So unusually we have 9 separate polls from 9 different polling companies as the last VI polls on uk polling wiki.
Of course if i were Heathener I would cut and paste the most recent 3 and claim there is a "TREND" The aforesaid poster has done this twice when 5 successive polls had larger than average LAB leads. Having a wide range of pollsters is IMO the best way to see the current position
For the record i see no trend and LAB are currently circa 20 ahead SKS landslide on those numbers
So unusually we have 9 separate polls from 9 different polling companies as the last VI polls on uk polling wiki.
Of course if i were Heathener I would cut and paste the most recent 3 and claim there is a "TREND" The aforesaid poster has done this twice when 5 successive polls had larger than average LAB leads. Having a wide range of pollsters is IMO the best way to see the current position
For the record i see no trend and LAB are currently circa 20 ahead SKS landslide on those numbers
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Sunak has committed to regular flights to Rwanda by the Autumn and clearly lays the blame for the delay on Labour peers
I reserve judgement on this scheme, but it had 48/35% support in November 23 you gov poll and until it is operational its success or otherwise remains an unknown
I would suggest however that today's announcement by Sunak with flights due by June/July that an election before November- December is unlikely and I expect it to be on the 14th November or 12th December
Is that pre- or post-Election?
This is the current House of Lords.
Blaming "Labour Peers" is an interesting version of 'I can't persuade the HoL'.
(The persistence of Lib Dems in volume is interesting.)
Anyone know the difference between the crossbenchers (dark grey), non-affiliated (mid grey) and independents (light grey)? I thought all non-party aligned were known as crossbenchers, but clearly not the case.
The Wikipedia article does not seem to enlighten on this.
Without checking the numbers - I assumed that the non-affiliated were Bishops.
I would guess that Independents are those who were appointed party politically, and have since left that party for some reason or other, whereas the 'Crossbenchers' are appointed (or elected from the hereditarys) as such.
Edit to add: Looking at the graphic, it appears that the non-affiliated is more than just the 26 Bishops. Presumably Law Lords or similar are also classed as 'non-affiliated'?
I thought the Law Lords were removed when the Supreme Court was established, and would now be Life Peers.
(The persistence of Lib Dems in volume is interesting.)
The Lib Dems still manage third place in elections in terms of vote share (excepting 2015). It might not work out in terms of seats in the commons, but the number of councillors and party supporters is still good. Probably helps that they're a (mostly) Unionist party running candidates throughout the whole country.
I am a bit biased however, as I tend to vote LD myself. I mean, they can second place in Bootle when they get 2 votes (the candidate and me).
Mon dieu. The upper Loire is dull. I shall spare you photographs of endless flat and vasty fields
A lot of France is like that in my experience. A good 70% of the country is Lincolnshire.
(Not that there's anything inherently wrong with Lincolnshire, in moderation. But France offers just such a dizzyingly vast amount of it.)
I wouldn’t say 70%. More like 30-40%?
Anyway near the coast is usually but not always nice. They have far fewer hideous tacky resort towns, or they hide them better. And superior weather helps
Meanwhile all the alps and Pyrenees are impressive and sometimes spectacular. Corsica just edges the Isle of Wight. The Dordogne, the Basque Country, burgundy, Provence, languedoc, savoie, Jura, the Rhone valley - the majority of France is appealing
Fair enough. France is huge and I've been to relatively little of it. Obviously the nice bits of it like the Alps are spectacular. I was thinking for example of my trip from Toulouse Airport to Andorra: the Pyrenees were splendid, but the first hour and a half of flat, unspectacular landscape and small, dead, unremarkable towns was not. And my trip from La Rochelle airport to whatever Eurocamp it was two hours to the north: mile after mile of very slightly rolling agricultural landscape. Not in any way unpleasant. But like a massive Lincolnshire wolds. And the train from the tunnel to Paris: 170 miles of flat.
But I am far from well-travelled in France and will happily bow to the experience of kjh and TimS and Leon on this.
If you want staggering French loveliness, go to Corsica. It’s called the “Ile de beaute” for a reason - it’s a stunner. Also really good cheeses, many of them not exported
Paradoxically the people are some of the most unpleasant I’ve ever met. Phenomenally rude. Even the French (mainland) think corsicans are rude. Even the Parisians think corsicans are rude
Apparently it comes from centuries of vendettas and mistrust - Dorothy Carrington talks about Corsican rudeness in her travel classic “Granite Island”
Not been, but very much on my list to visit. I have heard that meat and dairy is the focus of the local food, rather than seafood, as one might expect. This is apparently because of Corsicans congenital distrust of their coast as an open invitation to invaders. They are seemingly a mountain people who happen to live on an island, which would fit with your profile of them.
Mon dieu. The upper Loire is dull. I shall spare you photographs of endless flat and vasty fields
A lot of France is like that in my experience. A good 70% of the country is Lincolnshire.
(Not that there's anything inherently wrong with Lincolnshire, in moderation. But France offers just such a dizzyingly vast amount of it.)
I wouldn’t say 70%. More like 30-40%?
Anyway near the coast is usually but not always nice. They have far fewer hideous tacky resort towns, or they hide them better. And superior weather helps
Meanwhile all the alps and Pyrenees are impressive and sometimes spectacular. Corsica just edges the Isle of Wight. The Dordogne, the Basque Country, burgundy, Provence, languedoc, savoie, Jura, the Rhone valley - the majority of France is appealing
Fair enough. France is huge and I've been to relatively little of it. Obviously the nice bits of it like the Alps are spectacular. I was thinking for example of my trip from Toulouse Airport to Andorra: the Pyrenees were splendid, but the first hour and a half of flat, unspectacular landscape and small, dead, unremarkable towns was not. And my trip from La Rochelle airport to whatever Eurocamp it was two hours to the north: mile after mile of very slightly rolling agricultural landscape. Not in any way unpleasant. But like a massive Lincolnshire wolds. And the train from the tunnel to Paris: 170 miles of flat.
But I am far from well-travelled in France and will happily bow to the experience of kjh and TimS and Leon on this.
Don't think you should bow to my experiences, but for what it is worth I am not so keen on the French Alps. The skiing is good but the resorts are generally concrete jungles and you have to go above the tree line for decent skiing. I have mainly gone there because the people I have gone with choose to. The Dolomites in Italy are best in my opinion, as well Austria, provided you avoid small resorts in Austria if you are a decent skier. All much prettier and tree lined.
Sarlat is my favourite town in France. Haven't been there for a while, but it looks like Hogwarts.
Sarlat is absurdly pretty but unfortunately overrun with tourists
However the really great thing about France is that it’s so big and varied you only have to explore - get off the tourist trail - and you will find an equally lovely town with zero tourists 10 or 20 or 40km away. Buried in the lush countryside like a truffle under a tree
eg How many people have heard of Tailloires, on Lake Annecy? I went there for the gazette. Looks like this
Looks Like the L´Auberge de Pere Brise... cracking restaurant and very pleasant hotel
Looks like Sunak will have a couple of refugees on each flight but more flights so that he can wank on about how many flights have gone .
"The Rwanda scheme was announced two years ago this month. Since then more Home Secretaries than asylum seekers have been sent to Kigali."
Yvette Cooper.
Sunak has committed to regular flights to Rwanda by the Autumn and clearly lays the blame for the delay on Labour peers
I reserve judgement on this scheme, but it had 48/35% support in November 23 you gov poll and until it is operational its success or otherwise remains an unknown
I would suggest however that today's announcement by Sunak with flights due by June/July that an election before November- December is unlikely and I expect it to be on the 14th November or 12th December
Is that pre- or post-Election?
This is the current House of Lords.
Blaming "Labour Peers" is an interesting version of 'I can't persuade the HoL'.
(The persistence of Lib Dems in volume is interesting.)
Anyone know the difference between the crossbenchers (dark grey), non-affiliated (mid grey) and independents (light grey)? I thought all non-party aligned were known as crossbenchers, but clearly not the case.
The Wikipedia article does not seem to enlighten on this.
Without checking the numbers - I assumed that the non-affiliated were Bishops.
I would guess that Independents are those who were appointed party politically, and have since left that party for some reason or other, whereas the 'Crossbenchers' are appointed (or elected from the hereditarys) as such.
Edit to add: Looking at the graphic, it appears that the non-affiliated is more than just the 26 Bishops. Presumably Law Lords or similar are also classed as 'non-affiliated'?
Purple are the bishops. I didn't think we had law lords any more (after the SC was established?) but you may well be right that it's some kind of technical distinction, between choice of independence and requirement for some other role.
It seems to me that the German experience in both world wars was very similar in that their initial early successes were always ultimately going to prove futile thanks to their lack of resources and manpower once their enemies had got their shit together and their industrial might was simply too big to be defeated.
Very much a view of 20/20 hindsight, admittedly.
But the Schlieffen Plan failed. Ok, they got France and the rest in 1940, but Barbarossa failed too. And once they’d got themselves embroiled in trying to defend vast tracts of territory, despite their undoubted military skill and tenacious defence, they didn’t have the resources, logistics or manpower to win. Though the spring 1918 offensive caused some squeaky bums, it was a last roll of the dice and couldn’t realistically succeed. Same with the Battle of the Bulge too, for example.
A guy called Rob Thompson, who sadly died last year in his 50s of cancer, has done some fascinating work on Allied logistics in WW1 - the Germans had no chance ultimately in competing with that output. It’s mind boggling the resources the allied side had by 1917 and 1918. A similar tale by 1943 onwards. Fascinating stuff.
A bit late to the party, but re: World War II I always remember the quote that by December 1941 the Germans had decided it was a good idea to fight:
1. The largest empire in the world; and 2. The largest country in the world; and 3. The country with the largest industrial base in the world.
To do that, they decided that the two countries they'd get to help them would be Japan and Italy.
One thing that I hadn't appreciated until recently (mainly via the We Have Ways podcasts, and James Hollands excellent books) was how much harder rationing was in Germany from the start of the war than in say the UK. Despite stripping occupied territories the rationing was huge in Nazi Germany and from an early time point too. They also make some very silly choices - rather than keeping French industry in place and using them to produce equipment for the war they stripped factories and destroyed the French industry.
I have had my eyes opened to the realisation that once Britain and Empire countries stayed in the war in 1940, Hitler had lost. The nature of the defeat was not certain, or the timing, but eventually Germany would have lost. Economics is everything. Being good fighters (and despite the mythologysing, not ALL German troops were amazing) is not enough when faced with huge industrial power.
Germany (or more importantly Hitler) tried to run WWII on a peacetime economy (until 1943 at least) and by defeating their opponents within 4-8 weeks. Worked with Poland, Norway, France and the rest but didn't work with us, nor the Soviet Union.
Once October 1941 had rolled around, they were buggered, even without the US coming in.
After the Pearl Harbor attack, some FDR advisors wanted him to call for a declaration of war against Germany. Instead, he waited, expecting Hitler to make that declaration, first. Which Hitler did, haven't promised the Japanese he would.
That made it far easier for FDR to (mostly) unite the US, and to make the defeat of Germany the top priority.
Mon dieu. The upper Loire is dull. I shall spare you photographs of endless flat and vasty fields
A lot of France is like that in my experience. A good 70% of the country is Lincolnshire.
(Not that there's anything inherently wrong with Lincolnshire, in moderation. But France offers just such a dizzyingly vast amount of it.)
I wouldn’t say 70%. More like 30-40%?
Anyway near the coast is usually but not always nice. They have far fewer hideous tacky resort towns, or they hide them better. And superior weather helps
Meanwhile all the alps and Pyrenees are impressive and sometimes spectacular. Corsica just edges the Isle of Wight. The Dordogne, the Basque Country, burgundy, Provence, languedoc, savoie, Jura, the Rhone valley - the majority of France is appealing
Fair enough. France is huge and I've been to relatively little of it. Obviously the nice bits of it like the Alps are spectacular. I was thinking for example of my trip from Toulouse Airport to Andorra: the Pyrenees were splendid, but the first hour and a half of flat, unspectacular landscape and small, dead, unremarkable towns was not. And my trip from La Rochelle airport to whatever Eurocamp it was two hours to the north: mile after mile of very slightly rolling agricultural landscape. Not in any way unpleasant. But like a massive Lincolnshire wolds. And the train from the tunnel to Paris: 170 miles of flat.
But I am far from well-travelled in France and will happily bow to the experience of kjh and TimS and Leon on this.
If you want staggering French loveliness, go to Corsica. It’s called the “Ile de beaute” for a reason - it’s a stunner. Also really good cheeses, many of them not exported
Paradoxically the people are some of the most unpleasant I’ve ever met. Phenomenally rude. Even the French (mainland) think corsicans are rude. Even the Parisians think corsicans are rude
Apparently it comes from centuries of vendettas and mistrust - Dorothy Carrington talks about Corsican rudeness in her travel classic “Granite Island”
Not been, but very much on my list to visit. I have heard that meat and dairy is the focus of the local food, rather than seafood, as one might expect. This is apparently because of Corsicans congenital distrust of their coast as an open invitation to invaders. They are seemingly a mountain people who happen to live on an island, which would fit with your profile of them.
Yes - and it’s the same in Sardinia: meat and cheese not fish, as you’d expect
However the Sardinians are much much friendlier and cheerier than the corsicans. Not only are the Corsicans rude they often seem sunk in pensive gloom despite inhabiting such a spectacular island (far superior to Sardinia in beauty)
If you ever go make sure to read Carrington’s book. It’s a gem. Written decades ago but full of wit and charm and she nails it
The problem in the present one is that the actual charges are misdemeanours and therefore time barred unless they can be upgraded to felonies. The basis for doing so is that these false entries were crimes for some other purpose, also criminal. The bases for this are somewhat problematic with the possible exception of tax fraud because Trump appears to have claimed the reimbursements of Cohen as legitimate legal expenses for his businesses. I think proving these particular payments were in the legal expenses claimed is not going to be easy.
IANAL but just reading what the prosecution say it seems like proving that these particular payments were in the legal expenses claimed is going to be easy because not only will the recipient testify to it, they've got a tape of him and Trump setting up the scheme.
The other bases for claiming a criminal purpose do not seem to me to get off the ground. Trying to influence an election is not a crime: believe it or not that is what our politicians are trying to do every day, no matter how ineptly. Paying for silence is not a crime either.
Right so it wouldn't have been a crime if Trump had sent the money to Stormy Daniels himself then declared it to the Federal Elections Commission. But IIUC it is a crime to fail to declare it, assuming it's done for the purposes of the campaign. What Trump can try to persuade the court is that he didn't do it for the purposes of the campaign, he did it for some other purpose, like preventing his wife from finding out, so it wasn't a campaign-related expense. But this is going to be complicated for Trump because he apparently asked Cohen to try to stall Daniels until after the election then renege on the deal.
No, from what I have read paying off Stormy Daniels was not a legitimate expense. It was not declared but it simply could not have been declared because it was personal to him. Let's put it this way, had he declared the payments to her as an election expense he would have been prosecuted!
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Things must have changed dramatically since last June.
When we arrived last year in late afternoon Paris was heaving which was a pain because people kept walking into the pavement based bike lanes which caused some serious braking not to hit people.
The next morning (can't remember what day) we cycled from near Gare du Nord to Gare Montparnesse and again it was heaving. We were grateful for the number of reverse one way streets to protect cyclists which were safe (it is a great safety idea discussed here before and doesn't impede drivers). Solid traffic and buzzing pavements, van drivers opening their doors onto you and drivers cutting you up and trying to kill you. At the Place de la Concorde there was really only a choice between death and walking.
On the return (an afternoon) Paris was at a stand still with traffic (with the mandatory leaning on horns) so it was quicker to walk on the pavement and pick up bike lanes where we could.
I must say though cycling through the countryside in France, particularly between 12 and 2 you could be forgiven for thinking you were the only humans left.
It is decidedly odd. I noticed it yesterday - away from the absolutely main tourist areas - a peculiar quietness. I ascribed it to Sunday but today it’s the same. Part of it is the replacement of ICE cars with electric. You can hear the same evolution in london. Its good. But in Paris it also a sheer lack of traffic
Maybe nothing
I'll be there in June again so it will be interesting to see. I will be cycling from Gare du Nord to the Latin Qtr for the night and then leaving from Gare d'Austerlitz the next day and returning to Gare Montparnesse and cycling to Gare du Nord a week and a bit later. 3 different workdays.
After your recent posts I was working out how much time I have spent in Paris and France and it is huge. It runs into many years, although never longer than 3 weeks at any one time. I wasn't taught French in school and have never been there long enough to pick it up to my real regret. I have spent the equivalent of a year skiing on French slopes, I have spent the equivalent of a year touring with my family when my children were young. I have worked on and off in Paris and Nice at times. I spent 3 weeks touring with a girlfriend in the 70s and I now cycle all over France every year. I have been to Disneyland 3 times which is 2 times more than I wanted to go, but kids eh.
Out of interest what type of cycles? And will you be carrying your luggage?
Yes I carry my own luggage. Just two pannier bags on the back plus a central back bag for stuff like glasses, gloves, repair stuff etc
My bike is a town bike that has been adapted. It is a Marin but with armoured tyres and butterfly handlebars. We are off road, but usually tarmac, but we need to be able to cope with mildly rough stuff occasionally so we can't use normal touring bikes. I'll try and find a picture.
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Things must have changed dramatically since last June.
When we arrived last year in late afternoon Paris was heaving which was a pain because people kept walking into the pavement based bike lanes which caused some serious braking not to hit people.
The next morning (can't remember what day) we cycled from near Gare du Nord to Gare Montparnesse and again it was heaving. We were grateful for the number of reverse one way streets to protect cyclists which were safe (it is a great safety idea discussed here before and doesn't impede drivers). Solid traffic and buzzing pavements, van drivers opening their doors onto you and drivers cutting you up and trying to kill you. At the Place de la Concorde there was really only a choice between death and walking.
On the return (an afternoon) Paris was at a stand still with traffic (with the mandatory leaning on horns) so it was quicker to walk on the pavement and pick up bike lanes where we could.
I must say though cycling through the countryside in France, particularly between 12 and 2 you could be forgiven for thinking you were the only humans left.
It is decidedly odd. I noticed it yesterday - away from the absolutely main tourist areas - a peculiar quietness. I ascribed it to Sunday but today it’s the same. Part of it is the replacement of ICE cars with electric. You can hear the same evolution in london. Its good. But in Paris it also a sheer lack of traffic
Maybe nothing
I'll be there in June again so it will be interesting to see. I will be cycling from Gare du Nord to the Latin Qtr for the night and then leaving from Gare d'Austerlitz the next day and returning to Gare Montparnesse and cycling to Gare du Nord a week and a bit later. 3 different workdays.
After your recent posts I was working out how much time I have spent in Paris and France and it is huge. It runs into many years, although never longer than 3 weeks at any one time. I wasn't taught French in school and have never been there long enough to pick it up to my real regret. I have spent the equivalent of a year skiing on French slopes, I have spent the equivalent of a year touring with my family when my children were young. I have worked on and off in Paris and Nice at times. I spent 3 weeks touring with a girlfriend in the 70s and I now cycle all over France every year. I have been to Disneyland 3 times which is 2 times more than I wanted to go, but kids eh.
That’s a language fail, though. I did the same sums for Italy and worked out I’d spent well over a year of my life here; my Italian is now passable.
Why (absent complete dissolution of the UK) there'll never be an English parliament, and the English are quite content with that.
'To mark St George’s Day tomorrow, I asked people in Great Britain which flag they felt represented them best – the flag of their own nation, or the Union flag.
In England, nearly half (44%) chose the Union flag, with one in ten choosing the cross of St George and a further 29% saying both equally.'
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Cycling? Some of the main streets in Paris have more cyclists than cars now, and on some metrics the city has overtaken Amsterdam.
This has made it much more pleasant city to drive around with fewer cars clogging up the streets.
Yes could be. You certainly notice the profusion of cycles
On the other hand, when married to all the shuttered shops (post covid?) it brings a certain deadness to the streets. Like a perpetual Sunday
If they are following Dutch (and now British in some places) practice they may be using the concept of separated networks by type of transport. This is usually called "unravelling the modes" in English, and something unpronounceable in Dutch. Paris is trying to do change at breakneck speed.
So you may just be off a particular modal network. In London for example they have "Cycle Superhighways" (ie normal separated cycle tracks) and Quietways, which are for example walking / wheeling / cycling routes through LTNs where the motorised rat runners have been put back on through routes for motor vehicles.
Here's a 4 minute video looking at the concept, by David Hembrow in 2012. This is broad, but the same concept applies in cities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zd5tKIdOyg
In Central London an example might be the difference in facilities along the E-W Tavistock Place corridor, and Theobalds Road.
Over the next 10-20 years I'd expect the same concept to come in on North-South routes more, so that perhaps a dozen bridges will be motor free, and another dozen to be motor with minimal mobility facilities. Rather than the type of expensive and unnecessary hybrid dog's breakfast being proposed for Hammersmith Bridge.
As discussed here sometime ago one of the rules they have in France that would work well here is that cycles can go the wrong way down a one way street (provided the road is below a certain speed limit, ie not motorways and dual carriageways).
This is brilliant for both cars and bikes. Cars aren't having to constantly overtake bikes, slowing them down and can see them coming. Cyclists aren't worried about cars overtaking and hitting them or constantly having to look over their shoulders.
It is a no brainer.
Yes and pedestrians are glued to the phones as they step into the road so they won't see cyclists coming the right way, let alone the wrong way! Serves them right if they get knocked down.
It seems to me that the German experience in both world wars was very similar in that their initial early successes were always ultimately going to prove futile thanks to their lack of resources and manpower once their enemies had got their shit together and their industrial might was simply too big to be defeated.
Very much a view of 20/20 hindsight, admittedly.
But the Schlieffen Plan failed. Ok, they got France and the rest in 1940, but Barbarossa failed too. And once they’d got themselves embroiled in trying to defend vast tracts of territory, despite their undoubted military skill and tenacious defence, they didn’t have the resources, logistics or manpower to win. Though the spring 1918 offensive caused some squeaky bums, it was a last roll of the dice and couldn’t realistically succeed. Same with the Battle of the Bulge too, for example.
A guy called Rob Thompson, who sadly died last year in his 50s of cancer, has done some fascinating work on Allied logistics in WW1 - the Germans had no chance ultimately in competing with that output. It’s mind boggling the resources the allied side had by 1917 and 1918. A similar tale by 1943 onwards. Fascinating stuff.
A bit late to the party, but re: World War II I always remember the quote that by December 1941 the Germans had decided it was a good idea to fight:
1. The largest empire in the world; and 2. The largest country in the world; and 3. The country with the largest industrial base in the world.
To do that, they decided that the two countries they'd get to help them would be Japan and Italy.
Props to General Franco for keeping Spain on the sidelines; Hitler must have been miffed after the Luftwaffe won the Spanish civil war for him. Japan is a bit odd because there was very little coordination between Germany and Japan, just common enemies.
It seems to me that the German experience in both world wars was very similar in that their initial early successes were always ultimately going to prove futile thanks to their lack of resources and manpower once their enemies had got their shit together and their industrial might was simply too big to be defeated.
Very much a view of 20/20 hindsight, admittedly.
But the Schlieffen Plan failed. Ok, they got France and the rest in 1940, but Barbarossa failed too. And once they’d got themselves embroiled in trying to defend vast tracts of territory, despite their undoubted military skill and tenacious defence, they didn’t have the resources, logistics or manpower to win. Though the spring 1918 offensive caused some squeaky bums, it was a last roll of the dice and couldn’t realistically succeed. Same with the Battle of the Bulge too, for example.
A guy called Rob Thompson, who sadly died last year in his 50s of cancer, has done some fascinating work on Allied logistics in WW1 - the Germans had no chance ultimately in competing with that output. It’s mind boggling the resources the allied side had by 1917 and 1918. A similar tale by 1943 onwards. Fascinating stuff.
A bit late to the party, but re: World War II I always remember the quote that by December 1941 the Germans had decided it was a good idea to fight:
1. The largest empire in the world; and 2. The largest country in the world; and 3. The country with the largest industrial base in the world.
To do that, they decided that the two countries they'd get to help them would be Japan and Italy.
Props to General Franco for keeping Spain out of the war. Japan is a bit odd because there was very little coordination between Germany and Japan, just common enemies.
Distance notwithstanding quite a bit of technical coordination between Germany and Japan, particularly in aircraft design. Laughably the Nazis also got their racial experts to cook up some hokum about the Japanese being one of the Aryan nations.
It seems to me that the German experience in both world wars was very similar in that their initial early successes were always ultimately going to prove futile thanks to their lack of resources and manpower once their enemies had got their shit together and their industrial might was simply too big to be defeated.
Very much a view of 20/20 hindsight, admittedly.
But the Schlieffen Plan failed. Ok, they got France and the rest in 1940, but Barbarossa failed too. And once they’d got themselves embroiled in trying to defend vast tracts of territory, despite their undoubted military skill and tenacious defence, they didn’t have the resources, logistics or manpower to win. Though the spring 1918 offensive caused some squeaky bums, it was a last roll of the dice and couldn’t realistically succeed. Same with the Battle of the Bulge too, for example.
A guy called Rob Thompson, who sadly died last year in his 50s of cancer, has done some fascinating work on Allied logistics in WW1 - the Germans had no chance ultimately in competing with that output. It’s mind boggling the resources the allied side had by 1917 and 1918. A similar tale by 1943 onwards. Fascinating stuff.
A bit late to the party, but re: World War II I always remember the quote that by December 1941 the Germans had decided it was a good idea to fight:
1. The largest empire in the world; and 2. The largest country in the world; and 3. The country with the largest industrial base in the world.
To do that, they decided that the two countries they'd get to help them would be Japan and Italy.
One thing that I hadn't appreciated until recently (mainly via the We Have Ways podcasts, and James Hollands excellent books) was how much harder rationing was in Germany from the start of the war than in say the UK. Despite stripping occupied territories the rationing was huge in Nazi Germany and from an early time point too. They also make some very silly choices - rather than keeping French industry in place and using them to produce equipment for the war they stripped factories and destroyed the French industry.
I have had my eyes opened to the realisation that once Britain and Empire countries stayed in the war in 1940, Hitler had lost. The nature of the defeat was not certain, or the timing, but eventually Germany would have lost. Economics is everything. Being good fighters (and despite the mythologysing, not ALL German troops were amazing) is not enough when faced with huge industrial power.
That's why the Battle of Britain was the last time we would have a decisive role in world history. Since then, we've been an influential middleweight.
It seems to me that the German experience in both world wars was very similar in that their initial early successes were always ultimately going to prove futile thanks to their lack of resources and manpower once their enemies had got their shit together and their industrial might was simply too big to be defeated.
Very much a view of 20/20 hindsight, admittedly.
But the Schlieffen Plan failed. Ok, they got France and the rest in 1940, but Barbarossa failed too. And once they’d got themselves embroiled in trying to defend vast tracts of territory, despite their undoubted military skill and tenacious defence, they didn’t have the resources, logistics or manpower to win. Though the spring 1918 offensive caused some squeaky bums, it was a last roll of the dice and couldn’t realistically succeed. Same with the Battle of the Bulge too, for example.
A guy called Rob Thompson, who sadly died last year in his 50s of cancer, has done some fascinating work on Allied logistics in WW1 - the Germans had no chance ultimately in competing with that output. It’s mind boggling the resources the allied side had by 1917 and 1918. A similar tale by 1943 onwards. Fascinating stuff.
A bit late to the party, but re: World War II I always remember the quote that by December 1941 the Germans had decided it was a good idea to fight:
1. The largest empire in the world; and 2. The largest country in the world; and 3. The country with the largest industrial base in the world.
To do that, they decided that the two countries they'd get to help them would be Japan and Italy.
Props to General Franco for keeping Spain on the sidelines; Hitler must have been miffed after the Luftwaffe won the Spanish civil war for him. Japan is a bit odd because there was very little coordination between Germany and Japan, just common enemies.
I’ve never really understood why the Japanese decided to attack the USA. They had their hands reasonably full with China. What we now know as Indonesia makes more sense, since they had very little oil.
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Things must have changed dramatically since last June.
When we arrived last year in late afternoon Paris was heaving which was a pain because people kept walking into the pavement based bike lanes which caused some serious braking not to hit people.
The next morning (can't remember what day) we cycled from near Gare du Nord to Gare Montparnesse and again it was heaving. We were grateful for the number of reverse one way streets to protect cyclists which were safe (it is a great safety idea discussed here before and doesn't impede drivers). Solid traffic and buzzing pavements, van drivers opening their doors onto you and drivers cutting you up and trying to kill you. At the Place de la Concorde there was really only a choice between death and walking.
On the return (an afternoon) Paris was at a stand still with traffic (with the mandatory leaning on horns) so it was quicker to walk on the pavement and pick up bike lanes where we could.
I must say though cycling through the countryside in France, particularly between 12 and 2 you could be forgiven for thinking you were the only humans left.
It is decidedly odd. I noticed it yesterday - away from the absolutely main tourist areas - a peculiar quietness. I ascribed it to Sunday but today it’s the same. Part of it is the replacement of ICE cars with electric. You can hear the same evolution in london. Its good. But in Paris it also a sheer lack of traffic
Maybe nothing
I'll be there in June again so it will be interesting to see. I will be cycling from Gare du Nord to the Latin Qtr for the night and then leaving from Gare d'Austerlitz the next day and returning to Gare Montparnesse and cycling to Gare du Nord a week and a bit later. 3 different workdays.
After your recent posts I was working out how much time I have spent in Paris and France and it is huge. It runs into many years, although never longer than 3 weeks at any one time. I wasn't taught French in school and have never been there long enough to pick it up to my real regret. I have spent the equivalent of a year skiing on French slopes, I have spent the equivalent of a year touring with my family when my children were young. I have worked on and off in Paris and Nice at times. I spent 3 weeks touring with a girlfriend in the 70s and I now cycle all over France every year. I have been to Disneyland 3 times which is 2 times more than I wanted to go, but kids eh.
Out of interest what type of cycles? And will you be carrying your luggage?
Yes I carry my own luggage. Just two pannier bags on the back plus a central back bag for stuff like glasses, gloves, repair stuff etc
My bike is a town bike that has been adapted. It is a Marin but with armoured tyres and butterfly handlebars. We are off road, but usually tarmac, but we need to be able to cope with mildly rough stuff occasionally so we can't use normal touring bikes. I'll try and find a picture.
Interesting.
Mine is a decent quality light Boardman hybrid with quite a bit of MTB technology in it, and various accessories including a double sided pedals, a touring triple front gearset giving me a wide gear range (<20" to 120"), a Gruber Assist invisible e-bike kit (long thin motor in the seat post), and a front rack. I have a rear rack but that is a little heavy. These days I routinely run cameras or at least a Passpixi as it usually keeps the dodgy drivers well away.
For tyres I go for fast & puncture resistant (Marathon Supremes) but not heavily armoured - by which I assume you mean something like Marathon Pluses. I've done some roughish stuff on it, and plenty of normal trail / bridleway.
I've done a certain amount of touring, but mainly hotel to hotel or cycling friendly B&Bs.
The problem in the present one is that the actual charges are misdemeanours and therefore time barred unless they can be upgraded to felonies. The basis for doing so is that these false entries were crimes for some other purpose, also criminal. The bases for this are somewhat problematic with the possible exception of tax fraud because Trump appears to have claimed the reimbursements of Cohen as legitimate legal expenses for his businesses. I think proving these particular payments were in the legal expenses claimed is not going to be easy.
IANAL but just reading what the prosecution say it seems like proving that these particular payments were in the legal expenses claimed is going to be easy because not only will the recipient testify to it, they've got a tape of him and Trump setting up the scheme.
The other bases for claiming a criminal purpose do not seem to me to get off the ground. Trying to influence an election is not a crime: believe it or not that is what our politicians are trying to do every day, no matter how ineptly. Paying for silence is not a crime either.
Right so it wouldn't have been a crime if Trump had sent the money to Stormy Daniels himself then declared it to the Federal Elections Commission. But IIUC it is a crime to fail to declare it, assuming it's done for the purposes of the campaign. What Trump can try to persuade the court is that he didn't do it for the purposes of the campaign, he did it for some other purpose, like preventing his wife from finding out, so it wasn't a campaign-related expense. But this is going to be complicated for Trump because he apparently asked Cohen to try to stall Daniels until after the election then renege on the deal.
No, from what I have read paying off Stormy Daniels was not a legitimate expense. It was not declared but it simply could not have been declared because it was personal to him. Let's put it this way, had he declared the payments to her as an election expense he would have been prosecuted!
Not at all saying you're wrong but where did you read this?
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Cycling? Some of the main streets in Paris have more cyclists than cars now, and on some metrics the city has overtaken Amsterdam.
This has made it much more pleasant city to drive around with fewer cars clogging up the streets.
Yes could be. You certainly notice the profusion of cycles
On the other hand, when married to all the shuttered shops (post covid?) it brings a certain deadness to the streets. Like a perpetual Sunday
If they are following Dutch (and now British in some places) practice they may be using the concept of separated networks by type of transport. This is usually called "unravelling the modes" in English, and something unpronounceable in Dutch. Paris is trying to do change at breakneck speed.
So you may just be off a particular modal network. In London for example they have "Cycle Superhighways" (ie normal separated cycle tracks) and Quietways, which are for example walking / wheeling / cycling routes through LTNs where the motorised rat runners have been put back on through routes for motor vehicles.
Here's a 4 minute video looking at the concept, by David Hembrow in 2012. This is broad, but the same concept applies in cities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zd5tKIdOyg
In Central London an example might be the difference in facilities along the E-W Tavistock Place corridor, and Theobalds Road.
Over the next 10-20 years I'd expect the same concept to come in on North-South routes more, so that perhaps a dozen bridges will be motor free, and another dozen to be motor with minimal mobility facilities. Rather than the type of expensive and unnecessary hybrid dog's breakfast being proposed for Hammersmith Bridge.
As discussed here sometime ago one of the rules they have in France that would work well here is that cycles can go the wrong way down a one way street (provided the road is below a certain speed limit, ie not motorways and dual carriageways).
This is brilliant for both cars and bikes. Cars aren't having to constantly overtake bikes, slowing them down and can see them coming. Cyclists aren't worried about cars overtaking and hitting them or constantly having to look over their shoulders.
It is a no brainer.
Bikes can also go the wrong way down a one way street in this country, they changed the law a few years ago.
New York University (NYU) students have launched the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, calling on their school to divest from Israel and to end its Tel Aviv satellite campus.
The problem in the present one is that the actual charges are misdemeanours and therefore time barred unless they can be upgraded to felonies. The basis for doing so is that these false entries were crimes for some other purpose, also criminal. The bases for this are somewhat problematic with the possible exception of tax fraud because Trump appears to have claimed the reimbursements of Cohen as legitimate legal expenses for his businesses. I think proving these particular payments were in the legal expenses claimed is not going to be easy.
IANAL but just reading what the prosecution say it seems like proving that these particular payments were in the legal expenses claimed is going to be easy because not only will the recipient testify to it, they've got a tape of him and Trump setting up the scheme.
The other bases for claiming a criminal purpose do not seem to me to get off the ground. Trying to influence an election is not a crime: believe it or not that is what our politicians are trying to do every day, no matter how ineptly. Paying for silence is not a crime either.
Right so it wouldn't have been a crime if Trump had sent the money to Stormy Daniels himself then declared it to the Federal Elections Commission. But IIUC it is a crime to fail to declare it, assuming it's done for the purposes of the campaign. What Trump can try to persuade the court is that he didn't do it for the purposes of the campaign, he did it for some other purpose, like preventing his wife from finding out, so it wasn't a campaign-related expense. But this is going to be complicated for Trump because he apparently asked Cohen to try to stall Daniels until after the election then renege on the deal.
No, from what I have read paying off Stormy Daniels was not a legitimate expense. It was not declared but it simply could not have been declared because it was personal to him. Let's put it this way, had he declared the payments to her as an election expense he would have been prosecuted!
But if he'd paid such a personal expense out of his own pocket (which he's too mean to have done), what would have been the problem in this case ?
We have just had a Sainsbury's local open up with self checkout tills. This is in a posh bit of Surrey. My wife has repeatedly noticed when going to pay that the person in front of her has appeared to have paid, but there is a message - card declined.
So they have a duff card, go through the motions and appear to pay and then leave without paying. This has happened to her quite a few times now in a matter of a few month so we decided to report it, but the store was fully aware it was happening.
It seems to me that the German experience in both world wars was very similar in that their initial early successes were always ultimately going to prove futile thanks to their lack of resources and manpower once their enemies had got their shit together and their industrial might was simply too big to be defeated.
Very much a view of 20/20 hindsight, admittedly.
But the Schlieffen Plan failed. Ok, they got France and the rest in 1940, but Barbarossa failed too. And once they’d got themselves embroiled in trying to defend vast tracts of territory, despite their undoubted military skill and tenacious defence, they didn’t have the resources, logistics or manpower to win. Though the spring 1918 offensive caused some squeaky bums, it was a last roll of the dice and couldn’t realistically succeed. Same with the Battle of the Bulge too, for example.
A guy called Rob Thompson, who sadly died last year in his 50s of cancer, has done some fascinating work on Allied logistics in WW1 - the Germans had no chance ultimately in competing with that output. It’s mind boggling the resources the allied side had by 1917 and 1918. A similar tale by 1943 onwards. Fascinating stuff.
A bit late to the party, but re: World War II I always remember the quote that by December 1941 the Germans had decided it was a good idea to fight:
1. The largest empire in the world; and 2. The largest country in the world; and 3. The country with the largest industrial base in the world.
To do that, they decided that the two countries they'd get to help them would be Japan and Italy.
Props to General Franco for keeping Spain on the sidelines; Hitler must have been miffed after the Luftwaffe won the Spanish civil war for him. Japan is a bit odd because there was very little coordination between Germany and Japan, just common enemies.
I’ve never really understood why the Japanese decided to attack the USA. They had their hands reasonably full with China. What we now know as Indonesia makes more sense, since they had very little oil.
There was a reason but I've forgotten. Incidentally, many are shocked when they look at a map and find Pearl Harbor is closer to Tokyo than to New York.
According to considerable quantities of publicly available information, politics in the UK *is* populated by the weird and the wealthy.
Politics used to be a part time job, generally done by the upper middle classes. The problem with the change to professional, full time politics is that it isn’t a career - more moderately paid social work and greasy poll climbing. There’s no professional development and after 10 years in Parliament, you have no career to return to - unless you’ve created a lobbying network instead of trying to do the job.
Further, the gao between what an MP does and what we expect a Minister to do is staggering. To go from running a half dozen, very junior direct reports (with direct hire and fire), to running a department. 100ks of people, with all the internal systems and politics. And a weird, rather convoluted definition of responsibility - meaning you can’t fire civil servants if they literally lie to you.
It’s not surprising that many ministers just sign the huge piles of paper they are given. They have no idea how to do anything else.
The only way we are going to fix this is either dramatically devolve some things away from Parliament (eg set up an English Parliament as well as Westminster), or dramatically increase the number of MPs (I'd go with at least 900), or both.
Malmesbury puts his case very eloquently, but in my experience it's not quite as sharp-edged as that. MPs do have a degree of influence in Ministerial decisions, if only in the sense that the Minister has to buy their consent with concessions, and PPSs - the normal route to a Ministerial role - do see things from the inside, if only as bag-carriers. In the two Ministries where I was involved (Energy and Defra), there was the same sort of division of labour with the civil service as you get in a Council executive - the Minister set out the things that most concerned him or her, the civil service delivered a report weith option, and the Minister made choices. There was little to no personnel management.
The Yes, Minister idea that civil servants essentially run the show is true of weak Ministers, but if they come in with a clear agenda the civil service generally take a professional pride in trying to make it work, unless it's Triss-level craziness leading to formal notifications of dissent. I can't see that having another layer of government (e.g. an English Parliament) would help any of this, but separating the social work side might if every constituency had an elected Ombudsman who was expected to do just that, and MPs were banned from any official role in casework.
What policy do you find particularly crazy about Truss's time that warranted such a rebellion?
Not allowing the OBR to look at the unfunded tax cuts?
It wasn't that she instructed the Civil Service that there was a policy to be implemented, that it would be implemented, and she wanted realistic plans for doing so. She decided pretty well without consultation with civil service, financial markets, OBR, or even her own Cabinet colleagues that she was going to radically change direction, and announced it as a fait accompli.
WIth predictable consequences.
And all of that with no mandate other than from 80k tory members.
Last 6 words redundant.
Rishi wasn’t elected by Tory members - he was rejected by them as they preferred Liz Truss
The problem in the present one is that the actual charges are misdemeanours and therefore time barred unless they can be upgraded to felonies. The basis for doing so is that these false entries were crimes for some other purpose, also criminal. The bases for this are somewhat problematic with the possible exception of tax fraud because Trump appears to have claimed the reimbursements of Cohen as legitimate legal expenses for his businesses. I think proving these particular payments were in the legal expenses claimed is not going to be easy.
IANAL but just reading what the prosecution say it seems like proving that these particular payments were in the legal expenses claimed is going to be easy because not only will the recipient testify to it, they've got a tape of him and Trump setting up the scheme.
The other bases for claiming a criminal purpose do not seem to me to get off the ground. Trying to influence an election is not a crime: believe it or not that is what our politicians are trying to do every day, no matter how ineptly. Paying for silence is not a crime either.
Right so it wouldn't have been a crime if Trump had sent the money to Stormy Daniels himself then declared it to the Federal Elections Commission. But IIUC it is a crime to fail to declare it, assuming it's done for the purposes of the campaign. What Trump can try to persuade the court is that he didn't do it for the purposes of the campaign, he did it for some other purpose, like preventing his wife from finding out, so it wasn't a campaign-related expense. But this is going to be complicated for Trump because he apparently asked Cohen to try to stall Daniels until after the election then renege on the deal.
No, from what I have read paying off Stormy Daniels was not a legitimate expense. It was not declared but it simply could not have been declared because it was personal to him. Let's put it this way, had he declared the payments to her as an election expense he would have been prosecuted!
Not at all saying you're wrong but where did you read this?
The key, AIUI, is that your election expenses cannot be personal. So you can't claim a new suit, for example, even if you want to wear that suit whilst campaigning. Paying off someone you slept with and keeping them quiet might help your election campaign but it is not an expense directly related to the campaign so campaign money can't be used for it.
Mon dieu. The upper Loire is dull. I shall spare you photographs of endless flat and vasty fields
A lot of France is like that in my experience. A good 70% of the country is Lincolnshire.
(Not that there's anything inherently wrong with Lincolnshire, in moderation. But France offers just such a dizzyingly vast amount of it.)
I wouldn’t say 70%. More like 30-40%?
Anyway near the coast is usually but not always nice. They have far fewer hideous tacky resort towns, or they hide them better. And superior weather helps
Meanwhile all the alps and Pyrenees are impressive and sometimes spectacular. Corsica just edges the Isle of Wight. The Dordogne, the Basque Country, burgundy, Provence, languedoc, savoie, Jura, the Rhone valley - the majority of France is appealing
Fair enough. France is huge and I've been to relatively little of it. Obviously the nice bits of it like the Alps are spectacular. I was thinking for example of my trip from Toulouse Airport to Andorra: the Pyrenees were splendid, but the first hour and a half of flat, unspectacular landscape and small, dead, unremarkable towns was not. And my trip from La Rochelle airport to whatever Eurocamp it was two hours to the north: mile after mile of very slightly rolling agricultural landscape. Not in any way unpleasant. But like a massive Lincolnshire wolds. And the train from the tunnel to Paris: 170 miles of flat.
But I am far from well-travelled in France and will happily bow to the experience of kjh and TimS and Leon on this.
If you want staggering French loveliness, go to Corsica. It’s called the “Ile de beaute” for a reason - it’s a stunner. Also really good cheeses, many of them not exported
Paradoxically the people are some of the most unpleasant I’ve ever met. Phenomenally rude. Even the French (mainland) think corsicans are rude. Even the Parisians think corsicans are rude
Apparently it comes from centuries of vendettas and mistrust - Dorothy Carrington talks about Corsican rudeness in her travel classic “Granite Island”
Not been, but very much on my list to visit. I have heard that meat and dairy is the focus of the local food, rather than seafood, as one might expect. This is apparently because of Corsicans congenital distrust of their coast as an open invitation to invaders. They are seemingly a mountain people who happen to live on an island, which would fit with your profile of them.
Yes - and it’s the same in Sardinia: meat and cheese not fish, as you’d expect
However the Sardinians are much much friendlier and cheerier than the corsicans. Not only are the Corsicans rude they often seem sunk in pensive gloom despite inhabiting such a spectacular island (far superior to Sardinia in beauty)
If you ever go make sure to read Carrington’s book. It’s a gem. Written decades ago but full of wit and charm and she nails it
Nowhere in France seems over-blessed with happy go lucky, cheery souls (though I've not visited the outre-mer departments like Reunion so perhaps they're all happy there), but within L'Hexagone the cheeriest regions I've experienced are my own Maconnais and particularly the Beaujolais just to the South, where jollity is part of the brand, and some of the lands South of Toulouse like Corbieres and Faugeres.
It seems to me that the German experience in both world wars was very similar in that their initial early successes were always ultimately going to prove futile thanks to their lack of resources and manpower once their enemies had got their shit together and their industrial might was simply too big to be defeated.
Very much a view of 20/20 hindsight, admittedly.
But the Schlieffen Plan failed. Ok, they got France and the rest in 1940, but Barbarossa failed too. And once they’d got themselves embroiled in trying to defend vast tracts of territory, despite their undoubted military skill and tenacious defence, they didn’t have the resources, logistics or manpower to win. Though the spring 1918 offensive caused some squeaky bums, it was a last roll of the dice and couldn’t realistically succeed. Same with the Battle of the Bulge too, for example.
A guy called Rob Thompson, who sadly died last year in his 50s of cancer, has done some fascinating work on Allied logistics in WW1 - the Germans had no chance ultimately in competing with that output. It’s mind boggling the resources the allied side had by 1917 and 1918. A similar tale by 1943 onwards. Fascinating stuff.
A bit late to the party, but re: World War II I always remember the quote that by December 1941 the Germans had decided it was a good idea to fight:
1. The largest empire in the world; and 2. The largest country in the world; and 3. The country with the largest industrial base in the world.
To do that, they decided that the two countries they'd get to help them would be Japan and Italy.
One thing that I hadn't appreciated until recently (mainly via the We Have Ways podcasts, and James Hollands excellent books) was how much harder rationing was in Germany from the start of the war than in say the UK. Despite stripping occupied territories the rationing was huge in Nazi Germany and from an early time point too. They also make some very silly choices - rather than keeping French industry in place and using them to produce equipment for the war they stripped factories and destroyed the French industry.
I have had my eyes opened to the realisation that once Britain and Empire countries stayed in the war in 1940, Hitler had lost. The nature of the defeat was not certain, or the timing, but eventually Germany would have lost. Economics is everything. Being good fighters (and despite the mythologysing, not ALL German troops were amazing) is not enough when faced with huge industrial power.
That's why the Battle of Britain was the last time we would have a decisive role in world history. Since then, we've been an influential middleweight.
The way my parents and grandparents behaved, didn’t feel like it. After D Day things changed.
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Cycling? Some of the main streets in Paris have more cyclists than cars now, and on some metrics the city has overtaken Amsterdam.
This has made it much more pleasant city to drive around with fewer cars clogging up the streets.
Yes could be. You certainly notice the profusion of cycles
On the other hand, when married to all the shuttered shops (post covid?) it brings a certain deadness to the streets. Like a perpetual Sunday
If they are following Dutch (and now British in some places) practice they may be using the concept of separated networks by type of transport. This is usually called "unravelling the modes" in English, and something unpronounceable in Dutch. Paris is trying to do change at breakneck speed.
So you may just be off a particular modal network. In London for example they have "Cycle Superhighways" (ie normal separated cycle tracks) and Quietways, which are for example walking / wheeling / cycling routes through LTNs where the motorised rat runners have been put back on through routes for motor vehicles.
Here's a 4 minute video looking at the concept, by David Hembrow in 2012. This is broad, but the same concept applies in cities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zd5tKIdOyg
In Central London an example might be the difference in facilities along the E-W Tavistock Place corridor, and Theobalds Road.
Over the next 10-20 years I'd expect the same concept to come in on North-South routes more, so that perhaps a dozen bridges will be motor free, and another dozen to be motor with minimal mobility facilities. Rather than the type of expensive and unnecessary hybrid dog's breakfast being proposed for Hammersmith Bridge.
As discussed here sometime ago one of the rules they have in France that would work well here is that cycles can go the wrong way down a one way street (provided the road is below a certain speed limit, ie not motorways and dual carriageways).
This is brilliant for both cars and bikes. Cars aren't having to constantly overtake bikes, slowing them down and can see them coming. Cyclists aren't worried about cars overtaking and hitting them or constantly having to look over their shoulders.
It is a no brainer.
Bikes can also go the wrong way down a one way street in this country, they changed the law a few years ago.
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Cycling? Some of the main streets in Paris have more cyclists than cars now, and on some metrics the city has overtaken Amsterdam.
This has made it much more pleasant city to drive around with fewer cars clogging up the streets.
Yes could be. You certainly notice the profusion of cycles
On the other hand, when married to all the shuttered shops (post covid?) it brings a certain deadness to the streets. Like a perpetual Sunday
If they are following Dutch (and now British in some places) practice they may be using the concept of separated networks by type of transport. This is usually called "unravelling the modes" in English, and something unpronounceable in Dutch. Paris is trying to do change at breakneck speed.
So you may just be off a particular modal network. In London for example they have "Cycle Superhighways" (ie normal separated cycle tracks) and Quietways, which are for example walking / wheeling / cycling routes through LTNs where the motorised rat runners have been put back on through routes for motor vehicles.
Here's a 4 minute video looking at the concept, by David Hembrow in 2012. This is broad, but the same concept applies in cities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zd5tKIdOyg
In Central London an example might be the difference in facilities along the E-W Tavistock Place corridor, and Theobalds Road.
Over the next 10-20 years I'd expect the same concept to come in on North-South routes more, so that perhaps a dozen bridges will be motor free, and another dozen to be motor with minimal mobility facilities. Rather than the type of expensive and unnecessary hybrid dog's breakfast being proposed for Hammersmith Bridge.
As discussed here sometime ago one of the rules they have in France that would work well here is that cycles can go the wrong way down a one way street (provided the road is below a certain speed limit, ie not motorways and dual carriageways).
This is brilliant for both cars and bikes. Cars aren't having to constantly overtake bikes, slowing them down and can see them coming. Cyclists aren't worried about cars overtaking and hitting them or constantly having to look over their shoulders.
It is a no brainer.
Bikes can also go the wrong way down a one way street in this country, they changed the law a few years ago.
The American rule of being able to turn right at a red light (would be left here of course) is another one worth thinking about.
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Things must have changed dramatically since last June.
When we arrived last year in late afternoon Paris was heaving which was a pain because people kept walking into the pavement based bike lanes which caused some serious braking not to hit people.
The next morning (can't remember what day) we cycled from near Gare du Nord to Gare Montparnesse and again it was heaving. We were grateful for the number of reverse one way streets to protect cyclists which were safe (it is a great safety idea discussed here before and doesn't impede drivers). Solid traffic and buzzing pavements, van drivers opening their doors onto you and drivers cutting you up and trying to kill you. At the Place de la Concorde there was really only a choice between death and walking.
On the return (an afternoon) Paris was at a stand still with traffic (with the mandatory leaning on horns) so it was quicker to walk on the pavement and pick up bike lanes where we could.
I must say though cycling through the countryside in France, particularly between 12 and 2 you could be forgiven for thinking you were the only humans left.
It is decidedly odd. I noticed it yesterday - away from the absolutely main tourist areas - a peculiar quietness. I ascribed it to Sunday but today it’s the same. Part of it is the replacement of ICE cars with electric. You can hear the same evolution in london. Its good. But in Paris it also a sheer lack of traffic
Maybe nothing
I'll be there in June again so it will be interesting to see. I will be cycling from Gare du Nord to the Latin Qtr for the night and then leaving from Gare d'Austerlitz the next day and returning to Gare Montparnesse and cycling to Gare du Nord a week and a bit later. 3 different workdays.
After your recent posts I was working out how much time I have spent in Paris and France and it is huge. It runs into many years, although never longer than 3 weeks at any one time. I wasn't taught French in school and have never been there long enough to pick it up to my real regret. I have spent the equivalent of a year skiing on French slopes, I have spent the equivalent of a year touring with my family when my children were young. I have worked on and off in Paris and Nice at times. I spent 3 weeks touring with a girlfriend in the 70s and I now cycle all over France every year. I have been to Disneyland 3 times which is 2 times more than I wanted to go, but kids eh.
That’s a language fail, though. I did the same sums for Italy and worked out I’d spent well over a year of my life here; my Italian is now passable.
It is I am embarrassed to say.
My (not very erudite) theory is that some people are just not adept at languages.
Mrs P. is very clever but absolutely hopeless at languages - not helped by the fact that she went to a secondary modern where they taught no foreign languages at all (and barely taught English for that matter). She also can't mimic and can't do accents - I think it's related to a language weakness.
It seems to me that the German experience in both world wars was very similar in that their initial early successes were always ultimately going to prove futile thanks to their lack of resources and manpower once their enemies had got their shit together and their industrial might was simply too big to be defeated.
Very much a view of 20/20 hindsight, admittedly.
But the Schlieffen Plan failed. Ok, they got France and the rest in 1940, but Barbarossa failed too. And once they’d got themselves embroiled in trying to defend vast tracts of territory, despite their undoubted military skill and tenacious defence, they didn’t have the resources, logistics or manpower to win. Though the spring 1918 offensive caused some squeaky bums, it was a last roll of the dice and couldn’t realistically succeed. Same with the Battle of the Bulge too, for example.
A guy called Rob Thompson, who sadly died last year in his 50s of cancer, has done some fascinating work on Allied logistics in WW1 - the Germans had no chance ultimately in competing with that output. It’s mind boggling the resources the allied side had by 1917 and 1918. A similar tale by 1943 onwards. Fascinating stuff.
A bit late to the party, but re: World War II I always remember the quote that by December 1941 the Germans had decided it was a good idea to fight:
1. The largest empire in the world; and 2. The largest country in the world; and 3. The country with the largest industrial base in the world.
To do that, they decided that the two countries they'd get to help them would be Japan and Italy.
Props to General Franco for keeping Spain out of the war. Japan is a bit odd because there was very little coordination between Germany and Japan, just common enemies.
Distance notwithstanding quite a bit of technical coordination between Germany and Japan, particularly in aircraft design. Laughably the Nazis also got their racial experts to cook up some hokum about the Japanese being one of the Aryan nations.
One for the alternative historians is whether Hitler could have won if Japan had attacked Russia and divided Stalin's forces. They did not, and right at the end of the war, the Soviets declared war on Japan.
Wouldn't the Somme without the Generals been an improvement?
Not my department, but isn't the WW1 trope that the generals generally did a pretty good job of staying away from the front line?
I may just be thinking of Blackadder here.
Current WW1 historians are frustrated by the Blackadder, Lions Led by Donkeys view of WW1 generals that has become the accepted norm amongst the wider population. The picture is nuanced. Some were good, some were bad, like anything.
I am torn in my view of the Battle of the Somme. On one hand it seems that the disaster of the first day and the ensuing campaign threw away lives needlessly for little gain. And it's hard to see beyond that.
The flip side of the coin is that the Somme - originally planned as a huge offensive jointly with the French, but the French contribution was dramatically curtailed due to the German attack at Verdun - was a vital attritional battle, helping the French at Verdun by tying up German manpower and logistics.
It was also vital for the British Army in 1916 - largely the first time the volunteers of 1914 went into action - to actually learn how to fight, though it was certainly a bloody lesson.
It also brought hard-won lessons - the amount and density of artillery needed to properly destroy barbed wire was much greater than that used at the Somme, for example. New tactics, such as bite and hold, developed.
As for staying away from the frontline, the generals were hamstrung by poor communications. They were commanding thousands of men over a wide area and they needed to be at the centre of a vast communications hub to be contactable, receive reports and issue commands accordingly, and this was something like a chateau ten miles behind the frontline. Though the communications hub was rudimentary in the extreme and very ineffective.
Having said all that, I think there was still a willingness by the generals, or maybe too many of them, to stomach gargantuan casualties all through the war. But it was ultimately, brutally, a war of attrition.
I swing from one view to the other. I think the Somme, particularly the first day, was waste. But many argue it was the blood price that had to be paid, the school of hard knocks that had to be endured, that paved the way for eventual victory.
Interesting thanks v much. I also think that people forget/overlook/choose not to appreciate how much much of WWI we were under command of the French.
Have you been to the Somme, btw? It is fascinating. Horribly so but fascinating. You look out over a vast plain of for all the world pretty normal looking French countryside and have to remind yourself that a million people died there, many of whose bodies were never recovered.
Thank you.
To my chagrin I have never been. But I will be - if not this year, then certainly next year.
My first stopover on my road trips is usually near a WWI battlefield, in what look like old farm buildings just north of the Chemin des Dames. On my first visit I made the mistake of asking when the building was constructed, and was told that there isn’t a single building anywhere for miles around that is older than about 1920.
Had WW1 been in the UK, vast areas of our country would now look like Ilford or Hounslow.
Vast areas of our country DO look like Ilford or Hounslow
While we're on about that sort of thing: I was in Chester yesterday. The city of Chester within the walls is an unsung star in our urban firmament. Admittedly it's not quite as brimming with tourist attractions as, say, York, but a beautiful and singular and admirably well-preserved city core nonetheless.
But good grief the approach from the West is ugly. You come off the motorway, through some very nice outer suburbs, some very nice inner suburbs, and then a 1960s/70s zone of ring roads and tower blocks and utter charmlessness that feels as if its perhaps been designed as a deliberate contrast to the niceness of the city centre itself. (My particular pet hate is council-built tower blocks which deliberately sit at an angle to the streets they should be addressing. It's bad enough that they're ugly; at least try to make them look as if they're a coherent part of the urban landscape.) This ugliness feels too stark to have happened by sheer carelessness; it's as if those responsible for shaping our cities in the 60s and 70s actively wanted to make the environment as unpleasant as possible. I say this not to single Chester out, but to make the point that not even our loveliest cities have been immune from Hounslowification. (But that aside, you should still definitely visit Chester.)
It was not an accident. The 1960s did this and did so knowingly. If you put together the forgetfulness of brutalism (the name is not an accident) + lack of talent + building on the cheap + the dominance of the car + greed + 'government knows best' you can see the result.
A list of the places not so terribly afflicted is short, but longer than the list of places people love because brutalism worked well. Most were too small to bother with wrecking; some places so large you could not wreck it all. Stamford is my personal favourite.
Brutalism is a French name - it comes from “brute” or raw & generally exposes the raw materials the building is constructed from. You can have a brutalist wooden building just as you can a concrete one.
The problem is not brutalism per se (although it can lead to something of a “one-note” texture to buildings which doesn’t always work) but the god-awful concrete monstrosities that were built & then (crucially) not maintained properly afterwards.
The Barbican is a brutalist building, but remains a well regarded, popular place that people are keen to live in. Other tower blocks built around the same time are ... not as popular as the Barbican.
The Barbican is a very interesting piece of urbanism - fascinating to visit, and I can understand why people like it there - it's well located, and from what I understand the flats are very nice* inside. It shows what brutalism is *supposed* to be. But even at its best, it can be rather bleak. I'm glad all of our cities don't look like this.
A facet of architecture which never really gets considered in enough detail is the albedo of the building. The taller the building, the more light it cuts out, so the more important it is to be reflective. This is why glass skyscrapers can add rather than detract to the urban landscape, whereas concrete ones tend to have the opposite effect.
*One thing flats like this got right is the amount of light they tended to let in. I remember staying the night on the 12th floor of a horrible building in inner East London - but inside, the light filled up the place and the views were amazing.
Defending brutalism on the basis that we're not spending enough on polishing the pebble dash is rather daft. The buildings are fundamentally not good to look at. The brutalists deliberately eschewed long-held notions of architectural beauty - and lo, their buildings were fuck ugly. None should remain on the planet. We have the ability to document them in great detail without having to live amongst them.
What do you think of those buildings I posted pics of in Manchester @Luckyguy1983 ? Sharston Baths for example - I think that qualifies as 'brutalism' yet was rather nice. I agree that where long-held notions of architectural beauty (like the buildings addressing the street) were eschewed then the results were awful. But I think beautiful - or at least non-ugly - brutalism does exist. It's certainly not my favourite architectural genre. But it's not uniformly awful. I'd say the problem is that too many architects used 'modern' to excuse them from the need to be any good.
I found some of them less ugly than other examples of the genre, because they incorporated one or other if the rules of visually pleasing buildings. All of them could have looked a lot better if they'd worked within all the rules, but then they wouldn't have been brutalist. I am yet to be convinced that looking like a space age prison colony isn't 'the whole point' of brutalist architecture.
According to considerable quantities of publicly available information, politics in the UK *is* populated by the weird and the wealthy.
Politics used to be a part time job, generally done by the upper middle classes. The problem with the change to professional, full time politics is that it isn’t a career - more moderately paid social work and greasy poll climbing. There’s no professional development and after 10 years in Parliament, you have no career to return to - unless you’ve created a lobbying network instead of trying to do the job.
Further, the gao between what an MP does and what we expect a Minister to do is staggering. To go from running a half dozen, very junior direct reports (with direct hire and fire), to running a department. 100ks of people, with all the internal systems and politics. And a weird, rather convoluted definition of responsibility - meaning you can’t fire civil servants if they literally lie to you.
It’s not surprising that many ministers just sign the huge piles of paper they are given. They have no idea how to do anything else.
The only way we are going to fix this is either dramatically devolve some things away from Parliament (eg set up an English Parliament as well as Westminster), or dramatically increase the number of MPs (I'd go with at least 900), or both.
Malmesbury puts his case very eloquently, but in my experience it's not quite as sharp-edged as that. MPs do have a degree of influence in Ministerial decisions, if only in the sense that the Minister has to buy their consent with concessions, and PPSs - the normal route to a Ministerial role - do see things from the inside, if only as bag-carriers. In the two Ministries where I was involved (Energy and Defra), there was the same sort of division of labour with the civil service as you get in a Council executive - the Minister set out the things that most concerned him or her, the civil service delivered a report weith option, and the Minister made choices. There was little to no personnel management.
The Yes, Minister idea that civil servants essentially run the show is true of weak Ministers, but if they come in with a clear agenda the civil service generally take a professional pride in trying to make it work, unless it's Triss-level craziness leading to formal notifications of dissent. I can't see that having another layer of government (e.g. an English Parliament) would help any of this, but separating the social work side might if every constituency had an elected Ombudsman who was expected to do just that, and MPs were banned from any official role in casework.
What policy do you find particularly crazy about Truss's time that warranted such a rebellion?
Not allowing the OBR to look at the unfunded tax cuts?
It wasn't that she instructed the Civil Service that there was a policy to be implemented, that it would be implemented, and she wanted realistic plans for doing so. She decided pretty well without consultation with civil service, financial markets, OBR, or even her own Cabinet colleagues that she was going to radically change direction, and announced it as a fait accompli.
WIth predictable consequences.
And all of that with no mandate other than from 80k tory members.
Last 6 words redundant.
Rishi wasn’t elected by Tory members - he was rejected by them as they preferred Liz Truss
Quite rightly as it later turned out.
According to you and just about nobody else.
How many people think Truss was a better PM than even the utterly dismal Sunak?
He's terrible, she was worse; that's what history will record.
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Things must have changed dramatically since last June.
When we arrived last year in late afternoon Paris was heaving which was a pain because people kept walking into the pavement based bike lanes which caused some serious braking not to hit people.
The next morning (can't remember what day) we cycled from near Gare du Nord to Gare Montparnesse and again it was heaving. We were grateful for the number of reverse one way streets to protect cyclists which were safe (it is a great safety idea discussed here before and doesn't impede drivers). Solid traffic and buzzing pavements, van drivers opening their doors onto you and drivers cutting you up and trying to kill you. At the Place de la Concorde there was really only a choice between death and walking.
On the return (an afternoon) Paris was at a stand still with traffic (with the mandatory leaning on horns) so it was quicker to walk on the pavement and pick up bike lanes where we could.
I must say though cycling through the countryside in France, particularly between 12 and 2 you could be forgiven for thinking you were the only humans left.
It is decidedly odd. I noticed it yesterday - away from the absolutely main tourist areas - a peculiar quietness. I ascribed it to Sunday but today it’s the same. Part of it is the replacement of ICE cars with electric. You can hear the same evolution in london. Its good. But in Paris it also a sheer lack of traffic
Maybe nothing
I'll be there in June again so it will be interesting to see. I will be cycling from Gare du Nord to the Latin Qtr for the night and then leaving from Gare d'Austerlitz the next day and returning to Gare Montparnesse and cycling to Gare du Nord a week and a bit later. 3 different workdays.
After your recent posts I was working out how much time I have spent in Paris and France and it is huge. It runs into many years, although never longer than 3 weeks at any one time. I wasn't taught French in school and have never been there long enough to pick it up to my real regret. I have spent the equivalent of a year skiing on French slopes, I have spent the equivalent of a year touring with my family when my children were young. I have worked on and off in Paris and Nice at times. I spent 3 weeks touring with a girlfriend in the 70s and I now cycle all over France every year. I have been to Disneyland 3 times which is 2 times more than I wanted to go, but kids eh.
Out of interest what type of cycles? And will you be carrying your luggage?
Yes I carry my own luggage. Just two pannier bags on the back plus a central back bag for stuff like glasses, gloves, repair stuff etc
My bike is a town bike that has been adapted. It is a Marin but with armoured tyres and butterfly handlebars. We are off road, but usually tarmac, but we need to be able to cope with mildly rough stuff occasionally so we can't use normal touring bikes. I'll try and find a picture.
I had only been proper road cycling for eight weeks (at 42 years old!) before I embarked on a fortnight’s cycle touring in the south of France on mainly country roads and a few Route Nationals. I was immediately struck by the respect given to cyclists, with even the big trucks on the RN giving me the whole carriageway when overtaking. If it hadn’t been for the tarmac melting in 30+ degree sunshine it would have been perfect.
It seems to me that the German experience in both world wars was very similar in that their initial early successes were always ultimately going to prove futile thanks to their lack of resources and manpower once their enemies had got their shit together and their industrial might was simply too big to be defeated.
Very much a view of 20/20 hindsight, admittedly.
But the Schlieffen Plan failed. Ok, they got France and the rest in 1940, but Barbarossa failed too. And once they’d got themselves embroiled in trying to defend vast tracts of territory, despite their undoubted military skill and tenacious defence, they didn’t have the resources, logistics or manpower to win. Though the spring 1918 offensive caused some squeaky bums, it was a last roll of the dice and couldn’t realistically succeed. Same with the Battle of the Bulge too, for example.
A guy called Rob Thompson, who sadly died last year in his 50s of cancer, has done some fascinating work on Allied logistics in WW1 - the Germans had no chance ultimately in competing with that output. It’s mind boggling the resources the allied side had by 1917 and 1918. A similar tale by 1943 onwards. Fascinating stuff.
A bit late to the party, but re: World War II I always remember the quote that by December 1941 the Germans had decided it was a good idea to fight:
1. The largest empire in the world; and 2. The largest country in the world; and 3. The country with the largest industrial base in the world.
To do that, they decided that the two countries they'd get to help them would be Japan and Italy.
Props to General Franco for keeping Spain on the sidelines; Hitler must have been miffed after the Luftwaffe won the Spanish civil war for him. Japan is a bit odd because there was very little coordination between Germany and Japan, just common enemies.
Apparently Churchill and Sir Samuel Hoare got up to considerable skulduggery to keep Spain neutral.
It seems to me that the German experience in both world wars was very similar in that their initial early successes were always ultimately going to prove futile thanks to their lack of resources and manpower once their enemies had got their shit together and their industrial might was simply too big to be defeated.
Very much a view of 20/20 hindsight, admittedly.
But the Schlieffen Plan failed. Ok, they got France and the rest in 1940, but Barbarossa failed too. And once they’d got themselves embroiled in trying to defend vast tracts of territory, despite their undoubted military skill and tenacious defence, they didn’t have the resources, logistics or manpower to win. Though the spring 1918 offensive caused some squeaky bums, it was a last roll of the dice and couldn’t realistically succeed. Same with the Battle of the Bulge too, for example.
A guy called Rob Thompson, who sadly died last year in his 50s of cancer, has done some fascinating work on Allied logistics in WW1 - the Germans had no chance ultimately in competing with that output. It’s mind boggling the resources the allied side had by 1917 and 1918. A similar tale by 1943 onwards. Fascinating stuff.
A bit late to the party, but re: World War II I always remember the quote that by December 1941 the Germans had decided it was a good idea to fight:
1. The largest empire in the world; and 2. The largest country in the world; and 3. The country with the largest industrial base in the world.
To do that, they decided that the two countries they'd get to help them would be Japan and Italy.
One thing that I hadn't appreciated until recently (mainly via the We Have Ways podcasts, and James Hollands excellent books) was how much harder rationing was in Germany from the start of the war than in say the UK. Despite stripping occupied territories the rationing was huge in Nazi Germany and from an early time point too. They also make some very silly choices - rather than keeping French industry in place and using them to produce equipment for the war they stripped factories and destroyed the French industry.
I have had my eyes opened to the realisation that once Britain and Empire countries stayed in the war in 1940, Hitler had lost. The nature of the defeat was not certain, or the timing, but eventually Germany would have lost. Economics is everything. Being good fighters (and despite the mythologysing, not ALL German troops were amazing) is not enough when faced with huge industrial power.
Germany (or more importantly Hitler) tried to run WWII on a peacetime economy (until 1943 at least) and by defeating their opponents within 4-8 weeks. Worked with Poland, Norway, France and the rest but didn't work with us, nor the Soviet Union.
Once October 1941 had rolled around, they were buggered, even without the US coming in.
Basically ww2 was all over after Stalingrad. Strangely this decisive battle is rarely mentioned in our media.
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Cycling? Some of the main streets in Paris have more cyclists than cars now, and on some metrics the city has overtaken Amsterdam.
This has made it much more pleasant city to drive around with fewer cars clogging up the streets.
Yes could be. You certainly notice the profusion of cycles
On the other hand, when married to all the shuttered shops (post covid?) it brings a certain deadness to the streets. Like a perpetual Sunday
If they are following Dutch (and now British in some places) practice they may be using the concept of separated networks by type of transport. This is usually called "unravelling the modes" in English, and something unpronounceable in Dutch. Paris is trying to do change at breakneck speed.
So you may just be off a particular modal network. In London for example they have "Cycle Superhighways" (ie normal separated cycle tracks) and Quietways, which are for example walking / wheeling / cycling routes through LTNs where the motorised rat runners have been put back on through routes for motor vehicles.
Here's a 4 minute video looking at the concept, by David Hembrow in 2012. This is broad, but the same concept applies in cities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zd5tKIdOyg
In Central London an example might be the difference in facilities along the E-W Tavistock Place corridor, and Theobalds Road.
Over the next 10-20 years I'd expect the same concept to come in on North-South routes more, so that perhaps a dozen bridges will be motor free, and another dozen to be motor with minimal mobility facilities. Rather than the type of expensive and unnecessary hybrid dog's breakfast being proposed for Hammersmith Bridge.
As discussed here sometime ago one of the rules they have in France that would work well here is that cycles can go the wrong way down a one way street (provided the road is below a certain speed limit, ie not motorways and dual carriageways).
This is brilliant for both cars and bikes. Cars aren't having to constantly overtake bikes, slowing them down and can see them coming. Cyclists aren't worried about cars overtaking and hitting them or constantly having to look over their shoulders.
It is a no brainer.
Bikes can also go the wrong way down a one way street in this country, they changed the law a few years ago.
The problem in the present one is that the actual charges are misdemeanours and therefore time barred unless they can be upgraded to felonies. The basis for doing so is that these false entries were crimes for some other purpose, also criminal. The bases for this are somewhat problematic with the possible exception of tax fraud because Trump appears to have claimed the reimbursements of Cohen as legitimate legal expenses for his businesses. I think proving these particular payments were in the legal expenses claimed is not going to be easy.
IANAL but just reading what the prosecution say it seems like proving that these particular payments were in the legal expenses claimed is going to be easy because not only will the recipient testify to it, they've got a tape of him and Trump setting up the scheme.
The other bases for claiming a criminal purpose do not seem to me to get off the ground. Trying to influence an election is not a crime: believe it or not that is what our politicians are trying to do every day, no matter how ineptly. Paying for silence is not a crime either.
Right so it wouldn't have been a crime if Trump had sent the money to Stormy Daniels himself then declared it to the Federal Elections Commission. But IIUC it is a crime to fail to declare it, assuming it's done for the purposes of the campaign. What Trump can try to persuade the court is that he didn't do it for the purposes of the campaign, he did it for some other purpose, like preventing his wife from finding out, so it wasn't a campaign-related expense. But this is going to be complicated for Trump because he apparently asked Cohen to try to stall Daniels until after the election then renege on the deal.
No, from what I have read paying off Stormy Daniels was not a legitimate expense. It was not declared but it simply could not have been declared because it was personal to him. Let's put it this way, had he declared the payments to her as an election expense he would have been prosecuted!
Not at all saying you're wrong but where did you read this?
The key, AIUI, is that your election expenses cannot be personal. So you can't claim a new suit, for example, even if you want to wear that suit whilst campaigning. Paying off someone you slept with and keeping them quiet might help your election campaign but it is not an expense directly related to the campaign so campaign money can't be used for it.
I don't see what you're saying in the piece you linked. They talk about the John Edwards case, but the problem there resulting in the (failed) prosecution was that he got someone else to pay, and they spent more than an individual can donate, plus the campaign failed to report it. This is also what they already convicted Cohen for.
It seems to me that the German experience in both world wars was very similar in that their initial early successes were always ultimately going to prove futile thanks to their lack of resources and manpower once their enemies had got their shit together and their industrial might was simply too big to be defeated.
Very much a view of 20/20 hindsight, admittedly.
But the Schlieffen Plan failed. Ok, they got France and the rest in 1940, but Barbarossa failed too. And once they’d got themselves embroiled in trying to defend vast tracts of territory, despite their undoubted military skill and tenacious defence, they didn’t have the resources, logistics or manpower to win. Though the spring 1918 offensive caused some squeaky bums, it was a last roll of the dice and couldn’t realistically succeed. Same with the Battle of the Bulge too, for example.
A guy called Rob Thompson, who sadly died last year in his 50s of cancer, has done some fascinating work on Allied logistics in WW1 - the Germans had no chance ultimately in competing with that output. It’s mind boggling the resources the allied side had by 1917 and 1918. A similar tale by 1943 onwards. Fascinating stuff.
A bit late to the party, but re: World War II I always remember the quote that by December 1941 the Germans had decided it was a good idea to fight:
1. The largest empire in the world; and 2. The largest country in the world; and 3. The country with the largest industrial base in the world.
To do that, they decided that the two countries they'd get to help them would be Japan and Italy.
Props to General Franco for keeping Spain on the sidelines; Hitler must have been miffed after the Luftwaffe won the Spanish civil war for him. Japan is a bit odd because there was very little coordination between Germany and Japan, just common enemies.
I’ve never really understood why the Japanese decided to attack the USA. They had their hands reasonably full with China. What we now know as Indonesia makes more sense, since they had very little oil.
Because the regime believed - rightly or wrongly - that war with the US was inevitable, and that a surprise blow was their best chance ? Don't forget the US annexed Hawaii and the Philippines in the 1890s, so they were seen as an expansionist competitor. The Japanese occupation of Korea - and well as being straightforward imperial conquest - can be viewed in the same way.
And it's not as though they were an entirely rational bunch. Some of the naval leaders were aware of it's futility (I think), but honour demanded they do it anyway.
Don't forget that their empire also required oil, and a completely secure supply was impossible without conquest - which mean conflict with the US.
In reply to @MattW (I don't know why but I wasn't allowed to use quote. Kept saying I was 1 character too short)
Yes we are hotel/B&B to hotel/B&B. 3 chateaux overnighters in the next trip which I am looking forward to.
You are a different league to me. You sound like one of those chaps who waves to me kindly as they go hammering past. I don't even know what some of that stuff means.
I do have an upmarket off road bike (well it was, probably isn't now), but that hangs from the garage wall as I am too old for it now. I do love hydraulic brakes though, so I miss those, which I have on the off road bike. Might be a bit dangerous on a road bike I think. I also gave up on the clip on shoes sometime ago having had a few near misses with the ground.
Why (absent complete dissolution of the UK) there'll never be an English parliament, and the English are quite content with that.
'To mark St George’s Day tomorrow, I asked people in Great Britain which flag they felt represented them best – the flag of their own nation, or the Union flag.
In England, nearly half (44%) chose the Union flag, with one in ten choosing the cross of St George and a further 29% saying both equally.'
Btw nice to see Ashcroft turning his gaze away from Rayner for a moment.
The lack of identification toward England is one factor making the establishment of an English parliament less likely, but not imo the most important blocker, which is that officialdom wants England to be balkanised along European federal lines, so that's the agenda constantly being pushed, and indeed we see it being reheated and splatted on to a plate as if it's a delicous new recipe with Starmer.
The problem in the present one is that the actual charges are misdemeanours and therefore time barred unless they can be upgraded to felonies. The basis for doing so is that these false entries were crimes for some other purpose, also criminal. The bases for this are somewhat problematic with the possible exception of tax fraud because Trump appears to have claimed the reimbursements of Cohen as legitimate legal expenses for his businesses. I think proving these particular payments were in the legal expenses claimed is not going to be easy.
IANAL but just reading what the prosecution say it seems like proving that these particular payments were in the legal expenses claimed is going to be easy because not only will the recipient testify to it, they've got a tape of him and Trump setting up the scheme.
The other bases for claiming a criminal purpose do not seem to me to get off the ground. Trying to influence an election is not a crime: believe it or not that is what our politicians are trying to do every day, no matter how ineptly. Paying for silence is not a crime either.
Right so it wouldn't have been a crime if Trump had sent the money to Stormy Daniels himself then declared it to the Federal Elections Commission. But IIUC it is a crime to fail to declare it, assuming it's done for the purposes of the campaign. What Trump can try to persuade the court is that he didn't do it for the purposes of the campaign, he did it for some other purpose, like preventing his wife from finding out, so it wasn't a campaign-related expense. But this is going to be complicated for Trump because he apparently asked Cohen to try to stall Daniels until after the election then renege on the deal.
No, from what I have read paying off Stormy Daniels was not a legitimate expense. It was not declared but it simply could not have been declared because it was personal to him. Let's put it this way, had he declared the payments to her as an election expense he would have been prosecuted!
Not at all saying you're wrong but where did you read this?
The key, AIUI, is that your election expenses cannot be personal. So you can't claim a new suit, for example, even if you want to wear that suit whilst campaigning. Paying off someone you slept with and keeping them quiet might help your election campaign but it is not an expense directly related to the campaign so campaign money can't be used for it.
AIUI this the pretence that personal expenses to silence women could be part of the further waves of prosecutions that may be coming for Trump, which if misapplied as expenses could include tax fraud by not treating them as personal income.
I am not sure where attempting to manipulate an election by supressing information material to the electorate's perception of him is outlawed by New York law, but that is auui the indictments.
That is the 'buy womens' stories then suppress them process', know as 'catch and kill' - as organised by David Pecker of National Enquirer and then Cohen his legal agent who has had a prison sentence and is a witness this time.
It seems to me that the German experience in both world wars was very similar in that their initial early successes were always ultimately going to prove futile thanks to their lack of resources and manpower once their enemies had got their shit together and their industrial might was simply too big to be defeated.
Very much a view of 20/20 hindsight, admittedly.
But the Schlieffen Plan failed. Ok, they got France and the rest in 1940, but Barbarossa failed too. And once they’d got themselves embroiled in trying to defend vast tracts of territory, despite their undoubted military skill and tenacious defence, they didn’t have the resources, logistics or manpower to win. Though the spring 1918 offensive caused some squeaky bums, it was a last roll of the dice and couldn’t realistically succeed. Same with the Battle of the Bulge too, for example.
A guy called Rob Thompson, who sadly died last year in his 50s of cancer, has done some fascinating work on Allied logistics in WW1 - the Germans had no chance ultimately in competing with that output. It’s mind boggling the resources the allied side had by 1917 and 1918. A similar tale by 1943 onwards. Fascinating stuff.
A bit late to the party, but re: World War II I always remember the quote that by December 1941 the Germans had decided it was a good idea to fight:
1. The largest empire in the world; and 2. The largest country in the world; and 3. The country with the largest industrial base in the world.
To do that, they decided that the two countries they'd get to help them would be Japan and Italy.
One thing that I hadn't appreciated until recently (mainly via the We Have Ways podcasts, and James Hollands excellent books) was how much harder rationing was in Germany from the start of the war than in say the UK. Despite stripping occupied territories the rationing was huge in Nazi Germany and from an early time point too. They also make some very silly choices - rather than keeping French industry in place and using them to produce equipment for the war they stripped factories and destroyed the French industry.
I have had my eyes opened to the realisation that once Britain and Empire countries stayed in the war in 1940, Hitler had lost. The nature of the defeat was not certain, or the timing, but eventually Germany would have lost. Economics is everything. Being good fighters (and despite the mythologysing, not ALL German troops were amazing) is not enough when faced with huge industrial power.
Germany (or more importantly Hitler) tried to run WWII on a peacetime economy (until 1943 at least) and by defeating their opponents within 4-8 weeks. Worked with Poland, Norway, France and the rest but didn't work with us, nor the Soviet Union.
Once October 1941 had rolled around, they were buggered, even without the US coming in.
Basically ww2 was all over after Stalingrad. Strangely this decisive battle is rarely mentioned in our media.
To anyone interested in World War II in Europe, you read about the Eastern Front. Because thats were the vast majority of the land fighting happened. And I'd largely disagree. I mean, David Mitchell spent the first season of Peep show with a copy of Beever's 'Stalingrad' following him around.
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Things must have changed dramatically since last June.
When we arrived last year in late afternoon Paris was heaving which was a pain because people kept walking into the pavement based bike lanes which caused some serious braking not to hit people.
The next morning (can't remember what day) we cycled from near Gare du Nord to Gare Montparnesse and again it was heaving. We were grateful for the number of reverse one way streets to protect cyclists which were safe (it is a great safety idea discussed here before and doesn't impede drivers). Solid traffic and buzzing pavements, van drivers opening their doors onto you and drivers cutting you up and trying to kill you. At the Place de la Concorde there was really only a choice between death and walking.
On the return (an afternoon) Paris was at a stand still with traffic (with the mandatory leaning on horns) so it was quicker to walk on the pavement and pick up bike lanes where we could.
I must say though cycling through the countryside in France, particularly between 12 and 2 you could be forgiven for thinking you were the only humans left.
It is decidedly odd. I noticed it yesterday - away from the absolutely main tourist areas - a peculiar quietness. I ascribed it to Sunday but today it’s the same. Part of it is the replacement of ICE cars with electric. You can hear the same evolution in london. Its good. But in Paris it also a sheer lack of traffic
Maybe nothing
I'll be there in June again so it will be interesting to see. I will be cycling from Gare du Nord to the Latin Qtr for the night and then leaving from Gare d'Austerlitz the next day and returning to Gare Montparnesse and cycling to Gare du Nord a week and a bit later. 3 different workdays.
After your recent posts I was working out how much time I have spent in Paris and France and it is huge. It runs into many years, although never longer than 3 weeks at any one time. I wasn't taught French in school and have never been there long enough to pick it up to my real regret. I have spent the equivalent of a year skiing on French slopes, I have spent the equivalent of a year touring with my family when my children were young. I have worked on and off in Paris and Nice at times. I spent 3 weeks touring with a girlfriend in the 70s and I now cycle all over France every year. I have been to Disneyland 3 times which is 2 times more than I wanted to go, but kids eh.
That’s a language fail, though. I did the same sums for Italy and worked out I’d spent well over a year of my life here; my Italian is now passable.
It is I am embarrassed to say.
My (not very erudite) theory is that some people are just not adept at languages.
Mrs P. is very clever but absolutely hopeless at languages - not helped by the fact that she went to a secondary modern where they taught no foreign languages at all (and barely taught English for that matter). She also can't mimic and can't do accents - I think it's related to a language weakness.
I went to a Secondary Modern before moving onto a Grammar school and had the same issue. It really didn't help.
It seems to me that the German experience in both world wars was very similar in that their initial early successes were always ultimately going to prove futile thanks to their lack of resources and manpower once their enemies had got their shit together and their industrial might was simply too big to be defeated.
Very much a view of 20/20 hindsight, admittedly.
But the Schlieffen Plan failed. Ok, they got France and the rest in 1940, but Barbarossa failed too. And once they’d got themselves embroiled in trying to defend vast tracts of territory, despite their undoubted military skill and tenacious defence, they didn’t have the resources, logistics or manpower to win. Though the spring 1918 offensive caused some squeaky bums, it was a last roll of the dice and couldn’t realistically succeed. Same with the Battle of the Bulge too, for example.
A guy called Rob Thompson, who sadly died last year in his 50s of cancer, has done some fascinating work on Allied logistics in WW1 - the Germans had no chance ultimately in competing with that output. It’s mind boggling the resources the allied side had by 1917 and 1918. A similar tale by 1943 onwards. Fascinating stuff.
A bit late to the party, but re: World War II I always remember the quote that by December 1941 the Germans had decided it was a good idea to fight:
1. The largest empire in the world; and 2. The largest country in the world; and 3. The country with the largest industrial base in the world.
To do that, they decided that the two countries they'd get to help them would be Japan and Italy.
Part of the reason that the Germans went into WWI, was the runaway expansion of the Russian economy before the war.
They thought that they had to fight now - since in a decade they would be facing a vastly superior foe.
This economic transformation of Russia was lost in the revolution and mostly forgotten today.
According to considerable quantities of publicly available information, politics in the UK *is* populated by the weird and the wealthy.
Politics used to be a part time job, generally done by the upper middle classes. The problem with the change to professional, full time politics is that it isn’t a career - more moderately paid social work and greasy poll climbing. There’s no professional development and after 10 years in Parliament, you have no career to return to - unless you’ve created a lobbying network instead of trying to do the job.
Further, the gao between what an MP does and what we expect a Minister to do is staggering. To go from running a half dozen, very junior direct reports (with direct hire and fire), to running a department. 100ks of people, with all the internal systems and politics. And a weird, rather convoluted definition of responsibility - meaning you can’t fire civil servants if they literally lie to you.
It’s not surprising that many ministers just sign the huge piles of paper they are given. They have no idea how to do anything else.
The only way we are going to fix this is either dramatically devolve some things away from Parliament (eg set up an English Parliament as well as Westminster), or dramatically increase the number of MPs (I'd go with at least 900), or both.
Malmesbury puts his case very eloquently, but in my experience it's not quite as sharp-edged as that. MPs do have a degree of influence in Ministerial decisions, if only in the sense that the Minister has to buy their consent with concessions, and PPSs - the normal route to a Ministerial role - do see things from the inside, if only as bag-carriers. In the two Ministries where I was involved (Energy and Defra), there was the same sort of division of labour with the civil service as you get in a Council executive - the Minister set out the things that most concerned him or her, the civil service delivered a report weith option, and the Minister made choices. There was little to no personnel management.
The Yes, Minister idea that civil servants essentially run the show is true of weak Ministers, but if they come in with a clear agenda the civil service generally take a professional pride in trying to make it work, unless it's Triss-level craziness leading to formal notifications of dissent. I can't see that having another layer of government (e.g. an English Parliament) would help any of this, but separating the social work side might if every constituency had an elected Ombudsman who was expected to do just that, and MPs were banned from any official role in casework.
What policy do you find particularly crazy about Truss's time that warranted such a rebellion?
Not allowing the OBR to look at the unfunded tax cuts?
It wasn't that she instructed the Civil Service that there was a policy to be implemented, that it would be implemented, and she wanted realistic plans for doing so. She decided pretty well without consultation with civil service, financial markets, OBR, or even her own Cabinet colleagues that she was going to radically change direction, and announced it as a fait accompli.
WIth predictable consequences.
And all of that with no mandate other than from 80k tory members.
Last 6 words redundant.
Rishi wasn’t elected by Tory members - he was rejected by them as they preferred Liz Truss
Quite rightly as it later turned out.
According to you and just about nobody else.
How many people think Truss was a better PM than even the utterly dismal Sunak?
He's terrible, she was worse; that's what history will record.
According to the British public, Sunak has been polling lower than Truss at her worst - and let's remember that was a Government in a major crisis. This is just 'Monday' for Sunak.
Still a chunky disagreement with R+W on the split between Conservatives and Reform.
You would rather be ahead than behind but the difference is around the margin of error anyway. An unfortunate mistake for a leading opinion poll company to make but none of us is perfect and I appreciate them being open about it.
I suspect TSE's line holds true. WM is hard to call and the value remains with Street.
Tees looks like a Con edge (even ion a 20%+ swing since 2021), London and EM look Lab. The others and the PCC presumably won't have markets but their results will be very interesting
In reply to @MattW (I don't know why but I wasn't allowed to use quote. Kept saying I was 1 character too short)
Yes we are hotel/B&B to hotel/B&B. 3 chateaux overnighters in the next trip which I am looking forward to.
You are a different league to me. You sound like one of those chaps who waves to me kindly as they go hammering past. I don't even know what some of that stuff means.
I do have an upmarket off road bike (well it was, probably isn't now), but that hangs from the garage wall as I am too old for it now. I do love hydraulic brakes though, so I miss those, which I have on the off road bike. Might be a bit dangerous on a road bike I think. I also gave up on the clip on shoes sometime ago having had a few near misses with the ground.
He. I never go hammering anywhere, but I have a nerd tendency. I also live in a massively car-brained area with huge antisocial parking problems and little cycle parking.
Recent illness has prevented any cycling beyond about 10 miles, but I picked up an e-folder a few weeks ago for local trips as they were half price. I'm using it to try and educate my local hospital about active travel - it gets taken right into the consulting room.
Wouldn't the Somme without the Generals been an improvement?
Not my department, but isn't the WW1 trope that the generals generally did a pretty good job of staying away from the front line?
I may just be thinking of Blackadder here.
Current WW1 historians are frustrated by the Blackadder, Lions Led by Donkeys view of WW1 generals that has become the accepted norm amongst the wider population. The picture is nuanced. Some were good, some were bad, like anything.
I am torn in my view of the Battle of the Somme. On one hand it seems that the disaster of the first day and the ensuing campaign threw away lives needlessly for little gain. And it's hard to see beyond that.
The flip side of the coin is that the Somme - originally planned as a huge offensive jointly with the French, but the French contribution was dramatically curtailed due to the German attack at Verdun - was a vital attritional battle, helping the French at Verdun by tying up German manpower and logistics.
It was also vital for the British Army in 1916 - largely the first time the volunteers of 1914 went into action - to actually learn how to fight, though it was certainly a bloody lesson.
It also brought hard-won lessons - the amount and density of artillery needed to properly destroy barbed wire was much greater than that used at the Somme, for example. New tactics, such as bite and hold, developed.
As for staying away from the frontline, the generals were hamstrung by poor communications. They were commanding thousands of men over a wide area and they needed to be at the centre of a vast communications hub to be contactable, receive reports and issue commands accordingly, and this was something like a chateau ten miles behind the frontline. Though the communications hub was rudimentary in the extreme and very ineffective.
Having said all that, I think there was still a willingness by the generals, or maybe too many of them, to stomach gargantuan casualties all through the war. But it was ultimately, brutally, a war of attrition.
I swing from one view to the other. I think the Somme, particularly the first day, was waste. But many argue it was the blood price that had to be paid, the school of hard knocks that had to be endured, that paved the way for eventual victory.
Interesting thanks v much. I also think that people forget/overlook/choose not to appreciate how much much of WWI we were under command of the French.
Have you been to the Somme, btw? It is fascinating. Horribly so but fascinating. You look out over a vast plain of for all the world pretty normal looking French countryside and have to remind yourself that a million people died there, many of whose bodies were never recovered.
Thank you.
To my chagrin I have never been. But I will be - if not this year, then certainly next year.
My first stopover on my road trips is usually near a WWI battlefield, in what look like old farm buildings just north of the Chemin des Dames. On my first visit I made the mistake of asking when the building was constructed, and was told that there isn’t a single building anywhere for miles around that is older than about 1920.
Had WW1 been in the UK, vast areas of our country would now look like Ilford or Hounslow.
Vast areas of our country DO look like Ilford or Hounslow
While we're on about that sort of thing: I was in Chester yesterday. The city of Chester within the walls is an unsung star in our urban firmament. Admittedly it's not quite as brimming with tourist attractions as, say, York, but a beautiful and singular and admirably well-preserved city core nonetheless.
But good grief the approach from the West is ugly. You come off the motorway, through some very nice outer suburbs, some very nice inner suburbs, and then a 1960s/70s zone of ring roads and tower blocks and utter charmlessness that feels as if its perhaps been designed as a deliberate contrast to the niceness of the city centre itself. (My particular pet hate is council-built tower blocks which deliberately sit at an angle to the streets they should be addressing. It's bad enough that they're ugly; at least try to make them look as if they're a coherent part of the urban landscape.) This ugliness feels too stark to have happened by sheer carelessness; it's as if those responsible for shaping our cities in the 60s and 70s actively wanted to make the environment as unpleasant as possible. I say this not to single Chester out, but to make the point that not even our loveliest cities have been immune from Hounslowification. (But that aside, you should still definitely visit Chester.)
It was not an accident. The 1960s did this and did so knowingly. If you put together the forgetfulness of brutalism (the name is not an accident) + lack of talent + building on the cheap + the dominance of the car + greed + 'government knows best' you can see the result.
A list of the places not so terribly afflicted is short, but longer than the list of places people love because brutalism worked well. Most were too small to bother with wrecking; some places so large you could not wreck it all. Stamford is my personal favourite.
Brutalism is a French name - it comes from “brute” or raw & generally exposes the raw materials the building is constructed from. You can have a brutalist wooden building just as you can a concrete one.
The problem is not brutalism per se (although it can lead to something of a “one-note” texture to buildings which doesn’t always work) but the god-awful concrete monstrosities that were built & then (crucially) not maintained properly afterwards.
The Barbican is a brutalist building, but remains a well regarded, popular place that people are keen to live in. Other tower blocks built around the same time are ... not as popular as the Barbican.
The Barbican is a very interesting piece of urbanism - fascinating to visit, and I can understand why people like it there - it's well located, and from what I understand the flats are very nice* inside. It shows what brutalism is *supposed* to be. But even at its best, it can be rather bleak. I'm glad all of our cities don't look like this.
A facet of architecture which never really gets considered in enough detail is the albedo of the building. The taller the building, the more light it cuts out, so the more important it is to be reflective. This is why glass skyscrapers can add rather than detract to the urban landscape, whereas concrete ones tend to have the opposite effect.
*One thing flats like this got right is the amount of light they tended to let in. I remember staying the night on the 12th floor of a horrible building in inner East London - but inside, the light filled up the place and the views were amazing.
Defending brutalism on the basis that we're not spending enough on polishing the pebble dash is rather daft. The buildings are fundamentally not good to look at. The brutalists deliberately eschewed long-held notions of architectural beauty - and lo, their buildings were fuck ugly. None should remain on the planet. We have the ability to document them in great detail without having to live amongst them.
What do you think of those buildings I posted pics of in Manchester @Luckyguy1983 ? Sharston Baths for example - I think that qualifies as 'brutalism' yet was rather nice. I agree that where long-held notions of architectural beauty (like the buildings addressing the street) were eschewed then the results were awful. But I think beautiful - or at least non-ugly - brutalism does exist. It's certainly not my favourite architectural genre. But it's not uniformly awful. I'd say the problem is that too many architects used 'modern' to excuse them from the need to be any good.
I found some of them less ugly than other examples of the genre, because they incorporated one or other if the rules of visually pleasing buildings. All of them could have looked a lot better if they'd worked within all the rules, but then they wouldn't have been brutalist. I am yet to be convinced that looking like a space age prison colony isn't 'the whole point' of brutalist architecture.
Fair enough.
Going back to the example of Chester, I'd say even if you filled the gap between the city walls of Chester and the pleasant inner suburbs with the creme de la creme of Brutalism, it still would be less pleasing than either the Jacobean(?) and pre-Jacobean inside the city walls or the Victorian pleasant inner suburbs.
I think we've been conditioned to think we just can't have architecture as nice as the Victorians or Georgians or before had it, so if we can have something both modern and moderately pleasant like Sharston Baths then it's a win. But even Shartson Baths was considerably less nice than the Victorian baths in Manchester like Withington or Victoria Baths. It was just nicer than most municipal buildings built since the war. Interestingly, though, there are a couple of new houses built near me: one a rebuild-from-scratch of a Victorian semi which unfortunately fell down after some incompetent building work, and one a site reuse of what used to be a tired and nondescript postwar bungalow - both built in the Victorian style, both looking like they could have been there for 100 years apart from the temporary newness of the brick - and it makes you think: there's no reason why we can't build things that look good any more. We just, mysteriously, don't.
Why (absent complete dissolution of the UK) there'll never be an English parliament, and the English are quite content with that.
'To mark St George’s Day tomorrow, I asked people in Great Britain which flag they felt represented them best – the flag of their own nation, or the Union flag.
In England, nearly half (44%) chose the Union flag, with one in ten choosing the cross of St George and a further 29% saying both equally.'
The problem in the present one is that the actual charges are misdemeanours and therefore time barred unless they can be upgraded to felonies. The basis for doing so is that these false entries were crimes for some other purpose, also criminal. The bases for this are somewhat problematic with the possible exception of tax fraud because Trump appears to have claimed the reimbursements of Cohen as legitimate legal expenses for his businesses. I think proving these particular payments were in the legal expenses claimed is not going to be easy.
IANAL but just reading what the prosecution say it seems like proving that these particular payments were in the legal expenses claimed is going to be easy because not only will the recipient testify to it, they've got a tape of him and Trump setting up the scheme.
The other bases for claiming a criminal purpose do not seem to me to get off the ground. Trying to influence an election is not a crime: believe it or not that is what our politicians are trying to do every day, no matter how ineptly. Paying for silence is not a crime either.
Right so it wouldn't have been a crime if Trump had sent the money to Stormy Daniels himself then declared it to the Federal Elections Commission. But IIUC it is a crime to fail to declare it, assuming it's done for the purposes of the campaign. What Trump can try to persuade the court is that he didn't do it for the purposes of the campaign, he did it for some other purpose, like preventing his wife from finding out, so it wasn't a campaign-related expense. But this is going to be complicated for Trump because he apparently asked Cohen to try to stall Daniels until after the election then renege on the deal.
No, from what I have read paying off Stormy Daniels was not a legitimate expense. It was not declared but it simply could not have been declared because it was personal to him. Let's put it this way, had he declared the payments to her as an election expense he would have been prosecuted!
Not at all saying you're wrong but where did you read this?
The key, AIUI, is that your election expenses cannot be personal. So you can't claim a new suit, for example, even if you want to wear that suit whilst campaigning. Paying off someone you slept with and keeping them quiet might help your election campaign but it is not an expense directly related to the campaign so campaign money can't be used for it.
AIUI this the pretence that personal expenses to silence women could be part of the further waves of prosecutions that may be coming for Trump, which if misapplied as expenses could include tax fraud by not treating them as personal income.
I am not sure where attempting to manipulate an election by supressing information material to the electorate's perception of him is outlawed by New York law, but that is auui the indictments.
That is the 'buy womens' stories then suppress them process', know as 'catch and kill' - as organised by David Pecker of National Enquirer and then Cohen his legal agent who has had a prison sentence and is a witness this time.
Well, we shall see but a lot of American law professors are saying they simply don't get this bit of the case. I don't dispute the "catch and kill" mode of operating. Its just not illegal. In the trial the AG is trying to argue that it was made illegal because it was for the purpose of influencing an election. But that isn't illegal either. For all the ridiculous appeals that have been heard, not least in respect of Trump's supposed immunity, it is very odd that this was not taken as a preliminary point before the trial one way or another.
Why (absent complete dissolution of the UK) there'll never be an English parliament, and the English are quite content with that.
'To mark St George’s Day tomorrow, I asked people in Great Britain which flag they felt represented them best – the flag of their own nation, or the Union flag.
In England, nearly half (44%) chose the Union flag, with one in ten choosing the cross of St George and a further 29% saying both equally.'
Btw nice to see Ashcroft turning his gaze away from Rayner for a moment.
So 39% feel best represented by the St George's flag or both the St George's flag and union.
So that 39% (and indeed likely some like me who feel best represented by the Union flag) would certainly be happy with at least EVEL for English only legislation even an English parliament for the same
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Cycling? Some of the main streets in Paris have more cyclists than cars now, and on some metrics the city has overtaken Amsterdam.
This has made it much more pleasant city to drive around with fewer cars clogging up the streets.
Yes could be. You certainly notice the profusion of cycles
Cyclists were a major hazard when I was walking around Paris in March last year. They cycle at huge speeds and don't slow down when they see pedestrians. Walking across a cycle path was a bit dicey. Their attitude seemed to be "We're entitled to be on this cycle path and we don't care about anyone else including pedestrians".
I mean have you ever driven through the Place de la Concorde. On principle people don't look.
That really has changed. And - on reflection - it must be the cycle revolution meaning fewer cars (and quieter because electric)
Eg when I arrived my cab approached the arc de triomphe in mid afternoon and I braced for that infernal chaos. Yet not. Just a number of cars politely going in circles - the whirling frenzy is a memory
2024 is the year when the aim is to ban through traffic from Central Paris. This is the pithiest quote I can find on the actual numbers. This is 2020 vs 1990.
The proportion of journeys by car in Paris has dropped about 45 percent since 1990, according to a paper published by the journal Les Cahiers Scientifiques du Transport. At the same time, the use of public transit has risen by 30 percent and the share of cyclists has increased tenfold.
I think compared to progress in London, Paris has more of an over-emphasis on the historic centre.
Not surprising, as soon as you see what they’ve put around it.
Mon dieu. The upper Loire is dull. I shall spare you photographs of endless flat and vasty fields
A lot of France is like that in my experience. A good 70% of the country is Lincolnshire.
(Not that there's anything inherently wrong with Lincolnshire, in moderation. But France offers just such a dizzyingly vast amount of it.)
I wouldn’t say 70%. More like 30-40%?
Anyway near the coast is usually but not always nice. They have far fewer hideous tacky resort towns, or they hide them better. And superior weather helps
Meanwhile all the alps and Pyrenees are impressive and sometimes spectacular. Corsica just edges the Isle of Wight. The Dordogne, the Basque Country, burgundy, Provence, languedoc, savoie, Jura, the Rhone valley - the majority of France is appealing
Fair enough. France is huge and I've been to relatively little of it. Obviously the nice bits of it like the Alps are spectacular. I was thinking for example of my trip from Toulouse Airport to Andorra: the Pyrenees were splendid, but the first hour and a half of flat, unspectacular landscape and small, dead, unremarkable towns was not. And my trip from La Rochelle airport to whatever Eurocamp it was two hours to the north: mile after mile of very slightly rolling agricultural landscape. Not in any way unpleasant. But like a massive Lincolnshire wolds. And the train from the tunnel to Paris: 170 miles of flat.
But I am far from well-travelled in France and will happily bow to the experience of kjh and TimS and Leon on this.
If you want staggering French loveliness, go to Corsica. It’s called the “Ile de beaute” for a reason - it’s a stunner. Also really good cheeses, many of them not exported
Paradoxically the people are some of the most unpleasant I’ve ever met. Phenomenally rude. Even the French (mainland) think corsicans are rude. Even the Parisians think corsicans are rude
Apparently it comes from centuries of vendettas and mistrust - Dorothy Carrington talks about Corsican rudeness in her travel classic “Granite Island”
In Paris I have always found people to be nice and helpful, but the reputation of Parisians is obviously a thing (maybe it is to other French people) because when house hunting around Pau I had guide and he recommended never hiring a car with a Paris number plate. Always get a local one.
The attitude of non-Parisian French people, I’ve met, towards Paris is moderately startling. Frank hatred seems common. It makes @malcolmg sound like he is wearing an “I Love London” T-shirt, by comparison.
Very complimentary Malms you are too kind. Funninly enough I am off to Paris later in the week
Why (absent complete dissolution of the UK) there'll never be an English parliament, and the English are quite content with that.
'To mark St George’s Day tomorrow, I asked people in Great Britain which flag they felt represented them best – the flag of their own nation, or the Union flag.
In England, nearly half (44%) chose the Union flag, with one in ten choosing the cross of St George and a further 29% saying both equally.'
Btw nice to see Ashcroft turning his gaze away from Rayner for a moment.
So 39% feel best represented by the St George's flag or both the St George's flag and union.
So that 39% (and indeed likely some like me who feel best represented by the Union flag) would certainly be happy with at least EVEL for English only legislation even an English parliament for the same
I question the degree to which flag preference tells us anything about preferences for English devolution.
Wouldn't the Somme without the Generals been an improvement?
Not my department, but isn't the WW1 trope that the generals generally did a pretty good job of staying away from the front line?
I may just be thinking of Blackadder here.
Current WW1 historians are frustrated by the Blackadder, Lions Led by Donkeys view of WW1 generals that has become the accepted norm amongst the wider population. The picture is nuanced. Some were good, some were bad, like anything.
I am torn in my view of the Battle of the Somme. On one hand it seems that the disaster of the first day and the ensuing campaign threw away lives needlessly for little gain. And it's hard to see beyond that.
The flip side of the coin is that the Somme - originally planned as a huge offensive jointly with the French, but the French contribution was dramatically curtailed due to the German attack at Verdun - was a vital attritional battle, helping the French at Verdun by tying up German manpower and logistics.
It was also vital for the British Army in 1916 - largely the first time the volunteers of 1914 went into action - to actually learn how to fight, though it was certainly a bloody lesson.
It also brought hard-won lessons - the amount and density of artillery needed to properly destroy barbed wire was much greater than that used at the Somme, for example. New tactics, such as bite and hold, developed.
As for staying away from the frontline, the generals were hamstrung by poor communications. They were commanding thousands of men over a wide area and they needed to be at the centre of a vast communications hub to be contactable, receive reports and issue commands accordingly, and this was something like a chateau ten miles behind the frontline. Though the communications hub was rudimentary in the extreme and very ineffective.
Having said all that, I think there was still a willingness by the generals, or maybe too many of them, to stomach gargantuan casualties all through the war. But it was ultimately, brutally, a war of attrition.
I swing from one view to the other. I think the Somme, particularly the first day, was waste. But many argue it was the blood price that had to be paid, the school of hard knocks that had to be endured, that paved the way for eventual victory.
Interesting thanks v much. I also think that people forget/overlook/choose not to appreciate how much much of WWI we were under command of the French.
Have you been to the Somme, btw? It is fascinating. Horribly so but fascinating. You look out over a vast plain of for all the world pretty normal looking French countryside and have to remind yourself that a million people died there, many of whose bodies were never recovered.
Thank you.
To my chagrin I have never been. But I will be - if not this year, then certainly next year.
My first stopover on my road trips is usually near a WWI battlefield, in what look like old farm buildings just north of the Chemin des Dames. On my first visit I made the mistake of asking when the building was constructed, and was told that there isn’t a single building anywhere for miles around that is older than about 1920.
Had WW1 been in the UK, vast areas of our country would now look like Ilford or Hounslow.
Vast areas of our country DO look like Ilford or Hounslow
While we're on about that sort of thing: I was in Chester yesterday. The city of Chester within the walls is an unsung star in our urban firmament. Admittedly it's not quite as brimming with tourist attractions as, say, York, but a beautiful and singular and admirably well-preserved city core nonetheless.
But good grief the approach from the West is ugly. You come off the motorway, through some very nice outer suburbs, some very nice inner suburbs, and then a 1960s/70s zone of ring roads and tower blocks and utter charmlessness that feels as if its perhaps been designed as a deliberate contrast to the niceness of the city centre itself. (My particular pet hate is council-built tower blocks which deliberately sit at an angle to the streets they should be addressing. It's bad enough that they're ugly; at least try to make them look as if they're a coherent part of the urban landscape.) This ugliness feels too stark to have happened by sheer carelessness; it's as if those responsible for shaping our cities in the 60s and 70s actively wanted to make the environment as unpleasant as possible. I say this not to single Chester out, but to make the point that not even our loveliest cities have been immune from Hounslowification. (But that aside, you should still definitely visit Chester.)
It was not an accident. The 1960s did this and did so knowingly. If you put together the forgetfulness of brutalism (the name is not an accident) + lack of talent + building on the cheap + the dominance of the car + greed + 'government knows best' you can see the result.
A list of the places not so terribly afflicted is short, but longer than the list of places people love because brutalism worked well. Most were too small to bother with wrecking; some places so large you could not wreck it all. Stamford is my personal favourite.
Brutalism is a French name - it comes from “brute” or raw & generally exposes the raw materials the building is constructed from. You can have a brutalist wooden building just as you can a concrete one.
The problem is not brutalism per se (although it can lead to something of a “one-note” texture to buildings which doesn’t always work) but the god-awful concrete monstrosities that were built & then (crucially) not maintained properly afterwards.
The Barbican is a brutalist building, but remains a well regarded, popular place that people are keen to live in. Other tower blocks built around the same time are ... not as popular as the Barbican.
The Barbican is a very interesting piece of urbanism - fascinating to visit, and I can understand why people like it there - it's well located, and from what I understand the flats are very nice* inside. It shows what brutalism is *supposed* to be. But even at its best, it can be rather bleak. I'm glad all of our cities don't look like this.
A facet of architecture which never really gets considered in enough detail is the albedo of the building. The taller the building, the more light it cuts out, so the more important it is to be reflective. This is why glass skyscrapers can add rather than detract to the urban landscape, whereas concrete ones tend to have the opposite effect.
*One thing flats like this got right is the amount of light they tended to let in. I remember staying the night on the 12th floor of a horrible building in inner East London - but inside, the light filled up the place and the views were amazing.
Defending brutalism on the basis that we're not spending enough on polishing the pebble dash is rather daft. The buildings are fundamentally not good to look at. The brutalists deliberately eschewed long-held notions of architectural beauty - and lo, their buildings were fuck ugly. None should remain on the planet. We have the ability to document them in great detail without having to live amongst them.
What do you think of those buildings I posted pics of in Manchester @Luckyguy1983 ? Sharston Baths for example - I think that qualifies as 'brutalism' yet was rather nice. I agree that where long-held notions of architectural beauty (like the buildings addressing the street) were eschewed then the results were awful. But I think beautiful - or at least non-ugly - brutalism does exist. It's certainly not my favourite architectural genre. But it's not uniformly awful. I'd say the problem is that too many architects used 'modern' to excuse them from the need to be any good.
I found some of them less ugly than other examples of the genre, because they incorporated one or other if the rules of visually pleasing buildings. All of them could have looked a lot better if they'd worked within all the rules, but then they wouldn't have been brutalist. I am yet to be convinced that looking like a space age prison colony isn't 'the whole point' of brutalist architecture.
Fair enough.
Going back to the example of Chester, I'd say even if you filled the gap between the city walls of Chester and the pleasant inner suburbs with the creme de la creme of Brutalism, it still would be less pleasing than either the Jacobean(?) and pre-Jacobean inside the city walls or the Victorian pleasant inner suburbs.
I think we've been conditioned to think we just can't have architecture as nice as the Victorians or Georgians or before had it, so if we can have something both modern and moderately pleasant like Sharston Baths then it's a win. But even Shartson Baths was considerably less nice than the Victorian baths in Manchester like Withington or Victoria Baths. It was just nicer than most municipal buildings built since the war. Interestingly, though, there are a couple of new houses built near me: one a rebuild-from-scratch of a Victorian semi which unfortunately fell down after some incompetent building work, and one a site reuse of what used to be a tired and nondescript postwar bungalow - both built in the Victorian style, both looking like they could have been there for 100 years apart from the temporary newness of the brick - and it makes you think: there's no reason why we can't build things that look good any more. We just, mysteriously, don't.
Architects today are trained to believe that the more contentious the building the greater its architectural value. There is a lot of study around the psychology of architecture - why we are inherently pleased by arches, deep set windows, columns etc., but it is apparently not taught in such institutions. That needs to change.
It would be great if a neo-neo-gothic style for the modern era were to be developed. A version of gothic using the newer building materials and techniques. The more religious overtones of Victorian neo-gothic would probably be less strident, with a more 'ecological' look, with sinuous plant forms, a bit hobbity, coming to the fore.
By the 1930s, the US had begun giving the Philippines formal indepedence: "Governmental functions were gradually given to Filipinos by the Taft Commission;[79]: 1081, 1117 the 1934 Tydings–McDuffie Act granted a ten-year transition to independence through the creation of the Commonwealth of the Philippines the following year,[119] with Manuel Quezon president and Sergio Osmeña vice president.[120] Quezon's priorities were defence, social justice, inequality, economic diversification, and national character.[79]: 1081, 1117 Filipino (a standardized variety of Tagalog) became the national language,[121]: 27–29 women's suffrage was introduced,[122][62]: 416 and land reform was considered." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippines#History
From the very beginning of the US occupation, the US established local self governments: "The Second Philippine Commission (the Taft Commission), established by President William McKinley on March 16, 1900, and headed by William Howard Taft, was granted legislative as well as limited executive powers.[5] Between September 1900 and August 1902, it issued 499 laws, established a judicial system, including a Supreme Court, drew up a legal code, and organized a civil service.[6] The 1901 municipal code provided for popularly elected presidentes, vicepresidentes, and councilors to serve on municipal boards. The municipal board members were responsible for collecting taxes, maintaining municipal properties, and undertaking necessary construction projects; they also elected provincial governors." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft_Commission
It seems to me that the German experience in both world wars was very similar in that their initial early successes were always ultimately going to prove futile thanks to their lack of resources and manpower once their enemies had got their shit together and their industrial might was simply too big to be defeated.
Very much a view of 20/20 hindsight, admittedly.
But the Schlieffen Plan failed. Ok, they got France and the rest in 1940, but Barbarossa failed too. And once they’d got themselves embroiled in trying to defend vast tracts of territory, despite their undoubted military skill and tenacious defence, they didn’t have the resources, logistics or manpower to win. Though the spring 1918 offensive caused some squeaky bums, it was a last roll of the dice and couldn’t realistically succeed. Same with the Battle of the Bulge too, for example.
A guy called Rob Thompson, who sadly died last year in his 50s of cancer, has done some fascinating work on Allied logistics in WW1 - the Germans had no chance ultimately in competing with that output. It’s mind boggling the resources the allied side had by 1917 and 1918. A similar tale by 1943 onwards. Fascinating stuff.
A bit late to the party, but re: World War II I always remember the quote that by December 1941 the Germans had decided it was a good idea to fight:
1. The largest empire in the world; and 2. The largest country in the world; and 3. The country with the largest industrial base in the world.
To do that, they decided that the two countries they'd get to help them would be Japan and Italy.
One thing that I hadn't appreciated until recently (mainly via the We Have Ways podcasts, and James Hollands excellent books) was how much harder rationing was in Germany from the start of the war than in say the UK. Despite stripping occupied territories the rationing was huge in Nazi Germany and from an early time point too. They also make some very silly choices - rather than keeping French industry in place and using them to produce equipment for the war they stripped factories and destroyed the French industry.
I have had my eyes opened to the realisation that once Britain and Empire countries stayed in the war in 1940, Hitler had lost. The nature of the defeat was not certain, or the timing, but eventually Germany would have lost. Economics is everything. Being good fighters (and despite the mythologysing, not ALL German troops were amazing) is not enough when faced with huge industrial power.
Germany (or more importantly Hitler) tried to run WWII on a peacetime economy (until 1943 at least) and by defeating their opponents within 4-8 weeks. Worked with Poland, Norway, France and the rest but didn't work with us, nor the Soviet Union.
Once October 1941 had rolled around, they were buggered, even without the US coming in.
Basically ww2 was all over after Stalingrad. Strangely this decisive battle is rarely mentioned in our media.
To anyone interested in World War II in Europe, you read about the Eastern Front. Because thats were the vast majority of the land fighting happened. And I'd largely disagree. I mean, David Mitchell spent the first season of Peep show with a copy of Beever's 'Stalingrad' following him around.
Kursk was a monster of a battle still to fight after Stalingrad. Could it have gone the other way? What difference would it have made if it had?
I thought the fashionable story of the war now was that Germany lost the war by losing the struggle to produce enough planes to win the air war in the west?
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Cycling? Some of the main streets in Paris have more cyclists than cars now, and on some metrics the city has overtaken Amsterdam.
This has made it much more pleasant city to drive around with fewer cars clogging up the streets.
Yes could be. You certainly notice the profusion of cycles
On the other hand, when married to all the shuttered shops (post covid?) it brings a certain deadness to the streets. Like a perpetual Sunday
If they are following Dutch (and now British in some places) practice they may be using the concept of separated networks by type of transport. This is usually called "unravelling the modes" in English, and something unpronounceable in Dutch. Paris is trying to do change at breakneck speed.
So you may just be off a particular modal network. In London for example they have "Cycle Superhighways" (ie normal separated cycle tracks) and Quietways, which are for example walking / wheeling / cycling routes through LTNs where the motorised rat runners have been put back on through routes for motor vehicles.
Here's a 4 minute video looking at the concept, by David Hembrow in 2012. This is broad, but the same concept applies in cities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zd5tKIdOyg
In Central London an example might be the difference in facilities along the E-W Tavistock Place corridor, and Theobalds Road.
Over the next 10-20 years I'd expect the same concept to come in on North-South routes more, so that perhaps a dozen bridges will be motor free, and another dozen to be motor with minimal mobility facilities. Rather than the type of expensive and unnecessary hybrid dog's breakfast being proposed for Hammersmith Bridge.
As discussed here sometime ago one of the rules they have in France that would work well here is that cycles can go the wrong way down a one way street (provided the road is below a certain speed limit, ie not motorways and dual carriageways).
This is brilliant for both cars and bikes. Cars aren't having to constantly overtake bikes, slowing them down and can see them coming. Cyclists aren't worried about cars overtaking and hitting them or constantly having to look over their shoulders.
It is a no brainer.
Bikes can also go the wrong way down a one way street in this country, they changed the law a few years ago.
If you can give me a cite for that in the UK, it would be really valuable.
AIUI it needs a TRO (Traffic Regulation Order) or an ETRO (Experimental Traffic Regulation Order), the latter being able to be made permanent quite easily, but I do not have an authority.
I am aware that the DFT planned to change it, but they have been planning to change some things for decades and have failed to do so.
I do have a really interesting article by the Ranty Highwayman (road designer who writes about active travel in Highways Magazine most issues), which traces the history of these from as far back as 1978.
I'd say Sunak needs 10 planes full of boat people to fly to Rwanda in quick succession, to break the boats. I could be very wrong - it will become apparent very quickly if I am.
If he manages this, it will be a major feat, and he's right to try and get his name all over it before it happens. Also a very clear dividing line with Labour, whose shitty non-policy on this involves chucking even more money at the French, and quite possibly signing us up to agreements to take more asylum seekers from the EU.
It seems to me that the German experience in both world wars was very similar in that their initial early successes were always ultimately going to prove futile thanks to their lack of resources and manpower once their enemies had got their shit together and their industrial might was simply too big to be defeated.
Very much a view of 20/20 hindsight, admittedly.
But the Schlieffen Plan failed. Ok, they got France and the rest in 1940, but Barbarossa failed too. And once they’d got themselves embroiled in trying to defend vast tracts of territory, despite their undoubted military skill and tenacious defence, they didn’t have the resources, logistics or manpower to win. Though the spring 1918 offensive caused some squeaky bums, it was a last roll of the dice and couldn’t realistically succeed. Same with the Battle of the Bulge too, for example.
A guy called Rob Thompson, who sadly died last year in his 50s of cancer, has done some fascinating work on Allied logistics in WW1 - the Germans had no chance ultimately in competing with that output. It’s mind boggling the resources the allied side had by 1917 and 1918. A similar tale by 1943 onwards. Fascinating stuff.
A bit late to the party, but re: World War II I always remember the quote that by December 1941 the Germans had decided it was a good idea to fight:
1. The largest empire in the world; and 2. The largest country in the world; and 3. The country with the largest industrial base in the world.
To do that, they decided that the two countries they'd get to help them would be Japan and Italy.
One thing that I hadn't appreciated until recently (mainly via the We Have Ways podcasts, and James Hollands excellent books) was how much harder rationing was in Germany from the start of the war than in say the UK. Despite stripping occupied territories the rationing was huge in Nazi Germany and from an early time point too. They also make some very silly choices - rather than keeping French industry in place and using them to produce equipment for the war they stripped factories and destroyed the French industry.
I have had my eyes opened to the realisation that once Britain and Empire countries stayed in the war in 1940, Hitler had lost. The nature of the defeat was not certain, or the timing, but eventually Germany would have lost. Economics is everything. Being good fighters (and despite the mythologysing, not ALL German troops were amazing) is not enough when faced with huge industrial power.
Germany (or more importantly Hitler) tried to run WWII on a peacetime economy (until 1943 at least) and by defeating their opponents within 4-8 weeks. Worked with Poland, Norway, France and the rest but didn't work with us, nor the Soviet Union.
Once October 1941 had rolled around, they were buggered, even without the US coming in.
Basically ww2 was all over after Stalingrad. Strangely this decisive battle is rarely mentioned in our media.
To anyone interested in World War II in Europe, you read about the Eastern Front. Because thats were the vast majority of the land fighting happened. And I'd largely disagree. I mean, David Mitchell spent the first season of Peep show with a copy of Beever's 'Stalingrad' following him around.
Kursk was a monster of a battle still to fight after Stalingrad. Could it have gone the other way? What difference would it have made if it had?
I thought the fashionable story of the war now was that Germany lost the war by losing the struggle to produce enough planes to win the air war in the west?
Kursk (and indeed Stalingrad) might have gone the other way. But if it wasn't Stalingrad, the Germans would have reached some other grim outpost as the furthest they could get - after which they would have fallen back and back, as they did. Twentieth century warfare was such - I believe - that you just couldn't hold that much hostile, or even sullen, territory indefinitely.
I'd say Sunak needs 10 planes full of boat people to fly to Rwanda in quick succession, to break the boats. I could be very wrong - it will become apparent very quickly if I am.
If he manages this, it will be a major feat, and he's right to try and get his name all over it before it happens. Also a very clear dividing line with Labour, whose shitty non-policy on this involves chucking even more money at the French, and quite possibly signing us up to agreements to take more asylum seekers from the EU.
The current backlog is 80,777. An A320 can usually take 160 people. You would need 505 planes full of boat people to clear the backlog.
How many would you need to sufficient break the incentive for people to come to the UK on small boats? I don't know. I expect many over a long period.
I'd say Sunak needs 10 planes full of boat people to fly to Rwanda in quick succession, to break the boats. I could be very wrong - it will become apparent very quickly if I am.
If he manages this, it will be a major feat, and he's right to try and get his name all over it before it happens. Also a very clear dividing line with Labour, whose shitty non-policy on this involves chucking even more money at the French, and quite possibly signing us up to agreements to take more asylum seekers from the EU.
Bearing in mind the agreement was for 300 or so refugees/boat people are you planning 30 per flight?
I have never particularly liked the Conservative Party, this is nonetheless an immoral low, even for them.
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Cycling? Some of the main streets in Paris have more cyclists than cars now, and on some metrics the city has overtaken Amsterdam.
This has made it much more pleasant city to drive around with fewer cars clogging up the streets.
Yes could be. You certainly notice the profusion of cycles
On the other hand, when married to all the shuttered shops (post covid?) it brings a certain deadness to the streets. Like a perpetual Sunday
If they are following Dutch (and now British in some places) practice they may be using the concept of separated networks by type of transport. This is usually called "unravelling the modes" in English, and something unpronounceable in Dutch. Paris is trying to do change at breakneck speed.
So you may just be off a particular modal network. In London for example they have "Cycle Superhighways" (ie normal separated cycle tracks) and Quietways, which are for example walking / wheeling / cycling routes through LTNs where the motorised rat runners have been put back on through routes for motor vehicles.
Here's a 4 minute video looking at the concept, by David Hembrow in 2012. This is broad, but the same concept applies in cities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zd5tKIdOyg
In Central London an example might be the difference in facilities along the E-W Tavistock Place corridor, and Theobalds Road.
Over the next 10-20 years I'd expect the same concept to come in on North-South routes more, so that perhaps a dozen bridges will be motor free, and another dozen to be motor with minimal mobility facilities. Rather than the type of expensive and unnecessary hybrid dog's breakfast being proposed for Hammersmith Bridge.
As discussed here sometime ago one of the rules they have in France that would work well here is that cycles can go the wrong way down a one way street (provided the road is below a certain speed limit, ie not motorways and dual carriageways).
This is brilliant for both cars and bikes. Cars aren't having to constantly overtake bikes, slowing them down and can see them coming. Cyclists aren't worried about cars overtaking and hitting them or constantly having to look over their shoulders.
It is a no brainer.
Bikes can also go the wrong way down a one way street in this country, they changed the law a few years ago.
I don't think that's correct.
Well they introduced it in the City near my old offices, dunno about the rest of the country.
I'd say Sunak needs 10 planes full of boat people to fly to Rwanda in quick succession, to break the boats. I could be very wrong - it will become apparent very quickly if I am.
If he manages this, it will be a major feat, and he's right to try and get his name all over it before it happens. Also a very clear dividing line with Labour, whose shitty non-policy on this involves chucking even more money at the French, and quite possibly signing us up to agreements to take more asylum seekers from the EU.
The current backlog is 80,777. An A320 can usually take 160 people. You would need 505 planes full of boat people to clear the backlog.
How many would you need to sufficient break the incentive for people to come to the UK on small boats? I don't know. I expect many over a long period.
Still can't see how folk who have already gone through all sorts of crap with an expensive and risky boat trip at the end of it are going to be intimidated by a hypothetical one way flight to Rwanda. The human spirit being what it is I think they'll say to themselves 'once we're there who knows what might happen'.
He must have banked just shy of 400 grand in licence fees since his gardening leave started last July.
One can do an awful lot of gardening for 400 grand. Perhaps he could have had a segment each week on Gardeners World.
Well given he’s leaving on medical grounds I think it’s safe to say he’s not in the best shape right now. I just hope it doesn’t mean the whole sorry saga just gets swept under the rug.
I'd say Sunak needs 10 planes full of boat people to fly to Rwanda in quick succession, to break the boats. I could be very wrong - it will become apparent very quickly if I am.
If he manages this, it will be a major feat, and he's right to try and get his name all over it before it happens. Also a very clear dividing line with Labour, whose shitty non-policy on this involves chucking even more money at the French, and quite possibly signing us up to agreements to take more asylum seekers from the EU.
Bearing in mind the agreement was for 300 or so refugees/boat people are you planning 30 per flight?
I have never particularly liked the Conservative Party, this is nonetheless an immoral low, even for them.
No, 300 spaces won't be enough - even bearing in mind that 99.9% of people will abscond from Rwanda as soon as they get there. I don't know what would be enough but I'd think 2000-odd spaces would do it.
I'd say Sunak needs 10 planes full of boat people to fly to Rwanda in quick succession, to break the boats. I could be very wrong - it will become apparent very quickly if I am.
If he manages this, it will be a major feat, and he's right to try and get his name all over it before it happens. Also a very clear dividing line with Labour, whose shitty non-policy on this involves chucking even more money at the French, and quite possibly signing us up to agreements to take more asylum seekers from the EU.
The current backlog is 80,777. An A320 can usually take 160 people. You would need 505 planes full of boat people to clear the backlog.
How many would you need to sufficient break the incentive for people to come to the UK on small boats? I don't know. I expect many over a long period.
I don't think one needs to clear the backlog, just send all the newcomers to Rwanda.
I'd say Sunak needs 10 planes full of boat people to fly to Rwanda in quick succession, to break the boats. I could be very wrong - it will become apparent very quickly if I am.
If he manages this, it will be a major feat, and he's right to try and get his name all over it before it happens. Also a very clear dividing line with Labour, whose shitty non-policy on this involves chucking even more money at the French, and quite possibly signing us up to agreements to take more asylum seekers from the EU.
Bearing in mind the agreement was for 300 or so refugees/boat people are you planning 30 per flight?
I have never particularly liked the Conservative Party, this is nonetheless an immoral low, even for them.
As my (less political than me) wife said at lunch time - The Rwandan deal would be a reason not to vote Conservative all on its own!
We have just had a Sainsbury's local open up with self checkout tills. This is in a posh bit of Surrey. My wife has repeatedly noticed when going to pay that the person in front of her has appeared to have paid, but there is a message - card declined.
So they have a duff card, go through the motions and appear to pay and then leave without paying. This has happened to her quite a few times now in a matter of a few month so we decided to report it, but the store was fully aware it was happening.
In dodgier areas, you have to scan your receipt on a gate to get out of the self-checkout area.
(Also in most Carrefour in France, since we're on that subject. You can also buy booze with no age checks at those checkouts....)
I'd say Sunak needs 10 planes full of boat people to fly to Rwanda in quick succession, to break the boats. I could be very wrong - it will become apparent very quickly if I am.
If he manages this, it will be a major feat, and he's right to try and get his name all over it before it happens. Also a very clear dividing line with Labour, whose shitty non-policy on this involves chucking even more money at the French, and quite possibly signing us up to agreements to take more asylum seekers from the EU.
The current backlog is 80,777. An A320 can usually take 160 people. You would need 505 planes full of boat people to clear the backlog.
How many would you need to sufficient break the incentive for people to come to the UK on small boats? I don't know. I expect many over a long period.
I don't think one needs to clear the backlog, just send all the newcomers to Rwanda.
Channeling, the HY school of geography, we could just tow all of the small boats to Rwanda.
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Cycling? Some of the main streets in Paris have more cyclists than cars now, and on some metrics the city has overtaken Amsterdam.
This has made it much more pleasant city to drive around with fewer cars clogging up the streets.
Yes could be. You certainly notice the profusion of cycles
On the other hand, when married to all the shuttered shops (post covid?) it brings a certain deadness to the streets. Like a perpetual Sunday
If they are following Dutch (and now British in some places) practice they may be using the concept of separated networks by type of transport. This is usually called "unravelling the modes" in English, and something unpronounceable in Dutch. Paris is trying to do change at breakneck speed.
So you may just be off a particular modal network. In London for example they have "Cycle Superhighways" (ie normal separated cycle tracks) and Quietways, which are for example walking / wheeling / cycling routes through LTNs where the motorised rat runners have been put back on through routes for motor vehicles.
Here's a 4 minute video looking at the concept, by David Hembrow in 2012. This is broad, but the same concept applies in cities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zd5tKIdOyg
In Central London an example might be the difference in facilities along the E-W Tavistock Place corridor, and Theobalds Road.
Over the next 10-20 years I'd expect the same concept to come in on North-South routes more, so that perhaps a dozen bridges will be motor free, and another dozen to be motor with minimal mobility facilities. Rather than the type of expensive and unnecessary hybrid dog's breakfast being proposed for Hammersmith Bridge.
As discussed here sometime ago one of the rules they have in France that would work well here is that cycles can go the wrong way down a one way street (provided the road is below a certain speed limit, ie not motorways and dual carriageways).
This is brilliant for both cars and bikes. Cars aren't having to constantly overtake bikes, slowing them down and can see them coming. Cyclists aren't worried about cars overtaking and hitting them or constantly having to look over their shoulders.
It is a no brainer.
Bikes can also go the wrong way down a one way street in this country, they changed the law a few years ago.
The American rule of being able to turn right at a red light (would be left here of course) is another one worth thinking about.
Not at all. It's an abominable idea. Cyclists are shitty enough to pedestrians crossing the road when the light is red and the little green man on, without encouraging them even more.
There are relatively few things that I'll readily concede that the French do better than us, but I bloody love French cider. I like English cider too, but French cider must be the best in the world. They bang on about wine and cheese - which plenty of other places do just as well - but with their cider they genuinely do excel.
The problem in the present one is that the actual charges are misdemeanours and therefore time barred unless they can be upgraded to felonies. The basis for doing so is that these false entries were crimes for some other purpose, also criminal. The bases for this are somewhat problematic with the possible exception of tax fraud because Trump appears to have claimed the reimbursements of Cohen as legitimate legal expenses for his businesses. I think proving these particular payments were in the legal expenses claimed is not going to be easy.
IANAL but just reading what the prosecution say it seems like proving that these particular payments were in the legal expenses claimed is going to be easy because not only will the recipient testify to it, they've got a tape of him and Trump setting up the scheme.
The other bases for claiming a criminal purpose do not seem to me to get off the ground. Trying to influence an election is not a crime: believe it or not that is what our politicians are trying to do every day, no matter how ineptly. Paying for silence is not a crime either.
Right so it wouldn't have been a crime if Trump had sent the money to Stormy Daniels himself then declared it to the Federal Elections Commission. But IIUC it is a crime to fail to declare it, assuming it's done for the purposes of the campaign. What Trump can try to persuade the court is that he didn't do it for the purposes of the campaign, he did it for some other purpose, like preventing his wife from finding out, so it wasn't a campaign-related expense. But this is going to be complicated for Trump because he apparently asked Cohen to try to stall Daniels until after the election then renege on the deal.
No, from what I have read paying off Stormy Daniels was not a legitimate expense. It was not declared but it simply could not have been declared because it was personal to him. Let's put it this way, had he declared the payments to her as an election expense he would have been prosecuted!
The phrase "legitimate expense" does NOT describe ANY aspect of Donald Trump's fiscal finagling.
This is a sunny Monday morning in late April. I just went from my hotel by the Arc du Triomphe to Gare Montparnasse by Uber. It was a breeze - empty boulevards all the way, barely stopped. That’s great, but also a little strange
The comparison with London on a Monday morning is stark. Traffic wise I certainly prefer the quietness of Paris. But where is everyone?
Cycling? Some of the main streets in Paris have more cyclists than cars now, and on some metrics the city has overtaken Amsterdam.
This has made it much more pleasant city to drive around with fewer cars clogging up the streets.
Yes could be. You certainly notice the profusion of cycles
On the other hand, when married to all the shuttered shops (post covid?) it brings a certain deadness to the streets. Like a perpetual Sunday
If they are following Dutch (and now British in some places) practice they may be using the concept of separated networks by type of transport. This is usually called "unravelling the modes" in English, and something unpronounceable in Dutch. Paris is trying to do change at breakneck speed.
So you may just be off a particular modal network. In London for example they have "Cycle Superhighways" (ie normal separated cycle tracks) and Quietways, which are for example walking / wheeling / cycling routes through LTNs where the motorised rat runners have been put back on through routes for motor vehicles.
Here's a 4 minute video looking at the concept, by David Hembrow in 2012. This is broad, but the same concept applies in cities. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zd5tKIdOyg
In Central London an example might be the difference in facilities along the E-W Tavistock Place corridor, and Theobalds Road.
Over the next 10-20 years I'd expect the same concept to come in on North-South routes more, so that perhaps a dozen bridges will be motor free, and another dozen to be motor with minimal mobility facilities. Rather than the type of expensive and unnecessary hybrid dog's breakfast being proposed for Hammersmith Bridge.
As discussed here sometime ago one of the rules they have in France that would work well here is that cycles can go the wrong way down a one way street (provided the road is below a certain speed limit, ie not motorways and dual carriageways).
This is brilliant for both cars and bikes. Cars aren't having to constantly overtake bikes, slowing them down and can see them coming. Cyclists aren't worried about cars overtaking and hitting them or constantly having to look over their shoulders.
It is a no brainer.
Bikes can also go the wrong way down a one way street in this country, they changed the law a few years ago.
The American rule of being able to turn right at a red light (would be left here of course) is another one worth thinking about.
It seems to me that the German experience in both world wars was very similar in that their initial early successes were always ultimately going to prove futile thanks to their lack of resources and manpower once their enemies had got their shit together and their industrial might was simply too big to be defeated.
Very much a view of 20/20 hindsight, admittedly.
But the Schlieffen Plan failed. Ok, they got France and the rest in 1940, but Barbarossa failed too. And once they’d got themselves embroiled in trying to defend vast tracts of territory, despite their undoubted military skill and tenacious defence, they didn’t have the resources, logistics or manpower to win. Though the spring 1918 offensive caused some squeaky bums, it was a last roll of the dice and couldn’t realistically succeed. Same with the Battle of the Bulge too, for example.
A guy called Rob Thompson, who sadly died last year in his 50s of cancer, has done some fascinating work on Allied logistics in WW1 - the Germans had no chance ultimately in competing with that output. It’s mind boggling the resources the allied side had by 1917 and 1918. A similar tale by 1943 onwards. Fascinating stuff.
A bit late to the party, but re: World War II I always remember the quote that by December 1941 the Germans had decided it was a good idea to fight:
1. The largest empire in the world; and 2. The largest country in the world; and 3. The country with the largest industrial base in the world.
To do that, they decided that the two countries they'd get to help them would be Japan and Italy.
Part of the reason that the Germans went into WWI, was the runaway expansion of the Russian economy before the war.
They thought that they had to fight now - since in a decade they would be facing a vastly superior foe.
This economic transformation of Russia was lost in the revolution and mostly forgotten today.
Amazing to think in the early 20th century the russian stock market was regarded as a good bet. Shows how things can change.
I'd say Sunak needs 10 planes full of boat people to fly to Rwanda in quick succession, to break the boats. I could be very wrong - it will become apparent very quickly if I am.
If he manages this, it will be a major feat, and he's right to try and get his name all over it before it happens. Also a very clear dividing line with Labour, whose shitty non-policy on this involves chucking even more money at the French, and quite possibly signing us up to agreements to take more asylum seekers from the EU.
The current backlog is 80,777. An A320 can usually take 160 people. You would need 505 planes full of boat people to clear the backlog.
How many would you need to sufficient break the incentive for people to come to the UK on small boats? I don't know. I expect many over a long period.
I don't think one needs to clear the backlog, just send all the newcomers to Rwanda.
I'm not entirely clear, but my understanding is that most of the backlog are in legal limbo. The Govt has passed a law meaning they can't be processed here. So, don't we have to send them to Rwanda or forever pay for their upkeep? (Or, obviously, vote out this terrible government.)
The problem in the present one is that the actual charges are misdemeanours and therefore time barred unless they can be upgraded to felonies. The basis for doing so is that these false entries were crimes for some other purpose, also criminal. The bases for this are somewhat problematic with the possible exception of tax fraud because Trump appears to have claimed the reimbursements of Cohen as legitimate legal expenses for his businesses. I think proving these particular payments were in the legal expenses claimed is not going to be easy.
IANAL but just reading what the prosecution say it seems like proving that these particular payments were in the legal expenses claimed is going to be easy because not only will the recipient testify to it, they've got a tape of him and Trump setting up the scheme.
The other bases for claiming a criminal purpose do not seem to me to get off the ground. Trying to influence an election is not a crime: believe it or not that is what our politicians are trying to do every day, no matter how ineptly. Paying for silence is not a crime either.
Right so it wouldn't have been a crime if Trump had sent the money to Stormy Daniels himself then declared it to the Federal Elections Commission. But IIUC it is a crime to fail to declare it, assuming it's done for the purposes of the campaign. What Trump can try to persuade the court is that he didn't do it for the purposes of the campaign, he did it for some other purpose, like preventing his wife from finding out, so it wasn't a campaign-related expense. But this is going to be complicated for Trump because he apparently asked Cohen to try to stall Daniels until after the election then renege on the deal.
No, from what I have read paying off Stormy Daniels was not a legitimate expense. It was not declared but it simply could not have been declared because it was personal to him. Let's put it this way, had he declared the payments to her as an election expense he would have been prosecuted!
The phrase "legitimate expense" does NOT describe ANY aspect of Donald Trump's fiscal finagling.
Never has, still doesn't, never will.
Which is presumably one of the reasons that Trump didn't declare it. Even he didn't think he could get away with that.
The only thing that works is his cheapskate attempt to claim tax relief on the payoff by pretending it was legal expenses. If they can prove that he did that the games a runner of sorts.
Its very unfortunate that this is the one that's got to trial.
It seems to me that the German experience in both world wars was very similar in that their initial early successes were always ultimately going to prove futile thanks to their lack of resources and manpower once their enemies had got their shit together and their industrial might was simply too big to be defeated.
Very much a view of 20/20 hindsight, admittedly.
But the Schlieffen Plan failed. Ok, they got France and the rest in 1940, but Barbarossa failed too. And once they’d got themselves embroiled in trying to defend vast tracts of territory, despite their undoubted military skill and tenacious defence, they didn’t have the resources, logistics or manpower to win. Though the spring 1918 offensive caused some squeaky bums, it was a last roll of the dice and couldn’t realistically succeed. Same with the Battle of the Bulge too, for example.
A guy called Rob Thompson, who sadly died last year in his 50s of cancer, has done some fascinating work on Allied logistics in WW1 - the Germans had no chance ultimately in competing with that output. It’s mind boggling the resources the allied side had by 1917 and 1918. A similar tale by 1943 onwards. Fascinating stuff.
A bit late to the party, but re: World War II I always remember the quote that by December 1941 the Germans had decided it was a good idea to fight:
1. The largest empire in the world; and 2. The largest country in the world; and 3. The country with the largest industrial base in the world.
To do that, they decided that the two countries they'd get to help them would be Japan and Italy.
Part of the reason that the Germans went into WWI, was the runaway expansion of the Russian economy before the war.
They thought that they had to fight now - since in a decade they would be facing a vastly superior foe.
This economic transformation of Russia was lost in the revolution and mostly forgotten today.
Amazing to think in the early 20th century the russian stock market was regarded as a good bet. Shows how things can change.
Not that amazing when you consider their huge natural resources and the size of the potential market. What is genuinely amazing is how much damage communism did to their economy. They could have been another United States.
Note that PB's leading Trump-fluffer and (ALLEGED) pro-UKRer has yet to comment upon - let alone praise - passage by US House of the Ukrainian aid package.
There are relatively few things that I'll readily concede that the French do better than us, but I bloody love French cider. I like English cider too, but French cider must be the best in the world. They bang on about wine and cheese - which plenty of other places do just as well - but with their cider they genuinely do excel.
Do they? Genuine question
I grew up in Herefordshire and started drinking stolen Strongbow and “rough cider” from about the age of 12 and it put me off cider for life. I generally dislike it
Should I try to like it? Is Brittany the place to do it? They do seem quite proud of it. Also crepes. I’m in Locronan which is obviously an authentic Breton sail making village as they have five creperies, three places selling artisanal biscuits and a shop dedicated to the bijou Celtic arts of Wellness and heliotrope and amber soap-spheres
I doubt life has changed here in five hundred years
He must have banked just shy of 400 grand in licence fees since his gardening leave started last July.
One can do an awful lot of gardening for 400 grand. Perhaps he could have had a segment each week on Gardeners World.
Well given he’s leaving on medical grounds I think it’s safe to say he’s not in the best shape right now. I just hope it doesn’t mean the whole sorry saga just gets swept under the rug.
Comments
But I'm not sure either.
I am a bit biased however, as I tend to vote LD myself. I mean, they can second place in Bootle when they get 2 votes (the candidate and me).
Almost 320,000 services cancelled. Meanwhile rail bosses pay themselves big bonuses.
It's time to run our #railways for passengers not the profits of big businesses.
Once October 1941 had rolled around, they were buggered, even without the US coming in.
That made it far easier for FDR to (mostly) unite the US, and to make the defeat of Germany the top priority.
However the Sardinians are much much friendlier and cheerier than the corsicans. Not only are the Corsicans rude they often seem sunk in pensive gloom despite inhabiting such a spectacular island (far superior to Sardinia in beauty)
If you ever go make sure to read Carrington’s book. It’s a gem. Written decades ago but full of wit and charm and she nails it
My bike is a town bike that has been adapted. It is a Marin but with armoured tyres and butterfly handlebars. We are off road, but usually tarmac, but we need to be able to cope with mildly rough stuff occasionally so we can't use normal touring bikes. I'll try and find a picture.
'To mark St George’s Day tomorrow, I asked people in Great Britain which flag they felt represented them best – the flag of their own nation, or the Union flag.
In England, nearly half (44%) chose the Union flag, with one in ten choosing the cross of St George and a further 29% saying both equally.'
https://lordashcroftpolls.com/2024/04/which-flag-do-people-in-britain-think-represents-them-best/
Btw nice to see Ashcroft turning his gaze away from Rayner for a moment.
So nothing fancy. Couldn't find a dog for scale.
I'll probably not go back - it was idyllic when I stayed, and I don't want to spoil the memory.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13335255/The-dine-dashers-form-couple-left-without-paying-329-bill-Italian-restaurant-tucking-steaks-15-bottles-pop-wanted-doing-runners-string-outlets-past-year.html
Since then, we've been an influential middleweight.
What we now know as Indonesia makes more sense, since they had very little oil.
Mine is a decent quality light Boardman hybrid with quite a bit of MTB technology in it, and various accessories including a double sided pedals, a touring triple front gearset giving me a wide gear range (<20" to 120"), a Gruber Assist invisible e-bike kit (long thin motor in the seat post), and a front rack. I have a rear rack but that is a little heavy. These days I routinely run cameras or at least a Passpixi as it usually keeps the dodgy drivers well away.
For tyres I go for fast & puncture resistant (Marathon Supremes) but not heavily armoured - by which I assume you mean something like Marathon Pluses. I've done some roughish stuff on it, and plenty of normal trail / bridleway.
I've done a certain amount of touring, but mainly hotel to hotel or cycling friendly B&Bs.
New York University (NYU) students have launched the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, calling on their school to divest from Israel and to end its Tel Aviv satellite campus.
That was a passing coach trip and they soon departed. I was basically alone “in the cathedral of the Pyrenees”
I took that photo because I wanted to contrast the long suffering faces of the sculptured faces with the press of tourists
So they have a duff card, go through the motions and appear to pay and then leave without paying. This has happened to her quite a few times now in a matter of a few month so we decided to report it, but the store was fully aware it was happening.
The key, AIUI, is that your election expenses cannot be personal. So you can't claim a new suit, for example, even if you want to wear that suit whilst campaigning. Paying off someone you slept with and keeping them quiet might help your election campaign but it is not an expense directly related to the campaign so campaign money can't be used for it.
Mrs P. is very clever but absolutely hopeless at languages - not helped by the fact that she went to a secondary modern where they taught no foreign languages at all (and barely taught English for that matter). She also can't mimic and can't do accents - I think it's related to a language weakness.
How many people think Truss was a better PM than even the utterly dismal Sunak?
He's terrible, she was worse; that's what history will record.
She was spectacularly terrible for a brief period.
He is merely awful, but over a greater time span.
Ultimately he might do more damage...
Updated West Midlands Mayoral Voting Intention
🌹Lab 41
🌳Con 38
➡️Reform 6
🔶LD 5
🌍Green 5
⬜️Independent 5
1,018 in WMCA, 11-17 April
https://twitter.com/Savanta_UK/status/1782389213079519599
Still a chunky disagreement with R+W on the split between Conservatives and Reform.
Don't forget the US annexed Hawaii and the Philippines in the 1890s, so they were seen as an expansionist competitor. The Japanese occupation of Korea - and well as being straightforward imperial conquest - can be viewed in the same way.
And it's not as though they were an entirely rational bunch. Some of the naval leaders were aware of it's futility (I think), but honour demanded they do it anyway.
Don't forget that their empire also required oil, and a completely secure supply was impossible without conquest - which mean conflict with the US.
Yes we are hotel/B&B to hotel/B&B. 3 chateaux overnighters in the next trip which I am looking forward to.
You are a different league to me. You sound like one of those chaps who waves to me kindly as they go hammering past. I don't even know what some of that stuff means.
I do have an upmarket off road bike (well it was, probably isn't now), but that hangs from the garage wall as I am too old for it now. I do love hydraulic brakes though, so I miss those, which I have on the off road bike. Might be a bit dangerous on a road bike I think. I also gave up on the clip on shoes sometime ago having had a few near misses with the ground.
I am not sure where attempting to manipulate an election by supressing information material to the electorate's perception of him is outlawed by New York law, but that is auui the indictments.
That is the 'buy womens' stories then suppress them process', know as 'catch and kill' - as organised by David Pecker of National Enquirer and then Cohen his legal agent who has had a prison sentence and is a witness this time.
And I'd largely disagree. I mean, David Mitchell spent the first season of Peep show with a copy of Beever's 'Stalingrad' following him around.
They thought that they had to fight now - since in a decade they would be facing a vastly superior foe.
This economic transformation of Russia was lost in the revolution and mostly forgotten today.
I suspect TSE's line holds true. WM is hard to call and the value remains with Street.
Tees looks like a Con edge (even ion a 20%+ swing since 2021), London and EM look Lab. The others and the PCC presumably won't have markets but their results will be very interesting
Mine has low end hydraulic disk brakes, which I have done nothing to in years and they have been fine. It started out as one of these:
https://www.bikeradar.com/news/boardman-hybrid-team-just-in
Recent illness has prevented any cycling beyond about 10 miles, but I picked up an e-folder a few weeks ago for local trips as they were half price. I'm using it to try and educate my local hospital about active travel - it gets taken right into the consulting room.
Going back to the example of Chester, I'd say even if you filled the gap between the city walls of Chester and the pleasant inner suburbs with the creme de la creme of Brutalism, it still would be less pleasing than either the Jacobean(?) and pre-Jacobean inside the city walls or the Victorian pleasant inner suburbs.
I think we've been conditioned to think we just can't have architecture as nice as the Victorians or Georgians or before had it, so if we can have something both modern and moderately pleasant like Sharston Baths then it's a win. But even Shartson Baths was considerably less nice than the Victorian baths in Manchester like Withington or Victoria Baths. It was just nicer than most municipal buildings built since the war. Interestingly, though, there are a couple of new houses built near me: one a rebuild-from-scratch of a Victorian semi which unfortunately fell down after some incompetent building work, and one a site reuse of what used to be a tired and nondescript postwar bungalow - both built in the Victorian style, both looking like they could have been there for 100 years apart from the temporary newness of the brick - and it makes you think: there's no reason why we can't build things that look good any more. We just, mysteriously, don't.
I agree about the lack of fish though. I remember a lot of chacuterie and blackbird pate was much in evidence.
So that 39% (and indeed likely some like me who feel best represented by the Union flag) would certainly be happy with at least EVEL for English only legislation even an English parliament for the same
(ducks)
It would be great if a neo-neo-gothic style for the modern era were to be developed. A version of gothic using the newer building materials and techniques. The more religious overtones of Victorian neo-gothic would probably be less strident, with a more 'ecological' look, with sinuous plant forms, a bit hobbity, coming to the fore.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-68873266
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippines#History
From the very beginning of the US occupation, the US established local self governments: "The Second Philippine Commission (the Taft Commission), established by President William McKinley on March 16, 1900, and headed by William Howard Taft, was granted legislative as well as limited executive powers.[5] Between September 1900 and August 1902, it issued 499 laws, established a judicial system, including a Supreme Court, drew up a legal code, and organized a civil service.[6] The 1901 municipal code provided for popularly elected presidentes, vicepresidentes, and councilors to serve on municipal boards. The municipal board members were responsible for collecting taxes, maintaining municipal properties, and undertaking necessary construction projects; they also elected provincial governors."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft_Commission
I thought the fashionable story of the war now was that Germany lost the war by losing the struggle to produce enough planes to win the air war in the west?
AIUI it needs a TRO (Traffic Regulation Order) or an ETRO (Experimental Traffic Regulation Order), the latter being able to be made permanent quite easily, but I do not have an authority.
I am aware that the DFT planned to change it, but they have been planning to change some things for decades and have failed to do so.
I do have a really interesting article by the Ranty Highwayman (road designer who writes about active travel in Highways Magazine most issues), which traces the history of these from as far back as 1978.
https://therantyhighwayman.blogspot.com/2021/11/go-with-contraflow.html
If he manages this, it will be a major feat, and he's right to try and get his name all over it before it happens. Also a very clear dividing line with Labour, whose shitty non-policy on this involves chucking even more money at the French, and quite possibly signing us up to agreements to take more asylum seekers from the EU.
How many would you need to sufficient break the incentive for people to come to the UK on small boats? I don't know. I expect many over a long period.
I have never particularly liked the Conservative Party, this is nonetheless an immoral low, even for them.
One can do an awful lot of gardening for 400 grand. Perhaps he could have had a segment each week on Gardeners World.
(Also in most Carrefour in France, since we're on that subject. You can also buy booze with no age checks at those checkouts....)
That’s a Breton Kir. Cider and cassis. Nice
I like English cider too, but French cider must be the best in the world. They bang on about wine and cheese - which plenty of other places do just as well - but with their cider they genuinely do excel.
Never has, still doesn't, never will.
The only thing that works is his cheapskate attempt to claim tax relief on the payoff by pretending it was legal expenses. If they can prove that he did that the games a runner of sorts.
Its very unfortunate that this is the one that's got to trial.
I grew up in Herefordshire and started drinking stolen Strongbow and “rough cider” from about the age of 12 and it put me off cider for life. I generally dislike it
Should I try to like it? Is Brittany the place to do it? They do seem quite proud of it. Also crepes. I’m in Locronan which is obviously an authentic Breton sail making village as they have five creperies, three places selling artisanal biscuits and a shop dedicated to the bijou Celtic arts of Wellness and heliotrope and amber soap-spheres
I doubt life has changed here in five hundred years
Polanski filmed Tess here