Apparently the heckler who was removed from the hall was a Tory member of the GLA!
What heckler? What was said?
Just some shouting, don't know what was said. He was bundled out, and someone from GBNews followed him and recorded a short interview. I think it was Andrew Boff - that's a name I think I remember from Conhome in days gone by?
He's a bright, if somewhat eccentric guy, but has always managed to stay onside with his party. I wonder what his beef was?
It was perceived transphobia. It is actually a bit odd as I don't have a distinct recollection of a gamey part of the speech about trans - it was obliquely referred to in the part about banning sex offenders from 'changing their identity' - but I could be misremembering. It'll be all over the news.
It's, just, on BBC news channel at 1545, when Cruella launches into a Lyon-style anti-woke rant, but you only glimpse Boff being marched out; we don't hear his interjection. There's a later piece when he's being marched away outside the hall on YouTube; despite his fifty years of loyal service I suspect he's just burned a rather big bridge.
I wonder if they'll have to ask GBNews if they can use their footage.
Just getting caught up on the conference drama. I saw a comment yesterday that mentioned the GOPification of the Tories and I think that's what we're seeing. Braverman talking about lefties having immigrants 'mowing their lawns' is a particularly jarring Americanism. 'Cutting their grass' is the correct phrase. Without indulging my conspiracy brain too much, it all makes me think that her speech has been cooked up by some shadowy Yankee right-wing think-tank.
Another point of worry is the Conservative Party railing against elites and the establishment. They're the Conservative Party, what are they for if not the establishment?
And all the guff about failed immigration policies and how shit everything is and that it's all Labour's fault - they've been in power for 13 years! My flabber is gasted at the gall of senior Tories making these kind of arguments.
Hang on - is this a regional thing? Everyone I know in the South mows their lawn....
In Norway, they all have robot lawn mowers, homes, hotels, the lot. Years ahead of us.
Robot lawn mowers and dog poo covered English lawns (or some from that bloody fox that keeps energetically shagging in the woods with that hell noise, EEE gads, what does the fox say, indeed).
I don't know what wild animals come of the fjord tops in Norway, but perhaps the robot mower is a safer pursuit there.
EDIT: come to think of it, what does the fox say was Norwegian. Perhaps they don't know.
Just getting caught up on the conference drama. I saw a comment yesterday that mentioned the GOPification of the Tories and I think that's what we're seeing. Braverman talking about lefties having immigrants 'mowing their lawns' is a particularly jarring Americanism. 'Cutting their grass' is the correct phrase. Without indulging my conspiracy brain too much, it all makes me think that her speech has been cooked up by some shadowy Yankee right-wing think-tank.
Another point of worry is the Conservative Party railing against elites and the establishment. They're the Conservative Party, what are they for if not the establishment?
And all the guff about failed immigration policies and how shit everything is and that it's all Labour's fault - they've been in power for 13 years! My flabber is gasted at the gall of senior Tories making these kind of arguments.
What? “Mowing the lawn” is an Americanism in which world? I mow the lawn at least once a week but never “cut the grass” unless in a wilder area with a strimmer. I don’t know any of my British friends who wouldn’t say “mow the lawn”.
Agree. I think it's a question of scale and/or level of manicure. If you have a large, or very well tended bit of grass, you're mowing the lawn. If you have a backyard patch of grass, or an orchard or paddock, you cut the grass.
Nah. The orchard gets strimmed. A paddock would be grazed. The back garden grass gets mown even though it it definitely not a lawn.
Summary: "cut the grass" is more popular in all regions. "mow the lawn" is basically unknown in Northern Ireland. England is most likely to mow the lawn (31%), followed by Wales (29%).
"Cut", "grass", "mow", and "lawn" are all Germanic words, so there's possibly not a Norman / French influence to regional differences.
Just getting caught up on the conference drama. I saw a comment yesterday that mentioned the GOPification of the Tories and I think that's what we're seeing. Braverman talking about lefties having immigrants 'mowing their lawns' is a particularly jarring Americanism. 'Cutting their grass' is the correct phrase. Without indulging my conspiracy brain too much, it all makes me think that her speech has been cooked up by some shadowy Yankee right-wing think-tank.
Another point of worry is the Conservative Party railing against elites and the establishment. They're the Conservative Party, what are they for if not the establishment?
And all the guff about failed immigration policies and how shit everything is and that it's all Labour's fault - they've been in power for 13 years! My flabber is gasted at the gall of senior Tories making these kind of arguments.
Hang on - is this a regional thing? Everyone I know in the South mows their lawn....
In Norway, they all have robot lawn mowers, homes, hotels, the lot. Years ahead of us.
Robot hotel mowers? Is this new weaponry? Or are they hotels for robot lawns perhaps?
Just getting caught up on the conference drama. I saw a comment yesterday that mentioned the GOPification of the Tories and I think that's what we're seeing. Braverman talking about lefties having immigrants 'mowing their lawns' is a particularly jarring Americanism. 'Cutting their grass' is the correct phrase. Without indulging my conspiracy brain too much, it all makes me think that her speech has been cooked up by some shadowy Yankee right-wing think-tank.
Another point of worry is the Conservative Party railing against elites and the establishment. They're the Conservative Party, what are they for if not the establishment?
And all the guff about failed immigration policies and how shit everything is and that it's all Labour's fault - they've been in power for 13 years! My flabber is gasted at the gall of senior Tories making these kind of arguments.
What? “Mowing the lawn” is an Americanism in which world? I mow the lawn at least once a week but never “cut the grass” unless in a wilder area with a strimmer. I don’t know any of my British friends who wouldn’t say “mow the lawn”.
Agree. I think it's a question of scale and/or level of manicure. If you have a large, or very well tended bit of grass, you're mowing the lawn. If you have a backyard patch of grass, or an orchard or paddock, you cut the grass.
Nah. The orchard gets strimmed. A paddock would be grazed. The back garden grass gets mown even though it it definitely not a lawn.
The only time I would cut grass is with a scythe.
Not necessarily in either case. You could do an orchard on a ride on if you had wide enough gaps. And not every paddock/field has enough cattle or ponies on to keep the grass down without cutting it. You wouldn't say you were 'mowing the lawn' doing these things. I wouldn't anyway.
The first global temperature data is in for the full month of September. This month was, in my professional opinion as a climate scientist – absolutely gobsmackingly bananas. JRA-55 beat the prior monthly record by over 0.5C, and was around 1.8C warmer than preindustrial levels. https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1709217151452954998
Summary: "cut the grass" is more popular in all regions. "mow the lawn" is basically unknown in Northern Ireland. England is most likely to mow the lawn (31%), followed by Wales (29%).
"Cut", "grass", "mow", and "lawn" are all Germanic words, so there's possibly not a Norman / French influence to regional differences.
This distinction is not something I've come across before. FWIW I usually mow the lawn, but I'm sure I sometimes say I'm cutting the grass. The vineyard on the other hand is only ever mown, not cut.
This WaPo article will encourage some, and annoy others: "But all is not lost. Although a stump now pokes out where the imposing sycamore once dominated the undulating English moors, arboreal experts say the tree is very much alive and will probably regrow. That process, however, will take decades, if not centuries, and the end result may look much different from the tree that charmed poets, bewitched lovers and inspired photographers." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/10/03/sycamore-gap-tree-felling/
I should have mentioned this possibility earlier, since I grew up raising trees, and once saw the stump of a giant redwood -- with five or six large shoots growing around its edges.
Note that the %ages under each subheading sum to that entry, so those under ”all rural areas” sum to 17.1%.
Point of order, that's England not the UK
Apologies, so it is.
I note, in passing, that Oxford is listed as an “Urban City & Town” in this classification, yet I doubt Oxford has much in common with the kinds of places BR is thinking of. Yet this classification is another 40% of the population. I wonder how much of it is small cities like Oxford & how much towns that have more in common with the rural town category than they do larger places like Oxford. (The cut-off between the two is 10k population apparently).
"It’s official – Britain has lost its sense of humour We all now leap at the chance to smack people down for saying anything off colour, but surely intent has to count for something? Celia Walden"
I thought yesterday was peak weird at the CPC and we'd be back to a bit more message discipline today but if anything it seems to be getting weirder. Multiple conspiracy theories from multiple speakers including the actual home secretary, JRM talking about his love of hormone-injected beef, the PM appearing to welcome Nigel Farage joining the party, a London Assembly member being ejected for heckling, not only from the auditorium but the entire estate. What more chaos is yet to come?
I thought yesterday was peak weird at the CPC and we'd be back to a bit more message discipline today but if anything it seems to be getting weirder. Multiple conspiracy theories from multiple speakers including the actual home secretary, JRM talking about his love of hormone-injected beef, the PM appearing to welcome Nigel Farage joining the party, a London Assembly member being ejected for heckling, not only from the auditorium but the entire estate. What more chaos is yet to come?
So, given I'm now a political free agent, where on earth should my vote rest?
I'm nearly persuaded that Labour offer the best choice - that, despite them being incompetent, disingenuous bad people.
The LDs are clearly the most ghastly people in the world. Ed Davey?
Greens - oh fuck off.
I really have no idea - clearly none of the above.
Whichever one hurts the Tories the most. They need big shock for there to be any hope of them getting right again.
I wouldn't worry about Labour in power in their first term, they'll be poodles. It's the hubris after a few elections that always brings out the worst in parties. 97-2001 wasn't so bad. 2010-2015 wasn't so bad.
Similarly the Lib Dems look like a safe repository for your vote given that there will be other disaffected blues going their way. You don't have to like them.
But really, whichever party in your constituency got the most votes other than the Tories last time around. Don't fanny around abstaining for three elections, just give them one damn good kicking next year and see how they respond.
I thought yesterday was peak weird at the CPC and we'd be back to a bit more message discipline today but if anything it seems to be getting weirder. Multiple conspiracy theories from multiple speakers including the actual home secretary, JRM talking about his love of hormone-injected beef, the PM appearing to welcome Nigel Farage joining the party, a London Assembly member being ejected for heckling, not only from the auditorium but the entire estate. What more chaos is yet to come?
Hormones can have an impact on your appearance, but I've never heard of them making you look Victorian.
Summary: "cut the grass" is more popular in all regions. "mow the lawn" is basically unknown in Northern Ireland. England is most likely to mow the lawn (31%), followed by Wales (29%).
"Cut", "grass", "mow", and "lawn" are all Germanic words, so there's possibly not a Norman / French influence to regional differences.
The Saxon serf mowed the Norman lord's lawn. Or cut his grass.
Note that the %ages under each subheading sum to that entry, so those under ”all rural areas” sum to 17.1%.
Point of order, that's England not the UK
Is “urban area in a sparse setting” another name for Milton Keynes?
It’s a town over 10k people in the middle of no-where. 10k is a weird place to put your urban / non-urban town boundary, but there it is. At least they break out larger conurbations & cities.
The first global temperature data is in for the full month of September. This month was, in my professional opinion as a climate scientist – absolutely gobsmackingly bananas. JRA-55 beat the prior monthly record by over 0.5C, and was around 1.8C warmer than preindustrial levels. https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1709217151452954998
Thing is though sceptics love a big El Nino year like this, because in 10 years' time they can use it as the starting point for graphs and claim the global temperature is flatlining. Particularly if they use the satellite temperature datasets, which magnify the impact of El Nino and even more so if they use Spencer and Christy's dataset.
They dined off it for 16 years after the 1997/8 El Nino (remember the so called "hiatus"), then managed again for a few years after the 2015/16 event. Though this time the El Nino isn't particularly intense so I doubt we'll wait as long for the next record year.
I thought yesterday was peak weird at the CPC and we'd be back to a bit more message discipline today but if anything it seems to be getting weirder. Multiple conspiracy theories from multiple speakers including the actual home secretary, JRM talking about his love of hormone-injected beef, the PM appearing to welcome Nigel Farage joining the party, a London Assembly member being ejected for heckling, not only from the auditorium but the entire estate. What more chaos is yet to come?
So, given I'm now a political free agent, where on earth should my vote rest?
I'm nearly persuaded that Labour offer the best choice - that, despite them being incompetent, disingenuous bad people.
The LDs are clearly the most ghastly people in the world. Ed Davey?
Greens - oh fuck off.
I really have no idea - clearly none of the above.
Depends on your seat, party best placed to defeat the Tories.
The new iteration of Tories in power need an epochal defeat to understand their hurricane of hate, outright corruption and incompetence has no place in the UK.
So, given I'm now a political free agent, where on earth should my vote rest?
I'm nearly persuaded that Labour offer the best choice - that, despite them being incompetent, disingenuous bad people.
The LDs are clearly the most ghastly people in the world. Ed Davey?
Greens - oh fuck off.
I really have no idea - clearly none of the above.
Depends on your seat, party best placed to defeat the Tories.
The new iteration of Tories in power need an epochal defeat to understand their hurricane of hate, outright corruption and incompetence has no place in the UK.
It does feel rather like the "You still think you can control them?" moment from Cabaret. Does that make Andrew Boff the EmmCee?
So, given I'm now a political free agent, where on earth should my vote rest?
I'm nearly persuaded that Labour offer the best choice - that, despite them being incompetent, disingenuous bad people.
The LDs are clearly the most ghastly people in the world. Ed Davey?
Greens - oh fuck off.
I really have no idea - clearly none of the above.
Whichever one hurts the Tories the most. They need big shock for there to be any hope of them getting right again.
I wouldn't worry about Labour in power in their first term, they'll be poodles. It's the hubris after a few elections that always brings out the worst in parties. 97-2001 wasn't so bad. 2010-2015 wasn't so bad.
Similarly the Lib Dems look like a safe repository for your vote given that there will be other disaffected blues going their way. You don't have to like them.
But really, whichever party in your constituency got the most votes other than the Tories last time around. Don't fanny around abstaining for three elections, just give them one damn good kicking next year and see how they respond.
Yes, but no. I don't think I could ever vote negatively. It just seems wrong.
I think the vote I most wanted to make, but couldn't, was for a continuation of the 2010 coalition.
Summary: "cut the grass" is more popular in all regions. "mow the lawn" is basically unknown in Northern Ireland. England is most likely to mow the lawn (31%), followed by Wales (29%).
"Cut", "grass", "mow", and "lawn" are all Germanic words, so there's possibly not a Norman / French influence to regional differences.
The Saxon serf mowed the Norman lord's lawn. Or cut his grass.
Serf performs turf surface service for powerful paterfamiliaris?
I'm done with the Tory party. Braverman really is the last nail.
Are you really flouncing about Hurricane Suella? She did quite well to get through the complete wall of apathy that has greeted every other Government member tbh. Obviously not great that she got heckled by a Tory, though on the other hand, perhaps Kemi will be fuming that it didn't happen in her speech.
So, given I'm now a political free agent, where on earth should my vote rest?
I'm nearly persuaded that Labour offer the best choice - that, despite them being incompetent, disingenuous bad people.
The LDs are clearly the most ghastly people in the world. Ed Davey?
Greens - oh fuck off.
I really have no idea - clearly none of the above.
Whichever one hurts the Tories the most. They need big shock for there to be any hope of them getting right again.
I wouldn't worry about Labour in power in their first term, they'll be poodles. It's the hubris after a few elections that always brings out the worst in parties. 97-2001 wasn't so bad. 2010-2015 wasn't so bad.
Similarly the Lib Dems look like a safe repository for your vote given that there will be other disaffected blues going their way. You don't have to like them.
But really, whichever party in your constituency got the most votes other than the Tories last time around. Don't fanny around abstaining for three elections, just give them one damn good kicking next year and see how they respond.
Yes, but no. I don't think I could ever vote negatively. It just seems wrong.
I think the vote I most wanted to make, but couldn't, was for a continuation of the 2010 coalition.
Support Ed Davey then. Him and Gove are the only ministers left from the coalition in active politics.
I'm done with the Tory party. Braverman really is the last nail.
Are you really flouncing about Hurricane Suella? She did quite well to get through the complete wall of apathy that has greeted every other Government member tbh. Obviously not great that she got heckled by a Tory, though on the other hand, perhaps Kemi will be fuming that it didn't happen in her speech.
Actually 'flouncing' may be right - just annoyed, pissed off, jumping up and down and a bit lost
So, given I'm now a political free agent, where on earth should my vote rest?
I'm nearly persuaded that Labour offer the best choice - that, despite them being incompetent, disingenuous bad people.
The LDs are clearly the most ghastly people in the world. Ed Davey?
Greens - oh fuck off.
I really have no idea - clearly none of the above.
Whichever one hurts the Tories the most. They need big shock for there to be any hope of them getting right again.
I wouldn't worry about Labour in power in their first term, they'll be poodles. It's the hubris after a few elections that always brings out the worst in parties. 97-2001 wasn't so bad. 2010-2015 wasn't so bad.
Similarly the Lib Dems look like a safe repository for your vote given that there will be other disaffected blues going their way. You don't have to like them.
But really, whichever party in your constituency got the most votes other than the Tories last time around. Don't fanny around abstaining for three elections, just give them one damn good kicking next year and see how they respond.
Yes, but no. I don't think I could ever vote negatively. It just seems wrong.
I think the vote I most wanted to make, but couldn't, was for a continuation of the 2010 coalition.
Then I regret to inform you you are temporarily a Lib Dem! PR will bring that about, and hopefully break the big parties into a couple of piece each, and every election hereafter you'll have someone you can vote for. Problem with FPTP is it makes these big tent parties that can be rotted from the inside when a Braverman or a Corbyn gets a whiff of power. If they had their own fringe parties we could park them at the edges and argue over a range of sensible choices.
Just getting caught up on the conference drama. I saw a comment yesterday that mentioned the GOPification of the Tories and I think that's what we're seeing. Braverman talking about lefties having immigrants 'mowing their lawns' is a particularly jarring Americanism. 'Cutting their grass' is the correct phrase. Without indulging my conspiracy brain too much, it all makes me think that her speech has been cooked up by some shadowy Yankee right-wing think-tank.
Another point of worry is the Conservative Party railing against elites and the establishment. They're the Conservative Party, what are they for if not the establishment?
And all the guff about failed immigration policies and how shit everything is and that it's all Labour's fault - they've been in power for 13 years! My flabber is gasted at the gall of senior Tories making these kind of arguments.
What? “Mowing the lawn” is an Americanism in which world? I mow the lawn at least once a week but never “cut the grass” unless in a wilder area with a strimmer. I don’t know any of my British friends who wouldn’t say “mow the lawn”.
Agree. I think it's a question of scale and/or level of manicure. If you have a large, or very well tended bit of grass, you're mowing the lawn. If you have a backyard patch of grass, or an orchard or paddock, you cut the grass.
Nah. The orchard gets strimmed. A paddock would be grazed. The back garden grass gets mown even though it it definitely not a lawn.
The only time I would cut grass is with a scythe.
Not necessarily in either case. You could do an orchard on a ride on if you had wide enough gaps. And not every paddock/field has enough cattle or ponies on to keep the grass down without cutting it. You wouldn't say you were 'mowing the lawn' doing these things. I wouldn't anyway.
Farmers of my acquaintance would probably 'top' a paddock/field if it was undergrazed rather than 'cutting' it.
Cutting grass to me implies to me that there is an end product, either hay or silage.
Anyway, it doesn't matter. 'Mowing the lawn' is perfectly normal usage, although Braverman is wrong in that gardening doesn't seem to have been a particularly attractive job for the immigrant community, at least round here, unlike building work.
I'm done with the Tory party. Braverman really is the last nail.
Are you really flouncing about Hurricane Suella? She did quite well to get through the complete wall of apathy that has greeted every other Government member tbh. Obviously not great that she got heckled by a Tory, though on the other hand, perhaps Kemi will be fuming that it didn't happen in her speech.
The post election Tory party will be an interesting place if it's a big defeat, as I assume a number of possibly leadership contenders could lose their seats. Question is what faction that helps, in a kind of natural selection sense.
Somewhere online there must be a list of most marginal constituencies and who the MPs is, but I can only find the former or the latter, not both together. Which makes it too arduous a job to bother with. However Suella is rock solid safe with a majority of 26k. So are Badenoch (maj 27k) and Truss (26k). All in East Anglian constituencies.
Are any Conservative MPs likely to defect to another party?
My view is this is relatively unlikely.
A lot of free thinking moderates were purged or simply retired in 2019.
Anyone tempted to follow Christian Wakeford has possibly missed their chance as Labour/Lib Dems have candidates in most targets (Wakeford went before a Labour candidate was selected in his seat, and indeed now is the Labour candidate).
Andrew Bridgen has had some kind of breakdown, and joined the party for middle aged men with significant personal demons, so I don't see anyone following him.
I think at this stage, if you're really p1ssed off as a Tory MP, you just call it a day at the election.
I'm done with the Tory party. Braverman really is the last nail.
Are you really flouncing about Hurricane Suella? She did quite well to get through the complete wall of apathy that has greeted every other Government member tbh. Obviously not great that she got heckled by a Tory, though on the other hand, perhaps Kemi will be fuming that it didn't happen in her speech.
The post election Tory party will be an interesting place if it's a big defeat, as I assume a number of possibly leadership contenders could lose their seats. Question is what faction that helps, in a kind of natural selection sense.
Somewhere online there must be a list of most marginal constituencies and who the MPs is, but I can only find the former or the latter, not both together. Which makes it too arduous a job to bother with. However Suella is rock solid safe with a majority of 26k. So are Badenoch (maj 27k) and Truss (26k). All in East Anglian constituencies.
So, given I'm now a political free agent, where on earth should my vote rest?
I'm nearly persuaded that Labour offer the best choice - that, despite them being incompetent, disingenuous bad people.
The LDs are clearly the most ghastly people in the world. Ed Davey?
Greens - oh fuck off.
I really have no idea - clearly none of the above.
Fairly impressively insulted the vast majority on here
Yours, One of the most ghastly people in the world
My response to "Ed Davey?" would be: Ed Davey has an impressive record in coalition, probably achieving more than any other Lib Dem minister in that parliament, he's led the Lib Dems calmly through the difficult period after Swinson's blunders at the last election, and is by all accounts a pretty decent individual who's had an unenviably tough life.
So, given I'm now a political free agent, where on earth should my vote rest?
I'm nearly persuaded that Labour offer the best choice - that, despite them being incompetent, disingenuous bad people.
The LDs are clearly the most ghastly people in the world. Ed Davey?
Greens - oh fuck off.
I really have no idea - clearly none of the above.
Not sure whether I should take that as a vote for my future campaign or if you associate having no idea and noneoftheabove......
Even if I knew nothing of your views, and clearly I know very little beyond that which I've happened to read here, a short, sharp agenda might see you in Downing St by next Xmas!
So, given I'm now a political free agent, where on earth should my vote rest?
I'm nearly persuaded that Labour offer the best choice - that, despite them being incompetent, disingenuous bad people.
The LDs are clearly the most ghastly people in the world. Ed Davey?
Greens - oh fuck off.
I really have no idea - clearly none of the above.
Depends on your seat, party best placed to defeat the Tories.
The new iteration of Tories in power need an epochal defeat to understand their hurricane of hate, outright corruption and incompetence has no place in the UK.
It does feel rather like the "You still think you can control them?" moment from Cabaret. Does that make Andrew Boff the EmmCee?
In other "No, they can't be controlled" news,
Security minister Tom Tugendhat tells me he would welcome Nigel Farage into the Conservative Party if he applied to join.
The section of Braverman's speech where she listed Thatcher, Cameron and Churchill as people who were accused of racism by the left but "it didn't work" was a bit clunky. She would have been better just to say, "It won't work with me."
This WaPo article will encourage some, and annoy others: "But all is not lost. Although a stump now pokes out where the imposing sycamore once dominated the undulating English moors, arboreal experts say the tree is very much alive and will probably regrow. That process, however, will take decades, if not centuries, and the end result may look much different from the tree that charmed poets, bewitched lovers and inspired photographers." source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/10/03/sycamore-gap-tree-felling/
I should have mentioned this possibility earlier, since I grew up raising trees, and once saw the stump of a giant redwood -- with five or six large shoots growing around its edges.
A giant Coast Redwood or a Giant Redwood?
I know the former sprouts like mad from stumps - hence the Latin name Sequoia sempervirens - but I wasn't sure that the latter is quite so keen.
In this case, Sycamore definitely does - it is a pain if you are actively trying to get rid of it, because you have to keep treating the stump.
I'm done with the Tory party. Braverman really is the last nail.
Are you really flouncing about Hurricane Suella? She did quite well to get through the complete wall of apathy that has greeted every other Government member tbh. Obviously not great that she got heckled by a Tory, though on the other hand, perhaps Kemi will be fuming that it didn't happen in her speech.
The post election Tory party will be an interesting place if it's a big defeat, as I assume a number of possibly leadership contenders could lose their seats. Question is what faction that helps, in a kind of natural selection sense.
Somewhere online there must be a list of most marginal constituencies and who the MPs is, but I can only find the former or the latter, not both together. Which makes it too arduous a job to bother with. However Suella is rock solid safe with a majority of 26k. So are Badenoch (maj 27k) and Truss (26k). All in East Anglian constituencies.
Thanks. The funny thing is the way their model works, the four "safest Tory seats" are Chesham and Amersham, Tiverton and Honiton, Somerton and Frome and North Norfolk! (Because it looks at the gap between Tory and Labour vote share)
There's quite a juicy list of potential Portillos there. Only a bit of swingback makes a lot of them safe. But not Lee Anderson. He's gone.
"Helen Mirren has change of heart over ‘sexist’ Parkinson interview Actress takes the late presenter’s side over his questions about whether her body stopped her from being taken seriously" (£)
The section of Braverman's speech where she listed Thatcher, Cameron and Churchill as people who were accused of racism by the left but "it didn't work" was a bit clunky. She would have been better just to say, "It won't work with me."
Agree.
The bit that got Andrew Boff going though didn’t seem massively from left field. It was about woke ideology of institutions and workplaces, and it's the phrase 'gender ideology' that seems to set him off, as he says 'there's no such thing as gender ideology' - is the pro-lgbtq position that there no such thing as it?
Why, then, do MAGA politicians want to cut Ukraine off?
The answer is, unfortunately, obvious. Whatever Republican hard-liners may say, they want Putin to win. They view the Putin regime’s cruelty and repression as admirable features that America should emulate. They support a wannabe dictator at home and are sympathetic to actual dictators abroad.
So pay no attention to all those complaints about how much we’re spending in Ukraine. They aren’t justified by the actual cost of aid, and the people claiming to be worried about the cost don’t really care about the money. What they are, basically, is enemies of democracy, both abroad and at home.
It might not help that the actual cost of military aid is inflated by using as-new prices for old stock that would have been scrapped anyway, or at least, that is what is said.
It’s not so much cost - the money has already been spent so the cash cost to the US is minimal - as the reported value of the package is calculated as you say. This was intended to scare Russia but it has made the internal political argument more challenging too
I'm done with the Tory party. Braverman really is the last nail.
Are you really flouncing about Hurricane Suella? She did quite well to get through the complete wall of apathy that has greeted every other Government member tbh. Obviously not great that she got heckled by a Tory, though on the other hand, perhaps Kemi will be fuming that it didn't happen in her speech.
The post election Tory party will be an interesting place if it's a big defeat, as I assume a number of possibly leadership contenders could lose their seats. Question is what faction that helps, in a kind of natural selection sense.
Somewhere online there must be a list of most marginal constituencies and who the MPs is, but I can only find the former or the latter, not both together. Which makes it too arduous a job to bother with. However Suella is rock solid safe with a majority of 26k. So are Badenoch (maj 27k) and Truss (26k). All in East Anglian constituencies.
Thanks. The funny thing is the way their model works, the four "safest Tory seats" are Chesham and Amersham, Tiverton and Honiton, Somerton and Frome and North Norfolk! (Because it looks at the gap between Tory and Labour vote share)
There's quite a juicy list of potential Portillos there. Only a bit of swingback makes a lot of them safe. But not Lee Anderson. He's gone.
That is devastating news about Anderson. It really is. How will lazy layabout, benefit scroungers be able to feed themselves without his sage culinary advice?
Americans certainly do like cheese. If you go to a Walmart there will be aisles and aisles of it - but it will all be about 3 varieties - Jack, Monterey Jack, versions of cheddar. “Philadelphia” - the rest will be different forms of this with different shapes, processing and added bits
What they don’t have is a sophisticated market for cheese nor a taste for runny, pungent, blue, or goaty cheese - ie all the best stuff
But this used to be true of American beer. It used to be universally shit and gassy and pasteurised. Now they have one of the best beer cultures in the world and you can get excellent craft IPA anywhere in the country - a much better selection than most European countries (which will have 3 or 4 predictable beers)
So they may wise up to cheese in a similar way
I think when it comes to food, it is like a lot of US, the two extremes with the "middle" not being great. You have your rich that shop at Whole Foods or regional chains like Publix, which are often a better form of Waitrose...then the other extreme of Walmart / Dollar Tree where they might not even carry any fresh food. The middle like Albertsons are quite shitty in comparison to what we have here.
Our midmarket has traditionally been pretty decent. The US doesn't seem to have the equivalent of Sainsburys, or M&S, or even Tesco.
Likewise on the continent, certainly in France and Spain (Germany a bit more of a fractured market plus Aldi and Lidl). And in France it's really difficult to discern which are the u or non-u chains. Much less of a class system in French supermarkets: Auchan, Leclerc, Carrefour, Intermarche: more variation between stores than between chains.
It’s an over-engineered version of a standard Dutch roundabout. They do work really well. But this one (and the same design in Manchester) do look a bit like someone gave a Dutch blueprint to a bunch of HS2 engineers and said “here, build one of these”.
LOL! 😂
It probably can be done better, considering its an early adoption in the UK of what the Dutch have been doing for years no doubt it will evolve over time and future ones might be better.
But functionally? Its a good idea and works well.
The Dutch have nailed this for years. Build more roads, design well for active travel, everyone wins.
Its great to see parts of the UK adopting the Dutch approach. Hopefully more do over time. Evolving the aesthetics to look better is a secondary priority over functionality.
Yes, let’s all prioritise “functionality”. Eventually that way the whole of Britain can become a motorway and no one need ever get stuck in traffic because NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LIVE IN UGLY DEPRESSING BRITAIN
This is, by the way, exactly what happened to thousands of American downtowns. They prioritised the functionality of driving and parking. By destroying millions of lovely old buildings to make way for car lots and wide roads
Now no one wants to drive to the downtowns because they are hideous dystopias full of homeless people and empty car lots. = zero traffic. Problem solved
That's funny because towns like Warrington and cities like Preston that are facilitating both driving and active travel, along with getting new builds, are rapidly growing in population not shrinking.
Oh and home ownership rates are far higher than in miserably depressing London where most people have to work to pay rent with no hope of a home of their own.
And the roads are free flowing. As are the cycle paths. With plenty of trees also along the routes too, even if not shown at the junctions.
You have a very different idea of depressing to me. I find 21 people being forced into one two bedroom flat as they have nowhere else to live far more depressing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66941965
I'm sorry but no one wants to live in Warrington. That's why it's affordable, and why BTL landlords haven't come sniffing.
Most of the UK lives in towns like Warrington. Only there's hundreds of Warringtons dotted around the country each with a different name.
Its only a tiny minority that lives in cities (and even in cities most still drive).
Its an even smaller minority that lives in London, the only city where most have been forced off the road due to chronic overcrowding.
38% of the UK population lives in a city (defined as a populous urban area with a population over 500k people). Not a majority, but not tiny either. (Source: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf )
We should neither ignore cities (which are, after all, the economic engines of the UK) nor ignore the majority of people who live in towns & the wider countryside.
That data is only that high by merging neighbouring towns into built up urban areas. Here is the real data:
Cities excluding London make up 6.9 million people in England and Wales.
The majority of England and Wales live in towns.
You can’t exclude the population of London from “people who live in cities in England & Wales”. Come on.
Fair but even including London you only get to 17m people (correction exc London is 8m, I copied off wrong column).
Whereas 32.9 million live in towns.
Towns dramatically exceed cities in England, nearly 2:1, not that you'd know it from our city based correspondents and media.
For planning purposes, those areas that are contiguously built up with no rural / agricultural land around a city are really part of the city though. Hence my point that, according to a measure of those areas 38% of the UK population live in them.
You might (reasonably) argue that these hinterlands have differing needs to the city cores & I wouldn’t argue with that, but I would argue that they are not going to be the same as rural towns, so lumping them in with the rural town population & calling them “non city” residents seems wrong to me.
I never said rural towns though, rural was not part of the equation.
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
It’s an over-engineered version of a standard Dutch roundabout. They do work really well. But this one (and the same design in Manchester) do look a bit like someone gave a Dutch blueprint to a bunch of HS2 engineers and said “here, build one of these”.
LOL! 😂
It probably can be done better, considering its an early adoption in the UK of what the Dutch have been doing for years no doubt it will evolve over time and future ones might be better.
But functionally? Its a good idea and works well.
The Dutch have nailed this for years. Build more roads, design well for active travel, everyone wins.
Its great to see parts of the UK adopting the Dutch approach. Hopefully more do over time. Evolving the aesthetics to look better is a secondary priority over functionality.
Yes, let’s all prioritise “functionality”. Eventually that way the whole of Britain can become a motorway and no one need ever get stuck in traffic because NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LIVE IN UGLY DEPRESSING BRITAIN
This is, by the way, exactly what happened to thousands of American downtowns. They prioritised the functionality of driving and parking. By destroying millions of lovely old buildings to make way for car lots and wide roads
Now no one wants to drive to the downtowns because they are hideous dystopias full of homeless people and empty car lots. = zero traffic. Problem solved
That's funny because towns like Warrington and cities like Preston that are facilitating both driving and active travel, along with getting new builds, are rapidly growing in population not shrinking.
Oh and home ownership rates are far higher than in miserably depressing London where most people have to work to pay rent with no hope of a home of their own.
And the roads are free flowing. As are the cycle paths. With plenty of trees also along the routes too, even if not shown at the junctions.
You have a very different idea of depressing to me. I find 21 people being forced into one two bedroom flat as they have nowhere else to live far more depressing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66941965
I'm sorry but no one wants to live in Warrington. That's why it's affordable, and why BTL landlords haven't come sniffing.
Most of the UK lives in towns like Warrington. Only there's hundreds of Warringtons dotted around the country each with a different name.
Its only a tiny minority that lives in cities (and even in cities most still drive).
Its an even smaller minority that lives in London, the only city where most have been forced off the road due to chronic overcrowding.
38% of the UK population lives in a city (defined as a populous urban area with a population over 500k people). Not a majority, but not tiny either. (Source: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf )
We should neither ignore cities (which are, after all, the economic engines of the UK) nor ignore the majority of people who live in towns & the wider countryside.
That data is only that high by merging neighbouring towns into built up urban areas. Here is the real data:
Cities excluding London make up 6.9 million people in England and Wales.
The majority of England and Wales live in towns.
You can’t exclude the population of London from “people who live in cities in England & Wales”. Come on.
Fair but even including London you only get to 17m people (correction exc London is 8m, I copied off wrong column).
Whereas 32.9 million live in towns.
Towns dramatically exceed cities in England, nearly 2:1, not that you'd know it from our city based correspondents and media.
For planning purposes, those areas that are contiguously built up with no rural / agricultural land around a city are really part of the city though. Hence my point that, according to a measure of those areas 38% of the UK population live in them.
You might (reasonably) argue that these hinterlands have differing needs to the city cores & I wouldn’t argue with that, but I would argue that they are not going to be the same as rural towns, so lumping them in with the rural town population & calling them “non city” residents seems wrong to me.
I never said rural towns though, rural was not part of the equation.
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
Why do you differentiate say Altrincham from Manchester ?
It's part of the same urban lump, there is no rural gap.
Metrolink takes you from Alty to St Peters Sq in 25mins, every 6mins.
Historically yes Alty was very much a separate town and no doubt many still 'feel' it is in Cheshire and not an urban area.
Yet the government measures of Primary Urban Area and Travel to Work Areas both include Alty in the Manchester urban area as they are economically and socially one urban area.
It’s an over-engineered version of a standard Dutch roundabout. They do work really well. But this one (and the same design in Manchester) do look a bit like someone gave a Dutch blueprint to a bunch of HS2 engineers and said “here, build one of these”.
LOL! 😂
It probably can be done better, considering its an early adoption in the UK of what the Dutch have been doing for years no doubt it will evolve over time and future ones might be better.
But functionally? Its a good idea and works well.
The Dutch have nailed this for years. Build more roads, design well for active travel, everyone wins.
Its great to see parts of the UK adopting the Dutch approach. Hopefully more do over time. Evolving the aesthetics to look better is a secondary priority over functionality.
Yes, let’s all prioritise “functionality”. Eventually that way the whole of Britain can become a motorway and no one need ever get stuck in traffic because NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LIVE IN UGLY DEPRESSING BRITAIN
This is, by the way, exactly what happened to thousands of American downtowns. They prioritised the functionality of driving and parking. By destroying millions of lovely old buildings to make way for car lots and wide roads
Now no one wants to drive to the downtowns because they are hideous dystopias full of homeless people and empty car lots. = zero traffic. Problem solved
That's funny because towns like Warrington and cities like Preston that are facilitating both driving and active travel, along with getting new builds, are rapidly growing in population not shrinking.
Oh and home ownership rates are far higher than in miserably depressing London where most people have to work to pay rent with no hope of a home of their own.
And the roads are free flowing. As are the cycle paths. With plenty of trees also along the routes too, even if not shown at the junctions.
You have a very different idea of depressing to me. I find 21 people being forced into one two bedroom flat as they have nowhere else to live far more depressing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66941965
I'm sorry but no one wants to live in Warrington. That's why it's affordable, and why BTL landlords haven't come sniffing.
Most of the UK lives in towns like Warrington. Only there's hundreds of Warringtons dotted around the country each with a different name.
Its only a tiny minority that lives in cities (and even in cities most still drive).
Its an even smaller minority that lives in London, the only city where most have been forced off the road due to chronic overcrowding.
38% of the UK population lives in a city (defined as a populous urban area with a population over 500k people). Not a majority, but not tiny either. (Source: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf )
We should neither ignore cities (which are, after all, the economic engines of the UK) nor ignore the majority of people who live in towns & the wider countryside.
That data is only that high by merging neighbouring towns into built up urban areas. Here is the real data:
Cities excluding London make up 6.9 million people in England and Wales.
The majority of England and Wales live in towns.
You can’t exclude the population of London from “people who live in cities in England & Wales”. Come on.
Fair but even including London you only get to 17m people (correction exc London is 8m, I copied off wrong column).
Whereas 32.9 million live in towns.
Towns dramatically exceed cities in England, nearly 2:1, not that you'd know it from our city based correspondents and media.
For planning purposes, those areas that are contiguously built up with no rural / agricultural land around a city are really part of the city though. Hence my point that, according to a measure of those areas 38% of the UK population live in them.
You might (reasonably) argue that these hinterlands have differing needs to the city cores & I wouldn’t argue with that, but I would argue that they are not going to be the same as rural towns, so lumping them in with the rural town population & calling them “non city” residents seems wrong to me.
I never said rural towns though, rural was not part of the equation.
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
That certainly used to be the case in the South Yorkshire conurbation vs Sheffield until some fool made Doncaster a city.
Why would Haley polling well in a Democratic state which she'd still lose imply a landslide; what are her national figures ?
I'm interested in the answer, as I have money on her.
Sorry, I don't know other states or national.
But don't swings generally tend to be at least roughly similar in different places? In the UK, we wouldn't expect the Con to Lab swing to be fully 9% greater in one area than in another.
The section of Braverman's speech where she listed Thatcher, Cameron and Churchill as people who were accused of racism by the left but "it didn't work" was a bit clunky. She would have been better just to say, "It won't work with me."
Agree.
The bit that got Andrew Boff going though didn’t seem massively from left field. It was about woke ideology of institutions and workplaces, and it's the phrase 'gender ideology' that seems to set him off, as he says 'there's no such thing as gender ideology' - is the pro-lgbtq position that there no such thing as it?
Maybe it's one of those things where it's the other side that has ideologies, whereas one's own viewpoint is based on principles?
So, given I'm now a political free agent, where on earth should my vote rest?
I'm nearly persuaded that Labour offer the best choice - that, despite them being incompetent, disingenuous bad people.
The LDs are clearly the most ghastly people in the world. Ed Davey?
Greens - oh fuck off.
I really have no idea - clearly none of the above.
Depends on your seat, party best placed to defeat the Tories.
The new iteration of Tories in power need an epochal defeat to understand their hurricane of hate, outright corruption and incompetence has no place in the UK.
It does feel rather like the "You still think you can control them?" moment from Cabaret. Does that make Andrew Boff the EmmCee?
In other "No, they can't be controlled" news,
Security minister Tom Tugendhat tells me he would welcome Nigel Farage into the Conservative Party if he applied to join.
Americans certainly do like cheese. If you go to a Walmart there will be aisles and aisles of it - but it will all be about 3 varieties - Jack, Monterey Jack, versions of cheddar. “Philadelphia” - the rest will be different forms of this with different shapes, processing and added bits
What they don’t have is a sophisticated market for cheese nor a taste for runny, pungent, blue, or goaty cheese - ie all the best stuff
But this used to be true of American beer. It used to be universally shit and gassy and pasteurised. Now they have one of the best beer cultures in the world and you can get excellent craft IPA anywhere in the country - a much better selection than most European countries (which will have 3 or 4 predictable beers)
So they may wise up to cheese in a similar way
I think when it comes to food, it is like a lot of US, the two extremes with the "middle" not being great. You have your rich that shop at Whole Foods or regional chains like Publix, which are often a better form of Waitrose...then the other extreme of Walmart / Dollar Tree where they might not even carry any fresh food. The middle like Albertsons are quite shitty in comparison to what we have here.
Our midmarket has traditionally been pretty decent. The US doesn't seem to have the equivalent of Sainsburys, or M&S, or even Tesco.
Likewise on the continent, certainly in France and Spain (Germany a bit more of a fractured market plus Aldi and Lidl). And in France it's really difficult to discern which are the u or non-u chains. Much less of a class system in French supermarkets: Auchan, Leclerc, Carrefour, Intermarche: more variation between stores than between chains.
The US has Ralph’s, Vons and Trader Joe’s
Trader Joe's is literally Aldi. Its a limited selection of every changing goods made under licensing agreements to white label goods. All supermarkets do this to some extent now, but that isn't comparable to say a Sainsbury's supermarket.
If I remember correctly Vons is just Safeway, but in California.
It’s an over-engineered version of a standard Dutch roundabout. They do work really well. But this one (and the same design in Manchester) do look a bit like someone gave a Dutch blueprint to a bunch of HS2 engineers and said “here, build one of these”.
LOL! 😂
It probably can be done better, considering its an early adoption in the UK of what the Dutch have been doing for years no doubt it will evolve over time and future ones might be better.
But functionally? Its a good idea and works well.
The Dutch have nailed this for years. Build more roads, design well for active travel, everyone wins.
Its great to see parts of the UK adopting the Dutch approach. Hopefully more do over time. Evolving the aesthetics to look better is a secondary priority over functionality.
Yes, let’s all prioritise “functionality”. Eventually that way the whole of Britain can become a motorway and no one need ever get stuck in traffic because NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LIVE IN UGLY DEPRESSING BRITAIN
This is, by the way, exactly what happened to thousands of American downtowns. They prioritised the functionality of driving and parking. By destroying millions of lovely old buildings to make way for car lots and wide roads
Now no one wants to drive to the downtowns because they are hideous dystopias full of homeless people and empty car lots. = zero traffic. Problem solved
That's funny because towns like Warrington and cities like Preston that are facilitating both driving and active travel, along with getting new builds, are rapidly growing in population not shrinking.
Oh and home ownership rates are far higher than in miserably depressing London where most people have to work to pay rent with no hope of a home of their own.
And the roads are free flowing. As are the cycle paths. With plenty of trees also along the routes too, even if not shown at the junctions.
You have a very different idea of depressing to me. I find 21 people being forced into one two bedroom flat as they have nowhere else to live far more depressing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66941965
I'm sorry but no one wants to live in Warrington. That's why it's affordable, and why BTL landlords haven't come sniffing.
Most of the UK lives in towns like Warrington. Only there's hundreds of Warringtons dotted around the country each with a different name.
Its only a tiny minority that lives in cities (and even in cities most still drive).
Its an even smaller minority that lives in London, the only city where most have been forced off the road due to chronic overcrowding.
38% of the UK population lives in a city (defined as a populous urban area with a population over 500k people). Not a majority, but not tiny either. (Source: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf )
We should neither ignore cities (which are, after all, the economic engines of the UK) nor ignore the majority of people who live in towns & the wider countryside.
That data is only that high by merging neighbouring towns into built up urban areas. Here is the real data:
Cities excluding London make up 6.9 million people in England and Wales.
The majority of England and Wales live in towns.
You can’t exclude the population of London from “people who live in cities in England & Wales”. Come on.
Fair but even including London you only get to 17m people (correction exc London is 8m, I copied off wrong column).
Whereas 32.9 million live in towns.
Towns dramatically exceed cities in England, nearly 2:1, not that you'd know it from our city based correspondents and media.
For planning purposes, those areas that are contiguously built up with no rural / agricultural land around a city are really part of the city though. Hence my point that, according to a measure of those areas 38% of the UK population live in them.
You might (reasonably) argue that these hinterlands have differing needs to the city cores & I wouldn’t argue with that, but I would argue that they are not going to be the same as rural towns, so lumping them in with the rural town population & calling them “non city” residents seems wrong to me.
I never said rural towns though, rural was not part of the equation.
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
Why do you differentiate say Altrincham from Manchester ?
It's part of the same urban lump, there is no rural gap.
Metrolink takes you from Alty to St Peters Sq in 25mins, every 6mins.
Historically yes Alty was very much a separate town and no doubt many still 'feel' it is in Cheshire and not an urban area.
Yet the government measures of Primary Urban Area and Travel to Work Areas both include Alty in the Manchester urban area as they are economically and socially one urban area.
Look at the maps on this page just to see how much Stockport and Alty actually are part of the urban area around Manchester, without a rural gap.
Yep, places like Wigan which are in Greater Manchester are not in the urban lump, but you are massively under estimating the size of the urban lump.
It’s an over-engineered version of a standard Dutch roundabout. They do work really well. But this one (and the same design in Manchester) do look a bit like someone gave a Dutch blueprint to a bunch of HS2 engineers and said “here, build one of these”.
LOL! 😂
It probably can be done better, considering its an early adoption in the UK of what the Dutch have been doing for years no doubt it will evolve over time and future ones might be better.
But functionally? Its a good idea and works well.
The Dutch have nailed this for years. Build more roads, design well for active travel, everyone wins.
Its great to see parts of the UK adopting the Dutch approach. Hopefully more do over time. Evolving the aesthetics to look better is a secondary priority over functionality.
Yes, let’s all prioritise “functionality”. Eventually that way the whole of Britain can become a motorway and no one need ever get stuck in traffic because NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LIVE IN UGLY DEPRESSING BRITAIN
This is, by the way, exactly what happened to thousands of American downtowns. They prioritised the functionality of driving and parking. By destroying millions of lovely old buildings to make way for car lots and wide roads
Now no one wants to drive to the downtowns because they are hideous dystopias full of homeless people and empty car lots. = zero traffic. Problem solved
That's funny because towns like Warrington and cities like Preston that are facilitating both driving and active travel, along with getting new builds, are rapidly growing in population not shrinking.
Oh and home ownership rates are far higher than in miserably depressing London where most people have to work to pay rent with no hope of a home of their own.
And the roads are free flowing. As are the cycle paths. With plenty of trees also along the routes too, even if not shown at the junctions.
You have a very different idea of depressing to me. I find 21 people being forced into one two bedroom flat as they have nowhere else to live far more depressing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66941965
I'm sorry but no one wants to live in Warrington. That's why it's affordable, and why BTL landlords haven't come sniffing.
Most of the UK lives in towns like Warrington. Only there's hundreds of Warringtons dotted around the country each with a different name.
Its only a tiny minority that lives in cities (and even in cities most still drive).
Its an even smaller minority that lives in London, the only city where most have been forced off the road due to chronic overcrowding.
38% of the UK population lives in a city (defined as a populous urban area with a population over 500k people). Not a majority, but not tiny either. (Source: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf )
We should neither ignore cities (which are, after all, the economic engines of the UK) nor ignore the majority of people who live in towns & the wider countryside.
That data is only that high by merging neighbouring towns into built up urban areas. Here is the real data:
Cities excluding London make up 6.9 million people in England and Wales.
The majority of England and Wales live in towns.
You can’t exclude the population of London from “people who live in cities in England & Wales”. Come on.
Fair but even including London you only get to 17m people (correction exc London is 8m, I copied off wrong column).
Whereas 32.9 million live in towns.
Towns dramatically exceed cities in England, nearly 2:1, not that you'd know it from our city based correspondents and media.
For planning purposes, those areas that are contiguously built up with no rural / agricultural land around a city are really part of the city though. Hence my point that, according to a measure of those areas 38% of the UK population live in them.
You might (reasonably) argue that these hinterlands have differing needs to the city cores & I wouldn’t argue with that, but I would argue that they are not going to be the same as rural towns, so lumping them in with the rural town population & calling them “non city” residents seems wrong to me.
I never said rural towns though, rural was not part of the equation.
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
Why do you differentiate say Altrincham from Manchester ?
It's part of the same urban lump, there is no rural gap.
Metrolink takes you from Alty to St Peters Sq in 25mins, every 6mins.
Historically yes Alty was very much a separate town and no doubt many still 'feel' it is in Cheshire and not an urban area.
Yet the government measures of Primary Urban Area and Travel to Work Areas both include Alty in the Manchester urban area as they are economically and socially one urban area.
Because Altrincham simply isn't in the city of Manchester.
Its very much a town. Yes the Metrolink goes there, but Metrolink does not a city make, people going from Altrincham into Manchester are commuting into the city, not from one.
Altrincham very much has a town feeling and town statistics same as the other towns I named. 76% of Altrincham own their own home, versus barely over 50% in Manchester. Altrincham is predominantly houses not flats. Etc, etc
Most of the people who live in Manchester's urban area live in a town, not the City. That's kind of the point!
Are any Conservative MPs likely to defect to another party?
My view is this is relatively unlikely.
A lot of free thinking moderates were purged or simply retired in 2019.
Anyone tempted to follow Christian Wakeford has possibly missed their chance as Labour/Lib Dems have candidates in most targets (Wakeford went before a Labour candidate was selected in his seat, and indeed now is the Labour candidate).
Andrew Bridgen has had some kind of breakdown, and joined the party for middle aged men with significant personal demons, so I don't see anyone following him.
I think at this stage, if you're really p1ssed off as a Tory MP, you just call it a day at the election.
More likely than defection is a Faragiste entryism and subsequent civil war - potentially splitting the party in half.
It’s an over-engineered version of a standard Dutch roundabout. They do work really well. But this one (and the same design in Manchester) do look a bit like someone gave a Dutch blueprint to a bunch of HS2 engineers and said “here, build one of these”.
LOL! 😂
It probably can be done better, considering its an early adoption in the UK of what the Dutch have been doing for years no doubt it will evolve over time and future ones might be better.
But functionally? Its a good idea and works well.
The Dutch have nailed this for years. Build more roads, design well for active travel, everyone wins.
Its great to see parts of the UK adopting the Dutch approach. Hopefully more do over time. Evolving the aesthetics to look better is a secondary priority over functionality.
Yes, let’s all prioritise “functionality”. Eventually that way the whole of Britain can become a motorway and no one need ever get stuck in traffic because NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LIVE IN UGLY DEPRESSING BRITAIN
This is, by the way, exactly what happened to thousands of American downtowns. They prioritised the functionality of driving and parking. By destroying millions of lovely old buildings to make way for car lots and wide roads
Now no one wants to drive to the downtowns because they are hideous dystopias full of homeless people and empty car lots. = zero traffic. Problem solved
That's funny because towns like Warrington and cities like Preston that are facilitating both driving and active travel, along with getting new builds, are rapidly growing in population not shrinking.
Oh and home ownership rates are far higher than in miserably depressing London where most people have to work to pay rent with no hope of a home of their own.
And the roads are free flowing. As are the cycle paths. With plenty of trees also along the routes too, even if not shown at the junctions.
You have a very different idea of depressing to me. I find 21 people being forced into one two bedroom flat as they have nowhere else to live far more depressing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66941965
I'm sorry but no one wants to live in Warrington. That's why it's affordable, and why BTL landlords haven't come sniffing.
Most of the UK lives in towns like Warrington. Only there's hundreds of Warringtons dotted around the country each with a different name.
Its only a tiny minority that lives in cities (and even in cities most still drive).
Its an even smaller minority that lives in London, the only city where most have been forced off the road due to chronic overcrowding.
38% of the UK population lives in a city (defined as a populous urban area with a population over 500k people). Not a majority, but not tiny either. (Source: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf )
We should neither ignore cities (which are, after all, the economic engines of the UK) nor ignore the majority of people who live in towns & the wider countryside.
That data is only that high by merging neighbouring towns into built up urban areas. Here is the real data:
Cities excluding London make up 6.9 million people in England and Wales.
The majority of England and Wales live in towns.
You can’t exclude the population of London from “people who live in cities in England & Wales”. Come on.
Fair but even including London you only get to 17m people (correction exc London is 8m, I copied off wrong column).
Whereas 32.9 million live in towns.
Towns dramatically exceed cities in England, nearly 2:1, not that you'd know it from our city based correspondents and media.
For planning purposes, those areas that are contiguously built up with no rural / agricultural land around a city are really part of the city though. Hence my point that, according to a measure of those areas 38% of the UK population live in them.
You might (reasonably) argue that these hinterlands have differing needs to the city cores & I wouldn’t argue with that, but I would argue that they are not going to be the same as rural towns, so lumping them in with the rural town population & calling them “non city” residents seems wrong to me.
I never said rural towns though, rural was not part of the equation.
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
That certainly used to be the case in the South Yorkshire conurbation vs Sheffield until some fool made Doncaster a city.
My home town (sort of; I’m from a village outside). Donny is not a city in anything other than a technical vanity sense. In some ways it’s the ur-English Town.
It’s an over-engineered version of a standard Dutch roundabout. They do work really well. But this one (and the same design in Manchester) do look a bit like someone gave a Dutch blueprint to a bunch of HS2 engineers and said “here, build one of these”.
LOL! 😂
It probably can be done better, considering its an early adoption in the UK of what the Dutch have been doing for years no doubt it will evolve over time and future ones might be better.
But functionally? Its a good idea and works well.
The Dutch have nailed this for years. Build more roads, design well for active travel, everyone wins.
Its great to see parts of the UK adopting the Dutch approach. Hopefully more do over time. Evolving the aesthetics to look better is a secondary priority over functionality.
Yes, let’s all prioritise “functionality”. Eventually that way the whole of Britain can become a motorway and no one need ever get stuck in traffic because NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LIVE IN UGLY DEPRESSING BRITAIN
This is, by the way, exactly what happened to thousands of American downtowns. They prioritised the functionality of driving and parking. By destroying millions of lovely old buildings to make way for car lots and wide roads
Now no one wants to drive to the downtowns because they are hideous dystopias full of homeless people and empty car lots. = zero traffic. Problem solved
That's funny because towns like Warrington and cities like Preston that are facilitating both driving and active travel, along with getting new builds, are rapidly growing in population not shrinking.
Oh and home ownership rates are far higher than in miserably depressing London where most people have to work to pay rent with no hope of a home of their own.
And the roads are free flowing. As are the cycle paths. With plenty of trees also along the routes too, even if not shown at the junctions.
You have a very different idea of depressing to me. I find 21 people being forced into one two bedroom flat as they have nowhere else to live far more depressing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66941965
I'm sorry but no one wants to live in Warrington. That's why it's affordable, and why BTL landlords haven't come sniffing.
Most of the UK lives in towns like Warrington. Only there's hundreds of Warringtons dotted around the country each with a different name.
Its only a tiny minority that lives in cities (and even in cities most still drive).
Its an even smaller minority that lives in London, the only city where most have been forced off the road due to chronic overcrowding.
38% of the UK population lives in a city (defined as a populous urban area with a population over 500k people). Not a majority, but not tiny either. (Source: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf )
We should neither ignore cities (which are, after all, the economic engines of the UK) nor ignore the majority of people who live in towns & the wider countryside.
That data is only that high by merging neighbouring towns into built up urban areas. Here is the real data:
Cities excluding London make up 6.9 million people in England and Wales.
The majority of England and Wales live in towns.
You can’t exclude the population of London from “people who live in cities in England & Wales”. Come on.
Fair but even including London you only get to 17m people (correction exc London is 8m, I copied off wrong column).
Whereas 32.9 million live in towns.
Towns dramatically exceed cities in England, nearly 2:1, not that you'd know it from our city based correspondents and media.
For planning purposes, those areas that are contiguously built up with no rural / agricultural land around a city are really part of the city though. Hence my point that, according to a measure of those areas 38% of the UK population live in them.
You might (reasonably) argue that these hinterlands have differing needs to the city cores & I wouldn’t argue with that, but I would argue that they are not going to be the same as rural towns, so lumping them in with the rural town population & calling them “non city” residents seems wrong to me.
I never said rural towns though, rural was not part of the equation.
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
Why do you differentiate say Altrincham from Manchester ?
It's part of the same urban lump, there is no rural gap.
Metrolink takes you from Alty to St Peters Sq in 25mins, every 6mins.
Historically yes Alty was very much a separate town and no doubt many still 'feel' it is in Cheshire and not an urban area.
Yet the government measures of Primary Urban Area and Travel to Work Areas both include Alty in the Manchester urban area as they are economically and socially one urban area.
Because Altrincham simply isn't in the city of Manchester.
Its very much a town. Yes the Metrolink goes there, but Metrolink does not a city make, people going from Altrincham into Manchester are commuting into the city, not from one.
Altrincham very much has a town feeling and town statistics same as the other towns I named. 76% of Altrincham own their own home, versus barely over 50% in Manchester. Altrincham is predominantly houses not flats. Etc, etc
Most of the people who live in Manchester's urban area live in a town, not the City. That's kind of the point!
Eh ???
The vast majority of people who live in the local authority called Manchester live in houses, not flats, they are just poorer so fewer own them.
The ONS have gone to the effort of telling you 2.5m people live in the Greater Manchester urban area, that urban area includes Alty, Stockport, Sale etc. But not Wigan.
You can walk from Alty (Trafford) to Middleton (Rochdale) without leaving urban areas, that is what makes it all feel like a city.
You seem a little to focused on local authorities, come to Manchester, you will see that they are meaningless.
It’s an over-engineered version of a standard Dutch roundabout. They do work really well. But this one (and the same design in Manchester) do look a bit like someone gave a Dutch blueprint to a bunch of HS2 engineers and said “here, build one of these”.
LOL! 😂
It probably can be done better, considering its an early adoption in the UK of what the Dutch have been doing for years no doubt it will evolve over time and future ones might be better.
But functionally? Its a good idea and works well.
The Dutch have nailed this for years. Build more roads, design well for active travel, everyone wins.
Its great to see parts of the UK adopting the Dutch approach. Hopefully more do over time. Evolving the aesthetics to look better is a secondary priority over functionality.
Yes, let’s all prioritise “functionality”. Eventually that way the whole of Britain can become a motorway and no one need ever get stuck in traffic because NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LIVE IN UGLY DEPRESSING BRITAIN
This is, by the way, exactly what happened to thousands of American downtowns. They prioritised the functionality of driving and parking. By destroying millions of lovely old buildings to make way for car lots and wide roads
Now no one wants to drive to the downtowns because they are hideous dystopias full of homeless people and empty car lots. = zero traffic. Problem solved
That's funny because towns like Warrington and cities like Preston that are facilitating both driving and active travel, along with getting new builds, are rapidly growing in population not shrinking.
Oh and home ownership rates are far higher than in miserably depressing London where most people have to work to pay rent with no hope of a home of their own.
And the roads are free flowing. As are the cycle paths. With plenty of trees also along the routes too, even if not shown at the junctions.
You have a very different idea of depressing to me. I find 21 people being forced into one two bedroom flat as they have nowhere else to live far more depressing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66941965
I'm sorry but no one wants to live in Warrington. That's why it's affordable, and why BTL landlords haven't come sniffing.
Most of the UK lives in towns like Warrington. Only there's hundreds of Warringtons dotted around the country each with a different name.
Its only a tiny minority that lives in cities (and even in cities most still drive).
Its an even smaller minority that lives in London, the only city where most have been forced off the road due to chronic overcrowding.
38% of the UK population lives in a city (defined as a populous urban area with a population over 500k people). Not a majority, but not tiny either. (Source: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf )
We should neither ignore cities (which are, after all, the economic engines of the UK) nor ignore the majority of people who live in towns & the wider countryside.
That data is only that high by merging neighbouring towns into built up urban areas. Here is the real data:
Cities excluding London make up 6.9 million people in England and Wales.
The majority of England and Wales live in towns.
You can’t exclude the population of London from “people who live in cities in England & Wales”. Come on.
Fair but even including London you only get to 17m people (correction exc London is 8m, I copied off wrong column).
Whereas 32.9 million live in towns.
Towns dramatically exceed cities in England, nearly 2:1, not that you'd know it from our city based correspondents and media.
For planning purposes, those areas that are contiguously built up with no rural / agricultural land around a city are really part of the city though. Hence my point that, according to a measure of those areas 38% of the UK population live in them.
You might (reasonably) argue that these hinterlands have differing needs to the city cores & I wouldn’t argue with that, but I would argue that they are not going to be the same as rural towns, so lumping them in with the rural town population & calling them “non city” residents seems wrong to me.
I never said rural towns though, rural was not part of the equation.
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
Why do you differentiate say Altrincham from Manchester ?
It's part of the same urban lump, there is no rural gap.
Metrolink takes you from Alty to St Peters Sq in 25mins, every 6mins.
Historically yes Alty was very much a separate town and no doubt many still 'feel' it is in Cheshire and not an urban area.
Yet the government measures of Primary Urban Area and Travel to Work Areas both include Alty in the Manchester urban area as they are economically and socially one urban area.
Look at the maps on this page just to see how much Stockport and Alty actually are part of the urban area around Manchester, without a rural gap.
Yep, places like Wigan which are in Greater Manchester are not in the urban lump, but you are massively under estimating the size of the urban lump.
Yes its an urban lump, I said that. Warrington is in that urban lump, sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester. You can drive contiguously from Liverpool to Widnes to Warrington to Leigh to Manchester (or other routes) without ever getting into rural areas.
But that doesn't make Warrington, or Widnes, or Leigh, or Altrincham cities. They're suburban towns in the suburbs of cities.
So, given I'm now a political free agent, where on earth should my vote rest?
I'm nearly persuaded that Labour offer the best choice - that, despite them being incompetent, disingenuous bad people.
The LDs are clearly the most ghastly people in the world. Ed Davey?
Greens - oh fuck off.
I really have no idea - clearly none of the above.
Depends on your seat, party best placed to defeat the Tories.
The new iteration of Tories in power need an epochal defeat to understand their hurricane of hate, outright corruption and incompetence has no place in the UK.
It does feel rather like the "You still think you can control them?" moment from Cabaret. Does that make Andrew Boff the EmmCee?
In other "No, they can't be controlled" news,
Security minister Tom Tugendhat tells me he would welcome Nigel Farage into the Conservative Party if he applied to join.
It’s an over-engineered version of a standard Dutch roundabout. They do work really well. But this one (and the same design in Manchester) do look a bit like someone gave a Dutch blueprint to a bunch of HS2 engineers and said “here, build one of these”.
LOL! 😂
It probably can be done better, considering its an early adoption in the UK of what the Dutch have been doing for years no doubt it will evolve over time and future ones might be better.
But functionally? Its a good idea and works well.
The Dutch have nailed this for years. Build more roads, design well for active travel, everyone wins.
Its great to see parts of the UK adopting the Dutch approach. Hopefully more do over time. Evolving the aesthetics to look better is a secondary priority over functionality.
Yes, let’s all prioritise “functionality”. Eventually that way the whole of Britain can become a motorway and no one need ever get stuck in traffic because NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LIVE IN UGLY DEPRESSING BRITAIN
This is, by the way, exactly what happened to thousands of American downtowns. They prioritised the functionality of driving and parking. By destroying millions of lovely old buildings to make way for car lots and wide roads
Now no one wants to drive to the downtowns because they are hideous dystopias full of homeless people and empty car lots. = zero traffic. Problem solved
That's funny because towns like Warrington and cities like Preston that are facilitating both driving and active travel, along with getting new builds, are rapidly growing in population not shrinking.
Oh and home ownership rates are far higher than in miserably depressing London where most people have to work to pay rent with no hope of a home of their own.
And the roads are free flowing. As are the cycle paths. With plenty of trees also along the routes too, even if not shown at the junctions.
You have a very different idea of depressing to me. I find 21 people being forced into one two bedroom flat as they have nowhere else to live far more depressing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66941965
I'm sorry but no one wants to live in Warrington. That's why it's affordable, and why BTL landlords haven't come sniffing.
Most of the UK lives in towns like Warrington. Only there's hundreds of Warringtons dotted around the country each with a different name.
Its only a tiny minority that lives in cities (and even in cities most still drive).
Its an even smaller minority that lives in London, the only city where most have been forced off the road due to chronic overcrowding.
38% of the UK population lives in a city (defined as a populous urban area with a population over 500k people). Not a majority, but not tiny either. (Source: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf )
We should neither ignore cities (which are, after all, the economic engines of the UK) nor ignore the majority of people who live in towns & the wider countryside.
That data is only that high by merging neighbouring towns into built up urban areas. Here is the real data:
Cities excluding London make up 6.9 million people in England and Wales.
The majority of England and Wales live in towns.
You can’t exclude the population of London from “people who live in cities in England & Wales”. Come on.
Fair but even including London you only get to 17m people (correction exc London is 8m, I copied off wrong column).
Whereas 32.9 million live in towns.
Towns dramatically exceed cities in England, nearly 2:1, not that you'd know it from our city based correspondents and media.
For planning purposes, those areas that are contiguously built up with no rural / agricultural land around a city are really part of the city though. Hence my point that, according to a measure of those areas 38% of the UK population live in them.
You might (reasonably) argue that these hinterlands have differing needs to the city cores & I wouldn’t argue with that, but I would argue that they are not going to be the same as rural towns, so lumping them in with the rural town population & calling them “non city” residents seems wrong to me.
I never said rural towns though, rural was not part of the equation.
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
Why do you differentiate say Altrincham from Manchester ?
It's part of the same urban lump, there is no rural gap.
Metrolink takes you from Alty to St Peters Sq in 25mins, every 6mins.
Historically yes Alty was very much a separate town and no doubt many still 'feel' it is in Cheshire and not an urban area.
Yet the government measures of Primary Urban Area and Travel to Work Areas both include Alty in the Manchester urban area as they are economically and socially one urban area.
Look at the maps on this page just to see how much Stockport and Alty actually are part of the urban area around Manchester, without a rural gap.
Yep, places like Wigan which are in Greater Manchester are not in the urban lump, but you are massively under estimating the size of the urban lump.
Yes its an urban lump, I said that. Warrington is in that urban lump, sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester. You can drive contiguously from Liverpool to Widnes to Warrington to Leigh to Manchester (or other routes) without ever getting into rural areas.
But that doesn't make Warrington, or Widnes, or Leigh, or Altrincham cities. They're suburban towns in the suburbs of cities.
So just like London is a tiny place in the middle of an urban sprawl surrounded by loads of historical towns that have merged together to form a massive urban area ?
Yep, they may be 'towns' but they are part of a much larger urban fabric that fills Metrolink trams with commuters, fills the M60 with shoppers for the Trafford Centre.
Call them what ever you like, but those towns are making up an urban area that has the same attributes as any other city on the planet. A dense core surrounded by lower and lower density housing the further from the middle you go, but all economically and socially intertwined.
It’s an over-engineered version of a standard Dutch roundabout. They do work really well. But this one (and the same design in Manchester) do look a bit like someone gave a Dutch blueprint to a bunch of HS2 engineers and said “here, build one of these”.
LOL! 😂
It probably can be done better, considering its an early adoption in the UK of what the Dutch have been doing for years no doubt it will evolve over time and future ones might be better.
But functionally? Its a good idea and works well.
The Dutch have nailed this for years. Build more roads, design well for active travel, everyone wins.
Its great to see parts of the UK adopting the Dutch approach. Hopefully more do over time. Evolving the aesthetics to look better is a secondary priority over functionality.
Yes, let’s all prioritise “functionality”. Eventually that way the whole of Britain can become a motorway and no one need ever get stuck in traffic because NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LIVE IN UGLY DEPRESSING BRITAIN
This is, by the way, exactly what happened to thousands of American downtowns. They prioritised the functionality of driving and parking. By destroying millions of lovely old buildings to make way for car lots and wide roads
Now no one wants to drive to the downtowns because they are hideous dystopias full of homeless people and empty car lots. = zero traffic. Problem solved
That's funny because towns like Warrington and cities like Preston that are facilitating both driving and active travel, along with getting new builds, are rapidly growing in population not shrinking.
Oh and home ownership rates are far higher than in miserably depressing London where most people have to work to pay rent with no hope of a home of their own.
And the roads are free flowing. As are the cycle paths. With plenty of trees also along the routes too, even if not shown at the junctions.
You have a very different idea of depressing to me. I find 21 people being forced into one two bedroom flat as they have nowhere else to live far more depressing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66941965
I'm sorry but no one wants to live in Warrington. That's why it's affordable, and why BTL landlords haven't come sniffing.
Most of the UK lives in towns like Warrington. Only there's hundreds of Warringtons dotted around the country each with a different name.
Its only a tiny minority that lives in cities (and even in cities most still drive).
Its an even smaller minority that lives in London, the only city where most have been forced off the road due to chronic overcrowding.
38% of the UK population lives in a city (defined as a populous urban area with a population over 500k people). Not a majority, but not tiny either. (Source: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf )
We should neither ignore cities (which are, after all, the economic engines of the UK) nor ignore the majority of people who live in towns & the wider countryside.
That data is only that high by merging neighbouring towns into built up urban areas. Here is the real data:
Cities excluding London make up 6.9 million people in England and Wales.
The majority of England and Wales live in towns.
You can’t exclude the population of London from “people who live in cities in England & Wales”. Come on.
Fair but even including London you only get to 17m people (correction exc London is 8m, I copied off wrong column).
Whereas 32.9 million live in towns.
Towns dramatically exceed cities in England, nearly 2:1, not that you'd know it from our city based correspondents and media.
For planning purposes, those areas that are contiguously built up with no rural / agricultural land around a city are really part of the city though. Hence my point that, according to a measure of those areas 38% of the UK population live in them.
You might (reasonably) argue that these hinterlands have differing needs to the city cores & I wouldn’t argue with that, but I would argue that they are not going to be the same as rural towns, so lumping them in with the rural town population & calling them “non city” residents seems wrong to me.
I never said rural towns though, rural was not part of the equation.
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
Why do you differentiate say Altrincham from Manchester ?
It's part of the same urban lump, there is no rural gap.
Metrolink takes you from Alty to St Peters Sq in 25mins, every 6mins.
Historically yes Alty was very much a separate town and no doubt many still 'feel' it is in Cheshire and not an urban area.
Yet the government measures of Primary Urban Area and Travel to Work Areas both include Alty in the Manchester urban area as they are economically and socially one urban area.
Because Altrincham simply isn't in the city of Manchester.
Its very much a town. Yes the Metrolink goes there, but Metrolink does not a city make, people going from Altrincham into Manchester are commuting into the city, not from one.
Altrincham very much has a town feeling and town statistics same as the other towns I named. 76% of Altrincham own their own home, versus barely over 50% in Manchester. Altrincham is predominantly houses not flats. Etc, etc
Most of the people who live in Manchester's urban area live in a town, not the City. That's kind of the point!
Eh ???
The vast majority of people who live in the local authority called Manchester live in houses, not flats, they are just poorer so fewer own them.
The ONS have gone to the effort of telling you 2.5m people live in the Greater Manchester urban area, that urban area includes Alty, Stockport, Sale etc. But not Wigan.
You can walk from Alty (Trafford) to Middleton (Rochdale) without leaving urban areas, that is what makes it all feel like a city.
You seem a little to focused on local authorities, come to Manchester, you will see that they are meaningless.
Yes they have and they've also gone to the effect of breaking that urban area into towns and cities. The ONS agrees with me, Altrincham is a town, in Manchester's urban area. It is not part of the City of Manchester.
You seem a little too focused on Rural. You can walk from Liverpool to Manchester without leaving urban areas. Does that mean that Manchester is in the City of Liverpool?
Is Wigan part of the City of Manchester in your eyes? Leigh? Warrington?
It’s an over-engineered version of a standard Dutch roundabout. They do work really well. But this one (and the same design in Manchester) do look a bit like someone gave a Dutch blueprint to a bunch of HS2 engineers and said “here, build one of these”.
LOL! 😂
It probably can be done better, considering its an early adoption in the UK of what the Dutch have been doing for years no doubt it will evolve over time and future ones might be better.
But functionally? Its a good idea and works well.
The Dutch have nailed this for years. Build more roads, design well for active travel, everyone wins.
Its great to see parts of the UK adopting the Dutch approach. Hopefully more do over time. Evolving the aesthetics to look better is a secondary priority over functionality.
Yes, let’s all prioritise “functionality”. Eventually that way the whole of Britain can become a motorway and no one need ever get stuck in traffic because NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LIVE IN UGLY DEPRESSING BRITAIN
This is, by the way, exactly what happened to thousands of American downtowns. They prioritised the functionality of driving and parking. By destroying millions of lovely old buildings to make way for car lots and wide roads
Now no one wants to drive to the downtowns because they are hideous dystopias full of homeless people and empty car lots. = zero traffic. Problem solved
That's funny because towns like Warrington and cities like Preston that are facilitating both driving and active travel, along with getting new builds, are rapidly growing in population not shrinking.
Oh and home ownership rates are far higher than in miserably depressing London where most people have to work to pay rent with no hope of a home of their own.
And the roads are free flowing. As are the cycle paths. With plenty of trees also along the routes too, even if not shown at the junctions.
You have a very different idea of depressing to me. I find 21 people being forced into one two bedroom flat as they have nowhere else to live far more depressing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66941965
I'm sorry but no one wants to live in Warrington. That's why it's affordable, and why BTL landlords haven't come sniffing.
Most of the UK lives in towns like Warrington. Only there's hundreds of Warringtons dotted around the country each with a different name.
Its only a tiny minority that lives in cities (and even in cities most still drive).
Its an even smaller minority that lives in London, the only city where most have been forced off the road due to chronic overcrowding.
38% of the UK population lives in a city (defined as a populous urban area with a population over 500k people). Not a majority, but not tiny either. (Source: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf )
We should neither ignore cities (which are, after all, the economic engines of the UK) nor ignore the majority of people who live in towns & the wider countryside.
That data is only that high by merging neighbouring towns into built up urban areas. Here is the real data:
Cities excluding London make up 6.9 million people in England and Wales.
The majority of England and Wales live in towns.
You can’t exclude the population of London from “people who live in cities in England & Wales”. Come on.
Fair but even including London you only get to 17m people (correction exc London is 8m, I copied off wrong column).
Whereas 32.9 million live in towns.
Towns dramatically exceed cities in England, nearly 2:1, not that you'd know it from our city based correspondents and media.
For planning purposes, those areas that are contiguously built up with no rural / agricultural land around a city are really part of the city though. Hence my point that, according to a measure of those areas 38% of the UK population live in them.
You might (reasonably) argue that these hinterlands have differing needs to the city cores & I wouldn’t argue with that, but I would argue that they are not going to be the same as rural towns, so lumping them in with the rural town population & calling them “non city” residents seems wrong to me.
I never said rural towns though, rural was not part of the equation.
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
Why do you differentiate say Altrincham from Manchester ?
It's part of the same urban lump, there is no rural gap.
Metrolink takes you from Alty to St Peters Sq in 25mins, every 6mins.
Historically yes Alty was very much a separate town and no doubt many still 'feel' it is in Cheshire and not an urban area.
Yet the government measures of Primary Urban Area and Travel to Work Areas both include Alty in the Manchester urban area as they are economically and socially one urban area.
Because Altrincham simply isn't in the city of Manchester.
Its very much a town. Yes the Metrolink goes there, but Metrolink does not a city make, people going from Altrincham into Manchester are commuting into the city, not from one.
Altrincham very much has a town feeling and town statistics same as the other towns I named. 76% of Altrincham own their own home, versus barely over 50% in Manchester. Altrincham is predominantly houses not flats. Etc, etc
Most of the people who live in Manchester's urban area live in a town, not the City. That's kind of the point!
Eh ???
The vast majority of people who live in the local authority called Manchester live in houses, not flats, they are just poorer so fewer own them.
The ONS have gone to the effort of telling you 2.5m people live in the Greater Manchester urban area, that urban area includes Alty, Stockport, Sale etc. But not Wigan.
You can walk from Alty (Trafford) to Middleton (Rochdale) without leaving urban areas, that is what makes it all feel like a city.
You seem a little to focused on local authorities, come to Manchester, you will see that they are meaningless.
Yes they have and they've also gone to the effect of breaking that urban area into towns and cities. The ONS agrees with me, Altrincham is a town, in Manchester's urban area. It is not part of the City of Manchester.
you agree the English definition of a city is based on a local authority which is utterly meaningless when talking about urban planning I assume ?
It’s an over-engineered version of a standard Dutch roundabout. They do work really well. But this one (and the same design in Manchester) do look a bit like someone gave a Dutch blueprint to a bunch of HS2 engineers and said “here, build one of these”.
LOL! 😂
It probably can be done better, considering its an early adoption in the UK of what the Dutch have been doing for years no doubt it will evolve over time and future ones might be better.
But functionally? Its a good idea and works well.
The Dutch have nailed this for years. Build more roads, design well for active travel, everyone wins.
Its great to see parts of the UK adopting the Dutch approach. Hopefully more do over time. Evolving the aesthetics to look better is a secondary priority over functionality.
Yes, let’s all prioritise “functionality”. Eventually that way the whole of Britain can become a motorway and no one need ever get stuck in traffic because NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LIVE IN UGLY DEPRESSING BRITAIN
This is, by the way, exactly what happened to thousands of American downtowns. They prioritised the functionality of driving and parking. By destroying millions of lovely old buildings to make way for car lots and wide roads
Now no one wants to drive to the downtowns because they are hideous dystopias full of homeless people and empty car lots. = zero traffic. Problem solved
That's funny because towns like Warrington and cities like Preston that are facilitating both driving and active travel, along with getting new builds, are rapidly growing in population not shrinking.
Oh and home ownership rates are far higher than in miserably depressing London where most people have to work to pay rent with no hope of a home of their own.
And the roads are free flowing. As are the cycle paths. With plenty of trees also along the routes too, even if not shown at the junctions.
You have a very different idea of depressing to me. I find 21 people being forced into one two bedroom flat as they have nowhere else to live far more depressing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66941965
I'm sorry but no one wants to live in Warrington. That's why it's affordable, and why BTL landlords haven't come sniffing.
Most of the UK lives in towns like Warrington. Only there's hundreds of Warringtons dotted around the country each with a different name.
Its only a tiny minority that lives in cities (and even in cities most still drive).
Its an even smaller minority that lives in London, the only city where most have been forced off the road due to chronic overcrowding.
38% of the UK population lives in a city (defined as a populous urban area with a population over 500k people). Not a majority, but not tiny either. (Source: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf )
We should neither ignore cities (which are, after all, the economic engines of the UK) nor ignore the majority of people who live in towns & the wider countryside.
That data is only that high by merging neighbouring towns into built up urban areas. Here is the real data:
Cities excluding London make up 6.9 million people in England and Wales.
The majority of England and Wales live in towns.
You can’t exclude the population of London from “people who live in cities in England & Wales”. Come on.
Fair but even including London you only get to 17m people (correction exc London is 8m, I copied off wrong column).
Whereas 32.9 million live in towns.
Towns dramatically exceed cities in England, nearly 2:1, not that you'd know it from our city based correspondents and media.
For planning purposes, those areas that are contiguously built up with no rural / agricultural land around a city are really part of the city though. Hence my point that, according to a measure of those areas 38% of the UK population live in them.
You might (reasonably) argue that these hinterlands have differing needs to the city cores & I wouldn’t argue with that, but I would argue that they are not going to be the same as rural towns, so lumping them in with the rural town population & calling them “non city” residents seems wrong to me.
I never said rural towns though, rural was not part of the equation.
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
Why do you differentiate say Altrincham from Manchester ?
It's part of the same urban lump, there is no rural gap.
Metrolink takes you from Alty to St Peters Sq in 25mins, every 6mins.
Historically yes Alty was very much a separate town and no doubt many still 'feel' it is in Cheshire and not an urban area.
Yet the government measures of Primary Urban Area and Travel to Work Areas both include Alty in the Manchester urban area as they are economically and socially one urban area.
Because Altrincham simply isn't in the city of Manchester.
Its very much a town. Yes the Metrolink goes there, but Metrolink does not a city make, people going from Altrincham into Manchester are commuting into the city, not from one.
Altrincham very much has a town feeling and town statistics same as the other towns I named. 76% of Altrincham own their own home, versus barely over 50% in Manchester. Altrincham is predominantly houses not flats. Etc, etc
Most of the people who live in Manchester's urban area live in a town, not the City. That's kind of the point!
Eh ???
The vast majority of people who live in the local authority called Manchester live in houses, not flats, they are just poorer so fewer own them.
The ONS have gone to the effort of telling you 2.5m people live in the Greater Manchester urban area, that urban area includes Alty, Stockport, Sale etc. But not Wigan.
You can walk from Alty (Trafford) to Middleton (Rochdale) without leaving urban areas, that is what makes it all feel like a city.
You seem a little to focused on local authorities, come to Manchester, you will see that they are meaningless.
Yes they have and they've also gone to the effect of breaking that urban area into towns and cities. The ONS agrees with me, Altrincham is a town, in Manchester's urban area. It is not part of the City of Manchester.
you agree the English definition of a city is based on a local authority which is utterly meaningless when talking about urban planning I assume ?
Yes multiple cities in England, such as Doncaster or Preston, really ought to be classed as large towns.
I don't know of any towns in England that should be classed as cities.
It’s an over-engineered version of a standard Dutch roundabout. They do work really well. But this one (and the same design in Manchester) do look a bit like someone gave a Dutch blueprint to a bunch of HS2 engineers and said “here, build one of these”.
LOL! 😂
It probably can be done better, considering its an early adoption in the UK of what the Dutch have been doing for years no doubt it will evolve over time and future ones might be better.
But functionally? Its a good idea and works well.
The Dutch have nailed this for years. Build more roads, design well for active travel, everyone wins.
Its great to see parts of the UK adopting the Dutch approach. Hopefully more do over time. Evolving the aesthetics to look better is a secondary priority over functionality.
Yes, let’s all prioritise “functionality”. Eventually that way the whole of Britain can become a motorway and no one need ever get stuck in traffic because NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LIVE IN UGLY DEPRESSING BRITAIN
This is, by the way, exactly what happened to thousands of American downtowns. They prioritised the functionality of driving and parking. By destroying millions of lovely old buildings to make way for car lots and wide roads
Now no one wants to drive to the downtowns because they are hideous dystopias full of homeless people and empty car lots. = zero traffic. Problem solved
That's funny because towns like Warrington and cities like Preston that are facilitating both driving and active travel, along with getting new builds, are rapidly growing in population not shrinking.
Oh and home ownership rates are far higher than in miserably depressing London where most people have to work to pay rent with no hope of a home of their own.
And the roads are free flowing. As are the cycle paths. With plenty of trees also along the routes too, even if not shown at the junctions.
You have a very different idea of depressing to me. I find 21 people being forced into one two bedroom flat as they have nowhere else to live far more depressing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66941965
I'm sorry but no one wants to live in Warrington. That's why it's affordable, and why BTL landlords haven't come sniffing.
Most of the UK lives in towns like Warrington. Only there's hundreds of Warringtons dotted around the country each with a different name.
Its only a tiny minority that lives in cities (and even in cities most still drive).
Its an even smaller minority that lives in London, the only city where most have been forced off the road due to chronic overcrowding.
38% of the UK population lives in a city (defined as a populous urban area with a population over 500k people). Not a majority, but not tiny either. (Source: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf )
We should neither ignore cities (which are, after all, the economic engines of the UK) nor ignore the majority of people who live in towns & the wider countryside.
That data is only that high by merging neighbouring towns into built up urban areas. Here is the real data:
Cities excluding London make up 6.9 million people in England and Wales.
The majority of England and Wales live in towns.
You can’t exclude the population of London from “people who live in cities in England & Wales”. Come on.
Fair but even including London you only get to 17m people (correction exc London is 8m, I copied off wrong column).
Whereas 32.9 million live in towns.
Towns dramatically exceed cities in England, nearly 2:1, not that you'd know it from our city based correspondents and media.
For planning purposes, those areas that are contiguously built up with no rural / agricultural land around a city are really part of the city though. Hence my point that, according to a measure of those areas 38% of the UK population live in them.
You might (reasonably) argue that these hinterlands have differing needs to the city cores & I wouldn’t argue with that, but I would argue that they are not going to be the same as rural towns, so lumping them in with the rural town population & calling them “non city” residents seems wrong to me.
I never said rural towns though, rural was not part of the equation.
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
Why do you differentiate say Altrincham from Manchester ?
It's part of the same urban lump, there is no rural gap.
Metrolink takes you from Alty to St Peters Sq in 25mins, every 6mins.
Historically yes Alty was very much a separate town and no doubt many still 'feel' it is in Cheshire and not an urban area.
Yet the government measures of Primary Urban Area and Travel to Work Areas both include Alty in the Manchester urban area as they are economically and socially one urban area.
Because Altrincham simply isn't in the city of Manchester.
Its very much a town. Yes the Metrolink goes there, but Metrolink does not a city make, people going from Altrincham into Manchester are commuting into the city, not from one.
Altrincham very much has a town feeling and town statistics same as the other towns I named. 76% of Altrincham own their own home, versus barely over 50% in Manchester. Altrincham is predominantly houses not flats. Etc, etc
Most of the people who live in Manchester's urban area live in a town, not the City. That's kind of the point!
Eh ???
The vast majority of people who live in the local authority called Manchester live in houses, not flats, they are just poorer so fewer own them.
The ONS have gone to the effort of telling you 2.5m people live in the Greater Manchester urban area, that urban area includes Alty, Stockport, Sale etc. But not Wigan.
You can walk from Alty (Trafford) to Middleton (Rochdale) without leaving urban areas, that is what makes it all feel like a city.
You seem a little to focused on local authorities, come to Manchester, you will see that they are meaningless.
Yes they have and they've also gone to the effect of breaking that urban area into towns and cities. The ONS agrees with me, Altrincham is a town, in Manchester's urban area. It is not part of the City of Manchester.
you agree the English definition of a city is based on a local authority which is utterly meaningless when talking about urban planning I assume ?
Yes multiple cities in England, such as Doncaster or Preston, really ought to be classed as large towns.
I don't know of any towns in England that should be classed as cities.
You miss the point.
No one would ever think of a local authority boundary as relevant to any sort of urban planning would they ?
So, given I'm now a political free agent, where on earth should my vote rest?
I'm nearly persuaded that Labour offer the best choice - that, despite them being incompetent, disingenuous bad people.
The LDs are clearly the most ghastly people in the world. Ed Davey?
Greens - oh fuck off.
I really have no idea - clearly none of the above.
Depends on your seat, party best placed to defeat the Tories.
The new iteration of Tories in power need an epochal defeat to understand their hurricane of hate, outright corruption and incompetence has no place in the UK.
It does feel rather like the "You still think you can control them?" moment from Cabaret. Does that make Andrew Boff the EmmCee?
In other "No, they can't be controlled" news,
Security minister Tom Tugendhat tells me he would welcome Nigel Farage into the Conservative Party if he applied to join.
Jeez . There really is no hope for the Tories . He was seen as a moderate but looks like he’s also now completely sold his soul.
Im *guessing* Levido and co have looked at the numbers and concluded things are so dire this tactic is the only way of avoiding utter extinction.
I'm guessing Levido and co have been making a living pretending they are election strategists, when they actually are ideologues with an agenda. If they were the former they wouldn't be trying to get lucky this time with a repeat of the last, dismal Australian election campaign.
It’s an over-engineered version of a standard Dutch roundabout. They do work really well. But this one (and the same design in Manchester) do look a bit like someone gave a Dutch blueprint to a bunch of HS2 engineers and said “here, build one of these”.
LOL! 😂
It probably can be done better, considering its an early adoption in the UK of what the Dutch have been doing for years no doubt it will evolve over time and future ones might be better.
But functionally? Its a good idea and works well.
The Dutch have nailed this for years. Build more roads, design well for active travel, everyone wins.
Its great to see parts of the UK adopting the Dutch approach. Hopefully more do over time. Evolving the aesthetics to look better is a secondary priority over functionality.
Yes, let’s all prioritise “functionality”. Eventually that way the whole of Britain can become a motorway and no one need ever get stuck in traffic because NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LIVE IN UGLY DEPRESSING BRITAIN
This is, by the way, exactly what happened to thousands of American downtowns. They prioritised the functionality of driving and parking. By destroying millions of lovely old buildings to make way for car lots and wide roads
Now no one wants to drive to the downtowns because they are hideous dystopias full of homeless people and empty car lots. = zero traffic. Problem solved
That's funny because towns like Warrington and cities like Preston that are facilitating both driving and active travel, along with getting new builds, are rapidly growing in population not shrinking.
Oh and home ownership rates are far higher than in miserably depressing London where most people have to work to pay rent with no hope of a home of their own.
And the roads are free flowing. As are the cycle paths. With plenty of trees also along the routes too, even if not shown at the junctions.
You have a very different idea of depressing to me. I find 21 people being forced into one two bedroom flat as they have nowhere else to live far more depressing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66941965
I'm sorry but no one wants to live in Warrington. That's why it's affordable, and why BTL landlords haven't come sniffing.
Most of the UK lives in towns like Warrington. Only there's hundreds of Warringtons dotted around the country each with a different name.
Its only a tiny minority that lives in cities (and even in cities most still drive).
Its an even smaller minority that lives in London, the only city where most have been forced off the road due to chronic overcrowding.
38% of the UK population lives in a city (defined as a populous urban area with a population over 500k people). Not a majority, but not tiny either. (Source: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf )
We should neither ignore cities (which are, after all, the economic engines of the UK) nor ignore the majority of people who live in towns & the wider countryside.
That data is only that high by merging neighbouring towns into built up urban areas. Here is the real data:
Cities excluding London make up 6.9 million people in England and Wales.
The majority of England and Wales live in towns.
You can’t exclude the population of London from “people who live in cities in England & Wales”. Come on.
Fair but even including London you only get to 17m people (correction exc London is 8m, I copied off wrong column).
Whereas 32.9 million live in towns.
Towns dramatically exceed cities in England, nearly 2:1, not that you'd know it from our city based correspondents and media.
For planning purposes, those areas that are contiguously built up with no rural / agricultural land around a city are really part of the city though. Hence my point that, according to a measure of those areas 38% of the UK population live in them.
You might (reasonably) argue that these hinterlands have differing needs to the city cores & I wouldn’t argue with that, but I would argue that they are not going to be the same as rural towns, so lumping them in with the rural town population & calling them “non city” residents seems wrong to me.
I never said rural towns though, rural was not part of the equation.
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
Why do you differentiate say Altrincham from Manchester ?
It's part of the same urban lump, there is no rural gap.
Metrolink takes you from Alty to St Peters Sq in 25mins, every 6mins.
Historically yes Alty was very much a separate town and no doubt many still 'feel' it is in Cheshire and not an urban area.
Yet the government measures of Primary Urban Area and Travel to Work Areas both include Alty in the Manchester urban area as they are economically and socially one urban area.
Look at the maps on this page just to see how much Stockport and Alty actually are part of the urban area around Manchester, without a rural gap.
Yep, places like Wigan which are in Greater Manchester are not in the urban lump, but you are massively under estimating the size of the urban lump.
Yes its an urban lump, I said that. Warrington is in that urban lump, sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester. You can drive contiguously from Liverpool to Widnes to Warrington to Leigh to Manchester (or other routes) without ever getting into rural areas.
But that doesn't make Warrington, or Widnes, or Leigh, or Altrincham cities. They're suburban towns in the suburbs of cities.
So would you consider Ealing to be a separate town, and not part of London?
It’s an over-engineered version of a standard Dutch roundabout. They do work really well. But this one (and the same design in Manchester) do look a bit like someone gave a Dutch blueprint to a bunch of HS2 engineers and said “here, build one of these”.
LOL! 😂
It probably can be done better, considering its an early adoption in the UK of what the Dutch have been doing for years no doubt it will evolve over time and future ones might be better.
But functionally? Its a good idea and works well.
The Dutch have nailed this for years. Build more roads, design well for active travel, everyone wins.
Its great to see parts of the UK adopting the Dutch approach. Hopefully more do over time. Evolving the aesthetics to look better is a secondary priority over functionality.
Yes, let’s all prioritise “functionality”. Eventually that way the whole of Britain can become a motorway and no one need ever get stuck in traffic because NO ONE WILL EVER WANT TO LIVE IN UGLY DEPRESSING BRITAIN
This is, by the way, exactly what happened to thousands of American downtowns. They prioritised the functionality of driving and parking. By destroying millions of lovely old buildings to make way for car lots and wide roads
Now no one wants to drive to the downtowns because they are hideous dystopias full of homeless people and empty car lots. = zero traffic. Problem solved
That's funny because towns like Warrington and cities like Preston that are facilitating both driving and active travel, along with getting new builds, are rapidly growing in population not shrinking.
Oh and home ownership rates are far higher than in miserably depressing London where most people have to work to pay rent with no hope of a home of their own.
And the roads are free flowing. As are the cycle paths. With plenty of trees also along the routes too, even if not shown at the junctions.
You have a very different idea of depressing to me. I find 21 people being forced into one two bedroom flat as they have nowhere else to live far more depressing: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-66941965
I'm sorry but no one wants to live in Warrington. That's why it's affordable, and why BTL landlords haven't come sniffing.
Most of the UK lives in towns like Warrington. Only there's hundreds of Warringtons dotted around the country each with a different name.
Its only a tiny minority that lives in cities (and even in cities most still drive).
Its an even smaller minority that lives in London, the only city where most have been forced off the road due to chronic overcrowding.
38% of the UK population lives in a city (defined as a populous urban area with a population over 500k people). Not a majority, but not tiny either. (Source: http://www.demographia.com/db-worldua.pdf )
We should neither ignore cities (which are, after all, the economic engines of the UK) nor ignore the majority of people who live in towns & the wider countryside.
That data is only that high by merging neighbouring towns into built up urban areas. Here is the real data:
Cities excluding London make up 6.9 million people in England and Wales.
The majority of England and Wales live in towns.
You can’t exclude the population of London from “people who live in cities in England & Wales”. Come on.
Fair but even including London you only get to 17m people (correction exc London is 8m, I copied off wrong column).
Whereas 32.9 million live in towns.
Towns dramatically exceed cities in England, nearly 2:1, not that you'd know it from our city based correspondents and media.
For planning purposes, those areas that are contiguously built up with no rural / agricultural land around a city are really part of the city though. Hence my point that, according to a measure of those areas 38% of the UK population live in them.
You might (reasonably) argue that these hinterlands have differing needs to the city cores & I wouldn’t argue with that, but I would argue that they are not going to be the same as rural towns, so lumping them in with the rural town population & calling them “non city” residents seems wrong to me.
I never said rural towns though, rural was not part of the equation.
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
Why do you differentiate say Altrincham from Manchester ?
It's part of the same urban lump, there is no rural gap.
Metrolink takes you from Alty to St Peters Sq in 25mins, every 6mins.
Historically yes Alty was very much a separate town and no doubt many still 'feel' it is in Cheshire and not an urban area.
Yet the government measures of Primary Urban Area and Travel to Work Areas both include Alty in the Manchester urban area as they are economically and socially one urban area.
Because Altrincham simply isn't in the city of Manchester.
Its very much a town. Yes the Metrolink goes there, but Metrolink does not a city make, people going from Altrincham into Manchester are commuting into the city, not from one.
Altrincham very much has a town feeling and town statistics same as the other towns I named. 76% of Altrincham own their own home, versus barely over 50% in Manchester. Altrincham is predominantly houses not flats. Etc, etc
Most of the people who live in Manchester's urban area live in a town, not the City. That's kind of the point!
Eh ???
The vast majority of people who live in the local authority called Manchester live in houses, not flats, they are just poorer so fewer own them.
The ONS have gone to the effort of telling you 2.5m people live in the Greater Manchester urban area, that urban area includes Alty, Stockport, Sale etc. But not Wigan.
You can walk from Alty (Trafford) to Middleton (Rochdale) without leaving urban areas, that is what makes it all feel like a city.
You seem a little to focused on local authorities, come to Manchester, you will see that they are meaningless.
Yes they have and they've also gone to the effect of breaking that urban area into towns and cities. The ONS agrees with me, Altrincham is a town, in Manchester's urban area. It is not part of the City of Manchester.
you agree the English definition of a city is based on a local authority which is utterly meaningless when talking about urban planning I assume ?
Yes multiple cities in England, such as Doncaster or Preston, really ought to be classed as large towns.
I don't know of any towns in England that should be classed as cities.
Colchester’s designation as a city is long overdue, given it’s history!
Comments
I don't know what wild animals come of the fjord tops in Norway, but perhaps the robot mower is a safer pursuit there.
EDIT: come to think of it, what does the fox say was Norwegian. Perhaps they don't know.
The only time I would cut grass is with a scythe.
v
Cut the grass
Google is your friend:
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=GB&q=mow the lawn,cut the grass&hl=en-GB
Summary: "cut the grass" is more popular in all regions. "mow the lawn" is basically unknown in Northern Ireland. England is most likely to mow the lawn (31%), followed by Wales (29%).
"Cut", "grass", "mow", and "lawn" are all Germanic words, so there's possibly not a Norman / French influence to regional differences.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/rural-population-and-migration/rural-population-and-migration
Note that the %ages under each subheading sum to that entry, so those under ”all rural areas” sum to 17.1%.
I can see why they have not caught on over here.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-66997076
Nice phrase.
https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1709217151452954998
"But all is not lost. Although a stump now pokes out where the imposing sycamore once dominated the undulating English moors, arboreal experts say the tree is very much alive and will probably regrow. That process, however, will take decades, if not centuries, and the end result may look much different from the tree that charmed poets, bewitched lovers and inspired photographers."
source$: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/10/03/sycamore-gap-tree-felling/
I should have mentioned this possibility earlier, since I grew up raising trees, and once saw the stump of a giant redwood -- with five or six large shoots growing around its edges.
I think our politics still has one hell of an adjustment to make, judging by the HS2 blowback. This time, there really is no money left….
I note, in passing, that Oxford is listed as an “Urban City & Town” in this classification, yet I doubt Oxford has much in common with the kinds of places BR is thinking of. Yet this classification is another 40% of the population. I wonder how much of it is small cities like Oxford & how much towns that have more in common with the rural town category than they do larger places like Oxford. (The cut-off between the two is 10k population apparently).
I'm nearly persuaded that Labour offer the best choice - that, despite them being incompetent, disingenuous bad people.
The LDs are clearly the most ghastly people in the world. Ed Davey?
Greens - oh fuck off.
I really have no idea - clearly none of the above.
Well, actually, I try to keep my head down and hope that my wife does it.
Meanwhile, it looks like Braverman has upset all of the people she intended to upset.
I wouldn't worry about Labour in power in their first term, they'll be poodles. It's the hubris after a few elections that always brings out the worst in parties. 97-2001 wasn't so bad. 2010-2015 wasn't so bad.
Similarly the Lib Dems look like a safe repository for your vote given that there will be other disaffected blues going their way. You don't have to like them.
But really, whichever party in your constituency got the most votes other than the Tories last time around. Don't fanny around abstaining for three elections, just give them one damn good kicking next year and see how they respond.
wait for it
...roundabout
Or cut his grass.
They dined off it for 16 years after the 1997/8 El Nino (remember the so called "hiatus"), then managed again for a few years after the 2015/16 event. Though this time the El Nino isn't particularly intense so I doubt we'll wait as long for the next record year.
Well Sunak hasn't given his speech yet
Yours, One of the most ghastly people in the world
The new iteration of Tories in power need an epochal defeat to understand their hurricane of hate, outright corruption and incompetence has no place in the UK.
I think the vote I most wanted to make, but couldn't, was for a continuation of the 2010 coalition.
Apologies.
Sources say the caucus is unified.
McCarthy’s actions on Jan 6, his trip to Mar a Lago, his attempt to discredit the Jan 6 Cmte, his reneging on debt limit deal and his actions this weekend are all the reasons
https://twitter.com/LACaldwellDC/status/1709227128565195159
Problem with FPTP is it makes these big tent parties that can be rotted from the inside when a Braverman or a Corbyn gets a whiff of power. If they had their own fringe parties we could park them at the edges and argue over a range of sensible choices.
Cutting grass to me implies to me that there is an end product, either hay or silage.
Anyway, it doesn't matter. 'Mowing the lawn' is perfectly normal usage, although Braverman is wrong in that gardening doesn't seem to have been a particularly attractive job for the immigrant community, at least round here, unlike building work.
Somewhere online there must be a list of most marginal constituencies and who the MPs is, but I can only find the former or the latter, not both together. Which makes it too arduous a job to bother with. However Suella is rock solid safe with a majority of 26k. So are Badenoch (maj 27k) and Truss (26k). All in East Anglian constituencies.
A lot of free thinking moderates were purged or simply retired in 2019.
Anyone tempted to follow Christian Wakeford has possibly missed their chance as Labour/Lib Dems have candidates in most targets (Wakeford went before a Labour candidate was selected in his seat, and indeed now is the Labour candidate).
Andrew Bridgen has had some kind of breakdown, and joined the party for middle aged men with significant personal demons, so I don't see anyone following him.
I think at this stage, if you're really p1ssed off as a Tory MP, you just call it a day at the election.
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/orderedseats.html
California - Data Viewpoint
Biden 67, Trump 33
Biden 58, Haley 42
(2020: Biden 63, Trump 34)
So Haley does miles, miles better than Trump.
Implication being that Haley would win landslide if she gets nomination (obviously only one poll, one state etc).
Could this get traction amongst Republican primary voters?
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/
Security minister Tom Tugendhat tells me he would welcome Nigel Farage into the Conservative Party if he applied to join.
https://twitter.com/MichaelLCrick/status/1709232656511111538?t=yF7LmjVRSdmTILPECG9q0Q
I know the former sprouts like mad from stumps - hence the Latin name Sequoia sempervirens - but I wasn't sure that the latter is quite so keen.
In this case, Sycamore definitely does - it is a pain if you are actively trying to get rid of it, because you have to keep treating the stump.
There's quite a juicy list of potential Portillos there. Only a bit of swingback makes a lot of them safe. But not Lee Anderson. He's gone.
"Helen Mirren has change of heart over ‘sexist’ Parkinson interview
Actress takes the late presenter’s side over his questions about whether her body stopped her from being taken seriously" (£)
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/helen-mirren-has-change-of-heart-over-sexist-parkinson-interview-72mpxqv0k
I'm interested in the answer, as I have money on her.
The bit that got Andrew Boff going though didn’t seem massively from left field. It was about woke ideology of institutions and workplaces, and it's the phrase 'gender ideology' that seems to set him off, as he says 'there's no such thing as gender ideology' - is the pro-lgbtq position that there no such thing as it?
Most towns absolutely are urban/suburban and are neither rural nor city.
In the North West Liverpool/Manchester conurbation for instance I believe far more people live in towns like Wigan, Widnes, Warrington, Runcorn, Leigh, Stockport, Northwich, Altrincham etc, etc, etc than either Liverpool or Manchester.
It's part of the same urban lump, there is no rural gap.
Metrolink takes you from Alty to St Peters Sq in 25mins, every 6mins.
Historically yes Alty was very much a separate town and no doubt many still 'feel' it is in Cheshire and not an urban area.
Yet the government measures of Primary Urban Area and Travel to Work Areas both include Alty in the Manchester urban area as they are economically and socially one urban area.
But don't swings generally tend to be at least roughly similar in different places? In the UK, we wouldn't expect the Con to Lab swing to be fully 9% greater in one area than in another.
If I remember correctly Vons is just Safeway, but in California.
Yep, places like Wigan which are in Greater Manchester are not in the urban lump, but you are massively under estimating the size of the urban lump.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Manchester_Built-up_Area
Its very much a town. Yes the Metrolink goes there, but Metrolink does not a city make, people going from Altrincham into Manchester are commuting into the city, not from one.
Altrincham very much has a town feeling and town statistics same as the other towns I named. 76% of Altrincham own their own home, versus barely over 50% in Manchester. Altrincham is predominantly houses not flats. Etc, etc
Most of the people who live in Manchester's urban area live in a town, not the City. That's kind of the point!
The vast majority of people who live in the local authority called Manchester live in houses, not flats, they are just poorer so fewer own them.
The ONS have gone to the effort of telling you 2.5m people live in the Greater Manchester urban area, that urban area includes Alty, Stockport, Sale etc. But not Wigan.
You can walk from Alty (Trafford) to Middleton (Rochdale) without leaving urban areas, that is what makes it all feel like a city.
You seem a little to focused on local authorities, come to Manchester, you will see that they are meaningless.
Yes its an urban lump, I said that. Warrington is in that urban lump, sandwiched between Liverpool and Manchester. You can drive contiguously from Liverpool to Widnes to Warrington to Leigh to Manchester (or other routes) without ever getting into rural areas.
But that doesn't make Warrington, or Widnes, or Leigh, or Altrincham cities. They're suburban towns in the suburbs of cities.
Yep, they may be 'towns' but they are part of a much larger urban fabric that fills Metrolink trams with commuters, fills the M60 with shoppers for the Trafford Centre.
Call them what ever you like, but those towns are making up an urban area that has the same attributes as any other city on the planet. A dense core surrounded by lower and lower density housing the further from the middle you go, but all economically and socially intertwined.
You seem a little too focused on Rural. You can walk from Liverpool to Manchester without leaving urban areas. Does that mean that Manchester is in the City of Liverpool?
Is Wigan part of the City of Manchester in your eyes? Leigh? Warrington?
I don't know of any towns in England that should be classed as cities.
No one would ever think of a local authority boundary as relevant to any sort of urban planning would they ?
Even you can spot that I assume ?
If they were the former they wouldn't be trying to get lucky this time with a repeat of the last, dismal Australian election campaign.