I mean it's a bit chalk and apples but the 9th round reminds me of the Mayweather McGregor fight when McGregor was being thrown around like a rag doll and the ref stopped the fight. Big call in this case that the ref gave Fury a count rather than waved it off.
Fury saying he was robbed was ridiculous braggadocio. Though I probably wouldn't say that to his face.
As I said he has been on a mental health "journey" so it, the loss he was UD after all, will take some processing.
Look at the row back about the rematch. Yes def just after the result, then let's wait and see at the presser.
Want to have a bit of fun, donate to a good cause, and maybe win a massive book token? Here's how...
As I have mentioned once or twice, in January I took over a bookshop - The Book Ferret, in Arundel.
Now that I've got my feet under the table and the local customers have got used to the new face behind the desk, I'm going to be changing the name of the book shop next month, and I'm running a competition to guess the new name to raise money for charity - and you could win a book token!
The new name is the title of a twentieth century novel by a British author - details of the contest are on the JustGiving page where you can donate and enter
Want to have a bit of fun, donate to a good cause, and maybe win a massive book token? Here's how...
As I have mentioned once or twice, in January I took over a bookshop - The Book Ferret, in Arundel.
Now that I've got my feet under the table and the local customers have got used to the new face behind the desk, I'm going to be changing the name of the book shop next month, and I'm running a competition to guess the new name to raise money for charity - and you could win a book token!
The new name is the title of a twentieth century novel by a British author - details of the contest are on the JustGiving page where you can donate and enter
I mean it's a bit chalk and apples but the 9th round reminds me of the Mayweather McGregor fight when McGregor was being thrown around like a rag doll and the ref stopped the fight. Big call in this case that the ref gave Fury a count rather than waved it off.
Fury saying he was robbed was ridiculous braggadocio. Though I probably wouldn't say that to his face.
As I said he has been on a mental health "journey" so it, the loss he was UD after all, will take some processing.
Look at the row back about the rematch. Yes def just after the result, then let's wait and see at the presser.
That's fair. You don't get to the top without enormous self belief, that shades into self delusion occasionally.
One thing that sunrises me about the cargo bikes is that they don’t seem to have made an effort to make them really weatherproof - in the sense of just leave them outside.
I suspect most of these things are designed for use in countries with much nicer weather than the UK. It's the same with motorcycles and scooters, even quite expensive ones will rust quickly under the British weather, particularly if they're used in the winter and get exposed to road salt.
My current scooter is less than two years old, wasn't cheap, yet it's developed some visible rust despite being kept under a cover and regularly coated in anti-corrosion goo.
There's lots of interesting history, but I'll spare you this morning.
Suffice to say - like the standard Dutch bakfiets, it was invented in England.
Spoiler: parents are not ditching their cars. A BBC Bristol journalist from BBC Bristol has spoken to a couple of left-wing parents in urban areas of what is now one of the UK's most left-wing cities who now cycle their kids to school.
It's entirely unrepresentative, it is very much exaggerated and it is absolutely very BBC. Met and preachy to the core.
I am a big supporter of the BBC - I think the country is trashing a huge soft influence asset by running it down...
But I have to say this is a fair cop Casino - DM or Express levels of journalism. I fear the journalist's/editor's biases got the better of them.
It’s noteworthy that there’s a BBC article that’s remotely biased in that direction given the torrent of Tory talking points the organisation is cowed into spewing on a daily basis.
There have always been weak articles like this on the site. Inevitable when you consider the volume they pump out daily. Though I’d note that at least a third of the parents at our primary school, possibly closer to half, don’t own a car. It’s perhaps of anthropological interest to those living outside big cities to understand the cultural norms and mores of the millions who do.
Yes. I think there's a more interesting story to be written about the inconvenience of bringing up a family without the use of a car that would still fit the topic.
To your point I'm guessing most young families are in cities because that's where the jobs are.
There was a great slightly provocative quote on the school run in the video about Waterbeach I posted yesterday:
"With the local schools team, we said what what do you need in terms of access - how much parking do you need for parents in the morning? They basically said we don't want any because whatever you do outside the front of a primary school it will be chaos.
If you provide 50 parking spaces they'll be filled and more. If you provide none it will all be filled and more. So we'd rather you didn't provide any. So that was actually quite encouraging and not really the answer we'd expected."
(Separate facility provided for staff, disabled access etc. Plus a local mobility hub within walking distance on paths through amenity space.)
My cynical side says that that response was from the developer: who would quite like that car parking space to cram yet more houses in.
Our school has a too-small car park; shared by it and the adjacent secondary. The approach is via a long road that leads from almost outside the village; most people have a long drive just to reach the access road.
There is lots of active travel to the school; a short path leads from the end of a residential road in the village to the main gate. At school times, this is crammed with people and bikes. Noticeably less so in wet weather, though, when the car park gets busier.
But: lots of people park, or drop kids off on, the residential road; it is a much shorter trip for many than negotiating the access road. The road is not designed for that sort of traffic load. I ca guarantee that this will also happen in Waterbeach; lack of provision of a car park will just lead to people using nearby residential roads.
Active travel is fine for people like me, where we live less than a ten minute walk away from the school, especially as I don't work. It may be very different if you need to drive to work immediately afterwards - in other words, the life many people lead.
I'd recommend watching the presentation - it is only 15 minutes. There is car park provision at the mobility hub nearby, which is provision for the area rather than just the school.
"Nearby roads" are tending to be replaced with open landscaped amenity space or walking / wheeling / cycling paths.
I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but I like the way that tactile paving is now deemed unnecessary (coz cyclists hate them). I wonder what the RNIB think of that?
This is one of my bugbears: if a path is to be shared use between cyclists and pedestrians, then cyclist should be restricted in speed relative to the pedestrians. Maybe not to walking speed; but no more than two or three times pedestrian speed. Instead, you get people going very fast. What they've created there is a racetrack for cyclists - and it will be used as such.
I am *very* cynical when it comes to the cycling lobby arguing for cycling infrastructure at the expense of pedestrians. Good infrastructure would involve compromises for all users.
Surely Hunt is going to nick Wes Streeting's Big Idea for NHS of working evenings/weekends before the GE?
I remember a few years ago my Mum lost the sight in one eye suddenly. It was a Friday evening. We went to the local hospital A&E, but of course it was closed. They didn’t refer us to a check-up on the Saturday morning, because of course that wouldn’t happen. Nor did the non-existent Saturday encounter refer us to Moorfields on Sunday morning, which wouldn’t be a thing either. Fortunately it turned out to be a minor thing and she could see again in a fortnight.
Want to have a bit of fun, donate to a good cause, and maybe win a massive book token? Here's how...
As I have mentioned once or twice, in January I took over a bookshop - The Book Ferret, in Arundel.
Now that I've got my feet under the table and the local customers have got used to the new face behind the desk, I'm going to be changing the name of the book shop next month, and I'm running a competition to guess the new name to raise money for charity - and you could win a book token!
The new name is the title of a twentieth century novel by a British author - details of the contest are on the JustGiving page where you can donate and enter
www.justgiving.com/page/thebookferret
I'm guessing it's not Money ?
Something by Tony Powell, perhaps 😉
Have a guess via the JustGiving page!
I have.
I do love those books. And it would be a good name!
Boo! I worked out how to post images from imgur but they are still blurred!
You are safe from an insane barrage of photos
Altamura is fantastico. I am about to go under the “lower urban arch in Europe”
Your reports are welcome (however much we take the piss). I'm thinking of visiting somewhere down there this autumn, if I can spare the time.
I strongly recommend this bit of northern puglia and south east Basilicata. Virtually no foreign tourists - Taranto is not unique in this
I’ve never even HEARD of Altamura. Has anyone on here? Yet it has a perfectly preserved centro storico. A magnificent Romanesque cathedral. A medieval warren of greek, Arab and Norman streets
And what’s that word we invented for “when a destination fulfils your cliched expectations?”
Every guide book that bothers to mention Altamura - not many - says the focaccia is famously delicious . So I just bought some. And yes. It’s absolutely delicious. Best focaccia I’ve ever had (something to do with durum wheat? They have 600 year old bakeries here)
Spoiler: parents are not ditching their cars. A BBC Bristol journalist from BBC Bristol has spoken to a couple of left-wing parents in urban areas of what is now one of the UK's most left-wing cities who now cycle their kids to school.
It's entirely unrepresentative, it is very much exaggerated and it is absolutely very BBC. Met and preachy to the core.
I am a big supporter of the BBC - I think the country is trashing a huge soft influence asset by running it down...
But I have to say this is a fair cop Casino - DM or Express levels of journalism. I fear the journalist's/editor's biases got the better of them.
I didn't find the article particularly offensive. Jettisoning the cars for bikes and public transport isn't on my agenda, although if it were a practical proposition I'd be much happier to curtail my 30,000 miles a year habit for the relative calm of a strike-free train service.
Neither of my children have yet bothered to pass a driving test (and only one of them will probably get around to it), and they aren’t particularly unusual in that. Another decade, and possibly no one will need to any more, anyway.
Neither of my children drive (23 and 29) either but they live in cities. It seems more normal these days. In my day you got your first driving lesson on your 17th birthday and I have driven every since. Seems times have changed though
However I agree with @Casino_Royale on the tone of the article. Times have changed, but I don't think either of my kids have ignored the car because of the climate. They just don't need one and it is no longer a rite of passage anymore to get one.
Life's too short to get irritated about every other article on the BBC website.
I agree and have liked, but I also now have some sympathy for @Casino_Royale view point. I don't agree with @Casino_Royale on his view on the dangers and extent of woke, but he is right on this article. It also brought home to me @Casino_Royale point of view when I received all that horrendous crap from @megasaur the other day/week for a trivial joke and was accused of all sort of discrimination. I mean, me! Also the irony being @megasaur had made a far worse misogyny post only days before.
So I think credit to @Casino_Royale for highlighting this article.
I'm OK with it. I often don't notice Americanisms as I lived there for five years.
Obviously nobody believes Alex Brunner in the Mail who leeps telling us we are on the cusp of an economic "golden age" thanks to the Conservative Government.
He doesn't mention the 14 years of nonsense we've waded through to get to this chimera.
@stephenpollard Slightly surreal, Keir Starmer is on Sunday Brunch on C4 atm, cooking tandoori salmon. Have to say he is coming over very well - far better and more normal than Sunak when he tries these things. One of the best 'being normal' attempts I've seen.
@paulwaugh For most people who aren't plugged into politics 24/7, just seeing a party leader who looks and sounds normal is probably quite refreshing. Contrast with Rishi Sunak on Loose Women
@paulwaugh 'In many ways, Sunak is the contactless Prime Minister - in thrall to technology but unable to make a connection between himself and the voters.'
My latest @theipaper column on how this week again exposed the big gap between the PM and the public:
Morning all. Polling of late suggests a bump for Labour post LEs/Elphicke of maybe a couple of % points, Opinium, WeThink, Deltapoll and YouGov all found a bouncette, all within MoE though of course. Tories are sort of holding on at low to mid 20s but there is an inexorable drift down at a very slow pace, I don't expect that to reverse until a GE is called and then a limited bump up as DKs return (not en masse by any means). Reform are declining by a similar amount to Labour's bounce....... dyor, LDs and Greens seem static, LDs need double figures to be confident of large gains from the Tories but evenat 7 or 8% they'd nab quite a few. Galloway and the WPB made their first appearance this week in polls with 1% in Whitestone (actually 0.6%) and Opinium (awaiting tables), I've got them on ca 2.5% if they run 600 candidates or proportionate thereto (ca 750,000 votes), they'd need maybe 3 to 3.5% to start causing a bit of chaos. I think they will do pretty well for a new party, Gaza will be a strong recruiting sergeant this time and they are a natural outlet for it.
Most people presume that Reform UK will get fewer votes in the election than their polling. Can I ask why you think WPB will get more votes in the election than their polling?
Well, I just did. Gaza. Also, Increasing awareness of their existence and their performance where they have stood thus year so far suggests a not insignificant interest and support.. Reform are prompted in polling, WPB are not.
Thanks. There are other parties competing on the Gaza vote, including the better-organised, more established, larger, less homophobic Greens. I don’t think myself that Gaza is going to be a bigger issue in a few months. Ukraine faded from the headlines to a degree, as will Gaza. (Personally, I think Gaza is a huge tragedy, as is Ukraine, and I don’t want it to fade in people’s attention.)
The WPB’s performance to date has been good in the limited places they chose to stand. They chose to stand in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters. That scenario doesn’t generalise to most constituencies.
Prompting in the polls does make a difference, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.
Are WPB building on their success to date? Their crowdfunding campaign for the general election is going pretty poorly. I think they’ll struggle to raise the funds to stand in a very large number of constituencies. I also think it’s notable that lots of people aren’t joining them. Akhmed Yakoob in the W Mids mayoral election stood as an independent rather than for the WPB (who endorsed him). I don’t see that as a vote of confidence in the WPB.
Points all taken, however I think in terms of overall impact you're underestimating the impact of the Muslim vote potential on the total WPB achieve. They'll be probably aiming to achieve 10 to 20% of the Muslim vote, heavily concentrated in those areas of high Muslim population. That would put them well on the way to my 750k/2.5%. Maybe I'm too high, but I'll stick by it. The Ipsos survey this week shows the ethnic minority vote is ready to revolt with both Lab and Con leaders with absolute historic basement approval. In many constituencies they will get diddly. But then so will the LDs and Greens and Reform. I'm looking at Respect as a guide, a similar party with similar aims and appeal. They stood in 16 and 11 constituencies in 05 and 10 achieving 0.3% in 05 and over both averaging 3000 votes per seat. WPB achieved 29,000 votes over 33 wards and one PCC region, 5% in the Lewisham mayoralty earlier. 750,000 is a stretch but its by no means out of sight. That said, Money will be the big stumbling block, yes, unless they find a big backer to fund deposits. In that case (standing in under 500) , I predict them to average over 1500 votes/seat stood
Spoiler: parents are not ditching their cars. A BBC Bristol journalist from BBC Bristol has spoken to a couple of left-wing parents in urban areas of what is now one of the UK's most left-wing cities who now cycle their kids to school.
It's entirely unrepresentative, it is very much exaggerated and it is absolutely very BBC. Met and preachy to the core.
I am a big supporter of the BBC - I think the country is trashing a huge soft influence asset by running it down...
But I have to say this is a fair cop Casino - DM or Express levels of journalism. I fear the journalist's/editor's biases got the better of them.
I didn't find the article particularly offensive. Jettisoning the cars for bikes and public transport isn't on my agenda, although if it were a practical proposition I'd be much happier to curtail my 30,000 miles a year habit for the relative calm of a strike-free train service.
Neither of my children have yet bothered to pass a driving test (and only one of them will probably get around to it), and they aren’t particularly unusual in that. Another decade, and possibly no one will need to any more, anyway.
Neither of my children drive (23 and 29) either but they live in cities. It seems more normal these days. In my day you got your first driving lesson on your 17th birthday and I have driven every since. Seems times have changed though
However I agree with @Casino_Royale on the tone of the article. Times have changed, but I don't think either of my kids have ignored the car because of the climate. They just don't need one and it is no longer a rite of passage anymore to get one.
Life's too short to get irritated about every other article on the BBC website.
I agree and have liked, but I also now have some sympathy for @Casino_Royale view point. I don't agree with @Casino_Royale on his view on the dangers and extent of woke, but he is right on this article. It also brought home to me @Casino_Royale point of view when I received all that horrendous crap from @megasaur the other day/week for a trivial joke and was accused of all sort of discrimination. I mean, me! Also the irony being @megasaur had made a far worse misogyny post only days before.
So I think credit to @Casino_Royale for highlighting this article.
The article has initiated an interesting discussion on these pages about family mobility. Maybe it's not so bad?
Even Mosley was economically statist even if a rightwing nationalist. Elphicke is effectively a Thatcherite based on her record, indeed she is more rightwing than half of Tory MPs let alone the MPs of the Labour Party she has joined
Spoiler: parents are not ditching their cars. A BBC Bristol journalist from BBC Bristol has spoken to a couple of left-wing parents in urban areas of what is now one of the UK's most left-wing cities who now cycle their kids to school.
It's entirely unrepresentative, it is very much exaggerated and it is absolutely very BBC. Met and preachy to the core.
I am a big supporter of the BBC - I think the country is trashing a huge soft influence asset by running it down...
But I have to say this is a fair cop Casino - DM or Express levels of journalism. I fear the journalist's/editor's biases got the better of them.
It’s noteworthy that there’s a BBC article that’s remotely biased in that direction given the torrent of Tory talking points the organisation is cowed into spewing on a daily basis.
There have always been weak articles like this on the site. Inevitable when you consider the volume they pump out daily. Though I’d note that at least a third of the parents at our primary school, possibly closer to half, don’t own a car. It’s perhaps of anthropological interest to those living outside big cities to understand the cultural norms and mores of the millions who do.
Yes. I think there's a more interesting story to be written about the inconvenience of bringing up a family without the use of a car that would still fit the topic.
To your point I'm guessing most young families are in cities because that's where the jobs are.
Their jobs are there of course, but they’ve also made the decision to stay in the inner city rather than commute from the suburbs.
Those without cars generally say they don’t miss them but it must cause issues when it comes to taking rubbish to the tip or picking up furniture from IKEA.
The carless parent cohort are a cross section from poor and on benefits to pretty wealthy and working in the city.
The walking and cycling parents in Bristol, at least the ones the BBC found, are the very lucky few who can both afford to live around the corner from the good school, and have a parent without a tight morning schedule.
Once upon a time, kids would've walked or cycled to school on their lonesome. Then parents started to get risk averse and thus the school run started, making the roads more dangerous for those who continued to walk - a vicious cycle until there is a huge increase in congestion during school term and people won't let their kids out on the road.
I find that very sad, and count myself lucky that I had the freedom of my neighbourhood from about age 8.
Oh indeed, kids should be allowed to be kids, but today’s parents are much more worried about the massively rare safety issues, than they are about letting them be kids and explore the world.
It tells you a lot about the BBC though, that they choose to venerate the yummy mummies and WFHers in the million-pound houses with six grand bikes, and softly demonise the hardworking secretary whose boss notices if she arrives at 9:05 because there was a traffic jam outside the school on the other side of town.
“demonise” Really? Can you show me an article that “demonise[s]” a “hardworking secretary whose boss notices if she arrives at 9:05 because there was a traffic jam”. I can’t say I’ve noticed that happening.
It’s the same thing as the Sunday Times “lifestyle” pages, showing the 1%er lifestyle to the 10%ers, and suggesting that we should all be doing the same. The ‘demonisation’ is implicit rather than explicit, and while it’s acceptable for the likes of the Sunday Times, it should be criticised when the organisation that gives criminal records to tens of thousands of the poorest in society does it.
Spoiler: parents are not ditching their cars. A BBC Bristol journalist from BBC Bristol has spoken to a couple of left-wing parents in urban areas of what is now one of the UK's most left-wing cities who now cycle their kids to school.
It's entirely unrepresentative, it is very much exaggerated and it is absolutely very BBC. Met and preachy to the core.
I am a big supporter of the BBC - I think the country is trashing a huge soft influence asset by running it down...
But I have to say this is a fair cop Casino - DM or Express levels of journalism. I fear the journalist's/editor's biases got the better of them.
It’s noteworthy that there’s a BBC article that’s remotely biased in that direction given the torrent of Tory talking points the organisation is cowed into spewing on a daily basis.
There have always been weak articles like this on the site. Inevitable when you consider the volume they pump out daily. Though I’d note that at least a third of the parents at our primary school, possibly closer to half, don’t own a car. It’s perhaps of anthropological interest to those living outside big cities to understand the cultural norms and mores of the millions who do.
Yes. I think there's a more interesting story to be written about the inconvenience of bringing up a family without the use of a car that would still fit the topic.
To your point I'm guessing most young families are in cities because that's where the jobs are.
There was a great slightly provocative quote on the school run in the video about Waterbeach I posted yesterday:
"With the local schools team, we said what what do you need in terms of access - how much parking do you need for parents in the morning? They basically said we don't want any because whatever you do outside the front of a primary school it will be chaos.
If you provide 50 parking spaces they'll be filled and more. If you provide none it will all be filled and more. So we'd rather you didn't provide any. So that was actually quite encouraging and not really the answer we'd expected."
(Separate facility provided for staff, disabled access etc. Plus a local mobility hub within walking distance on paths through amenity space.)
My cynical side says that that response was from the developer: who would quite like that car parking space to cram yet more houses in.
Our school has a too-small car park; shared by it and the adjacent secondary. The approach is via a long road that leads from almost outside the village; most people have a long drive just to reach the access road.
There is lots of active travel to the school; a short path leads from the end of a residential road in the village to the main gate. At school times, this is crammed with people and bikes. Noticeably less so in wet weather, though, when the car park gets busier.
But: lots of people park, or drop kids off on, the residential road; it is a much shorter trip for many than negotiating the access road. The road is not designed for that sort of traffic load. I ca guarantee that this will also happen in Waterbeach; lack of provision of a car park will just lead to people using nearby residential roads.
Active travel is fine for people like me, where we live less than a ten minute walk away from the school, especially as I don't work. It may be very different if you need to drive to work immediately afterwards - in other words, the life many people lead.
I'd recommend watching the presentation - it is only 15 minutes. There is car park provision at the mobility hub nearby, which is provision for the area rather than just the school.
"Nearby roads" are tending to be replaced with open landscaped amenity space or walking / wheeling / cycling paths.
I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but I like the way that tactile paving is now deemed unnecessary (coz cyclists hate them). I wonder what the RNIB think of that?
This is one of my bugbears: if a path is to be shared use between cyclists and pedestrians, then cyclist should be restricted in speed relative to the pedestrians. Maybe not to walking speed; but no more than two or three times pedestrian speed. Instead, you get people going very fast. What they've created there is a racetrack for cyclists - and it will be used as such.
I am *very* cynical when it comes to the cycling lobby arguing for cycling infrastructure at the expense of pedestrians. Good infrastructure would involve compromises for all users.
I do wonder about the people who claim that either cars or bikes can’t do less than 20mph.
I have never found any trouble in keeping to the speed limits in either.
Reducing your speed in a mixed use environment is simply good manners.
Labour seems to understand this. The Tories less so ...
Excellent article from @TorstenBell in the Guardian. You'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise, but political polarisation in the UK is *lower* today than 40 years ago. We are not the US. UK voters are not polarised, just "pissed off and volatile".
Boo! I worked out how to post images from imgur but they are still blurred!
You are safe from an insane barrage of photos
Altamura is fantastico. I am about to go under the “lower urban arch in Europe”
Your reports are welcome (however much we take the piss). I'm thinking of visiting somewhere down there this autumn, if I can spare the time.
I strongly recommend this bit of northern puglia and south east Basilicata. Virtually no foreign tourists - Taranto is not unique in this
I’ve never even HEARD of Altamura. Has anyone on here? Yet it has a perfectly preserved centro storico. A magnificent Romanesque cathedral. A medieval warren of greek, Arab and Norman streets
And what’s that word we invented for “when a destination fulfils your cliched expectations?”
Every guide book that bothers to mention Altamura - not many - says the focaccia is famously delicious . So I just bought some. And yes. It’s absolutely delicious. Best focaccia I’ve ever had (something to do with durum wheat? They have 600 year old bakeries here)
Yay puglia
@Leon I'm back for my Las Vegas/Death Valley/Grand Canyon trip. Just wanted to thank you for some of the advice given.
The highlight for me was Death Valley. I presume you have been? Awesome place.
The other highlight was the Santana concert at the House of Blues. Probably one of the best concerts and venues I have been to. Eric Clapton at the Albert Hall in a few days time should be an interesting comparison. These two are the two most expensive concerts I have ever been to by a long way.
The helicopter trip (my first flight in a helicopter) over the Grand Canyon was very enjoyable but a little disappointing. I was expecting to be thrilled but compared to an acrobatics plane and a glider it is very tame even over that landscape. They tried to spice it up with Ride of the Valkyries as you approached the lip of the canyon and Also Sprech Zarathustra as you went over the lip.
Morning all. Polling of late suggests a bump for Labour post LEs/Elphicke of maybe a couple of % points, Opinium, WeThink, Deltapoll and YouGov all found a bouncette, all within MoE though of course. Tories are sort of holding on at low to mid 20s but there is an inexorable drift down at a very slow pace, I don't expect that to reverse until a GE is called and then a limited bump up as DKs return (not en masse by any means). Reform are declining by a similar amount to Labour's bounce....... dyor, LDs and Greens seem static, LDs need double figures to be confident of large gains from the Tories but evenat 7 or 8% they'd nab quite a few. Galloway and the WPB made their first appearance this week in polls with 1% in Whitestone (actually 0.6%) and Opinium (awaiting tables), I've got them on ca 2.5% if they run 600 candidates or proportionate thereto (ca 750,000 votes), they'd need maybe 3 to 3.5% to start causing a bit of chaos. I think they will do pretty well for a new party, Gaza will be a strong recruiting sergeant this time and they are a natural outlet for it.
Most people presume that Reform UK will get fewer votes in the election than their polling. Can I ask why you think WPB will get more votes in the election than their polling?
Well, I just did. Gaza. Also, Increasing awareness of their existence and their performance where they have stood thus year so far suggests a not insignificant interest and support.. Reform are prompted in polling, WPB are not.
Thanks. There are other parties competing on the Gaza vote, including the better-organised, more established, larger, less homophobic Greens. I don’t think myself that Gaza is going to be a bigger issue in a few months. Ukraine faded from the headlines to a degree, as will Gaza. (Personally, I think Gaza is a huge tragedy, as is Ukraine, and I don’t want it to fade in people’s attention.)
The WPB’s performance to date has been good in the limited places they chose to stand. They chose to stand in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters. That scenario doesn’t generalise to most constituencies.
Prompting in the polls does make a difference, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.
Are WPB building on their success to date? Their crowdfunding campaign for the general election is going pretty poorly. I think they’ll struggle to raise the funds to stand in a very large number of constituencies. I also think it’s notable that lots of people aren’t joining them. Akhmed Yakoob in the W Mids mayoral election stood as an independent rather than for the WPB (who endorsed him). I don’t see that as a vote of confidence in the WPB.
Points all taken, however I think in terms of overall impact you're underestimating the impact of the Muslim vote potential on the total WPB achieve. They'll be probably aiming to achieve 10 to 20% of the Muslim vote, heavily concentrated in those areas of high Muslim population. That would put them well on the way to my 750k/2.5%. Maybe I'm too high, but I'll stick by it. The Ipsos survey this week shows the ethnic minority vote is ready to revolt with both Lab and Con leaders with absolute historic basement approval. In many constituencies they will get diddly. But then so will the LDs and Greens and Reform. I'm looking at Respect as a guide, a similar party with similar aims and appeal. They stood in 16 and 11 constituencies in 05 and 10 achieving 0.3% in 05 and over both averaging 3000 votes per seat. WPB achieved 29,000 votes over 33 wards and one PCC region, 5% in the Lewisham mayoralty earlier. 750,000 is a stretch but its by no means out of sight. That said, Money will be the big stumbling block, yes, unless they find a big backer to fund deposits. In that case (standing in under 500) , I predict them to average over 1500 votes/seat stood
RESPECT is a very good model. They got 68k in 2005 and 33k in 2010, before collapsing completely in infighting. A good starting point is that WPB are going to get about the same. You’re predicting that WPB will do 11 times better than RESPECT’s best. I’m not seeing the mechanism by which that happens.
If the WPB get 20% of the Muslim vote, that’s 20% of 4.4%, which is 0.9%. To get to 2.5%, where does the other 1.6% come from? I suggest WPB comes after the infighting of RESPECT and with Galloway turning more social conservative, suggesting the party will be much less able to mobilise far left support. Ergo, I expect WPB to do worse than RESPECT’s 2005 high.
One thing that sunrises me about the cargo bikes is that they don’t seem to have made an effort to make them really weatherproof - in the sense of just leave them outside.
I suspect most of these things are designed for use in countries with much nicer weather than the UK. It's the same with motorcycles and scooters, even quite expensive ones will rust quickly under the British weather, particularly if they're used in the winter and get exposed to road salt.
My current scooter is less than two years old, wasn't cheap, yet it's developed some visible rust despite being kept under a cover and regularly coated in anti-corrosion goo.
There's lots of interesting history, but I'll spare you this morning.
Suffice to say - like the standard Dutch bakfiets, it was invented in England.
The bikes for specifically carrying children are very popular in Denmark. The morning traffic in Copenhagen is full of them.
Spoiler: parents are not ditching their cars. A BBC Bristol journalist from BBC Bristol has spoken to a couple of left-wing parents in urban areas of what is now one of the UK's most left-wing cities who now cycle their kids to school.
It's entirely unrepresentative, it is very much exaggerated and it is absolutely very BBC. Met and preachy to the core.
I am a big supporter of the BBC - I think the country is trashing a huge soft influence asset by running it down...
But I have to say this is a fair cop Casino - DM or Express levels of journalism. I fear the journalist's/editor's biases got the better of them.
I didn't find the article particularly offensive. Jettisoning the cars for bikes and public transport isn't on my agenda, although if it were a practical proposition I'd be much happier to curtail my 30,000 miles a year habit for the relative calm of a strike-free train service.
Neither of my children have yet bothered to pass a driving test (and only one of them will probably get around to it), and they aren’t particularly unusual in that. Another decade, and possibly no one will need to any more, anyway.
You can get by in inner cities with excellent public transport and cycle lanes with no car but in rural areas with no nearby stations, infrequent buses and even cycling taking up to an hour to reach the nearest town a car still remains must
Spoiler: parents are not ditching their cars. A BBC Bristol journalist from BBC Bristol has spoken to a couple of left-wing parents in urban areas of what is now one of the UK's most left-wing cities who now cycle their kids to school.
It's entirely unrepresentative, it is very much exaggerated and it is absolutely very BBC. Met and preachy to the core.
I am a big supporter of the BBC - I think the country is trashing a huge soft influence asset by running it down...
But I have to say this is a fair cop Casino - DM or Express levels of journalism. I fear the journalist's/editor's biases got the better of them.
It’s noteworthy that there’s a BBC article that’s remotely biased in that direction given the torrent of Tory talking points the organisation is cowed into spewing on a daily basis.
There have always been weak articles like this on the site. Inevitable when you consider the volume they pump out daily. Though I’d note that at least a third of the parents at our primary school, possibly closer to half, don’t own a car. It’s perhaps of anthropological interest to those living outside big cities to understand the cultural norms and mores of the millions who do.
Yes. I think there's a more interesting story to be written about the inconvenience of bringing up a family without the use of a car that would still fit the topic.
To your point I'm guessing most young families are in cities because that's where the jobs are.
Their jobs are there of course, but they’ve also made the decision to stay in the inner city rather than commute from the suburbs.
Those without cars generally say they don’t miss them but it must cause issues when it comes to taking rubbish to the tip or picking up furniture from IKEA.
The carless parent cohort are a cross section from poor and on benefits to pretty wealthy and working in the city.
The walking and cycling parents in Bristol, at least the ones the BBC found, are the very lucky few who can both afford to live around the corner from the good school, and have a parent without a tight morning schedule.
Once upon a time, kids would've walked or cycled to school on their lonesome. Then parents started to get risk averse and thus the school run started, making the roads more dangerous for those who continued to walk - a vicious cycle until there is a huge increase in congestion during school term and people won't let their kids out on the road.
I find that very sad, and count myself lucky that I had the freedom of my neighbourhood from about age 8.
Oh indeed, kids should be allowed to be kids, but today’s parents are much more worried about the massively rare safety issues, than they are about letting them be kids and explore the world.
It tells you a lot about the BBC though, that they choose to venerate the yummy mummies and WFHers in the million-pound houses with six grand bikes, and softly demonise the hardworking secretary whose boss notices if she arrives at 9:05 because there was a traffic jam outside the school on the other side of town.
“demonise” Really? Can you show me an article that “demonise[s]” a “hardworking secretary whose boss notices if she arrives at 9:05 because there was a traffic jam”. I can’t say I’ve noticed that happening.
It’s the same thing as the Sunday Times “lifestyle” pages, showing the 1%er lifestyle to the 10%ers, and suggesting that we should all be doing the same. The ‘demonisation’ is implicit rather than explicit, and while it’s acceptable for the likes of the Sunday Times, it should be criticised when the organisation that gives criminal records to tens of thousands of the poorest in society does it.
I’m not familiar with BBC News articles that look like Sunday Times “lifestyle” pages. Can you show me a specific article demonstrating this demonisation?
One thing that sunrises me about the cargo bikes is that they don’t seem to have made an effort to make them really weatherproof - in the sense of just leave them outside.
I suspect most of these things are designed for use in countries with much nicer weather than the UK. It's the same with motorcycles and scooters, even quite expensive ones will rust quickly under the British weather, particularly if they're used in the winter and get exposed to road salt.
My current scooter is less than two years old, wasn't cheap, yet it's developed some visible rust despite being kept under a cover and regularly coated in anti-corrosion goo.
Denmark is not the Sunshine Country. Well, the summers are quite nice. But in winter, digging your cargo bike out of a snow drift would be common thing.
Perhaps that is the issue - the weather is actually worse, so the bikes live in garages and bike sheds?
No, you've got it all wrong. Heavy snow in Denmark does happen, but it's not really common. And most everybody leaves their bikes outside. Furthermore, in big cities, the infrastructure is not only present but looked after: the bike lanes are ploughed by golf-buggy-sized vehicles with brushes to remove snow.
Cycling in the Danish winter is still a sensible, low-hassle option.
One thing that sunrises me about the cargo bikes is that they don’t seem to have made an effort to make them really weatherproof - in the sense of just leave them outside.
I suspect most of these things are designed for use in countries with much nicer weather than the UK. It's the same with motorcycles and scooters, even quite expensive ones will rust quickly under the British weather, particularly if they're used in the winter and get exposed to road salt.
My current scooter is less than two years old, wasn't cheap, yet it's developed some visible rust despite being kept under a cover and regularly coated in anti-corrosion goo.
Denmark is not the Sunshine Country. Well, the summers are quite nice. But in winter, digging your cargo bike out of a snow drift would be common thing.
Perhaps that is the issue - the weather is actually worse, so the bikes live in garages and bike sheds?
No, you've got it all wrong. Heavy snow in Denmark does happen, but it's not really common. And most everybody leaves their bikes outside. Furthermore, in big cities, the infrastructure is not only present but looked after: the bike lanes are ploughed by golf-buggy-sized vehicles with brushes to remove snow.
Cycling in the Danish winter is still a sensible, low-hassle option.
Is 'gotten' even an Americanism? I've used it as long as I can remember.
Like most "Americanisms" it's simply the English from the time of early settlement which was replaced here, but not over there. Fall is another example.
Labour seems to understand this. The Tories less so ...
Excellent article from @TorstenBell in the Guardian. You'd be forgiven for thinking otherwise, but political polarisation in the UK is *lower* today than 40 years ago. We are not the US. UK voters are not polarised, just "pissed off and volatile".
Even in the US there are more Independent voters than there were before and they tend to decide elections.
Of course the fact we may have more swing voters also means a Labour government has less core vote to rely on if the economy is poor
Yes and no. I can't imagine East Ham, for example, being in play for the Conservatives under any circumstances. Indeed, at the GLA election for City and East, the Conservative finishing 70,000 votes behind the Labour winner was just 10 votes in front of the Green whereas the gap at the Mayoral level between the Conservative and Green was 25,000 votes.
I'd be confident of the Greens finishing second in Stratford & Bow and possibly East Ham and West Ham & Beckton on current evidence.
Boo! I worked out how to post images from imgur but they are still blurred!
You are safe from an insane barrage of photos
Altamura is fantastico. I am about to go under the “lower urban arch in Europe”
Your reports are welcome (however much we take the piss). I'm thinking of visiting somewhere down there this autumn, if I can spare the time.
I strongly recommend this bit of northern puglia and south east Basilicata. Virtually no foreign tourists - Taranto is not unique in this
I’ve never even HEARD of Altamura. Has anyone on here? Yet it has a perfectly preserved centro storico. A magnificent Romanesque cathedral. A medieval warren of greek, Arab and Norman streets
And what’s that word we invented for “when a destination fulfils your cliched expectations?”
Every guide book that bothers to mention Altamura - not many - says the focaccia is famously delicious . So I just bought some. And yes. It’s absolutely delicious. Best focaccia I’ve ever had (something to do with durum wheat? They have 600 year old bakeries here)
Yay puglia
@Leon I'm back for my Las Vegas/Death Valley/Grand Canyon trip. Just wanted to thank you for some of the advice given.
The highlight for me was Death Valley. I presume you have been? Awesome place.
The other highlight was the Santana concert at the House of Blues. Probably one of the best concerts and venues I have been to. Eric Clapton at the Albert Hall in a few days time should be an interesting comparison. These two are the two most expensive concerts I have ever been to by a long way.
The helicopter trip (my first flight in a helicopter) over the Grand Canyon was very enjoyable but a little disappointing. I was expecting to be thrilled but compared to an acrobatics plane and a glider it is very tame even over that landscape. They tried to spice it up with Ride of the Valkyries as you approached the lip of the canyon and Also Sprech Zarathustra as you went over the lip.
Thanks again for the advice.
If you found the helicopter ride disappointing then it’s a good job you didn’t do the walk to the lip of the canyon. It’s one of the biggest let-downs in global travel - to my mind. It’s just an enormous hole surrounded by crowds - and for some reason even the scale doesn’t really impact - it lacks noom!
Size is certainly not everything. The Cuillins on Skye are my favourite example. Some of the most dramatic mountains on earth - yet they are TINY
PS yes I know Death Valley very well. As a young man I literally broke down there in a car hired from rent-a-wreck. We left it in Barstow where it was towed - and fled the country
In a later visit with my wife we stayed overnight in the famous lodge and got up for dawn in one of the most mystical areas. She was so excited she stripped naked and ran into the dunes
Morning all. Polling of late suggests a bump for Labour post LEs/Elphicke of maybe a couple of % points, Opinium, WeThink, Deltapoll and YouGov all found a bouncette, all within MoE though of course. Tories are sort of holding on at low to mid 20s but there is an inexorable drift down at a very slow pace, I don't expect that to reverse until a GE is called and then a limited bump up as DKs return (not en masse by any means). Reform are declining by a similar amount to Labour's bounce....... dyor, LDs and Greens seem static, LDs need double figures to be confident of large gains from the Tories but evenat 7 or 8% they'd nab quite a few. Galloway and the WPB made their first appearance this week in polls with 1% in Whitestone (actually 0.6%) and Opinium (awaiting tables), I've got them on ca 2.5% if they run 600 candidates or proportionate thereto (ca 750,000 votes), they'd need maybe 3 to 3.5% to start causing a bit of chaos. I think they will do pretty well for a new party, Gaza will be a strong recruiting sergeant this time and they are a natural outlet for it.
Most people presume that Reform UK will get fewer votes in the election than their polling. Can I ask why you think WPB will get more votes in the election than their polling?
Well, I just did. Gaza. Also, Increasing awareness of their existence and their performance where they have stood thus year so far suggests a not insignificant interest and support.. Reform are prompted in polling, WPB are not.
Thanks. There are other parties competing on the Gaza vote, including the better-organised, more established, larger, less homophobic Greens. I don’t think myself that Gaza is going to be a bigger issue in a few months. Ukraine faded from the headlines to a degree, as will Gaza. (Personally, I think Gaza is a huge tragedy, as is Ukraine, and I don’t want it to fade in people’s attention.)
The WPB’s performance to date has been good in the limited places they chose to stand. They chose to stand in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters. That scenario doesn’t generalise to most constituencies.
Prompting in the polls does make a difference, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.
Are WPB building on their success to date? Their crowdfunding campaign for the general election is going pretty poorly. I think they’ll struggle to raise the funds to stand in a very large number of constituencies. I also think it’s notable that lots of people aren’t joining them. Akhmed Yakoob in the W Mids mayoral election stood as an independent rather than for the WPB (who endorsed him). I don’t see that as a vote of confidence in the WPB.
Points all taken, however I think in terms of overall impact you're underestimating the impact of the Muslim vote potential on the total WPB achieve. They'll be probably aiming to achieve 10 to 20% of the Muslim vote, heavily concentrated in those areas of high Muslim population. That would put them well on the way to my 750k/2.5%. Maybe I'm too high, but I'll stick by it. The Ipsos survey this week shows the ethnic minority vote is ready to revolt with both Lab and Con leaders with absolute historic basement approval. In many constituencies they will get diddly. But then so will the LDs and Greens and Reform. I'm looking at Respect as a guide, a similar party with similar aims and appeal. They stood in 16 and 11 constituencies in 05 and 10 achieving 0.3% in 05 and over both averaging 3000 votes per seat. WPB achieved 29,000 votes over 33 wards and one PCC region, 5% in the Lewisham mayoralty earlier. 750,000 is a stretch but its by no means out of sight. That said, Money will be the big stumbling block, yes, unless they find a big backer to fund deposits. In that case (standing in under 500) , I predict them to average over 1500 votes/seat stood
RESPECT is a very good model. They got 68k in 2005 and 33k in 2010, before collapsing completely in infighting. A good starting point is that WPB are going to get about the same. You’re predicting that WPB will do 11 times better than RESPECT’s best. I’m not seeing the mechanism by which that happens.
If the WPB get 20% of the Muslim vote, that’s 20% of 4.4%, which is 0.9%. To get to 2.5%, where does the other 1.6% come from? I suggest WPB comes after the infighting of RESPECT and with Galloway turning more social conservative, suggesting the party will be much less able to mobilise far left support. Ergo, I expect WPB to do worse than RESPECT’s 2005 high.
Sorry, 4.4% is the 2011 census figure. The more recent census says 6.5% in England & Wales, but Scotland and NI will bring that figure down. 20% of let’s call it 6% would be 1.2%.
I've just read that BBC article on cycling and it's completely harmless. Does the BBC's job of reporting on a new social phenomenon, and literally starts with this deeply conservative line:
Living without a car could feel like a bold and even frightening decision for a generation familiar with seeing multiple vehicles parked outside a single home.
And as polls keep telling us, climate change really is a salient issue for people younger than 50, consistent across political divide. It's not just some whiny Green voters.
Boo! I worked out how to post images from imgur but they are still blurred!
You are safe from an insane barrage of photos
Altamura is fantastico. I am about to go under the “lower urban arch in Europe”
Your reports are welcome (however much we take the piss). I'm thinking of visiting somewhere down there this autumn, if I can spare the time.
I strongly recommend this bit of northern puglia and south east Basilicata. Virtually no foreign tourists - Taranto is not unique in this
I’ve never even HEARD of Altamura. Has anyone on here? Yet it has a perfectly preserved centro storico. A magnificent Romanesque cathedral. A medieval warren of greek, Arab and Norman streets
And what’s that word we invented for “when a destination fulfils your cliched expectations?”
Every guide book that bothers to mention Altamura - not many - says the focaccia is famously delicious . So I just bought some. And yes. It’s absolutely delicious. Best focaccia I’ve ever had (something to do with durum wheat? They have 600 year old bakeries here)
Yay puglia
@Leon I'm back for my Las Vegas/Death Valley/Grand Canyon trip. Just wanted to thank you for some of the advice given.
The highlight for me was Death Valley. I presume you have been? Awesome place.
The other highlight was the Santana concert at the House of Blues. Probably one of the best concerts and venues I have been to. Eric Clapton at the Albert Hall in a few days time should be an interesting comparison. These two are the two most expensive concerts I have ever been to by a long way.
The helicopter trip (my first flight in a helicopter) over the Grand Canyon was very enjoyable but a little disappointing. I was expecting to be thrilled but compared to an acrobatics plane and a glider it is very tame even over that landscape. They tried to spice it up with Ride of the Valkyries as you approached the lip of the canyon and Also Sprech Zarathustra as you went over the lip.
Thanks again for the advice.
If you found the helicopter ride disappointing then it’s a good job you didn’t do the walk to the lip of the canyon. It’s one of the biggest let-downs in global travel - to my mind. It’s just an enormous hole surrounded by crowds - and for some reason even the scale doesn’t really impact - it lacks noom!
Size is certainly not everything. The Cuillins on Skye are my favourite example. Some of the most dramatic mountains on earth - yet they are TINY
You could always have chucked a dog over the edge for scale.
Morning all. Polling of late suggests a bump for Labour post LEs/Elphicke of maybe a couple of % points, Opinium, WeThink, Deltapoll and YouGov all found a bouncette, all within MoE though of course. Tories are sort of holding on at low to mid 20s but there is an inexorable drift down at a very slow pace, I don't expect that to reverse until a GE is called and then a limited bump up as DKs return (not en masse by any means). Reform are declining by a similar amount to Labour's bounce....... dyor, LDs and Greens seem static, LDs need double figures to be confident of large gains from the Tories but evenat 7 or 8% they'd nab quite a few. Galloway and the WPB made their first appearance this week in polls with 1% in Whitestone (actually 0.6%) and Opinium (awaiting tables), I've got them on ca 2.5% if they run 600 candidates or proportionate thereto (ca 750,000 votes), they'd need maybe 3 to 3.5% to start causing a bit of chaos. I think they will do pretty well for a new party, Gaza will be a strong recruiting sergeant this time and they are a natural outlet for it.
Most people presume that Reform UK will get fewer votes in the election than their polling. Can I ask why you think WPB will get more votes in the election than their polling?
Well, I just did. Gaza. Also, Increasing awareness of their existence and their performance where they have stood thus year so far suggests a not insignificant interest and support.. Reform are prompted in polling, WPB are not.
Thanks. There are other parties competing on the Gaza vote, including the better-organised, more established, larger, less homophobic Greens. I don’t think myself that Gaza is going to be a bigger issue in a few months. Ukraine faded from the headlines to a degree, as will Gaza. (Personally, I think Gaza is a huge tragedy, as is Ukraine, and I don’t want it to fade in people’s attention.)
The WPB’s performance to date has been good in the limited places they chose to stand. They chose to stand in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters. That scenario doesn’t generalise to most constituencies.
Prompting in the polls does make a difference, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.
Are WPB building on their success to date? Their crowdfunding campaign for the general election is going pretty poorly. I think they’ll struggle to raise the funds to stand in a very large number of constituencies. I also think it’s notable that lots of people aren’t joining them. Akhmed Yakoob in the W Mids mayoral election stood as an independent rather than for the WPB (who endorsed him). I don’t see that as a vote of confidence in the WPB.
Points all taken, however I think in terms of overall impact you're underestimating the impact of the Muslim vote potential on the total WPB achieve. They'll be probably aiming to achieve 10 to 20% of the Muslim vote, heavily concentrated in those areas of high Muslim population. That would put them well on the way to my 750k/2.5%. Maybe I'm too high, but I'll stick by it. The Ipsos survey this week shows the ethnic minority vote is ready to revolt with both Lab and Con leaders with absolute historic basement approval. In many constituencies they will get diddly. But then so will the LDs and Greens and Reform. I'm looking at Respect as a guide, a similar party with similar aims and appeal. They stood in 16 and 11 constituencies in 05 and 10 achieving 0.3% in 05 and over both averaging 3000 votes per seat. WPB achieved 29,000 votes over 33 wards and one PCC region, 5% in the Lewisham mayoralty earlier. 750,000 is a stretch but its by no means out of sight. That said, Money will be the big stumbling block, yes, unless they find a big backer to fund deposits. In that case (standing in under 500) , I predict them to average over 1500 votes/seat stood
RESPECT is a very good model. They got 68k in 2005 and 33k in 2010, before collapsing completely in infighting. A good starting point is that WPB are going to get about the same. You’re predicting that WPB will do 11 times better than RESPECT’s best. I’m not seeing the mechanism by which that happens.
If the WPB get 20% of the Muslim vote, that’s 20% of 4.4%, which is 0.9%. To get to 2.5%, where does the other 1.6% come from? I suggest WPB comes after the infighting of RESPECT and with Galloway turning more social conservative, suggesting the party will be much less able to mobilise far left support. Ergo, I expect WPB to do worse than RESPECT’s 2005 high.
Respect only stood in 16 seats in 2005 and 11 in 2010, clearly the WPB are standing in many more than this. I expect them to get fewer votes per seat than Respect as they will stand in some duds. They got within 4000 of Respect 2010 in 33 council wards and a PCC election. That said, we clearly disagree on this and I'll happily concede I was wrong if I am well off. But I'll eat my hat if WPB get fewer than 68,000 votes.
Spoiler: parents are not ditching their cars. A BBC Bristol journalist from BBC Bristol has spoken to a couple of left-wing parents in urban areas of what is now one of the UK's most left-wing cities who now cycle their kids to school.
It's entirely unrepresentative, it is very much exaggerated and it is absolutely very BBC. Met and preachy to the core.
I am a big supporter of the BBC - I think the country is trashing a huge soft influence asset by running it down...
But I have to say this is a fair cop Casino - DM or Express levels of journalism. I fear the journalist's/editor's biases got the better of them.
It’s noteworthy that there’s a BBC article that’s remotely biased in that direction given the torrent of Tory talking points the organisation is cowed into spewing on a daily basis.
There have always been weak articles like this on the site. Inevitable when you consider the volume they pump out daily. Though I’d note that at least a third of the parents at our primary school, possibly closer to half, don’t own a car. It’s perhaps of anthropological interest to those living outside big cities to understand the cultural norms and mores of the millions who do.
Yes. I think there's a more interesting story to be written about the inconvenience of bringing up a family without the use of a car that would still fit the topic.
To your point I'm guessing most young families are in cities because that's where the jobs are.
Their jobs are there of course, but they’ve also made the decision to stay in the inner city rather than commute from the suburbs.
Those without cars generally say they don’t miss them but it must cause issues when it comes to taking rubbish to the tip or picking up furniture from IKEA.
The carless parent cohort are a cross section from poor and on benefits to pretty wealthy and working in the city.
The walking and cycling parents in Bristol, at least the ones the BBC found, are the very lucky few who can both afford to live around the corner from the good school, and have a parent without a tight morning schedule.
Once upon a time, kids would've walked or cycled to school on their lonesome. Then parents started to get risk averse and thus the school run started, making the roads more dangerous for those who continued to walk - a vicious cycle until there is a huge increase in congestion during school term and people won't let their kids out on the road.
I find that very sad, and count myself lucky that I had the freedom of my neighbourhood from about age 8.
Oh indeed, kids should be allowed to be kids, but today’s parents are much more worried about the massively rare safety issues, than they are about letting them be kids and explore the world.
It tells you a lot about the BBC though, that they choose to venerate the yummy mummies and WFHers in the million-pound houses with six grand bikes, and softly demonise the hardworking secretary whose boss notices if she arrives at 9:05 because there was a traffic jam outside the school on the other side of town.
“demonise” Really? Can you show me an article that “demonise[s]” a “hardworking secretary whose boss notices if she arrives at 9:05 because there was a traffic jam”. I can’t say I’ve noticed that happening.
After the Brexit referendum there was a realisation among the young city-dwelling population, the hated metropolitan liberals, there was a world out there they simply didn’t comprehend. How else could they have been so confidently wrong about the result. Those who ventured out of the big cities realised that millions of people lived their lives with very different cultural and political reference points. This led to thousands of pained navel gazing editorials and launched the career of the lauded academic Matt Goodwin.
What was never noticed in all of this is that the incomprehension and failure to understand how people can be different is mutual. But you won’t find many navel gazing editorials about that.
Boo! I worked out how to post images from imgur but they are still blurred!
You are safe from an insane barrage of photos
Altamura is fantastico. I am about to go under the “lower urban arch in Europe”
Your reports are welcome (however much we take the piss). I'm thinking of visiting somewhere down there this autumn, if I can spare the time.
I strongly recommend this bit of northern puglia and south east Basilicata. Virtually no foreign tourists - Taranto is not unique in this
I’ve never even HEARD of Altamura. Has anyone on here? Yet it has a perfectly preserved centro storico. A magnificent Romanesque cathedral. A medieval warren of greek, Arab and Norman streets
And what’s that word we invented for “when a destination fulfils your cliched expectations?”
Every guide book that bothers to mention Altamura - not many - says the focaccia is famously delicious . So I just bought some. And yes. It’s absolutely delicious. Best focaccia I’ve ever had (something to do with durum wheat? They have 600 year old bakeries here)
Yay puglia
@Leon I'm back for my Las Vegas/Death Valley/Grand Canyon trip. Just wanted to thank you for some of the advice given.
The highlight for me was Death Valley. I presume you have been? Awesome place.
The other highlight was the Santana concert at the House of Blues. Probably one of the best concerts and venues I have been to. Eric Clapton at the Albert Hall in a few days time should be an interesting comparison. These two are the two most expensive concerts I have ever been to by a long way.
The helicopter trip (my first flight in a helicopter) over the Grand Canyon was very enjoyable but a little disappointing. I was expecting to be thrilled but compared to an acrobatics plane and a glider it is very tame even over that landscape. They tried to spice it up with Ride of the Valkyries as you approached the lip of the canyon and Also Sprech Zarathustra as you went over the lip.
Thanks again for the advice.
If you found the helicopter ride disappointing then it’s a good job you didn’t do the walk to the lip of the canyon. It’s one of the biggest let-downs in global travel - to my mind. It’s just an enormous hole surrounded by crowds - and for some reason even the scale doesn’t really impact - it lacks noom!
Size is certainly not everything. The Cuillins on Skye are my favourite example. Some of the most dramatic mountains on earth - yet they are TINY
You could always have chucked a dog over the edge for scale.
Want to have a bit of fun, donate to a good cause, and maybe win a massive book token? Here's how...
As I have mentioned once or twice, in January I took over a bookshop - The Book Ferret, in Arundel.
Now that I've got my feet under the table and the local customers have got used to the new face behind the desk, I'm going to be changing the name of the book shop next month, and I'm running a competition to guess the new name to raise money for charity - and you could win a book token!
The new name is the title of a twentieth century novel by a British author - details of the contest are on the JustGiving page where you can donate and enter
www.justgiving.com/page/thebookferret
84 Charing Cross Road. BlancheLivermore will thank you. The Ice Twins, by SK Tremayne. The Political Punter, by Mike Smithson.
Morning all. Polling of late suggests a bump for Labour post LEs/Elphicke of maybe a couple of % points, Opinium, WeThink, Deltapoll and YouGov all found a bouncette, all within MoE though of course. Tories are sort of holding on at low to mid 20s but there is an inexorable drift down at a very slow pace, I don't expect that to reverse until a GE is called and then a limited bump up as DKs return (not en masse by any means). Reform are declining by a similar amount to Labour's bounce....... dyor, LDs and Greens seem static, LDs need double figures to be confident of large gains from the Tories but evenat 7 or 8% they'd nab quite a few. Galloway and the WPB made their first appearance this week in polls with 1% in Whitestone (actually 0.6%) and Opinium (awaiting tables), I've got them on ca 2.5% if they run 600 candidates or proportionate thereto (ca 750,000 votes), they'd need maybe 3 to 3.5% to start causing a bit of chaos. I think they will do pretty well for a new party, Gaza will be a strong recruiting sergeant this time and they are a natural outlet for it.
Most people presume that Reform UK will get fewer votes in the election than their polling. Can I ask why you think WPB will get more votes in the election than their polling?
Well, I just did. Gaza. Also, Increasing awareness of their existence and their performance where they have stood thus year so far suggests a not insignificant interest and support.. Reform are prompted in polling, WPB are not.
Thanks. There are other parties competing on the Gaza vote, including the better-organised, more established, larger, less homophobic Greens. I don’t think myself that Gaza is going to be a bigger issue in a few months. Ukraine faded from the headlines to a degree, as will Gaza. (Personally, I think Gaza is a huge tragedy, as is Ukraine, and I don’t want it to fade in people’s attention.)
The WPB’s performance to date has been good in the limited places they chose to stand. They chose to stand in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters. That scenario doesn’t generalise to most constituencies.
Prompting in the polls does make a difference, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.
Are WPB building on their success to date? Their crowdfunding campaign for the general election is going pretty poorly. I think they’ll struggle to raise the funds to stand in a very large number of constituencies. I also think it’s notable that lots of people aren’t joining them. Akhmed Yakoob in the W Mids mayoral election stood as an independent rather than for the WPB (who endorsed him). I don’t see that as a vote of confidence in the WPB.
Points all taken, however I think in terms of overall impact you're underestimating the impact of the Muslim vote potential on the total WPB achieve. They'll be probably aiming to achieve 10 to 20% of the Muslim vote, heavily concentrated in those areas of high Muslim population. That would put them well on the way to my 750k/2.5%. Maybe I'm too high, but I'll stick by it. The Ipsos survey this week shows the ethnic minority vote is ready to revolt with both Lab and Con leaders with absolute historic basement approval. In many constituencies they will get diddly. But then so will the LDs and Greens and Reform. I'm looking at Respect as a guide, a similar party with similar aims and appeal. They stood in 16 and 11 constituencies in 05 and 10 achieving 0.3% in 05 and over both averaging 3000 votes per seat. WPB achieved 29,000 votes over 33 wards and one PCC region, 5% in the Lewisham mayoralty earlier. 750,000 is a stretch but its by no means out of sight. That said, Money will be the big stumbling block, yes, unless they find a big backer to fund deposits. In that case (standing in under 500) , I predict them to average over 1500 votes/seat stood
RESPECT is a very good model. They got 68k in 2005 and 33k in 2010, before collapsing completely in infighting. A good starting point is that WPB are going to get about the same. You’re predicting that WPB will do 11 times better than RESPECT’s best. I’m not seeing the mechanism by which that happens.
If the WPB get 20% of the Muslim vote, that’s 20% of 4.4%, which is 0.9%. To get to 2.5%, where does the other 1.6% come from? I suggest WPB comes after the infighting of RESPECT and with Galloway turning more social conservative, suggesting the party will be much less able to mobilise far left support. Ergo, I expect WPB to do worse than RESPECT’s 2005 high.
Respect only stood in 16 seats in 2005 and 11 in 2010, clearly the WPB are standing in many more than this. I expect them to get fewer votes per seat than Respect as they will stand in some duds. They got within 4000 of Respect 2010 in 33 council wards and a PCC election. That said, we clearly disagree on this and I'll happily concede I was wrong if I am well off. But I'll eat my hat if WPB get fewer than 68,000 votes.
In my part of London, we have the Newham Independents who have three Councillors, two won in overwhelming by-election successes and one via defection.
Their leadership is ex-Labour, strong supporters of Corbyn who were booted from the fold when Roksana Foaz recognised the future lay in backing Starmer. Said Independents jumped immediately onto the pro-Palestine bandwagon and their wins came in strongly Muslim areas (their candidate in my more Hindu Ward was well beaten). Some parts of Newham had Palestinian flags on the lamp post but the Mail and Express created the impression in provincial England this was happening all over London - it wasn't. Again, in my more Hindu area, no flags on lamp posts.
We need another new word for “the sense of pleasure in discovering an untouched jewel of a place in a massively touristed region/country”
Altamura is that
The feeling probably requires a German compound noun, but the process is similar to “gleaning”: the act of collecting leftover crops from fields after they have been commercially harvested.
Morning all. Polling of late suggests a bump for Labour post LEs/Elphicke of maybe a couple of % points, Opinium, WeThink, Deltapoll and YouGov all found a bouncette, all within MoE though of course. Tories are sort of holding on at low to mid 20s but there is an inexorable drift down at a very slow pace, I don't expect that to reverse until a GE is called and then a limited bump up as DKs return (not en masse by any means). Reform are declining by a similar amount to Labour's bounce....... dyor, LDs and Greens seem static, LDs need double figures to be confident of large gains from the Tories but evenat 7 or 8% they'd nab quite a few. Galloway and the WPB made their first appearance this week in polls with 1% in Whitestone (actually 0.6%) and Opinium (awaiting tables), I've got them on ca 2.5% if they run 600 candidates or proportionate thereto (ca 750,000 votes), they'd need maybe 3 to 3.5% to start causing a bit of chaos. I think they will do pretty well for a new party, Gaza will be a strong recruiting sergeant this time and they are a natural outlet for it.
Most people presume that Reform UK will get fewer votes in the election than their polling. Can I ask why you think WPB will get more votes in the election than their polling?
Well, I just did. Gaza. Also, Increasing awareness of their existence and their performance where they have stood thus year so far suggests a not insignificant interest and support.. Reform are prompted in polling, WPB are not.
Thanks. There are other parties competing on the Gaza vote, including the better-organised, more established, larger, less homophobic Greens. I don’t think myself that Gaza is going to be a bigger issue in a few months. Ukraine faded from the headlines to a degree, as will Gaza. (Personally, I think Gaza is a huge tragedy, as is Ukraine, and I don’t want it to fade in people’s attention.)
The WPB’s performance to date has been good in the limited places they chose to stand. They chose to stand in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters. That scenario doesn’t generalise to most constituencies.
Prompting in the polls does make a difference, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.
Are WPB building on their success to date? Their crowdfunding campaign for the general election is going pretty poorly. I think they’ll struggle to raise the funds to stand in a very large number of constituencies. I also think it’s notable that lots of people aren’t joining them. Akhmed Yakoob in the W Mids mayoral election stood as an independent rather than for the WPB (who endorsed him). I don’t see that as a vote of confidence in the WPB.
Points all taken, however I think in terms of overall impact you're underestimating the impact of the Muslim vote potential on the total WPB achieve. They'll be probably aiming to achieve 10 to 20% of the Muslim vote, heavily concentrated in those areas of high Muslim population. That would put them well on the way to my 750k/2.5%. Maybe I'm too high, but I'll stick by it. The Ipsos survey this week shows the ethnic minority vote is ready to revolt with both Lab and Con leaders with absolute historic basement approval. In many constituencies they will get diddly. But then so will the LDs and Greens and Reform. I'm looking at Respect as a guide, a similar party with similar aims and appeal. They stood in 16 and 11 constituencies in 05 and 10 achieving 0.3% in 05 and over both averaging 3000 votes per seat. WPB achieved 29,000 votes over 33 wards and one PCC region, 5% in the Lewisham mayoralty earlier. 750,000 is a stretch but its by no means out of sight. That said, Money will be the big stumbling block, yes, unless they find a big backer to fund deposits. In that case (standing in under 500) , I predict them to average over 1500 votes/seat stood
RESPECT is a very good model. They got 68k in 2005 and 33k in 2010, before collapsing completely in infighting. A good starting point is that WPB are going to get about the same. You’re predicting that WPB will do 11 times better than RESPECT’s best. I’m not seeing the mechanism by which that happens.
If the WPB get 20% of the Muslim vote, that’s 20% of 4.4%, which is 0.9%. To get to 2.5%, where does the other 1.6% come from? I suggest WPB comes after the infighting of RESPECT and with Galloway turning more social conservative, suggesting the party will be much less able to mobilise far left support. Ergo, I expect WPB to do worse than RESPECT’s 2005 high.
Respect only stood in 16 seats in 2005 and 11 in 2010, clearly the WPB are standing in many more than this. I expect them to get fewer votes per seat than Respect as they will stand in some duds. They got within 4000 of Respect 2010 in 33 council wards and a PCC election. That said, we clearly disagree on this and I'll happily concede I was wrong if I am well off. But I'll eat my hat if WPB get fewer than 68,000 votes.
In my part of London, we have the Newham Independents who have three Councillors, two won in overwhelming by-election successes and one via defection.
Their leadership is ex-Labour, strong supporters of Corbyn who were booted from the fold when Roksana Foaz recognised the future lay in backing Starmer. Said Independents jumped immediately onto the pro-Palestine bandwagon and their wins came in strongly Muslim areas (their candidate in my more Hindu Ward was well beaten). Some parts of Newham had Palestinian flags on the lamp post but the Mail and Express created the impression in provincial England this was happening all over London - it wasn't. Again, in my more Hindu area, no flags on lamp posts.
WPB are supporting Newham Independant Tahir Mirza in East Ham and appear to be standing a candidate in West Ham and Beckton. Both were strong Respect showings formerly of course.
Spoiler: parents are not ditching their cars. A BBC Bristol journalist from BBC Bristol has spoken to a couple of left-wing parents in urban areas of what is now one of the UK's most left-wing cities who now cycle their kids to school.
It's entirely unrepresentative, it is very much exaggerated and it is absolutely very BBC. Met and preachy to the core.
I am a big supporter of the BBC - I think the country is trashing a huge soft influence asset by running it down...
But I have to say this is a fair cop Casino - DM or Express levels of journalism. I fear the journalist's/editor's biases got the better of them.
It’s noteworthy that there’s a BBC article that’s remotely biased in that direction given the torrent of Tory talking points the organisation is cowed into spewing on a daily basis.
There have always been weak articles like this on the site. Inevitable when you consider the volume they pump out daily. Though I’d note that at least a third of the parents at our primary school, possibly closer to half, don’t own a car. It’s perhaps of anthropological interest to those living outside big cities to understand the cultural norms and mores of the millions who do.
Yes. I think there's a more interesting story to be written about the inconvenience of bringing up a family without the use of a car that would still fit the topic.
To your point I'm guessing most young families are in cities because that's where the jobs are.
Their jobs are there of course, but they’ve also made the decision to stay in the inner city rather than commute from the suburbs.
Those without cars generally say they don’t miss them but it must cause issues when it comes to taking rubbish to the tip or picking up furniture from IKEA.
The carless parent cohort are a cross section from poor and on benefits to pretty wealthy and working in the city.
The walking and cycling parents in Bristol, at least the ones the BBC found, are the very lucky few who can both afford to live around the corner from the good school, and have a parent without a tight morning schedule.
Once upon a time, kids would've walked or cycled to school on their lonesome. Then parents started to get risk averse and thus the school run started, making the roads more dangerous for those who continued to walk - a vicious cycle until there is a huge increase in congestion during school term and people won't let their kids out on the road.
I find that very sad, and count myself lucky that I had the freedom of my neighbourhood from about age 8.
Oh indeed, kids should be allowed to be kids, but today’s parents are much more worried about the massively rare safety issues, than they are about letting them be kids and explore the world.
It tells you a lot about the BBC though, that they choose to venerate the yummy mummies and WFHers in the million-pound houses with six grand bikes, and softly demonise the hardworking secretary whose boss notices if she arrives at 9:05 because there was a traffic jam outside the school on the other side of town.
“demonise” Really? Can you show me an article that “demonise[s]” a “hardworking secretary whose boss notices if she arrives at 9:05 because there was a traffic jam”. I can’t say I’ve noticed that happening.
After the Brexit referendum there was a realisation among the young city-dwelling population, the hated metropolitan liberals, there was a world out there they simply didn’t comprehend. How else could they have been so confidently wrong about the result. Those who ventured out of the big cities realised that millions of people lived their lives with very different cultural and political reference points. This led to thousands of pained navel gazing editorials and launched the career of the lauded academic Matt Goodwin.
What was never noticed in all of this is that the incomprehension and failure to understand how people can be different is mutual. But you won’t find many navel gazing editorials about that.
What is of interest is to take the woke methodology - micro aggressions, ignoring cultural differences, silencing groups etc and apply it to interactions in society in general.
“I can’t say I’ve noticed that happening.”
A frequently noted phenomenon is people genuinely not seeing negative issues and behaviour towards groups they are not part of. This is especially marked when it is groups they don’t feel any especial link to.
Morning all. Polling of late suggests a bump for Labour post LEs/Elphicke of maybe a couple of % points, Opinium, WeThink, Deltapoll and YouGov all found a bouncette, all within MoE though of course. Tories are sort of holding on at low to mid 20s but there is an inexorable drift down at a very slow pace, I don't expect that to reverse until a GE is called and then a limited bump up as DKs return (not en masse by any means). Reform are declining by a similar amount to Labour's bounce....... dyor, LDs and Greens seem static, LDs need double figures to be confident of large gains from the Tories but evenat 7 or 8% they'd nab quite a few. Galloway and the WPB made their first appearance this week in polls with 1% in Whitestone (actually 0.6%) and Opinium (awaiting tables), I've got them on ca 2.5% if they run 600 candidates or proportionate thereto (ca 750,000 votes), they'd need maybe 3 to 3.5% to start causing a bit of chaos. I think they will do pretty well for a new party, Gaza will be a strong recruiting sergeant this time and they are a natural outlet for it.
Most people presume that Reform UK will get fewer votes in the election than their polling. Can I ask why you think WPB will get more votes in the election than their polling?
Well, I just did. Gaza. Also, Increasing awareness of their existence and their performance where they have stood thus year so far suggests a not insignificant interest and support.. Reform are prompted in polling, WPB are not.
Thanks. There are other parties competing on the Gaza vote, including the better-organised, more established, larger, less homophobic Greens. I don’t think myself that Gaza is going to be a bigger issue in a few months. Ukraine faded from the headlines to a degree, as will Gaza. (Personally, I think Gaza is a huge tragedy, as is Ukraine, and I don’t want it to fade in people’s attention.)
The WPB’s performance to date has been good in the limited places they chose to stand. They chose to stand in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters. That scenario doesn’t generalise to most constituencies.
Prompting in the polls does make a difference, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.
Are WPB building on their success to date? Their crowdfunding campaign for the general election is going pretty poorly. I think they’ll struggle to raise the funds to stand in a very large number of constituencies. I also think it’s notable that lots of people aren’t joining them. Akhmed Yakoob in the W Mids mayoral election stood as an independent rather than for the WPB (who endorsed him). I don’t see that as a vote of confidence in the WPB.
Points all taken, however I think in terms of overall impact you're underestimating the impact of the Muslim vote potential on the total WPB achieve. They'll be probably aiming to achieve 10 to 20% of the Muslim vote, heavily concentrated in those areas of high Muslim population. That would put them well on the way to my 750k/2.5%. Maybe I'm too high, but I'll stick by it. The Ipsos survey this week shows the ethnic minority vote is ready to revolt with both Lab and Con leaders with absolute historic basement approval. In many constituencies they will get diddly. But then so will the LDs and Greens and Reform. I'm looking at Respect as a guide, a similar party with similar aims and appeal. They stood in 16 and 11 constituencies in 05 and 10 achieving 0.3% in 05 and over both averaging 3000 votes per seat. WPB achieved 29,000 votes over 33 wards and one PCC region, 5% in the Lewisham mayoralty earlier. 750,000 is a stretch but its by no means out of sight. That said, Money will be the big stumbling block, yes, unless they find a big backer to fund deposits. In that case (standing in under 500) , I predict them to average over 1500 votes/seat stood
RESPECT is a very good model. They got 68k in 2005 and 33k in 2010, before collapsing completely in infighting. A good starting point is that WPB are going to get about the same. You’re predicting that WPB will do 11 times better than RESPECT’s best. I’m not seeing the mechanism by which that happens.
If the WPB get 20% of the Muslim vote, that’s 20% of 4.4%, which is 0.9%. To get to 2.5%, where does the other 1.6% come from? I suggest WPB comes after the infighting of RESPECT and with Galloway turning more social conservative, suggesting the party will be much less able to mobilise far left support. Ergo, I expect WPB to do worse than RESPECT’s 2005 high.
Respect only stood in 16 seats in 2005 and 11 in 2010, clearly the WPB are standing in many more than this. I expect them to get fewer votes per seat than Respect as they will stand in some duds. They got within 4000 of Respect 2010 in 33 council wards and a PCC election. That said, we clearly disagree on this and I'll happily concede I was wrong if I am well off. But I'll eat my hat if WPB get fewer than 68,000 votes.
We’re not going to agree on this one. Let’s see what happens at the general election!
I would note that “clearly” is questionable in your statement that the WPB will be “standing in many more” constituencies. They’ve announced a plan to stand in many more constituencies. Will they actually do so?
Morning all. Polling of late suggests a bump for Labour post LEs/Elphicke of maybe a couple of % points, Opinium, WeThink, Deltapoll and YouGov all found a bouncette, all within MoE though of course. Tories are sort of holding on at low to mid 20s but there is an inexorable drift down at a very slow pace, I don't expect that to reverse until a GE is called and then a limited bump up as DKs return (not en masse by any means). Reform are declining by a similar amount to Labour's bounce....... dyor, LDs and Greens seem static, LDs need double figures to be confident of large gains from the Tories but evenat 7 or 8% they'd nab quite a few. Galloway and the WPB made their first appearance this week in polls with 1% in Whitestone (actually 0.6%) and Opinium (awaiting tables), I've got them on ca 2.5% if they run 600 candidates or proportionate thereto (ca 750,000 votes), they'd need maybe 3 to 3.5% to start causing a bit of chaos. I think they will do pretty well for a new party, Gaza will be a strong recruiting sergeant this time and they are a natural outlet for it.
Most people presume that Reform UK will get fewer votes in the election than their polling. Can I ask why you think WPB will get more votes in the election than their polling?
Well, I just did. Gaza. Also, Increasing awareness of their existence and their performance where they have stood thus year so far suggests a not insignificant interest and support.. Reform are prompted in polling, WPB are not.
Thanks. There are other parties competing on the Gaza vote, including the better-organised, more established, larger, less homophobic Greens. I don’t think myself that Gaza is going to be a bigger issue in a few months. Ukraine faded from the headlines to a degree, as will Gaza. (Personally, I think Gaza is a huge tragedy, as is Ukraine, and I don’t want it to fade in people’s attention.)
The WPB’s performance to date has been good in the limited places they chose to stand. They chose to stand in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters. That scenario doesn’t generalise to most constituencies.
Prompting in the polls does make a difference, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.
Are WPB building on their success to date? Their crowdfunding campaign for the general election is going pretty poorly. I think they’ll struggle to raise the funds to stand in a very large number of constituencies. I also think it’s notable that lots of people aren’t joining them. Akhmed Yakoob in the W Mids mayoral election stood as an independent rather than for the WPB (who endorsed him). I don’t see that as a vote of confidence in the WPB.
Points all taken, however I think in terms of overall impact you're underestimating the impact of the Muslim vote potential on the total WPB achieve. They'll be probably aiming to achieve 10 to 20% of the Muslim vote, heavily concentrated in those areas of high Muslim population. That would put them well on the way to my 750k/2.5%. Maybe I'm too high, but I'll stick by it. The Ipsos survey this week shows the ethnic minority vote is ready to revolt with both Lab and Con leaders with absolute historic basement approval. In many constituencies they will get diddly. But then so will the LDs and Greens and Reform. I'm looking at Respect as a guide, a similar party with similar aims and appeal. They stood in 16 and 11 constituencies in 05 and 10 achieving 0.3% in 05 and over both averaging 3000 votes per seat. WPB achieved 29,000 votes over 33 wards and one PCC region, 5% in the Lewisham mayoralty earlier. 750,000 is a stretch but its by no means out of sight. That said, Money will be the big stumbling block, yes, unless they find a big backer to fund deposits. In that case (standing in under 500) , I predict them to average over 1500 votes/seat stood
RESPECT is a very good model. They got 68k in 2005 and 33k in 2010, before collapsing completely in infighting. A good starting point is that WPB are going to get about the same. You’re predicting that WPB will do 11 times better than RESPECT’s best. I’m not seeing the mechanism by which that happens.
If the WPB get 20% of the Muslim vote, that’s 20% of 4.4%, which is 0.9%. To get to 2.5%, where does the other 1.6% come from? I suggest WPB comes after the infighting of RESPECT and with Galloway turning more social conservative, suggesting the party will be much less able to mobilise far left support. Ergo, I expect WPB to do worse than RESPECT’s 2005 high.
Respect only stood in 16 seats in 2005 and 11 in 2010, clearly the WPB are standing in many more than this. I expect them to get fewer votes per seat than Respect as they will stand in some duds. They got within 4000 of Respect 2010 in 33 council wards and a PCC election. That said, we clearly disagree on this and I'll happily concede I was wrong if I am well off. But I'll eat my hat if WPB get fewer than 68,000 votes.
In my part of London, we have the Newham Independents who have three Councillors, two won in overwhelming by-election successes and one via defection.
Their leadership is ex-Labour, strong supporters of Corbyn who were booted from the fold when Roksana Foaz recognised the future lay in backing Starmer. Said Independents jumped immediately onto the pro-Palestine bandwagon and their wins came in strongly Muslim areas (their candidate in my more Hindu Ward was well beaten). Some parts of Newham had Palestinian flags on the lamp post but the Mail and Express created the impression in provincial England this was happening all over London - it wasn't. Again, in my more Hindu area, no flags on lamp posts.
WPB are supporting Newham Independant Tahir Mirza in East Ham and appear to be standing a candidate in West Ham and Beckton. Both were strong Respect showings formerly of course.
Just to add to this, the Newham Independents have chosen Councillor Sophia Naqvi, who won the Plaistow by-election, as their candidate. I'd be surprised if the WPB stood a candidate against her.
Labour, who have suspended the relevant CLP groups, have yet to announce a candidate in either West Ham & Beckton or Stratford & Bow. My understanding is Sir Stephen Timms will stand again in East Ham.
Morning all. Polling of late suggests a bump for Labour post LEs/Elphicke of maybe a couple of % points, Opinium, WeThink, Deltapoll and YouGov all found a bouncette, all within MoE though of course. Tories are sort of holding on at low to mid 20s but there is an inexorable drift down at a very slow pace, I don't expect that to reverse until a GE is called and then a limited bump up as DKs return (not en masse by any means). Reform are declining by a similar amount to Labour's bounce....... dyor, LDs and Greens seem static, LDs need double figures to be confident of large gains from the Tories but evenat 7 or 8% they'd nab quite a few. Galloway and the WPB made their first appearance this week in polls with 1% in Whitestone (actually 0.6%) and Opinium (awaiting tables), I've got them on ca 2.5% if they run 600 candidates or proportionate thereto (ca 750,000 votes), they'd need maybe 3 to 3.5% to start causing a bit of chaos. I think they will do pretty well for a new party, Gaza will be a strong recruiting sergeant this time and they are a natural outlet for it.
Most people presume that Reform UK will get fewer votes in the election than their polling. Can I ask why you think WPB will get more votes in the election than their polling?
Well, I just did. Gaza. Also, Increasing awareness of their existence and their performance where they have stood thus year so far suggests a not insignificant interest and support.. Reform are prompted in polling, WPB are not.
Thanks. There are other parties competing on the Gaza vote, including the better-organised, more established, larger, less homophobic Greens. I don’t think myself that Gaza is going to be a bigger issue in a few months. Ukraine faded from the headlines to a degree, as will Gaza. (Personally, I think Gaza is a huge tragedy, as is Ukraine, and I don’t want it to fade in people’s attention.)
The WPB’s performance to date has been good in the limited places they chose to stand. They chose to stand in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters. That scenario doesn’t generalise to most constituencies.
Prompting in the polls does make a difference, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.
Are WPB building on their success to date? Their crowdfunding campaign for the general election is going pretty poorly. I think they’ll struggle to raise the funds to stand in a very large number of constituencies. I also think it’s notable that lots of people aren’t joining them. Akhmed Yakoob in the W Mids mayoral election stood as an independent rather than for the WPB (who endorsed him). I don’t see that as a vote of confidence in the WPB.
Points all taken, however I think in terms of overall impact you're underestimating the impact of the Muslim vote potential on the total WPB achieve. They'll be probably aiming to achieve 10 to 20% of the Muslim vote, heavily concentrated in those areas of high Muslim population. That would put them well on the way to my 750k/2.5%. Maybe I'm too high, but I'll stick by it. The Ipsos survey this week shows the ethnic minority vote is ready to revolt with both Lab and Con leaders with absolute historic basement approval. In many constituencies they will get diddly. But then so will the LDs and Greens and Reform. I'm looking at Respect as a guide, a similar party with similar aims and appeal. They stood in 16 and 11 constituencies in 05 and 10 achieving 0.3% in 05 and over both averaging 3000 votes per seat. WPB achieved 29,000 votes over 33 wards and one PCC region, 5% in the Lewisham mayoralty earlier. 750,000 is a stretch but its by no means out of sight. That said, Money will be the big stumbling block, yes, unless they find a big backer to fund deposits. In that case (standing in under 500) , I predict them to average over 1500 votes/seat stood
RESPECT is a very good model. They got 68k in 2005 and 33k in 2010, before collapsing completely in infighting. A good starting point is that WPB are going to get about the same. You’re predicting that WPB will do 11 times better than RESPECT’s best. I’m not seeing the mechanism by which that happens.
If the WPB get 20% of the Muslim vote, that’s 20% of 4.4%, which is 0.9%. To get to 2.5%, where does the other 1.6% come from? I suggest WPB comes after the infighting of RESPECT and with Galloway turning more social conservative, suggesting the party will be much less able to mobilise far left support. Ergo, I expect WPB to do worse than RESPECT’s 2005 high.
Respect only stood in 16 seats in 2005 and 11 in 2010, clearly the WPB are standing in many more than this. I expect them to get fewer votes per seat than Respect as they will stand in some duds. They got within 4000 of Respect 2010 in 33 council wards and a PCC election. That said, we clearly disagree on this and I'll happily concede I was wrong if I am well off. But I'll eat my hat if WPB get fewer than 68,000 votes.
We’re not going to agree on this one. Let’s see what happens at the general election!
I would note that “clearly” is questionable in your statement that the WPB will be “standing in many more” constituencies. They’ve announced a plan to stand in many more constituencies. Will they actually do so?
They've announced 160 candidates so far, and further Midlands candidates yesterday with regular annoucements planned/to come. I can't see them not going forward with the vast majority. Time will tell! Yes, let's review after voting
Morning all. Polling of late suggests a bump for Labour post LEs/Elphicke of maybe a couple of % points, Opinium, WeThink, Deltapoll and YouGov all found a bouncette, all within MoE though of course. Tories are sort of holding on at low to mid 20s but there is an inexorable drift down at a very slow pace, I don't expect that to reverse until a GE is called and then a limited bump up as DKs return (not en masse by any means). Reform are declining by a similar amount to Labour's bounce....... dyor, LDs and Greens seem static, LDs need double figures to be confident of large gains from the Tories but evenat 7 or 8% they'd nab quite a few. Galloway and the WPB made their first appearance this week in polls with 1% in Whitestone (actually 0.6%) and Opinium (awaiting tables), I've got them on ca 2.5% if they run 600 candidates or proportionate thereto (ca 750,000 votes), they'd need maybe 3 to 3.5% to start causing a bit of chaos. I think they will do pretty well for a new party, Gaza will be a strong recruiting sergeant this time and they are a natural outlet for it.
Most people presume that Reform UK will get fewer votes in the election than their polling. Can I ask why you think WPB will get more votes in the election than their polling?
Well, I just did. Gaza. Also, Increasing awareness of their existence and their performance where they have stood thus year so far suggests a not insignificant interest and support.. Reform are prompted in polling, WPB are not.
Thanks. There are other parties competing on the Gaza vote, including the better-organised, more established, larger, less homophobic Greens. I don’t think myself that Gaza is going to be a bigger issue in a few months. Ukraine faded from the headlines to a degree, as will Gaza. (Personally, I think Gaza is a huge tragedy, as is Ukraine, and I don’t want it to fade in people’s attention.)
The WPB’s performance to date has been good in the limited places they chose to stand. They chose to stand in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters. That scenario doesn’t generalise to most constituencies.
Prompting in the polls does make a difference, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.
Are WPB building on their success to date? Their crowdfunding campaign for the general election is going pretty poorly. I think they’ll struggle to raise the funds to stand in a very large number of constituencies. I also think it’s notable that lots of people aren’t joining them. Akhmed Yakoob in the W Mids mayoral election stood as an independent rather than for the WPB (who endorsed him). I don’t see that as a vote of confidence in the WPB.
Points all taken, however I think in terms of overall impact you're underestimating the impact of the Muslim vote potential on the total WPB achieve. They'll be probably aiming to achieve 10 to 20% of the Muslim vote, heavily concentrated in those areas of high Muslim population. That would put them well on the way to my 750k/2.5%. Maybe I'm too high, but I'll stick by it. The Ipsos survey this week shows the ethnic minority vote is ready to revolt with both Lab and Con leaders with absolute historic basement approval. In many constituencies they will get diddly. But then so will the LDs and Greens and Reform. I'm looking at Respect as a guide, a similar party with similar aims and appeal. They stood in 16 and 11 constituencies in 05 and 10 achieving 0.3% in 05 and over both averaging 3000 votes per seat. WPB achieved 29,000 votes over 33 wards and one PCC region, 5% in the Lewisham mayoralty earlier. 750,000 is a stretch but its by no means out of sight. That said, Money will be the big stumbling block, yes, unless they find a big backer to fund deposits. In that case (standing in under 500) , I predict them to average over 1500 votes/seat stood
RESPECT is a very good model. They got 68k in 2005 and 33k in 2010, before collapsing completely in infighting. A good starting point is that WPB are going to get about the same. You’re predicting that WPB will do 11 times better than RESPECT’s best. I’m not seeing the mechanism by which that happens.
If the WPB get 20% of the Muslim vote, that’s 20% of 4.4%, which is 0.9%. To get to 2.5%, where does the other 1.6% come from? I suggest WPB comes after the infighting of RESPECT and with Galloway turning more social conservative, suggesting the party will be much less able to mobilise far left support. Ergo, I expect WPB to do worse than RESPECT’s 2005 high.
Respect only stood in 16 seats in 2005 and 11 in 2010, clearly the WPB are standing in many more than this. I expect them to get fewer votes per seat than Respect as they will stand in some duds. They got within 4000 of Respect 2010 in 33 council wards and a PCC election. That said, we clearly disagree on this and I'll happily concede I was wrong if I am well off. But I'll eat my hat if WPB get fewer than 68,000 votes.
In my part of London, we have the Newham Independents who have three Councillors, two won in overwhelming by-election successes and one via defection.
Their leadership is ex-Labour, strong supporters of Corbyn who were booted from the fold when Roksana Foaz recognised the future lay in backing Starmer. Said Independents jumped immediately onto the pro-Palestine bandwagon and their wins came in strongly Muslim areas (their candidate in my more Hindu Ward was well beaten). Some parts of Newham had Palestinian flags on the lamp post but the Mail and Express created the impression in provincial England this was happening all over London - it wasn't. Again, in my more Hindu area, no flags on lamp posts.
I suggest the interesting question is why haven’t they all joined the WPB? The WPB is not hoovering up all these Corbynite and/or pro-Palestine groups.
My mistake. The bakery dates back to 1391. And there’s a queue for the bread
Next to it is a man singing beautiful puglian songs on the guitar. There are lots of people here - it’s a festival day
But everyone is Italian. Not a single foreign tourist
And they have the lowest urban arch in Europe!
Focaccia available at 1391 but sold out by 1420?
I have a feeling focaccia is like baguettes, historical as hell but actually a recent invention
No, you’re thinking of ciabatta. Invented in 1982
Focaccia is ancient. Possibly Etruscan
Didn’t some experimental archeological types have some fun trying to recreate the bread shown in frescos and paintings in Pompei?
I would not be amazed if it was indistinguishable from pizza (except no tomatoes). How many different ways can you do not very leavened bread (nb the ancients only did sourdough though Pliny mentions the Germans using brewers yeast) with a savoury topping?
Morning all. Polling of late suggests a bump for Labour post LEs/Elphicke of maybe a couple of % points, Opinium, WeThink, Deltapoll and YouGov all found a bouncette, all within MoE though of course. Tories are sort of holding on at low to mid 20s but there is an inexorable drift down at a very slow pace, I don't expect that to reverse until a GE is called and then a limited bump up as DKs return (not en masse by any means). Reform are declining by a similar amount to Labour's bounce....... dyor, LDs and Greens seem static, LDs need double figures to be confident of large gains from the Tories but evenat 7 or 8% they'd nab quite a few. Galloway and the WPB made their first appearance this week in polls with 1% in Whitestone (actually 0.6%) and Opinium (awaiting tables), I've got them on ca 2.5% if they run 600 candidates or proportionate thereto (ca 750,000 votes), they'd need maybe 3 to 3.5% to start causing a bit of chaos. I think they will do pretty well for a new party, Gaza will be a strong recruiting sergeant this time and they are a natural outlet for it.
Most people presume that Reform UK will get fewer votes in the election than their polling. Can I ask why you think WPB will get more votes in the election than their polling?
Well, I just did. Gaza. Also, Increasing awareness of their existence and their performance where they have stood thus year so far suggests a not insignificant interest and support.. Reform are prompted in polling, WPB are not.
Thanks. There are other parties competing on the Gaza vote, including the better-organised, more established, larger, less homophobic Greens. I don’t think myself that Gaza is going to be a bigger issue in a few months. Ukraine faded from the headlines to a degree, as will Gaza. (Personally, I think Gaza is a huge tragedy, as is Ukraine, and I don’t want it to fade in people’s attention.)
The WPB’s performance to date has been good in the limited places they chose to stand. They chose to stand in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters. That scenario doesn’t generalise to most constituencies.
Prompting in the polls does make a difference, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.
Are WPB building on their success to date? Their crowdfunding campaign for the general election is going pretty poorly. I think they’ll struggle to raise the funds to stand in a very large number of constituencies. I also think it’s notable that lots of people aren’t joining them. Akhmed Yakoob in the W Mids mayoral election stood as an independent rather than for the WPB (who endorsed him). I don’t see that as a vote of confidence in the WPB.
Points all taken, however I think in terms of overall impact you're underestimating the impact of the Muslim vote potential on the total WPB achieve. They'll be probably aiming to achieve 10 to 20% of the Muslim vote, heavily concentrated in those areas of high Muslim population. That would put them well on the way to my 750k/2.5%. Maybe I'm too high, but I'll stick by it. The Ipsos survey this week shows the ethnic minority vote is ready to revolt with both Lab and Con leaders with absolute historic basement approval. In many constituencies they will get diddly. But then so will the LDs and Greens and Reform. I'm looking at Respect as a guide, a similar party with similar aims and appeal. They stood in 16 and 11 constituencies in 05 and 10 achieving 0.3% in 05 and over both averaging 3000 votes per seat. WPB achieved 29,000 votes over 33 wards and one PCC region, 5% in the Lewisham mayoralty earlier. 750,000 is a stretch but its by no means out of sight. That said, Money will be the big stumbling block, yes, unless they find a big backer to fund deposits. In that case (standing in under 500) , I predict them to average over 1500 votes/seat stood
RESPECT is a very good model. They got 68k in 2005 and 33k in 2010, before collapsing completely in infighting. A good starting point is that WPB are going to get about the same. You’re predicting that WPB will do 11 times better than RESPECT’s best. I’m not seeing the mechanism by which that happens.
If the WPB get 20% of the Muslim vote, that’s 20% of 4.4%, which is 0.9%. To get to 2.5%, where does the other 1.6% come from? I suggest WPB comes after the infighting of RESPECT and with Galloway turning more social conservative, suggesting the party will be much less able to mobilise far left support. Ergo, I expect WPB to do worse than RESPECT’s 2005 high.
Respect only stood in 16 seats in 2005 and 11 in 2010, clearly the WPB are standing in many more than this. I expect them to get fewer votes per seat than Respect as they will stand in some duds. They got within 4000 of Respect 2010 in 33 council wards and a PCC election. That said, we clearly disagree on this and I'll happily concede I was wrong if I am well off. But I'll eat my hat if WPB get fewer than 68,000 votes.
In my part of London, we have the Newham Independents who have three Councillors, two won in overwhelming by-election successes and one via defection.
Their leadership is ex-Labour, strong supporters of Corbyn who were booted from the fold when Roksana Foaz recognised the future lay in backing Starmer. Said Independents jumped immediately onto the pro-Palestine bandwagon and their wins came in strongly Muslim areas (their candidate in my more Hindu Ward was well beaten). Some parts of Newham had Palestinian flags on the lamp post but the Mail and Express created the impression in provincial England this was happening all over London - it wasn't. Again, in my more Hindu area, no flags on lamp posts.
WPB are supporting Newham Independant Tahir Mirza in East Ham and appear to be standing a candidate in West Ham and Beckton. Both were strong Respect showings formerly of course.
But Mirza is not standing as a WPB candidate, so won’t contribute to the WPB vote share.
Morning all. Polling of late suggests a bump for Labour post LEs/Elphicke of maybe a couple of % points, Opinium, WeThink, Deltapoll and YouGov all found a bouncette, all within MoE though of course. Tories are sort of holding on at low to mid 20s but there is an inexorable drift down at a very slow pace, I don't expect that to reverse until a GE is called and then a limited bump up as DKs return (not en masse by any means). Reform are declining by a similar amount to Labour's bounce....... dyor, LDs and Greens seem static, LDs need double figures to be confident of large gains from the Tories but evenat 7 or 8% they'd nab quite a few. Galloway and the WPB made their first appearance this week in polls with 1% in Whitestone (actually 0.6%) and Opinium (awaiting tables), I've got them on ca 2.5% if they run 600 candidates or proportionate thereto (ca 750,000 votes), they'd need maybe 3 to 3.5% to start causing a bit of chaos. I think they will do pretty well for a new party, Gaza will be a strong recruiting sergeant this time and they are a natural outlet for it.
Most people presume that Reform UK will get fewer votes in the election than their polling. Can I ask why you think WPB will get more votes in the election than their polling?
Well, I just did. Gaza. Also, Increasing awareness of their existence and their performance where they have stood thus year so far suggests a not insignificant interest and support.. Reform are prompted in polling, WPB are not.
Thanks. There are other parties competing on the Gaza vote, including the better-organised, more established, larger, less homophobic Greens. I don’t think myself that Gaza is going to be a bigger issue in a few months. Ukraine faded from the headlines to a degree, as will Gaza. (Personally, I think Gaza is a huge tragedy, as is Ukraine, and I don’t want it to fade in people’s attention.)
The WPB’s performance to date has been good in the limited places they chose to stand. They chose to stand in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters. That scenario doesn’t generalise to most constituencies.
Prompting in the polls does make a difference, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.
Are WPB building on their success to date? Their crowdfunding campaign for the general election is going pretty poorly. I think they’ll struggle to raise the funds to stand in a very large number of constituencies. I also think it’s notable that lots of people aren’t joining them. Akhmed Yakoob in the W Mids mayoral election stood as an independent rather than for the WPB (who endorsed him). I don’t see that as a vote of confidence in the WPB.
Points all taken, however I think in terms of overall impact you're underestimating the impact of the Muslim vote potential on the total WPB achieve. They'll be probably aiming to achieve 10 to 20% of the Muslim vote, heavily concentrated in those areas of high Muslim population. That would put them well on the way to my 750k/2.5%. Maybe I'm too high, but I'll stick by it. The Ipsos survey this week shows the ethnic minority vote is ready to revolt with both Lab and Con leaders with absolute historic basement approval. In many constituencies they will get diddly. But then so will the LDs and Greens and Reform. I'm looking at Respect as a guide, a similar party with similar aims and appeal. They stood in 16 and 11 constituencies in 05 and 10 achieving 0.3% in 05 and over both averaging 3000 votes per seat. WPB achieved 29,000 votes over 33 wards and one PCC region, 5% in the Lewisham mayoralty earlier. 750,000 is a stretch but its by no means out of sight. That said, Money will be the big stumbling block, yes, unless they find a big backer to fund deposits. In that case (standing in under 500) , I predict them to average over 1500 votes/seat stood
RESPECT is a very good model. They got 68k in 2005 and 33k in 2010, before collapsing completely in infighting. A good starting point is that WPB are going to get about the same. You’re predicting that WPB will do 11 times better than RESPECT’s best. I’m not seeing the mechanism by which that happens.
If the WPB get 20% of the Muslim vote, that’s 20% of 4.4%, which is 0.9%. To get to 2.5%, where does the other 1.6% come from? I suggest WPB comes after the infighting of RESPECT and with Galloway turning more social conservative, suggesting the party will be much less able to mobilise far left support. Ergo, I expect WPB to do worse than RESPECT’s 2005 high.
Respect only stood in 16 seats in 2005 and 11 in 2010, clearly the WPB are standing in many more than this. I expect them to get fewer votes per seat than Respect as they will stand in some duds. They got within 4000 of Respect 2010 in 33 council wards and a PCC election. That said, we clearly disagree on this and I'll happily concede I was wrong if I am well off. But I'll eat my hat if WPB get fewer than 68,000 votes.
In my part of London, we have the Newham Independents who have three Councillors, two won in overwhelming by-election successes and one via defection.
Their leadership is ex-Labour, strong supporters of Corbyn who were booted from the fold when Roksana Foaz recognised the future lay in backing Starmer. Said Independents jumped immediately onto the pro-Palestine bandwagon and their wins came in strongly Muslim areas (their candidate in my more Hindu Ward was well beaten). Some parts of Newham had Palestinian flags on the lamp post but the Mail and Express created the impression in provincial England this was happening all over London - it wasn't. Again, in my more Hindu area, no flags on lamp posts.
WPB are supporting Newham Independant Tahir Mirza in East Ham and appear to be standing a candidate in West Ham and Beckton. Both were strong Respect showings formerly of course.
But Mirza is not standing as a WPB candidate, so won’t contribute to the WPB vote share.
I know that, there's about a dozen or so independans the WPB will support who will not add anything to their vote total
Morning all. Polling of late suggests a bump for Labour post LEs/Elphicke of maybe a couple of % points, Opinium, WeThink, Deltapoll and YouGov all found a bouncette, all within MoE though of course. Tories are sort of holding on at low to mid 20s but there is an inexorable drift down at a very slow pace, I don't expect that to reverse until a GE is called and then a limited bump up as DKs return (not en masse by any means). Reform are declining by a similar amount to Labour's bounce....... dyor, LDs and Greens seem static, LDs need double figures to be confident of large gains from the Tories but evenat 7 or 8% they'd nab quite a few. Galloway and the WPB made their first appearance this week in polls with 1% in Whitestone (actually 0.6%) and Opinium (awaiting tables), I've got them on ca 2.5% if they run 600 candidates or proportionate thereto (ca 750,000 votes), they'd need maybe 3 to 3.5% to start causing a bit of chaos. I think they will do pretty well for a new party, Gaza will be a strong recruiting sergeant this time and they are a natural outlet for it.
Most people presume that Reform UK will get fewer votes in the election than their polling. Can I ask why you think WPB will get more votes in the election than their polling?
Well, I just did. Gaza. Also, Increasing awareness of their existence and their performance where they have stood thus year so far suggests a not insignificant interest and support.. Reform are prompted in polling, WPB are not.
Thanks. There are other parties competing on the Gaza vote, including the better-organised, more established, larger, less homophobic Greens. I don’t think myself that Gaza is going to be a bigger issue in a few months. Ukraine faded from the headlines to a degree, as will Gaza. (Personally, I think Gaza is a huge tragedy, as is Ukraine, and I don’t want it to fade in people’s attention.)
The WPB’s performance to date has been good in the limited places they chose to stand. They chose to stand in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters. That scenario doesn’t generalise to most constituencies.
Prompting in the polls does make a difference, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.
Are WPB building on their success to date? Their crowdfunding campaign for the general election is going pretty poorly. I think they’ll struggle to raise the funds to stand in a very large number of constituencies. I also think it’s notable that lots of people aren’t joining them. Akhmed Yakoob in the W Mids mayoral election stood as an independent rather than for the WPB (who endorsed him). I don’t see that as a vote of confidence in the WPB.
Points all taken, however I think in terms of overall impact you're underestimating the impact of the Muslim vote potential on the total WPB achieve. They'll be probably aiming to achieve 10 to 20% of the Muslim vote, heavily concentrated in those areas of high Muslim population. That would put them well on the way to my 750k/2.5%. Maybe I'm too high, but I'll stick by it. The Ipsos survey this week shows the ethnic minority vote is ready to revolt with both Lab and Con leaders with absolute historic basement approval. In many constituencies they will get diddly. But then so will the LDs and Greens and Reform. I'm looking at Respect as a guide, a similar party with similar aims and appeal. They stood in 16 and 11 constituencies in 05 and 10 achieving 0.3% in 05 and over both averaging 3000 votes per seat. WPB achieved 29,000 votes over 33 wards and one PCC region, 5% in the Lewisham mayoralty earlier. 750,000 is a stretch but its by no means out of sight. That said, Money will be the big stumbling block, yes, unless they find a big backer to fund deposits. In that case (standing in under 500) , I predict them to average over 1500 votes/seat stood
RESPECT is a very good model. They got 68k in 2005 and 33k in 2010, before collapsing completely in infighting. A good starting point is that WPB are going to get about the same. You’re predicting that WPB will do 11 times better than RESPECT’s best. I’m not seeing the mechanism by which that happens.
If the WPB get 20% of the Muslim vote, that’s 20% of 4.4%, which is 0.9%. To get to 2.5%, where does the other 1.6% come from? I suggest WPB comes after the infighting of RESPECT and with Galloway turning more social conservative, suggesting the party will be much less able to mobilise far left support. Ergo, I expect WPB to do worse than RESPECT’s 2005 high.
Respect only stood in 16 seats in 2005 and 11 in 2010, clearly the WPB are standing in many more than this. I expect them to get fewer votes per seat than Respect as they will stand in some duds. They got within 4000 of Respect 2010 in 33 council wards and a PCC election. That said, we clearly disagree on this and I'll happily concede I was wrong if I am well off. But I'll eat my hat if WPB get fewer than 68,000 votes.
In my part of London, we have the Newham Independents who have three Councillors, two won in overwhelming by-election successes and one via defection.
Their leadership is ex-Labour, strong supporters of Corbyn who were booted from the fold when Roksana Foaz recognised the future lay in backing Starmer. Said Independents jumped immediately onto the pro-Palestine bandwagon and their wins came in strongly Muslim areas (their candidate in my more Hindu Ward was well beaten). Some parts of Newham had Palestinian flags on the lamp post but the Mail and Express created the impression in provincial England this was happening all over London - it wasn't. Again, in my more Hindu area, no flags on lamp posts.
WPB are supporting Newham Independant Tahir Mirza in East Ham and appear to be standing a candidate in West Ham and Beckton. Both were strong Respect showings formerly of course.
Just to add to this, the Newham Independents have chosen Councillor Sophia Naqvi, who won the Plaistow by-election, as their candidate. I'd be surprised if the WPB stood a candidate against her.
Labour, who have suspended the relevant CLP groups, have yet to announce a candidate in either West Ham & Beckton or Stratford & Bow. My understanding is Sir Stephen Timms will stand again in East Ham.
They might well withdraw in West Ham in that case in return for a bit of Newham boosting nearby
Spoiler: parents are not ditching their cars. A BBC Bristol journalist from BBC Bristol has spoken to a couple of left-wing parents in urban areas of what is now one of the UK's most left-wing cities who now cycle their kids to school.
It's entirely unrepresentative, it is very much exaggerated and it is absolutely very BBC. Met and preachy to the core.
I am a big supporter of the BBC - I think the country is trashing a huge soft influence asset by running it down...
But I have to say this is a fair cop Casino - DM or Express levels of journalism. I fear the journalist's/editor's biases got the better of them.
It’s noteworthy that there’s a BBC article that’s remotely biased in that direction given the torrent of Tory talking points the organisation is cowed into spewing on a daily basis.
There have always been weak articles like this on the site. Inevitable when you consider the volume they pump out daily. Though I’d note that at least a third of the parents at our primary school, possibly closer to half, don’t own a car. It’s perhaps of anthropological interest to those living outside big cities to understand the cultural norms and mores of the millions who do.
Yes. I think there's a more interesting story to be written about the inconvenience of bringing up a family without the use of a car that would still fit the topic.
To your point I'm guessing most young families are in cities because that's where the jobs are.
There was a great slightly provocative quote on the school run in the video about Waterbeach I posted yesterday:
"With the local schools team, we said what what do you need in terms of access - how much parking do you need for parents in the morning? They basically said we don't want any because whatever you do outside the front of a primary school it will be chaos.
If you provide 50 parking spaces they'll be filled and more. If you provide none it will all be filled and more. So we'd rather you didn't provide any. So that was actually quite encouraging and not really the answer we'd expected."
(Separate facility provided for staff, disabled access etc. Plus a local mobility hub within walking distance on paths through amenity space.)
My cynical side says that that response was from the developer: who would quite like that car parking space to cram yet more houses in.
Our school has a too-small car park; shared by it and the adjacent secondary. The approach is via a long road that leads from almost outside the village; most people have a long drive just to reach the access road.
There is lots of active travel to the school; a short path leads from the end of a residential road in the village to the main gate. At school times, this is crammed with people and bikes. Noticeably less so in wet weather, though, when the car park gets busier.
But: lots of people park, or drop kids off on, the residential road; it is a much shorter trip for many than negotiating the access road. The road is not designed for that sort of traffic load. I ca guarantee that this will also happen in Waterbeach; lack of provision of a car park will just lead to people using nearby residential roads.
Active travel is fine for people like me, where we live less than a ten minute walk away from the school, especially as I don't work. It may be very different if you need to drive to work immediately afterwards - in other words, the life many people lead.
I'd recommend watching the presentation - it is only 15 minutes. There is car park provision at the mobility hub nearby, which is provision for the area rather than just the school.
"Nearby roads" are tending to be replaced with open landscaped amenity space or walking / wheeling / cycling paths.
I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but I like the way that tactile paving is now deemed unnecessary (coz cyclists hate them). I wonder what the RNIB think of that?
This is one of my bugbears: if a path is to be shared use between cyclists and pedestrians, then cyclist should be restricted in speed relative to the pedestrians. Maybe not to walking speed; but no more than two or three times pedestrian speed. Instead, you get people going very fast. What they've created there is a racetrack for cyclists - and it will be used as such.
I am *very* cynical when it comes to the cycling lobby arguing for cycling infrastructure at the expense of pedestrians. Good infrastructure would involve compromises for all users.
Thoughts. There's a lot about the need to unlearn assumptions, and change cultural expectations. You see that in the hierarchy of road users in the updated Highway Code from 2022 - the pedestrian priority at side road entrances will remain difficult in some measure until general road culture changes, which will take years or perhaps 2 decades, especially when we have no routine continuing education required to maintain a driving license.
Or contraflow cycling on 20mph one way streets. Been done in Cambridge since the 1990s, and now I think (you may know better) on pretty much all one way streets. But try and do a single street in Mansfield, and all the Local Councillors will have a heart attack because it is "so dangerous". Or two way mobility tracks on Binley Road in Coventry and "people will never look both ways" (is it so difficult - Highway Code says it is a basic?and "it is dangerous when I reverse out of my drive into the busy road" (why the f*ck are you reversing *out* of your drive?)
Unlearning habits: One amusing thing that happened at Waterbeach (in the presentation) is that when they created a flat environment where pedestrians get priority, one of the first developers created and built another whole new level of pavements on top with kerbs even higher - not getting the basic philosophy that they were designed out. I'm interested how often tactile paving standards (which have been in place since the 1980s) are often simply not followed when it is installed.
Spoiler: parents are not ditching their cars. A BBC Bristol journalist from BBC Bristol has spoken to a couple of left-wing parents in urban areas of what is now one of the UK's most left-wing cities who now cycle their kids to school.
It's entirely unrepresentative, it is very much exaggerated and it is absolutely very BBC. Met and preachy to the core.
I am a big supporter of the BBC - I think the country is trashing a huge soft influence asset by running it down...
But I have to say this is a fair cop Casino - DM or Express levels of journalism. I fear the journalist's/editor's biases got the better of them.
It’s noteworthy that there’s a BBC article that’s remotely biased in that direction given the torrent of Tory talking points the organisation is cowed into spewing on a daily basis.
There have always been weak articles like this on the site. Inevitable when you consider the volume they pump out daily. Though I’d note that at least a third of the parents at our primary school, possibly closer to half, don’t own a car. It’s perhaps of anthropological interest to those living outside big cities to understand the cultural norms and mores of the millions who do.
Yes. I think there's a more interesting story to be written about the inconvenience of bringing up a family without the use of a car that would still fit the topic.
To your point I'm guessing most young families are in cities because that's where the jobs are.
There was a great slightly provocative quote on the school run in the video about Waterbeach I posted yesterday:
"With the local schools team, we said what what do you need in terms of access - how much parking do you need for parents in the morning? They basically said we don't want any because whatever you do outside the front of a primary school it will be chaos.
If you provide 50 parking spaces they'll be filled and more. If you provide none it will all be filled and more. So we'd rather you didn't provide any. So that was actually quite encouraging and not really the answer we'd expected."
(Separate facility provided for staff, disabled access etc. Plus a local mobility hub within walking distance on paths through amenity space.)
My cynical side says that that response was from the developer: who would quite like that car parking space to cram yet more houses in.
Our school has a too-small car park; shared by it and the adjacent secondary. The approach is via a long road that leads from almost outside the village; most people have a long drive just to reach the access road.
There is lots of active travel to the school; a short path leads from the end of a residential road in the village to the main gate. At school times, this is crammed with people and bikes. Noticeably less so in wet weather, though, when the car park gets busier.
But: lots of people park, or drop kids off on, the residential road; it is a much shorter trip for many than negotiating the access road. The road is not designed for that sort of traffic load. I ca guarantee that this will also happen in Waterbeach; lack of provision of a car park will just lead to people using nearby residential roads.
Active travel is fine for people like me, where we live less than a ten minute walk away from the school, especially as I don't work. It may be very different if you need to drive to work immediately afterwards - in other words, the life many people lead.
I'd recommend watching the presentation - it is only 15 minutes. There is car park provision at the mobility hub nearby, which is provision for the area rather than just the school.
"Nearby roads" are tending to be replaced with open landscaped amenity space or walking / wheeling / cycling paths.
I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but I like the way that tactile paving is now deemed unnecessary (coz cyclists hate them). I wonder what the RNIB think of that?
This is one of my bugbears: if a path is to be shared use between cyclists and pedestrians, then cyclist should be restricted in speed relative to the pedestrians. Maybe not to walking speed; but no more than two or three times pedestrian speed. Instead, you get people going very fast. What they've created there is a racetrack for cyclists - and it will be used as such.
I am *very* cynical when it comes to the cycling lobby arguing for cycling infrastructure at the expense of pedestrians. Good infrastructure would involve compromises for all users.
Thoughts. There's a lot about the need to unlearn assumptions, and change cultural expectations. You see that in the hierarchy of road users in the updated Highway Code from 2022 - the pedestrian priority at side road entrances will remain difficult in some measure until general road culture changes, which will take years or perhaps 2 decades, especially when we have no routine continuing education required to maintain a driving license.
Or contraflow cycling on 20mph one way streets. Been done in Cambridge since the 1990s, and now I think (you may know better) on pretty much all one way streets. But try and do a single street in Mansfield, and all the Local Councillors will have a heart attack because it is "so dangerous". Or two way mobility tracks on Binley Road in Coventry and "people will never look both ways" (is it so difficult - Highway Code says it is a basic?and "it is dangerous when I reverse out of my drive into the busy road" (why the f*ck are you reversing *out* of your drive?)
Unlearning habits: One amusing thing that happened at Waterbeach (in the presentation) is that when they created a flat environment where pedestrians get priority, one of the first developers created and built another whole new level of pavements on top with kerbs even higher - not getting the basic philosophy that they were designed out. I'm interested how often tactile paving standards (which have been in place since the 1980s) are often simply not followed when it is installed.
Shared space is in debate. We are trained to make streets with kerbs, tactiles etc to make them readable by visually impaired. "Shared space" was a movement from ~2000-2005 which said "remove all of that and people will be safe because motor vehicle drivers will have do be considerate". That gave us spaces like Exhibition Road, which has failed because it treats shared space as fully including motor vehicles rather than allowing them in as "guests". It missed that that never works in practice because all drivers are human, and VI people / vulnerable road users can't trust their lives to that. Waterbeach is far more thorough, very much circumscribing spaces accessible by motor and changing priorities, but I'm not 100% convinced it will be successful. That's another one around cultural expectations.
Pedestrians vs cyclists. A development over maybe the last 2-3 years has been convergence around common needs, especially amongst disabled charities and organisations like Sustrans. The Cycle Design Vehicle required to be accommodated (and often not) by new cycling infra (1.2m wide by 2.8m long - that is, size plus a dynamic envelope aka wobble room) has almost identical needs to mobility aids.
Personally when lobbying or arguing I always take the PoV of a disabled pedestrian, because I am (or will be) one, I got radicalised on this stuff by not being able to wheel my mum to the GP as all the walkways had wheelchair blocking barriers, and it avoids a lot of spurious distractions, plus has more legal teeth.
There are certain small fringe organisations around - such as those feeding inflammatory videos about 'floating bus stops' to the Mail and the Telegraph - who *want* a cyclists-vs-disabled conflict, and say things like 'cycling organisation Sustrans using disabled people as a human shield'. On bus stop bypasses they ignore that banning them will force mobility aid users out into general traffic at every bus stop - so it's a balance to be struck with factors both sides, and they point blank refuse to acknowledge the other side of the equation. Mark Harper may try a wedge issue on this one before he is finished.
Speeds - my new e-cycle is interesting on that. The 3 levels of assist also reflect speed as well as power, so give me max assist speeds of ~10kph, ~17-18kph, and ~25kph on the flat. I find that 1 is for areas busy with pedestrians, 2 is for shared paths / rough surfaces, and 3 elsewhere.
Ay-up! Back late last night after 6 days in Yorkshire, staying in Scarborough, visiting Whitby and York. York was a nice sunny day, went inside the Minster, which I think has a better ambiance than Durham (visited last October). Whitby was very foggy, two days in a row! But visited the Abbey on the second day, ruins in the mist seemed rather atmospheric really. North Yorks Moor Railway will have to wait for another opportunity!
Anyway, added the North Bay Railway (20 inch gauge) and both the Central Tramway (actually a cliff lift), and the Scarborough Spa Cliff Lift.
Spoiler: parents are not ditching their cars. A BBC Bristol journalist from BBC Bristol has spoken to a couple of left-wing parents in urban areas of what is now one of the UK's most left-wing cities who now cycle their kids to school.
It's entirely unrepresentative, it is very much exaggerated and it is absolutely very BBC. Met and preachy to the core.
I am a big supporter of the BBC - I think the country is trashing a huge soft influence asset by running it down...
But I have to say this is a fair cop Casino - DM or Express levels of journalism. I fear the journalist's/editor's biases got the better of them.
It’s noteworthy that there’s a BBC article that’s remotely biased in that direction given the torrent of Tory talking points the organisation is cowed into spewing on a daily basis.
There have always been weak articles like this on the site. Inevitable when you consider the volume they pump out daily. Though I’d note that at least a third of the parents at our primary school, possibly closer to half, don’t own a car. It’s perhaps of anthropological interest to those living outside big cities to understand the cultural norms and mores of the millions who do.
Yes. I think there's a more interesting story to be written about the inconvenience of bringing up a family without the use of a car that would still fit the topic.
To your point I'm guessing most young families are in cities because that's where the jobs are.
Their jobs are there of course, but they’ve also made the decision to stay in the inner city rather than commute from the suburbs.
Those without cars generally say they don’t miss them but it must cause issues when it comes to taking rubbish to the tip or picking up furniture from IKEA.
The carless parent cohort are a cross section from poor and on benefits to pretty wealthy and working in the city.
The walking and cycling parents in Bristol, at least the ones the BBC found, are the very lucky few who can both afford to live around the corner from the good school, and have a parent without a tight morning schedule.
Once upon a time, kids would've walked or cycled to school on their lonesome. Then parents started to get risk averse and thus the school run started, making the roads more dangerous for those who continued to walk - a vicious cycle until there is a huge increase in congestion during school term and people won't let their kids out on the road.
I find that very sad, and count myself lucky that I had the freedom of my neighbourhood from about age 8.
Oh indeed, kids should be allowed to be kids, but today’s parents are much more worried about the massively rare safety issues, than they are about letting them be kids and explore the world.
It tells you a lot about the BBC though, that they choose to venerate the yummy mummies and WFHers in the million-pound houses with six grand bikes, and softly demonise the hardworking secretary whose boss notices if she arrives at 9:05 because there was a traffic jam outside the school on the other side of town.
“demonise” Really? Can you show me an article that “demonise[s]” a “hardworking secretary whose boss notices if she arrives at 9:05 because there was a traffic jam”. I can’t say I’ve noticed that happening.
After the Brexit referendum there was a realisation among the young city-dwelling population, the hated metropolitan liberals, there was a world out there they simply didn’t comprehend. How else could they have been so confidently wrong about the result. Those who ventured out of the big cities realised that millions of people lived their lives with very different cultural and political reference points. This led to thousands of pained navel gazing editorials and launched the career of the lauded academic Matt Goodwin.
What was never noticed in all of this is that the incomprehension and failure to understand how people can be different is mutual. But you won’t find many navel gazing editorials about that.
Because the people writing those pained navel gazing editorials are just as metropolitan as the liberals they affect to despise. They have no better idea of the other world out there than the liberals and care even less.
The "culture war" is an utterly cynical exercise. It looks they have been found out. Hence the thrashing the Tories are going to get at the next election.
Morning all. Polling of late suggests a bump for Labour post LEs/Elphicke of maybe a couple of % points, Opinium, WeThink, Deltapoll and YouGov all found a bouncette, all within MoE though of course. Tories are sort of holding on at low to mid 20s but there is an inexorable drift down at a very slow pace, I don't expect that to reverse until a GE is called and then a limited bump up as DKs return (not en masse by any means). Reform are declining by a similar amount to Labour's bounce....... dyor, LDs and Greens seem static, LDs need double figures to be confident of large gains from the Tories but evenat 7 or 8% they'd nab quite a few. Galloway and the WPB made their first appearance this week in polls with 1% in Whitestone (actually 0.6%) and Opinium (awaiting tables), I've got them on ca 2.5% if they run 600 candidates or proportionate thereto (ca 750,000 votes), they'd need maybe 3 to 3.5% to start causing a bit of chaos. I think they will do pretty well for a new party, Gaza will be a strong recruiting sergeant this time and they are a natural outlet for it.
Most people presume that Reform UK will get fewer votes in the election than their polling. Can I ask why you think WPB will get more votes in the election than their polling?
Well, I just did. Gaza. Also, Increasing awareness of their existence and their performance where they have stood thus year so far suggests a not insignificant interest and support.. Reform are prompted in polling, WPB are not.
Thanks. There are other parties competing on the Gaza vote, including the better-organised, more established, larger, less homophobic Greens. I don’t think myself that Gaza is going to be a bigger issue in a few months. Ukraine faded from the headlines to a degree, as will Gaza. (Personally, I think Gaza is a huge tragedy, as is Ukraine, and I don’t want it to fade in people’s attention.)
The WPB’s performance to date has been good in the limited places they chose to stand. They chose to stand in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters. That scenario doesn’t generalise to most constituencies.
Prompting in the polls does make a difference, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.
Are WPB building on their success to date? Their crowdfunding campaign for the general election is going pretty poorly. I think they’ll struggle to raise the funds to stand in a very large number of constituencies. I also think it’s notable that lots of people aren’t joining them. Akhmed Yakoob in the W Mids mayoral election stood as an independent rather than for the WPB (who endorsed him). I don’t see that as a vote of confidence in the WPB.
Points all taken, however I think in terms of overall impact you're underestimating the impact of the Muslim vote potential on the total WPB achieve. They'll be probably aiming to achieve 10 to 20% of the Muslim vote, heavily concentrated in those areas of high Muslim population. That would put them well on the way to my 750k/2.5%. Maybe I'm too high, but I'll stick by it. The Ipsos survey this week shows the ethnic minority vote is ready to revolt with both Lab and Con leaders with absolute historic basement approval. In many constituencies they will get diddly. But then so will the LDs and Greens and Reform. I'm looking at Respect as a guide, a similar party with similar aims and appeal. They stood in 16 and 11 constituencies in 05 and 10 achieving 0.3% in 05 and over both averaging 3000 votes per seat. WPB achieved 29,000 votes over 33 wards and one PCC region, 5% in the Lewisham mayoralty earlier. 750,000 is a stretch but its by no means out of sight. That said, Money will be the big stumbling block, yes, unless they find a big backer to fund deposits. In that case (standing in under 500) , I predict them to average over 1500 votes/seat stood
RESPECT is a very good model. They got 68k in 2005 and 33k in 2010, before collapsing completely in infighting. A good starting point is that WPB are going to get about the same. You’re predicting that WPB will do 11 times better than RESPECT’s best. I’m not seeing the mechanism by which that happens.
If the WPB get 20% of the Muslim vote, that’s 20% of 4.4%, which is 0.9%. To get to 2.5%, where does the other 1.6% come from? I suggest WPB comes after the infighting of RESPECT and with Galloway turning more social conservative, suggesting the party will be much less able to mobilise far left support. Ergo, I expect WPB to do worse than RESPECT’s 2005 high.
Respect only stood in 16 seats in 2005 and 11 in 2010, clearly the WPB are standing in many more than this. I expect them to get fewer votes per seat than Respect as they will stand in some duds. They got within 4000 of Respect 2010 in 33 council wards and a PCC election. That said, we clearly disagree on this and I'll happily concede I was wrong if I am well off. But I'll eat my hat if WPB get fewer than 68,000 votes.
In my part of London, we have the Newham Independents who have three Councillors, two won in overwhelming by-election successes and one via defection.
Their leadership is ex-Labour, strong supporters of Corbyn who were booted from the fold when Roksana Foaz recognised the future lay in backing Starmer. Said Independents jumped immediately onto the pro-Palestine bandwagon and their wins came in strongly Muslim areas (their candidate in my more Hindu Ward was well beaten). Some parts of Newham had Palestinian flags on the lamp post but the Mail and Express created the impression in provincial England this was happening all over London - it wasn't. Again, in my more Hindu area, no flags on lamp posts.
I suggest the interesting question is why haven’t they all joined the WPB? The WPB is not hoovering up all these Corbynite and/or pro-Palestine groups.
Join? The WPB is not the National Trust, it's a Galloway fan club.
Boo! I worked out how to post images from imgur but they are still blurred!
You are safe from an insane barrage of photos
Altamura is fantastico. I am about to go under the “lower urban arch in Europe”
Your reports are welcome (however much we take the piss). I'm thinking of visiting somewhere down there this autumn, if I can spare the time.
I strongly recommend this bit of northern puglia and south east Basilicata. Virtually no foreign tourists - Taranto is not unique in this
I’ve never even HEARD of Altamura. Has anyone on here? Yet it has a perfectly preserved centro storico. A magnificent Romanesque cathedral. A medieval warren of greek, Arab and Norman streets
And what’s that word we invented for “when a destination fulfils your cliched expectations?”
Every guide book that bothers to mention Altamura - not many - says the focaccia is famously delicious . So I just bought some. And yes. It’s absolutely delicious. Best focaccia I’ve ever had (something to do with durum wheat? They have 600 year old bakeries here)
Yay puglia
@Leon I'm back for my Las Vegas/Death Valley/Grand Canyon trip. Just wanted to thank you for some of the advice given.
The highlight for me was Death Valley. I presume you have been? Awesome place.
The other highlight was the Santana concert at the House of Blues. Probably one of the best concerts and venues I have been to. Eric Clapton at the Albert Hall in a few days time should be an interesting comparison. These two are the two most expensive concerts I have ever been to by a long way.
The helicopter trip (my first flight in a helicopter) over the Grand Canyon was very enjoyable but a little disappointing. I was expecting to be thrilled but compared to an acrobatics plane and a glider it is very tame even over that landscape. They tried to spice it up with Ride of the Valkyries as you approached the lip of the canyon and Also Sprech Zarathustra as you went over the lip.
Thanks again for the advice.
If you found the helicopter ride disappointing then it’s a good job you didn’t do the walk to the lip of the canyon. It’s one of the biggest let-downs in global travel - to my mind. It’s just an enormous hole surrounded by crowds - and for some reason even the scale doesn’t really impact - it lacks noom!
Size is certainly not everything. The Cuillins on Skye are my favourite example. Some of the most dramatic mountains on earth - yet they are TINY
PS yes I know Death Valley very well. As a young man I literally broke down there in a car hired from rent-a-wreck. We left it in Barstow where it was towed - and fled the country
In a later visit with my wife we stayed overnight in the famous lodge and got up for dawn in one of the most mystical areas. She was so excited she stripped naked and ran into the dunes
Lots of noom THERE
We did the rim at the Grand Canyon. Sunrise and sunset plus took one of the buses to Hermits Rest and walked back along the rim. As you say - too many people.
We stayed at the Inn at Furnace Creek at Death valley. Is that what you are referring to. We also went to the dunes. Badwater and Artists Drive are amazing, but the highlights for us were the top of the volcano and seeing a coyote. On the drive there we were both getting tense realising we had driven 55 miles and the last 30 were on a road where we had not seen a single car in either direction and realising if we broke down or crashed we were stuffed with no phone signal and the heat. Apparently the vast majority of car fatalities are single car incidents.
the fact that human beings operate almost all of the time on autopilot, making moment-by-moment decisions without conscious reflection and relying on imperfect heuristics to navigate the complexities of the world around them.
I want people to remember this phrase next time they wring their hands about poor decision making around diet and lifestyle. Anything nudge units can do, advertisers and supermarkets can do better. It takes a profound mental fortitude to live a busy life and avoid deliberately induced temptation.
Morning all. Polling of late suggests a bump for Labour post LEs/Elphicke of maybe a couple of % points, Opinium, WeThink, Deltapoll and YouGov all found a bouncette, all within MoE though of course. Tories are sort of holding on at low to mid 20s but there is an inexorable drift down at a very slow pace, I don't expect that to reverse until a GE is called and then a limited bump up as DKs return (not en masse by any means). Reform are declining by a similar amount to Labour's bounce....... dyor, LDs and Greens seem static, LDs need double figures to be confident of large gains from the Tories but evenat 7 or 8% they'd nab quite a few. Galloway and the WPB made their first appearance this week in polls with 1% in Whitestone (actually 0.6%) and Opinium (awaiting tables), I've got them on ca 2.5% if they run 600 candidates or proportionate thereto (ca 750,000 votes), they'd need maybe 3 to 3.5% to start causing a bit of chaos. I think they will do pretty well for a new party, Gaza will be a strong recruiting sergeant this time and they are a natural outlet for it.
Most people presume that Reform UK will get fewer votes in the election than their polling. Can I ask why you think WPB will get more votes in the election than their polling?
Well, I just did. Gaza. Also, Increasing awareness of their existence and their performance where they have stood thus year so far suggests a not insignificant interest and support.. Reform are prompted in polling, WPB are not.
Thanks. There are other parties competing on the Gaza vote, including the better-organised, more established, larger, less homophobic Greens. I don’t think myself that Gaza is going to be a bigger issue in a few months. Ukraine faded from the headlines to a degree, as will Gaza. (Personally, I think Gaza is a huge tragedy, as is Ukraine, and I don’t want it to fade in people’s attention.)
The WPB’s performance to date has been good in the limited places they chose to stand. They chose to stand in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters. That scenario doesn’t generalise to most constituencies.
Prompting in the polls does make a difference, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.
Are WPB building on their success to date? Their crowdfunding campaign for the general election is going pretty poorly. I think they’ll struggle to raise the funds to stand in a very large number of constituencies. I also think it’s notable that lots of people aren’t joining them. Akhmed Yakoob in the W Mids mayoral election stood as an independent rather than for the WPB (who endorsed him). I don’t see that as a vote of confidence in the WPB.
Points all taken, however I think in terms of overall impact you're underestimating the impact of the Muslim vote potential on the total WPB achieve. They'll be probably aiming to achieve 10 to 20% of the Muslim vote, heavily concentrated in those areas of high Muslim population. That would put them well on the way to my 750k/2.5%. Maybe I'm too high, but I'll stick by it. The Ipsos survey this week shows the ethnic minority vote is ready to revolt with both Lab and Con leaders with absolute historic basement approval. In many constituencies they will get diddly. But then so will the LDs and Greens and Reform. I'm looking at Respect as a guide, a similar party with similar aims and appeal. They stood in 16 and 11 constituencies in 05 and 10 achieving 0.3% in 05 and over both averaging 3000 votes per seat. WPB achieved 29,000 votes over 33 wards and one PCC region, 5% in the Lewisham mayoralty earlier. 750,000 is a stretch but its by no means out of sight. That said, Money will be the big stumbling block, yes, unless they find a big backer to fund deposits. In that case (standing in under 500) , I predict them to average over 1500 votes/seat stood
RESPECT is a very good model. They got 68k in 2005 and 33k in 2010, before collapsing completely in infighting. A good starting point is that WPB are going to get about the same. You’re predicting that WPB will do 11 times better than RESPECT’s best. I’m not seeing the mechanism by which that happens.
If the WPB get 20% of the Muslim vote, that’s 20% of 4.4%, which is 0.9%. To get to 2.5%, where does the other 1.6% come from? I suggest WPB comes after the infighting of RESPECT and with Galloway turning more social conservative, suggesting the party will be much less able to mobilise far left support. Ergo, I expect WPB to do worse than RESPECT’s 2005 high.
Respect only stood in 16 seats in 2005 and 11 in 2010, clearly the WPB are standing in many more than this. I expect them to get fewer votes per seat than Respect as they will stand in some duds. They got within 4000 of Respect 2010 in 33 council wards and a PCC election. That said, we clearly disagree on this and I'll happily concede I was wrong if I am well off. But I'll eat my hat if WPB get fewer than 68,000 votes.
In my part of London, we have the Newham Independents who have three Councillors, two won in overwhelming by-election successes and one via defection.
Their leadership is ex-Labour, strong supporters of Corbyn who were booted from the fold when Roksana Foaz recognised the future lay in backing Starmer. Said Independents jumped immediately onto the pro-Palestine bandwagon and their wins came in strongly Muslim areas (their candidate in my more Hindu Ward was well beaten). Some parts of Newham had Palestinian flags on the lamp post but the Mail and Express created the impression in provincial England this was happening all over London - it wasn't. Again, in my more Hindu area, no flags on lamp posts.
I suggest the interesting question is why haven’t they all joined the WPB? The WPB is not hoovering up all these Corbynite and/or pro-Palestine groups.
Join? The WPB is not the National Trust, it's a Galloway fan club.
Indeed, and that’s my point. RESPECT was, for a time, more than that and thus, I theorise, was able to attract more support. The WPB is more clearly a Galloway vehicle. That will hold them back.
Spoiler: parents are not ditching their cars. A BBC Bristol journalist from BBC Bristol has spoken to a couple of left-wing parents in urban areas of what is now one of the UK's most left-wing cities who now cycle their kids to school.
It's entirely unrepresentative, it is very much exaggerated and it is absolutely very BBC. Met and preachy to the core.
I am a big supporter of the BBC - I think the country is trashing a huge soft influence asset by running it down...
But I have to say this is a fair cop Casino - DM or Express levels of journalism. I fear the journalist's/editor's biases got the better of them.
It’s noteworthy that there’s a BBC article that’s remotely biased in that direction given the torrent of Tory talking points the organisation is cowed into spewing on a daily basis.
There have always been weak articles like this on the site. Inevitable when you consider the volume they pump out daily. Though I’d note that at least a third of the parents at our primary school, possibly closer to half, don’t own a car. It’s perhaps of anthropological interest to those living outside big cities to understand the cultural norms and mores of the millions who do.
Yes. I think there's a more interesting story to be written about the inconvenience of bringing up a family without the use of a car that would still fit the topic.
To your point I'm guessing most young families are in cities because that's where the jobs are.
Their jobs are there of course, but they’ve also made the decision to stay in the inner city rather than commute from the suburbs.
Those without cars generally say they don’t miss them but it must cause issues when it comes to taking rubbish to the tip or picking up furniture from IKEA.
The carless parent cohort are a cross section from poor and on benefits to pretty wealthy and working in the city.
The walking and cycling parents in Bristol, at least the ones the BBC found, are the very lucky few who can both afford to live around the corner from the good school, and have a parent without a tight morning schedule.
Once upon a time, kids would've walked or cycled to school on their lonesome. Then parents started to get risk averse and thus the school run started, making the roads more dangerous for those who continued to walk - a vicious cycle until there is a huge increase in congestion during school term and people won't let their kids out on the road.
I find that very sad, and count myself lucky that I had the freedom of my neighbourhood from about age 8.
Oh indeed, kids should be allowed to be kids, but today’s parents are much more worried about the massively rare safety issues, than they are about letting them be kids and explore the world.
It tells you a lot about the BBC though, that they choose to venerate the yummy mummies and WFHers in the million-pound houses with six grand bikes, and softly demonise the hardworking secretary whose boss notices if she arrives at 9:05 because there was a traffic jam outside the school on the other side of town.
“demonise” Really? Can you show me an article that “demonise[s]” a “hardworking secretary whose boss notices if she arrives at 9:05 because there was a traffic jam”. I can’t say I’ve noticed that happening.
After the Brexit referendum there was a realisation among the young city-dwelling population, the hated metropolitan liberals, there was a world out there they simply didn’t comprehend. How else could they have been so confidently wrong about the result. Those who ventured out of the big cities realised that millions of people lived their lives with very different cultural and political reference points. This led to thousands of pained navel gazing editorials and launched the career of the lauded academic Matt Goodwin.
What was never noticed in all of this is that the incomprehension and failure to understand how people can be different is mutual. But you won’t find many navel gazing editorials about that.
Because the people writing those pained navel gazing editorials are just as metropolitan as the liberals they affect to despise. They have no better idea of the other world out there than the liberals and care even less.
The "culture war" is an utterly cynical exercise. It looks they have been found out. Hence the thrashing the Tories are going to get at the next election.
I recall a Guardian piece, where a hack went among the unwashed (literally - she gave up the middle class habit of bathing every day) on a council estate in London. The Sanders Of The River vibe was very strong.
Morning all. Polling of late suggests a bump for Labour post LEs/Elphicke of maybe a couple of % points, Opinium, WeThink, Deltapoll and YouGov all found a bouncette, all within MoE though of course. Tories are sort of holding on at low to mid 20s but there is an inexorable drift down at a very slow pace, I don't expect that to reverse until a GE is called and then a limited bump up as DKs return (not en masse by any means). Reform are declining by a similar amount to Labour's bounce....... dyor, LDs and Greens seem static, LDs need double figures to be confident of large gains from the Tories but evenat 7 or 8% they'd nab quite a few. Galloway and the WPB made their first appearance this week in polls with 1% in Whitestone (actually 0.6%) and Opinium (awaiting tables), I've got them on ca 2.5% if they run 600 candidates or proportionate thereto (ca 750,000 votes), they'd need maybe 3 to 3.5% to start causing a bit of chaos. I think they will do pretty well for a new party, Gaza will be a strong recruiting sergeant this time and they are a natural outlet for it.
Most people presume that Reform UK will get fewer votes in the election than their polling. Can I ask why you think WPB will get more votes in the election than their polling?
Well, I just did. Gaza. Also, Increasing awareness of their existence and their performance where they have stood thus year so far suggests a not insignificant interest and support.. Reform are prompted in polling, WPB are not.
Thanks. There are other parties competing on the Gaza vote, including the better-organised, more established, larger, less homophobic Greens. I don’t think myself that Gaza is going to be a bigger issue in a few months. Ukraine faded from the headlines to a degree, as will Gaza. (Personally, I think Gaza is a huge tragedy, as is Ukraine, and I don’t want it to fade in people’s attention.)
The WPB’s performance to date has been good in the limited places they chose to stand. They chose to stand in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters. That scenario doesn’t generalise to most constituencies.
Prompting in the polls does make a difference, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.
Are WPB building on their success to date? Their crowdfunding campaign for the general election is going pretty poorly. I think they’ll struggle to raise the funds to stand in a very large number of constituencies. I also think it’s notable that lots of people aren’t joining them. Akhmed Yakoob in the W Mids mayoral election stood as an independent rather than for the WPB (who endorsed him). I don’t see that as a vote of confidence in the WPB.
Points all taken, however I think in terms of overall impact you're underestimating the impact of the Muslim vote potential on the total WPB achieve. They'll be probably aiming to achieve 10 to 20% of the Muslim vote, heavily concentrated in those areas of high Muslim population. That would put them well on the way to my 750k/2.5%. Maybe I'm too high, but I'll stick by it. The Ipsos survey this week shows the ethnic minority vote is ready to revolt with both Lab and Con leaders with absolute historic basement approval. In many constituencies they will get diddly. But then so will the LDs and Greens and Reform. I'm looking at Respect as a guide, a similar party with similar aims and appeal. They stood in 16 and 11 constituencies in 05 and 10 achieving 0.3% in 05 and over both averaging 3000 votes per seat. WPB achieved 29,000 votes over 33 wards and one PCC region, 5% in the Lewisham mayoralty earlier. 750,000 is a stretch but its by no means out of sight. That said, Money will be the big stumbling block, yes, unless they find a big backer to fund deposits. In that case (standing in under 500) , I predict them to average over 1500 votes/seat stood
RESPECT is a very good model. They got 68k in 2005 and 33k in 2010, before collapsing completely in infighting. A good starting point is that WPB are going to get about the same. You’re predicting that WPB will do 11 times better than RESPECT’s best. I’m not seeing the mechanism by which that happens.
If the WPB get 20% of the Muslim vote, that’s 20% of 4.4%, which is 0.9%. To get to 2.5%, where does the other 1.6% come from? I suggest WPB comes after the infighting of RESPECT and with Galloway turning more social conservative, suggesting the party will be much less able to mobilise far left support. Ergo, I expect WPB to do worse than RESPECT’s 2005 high.
Respect only stood in 16 seats in 2005 and 11 in 2010, clearly the WPB are standing in many more than this. I expect them to get fewer votes per seat than Respect as they will stand in some duds. They got within 4000 of Respect 2010 in 33 council wards and a PCC election. That said, we clearly disagree on this and I'll happily concede I was wrong if I am well off. But I'll eat my hat if WPB get fewer than 68,000 votes.
In my part of London, we have the Newham Independents who have three Councillors, two won in overwhelming by-election successes and one via defection.
Their leadership is ex-Labour, strong supporters of Corbyn who were booted from the fold when Roksana Foaz recognised the future lay in backing Starmer. Said Independents jumped immediately onto the pro-Palestine bandwagon and their wins came in strongly Muslim areas (their candidate in my more Hindu Ward was well beaten). Some parts of Newham had Palestinian flags on the lamp post but the Mail and Express created the impression in provincial England this was happening all over London - it wasn't. Again, in my more Hindu area, no flags on lamp posts.
I suggest the interesting question is why haven’t they all joined the WPB? The WPB is not hoovering up all these Corbynite and/or pro-Palestine groups.
Glen O'Hara @gsoh31 · 1h Student visas are already down nearly 30%, and I would say between 10 and 20 universities are going to get into deep trouble. Another 10 to 20 will follow rapidly. Imagine sending a further signal that you want the numbers down... (1/2)
Morning all. Polling of late suggests a bump for Labour post LEs/Elphicke of maybe a couple of % points, Opinium, WeThink, Deltapoll and YouGov all found a bouncette, all within MoE though of course. Tories are sort of holding on at low to mid 20s but there is an inexorable drift down at a very slow pace, I don't expect that to reverse until a GE is called and then a limited bump up as DKs return (not en masse by any means). Reform are declining by a similar amount to Labour's bounce....... dyor, LDs and Greens seem static, LDs need double figures to be confident of large gains from the Tories but evenat 7 or 8% they'd nab quite a few. Galloway and the WPB made their first appearance this week in polls with 1% in Whitestone (actually 0.6%) and Opinium (awaiting tables), I've got them on ca 2.5% if they run 600 candidates or proportionate thereto (ca 750,000 votes), they'd need maybe 3 to 3.5% to start causing a bit of chaos. I think they will do pretty well for a new party, Gaza will be a strong recruiting sergeant this time and they are a natural outlet for it.
Most people presume that Reform UK will get fewer votes in the election than their polling. Can I ask why you think WPB will get more votes in the election than their polling?
Well, I just did. Gaza. Also, Increasing awareness of their existence and their performance where they have stood thus year so far suggests a not insignificant interest and support.. Reform are prompted in polling, WPB are not.
Thanks. There are other parties competing on the Gaza vote, including the better-organised, more established, larger, less homophobic Greens. I don’t think myself that Gaza is going to be a bigger issue in a few months. Ukraine faded from the headlines to a degree, as will Gaza. (Personally, I think Gaza is a huge tragedy, as is Ukraine, and I don’t want it to fade in people’s attention.)
The WPB’s performance to date has been good in the limited places they chose to stand. They chose to stand in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters. That scenario doesn’t generalise to most constituencies.
Prompting in the polls does make a difference, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.
Are WPB building on their success to date? Their crowdfunding campaign for the general election is going pretty poorly. I think they’ll struggle to raise the funds to stand in a very large number of constituencies. I also think it’s notable that lots of people aren’t joining them. Akhmed Yakoob in the W Mids mayoral election stood as an independent rather than for the WPB (who endorsed him). I don’t see that as a vote of confidence in the WPB.
Points all taken, however I think in terms of overall impact you're underestimating the impact of the Muslim vote potential on the total WPB achieve. They'll be probably aiming to achieve 10 to 20% of the Muslim vote, heavily concentrated in those areas of high Muslim population. That would put them well on the way to my 750k/2.5%. Maybe I'm too high, but I'll stick by it. The Ipsos survey this week shows the ethnic minority vote is ready to revolt with both Lab and Con leaders with absolute historic basement approval. In many constituencies they will get diddly. But then so will the LDs and Greens and Reform. I'm looking at Respect as a guide, a similar party with similar aims and appeal. They stood in 16 and 11 constituencies in 05 and 10 achieving 0.3% in 05 and over both averaging 3000 votes per seat. WPB achieved 29,000 votes over 33 wards and one PCC region, 5% in the Lewisham mayoralty earlier. 750,000 is a stretch but its by no means out of sight. That said, Money will be the big stumbling block, yes, unless they find a big backer to fund deposits. In that case (standing in under 500) , I predict them to average over 1500 votes/seat stood
RESPECT is a very good model. They got 68k in 2005 and 33k in 2010, before collapsing completely in infighting. A good starting point is that WPB are going to get about the same. You’re predicting that WPB will do 11 times better than RESPECT’s best. I’m not seeing the mechanism by which that happens.
If the WPB get 20% of the Muslim vote, that’s 20% of 4.4%, which is 0.9%. To get to 2.5%, where does the other 1.6% come from? I suggest WPB comes after the infighting of RESPECT and with Galloway turning more social conservative, suggesting the party will be much less able to mobilise far left support. Ergo, I expect WPB to do worse than RESPECT’s 2005 high.
Respect only stood in 16 seats in 2005 and 11 in 2010, clearly the WPB are standing in many more than this. I expect them to get fewer votes per seat than Respect as they will stand in some duds. They got within 4000 of Respect 2010 in 33 council wards and a PCC election. That said, we clearly disagree on this and I'll happily concede I was wrong if I am well off. But I'll eat my hat if WPB get fewer than 68,000 votes.
In my part of London, we have the Newham Independents who have three Councillors, two won in overwhelming by-election successes and one via defection.
Their leadership is ex-Labour, strong supporters of Corbyn who were booted from the fold when Roksana Foaz recognised the future lay in backing Starmer. Said Independents jumped immediately onto the pro-Palestine bandwagon and their wins came in strongly Muslim areas (their candidate in my more Hindu Ward was well beaten). Some parts of Newham had Palestinian flags on the lamp post but the Mail and Express created the impression in provincial England this was happening all over London - it wasn't. Again, in my more Hindu area, no flags on lamp posts.
I suggest the interesting question is why haven’t they all joined the WPB? The WPB is not hoovering up all these Corbynite and/or pro-Palestine groups.
Not a difficult question to answer. WPB is climate sceptic, anti-abortion, the EU, gender self ID, devolution and woke in general. It is also pro Russia and China. Given all that, the interesting question is why it has hoovered up so many?
Spoiler: parents are not ditching their cars. A BBC Bristol journalist from BBC Bristol has spoken to a couple of left-wing parents in urban areas of what is now one of the UK's most left-wing cities who now cycle their kids to school.
It's entirely unrepresentative, it is very much exaggerated and it is absolutely very BBC. Met and preachy to the core.
I am a big supporter of the BBC - I think the country is trashing a huge soft influence asset by running it down...
But I have to say this is a fair cop Casino - DM or Express levels of journalism. I fear the journalist's/editor's biases got the better of them.
It’s noteworthy that there’s a BBC article that’s remotely biased in that direction given the torrent of Tory talking points the organisation is cowed into spewing on a daily basis.
There have always been weak articles like this on the site. Inevitable when you consider the volume they pump out daily. Though I’d note that at least a third of the parents at our primary school, possibly closer to half, don’t own a car. It’s perhaps of anthropological interest to those living outside big cities to understand the cultural norms and mores of the millions who do.
Yes. I think there's a more interesting story to be written about the inconvenience of bringing up a family without the use of a car that would still fit the topic.
To your point I'm guessing most young families are in cities because that's where the jobs are.
Their jobs are there of course, but they’ve also made the decision to stay in the inner city rather than commute from the suburbs.
Those without cars generally say they don’t miss them but it must cause issues when it comes to taking rubbish to the tip or picking up furniture from IKEA.
The carless parent cohort are a cross section from poor and on benefits to pretty wealthy and working in the city.
The walking and cycling parents in Bristol, at least the ones the BBC found, are the very lucky few who can both afford to live around the corner from the good school, and have a parent without a tight morning schedule.
Once upon a time, kids would've walked or cycled to school on their lonesome. Then parents started to get risk averse and thus the school run started, making the roads more dangerous for those who continued to walk - a vicious cycle until there is a huge increase in congestion during school term and people won't let their kids out on the road.
I find that very sad, and count myself lucky that I had the freedom of my neighbourhood from about age 8.
Oh indeed, kids should be allowed to be kids, but today’s parents are much more worried about the massively rare safety issues, than they are about letting them be kids and explore the world.
It tells you a lot about the BBC though, that they choose to venerate the yummy mummies and WFHers in the million-pound houses with six grand bikes, and softly demonise the hardworking secretary whose boss notices if she arrives at 9:05 because there was a traffic jam outside the school on the other side of town.
“demonise” Really? Can you show me an article that “demonise[s]” a “hardworking secretary whose boss notices if she arrives at 9:05 because there was a traffic jam”. I can’t say I’ve noticed that happening.
It’s the same thing as the Sunday Times “lifestyle” pages, showing the 1%er lifestyle to the 10%ers, and suggesting that we should all be doing the same. The ‘demonisation’ is implicit rather than explicit, and while it’s acceptable for the likes of the Sunday Times, it should be criticised when the organisation that gives criminal records to tens of thousands of the poorest in society does it.
I’m not familiar with BBC News articles that look like Sunday Times “lifestyle” pages. Can you show me a specific article demonstrating this demonisation?
One thing that sunrises me about the cargo bikes is that they don’t seem to have made an effort to make them really weatherproof - in the sense of just leave them outside.
I suspect most of these things are designed for use in countries with much nicer weather than the UK. It's the same with motorcycles and scooters, even quite expensive ones will rust quickly under the British weather, particularly if they're used in the winter and get exposed to road salt.
My current scooter is less than two years old, wasn't cheap, yet it's developed some visible rust despite being kept under a cover and regularly coated in anti-corrosion goo.
There's lots of interesting history, but I'll spare you this morning.
Suffice to say - like the standard Dutch bakfiets, it was invented in England.
The bikes for specifically carrying children are very popular in Denmark. The morning traffic in Copenhagen is full of them.
Indeed - a variety of the thing invented here.
One item I find interesting about Christiania type cargo bikes (box in front on two wheels) is that aiui they are relatively pigs to ride.
The regs are fun:
The Danish Transport Authority's Bicycle Order states the following:
Chapter 2: § 3. A bicycle shall not be designed for more than three persons. However, in addition, there may be room for up to four children not older than 7 years, cf. § 25.
Chapter 8: § 25. No more persons may be carried on a bicycle than it is designed to carry. Children not older than 7 years may only be carried on the bicycle when a special seat is provided for them. Paragraph 2. Special seating for children shall be adapted to the weight and height of the child and shall be shielded from the wheels. Paragraph 3. Children carried on bicycles shall be securely restrained. Paragraph 4. The carriage of children shall not prevent the driver of the bicycle from having full control of the bicycle or from giving appropriate signals. Paragraph 5. The driver of the bicycle must be at least 15 years of age when carrying children on the bicycle.
This means that if the children are under 8 years old, the law allows six children on a cargo bike - if it is equipped for it! So there must be a special space for each of the children and they must be buckled in.
For example, you can use our child bench or child seat with harnesses for the children, or you can attach a car seat or lift for the small child.
The driver of the Christianiacycle keeps the child/children safely in front of him/her on the load, so you can keep an eye on them at all times, and the solid box construction provides good protection for the children.
Glen O'Hara @gsoh31 · 1h Student visas are already down nearly 30%, and I would say between 10 and 20 universities are going to get into deep trouble. Another 10 to 20 will follow rapidly. Imagine sending a further signal that you want the numbers down... (1/2)
My understanding is that the fall is as much to do with changes in China (the recent property and debt crisis) as it is to do with changes in visa rules here, but I’ve not seen a detailed analysis of this (is the fall more in Chinese students than other groups).
Boo! I worked out how to post images from imgur but they are still blurred!
You are safe from an insane barrage of photos
Altamura is fantastico. I am about to go under the “lower urban arch in Europe”
Your reports are welcome (however much we take the piss). I'm thinking of visiting somewhere down there this autumn, if I can spare the time.
I strongly recommend this bit of northern puglia and south east Basilicata. Virtually no foreign tourists - Taranto is not unique in this
I’ve never even HEARD of Altamura. Has anyone on here? Yet it has a perfectly preserved centro storico. A magnificent Romanesque cathedral. A medieval warren of greek, Arab and Norman streets
And what’s that word we invented for “when a destination fulfils your cliched expectations?”
Every guide book that bothers to mention Altamura - not many - says the focaccia is famously delicious . So I just bought some. And yes. It’s absolutely delicious. Best focaccia I’ve ever had (something to do with durum wheat? They have 600 year old bakeries here)
Yay puglia
@Leon I'm back for my Las Vegas/Death Valley/Grand Canyon trip. Just wanted to thank you for some of the advice given.
The highlight for me was Death Valley. I presume you have been? Awesome place.
The other highlight was the Santana concert at the House of Blues. Probably one of the best concerts and venues I have been to. Eric Clapton at the Albert Hall in a few days time should be an interesting comparison. These two are the two most expensive concerts I have ever been to by a long way.
The helicopter trip (my first flight in a helicopter) over the Grand Canyon was very enjoyable but a little disappointing. I was expecting to be thrilled but compared to an acrobatics plane and a glider it is very tame even over that landscape. They tried to spice it up with Ride of the Valkyries as you approached the lip of the canyon and Also Sprech Zarathustra as you went over the lip.
Thanks again for the advice.
If you found the helicopter ride disappointing then it’s a good job you didn’t do the walk to the lip of the canyon. It’s one of the biggest let-downs in global travel - to my mind. It’s just an enormous hole surrounded by crowds - and for some reason even the scale doesn’t really impact - it lacks noom!
Size is certainly not everything. The Cuillins on Skye are my favourite example. Some of the most dramatic mountains on earth - yet they are TINY
PS yes I know Death Valley very well. As a young man I literally broke down there in a car hired from rent-a-wreck. We left it in Barstow where it was towed - and fled the country
In a later visit with my wife we stayed overnight in the famous lodge and got up for dawn in one of the most mystical areas. She was so excited she stripped naked and ran into the dunes
Lots of noom THERE
We did the rim at the Grand Canyon. Sunrise and sunset plus took one of the buses to Hermits Rest and walked back along the rim. As you say - too many people.
We stayed at the Inn at Furnace Creek at Death valley. Is that what you are referring to. We also went to the dunes. Badwater and Artists Drive are amazing, but the highlights for us were the top of the volcano and seeing a coyote. On the drive there we were both getting tense realising we had driven 55 miles and the last 30 were on a road where we had not seen a single car in either direction and realising if we broke down or crashed we were stuffed with no phone signal and the heat. Apparently the vast majority of car fatalities are single car incidents.
The rolling out of satellite cell service will give everyone the abilities of a PLB. I wonder how many lives that will save?
Ay-up! Back late last night after 6 days in Yorkshire, staying in Scarborough, visiting Whitby and York. York was a nice sunny day, went inside the Minster, which I think has a better ambiance than Durham (visited last October). Whitby was very foggy, two days in a row! But visited the Abbey on the second day, ruins in the mist seemed rather atmospheric really. North Yorks Moor Railway will have to wait for another opportunity!
Anyway, added the North Bay Railway (20 inch gauge) and both the Central Tramway (actually a cliff lift), and the Scarborough Spa Cliff Lift.
Morning all. Polling of late suggests a bump for Labour post LEs/Elphicke of maybe a couple of % points, Opinium, WeThink, Deltapoll and YouGov all found a bouncette, all within MoE though of course. Tories are sort of holding on at low to mid 20s but there is an inexorable drift down at a very slow pace, I don't expect that to reverse until a GE is called and then a limited bump up as DKs return (not en masse by any means). Reform are declining by a similar amount to Labour's bounce....... dyor, LDs and Greens seem static, LDs need double figures to be confident of large gains from the Tories but evenat 7 or 8% they'd nab quite a few. Galloway and the WPB made their first appearance this week in polls with 1% in Whitestone (actually 0.6%) and Opinium (awaiting tables), I've got them on ca 2.5% if they run 600 candidates or proportionate thereto (ca 750,000 votes), they'd need maybe 3 to 3.5% to start causing a bit of chaos. I think they will do pretty well for a new party, Gaza will be a strong recruiting sergeant this time and they are a natural outlet for it.
Most people presume that Reform UK will get fewer votes in the election than their polling. Can I ask why you think WPB will get more votes in the election than their polling?
Well, I just did. Gaza. Also, Increasing awareness of their existence and their performance where they have stood thus year so far suggests a not insignificant interest and support.. Reform are prompted in polling, WPB are not.
Thanks. There are other parties competing on the Gaza vote, including the better-organised, more established, larger, less homophobic Greens. I don’t think myself that Gaza is going to be a bigger issue in a few months. Ukraine faded from the headlines to a degree, as will Gaza. (Personally, I think Gaza is a huge tragedy, as is Ukraine, and I don’t want it to fade in people’s attention.)
The WPB’s performance to date has been good in the limited places they chose to stand. They chose to stand in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters. That scenario doesn’t generalise to most constituencies.
Prompting in the polls does make a difference, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.
Are WPB building on their success to date? Their crowdfunding campaign for the general election is going pretty poorly. I think they’ll struggle to raise the funds to stand in a very large number of constituencies. I also think it’s notable that lots of people aren’t joining them. Akhmed Yakoob in the W Mids mayoral election stood as an independent rather than for the WPB (who endorsed him). I don’t see that as a vote of confidence in the WPB.
Points all taken, however I think in terms of overall impact you're underestimating the impact of the Muslim vote potential on the total WPB achieve. They'll be probably aiming to achieve 10 to 20% of the Muslim vote, heavily concentrated in those areas of high Muslim population. That would put them well on the way to my 750k/2.5%. Maybe I'm too high, but I'll stick by it. The Ipsos survey this week shows the ethnic minority vote is ready to revolt with both Lab and Con leaders with absolute historic basement approval. In many constituencies they will get diddly. But then so will the LDs and Greens and Reform. I'm looking at Respect as a guide, a similar party with similar aims and appeal. They stood in 16 and 11 constituencies in 05 and 10 achieving 0.3% in 05 and over both averaging 3000 votes per seat. WPB achieved 29,000 votes over 33 wards and one PCC region, 5% in the Lewisham mayoralty earlier. 750,000 is a stretch but its by no means out of sight. That said, Money will be the big stumbling block, yes, unless they find a big backer to fund deposits. In that case (standing in under 500) , I predict them to average over 1500 votes/seat stood
RESPECT is a very good model. They got 68k in 2005 and 33k in 2010, before collapsing completely in infighting. A good starting point is that WPB are going to get about the same. You’re predicting that WPB will do 11 times better than RESPECT’s best. I’m not seeing the mechanism by which that happens.
If the WPB get 20% of the Muslim vote, that’s 20% of 4.4%, which is 0.9%. To get to 2.5%, where does the other 1.6% come from? I suggest WPB comes after the infighting of RESPECT and with Galloway turning more social conservative, suggesting the party will be much less able to mobilise far left support. Ergo, I expect WPB to do worse than RESPECT’s 2005 high.
Respect only stood in 16 seats in 2005 and 11 in 2010, clearly the WPB are standing in many more than this. I expect them to get fewer votes per seat than Respect as they will stand in some duds. They got within 4000 of Respect 2010 in 33 council wards and a PCC election. That said, we clearly disagree on this and I'll happily concede I was wrong if I am well off. But I'll eat my hat if WPB get fewer than 68,000 votes.
In my part of London, we have the Newham Independents who have three Councillors, two won in overwhelming by-election successes and one via defection.
Their leadership is ex-Labour, strong supporters of Corbyn who were booted from the fold when Roksana Foaz recognised the future lay in backing Starmer. Said Independents jumped immediately onto the pro-Palestine bandwagon and their wins came in strongly Muslim areas (their candidate in my more Hindu Ward was well beaten). Some parts of Newham had Palestinian flags on the lamp post but the Mail and Express created the impression in provincial England this was happening all over London - it wasn't. Again, in my more Hindu area, no flags on lamp posts.
I suggest the interesting question is why haven’t they all joined the WPB? The WPB is not hoovering up all these Corbynite and/or pro-Palestine groups.
Not a difficult question to answer. WPB is climate sceptic, anti-abortion, the EU, gender self ID, devolution and woke in general. It is also pro Russia and China. Given all that, the interesting question is why it has hoovered up so many?
And that’s why I’m sceptical that they’ll do as well as 2.5%.
Morning all. Polling of late suggests a bump for Labour post LEs/Elphicke of maybe a couple of % points, Opinium, WeThink, Deltapoll and YouGov all found a bouncette, all within MoE though of course. Tories are sort of holding on at low to mid 20s but there is an inexorable drift down at a very slow pace, I don't expect that to reverse until a GE is called and then a limited bump up as DKs return (not en masse by any means). Reform are declining by a similar amount to Labour's bounce....... dyor, LDs and Greens seem static, LDs need double figures to be confident of large gains from the Tories but evenat 7 or 8% they'd nab quite a few. Galloway and the WPB made their first appearance this week in polls with 1% in Whitestone (actually 0.6%) and Opinium (awaiting tables), I've got them on ca 2.5% if they run 600 candidates or proportionate thereto (ca 750,000 votes), they'd need maybe 3 to 3.5% to start causing a bit of chaos. I think they will do pretty well for a new party, Gaza will be a strong recruiting sergeant this time and they are a natural outlet for it.
Most people presume that Reform UK will get fewer votes in the election than their polling. Can I ask why you think WPB will get more votes in the election than their polling?
Well, I just did. Gaza. Also, Increasing awareness of their existence and their performance where they have stood thus year so far suggests a not insignificant interest and support.. Reform are prompted in polling, WPB are not.
Thanks. There are other parties competing on the Gaza vote, including the better-organised, more established, larger, less homophobic Greens. I don’t think myself that Gaza is going to be a bigger issue in a few months. Ukraine faded from the headlines to a degree, as will Gaza. (Personally, I think Gaza is a huge tragedy, as is Ukraine, and I don’t want it to fade in people’s attention.)
The WPB’s performance to date has been good in the limited places they chose to stand. They chose to stand in areas with a high proportion of Muslim voters. That scenario doesn’t generalise to most constituencies.
Prompting in the polls does make a difference, but it doesn’t make a huge difference.
Are WPB building on their success to date? Their crowdfunding campaign for the general election is going pretty poorly. I think they’ll struggle to raise the funds to stand in a very large number of constituencies. I also think it’s notable that lots of people aren’t joining them. Akhmed Yakoob in the W Mids mayoral election stood as an independent rather than for the WPB (who endorsed him). I don’t see that as a vote of confidence in the WPB.
Points all taken, however I think in terms of overall impact you're underestimating the impact of the Muslim vote potential on the total WPB achieve. They'll be probably aiming to achieve 10 to 20% of the Muslim vote, heavily concentrated in those areas of high Muslim population. That would put them well on the way to my 750k/2.5%. Maybe I'm too high, but I'll stick by it. The Ipsos survey this week shows the ethnic minority vote is ready to revolt with both Lab and Con leaders with absolute historic basement approval. In many constituencies they will get diddly. But then so will the LDs and Greens and Reform. I'm looking at Respect as a guide, a similar party with similar aims and appeal. They stood in 16 and 11 constituencies in 05 and 10 achieving 0.3% in 05 and over both averaging 3000 votes per seat. WPB achieved 29,000 votes over 33 wards and one PCC region, 5% in the Lewisham mayoralty earlier. 750,000 is a stretch but its by no means out of sight. That said, Money will be the big stumbling block, yes, unless they find a big backer to fund deposits. In that case (standing in under 500) , I predict them to average over 1500 votes/seat stood
RESPECT is a very good model. They got 68k in 2005 and 33k in 2010, before collapsing completely in infighting. A good starting point is that WPB are going to get about the same. You’re predicting that WPB will do 11 times better than RESPECT’s best. I’m not seeing the mechanism by which that happens.
If the WPB get 20% of the Muslim vote, that’s 20% of 4.4%, which is 0.9%. To get to 2.5%, where does the other 1.6% come from? I suggest WPB comes after the infighting of RESPECT and with Galloway turning more social conservative, suggesting the party will be much less able to mobilise far left support. Ergo, I expect WPB to do worse than RESPECT’s 2005 high.
Respect only stood in 16 seats in 2005 and 11 in 2010, clearly the WPB are standing in many more than this. I expect them to get fewer votes per seat than Respect as they will stand in some duds. They got within 4000 of Respect 2010 in 33 council wards and a PCC election. That said, we clearly disagree on this and I'll happily concede I was wrong if I am well off. But I'll eat my hat if WPB get fewer than 68,000 votes.
In my part of London, we have the Newham Independents who have three Councillors, two won in overwhelming by-election successes and one via defection.
Their leadership is ex-Labour, strong supporters of Corbyn who were booted from the fold when Roksana Foaz recognised the future lay in backing Starmer. Said Independents jumped immediately onto the pro-Palestine bandwagon and their wins came in strongly Muslim areas (their candidate in my more Hindu Ward was well beaten). Some parts of Newham had Palestinian flags on the lamp post but the Mail and Express created the impression in provincial England this was happening all over London - it wasn't. Again, in my more Hindu area, no flags on lamp posts.
I suggest the interesting question is why haven’t they all joined the WPB? The WPB is not hoovering up all these Corbynite and/or pro-Palestine groups.
Not a difficult question to answer. WPB is climate sceptic, anti-abortion, the EU, gender self ID, devolution and woke in general. It is also pro Russia and China. Given all that, the interesting question is why it has hoovered up so many?
And that’s why I’m sceptical that they’ll do as well as 2.5%.
Well they won't if they don't stand in 500 plus seats certainly! 500 seats plus- a bold 750,000 Under 500 - average 1500 votes per seat I'm feeling a bit queasy about 2.5% now but no backsies!
Spoiler: parents are not ditching their cars. A BBC Bristol journalist from BBC Bristol has spoken to a couple of left-wing parents in urban areas of what is now one of the UK's most left-wing cities who now cycle their kids to school.
It's entirely unrepresentative, it is very much exaggerated and it is absolutely very BBC. Met and preachy to the core.
I am a big supporter of the BBC - I think the country is trashing a huge soft influence asset by running it down...
But I have to say this is a fair cop Casino - DM or Express levels of journalism. I fear the journalist's/editor's biases got the better of them.
It’s noteworthy that there’s a BBC article that’s remotely biased in that direction given the torrent of Tory talking points the organisation is cowed into spewing on a daily basis.
There have always been weak articles like this on the site. Inevitable when you consider the volume they pump out daily. Though I’d note that at least a third of the parents at our primary school, possibly closer to half, don’t own a car. It’s perhaps of anthropological interest to those living outside big cities to understand the cultural norms and mores of the millions who do.
Yes. I think there's a more interesting story to be written about the inconvenience of bringing up a family without the use of a car that would still fit the topic.
To your point I'm guessing most young families are in cities because that's where the jobs are.
There was a great slightly provocative quote on the school run in the video about Waterbeach I posted yesterday:
"With the local schools team, we said what what do you need in terms of access - how much parking do you need for parents in the morning? They basically said we don't want any because whatever you do outside the front of a primary school it will be chaos.
If you provide 50 parking spaces they'll be filled and more. If you provide none it will all be filled and more. So we'd rather you didn't provide any. So that was actually quite encouraging and not really the answer we'd expected."
(Separate facility provided for staff, disabled access etc. Plus a local mobility hub within walking distance on paths through amenity space.)
My cynical side says that that response was from the developer: who would quite like that car parking space to cram yet more houses in.
Our school has a too-small car park; shared by it and the adjacent secondary. The approach is via a long road that leads from almost outside the village; most people have a long drive just to reach the access road.
There is lots of active travel to the school; a short path leads from the end of a residential road in the village to the main gate. At school times, this is crammed with people and bikes. Noticeably less so in wet weather, though, when the car park gets busier.
But: lots of people park, or drop kids off on, the residential road; it is a much shorter trip for many than negotiating the access road. The road is not designed for that sort of traffic load. I ca guarantee that this will also happen in Waterbeach; lack of provision of a car park will just lead to people using nearby residential roads.
Active travel is fine for people like me, where we live less than a ten minute walk away from the school, especially as I don't work. It may be very different if you need to drive to work immediately afterwards - in other words, the life many people lead.
I'd recommend watching the presentation - it is only 15 minutes. There is car park provision at the mobility hub nearby, which is provision for the area rather than just the school.
"Nearby roads" are tending to be replaced with open landscaped amenity space or walking / wheeling / cycling paths.
I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but I like the way that tactile paving is now deemed unnecessary (coz cyclists hate them). I wonder what the RNIB think of that?
This is one of my bugbears: if a path is to be shared use between cyclists and pedestrians, then cyclist should be restricted in speed relative to the pedestrians. Maybe not to walking speed; but no more than two or three times pedestrian speed. Instead, you get people going very fast. What they've created there is a racetrack for cyclists - and it will be used as such.
I am *very* cynical when it comes to the cycling lobby arguing for cycling infrastructure at the expense of pedestrians. Good infrastructure would involve compromises for all users.
Thoughts. There's a lot about the need to unlearn assumptions, and change cultural expectations. You see that in the hierarchy of road users in the updated Highway Code from 2022 - the pedestrian priority at side road entrances will remain difficult in some measure until general road culture changes, which will take years or perhaps 2 decades, especially when we have no routine continuing education required to maintain a driving license.
Or contraflow cycling on 20mph one way streets. Been done in Cambridge since the 1990s, and now I think (you may know better) on pretty much all one way streets. But try and do a single street in Mansfield, and all the Local Councillors will have a heart attack because it is "so dangerous". Or two way mobility tracks on Binley Road in Coventry and "people will never look both ways" (is it so difficult - Highway Code says it is a basic?and "it is dangerous when I reverse out of my drive into the busy road" (why the f*ck are you reversing *out* of your drive?)
Unlearning habits: One amusing thing that happened at Waterbeach (in the presentation) is that when they created a flat environment where pedestrians get priority, one of the first developers created and built another whole new level of pavements on top with kerbs even higher - not getting the basic philosophy that they were designed out. I'm interested how often tactile paving standards (which have been in place since the 1980s) are often simply not followed when it is installed.
Shared space is in debate. We are trained to make streets with kerbs, tactiles etc to make them readable by visually impaired. "Shared space" was a movement from ~2000-2005 which said "remove all of that and people will be safe because motor vehicle drivers will have do be considerate". That gave us spaces like Exhibition Road, which has failed because it treats shared space as fully including motor vehicles rather than allowing them in as "guests". It missed that that never works in practice because all drivers are human, and VI people / vulnerable road users can't trust their lives to that. Waterbeach is far more thorough, very much circumscribing spaces accessible by motor and changing priorities, but I'm not 100% convinced it will be successful. That's another one around cultural expectations.
Pedestrians vs cyclists. A development over maybe the last 2-3 years has been convergence around common needs, especially amongst disabled charities and organisations like Sustrans. The Cycle Design Vehicle required to be accommodated (and often not) by new cycling infra (1.2m wide by 2.8m long - that is, size plus a dynamic envelope aka wobble room) has almost identical needs to mobility aids.
Personally when lobbying or arguing I always take the PoV of a disabled pedestrian, because I am (or will be) one, I got radicalised on this stuff by not being able to wheel my mum to the GP as all the walkways had wheelchair blocking barriers, and it avoids a lot of spurious distractions, plus has more legal teeth.
There are certain small fringe organisations around - such as those feeding inflammatory videos about 'floating bus stops' to the Mail and the Telegraph - who *want* a cyclists-vs-disabled conflict, and say things like 'cycling organisation Sustrans using disabled people as a human shield'. On bus stop bypasses they ignore that banning them will force mobility aid users out into general traffic at every bus stop - so it's a balance to be struck with factors both sides, and they point blank refuse to acknowledge the other side of the equation. Mark Harper may try a wedge issue on this one before he is finished.
Speeds - my new e-cycle is interesting on that. The 3 levels of assist also reflect speed as well as power, so give me max assist speeds of ~10kph, ~17-18kph, and ~25kph on the flat. I find that 1 is for areas busy with pedestrians, 2 is for shared paths / rough surfaces, and 3 elsewhere.
Enough for now.
Near me, they put “floating bus stops” in. With a black asphalt surface and black curbstones.
After the inevitable happened, they painted white stripes on the curb stones.
Spoiler: parents are not ditching their cars. A BBC Bristol journalist from BBC Bristol has spoken to a couple of left-wing parents in urban areas of what is now one of the UK's most left-wing cities who now cycle their kids to school.
It's entirely unrepresentative, it is very much exaggerated and it is absolutely very BBC. Met and preachy to the core.
I am a big supporter of the BBC - I think the country is trashing a huge soft influence asset by running it down...
But I have to say this is a fair cop Casino - DM or Express levels of journalism. I fear the journalist's/editor's biases got the better of them.
It’s noteworthy that there’s a BBC article that’s remotely biased in that direction given the torrent of Tory talking points the organisation is cowed into spewing on a daily basis.
There have always been weak articles like this on the site. Inevitable when you consider the volume they pump out daily. Though I’d note that at least a third of the parents at our primary school, possibly closer to half, don’t own a car. It’s perhaps of anthropological interest to those living outside big cities to understand the cultural norms and mores of the millions who do.
Yes. I think there's a more interesting story to be written about the inconvenience of bringing up a family without the use of a car that would still fit the topic.
To your point I'm guessing most young families are in cities because that's where the jobs are.
Their jobs are there of course, but they’ve also made the decision to stay in the inner city rather than commute from the suburbs.
Those without cars generally say they don’t miss them but it must cause issues when it comes to taking rubbish to the tip or picking up furniture from IKEA.
The carless parent cohort are a cross section from poor and on benefits to pretty wealthy and working in the city.
The walking and cycling parents in Bristol, at least the ones the BBC found, are the very lucky few who can both afford to live around the corner from the good school, and have a parent without a tight morning schedule.
Once upon a time, kids would've walked or cycled to school on their lonesome. Then parents started to get risk averse and thus the school run started, making the roads more dangerous for those who continued to walk - a vicious cycle until there is a huge increase in congestion during school term and people won't let their kids out on the road.
I find that very sad, and count myself lucky that I had the freedom of my neighbourhood from about age 8.
Oh indeed, kids should be allowed to be kids, but today’s parents are much more worried about the massively rare safety issues, than they are about letting them be kids and explore the world.
It tells you a lot about the BBC though, that they choose to venerate the yummy mummies and WFHers in the million-pound houses with six grand bikes, and softly demonise the hardworking secretary whose boss notices if she arrives at 9:05 because there was a traffic jam outside the school on the other side of town.
“demonise” Really? Can you show me an article that “demonise[s]” a “hardworking secretary whose boss notices if she arrives at 9:05 because there was a traffic jam”. I can’t say I’ve noticed that happening.
It’s the same thing as the Sunday Times “lifestyle” pages, showing the 1%er lifestyle to the 10%ers, and suggesting that we should all be doing the same. The ‘demonisation’ is implicit rather than explicit, and while it’s acceptable for the likes of the Sunday Times, it should be criticised when the organisation that gives criminal records to tens of thousands of the poorest in society does it.
I’m not familiar with BBC News articles that look like Sunday Times “lifestyle” pages. Can you show me a specific article demonstrating this demonisation?
Glen O'Hara @gsoh31 · 1h Student visas are already down nearly 30%, and I would say between 10 and 20 universities are going to get into deep trouble. Another 10 to 20 will follow rapidly. Imagine sending a further signal that you want the numbers down... (1/2)
The ‘dependents of students’ phenomena, is literally one year from 2023. An undoing of that isn’t going to be the end of the world for dozens of universities. The more likely issue is the economic recession in China.
One thing that sunrises me about the cargo bikes is that they don’t seem to have made an effort to make them really weatherproof - in the sense of just leave them outside.
I suspect most of these things are designed for use in countries with much nicer weather than the UK. It's the same with motorcycles and scooters, even quite expensive ones will rust quickly under the British weather, particularly if they're used in the winter and get exposed to road salt.
My current scooter is less than two years old, wasn't cheap, yet it's developed some visible rust despite being kept under a cover and regularly coated in anti-corrosion goo.
There's lots of interesting history, but I'll spare you this morning.
Suffice to say - like the standard Dutch bakfiets, it was invented in England.
The bikes for specifically carrying children are very popular in Denmark. The morning traffic in Copenhagen is full of them.
Indeed - a variety of the thing invented here.
One item I find interesting about Christiania type cargo bikes (box in front on two wheels) is that aiui they are relatively pigs to ride.
The regs are fun:
The Danish Transport Authority's Bicycle Order states the following:
Chapter 2: § 3. A bicycle shall not be designed for more than three persons. However, in addition, there may be room for up to four children not older than 7 years, cf. § 25.
Chapter 8: § 25. No more persons may be carried on a bicycle than it is designed to carry. Children not older than 7 years may only be carried on the bicycle when a special seat is provided for them. Paragraph 2. Special seating for children shall be adapted to the weight and height of the child and shall be shielded from the wheels. Paragraph 3. Children carried on bicycles shall be securely restrained. Paragraph 4. The carriage of children shall not prevent the driver of the bicycle from having full control of the bicycle or from giving appropriate signals. Paragraph 5. The driver of the bicycle must be at least 15 years of age when carrying children on the bicycle.
This means that if the children are under 8 years old, the law allows six children on a cargo bike - if it is equipped for it! So there must be a special space for each of the children and they must be buckled in.
For example, you can use our child bench or child seat with harnesses for the children, or you can attach a car seat or lift for the small child.
The driver of the Christianiacycle keeps the child/children safely in front of him/her on the load, so you can keep an eye on them at all times, and the solid box construction provides good protection for the children.
I do wonder about the claim of good protection. From what I’ve seen, simple plywood. If rot gets in, marraging… cheese.
I would be thinking more of carbon fibre, honeycomb core and may be Kevlar layers. But that maybe because I fiddle with racing rowing boats all the time.
Spoiler: parents are not ditching their cars. A BBC Bristol journalist from BBC Bristol has spoken to a couple of left-wing parents in urban areas of what is now one of the UK's most left-wing cities who now cycle their kids to school.
It's entirely unrepresentative, it is very much exaggerated and it is absolutely very BBC. Met and preachy to the core.
I am a big supporter of the BBC - I think the country is trashing a huge soft influence asset by running it down...
But I have to say this is a fair cop Casino - DM or Express levels of journalism. I fear the journalist's/editor's biases got the better of them.
It’s noteworthy that there’s a BBC article that’s remotely biased in that direction given the torrent of Tory talking points the organisation is cowed into spewing on a daily basis.
There have always been weak articles like this on the site. Inevitable when you consider the volume they pump out daily. Though I’d note that at least a third of the parents at our primary school, possibly closer to half, don’t own a car. It’s perhaps of anthropological interest to those living outside big cities to understand the cultural norms and mores of the millions who do.
Yes. I think there's a more interesting story to be written about the inconvenience of bringing up a family without the use of a car that would still fit the topic.
To your point I'm guessing most young families are in cities because that's where the jobs are.
Their jobs are there of course, but they’ve also made the decision to stay in the inner city rather than commute from the suburbs.
Those without cars generally say they don’t miss them but it must cause issues when it comes to taking rubbish to the tip or picking up furniture from IKEA.
The carless parent cohort are a cross section from poor and on benefits to pretty wealthy and working in the city.
The walking and cycling parents in Bristol, at least the ones the BBC found, are the very lucky few who can both afford to live around the corner from the good school, and have a parent without a tight morning schedule.
Once upon a time, kids would've walked or cycled to school on their lonesome. Then parents started to get risk averse and thus the school run started, making the roads more dangerous for those who continued to walk - a vicious cycle until there is a huge increase in congestion during school term and people won't let their kids out on the road.
I find that very sad, and count myself lucky that I had the freedom of my neighbourhood from about age 8.
Oh indeed, kids should be allowed to be kids, but today’s parents are much more worried about the massively rare safety issues, than they are about letting them be kids and explore the world.
It tells you a lot about the BBC though, that they choose to venerate the yummy mummies and WFHers in the million-pound houses with six grand bikes, and softly demonise the hardworking secretary whose boss notices if she arrives at 9:05 because there was a traffic jam outside the school on the other side of town.
“demonise” Really? Can you show me an article that “demonise[s]” a “hardworking secretary whose boss notices if she arrives at 9:05 because there was a traffic jam”. I can’t say I’ve noticed that happening.
It’s the same thing as the Sunday Times “lifestyle” pages, showing the 1%er lifestyle to the 10%ers, and suggesting that we should all be doing the same. The ‘demonisation’ is implicit rather than explicit, and while it’s acceptable for the likes of the Sunday Times, it should be criticised when the organisation that gives criminal records to tens of thousands of the poorest in society does it.
I’m not familiar with BBC News articles that look like Sunday Times “lifestyle” pages. Can you show me a specific article demonstrating this demonisation?
I’m not saying that’s a great article, but I don’t think it “demonise[s]” hardworking secretaries who are 5 minutes late because of a traffic jam.
It’s a very soft and indirect demonisation, by saying how lovely it is that the yummy mummies take their kids to school by bike. The actual problem is that these sort of articles feed into public policy, and over time it becomes more and more difficult to be that mum who needs to get her kids to school and then to work on time.
We need another new word for “the sense of pleasure in discovering an untouched jewel of a place in a massively touristed region/country”
Altamura is that
The feeling probably requires a German compound noun, but the process is similar to “gleaning”: the act of collecting leftover crops from fields after they have been commercially harvested.
...The 130,000-year-old calcified Altamura Man was discovered in 1993 in the nearby limestone cave called grotta di Lamalunga...
One thing that sunrises me about the cargo bikes is that they don’t seem to have made an effort to make them really weatherproof - in the sense of just leave them outside.
I suspect most of these things are designed for use in countries with much nicer weather than the UK. It's the same with motorcycles and scooters, even quite expensive ones will rust quickly under the British weather, particularly if they're used in the winter and get exposed to road salt.
My current scooter is less than two years old, wasn't cheap, yet it's developed some visible rust despite being kept under a cover and regularly coated in anti-corrosion goo.
There's lots of interesting history, but I'll spare you this morning.
Suffice to say - like the standard Dutch bakfiets, it was invented in England.
The bikes for specifically carrying children are very popular in Denmark. The morning traffic in Copenhagen is full of them.
Indeed - a variety of the thing invented here.
One item I find interesting about Christiania type cargo bikes (box in front on two wheels) is that aiui they are relatively pigs to ride.
The regs are fun:
The Danish Transport Authority's Bicycle Order states the following:
Chapter 2: § 3. A bicycle shall not be designed for more than three persons. However, in addition, there may be room for up to four children not older than 7 years, cf. § 25.
Chapter 8: § 25. No more persons may be carried on a bicycle than it is designed to carry. Children not older than 7 years may only be carried on the bicycle when a special seat is provided for them. Paragraph 2. Special seating for children shall be adapted to the weight and height of the child and shall be shielded from the wheels. Paragraph 3. Children carried on bicycles shall be securely restrained. Paragraph 4. The carriage of children shall not prevent the driver of the bicycle from having full control of the bicycle or from giving appropriate signals. Paragraph 5. The driver of the bicycle must be at least 15 years of age when carrying children on the bicycle.
This means that if the children are under 8 years old, the law allows six children on a cargo bike - if it is equipped for it! So there must be a special space for each of the children and they must be buckled in.
For example, you can use our child bench or child seat with harnesses for the children, or you can attach a car seat or lift for the small child.
The driver of the Christianiacycle keeps the child/children safely in front of him/her on the load, so you can keep an eye on them at all times, and the solid box construction provides good protection for the children.
I do wonder about the claim of good protection. From what I’ve seen, simple plywood. If rot gets in, marraging… cheese.
I would be think long of carbon fibre, honeycomb core and maybe Kevlar layers. But that maybe because I fiddle with racing rowing boats all the time.
Spoiler: parents are not ditching their cars. A BBC Bristol journalist from BBC Bristol has spoken to a couple of left-wing parents in urban areas of what is now one of the UK's most left-wing cities who now cycle their kids to school.
It's entirely unrepresentative, it is very much exaggerated and it is absolutely very BBC. Met and preachy to the core.
I am a big supporter of the BBC - I think the country is trashing a huge soft influence asset by running it down...
But I have to say this is a fair cop Casino - DM or Express levels of journalism. I fear the journalist's/editor's biases got the better of them.
It’s noteworthy that there’s a BBC article that’s remotely biased in that direction given the torrent of Tory talking points the organisation is cowed into spewing on a daily basis.
There have always been weak articles like this on the site. Inevitable when you consider the volume they pump out daily. Though I’d note that at least a third of the parents at our primary school, possibly closer to half, don’t own a car. It’s perhaps of anthropological interest to those living outside big cities to understand the cultural norms and mores of the millions who do.
Yes. I think there's a more interesting story to be written about the inconvenience of bringing up a family without the use of a car that would still fit the topic.
To your point I'm guessing most young families are in cities because that's where the jobs are.
There was a great slightly provocative quote on the school run in the video about Waterbeach I posted yesterday:
"With the local schools team, we said what what do you need in terms of access - how much parking do you need for parents in the morning? They basically said we don't want any because whatever you do outside the front of a primary school it will be chaos.
If you provide 50 parking spaces they'll be filled and more. If you provide none it will all be filled and more. So we'd rather you didn't provide any. So that was actually quite encouraging and not really the answer we'd expected."
(Separate facility provided for staff, disabled access etc. Plus a local mobility hub within walking distance on paths through amenity space.)
My cynical side says that that response was from the developer: who would quite like that car parking space to cram yet more houses in.
Our school has a too-small car park; shared by it and the adjacent secondary. The approach is via a long road that leads from almost outside the village; most people have a long drive just to reach the access road.
There is lots of active travel to the school; a short path leads from the end of a residential road in the village to the main gate. At school times, this is crammed with people and bikes. Noticeably less so in wet weather, though, when the car park gets busier.
But: lots of people park, or drop kids off on, the residential road; it is a much shorter trip for many than negotiating the access road. The road is not designed for that sort of traffic load. I ca guarantee that this will also happen in Waterbeach; lack of provision of a car park will just lead to people using nearby residential roads.
Active travel is fine for people like me, where we live less than a ten minute walk away from the school, especially as I don't work. It may be very different if you need to drive to work immediately afterwards - in other words, the life many people lead.
I'd recommend watching the presentation - it is only 15 minutes. There is car park provision at the mobility hub nearby, which is provision for the area rather than just the school.
"Nearby roads" are tending to be replaced with open landscaped amenity space or walking / wheeling / cycling paths.
I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but I like the way that tactile paving is now deemed unnecessary (coz cyclists hate them). I wonder what the RNIB think of that?
This is one of my bugbears: if a path is to be shared use between cyclists and pedestrians, then cyclist should be restricted in speed relative to the pedestrians. Maybe not to walking speed; but no more than two or three times pedestrian speed. Instead, you get people going very fast. What they've created there is a racetrack for cyclists - and it will be used as such.
I am *very* cynical when it comes to the cycling lobby arguing for cycling infrastructure at the expense of pedestrians. Good infrastructure would involve compromises for all users.
Thoughts. There's a lot about the need to unlearn assumptions, and change cultural expectations. You see that in the hierarchy of road users in the updated Highway Code from 2022 - the pedestrian priority at side road entrances will remain difficult in some measure until general road culture changes, which will take years or perhaps 2 decades, especially when we have no routine continuing education required to maintain a driving license.
Or contraflow cycling on 20mph one way streets. Been done in Cambridge since the 1990s, and now I think (you may know better) on pretty much all one way streets. But try and do a single street in Mansfield, and all the Local Councillors will have a heart attack because it is "so dangerous". Or two way mobility tracks on Binley Road in Coventry and "people will never look both ways" (is it so difficult - Highway Code says it is a basic?and "it is dangerous when I reverse out of my drive into the busy road" (why the f*ck are you reversing *out* of your drive?)
Unlearning habits: One amusing thing that happened at Waterbeach (in the presentation) is that when they created a flat environment where pedestrians get priority, one of the first developers created and built another whole new level of pavements on top with kerbs even higher - not getting the basic philosophy that they were designed out. I'm interested how often tactile paving standards (which have been in place since the 1980s) are often simply not followed when it is installed.
Shared space is in debate. We are trained to make streets with kerbs, tactiles etc to make them readable by visually impaired. "Shared space" was a movement from ~2000-2005 which said "remove all of that and people will be safe because motor vehicle drivers will have do be considerate". That gave us spaces like Exhibition Road, which has failed because it treats shared space as fully including motor vehicles rather than allowing them in as "guests". It missed that that never works in practice because all drivers are human, and VI people / vulnerable road users can't trust their lives to that. Waterbeach is far more thorough, very much circumscribing spaces accessible by motor and changing priorities, but I'm not 100% convinced it will be successful. That's another one around cultural expectations.
Pedestrians vs cyclists. A development over maybe the last 2-3 years has been convergence around common needs, especially amongst disabled charities and organisations like Sustrans. The Cycle Design Vehicle required to be accommodated (and often not) by new cycling infra (1.2m wide by 2.8m long - that is, size plus a dynamic envelope aka wobble room) has almost identical needs to mobility aids.
Personally when lobbying or arguing I always take the PoV of a disabled pedestrian, because I am (or will be) one, I got radicalised on this stuff by not being able to wheel my mum to the GP as all the walkways had wheelchair blocking barriers, and it avoids a lot of spurious distractions, plus has more legal teeth.
There are certain small fringe organisations around - such as those feeding inflammatory videos about 'floating bus stops' to the Mail and the Telegraph - who *want* a cyclists-vs-disabled conflict, and say things like 'cycling organisation Sustrans using disabled people as a human shield'. On bus stop bypasses they ignore that banning them will force mobility aid users out into general traffic at every bus stop - so it's a balance to be struck with factors both sides, and they point blank refuse to acknowledge the other side of the equation. Mark Harper may try a wedge issue on this one before he is finished.
Speeds - my new e-cycle is interesting on that. The 3 levels of assist also reflect speed as well as power, so give me max assist speeds of ~10kph, ~17-18kph, and ~25kph on the flat. I find that 1 is for areas busy with pedestrians, 2 is for shared paths / rough surfaces, and 3 elsewhere.
Enough for now.
Near me, they put “floating bus stops” in. With a black asphalt surface and black curbstones.
After the inevitable happened, they painted white stripes on the curb stones.
Yep - it's in getting decent standards, following the standards and sweating the detail.
In London there has been a real issue for a number of years of Boroughs not following TFL standards, which have in general been good.
On that piccie, it's revealing all the yellow paintwork they had to put in the cycle track to stop ASB drivers abusing it. Something Edinburgh is still working on . There's a wonderful photo of a workteam replacing slabs on the footway smashed by delivery lorries, whilst behind them there is a 7.5 tonne lorry parked on the pavement, delivering.
The problems they cause are weirdly inconsistent. Here's one that's been in Hammersmith and Fulham for I reckon 60 or 70 years. But it seems to have caused no problems throughout all that time, and no one demands its removal. I wonder why .
Spoiler: parents are not ditching their cars. A BBC Bristol journalist from BBC Bristol has spoken to a couple of left-wing parents in urban areas of what is now one of the UK's most left-wing cities who now cycle their kids to school.
It's entirely unrepresentative, it is very much exaggerated and it is absolutely very BBC. Met and preachy to the core.
I am a big supporter of the BBC - I think the country is trashing a huge soft influence asset by running it down...
But I have to say this is a fair cop Casino - DM or Express levels of journalism. I fear the journalist's/editor's biases got the better of them.
It’s noteworthy that there’s a BBC article that’s remotely biased in that direction given the torrent of Tory talking points the organisation is cowed into spewing on a daily basis.
There have always been weak articles like this on the site. Inevitable when you consider the volume they pump out daily. Though I’d note that at least a third of the parents at our primary school, possibly closer to half, don’t own a car. It’s perhaps of anthropological interest to those living outside big cities to understand the cultural norms and mores of the millions who do.
Yes. I think there's a more interesting story to be written about the inconvenience of bringing up a family without the use of a car that would still fit the topic.
To your point I'm guessing most young families are in cities because that's where the jobs are.
Their jobs are there of course, but they’ve also made the decision to stay in the inner city rather than commute from the suburbs.
Those without cars generally say they don’t miss them but it must cause issues when it comes to taking rubbish to the tip or picking up furniture from IKEA.
The carless parent cohort are a cross section from poor and on benefits to pretty wealthy and working in the city.
The walking and cycling parents in Bristol, at least the ones the BBC found, are the very lucky few who can both afford to live around the corner from the good school, and have a parent without a tight morning schedule.
Once upon a time, kids would've walked or cycled to school on their lonesome. Then parents started to get risk averse and thus the school run started, making the roads more dangerous for those who continued to walk - a vicious cycle until there is a huge increase in congestion during school term and people won't let their kids out on the road.
I find that very sad, and count myself lucky that I had the freedom of my neighbourhood from about age 8.
Oh indeed, kids should be allowed to be kids, but today’s parents are much more worried about the massively rare safety issues, than they are about letting them be kids and explore the world.
It tells you a lot about the BBC though, that they choose to venerate the yummy mummies and WFHers in the million-pound houses with six grand bikes, and softly demonise the hardworking secretary whose boss notices if she arrives at 9:05 because there was a traffic jam outside the school on the other side of town.
“demonise” Really? Can you show me an article that “demonise[s]” a “hardworking secretary whose boss notices if she arrives at 9:05 because there was a traffic jam”. I can’t say I’ve noticed that happening.
It’s the same thing as the Sunday Times “lifestyle” pages, showing the 1%er lifestyle to the 10%ers, and suggesting that we should all be doing the same. The ‘demonisation’ is implicit rather than explicit, and while it’s acceptable for the likes of the Sunday Times, it should be criticised when the organisation that gives criminal records to tens of thousands of the poorest in society does it.
I’m not familiar with BBC News articles that look like Sunday Times “lifestyle” pages. Can you show me a specific article demonstrating this demonisation?
I’m not saying that’s a great article, but I don’t think it “demonise[s]” hardworking secretaries who are 5 minutes late because of a traffic jam.
It’s a very soft and indirect demonisation, by saying how lovely it is that the yummy mummies take their kids to school by bike. The actual problem is that these sort of articles feed into public policy, and over time it becomes more and more difficult to be that mum who needs to get her kids to school and then to work on time.
Doesn't give the latter the legal right to run over other people's children and to park across, and actually in, the *neighbour's driveways. A real problem in many places.
Spoiler: parents are not ditching their cars. A BBC Bristol journalist from BBC Bristol has spoken to a couple of left-wing parents in urban areas of what is now one of the UK's most left-wing cities who now cycle their kids to school.
It's entirely unrepresentative, it is very much exaggerated and it is absolutely very BBC. Met and preachy to the core.
I am a big supporter of the BBC - I think the country is trashing a huge soft influence asset by running it down...
But I have to say this is a fair cop Casino - DM or Express levels of journalism. I fear the journalist's/editor's biases got the better of them.
It’s noteworthy that there’s a BBC article that’s remotely biased in that direction given the torrent of Tory talking points the organisation is cowed into spewing on a daily basis.
There have always been weak articles like this on the site. Inevitable when you consider the volume they pump out daily. Though I’d note that at least a third of the parents at our primary school, possibly closer to half, don’t own a car. It’s perhaps of anthropological interest to those living outside big cities to understand the cultural norms and mores of the millions who do.
Yes. I think there's a more interesting story to be written about the inconvenience of bringing up a family without the use of a car that would still fit the topic.
To your point I'm guessing most young families are in cities because that's where the jobs are.
There was a great slightly provocative quote on the school run in the video about Waterbeach I posted yesterday:
"With the local schools team, we said what what do you need in terms of access - how much parking do you need for parents in the morning? They basically said we don't want any because whatever you do outside the front of a primary school it will be chaos.
If you provide 50 parking spaces they'll be filled and more. If you provide none it will all be filled and more. So we'd rather you didn't provide any. So that was actually quite encouraging and not really the answer we'd expected."
(Separate facility provided for staff, disabled access etc. Plus a local mobility hub within walking distance on paths through amenity space.)
My cynical side says that that response was from the developer: who would quite like that car parking space to cram yet more houses in.
Our school has a too-small car park; shared by it and the adjacent secondary. The approach is via a long road that leads from almost outside the village; most people have a long drive just to reach the access road.
There is lots of active travel to the school; a short path leads from the end of a residential road in the village to the main gate. At school times, this is crammed with people and bikes. Noticeably less so in wet weather, though, when the car park gets busier.
But: lots of people park, or drop kids off on, the residential road; it is a much shorter trip for many than negotiating the access road. The road is not designed for that sort of traffic load. I ca guarantee that this will also happen in Waterbeach; lack of provision of a car park will just lead to people using nearby residential roads.
Active travel is fine for people like me, where we live less than a ten minute walk away from the school, especially as I don't work. It may be very different if you need to drive to work immediately afterwards - in other words, the life many people lead.
I'd recommend watching the presentation - it is only 15 minutes. There is car park provision at the mobility hub nearby, which is provision for the area rather than just the school.
"Nearby roads" are tending to be replaced with open landscaped amenity space or walking / wheeling / cycling paths.
I haven't watched the whole thing yet, but I like the way that tactile paving is now deemed unnecessary (coz cyclists hate them). I wonder what the RNIB think of that?
This is one of my bugbears: if a path is to be shared use between cyclists and pedestrians, then cyclist should be restricted in speed relative to the pedestrians. Maybe not to walking speed; but no more than two or three times pedestrian speed. Instead, you get people going very fast. What they've created there is a racetrack for cyclists - and it will be used as such.
I am *very* cynical when it comes to the cycling lobby arguing for cycling infrastructure at the expense of pedestrians. Good infrastructure would involve compromises for all users.
Thoughts. There's a lot about the need to unlearn assumptions, and change cultural expectations. You see that in the hierarchy of road users in the updated Highway Code from 2022 - the pedestrian priority at side road entrances will remain difficult in some measure until general road culture changes, which will take years or perhaps 2 decades, especially when we have no routine continuing education required to maintain a driving license.
Or contraflow cycling on 20mph one way streets. Been done in Cambridge since the 1990s, and now I think (you may know better) on pretty much all one way streets. But try and do a single street in Mansfield, and all the Local Councillors will have a heart attack because it is "so dangerous". Or two way mobility tracks on Binley Road in Coventry and "people will never look both ways" (is it so difficult - Highway Code says it is a basic?and "it is dangerous when I reverse out of my drive into the busy road" (why the f*ck are you reversing *out* of your drive?)
Unlearning habits: One amusing thing that happened at Waterbeach (in the presentation) is that when they created a flat environment where pedestrians get priority, one of the first developers created and built another whole new level of pavements on top with kerbs even higher - not getting the basic philosophy that they were designed out. I'm interested how often tactile paving standards (which have been in place since the 1980s) are often simply not followed when it is installed.
Shared space is in debate. We are trained to make streets with kerbs, tactiles etc to make them readable by visually impaired. "Shared space" was a movement from ~2000-2005 which said "remove all of that and people will be safe because motor vehicle drivers will have do be considerate". That gave us spaces like Exhibition Road, which has failed because it treats shared space as fully including motor vehicles rather than allowing them in as "guests". It missed that that never works in practice because all drivers are human, and VI people / vulnerable road users can't trust their lives to that. Waterbeach is far more thorough, very much circumscribing spaces accessible by motor and changing priorities, but I'm not 100% convinced it will be successful. That's another one around cultural expectations.
Pedestrians vs cyclists. A development over maybe the last 2-3 years has been convergence around common needs, especially amongst disabled charities and organisations like Sustrans. The Cycle Design Vehicle required to be accommodated (and often not) by new cycling infra (1.2m wide by 2.8m long - that is, size plus a dynamic envelope aka wobble room) has almost identical needs to mobility aids.
Personally when lobbying or arguing I always take the PoV of a disabled pedestrian, because I am (or will be) one, I got radicalised on this stuff by not being able to wheel my mum to the GP as all the walkways had wheelchair blocking barriers, and it avoids a lot of spurious distractions, plus has more legal teeth.
There are certain small fringe organisations around - such as those feeding inflammatory videos about 'floating bus stops' to the Mail and the Telegraph - who *want* a cyclists-vs-disabled conflict, and say things like 'cycling organisation Sustrans using disabled people as a human shield'. On bus stop bypasses they ignore that banning them will force mobility aid users out into general traffic at every bus stop - so it's a balance to be struck with factors both sides, and they point blank refuse to acknowledge the other side of the equation. Mark Harper may try a wedge issue on this one before he is finished.
Speeds - my new e-cycle is interesting on that. The 3 levels of assist also reflect speed as well as power, so give me max assist speeds of ~10kph, ~17-18kph, and ~25kph on the flat. I find that 1 is for areas busy with pedestrians, 2 is for shared paths / rough surfaces, and 3 elsewhere.
Enough for now.
Near me, they put “floating bus stops” in. With a black asphalt surface and black curbstones.
After the inevitable happened, they painted white stripes on the curb stones.
Yep - it's in getting decent standards, following the standards and sweating the detail.
In London there has been a real issue for a number of years of Boroughs not following TFL standards, which have in general been good.
On that piccie, it's revealing all the yellow paintwork they had to put in the cycle track to stop ASB drivers abusing it. Something Edinburgh is still working on . There's a wonderful photo of a workteam replacing slabs on the footway smashed by delivery lorries, whilst behind them there is a 7.5 tonne lorry parked on the pavement, delivering.
Err… the double yellow line was there before the cycle lane/floating bus stop. As were the yellow markings on the curb.
The big problem is *lack* of adequate markings. Drivers who don’t know the area are visibly confused at junctions and sometimes only just avoid ending up in the cycle lane.
This is not helped by the idiots who put the cycle lane in changing their… minds?.. three times. Leaving three sets of somewhat faded and painted over markings to choose from.
I had no idea that curb stones could come in black - why would you want them to be?
Glen O'Hara @gsoh31 · 1h Student visas are already down nearly 30%, and I would say between 10 and 20 universities are going to get into deep trouble. Another 10 to 20 will follow rapidly. Imagine sending a further signal that you want the numbers down... (1/2)
My understanding is that the fall is as much to do with changes in China (the recent property and debt crisis) as it is to do with changes in visa rules here, but I’ve not seen a detailed analysis of this (is the fall more in Chinese students than other groups).
According to this source, "the number of international student visas granted (primarily to students from Mainland China, India, and Nigeria) increased by 81% from 2019 to 2022."
I think at least 3 things can be drawn from this. Firstly, the comparison here is being made with highly exceptional numbers which were presumably generated by delays in applications caused by restrictions in movement caused by Covid.
Secondly, a 30% reduction from from an 81% increase would still indicate a very large increase from the artificially reduced numbers during Covid.
Thirdly, it would be more than somewhat surprising if Universities had built their financial planning on numbers that were so clearly distorted in this way and, very likely, unsustainable for the medium term. Any University that is in financial trouble has probably not recovered from the losses in the Covid years or has been riding for a fall for a while.
Thirdly, it would be more than somewhat surprising if Universities had built their financial planning on numbers that were so clearly distorted in this way and, very likely, unsustainable for the medium term.
Having worked in three of them - it really, really wouldn't.
In fact, planning in this way is in my experience both normal and has been positively encouraged by performance management targets that seems to have at best a nodding acquaintance with reality.
Comments
Look at the row back about the rematch. Yes def just after the result, then let's wait and see at the presser.
https://x.com/MorrisF1/status/1792142302497865740
If you have any other offers etc do feel free to post/let me know.
You don't get to the top without enormous self belief, that shades into self delusion occasionally.
Suffice to say - like the standard Dutch bakfiets, it was invented in England.
This is one of my bugbears: if a path is to be shared use between cyclists and pedestrians, then cyclist should be restricted in speed relative to the pedestrians. Maybe not to walking speed; but no more than two or three times pedestrian speed. Instead, you get people going very fast. What they've created there is a racetrack for cyclists - and it will be used as such.
I am *very* cynical when it comes to the cycling lobby arguing for cycling infrastructure at the expense of pedestrians. Good infrastructure would involve compromises for all users.
I’ve never even HEARD of Altamura. Has anyone on here? Yet it has a perfectly preserved centro storico. A magnificent Romanesque cathedral. A medieval warren of greek, Arab and Norman streets
And what’s that word we invented for “when a destination fulfils your cliched expectations?”
Every guide book that bothers to mention Altamura - not many - says the focaccia is famously delicious
. So I just bought some. And yes. It’s absolutely delicious. Best focaccia I’ve ever had (something to do with durum wheat? They have 600 year old bakeries here)
Yay puglia
So I think credit to @Casino_Royale for highlighting this article.
He doesn't mention the 14 years of nonsense we've waded through to get to this chimera.
Slightly surreal, Keir Starmer is on Sunday Brunch on C4 atm, cooking tandoori salmon.
Have to say he is coming over very well - far better and more normal than Sunak when he tries these things. One of the best 'being normal' attempts I've seen.
@paulwaugh
For most people who aren't plugged into politics 24/7, just seeing a party leader who looks and sounds normal is probably quite refreshing.
Contrast with Rishi Sunak on Loose Women
@paulwaugh
'In many ways, Sunak is the contactless Prime Minister - in thrall to technology but unable to make a connection between himself and the voters.'
My latest @theipaper column on how this week again exposed the big gap between the PM and the public:
In many constituencies they will get diddly. But then so will the LDs and Greens and Reform. I'm looking at Respect as a guide, a similar party with similar aims and appeal. They stood in 16 and 11 constituencies in 05 and 10 achieving 0.3% in 05 and over both averaging 3000 votes per seat. WPB achieved 29,000 votes over 33 wards and one PCC region, 5% in the Lewisham mayoralty earlier. 750,000 is a stretch but its by no means out of sight.
That said, Money will be the big stumbling block, yes, unless they find a big backer to fund deposits. In that case (standing in under 500) , I predict them to average over 1500 votes/seat stood
Next to it is a man singing beautiful puglian songs on the guitar. There are lots of people here - it’s a festival day
But everyone is Italian. Not a single foreign tourist
And they have the lowest urban arch in Europe!
I have never found any trouble in keeping to the speed limits in either.
Reducing your speed in a mixed use environment is simply good manners.
Of course the fact we may have more swing voters also means a Labour government has less core vote to rely on if the economy is poor
The highlight for me was Death Valley. I presume you have been? Awesome place.
The other highlight was the Santana concert at the House of Blues. Probably one of the best concerts and venues I have been to. Eric Clapton at the Albert Hall in a few days time should be an interesting comparison. These two are the two most expensive concerts I have ever been to by a long way.
The helicopter trip (my first flight in a helicopter) over the Grand Canyon was very enjoyable but a little disappointing. I was expecting to be thrilled but compared to an acrobatics plane and a glider it is very tame even over that landscape. They tried to spice it up with Ride of the Valkyries as you approached the lip of the canyon and Also Sprech Zarathustra as you went over the lip.
Thanks again for the advice.
If the WPB get 20% of the Muslim vote, that’s 20% of 4.4%, which is 0.9%. To get to 2.5%, where does the other 1.6% come from? I suggest WPB comes after the infighting of RESPECT and with Galloway turning more social conservative, suggesting the party will be much less able to mobilise far left support. Ergo, I expect WPB to do worse than RESPECT’s 2005 high.
Cycling in the Danish winter is still a sensible, low-hassle option.
Fall is another example.
I'd be confident of the Greens finishing second in Stratford & Bow and possibly East Ham and West Ham & Beckton on current evidence.
Size is certainly not everything. The Cuillins on Skye are my favourite example. Some of the most dramatic mountains on earth - yet they are TINY
PS yes I know Death Valley very well. As a young man I literally broke down there in a car hired from rent-a-wreck. We left it in Barstow where it was towed - and fled the country
In a later visit with my wife we stayed overnight in the famous lodge and got up for dawn in one of the most mystical areas. She was so excited she stripped naked and ran into the dunes
Lots of noom THERE
Altamura is that
Living without a car could feel like a bold and even frightening decision for a generation familiar with seeing multiple vehicles parked outside a single home.
And as polls keep telling us, climate change really is a salient issue for people younger than 50, consistent across political divide. It's not just some whiny Green voters.
That said, we clearly disagree on this and I'll happily concede I was wrong if I am well off. But I'll eat my hat if WPB get fewer than 68,000 votes.
What was never noticed in all of this is that the incomprehension and failure to understand how people can be different is mutual. But you won’t find many navel gazing editorials about that.
Their leadership is ex-Labour, strong supporters of Corbyn who were booted from the fold when Roksana Foaz recognised the future lay in backing Starmer. Said Independents jumped immediately onto the pro-Palestine bandwagon and their wins came in strongly Muslim areas (their candidate in my more Hindu Ward was well beaten). Some parts of Newham had Palestinian flags on the lamp post but the Mail and Express created the impression in provincial England this was happening all over London - it wasn't. Again, in my more Hindu area, no flags on lamp posts.
Focaccia is ancient. Possibly Etruscan
State-sponsored psychological manipulation is becoming ubiquitous
Gary Sidley"
https://thecritic.co.uk/you-are-being-nudged/
“I can’t say I’ve noticed that happening.”
A frequently noted phenomenon is people genuinely not seeing negative issues and behaviour towards groups they are not part of. This is especially marked when it is groups they don’t feel any especial link to.
I would note that “clearly” is questionable in your statement that the WPB will be “standing in many more” constituencies. They’ve announced a plan to stand in many more constituencies. Will they actually do so?
Labour, who have suspended the relevant CLP groups, have yet to announce a candidate in either West Ham & Beckton or Stratford & Bow. My understanding is Sir Stephen Timms will stand again in East Ham.
Yes, let's review after voting
Or contraflow cycling on 20mph one way streets. Been done in Cambridge since the 1990s, and now I think (you may know better) on pretty much all one way streets. But try and do a single street in Mansfield, and all the Local Councillors will have a heart attack because it is "so dangerous". Or two way mobility tracks on Binley Road in Coventry and "people will never look both ways" (is it so difficult - Highway Code says it is a basic?and "it is dangerous when I reverse out of my drive into the busy road" (why the f*ck are you reversing *out* of your drive?)
Unlearning habits: One amusing thing that happened at Waterbeach (in the presentation) is that when they created a flat environment where pedestrians get priority, one of the first developers created and built another whole new level of pavements on top with kerbs even higher - not getting the basic philosophy that they were designed out. I'm interested how often tactile paving standards (which have been in place since the 1980s) are often simply not followed when it is installed.
Pedestrians vs cyclists. A development over maybe the last 2-3 years has been convergence around common needs, especially amongst disabled charities and organisations like Sustrans. The Cycle Design Vehicle required to be accommodated (and often not) by new cycling infra (1.2m wide by 2.8m long - that is, size plus a dynamic envelope aka wobble room) has almost identical needs to mobility aids.
Personally when lobbying or arguing I always take the PoV of a disabled pedestrian, because I am (or will be) one, I got radicalised on this stuff by not being able to wheel my mum to the GP as all the walkways had wheelchair blocking barriers, and it avoids a lot of spurious distractions, plus has more legal teeth.
There are certain small fringe organisations around - such as those feeding inflammatory videos about 'floating bus stops' to the Mail and the Telegraph - who *want* a cyclists-vs-disabled conflict, and say things like 'cycling organisation Sustrans using disabled people as a human shield'. On bus stop bypasses they ignore that banning them will force mobility aid users out into general traffic at every bus stop - so it's a balance to be struck with factors both sides, and they point blank refuse to acknowledge the other side of the equation. Mark Harper may try a wedge issue on this one before he is finished.
Speeds - my new e-cycle is interesting on that. The 3 levels of assist also reflect speed as well as power, so give me max assist speeds of ~10kph, ~17-18kph, and ~25kph on the flat. I find that 1 is for areas busy with pedestrians, 2 is for shared paths / rough surfaces, and 3 elsewhere.
Enough for now.
Anyway, added the North Bay Railway (20 inch gauge) and both the Central Tramway (actually a cliff lift), and the Scarborough Spa Cliff Lift.
The "culture war" is an utterly cynical exercise. It looks they have been found out. Hence the thrashing the Tories are going to get at the next election.
We stayed at the Inn at Furnace Creek at Death valley. Is that what you are referring to. We also went to the dunes. Badwater and Artists Drive are amazing, but the highlights for us were the top of the volcano and seeing a coyote. On the drive there we were both getting tense realising we had driven 55 miles and the last 30 were on a road where we had not seen a single car in either direction and realising if we broke down or crashed we were stuffed with no phone signal and the heat. Apparently the vast majority of car fatalities are single car incidents.
I want people to remember this phrase next time they wring their hands about poor decision making around diet and lifestyle. Anything nudge units can do, advertisers and supermarkets can do better. It takes a profound mental fortitude to live a busy life and avoid deliberately induced temptation.
And when you’re calling for a random check on everyone in self scan such that there is a queue waiting to be checked?
I saw it flash up and walked back out to the ‘scan at till’ and just did the seven items there in thirty seconds.
What a complete waste of time.
@gsoh31
·
1h
Student visas are already down nearly 30%, and I would say between 10 and 20 universities are going to get into deep trouble. Another 10 to 20 will follow rapidly. Imagine sending a further signal that you want the numbers down... (1/2)
https://x.com/gsoh31/status/1792131030658269402
WPB is climate sceptic, anti-abortion, the EU, gender self ID, devolution and woke in general.
It is also pro Russia and China.
Given all that, the interesting question is why it has hoovered up so many?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c84z0md30z3o
One item I find interesting about Christiania type cargo bikes (box in front on two wheels) is that aiui they are relatively pigs to ride.
The regs are fun:
The Danish Transport Authority's Bicycle Order states the following:
Chapter 2: § 3. A bicycle shall not be designed for more than three persons. However, in addition, there may be room for up to four children not older than 7 years, cf. § 25.
Chapter 8: § 25. No more persons may be carried on a bicycle than it is designed to carry. Children not older than 7 years may only be carried on the bicycle when a special seat is provided for them.
Paragraph 2. Special seating for children shall be adapted to the weight and height of the child and shall be shielded from the wheels.
Paragraph 3. Children carried on bicycles shall be securely restrained.
Paragraph 4. The carriage of children shall not prevent the driver of the bicycle from having full control of the bicycle or from giving appropriate signals.
Paragraph 5. The driver of the bicycle must be at least 15 years of age when carrying children on the bicycle.
This means that if the children are under 8 years old, the law allows six children on a cargo bike - if it is equipped for it! So there must be a special space for each of the children and they must be buckled in.
For example, you can use our child bench or child seat with harnesses for the children, or you can attach a car seat or lift for the small child.
The driver of the Christianiacycle keeps the child/children safely in front of him/her on the load, so you can keep an eye on them at all times, and the solid box construction provides good protection for the children.
500 seats plus- a bold 750,000
Under 500 - average 1500 votes per seat
I'm feeling a bit queasy about 2.5% now but no backsies!
RAYNER
CURRY
After the inevitable happened, they painted white stripes on the curb stones.
https://www.eataly.com/us_en/magazine/recipes/appetizer-recipes/frico-friulano
I would be thinking more of carbon fibre, honeycomb core and may be Kevlar layers. But that maybe because I fiddle with racing rowing boats all the time.
"Let's meet the teams..."
In London there has been a real issue for a number of years of Boroughs not following TFL standards, which have in general been good.
On that piccie, it's revealing all the yellow paintwork they had to put in the cycle track to stop ASB drivers abusing it. Something Edinburgh is still working on
The problems they cause are weirdly inconsistent. Here's one that's been in Hammersmith and Fulham for I reckon 60 or 70 years. But it seems to have caused no problems throughout all that time, and no one demands its removal. I wonder why
*The school's neighbours - not the parents'.
The big problem is *lack* of adequate markings. Drivers who don’t know the area are visibly confused at junctions and sometimes only just avoid ending up in the cycle lane.
This is not helped by the idiots who put the cycle lane in changing their… minds?.. three times. Leaving three sets of somewhat faded and painted over markings to choose from.
I had no idea that curb stones could come in black - why would you want them to be?
https://workpermit.com/news/uk-student-visa-changes-comprehensive-analysis-20230707-0
I think at least 3 things can be drawn from this. Firstly, the comparison here is being made with highly exceptional numbers which were presumably generated by delays in applications caused by restrictions in movement caused by Covid.
Secondly, a 30% reduction from from an 81% increase would still indicate a very large increase from the artificially reduced numbers during Covid.
Thirdly, it would be more than somewhat surprising if Universities had built their financial planning on numbers that were so clearly distorted in this way and, very likely, unsustainable for the medium term. Any University that is in financial trouble has probably not recovered from the losses in the Covid years or has been riding for a fall for a while.
In fact, planning in this way is in my experience both normal and has been positively encouraged by performance management targets that seems to have at best a nodding acquaintance with reality.