the current government, yet he is now endorsing the consummate 1970s declinism of 'picking winners', so beloved of Harold Wilson and Sunny Jim. The British Right is in intellectual free-fall.
The thing is, industrial policy has worked in Germany for many decades. Industrial strategy is also about long-term invesment as much as "picking winners", which we have been singularly awful at.
It has to be said certain City interests have always been keen to the raise this issue of 1970's industrial failure ( also linked to feudal management and obstreperous Unions ) because it obscures this other issue of short-term investment, as well as an excessively laissez-faire approach to key strategic national interests, over the last 30 years, up to and including issues like nuclear power generation, and to an extent unmatched almost anywhere else in the Western world.
It is an open question as to whether it was industrial policy as is commonly understood (i.e. picking and favouring winning sectors and companies and protecting them) that worked in Germany, or microeconomic policy more broadly, such as an excellent education and apprenticeship system, good infrastructure, more pro-growth planning laws than here and macroeconomic policy that emphasised low inflation. (Also of course cheap Russian gas from the 80s until last year).
I'd give the latter factors much more weight, and I haven't worked in the City in quite a few years.
Absolutely. Industrial policy does not mean 'picking winners'. That's a nonsense argument which dates back to the nonsense industrial policies of the Labour governments of the 1970s.
Germany doesn't, generally, pick winners.
The closest recently I can think of was Merkel pushing the Tesla factory near Berlin.
This was seen in large chucks of the German motor industry as putting on a particularly nasty pair of brass knuckles, punching them in the gut, all while singing "How Do You Like Me Now" by The Heavy.
It's certainly had an effect - on a recent visit to Hamburg, 1 in 4 taxis was a Tesla 3. The rest were the usual big, slightly old Mercs.
The German car industry is, like the UK based industry, wanting to avoid investment in battery plants. It's not their thing, they want to outsource it to China.
The problem is that it involves lots of investment, smallish margins, its hard work to manage and keep up with. Not much time for trebles in the boardroom, when you are doing that.
The fashion for building mass battery factories in the developed world was started by a certain business man (not named for trigger value). He was described as insane for doing so. But it is a big part of why the margins on the vehicles his company sells are so high.
My suggestion on this was to offer a bounty per battery cell produced in the UK. Percentage of max bounty based on the value added in the UK.
The big advantage of this approach is that it requires no money down. The factories will take 5-10 years to build. The government will be paying out a decade from now.
"The fashion for building mass battery factories in the developed world was started by a certain business man (not named for trigger value)"
A plant actually built and largely financed by Panasonic, and which used Panasonic tech. ...
Which was part of a process.
The first step was to buy the entire production from just-obsolete* Panasonic plants in the Far East.
The second step was to build a plant onshore, in partnership with Panasonic
The third step was to use the know how... acquired from the partnership with Panasonic to build their own plants.
This is the process that China has used, methodically, to pull chunks of the supply chain in.
It also is worth considering the laughable BritVolt business plan, in comparison. Build a factory and batteries will happen. No stinking expertise required.
*Last year or the year before's cell designs are always cheap and much more reliable than the bleeding edge ones.
Surely the BritishVolt plan was simple: "All join on for car batteries" Put up a small amount of your own money Give it a twatty name to get that twat Boris on board Demand as much government cash as possible Pull in just enough investors to make it look like anyone is interested Demand even more government cash to get it over the line Sell the thing, make an absolute fortune, who cares if it works or not?
We don't make things, we don't want to make things. We want to create a chimera and sell the idea quickly before it fails.
Per The Times: "Starmer: I'll build houses on the green belt"
Irrespective of the actual merits, politically is this bold outflanking, or reckless politics?
As per the FT: “A generation and its hopes are being blocked by those who — more often than not — enjoy the secure homes and jobs that they’re denying to others,” Starmer will say.
“Mark my words: we will take on planning reform. We’ll bring back local housing targets. We’ll streamline the process for national infrastructure projects and commercial development and we’ll remove the veto used by big landowners to stop shovels hitting the ground.”
I think it's outflanking the Tories on growth. It'll lose some nimby votes but that's not where most Labour targets are and you need to take on vested interests to move the country forward.
Nice to some Labour policy, and one that is in the right direction.
This feels like an area where there is a big divide between Labour and the Lib Dems.
If the interview on BBC 1 is anything to go by he was talking about common sense in decisions. He gave the example of building on a playing field not in the greenbelt but not building on a carpark in the greenbelt. We have exactly that issue around here. Our village was taken out of the greenbelt. Building is rampant without any additional infrastructure to support it, yet on the edge of the village, in the green belt, a street of houses has a gap between 2 houses that can't be built on. It is an obvious building plot, with no other use. Bonkers.
I have noticed recently a number of new build houses on what were previously pub car parks, obviously no longer required in this day and age
Presumably pub turned into accomodation. Shame to lose a pub. Our local has gone into adminstration. Has been closed for a month or so, so far. Hope it opens again and not built on.
Not proposing building on car parks if they serve a purpose obviously, just the barmy situation that green land not in the greenbelt gets built on and brownfield sites in the greenbelt don't regardless of the specific circumstances.
In Lib/Lab/Green Godalming (south of Guildford) we proposed to build housing on part of a very central car park, and replace the lost spaces with a multi-storey. I thought it was a no-brainer - lots of nice new homes in walking distance of the shops and the river, and what can be more brownfield than a car park?
Wrong. The nearly moribund local Tories roused themselves to a spectacular campaign. "SAVE OUR CAR PARK" letters to every home. Jeremy Hunt weighed in. Tories stood on the High Street collecting signatures. The clear (false) impression was that we were reducing the number of parking spaces. Several high street shops complained that they'd lose custom as a result (whereas in fact they'd have had more local custom), so the Tories could add a second string to the bow: "SAVE OUR HIGH STREET". As the consultation proceeded, we found "No" votes outweighing the "yes" votes by 10-1.
We surrendered, and the houses won't be built. It didn't do the Tories any strategic good in this month's election - they lost all but two seats on the Town Council, making them the 4th largest party. But they could console themselves by saying truthfully that they'd fought a very effective single-issue campaign.
I still think it was an excellent idea, foiled by unscrupulous opposition. But it's an example of how people react against change.
The whole parking thing is an example of thick-eared British refusal to learn from other counties. We set up so many false dichotomies in this country, rather like the Americans. Either do things the (inefficient) way we've always done them, or go 180 degrees to some imagined strawman socialist/fascist dystopia, without stopping along the way to consider the many effective ways our close European neighbours have done things for years.
Visit any reasonable sized French, Belgian, German or Swiss town in your car and you'll notice entrance signs to very nicely appointed, conveniently sited underground car parks. Often multiple levels, secure and with nice colour coding and non-urinous lifts to the surface. They are usually on the edge of a central traffic-limited zone (which incidentally will be full of pleasant narrow streets that are mainly pedestrian but allow the occasional resident to drive through, rather than windswept boulevards of poundland and charity shops with fast food wrappers drifting in the breeze). And the parking will of course be a fraction of the cost of a bog standard UK pay and display.
But we don't consider the pretty obvious solution of underground parking do we, except in private waterfront newbuilds in East London. No, we pose a choice between vast concrete savannas of grazing SUVs, or an absolute ban on vehicles and a park and ride 10 miles out of town.
I agree with this, both in terms of sentiment (learning from the rest of the world) and the specifics of car parks. But it is worth pointing out that one of the issues is that building underground for these sorts of projects is very expensive compared to building up and one of the reasons no one does it is because no one is willing to invest the private capital to do it.
Yes, which brings us to one of the other British diseases: centralism and a lack of devolution to towns and cities. The reason your average French or Belgian town has a nice shiny underground car park is because the municipality voted to fund and build it, with local money from municipal taxpayers. If it's a big one they might have applied for a grant from central or regional government, or even in some cases the EU, but the decision was local. It might once up and running be run by something like Vinci but it was conceived based on demand and town planning.
Same with the weekly markets, the town festivals, e-bike hire and various other things these towns are able to sort out on their own.
Again, not a thing there I disagree with. I was going to say something similar about this being in the remit of local councils to change but was not sure how firm my ground was on this.
Here in the People's Republic of Hounslow....
The council kicked Thames Tradesmen rowing club out of the boat house on the river they had rented for years.
A pedestrian bridge was built on the railway bridge to make the site accessible - all in the name of the Thames Path, they said.
Finally, they admitted that they were actually looking at flogging the empty site to a high end property developer. But that isn't happening now.
Much wittering about accessibility to the River. Well, there's a boat ramp that no-one can use now....
I asked, at a meeting, why not do a partnership with a developer. The council gets X flats in the block. The ground floor is a boathouse which the council can rent to Thames Tradesmen. Dead silence.
Instead, we have an expensive bridge to a building site.
And yes, the name of the club means what you might think it means - founded in Victorian times for the pleb rowers...
Was BritishVolt not going to be a battery factory? That could be revived, Vauxhall could invest, the Government would have to grease the wheels, but we piss money at a lot of less worthwhile things.
Ah yes. Subsidies for British firms funded by British taxpayers to ensure they remain competitive. Very good. Very Conservative.
The poster in question is always bemoaning the post-Truss declinism of the current government, yet he is now endorsing the consummate 1970s declinism of 'picking winners', so beloved of Harold Wilson and Sunny Jim. The British Right is in intellectual free-fall.
The thing is, industrial policy has worked in Germany for many decades. Industrial strategy is also about long-term invesment as much as "picking winners", which we have been singularly awful at.
It has to be said certain City interests have always been keen to the raise this issue of 1970's industrial failure ( also linked to feudal management and obstreperous Unions ) because it obscures this other issue of short-term investment, as well as an excessively laissez-faire approach to key strategic national interests, over the last 30 years, up to and including issues like nuclear power generation, and to an extent unmatched almost anywhere else in the Western world.
It is an open question as to whether it was industrial policy as is commonly understood (i.e. picking and favouring winning sectors and companies and protecting them) that worked in Germany, or microeconomic policy more broadly, such as an excellent education and apprenticeship system, good infrastructure, more pro-growth planning laws than here and macroeconomic policy that emphasised low inflation. (Also of course cheap Russian gas from the 80s until last year).
I'd give the latter factors much more weight, and I haven't worked in the City in quite a few years.
Absolutely. Industrial policy does not mean 'picking winners'. That's a nonsense argument which dates back to the nonsense industrial policies of the Labour governments of the 1970s.
Germany doesn't, generally, pick winners.
The closest recently I can think of was Merkel pushing the Tesla factory near Berlin.
This was seen in large chucks of the German motor industry as putting on a particularly nasty pair of brass knuckles, punching them in the gut, all while singing "How Do You Like Me Now" by The Heavy.
It's certainly had an effect - on a recent visit to Hamburg, 1 in 4 taxis was a Tesla 3. The rest were the usual big, slightly old Mercs.
The German car industry is, like the UK based industry, wanting to avoid investment in battery plants. It's not their thing, they want to outsource it to China.
The problem is that it involves lots of investment, smallish margins, its hard work to manage and keep up with. Not much time for trebles in the boardroom, when you are doing that.
The fashion for building mass battery factories in the developed world was started by a certain business man (not named for trigger value). He was described as insane for doing so. But it is a big part of why the margins on the vehicles his company sells are so high.
My suggestion on this was to offer a bounty per battery cell produced in the UK. Percentage of max bounty based on the value added in the UK.
The big advantage of this approach is that it requires no money down. The factories will take 5-10 years to build. The government will be paying out a decade from now.
"The fashion for building mass battery factories in the developed world was started by a certain business man (not named for trigger value)"
A plant actually built and largely financed by Panasonic, and which used Panasonic tech. ...
Which was part of a process.
The first step was to buy the entire production from just-obsolete* Panasonic plants in the Far East.
The second step was to build a plant onshore, in partnership with Panasonic
The third step was to use the know how... acquired from the partnership with Panasonic to build their own plants.
This is the process that China has used, methodically, to pull chunks of the supply chain in.
It also is worth considering the laughable BritVolt business plan, in comparison. Build a factory and batteries will happen. No stinking expertise required.
*Last year or the year before's cell designs are always cheap and much more reliable than the bleeding edge ones.
Surely the BritishVolt plan was simple: "All join on for car batteries" Put up a small amount of your own money Give it a twatty name to get that twat Boris on board Demand as much government cash as possible Pull in just enough investors to make it look like anyone is interested Demand even more government cash to get it over the line Sell the thing, make an absolute fortune, who cares if it works or not?
We don't make things, we don't want to make things. We want to create a chimera and sell the idea quickly before it fails.
My lawyers will call upon your lawyers for stealing my business plan. How dare you!
In the days that I worked from home, I found it much better, and more productive, to get up very early. I could get a considerable amount of work done before the telephone calls (no emails in those days). 6am to 9am, even allowing for breakfast, I could finish all yesterdays correspondence and start on today’s!
You were more productive, or you merely worked longer hours? One of the benefits for employers of WFH is the number of mugs (like me) donating free overtime.
I was, to some extent ‘measuring’ my own productivity, so yes I was more productive. I usually stopped about 4pm, unless I was out somewhere.
On the subject of Egypt, very early this morning @Nigelb posted a fabulous article on (a) making desert areas more fertile, (b) ameliorating global warming, (c) generating cheap electricity and (d) doing all this without requiring people to change their lifestyles.
Grand infrastructure projects are always fascinating, and especially when they involve controlling water. In fact mass water works were arguably the basis for the rise of most early civilisations as they required strong central power and control. The Egyptians of course, the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, all involved doing things to channel and control water. The Aswan dam was Nasser's biggest monument. The 3 gorges dam was an announcement that China had arrived as a great power. The Dutch draining the polders, Hong Kong Singapore and Dubai reclaiming land from the sea. Venice creating a regional economic powerhouse on a stagnant lagoon. The failure of the Soviet union's grand irrigation schemes in Central Asia as the region succumbed to salination and the Aral dried up were perhaps a signifier of that civilisation's flaws.
I love these really big ideas. That's why I was always a fan of Boris island despite its promoter, and likewise the tidal barrages we were going to construct all along the West coast. Those could have been our grand waterworks.
Perhaps we should think bigger than Boris Island and reclaim Dogger Bank.
Well there is genuinely a slightly madder project proposed, which would involve closing the North Sea off from the Atlantic to protect the low lying European coastlines. Though as the gap between Norway and the Faroes reaches around 300m of ocean depth, it's a bit impractical.
The Yellowstone caldera geothermal plan is another great one.
If @Malmesbury were around, he'd be wanting to revive the 'Atoms for Peace' project, which planned to build the canal connecting the Qattara Depression to the Med using a hundred or so subsurface thermonuclear explosions.
That is a completely woke, vegan, anti-nuclear project.
What we need is a few petatons of nukes to tune up Mars. That's a proper project.
Trying to find a link to the one to blow a big chunk of the Venusian atmosphere off into space....
I don't really understand that. I've had a bad cold for the last few days which turns out to be Covid. I wouldn't have dreamed of going into work and infecting colleagues, but I'm able to work reasonably well, so I do. Even if I didn't have much work ethic, I'd still feel it was a bit difficult to say "I can't work because I'm sniffling". How does working from home make it MORE likely that I'll take a day off because I feel or claim to feel seedy?
I agree. The Daily Mail's logic is difficult to understand.
It's not.
It's readers are all retirees who want to believe WFH is a skive, because they were never allowed to do it, and they can't get their heads around modern technology, so the paper is giving them what they want to hear.
I was allowed to do it now and again, and it was a skive. But that’s just me.
I work like a trooper at home, just as I do in the office. Even my father - who reads the Daily Mail, and still hasn't adjusted his view of anyone else doing it - commented as such when he stayed with us. I think in the past, because it was rare, you could effectively use it as a semi-free day off but, now, it's a fundamental part of how people work flexibly.
Of course, there are two types: those that diligently work and need minimal/no supervision, and those who try and get away with as little as possible. There are no doubt people mucking around at home who need to be virtually supervised, just as they'd muck around in the office if they weren't directly supervised, and it's important to check in with their progress, and measure their performance, just as you would in the office.
It comes down to a combination of work quality, process, management and the employee.
If you have a well paid, high quality employee working for a good employer, doing interesting work in a process that enables WFH - it works
For process, Agile (for example) was designed for remote working. Which is why so many software outfits can move to WFH with few problems.
If you send home David Brent’s employees, with a broken laptop, and expect them to get on with it….
We dont have an industrial policy so nobody fights our corner for jobs and investment.
BoZo had an industrial policy.
"Fuck business" as I recall
For once Bozo was telling the truth ! And the Brexiters go to economist Minford said Brexit would decimate manufacturing and agriculture so another correct prediction!
Anyone who still thinks Brexit was a good idea needs to seek help !
hmmm
perhaps it the people who cant get over a vote from 7 years ago who need the help. Political PTSD.
Remainers were on the right side of history! Brexit is an unmitigated disaster , even its chief cheerleader Farage said it has failed!
LOL oh really
have we millions of unemployed, has the economy collapsed , are we all eating grass ?
Any impact has been dwarfed by Covid and Putin, we're in a new world get over it,
Grass might be cheaper than some of our staple crops. Perhaps one of the supermarkets should try it?
Otherwise its the usual "Covid and Ukraine" excuse because those things only impacted the UK and don't look at any other economy.
I look at all the major economies and they are all suffering the impact too. Germany's heading in to a recession, France is struggling made worse by pension reform. For the left Brexit is the new Thatcher something to whinge about even though the world has moved on and we have different problems.
The world has moved on, which is why the Right is responding with new ideas and new solutions! Like… er… well… Sunak has suggested teaching slightly more maths in schools…. And… um… I guess the NatC conference thinks we should all read the Bible, get (heterosexually) married and have more kids… and Suella thinks the solution is to be part of a Cabinet overseeing high immigration while endlessly talking about how we should have low immigration… Yes, thank heavens for these brave new ideas.
Comments
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65617948
Same with the weekly markets, the town festivals, e-bike hire and various other things these towns are able to sort out on their own.
Peak Nat was when Boris/Truss were at the peak of their powers, which pushed Scots toward independence.
The future dynamic is either a Major-esque Sunak narrow win or more likely a Starmer led Gov't which are both preferred in Scotland compared to the Boris show. So the votes that count won't get indy over the line.
https://greenallianceblog.org.uk/2021/10/04/does-keir-starmer-want-to-be-a-green-prime-minister/
'Get over it' isn't an adequate response to the problems it has posed.
If one ignores a couple of Scotch sub samples that were so fascinating to PB I still don’t see any sign of a mad rush to Starmerisn, in fact I ‘m genuinely interested to see how Labour sell their record north of the border in the run up to a GE. Headlines like this won’t help.
The first step was to buy the entire production from just-obsolete* Panasonic plants in the Far East.
The second step was to build a plant onshore, in partnership with Panasonic
The third step was to use the know how... acquired from the partnership with Panasonic to build their own plants.
This is the process that China has used, methodically, to pull chunks of the supply chain in.
It also is worth considering the laughable BritVolt business plan, in comparison. Build a factory and batteries will happen. No stinking expertise required.
*Last year or the year before's cell designs are always cheap and much more reliable than the bleeding edge ones.
There is an obvious middle ground to pitch. An independent Scotland plans to join the EU as quickly as possible - independence within a series of boundaries set by a collective.
We could do the same inside a federal UK. Allow the home nations the power to set their own taxes and domestic policies. Only federal taxes, defence and foreign affairs remain in Westminster. Scotland would then be free to do what it wants - as would England.
An example. We can easily manage things like migration by allowing the paranoids south of the wall to impose things like ID cards for access to services and jobs. Scotland can then have an open migration without upsetting things in the UK, as a non-ID'd migrant to Scotland would not be able to work or get stuff in England.
Transform the UK so that it actually works, then come back and ask the independence question. When Scotland is largely dragged around by English voters who in recent times have held non-British values, I can understand the drive towards separation. But make the UK actually work as a modern multi-national state? Very different.
"All join on for car batteries"
Put up a small amount of your own money
Give it a twatty name to get that twat Boris on board
Demand as much government cash as possible
Pull in just enough investors to make it look like anyone is interested
Demand even more government cash to get it over the line
Sell the thing, make an absolute fortune, who cares if it works or not?
We don't make things, we don't want to make things. We want to create a chimera and sell the idea quickly before it fails.
The council kicked Thames Tradesmen rowing club out of the boat house on the river they had rented for years.
A pedestrian bridge was built on the railway bridge to make the site accessible - all in the name of the Thames Path, they said.
Finally, they admitted that they were actually looking at flogging the empty site to a high end property developer. But that isn't happening now.
Much wittering about accessibility to the River. Well, there's a boat ramp that no-one can use now....
I asked, at a meeting, why not do a partnership with a developer. The council gets X flats in the block. The ground floor is a boathouse which the council can rent to Thames Tradesmen. Dead silence.
Instead, we have an expensive bridge to a building site.
And yes, the name of the club means what you might think it means - founded in Victorian times for the pleb rowers...
What we need is a few petatons of nukes to tune up Mars. That's a proper project.
Trying to find a link to the one to blow a big chunk of the Venusian atmosphere off into space.... It comes down to a combination of work quality, process, management and the employee.
If you have a well paid, high quality employee working for a good employer, doing interesting work in a process that enables WFH - it works
For process, Agile (for example) was designed for remote working. Which is why so many software outfits can move to WFH with few problems.
If you send home David Brent’s employees, with a broken laptop, and expect them to get on with it….