Do we have any markets on this yet? Though they will be driven by insiders, of course.
It sounds as if Reform need to get the "build like the Lib Dems" programme off it's backside PDQ, or their window of opportunity may close surprisingly quickly.
4 ranting heads in Parliament, 0.14% of Local Councillors and a couple of self-debased media outlets aren't going to win many seats for them.
Plus will any Reform MPs throw in the towel?
Yes. Had an unexpected chat with a reform voter last night. He seemed to think that “our Nigel” would be key to threatening especially Labour. I pointed out that we’re already past peak reform and the red wall didn’t seem remotely interested in electing swathes of FUKers.
There is very very clearly a “plague on all your houses” constituency of voters, who are sick of politicians in general. But the reason why they are sick is they want stuff done in their town. Watching the antics of the famous 5 not only delivering nothing but making a bit of a tit of themselves is not going to make the people who didn’t vote for them in 2024 do so in 2029:
“Past Peak Reform”
??
No we’re not. Recent polls all have them rising. That might stop soon - I expect it will - I reckon their ceiling is 20-25% - but it hasn’t stopped yet
The interesting problem Reform will hit at some point is the calibre of their top support base. Beyond Farage - who is very able in a particular way - there are currently no names at all, and in particular no names with an apparent capacity to run a medium size or large organisation - like a council, or a ministry.
If they remain just a vehicle of protest - like the extreme left but even less intelligent - then it's manageable for the majority of voters who still will only vote for parties with a degree, however tarnished and limited, of capacity for being centrist and capable, and keep the rickety show of UKplc on the road.
The interesting point would be if a significant group of people with real clout and ability get to the top of the Reform tree. SFAICS we are not close to that yet.
Scarily Richard Tice has more experience running businesses than the whole of the current cabinet combined.
I'm not sure that it is even medium sized organisations, though.
Like Trump, it was an inherited property business, and then in Tice's case followed by bits of investment-trust type things.
AIUI - perhaps a PBer is acquainted?
Quick google, CLS (isn't the company he was left), which he appointed CEO of has 150 employees and manages £2bn worth of property assets, and £250m in income...I think I would say that is a proper business i.e. one you could right royally f##k up.
It depends on the medium as to survival too. Papyrus in Egypt has survived relatively well but rotted elsewhere. Ceramic notes on pottery shards in Greece survived very nicely, as did clay tablets for cuneiform. Steles of stone or bronze that are engraved can be handy, but most written material across time has been lost.
Today, we have the ephemeral nature of the internet/electronic communications combined with a flood of dross.
You can have a civilisation without writing - the incans? - but it is rare. Almost all do from Sumer on
So the Tas Tepeler may have been pre-literate but given that it keeps surprising, wildly, on the upside, my guess is that they did have writing. But it has probably perished, as you suggest
Remember that the only reason these incredible stone sites survive is because they were, almost certainly, deliberately buried
Incans did use quipus for recording - much as Middle East writing was mainly temple records and accounts.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
Yesterday, Garmin told me I'd done 20,000 km of logged exercises since I started using my first watch at the end of 2016. 12,000 km of which were runs. And I haven't logged all of them...
It encourages me to get better sleep, and that encouragement is successful. I’ve been sleeping better since I put it on
Still haven’t got the GPS working, however
You still haven't got the GPS working? You shouldn't need to "get it working", it should just work. How is it tracking your walks/runs etc without a functioning GPS?
Something that confuses people is this. GPS on its own takes quite a while to get its initial fix.
Mobile phones are much faster, because they use mast data and nearby mapped WiFi to guesstimate their position, which makes getting the initial fix faster.
Smart watches without a mobile connection don't do this. So they can take a minute or so to get a fix. This is noticeable because most do not maintain a GPS fix all the time - only for some activities. This is to save power.
So when I put my Garmin in the activity mode for rowing, it starts getting a GPS fix and takes a little while to say that it is ready.
My Apple Watch Ultra works instantly without any problem, without being shackled to a phone. It has its own e-sim card. I never have a phone with me when running – there is no point. The watch works without it and can make and receive calls and texts etc so the bulky phone stays at home.
Which is the reason for the lower battery life on Apple Watches (and other sim'd smart watches) vs those without.
Nope. As I have said repeatedly now, you only have you charge the AWU every three days despite its manifold features (which are why it is awesome). And it charges from flat in the time it takes you to get washed and dressed of a morning. I mean, you can get years out of a basic Casio, but it has very few features. If your 'smartwatch' only works when shackled to a phone it is limited by your phone's battery life regardless of its own notional battery life.
Oh dear. I seem to have restarted the Great PB Watch Wars, via the Second Battle of GPS Availability
I can't understand why you can't get the GPS to work on your watch? What use is it without GPS? That is the way it tracks all your walks and runs. Is it faulty?
Calm down! I think I have to go outside and wave it about a bit
I dunno. I’m still obsessed with its health tracking features
I’m pretty sure it is inferior to the AUW in this aspect, but I don’t care. It does exactly what I want and I don’t have to charge it for two whole weeks which is superb
We’ve discussed why charging is a vexatious issue for me. It’s coz I travel so much - and I’m off again today
I’m gonna try the Garmin Venu’s “jet lag” feature. Apparently it can monitor all my health and sleep patterns and advise me how to get over jet lag. Given that I had horrible jet lag on my last long haul flight (to Vancouver) this could be a life saver
And on that note I’d better get up and start packing. Later
Fair enough, as I have said. But my point is that comparing a watch that relies on a phone with one that works independently is comparing apples with pears. You need a functioning phone (which has to be charged regularly) for the your watch to work properly.
Right, but he needs a functioning charged phone for his travels anyway, so he can assume that he will already have the phone. A watch that doesn't need charging for the duration of a week away is one less charging cable to pack. I can see the advantage for his use case.
You're even more inflexible than HYUFD on some topics.
I'm not inflexible at all, I have said repeatedly that if that setup suits him then he should go for it. I'm glad that he's getting value from a smartwatch, as I have already said to him. Not really sure what your point is or why you felt moved to intervene.
Yesterday, Garmin told me I'd done 20,000 km of logged exercises since I started using my first watch at the end of 2016. 12,000 km of which were runs. And I haven't logged all of them...
It encourages me to get better sleep, and that encouragement is successful. I’ve been sleeping better since I put it on
Still haven’t got the GPS working, however
You still haven't got the GPS working? You shouldn't need to "get it working", it should just work. How is it tracking your walks/runs etc without a functioning GPS?
Something that confuses people is this. GPS on its own takes quite a while to get its initial fix.
Mobile phones are much faster, because they use mast data and nearby mapped WiFi to guesstimate their position, which makes getting the initial fix faster.
Smart watches without a mobile connection don't do this. So they can take a minute or so to get a fix. This is noticeable because most do not maintain a GPS fix all the time - only for some activities. This is to save power.
So when I put my Garmin in the activity mode for rowing, it starts getting a GPS fix and takes a little while to say that it is ready.
My Apple Watch Ultra works instantly without any problem, without being shackled to a phone. It has its own e-sim card. I never have a phone with me when running – there is no point. The watch works without it and can make and receive calls and texts etc so the bulky phone stays at home.
Which is the reason for the lower battery life on Apple Watches (and other sim'd smart watches) vs those without.
Nope. As I have said repeatedly now, you only have you charge the AWU every three days despite its manifold features (which are why it is awesome). And it charges from flat in the time it takes you to get washed and dressed of a morning. I mean, you can get years out of a basic Casio, but it has very few features. If your 'smartwatch' only works when shackled to a phone it is limited by your phone's battery life regardless of its own notional battery life.
Non tethered (and non sim'd) smart watches work just fine. The slower GPS startup is design choice.
The battery size is pretty similar, so you have an energy budget. The more features you run, the quicker the battery is exhausted.
One criticism of the earlier Apple Watches, was that, when used in exercise modes, the battery didn't last for a full exercise session. For exercise monitoring, on nearly all smart watches, a bunch of things pop into high gear. So if you go for a run, the battery will be depleted much faster than if you are reading the paper.
Again – AGAIN – I'm not talking about the Apple Watch (earlier models or otherwise), but the Apple Watch Ultra – which is a different beast entirely, and has a vastly superior battery life. I would never buy a watch without its own sim as I'd then have to take my phone out running ... and swimming!
If you wanted to be able to take calls etc while you running.
Even the quite basic Garmins (for example) can play music, record exercise data and make electronic payments without any phone being involved.
Indeed, but you are uncontactable without your phone. Not so with the Ultra which works independently.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
Presumably the UK government are all in favour of everyone driving electric cars, and with a bit of thought might consider a massive electric car factory to not only be helping push that agenda but also generating plenty of automotive exports.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
Presumably the UK government are all in favour of everyone driving electric cars, and with a bit of thought might consider a massive electric car factory to not only be helping push that agenda but also generating plenty of automotive exports.
We will probably end up with a BYD or Geely one....
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I was reflecting on this around my town.
As I see it, the big thing missing here is reasons to spend time in the town centre. We have a big ASDA (built on the old gasworks in the early 1980s), a nice covered shopping centre, indoor market etc, it's a big town (45k people). But there's not enough destination type development, and too much a little way outside the centre.
One of our issues is that we have a large MacArthur Glen outlet centre 2 miles away, which is literally just in Derbyshire (ie Business Rates go the other way), and draws about 4m visitors per annum - including some who would be in town.
One interesting stat from the presentation in on Leicester I posted last week is that they have increased the residents in their central area from 6k to 21k over 15-18 years.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
Presumably the UK government are all in favour of everyone driving electric cars, and with a bit of thought might consider a massive electric car factory to not only be helping push that agenda but also generating plenty of automotive exports.
We will probably end up with a BYD or Geely one....
Given that the government wants to subsidise Carbon Capture on a per unit captured basis.
Why not subsidise per unit of delivered power storage capability*, for ZEVs. Subsidy based on the level of UK content.
Given that it would take beyond the next election to get actually battery plants etc running, no money to be spent by the government until then...
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Can you post a link that let's us see the comments?
The Specious lets archive.ph through, but I don't get the reactions from the commentariat.
I guess they can be cheerful that they will all probably pop their clogs first .
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
After the experience of the last couple of decades of UK infrastructure investment, one has to wonder how the motorway network ever got built in the first place!
The transport secretary had a road-builiding company.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Well BTL there is a cesspit so that's a badge of honour. Must be a decent article.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I was reflecting on this around my town.
As I see it, the big thing missing here is reasons to spend time in the town centre. We have a big ASDA (built on the old gasworks in the early 1980s), a nice covered shopping centre, indoor market etc, it's a big town (45k people). But there's not enough destination type development, and too much a little way outside the centre.
One of our issues is that we have a large MacArthur Glen outlet centre 2 miles away, which is literally just in Derbyshire (ie Business Rates go the other way), and draws about 4m visitors per annum - including some who would be in town.
One interesting stat from the presentation in on Leicester I posted last week is that they have increased the residents in their central area from 6k to 21k over 15-18 years.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
Presumably the UK government are all in favour of everyone driving electric cars, and with a bit of thought might consider a massive electric car factory to not only be helping push that agenda but also generating plenty of automotive exports.
We will probably end up with a BYD or Geely one....
It's superior manufacturing tech, so why not ? (The software perhaps not.)
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
Presumably the UK government are all in favour of everyone driving electric cars, and with a bit of thought might consider a massive electric car factory to not only be helping push that agenda but also generating plenty of automotive exports.
We will probably end up with a BYD or Geely one....
It's superior manufacturing tech, so why not ? (The software perhaps not.)
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Well BTL there is a cesspit so that's a badge of honour. Must be a decent article.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
Hm, a bit. But not just London. Inner Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool and so on will also support this model. And these cities can rise from their car-constrained shackles. This is far from everyone in the country. But it is a not inconsiderable number of people.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
Hm, a bit. But not just London. Inner Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool and so on will also support this model. And these cities can rise from their car-constrained shackles. This is far from everyone in the country. But it is a not inconsiderable number of people.
No, but to herald the death of the car kind of implies no more cars, and this is hogwash. Just the same as Londoners having no idea how the countryside works. The author ought to know better, hailing from Cornwall as he does.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
28% of people in Wiltshire commute less than 10km (up to 30 minute cycle), compared with 30% in Camden. Taking into account WFH, 2/3rds of Wiltshire workers are moving less than 10km.
A reminder that even in our more rural areas, most people still live in towns or cities and are moving relatively short distances. I don't think the car will die off, bit this idea that it's London v everyone else is wrong. 80% of us live in urban areas. 40% of households in Liverpool don't have a car.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I was reflecting on this around my town.
As I see it, the big thing missing here is reasons to spend time in the town centre. We have a big ASDA (built on the old gasworks in the early 1980s), a nice covered shopping centre, indoor market etc, it's a big town (45k people). But there's not enough destination type development, and too much a little way outside the centre.
One of our issues is that we have a large MacArthur Glen outlet centre 2 miles away, which is literally just in Derbyshire (ie Business Rates go the other way), and draws about 4m visitors per annum - including some who would be in town.
One interesting stat from the presentation in on Leicester I posted last week is that they have increased the residents in their central area from 6k to 21k over 15-18 years.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
Hm, a bit. But not just London. Inner Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool and so on will also support this model. And these cities can rise from their car-constrained shackles. This is far from everyone in the country. But it is a not inconsiderable number of people.
And it has the potential to be a lot more people.
That kind of big tall terraced house, fairly high density, not much space for cars geography is incredibly expensive, which implies that people really want it. Think the sort of house the Browns live in in the Paddington movies. And if you have that many people in walking distance, the other desirable bits of urban life follow.
No, it's not for everyone, but right now we should be aiming to have a lot more of it, because that's where the unmet demand seems to be.
Too many of our MPs think their job is to work as under qualified overpaid social workers. They are wrong. Their job is to make a judgement on what the government is doing and vote accordingly. This is not a full time job. If they have time on their hands they should be free to earn money from it provided this does conflict with their primary task. There are lots of benefits to this. It makes politics both more attractive and more affordable for those with superior earning capacity. It keeps them more in contact with the real world. It facilitates their return to normality when their time as an MP is done. Ultimately this is a matter for their constituents, not their jealous compatriots.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I was reflecting on this around my town.
As I see it, the big thing missing here is reasons to spend time in the town centre. We have a big ASDA (built on the old gasworks in the early 1980s), a nice covered shopping centre, indoor market etc, it's a big town (45k people). But there's not enough destination type development, and too much a little way outside the centre.
One of our issues is that we have a large MacArthur Glen outlet centre 2 miles away, which is literally just in Derbyshire (ie Business Rates go the other way), and draws about 4m visitors per annum - including some who would be in town.
One interesting stat from the presentation in on Leicester I posted last week is that they have increased the residents in their central area from 6k to 21k over 15-18 years.
I think @Foxy can perhaps tell us more from being there; it is on my list of places to explore in the next few months.
Interesting. from that I didn't even know it had a river running through it. I always imagined, had been led to believe, it is a bit of a dump, but from that it looks quite pleasant.
Elton John to perform at exclusive private dinner for cabinet and selected investors reporting Guardian. Food by Clare Smyth.
" “I wish you could see the politicians’ faces. We spend a lot of time in meetings, we don’t get out very often,” Nandy replied. "
As the newspaper points out:
"Perhaps, but would it be unfair to suggest that Labour politicians have been in hot water of late for taking freebies to attend superstar gigs?"
Oh this could be funny. Presumably Mr John isn’t turning up out of the kindness of his heart?
(Musicians almost never turn up to perform anywhere out of the kindness of their heart, because they always need to pay the band, production, roadies, and rent PA and lighting, which will absolutely run well into the five figures for someone like EJ, even in an hotel ballroom).
Elton John to perform at exclusive private dinner for cabinet and selected investors reporting Guardian. Food by Clare Smyth.
" “I wish you could see the politicians’ faces. We spend a lot of time in meetings, we don’t get out very often,” Nandy replied. "
As the newspaper points out:
"Perhaps, but would it be unfair to suggest that Labour politicians have been in hot water of late for taking freebies to attend superstar gigs?"
Oh this could be funny. Presumably Mr John isn’t turning up out of the kindness of his heart?
(Musicians almost never turn up to actually perform anywhere out of the kindness of their heart, they always need to pay the band, production, roadies, and rent PA and lighting, which will absolutely run well into the five figures for someone like EJ, even in an hotel ballroom).
The whole thing is shaping up to be a major shitshow. What was the point of having the whole investment jamboree before the budget anyway? I would imagine the Government knows these companies are making big 'investments' already so that it can have some announcements to make, but you never know with this bunch.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Well BTL there is a cesspit so that's a badge of honour. Must be a decent article.
Slightly baroque prose, and I think the author may be a little out of date wrt to Glasgow.
And I'm afraid I don't quite see self-driving e-tuktuks saving the world for this demographic.
How in such vehicle is the Specious late middle-aged columnist supposed to get a discrete Bobby J from this week's Girl in Pearls?
Glasgow is a contradiction. The stupid motorway straight through the middle, but also decent and growing cycle infrastructure and pedestrianised streets, lots of train stations/subway but a terrible bus service.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
28% of people in Wiltshire commute less than 10km (up to 30 minute cycle), compared with 30% in Camden. Taking into account WFH, 2/3rds of Wiltshire workers are moving less than 10km.
A reminder that even in our more rural areas, most people still live in towns or cities and are moving relatively short distances. I don't think the car will die off, bit this idea that it's London v everyone else is wrong. 80% of us live in urban areas. 40% of households in Liverpool don't have a car.
Well, they don’t have their own car. Or insurance.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
Presumably the UK government are all in favour of everyone driving electric cars, and with a bit of thought might consider a massive electric car factory to not only be helping push that agenda but also generating plenty of automotive exports.
We will probably end up with a BYD or Geely one....
Given that the government wants to subsidise Carbon Capture on a per unit captured basis.
Why not subsidise per unit of delivered power storage capability*, for ZEVs. Subsidy based on the level of UK content.
Given that it would take beyond the next election to get actually battery plants etc running, no money to be spent by the government until then...
*Not just batteries. Not picking winners.
Far too sensible for Thoroughly Mental Milly*.
*If you love the nickname, it's all my own work. If you hate it, I stole it off the Planet Normal podcast.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
Presumably the UK government are all in favour of everyone driving electric cars, and with a bit of thought might consider a massive electric car factory to not only be helping push that agenda but also generating plenty of automotive exports.
We will probably end up with a BYD or Geely one....
It's superior manufacturing tech, so why not ? (The software perhaps not.)
They stole the giga-press technology from Tesla.
It's batteries that matter most. And anyway, that was an Italian company, not Tesla.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I was reflecting on this around my town.
As I see it, the big thing missing here is reasons to spend time in the town centre. We have a big ASDA (built on the old gasworks in the early 1980s), a nice covered shopping centre, indoor market etc, it's a big town (45k people). But there's not enough destination type development, and too much a little way outside the centre.
One of our issues is that we have a large MacArthur Glen outlet centre 2 miles away, which is literally just in Derbyshire (ie Business Rates go the other way), and draws about 4m visitors per annum - including some who would be in town.
One interesting stat from the presentation in on Leicester I posted last week is that they have increased the residents in their central area from 6k to 21k over 15-18 years.
I think @Foxy can perhaps tell us more from being there; it is on my list of places to explore in the next few months.
Interesting. from that I didn't even know it had a river running through it. I always imagined, had been led to believe, it is a bit of a dump, but from that it looks quite pleasant.
Being from N Notts / Derbys, I'm naturally slightly prejudiced against Leics as it is Southern and flat (used to annoy a former GF).
But they have had - like Nottingham and perhaps not like Derby - a consistent fairly long-term vision for their place. Local oppositional politics has been around "neglect of the suburbs", and the Council are pivoting that way for the next phase.
They are one of a small number of places with Level 3 ratings for delivery of active travel. We'll see what happens.
Elton John to perform at exclusive private dinner for cabinet and selected investors reporting Guardian. Food by Clare Smyth.
" “I wish you could see the politicians’ faces. We spend a lot of time in meetings, we don’t get out very often,” Nandy replied. "
As the newspaper points out:
"Perhaps, but would it be unfair to suggest that Labour politicians have been in hot water of late for taking freebies to attend superstar gigs?"
Oh this could be funny. Presumably Mr John isn’t turning up out of the kindness of his heart?
(Musicians almost never turn up to perform anywhere out of the kindness of their heart, because they always need to pay the band, production, roadies, and rent PA and lighting, which will absolutely run well into the five figures for someone like EJ, even in an hotel ballroom).
He only just retired from touring, and has often talked in interviews of a compulsion to perform, and a need for adulation. So he may not have been so hard to persuade...
Elton John to perform at exclusive private dinner for cabinet and selected investors reporting Guardian. Food by Clare Smyth.
" “I wish you could see the politicians’ faces. We spend a lot of time in meetings, we don’t get out very often,” Nandy replied. "
As the newspaper points out:
"Perhaps, but would it be unfair to suggest that Labour politicians have been in hot water of late for taking freebies to attend superstar gigs?"
Oh this could be funny. Presumably Mr John isn’t turning up out of the kindness of his heart?
(Musicians almost never turn up to actually perform anywhere out of the kindness of their heart, they always need to pay the band, production, roadies, and rent PA and lighting, which will absolutely run well into the five figures for someone like EJ, even in an hotel ballroom).
The whole thing is shaping up to be a major shitshow. What was the point of having the whole investment jamboree before the budget anyway? I would imagine the Government knows these companies are making big 'investments' already so that it can have some announcements to make, but you never know with this bunch.
All it needs is for one or two of the investments announced this week to get pulled after the Budget, and the whole thing unravels. As it is, the headlines have been more negative than positive in the run up to it, but I guess they’re just hoping to run on vibes rather than policies for as long as possible. See Kamala Harris for more details.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
Presumably the UK government are all in favour of everyone driving electric cars, and with a bit of thought might consider a massive electric car factory to not only be helping push that agenda but also generating plenty of automotive exports.
We will probably end up with a BYD or Geely one....
It's superior manufacturing tech, so why not ? (The software perhaps not.)
They stole the giga-press technology from Tesla.
It's batteries that matter most. And anyway, that was an Italian company, not Tesla.
Yes the machines are manufactured by an Italian company for Tesla, the technology was perfected by Tesla for use in car production, which was stolen from Telsa's operation in China.
Edit:- Just double checked and apparently the Italian company it itself a Chinese owned company, which looks like they had their tech stolen by other Chinese companies via Tesla's operation in China.
Elton is a big Labour supporter so he might have done it as "cost"...which for Elton is still £100k's :-)
Indeed. Even if he turns up at a small venue and pays everything himself, there’s still going to be a massive donation in kind which will read “Elton John: private concert for ministers and party officials.” in a register somewhere.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
I imagine the journalist’s intent was to write a provocative piece which attracts clicks and comments - and human eyes on adverts - thereby pleasing his brilliant new editor
Given that it is the Most Read article it seems that the job was definitely done
Elton is a big Labour supporter so he might have done it as "cost"...which for Elton is still £100k's :-)
Indeed. Even if he turns up at a small venue and pays everything himself, there’s still going to be a massive donation in kind which will read “Elton John: private concert for ministers and party officials.” in a register somewhere.
I mean at least it isn't Taylor Swift...again...
Of all the freebies and donations in kind, these kind of things are the ones that it is hard to have any issue with.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
Agree. One can think of so many instances where it fails and is clearly written by someone who is single and lives in London. No imagination whatsoever.
No consideration for families, people with dogs, taking stuff to the dump, people living in the middle of nowhere. The list is endless where this fails.
For a single person getting around a city it is excellent. For anything else it is crap.
Too many of our MPs think their job is to work as under qualified overpaid social workers. They are wrong. Their job is to make a judgement on what the government is doing and vote accordingly. This is not a full time job. If they have time on their hands they should be free to earn money from it provided this does conflict with their primary task. There are lots of benefits to this. It makes politics both more attractive and more affordable for those with superior earning capacity. It keeps them more in contact with the real world. It facilitates their return to normality when their time as an MP is done. Ultimately this is a matter for their constituents, not their jealous compatriots.
My impression is that MPs do not spend enough time scrutinising government legislation. It's something that could easily be a very full-time job, and then ideally I'd want an MP to be taking part in political debate in their constituencies, so that they can take the best of those views to the Commons.
Unfortunately, the strength of the party whipping system means that approaching the jobs of MP in that way is a waste of time. The government will win every vote regardless, and you will almost always vote as you are told to vote. So why read what you are voting on?
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
I imagine the journalist’s intent was to write a provocative piece which attracts clicks and comments - and human eyes on adverts - thereby pleasing his brilliant new editor
Given that it is the Most Read article it seems that the job was definitely done
Isn't that short termism. After a few nonsense articles readers will just give up in despair.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
28% of people in Wiltshire commute less than 10km (up to 30 minute cycle), compared with 30% in Camden. Taking into account WFH, 2/3rds of Wiltshire workers are moving less than 10km.
A reminder that even in our more rural areas, most people still live in towns or cities and are moving relatively short distances. I don't think the car will die off, bit this idea that it's London v everyone else is wrong. 80% of us live in urban areas. 40% of households in Liverpool don't have a car.
Well, they don’t have their own car. Or insurance.
Dundee isn't far behind at 36%, if you're going to cast aspersions
Elton is a big Labour supporter so he might have done it as "cost"...which for Elton is still £100k's :-)
Indeed. Even if he turns up at a small venue and pays everything himself, there’s still going to be a massive donation in kind which will read “Elton John: private concert for ministers and party officials.” in a register somewhere.
Elton is famous for his crazy riders....separate hotel room for his specs, fresh flowers everywhere, etc.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
Agree. One can think of so many instances where it fails and is clearly written by someone who is single and lives in London. No imagination whatsoever.
No consideration for families, people with dogs, taking stuff to the dump, people living in the middle of nowhere. The list is endless where this fails.
For a single person getting around a city it is excellent. For anything else it is crap.
So many town planner academic types hate cars with a passion, and think that everyone exists in a Utopia where they never change jobs and their wife doesn’t work three towns away, while buses run every five minutes direct to everywhere people could possibly work or socialise, buses that are free of homeless or unsavoury youth.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
I imagine the journalist’s intent was to write a provocative piece which attracts clicks and comments - and human eyes on adverts - thereby pleasing his brilliant new editor
Given that it is the Most Read article it seems that the job was definitely done
Isn't that short termism. After a few nonsense articles readers will just give up in despair.
The trick is finding the right balance
Every so often you do need a viral article to remind editors of your value
Apparently Starmer was more upbeat at this investment conference. I think they need to change the narrative, I was talking to some business owners over the weekend, who aren't really political and all they were talking about was how many people they knew had left, were leaving and that they had looked into things and even Spain and Italy are more attractive tax wise these days for people in their situation (so don't even need to go to the sandpit) before any more punishment beating from the budget or increased regulation on workers rights or environments standards.
Agree about it being a racket, especially when it's £large for not very much work advising BigCorp.
On the other hand, being an opposition MP is a pretty rubbish job, especially if you're not particularly into all the community advice stuff. Even more so when the government majority is well into three figures. And the contrast between being a minister and being an opposition backbencher is the coldest of cold baths.
But there's a reason that very few Conservative MPs ran with this story- it's been almost entirely the baby of the commentators. That's because MPs could see where it would end up.
They shouldn't have become an MP if they're not interested in the community advice stuff.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
Agree. One can think of so many instances where it fails and is clearly written by someone who is single and lives in London. No imagination whatsoever.
No consideration for families, people with dogs, taking stuff to the dump, people living in the middle of nowhere. The list is endless where this fails.
For a single person getting around a city it is excellent. For anything else it is crap.
So many town planner academic types hate cars with a passion, and think that everyone exists in a Utopia where they never change jobs and their wife doesn’t work three towns away, while buses run every five minutes direct to everywhere people could possibly work or socialise, buses that are free of homeless or unsavoury youth.
You know they are the sort of people who ride those cargo bikes...
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
Agree. One can think of so many instances where it fails and is clearly written by someone who is single and lives in London. No imagination whatsoever.
No consideration for families, people with dogs, taking stuff to the dump, people living in the middle of nowhere. The list is endless where this fails.
For a single person getting around a city it is excellent. For anything else it is crap.
So many town planner academic types hate cars with a passion, and think that everyone exists in a Utopia where they never change jobs and their wife doesn’t work three towns away, while buses run every five minutes direct to everywhere people could possibly work or socialise, buses that are free of homeless or unsavoury youth.
At least they're trying to make life better for people. You sound so defeatist. "Too hard".
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I was reflecting on this around my town.
As I see it, the big thing missing here is reasons to spend time in the town centre. We have a big ASDA (built on the old gasworks in the early 1980s), a nice covered shopping centre, indoor market etc, it's a big town (45k people). But there's not enough destination type development, and too much a little way outside the centre.
One of our issues is that we have a large MacArthur Glen outlet centre 2 miles away, which is literally just in Derbyshire (ie Business Rates go the other way), and draws about 4m visitors per annum - including some who would be in town.
One interesting stat from the presentation in on Leicester I posted last week is that they have increased the residents in their central area from 6k to 21k over 15-18 years.
I think @Foxy can perhaps tell us more from being there; it is on my list of places to explore in the next few months.
Interesting. from that I didn't even know it had a river running through it. I always imagined, had been led to believe, it is a bit of a dump, but from that it looks quite pleasant.
Being from N Notts / Derbys, I'm naturally slightly prejudiced against Leics as it is Southern and flat (used to annoy a former GF).
But they have had - like Nottingham and perhaps not like Derby - a consistent fairly long-term vision for their place. Local oppositional politics has been around "neglect of the suburbs", and the Council are pivoting that way for the next phase.
They are one of a small number of places with Level 3 ratings for delivery of active travel. We'll see what happens.
My antipathy towards Leicester probably comes from the 18 months I spent working in Derby. A place I became very fond of.
Elton is a big Labour supporter so he might have done it as "cost"...which for Elton is still £100k's :-)
Indeed. Even if he turns up at a small venue and pays everything himself, there’s still going to be a massive donation in kind which will read “Elton John: private concert for ministers and party officials.” in a register somewhere.
Elton is famous for his crazy riders....separate hotel room for his specs, fresh flowers everywhere, etc.
Of course, the bands of the ‘80s and ‘90s were brilliant at making sure any promoter needed to have a whole army of interns running around the city for a day or two before the concert, collecting silly items that the band themselves didn’t care about, most being happy with little more than a well-stocked bar in the dressing room and a car to take them either to their hotel or to the party afterwards. Oh, and no brown M&Ms.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
I imagine the journalist’s intent was to write a provocative piece which attracts clicks and comments - and human eyes on adverts - thereby pleasing his brilliant new editor
Given that it is the Most Read article it seems that the job was definitely done
Isn't that short termism. After a few nonsense articles readers will just give up in despair.
The trick is finding the right balance
Every so often you do need a viral article to remind editors of your value
Are, we are sucking up are we? Still not a stupid thing to do with a new boss, making sure you are noticed ahead of the other workers and for the right reasons.
How are you finding working for him? I have met him a few times at the counts after an election. I had a pleasant long chat with him once and found him very amiable. However I also saw him lose his temper once and that wasn't so pleasant.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
Agree. One can think of so many instances where it fails and is clearly written by someone who is single and lives in London. No imagination whatsoever.
No consideration for families, people with dogs, taking stuff to the dump, people living in the middle of nowhere. The list is endless where this fails.
For a single person getting around a city it is excellent. For anything else it is crap.
So many town planner academic types hate cars with a passion, and think that everyone exists in a Utopia where they never change jobs and their wife doesn’t work three towns away, while buses run every five minutes direct to everywhere people could possibly work or socialise, buses that are free of homeless or unsavoury youth.
At least they're trying to make life better for people. You sound so defeatist. "Too hard".
Find somewhere to hide the cars, underground or behind the houses. Don’t just assume that people living there will never need to have one.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
Agree. One can think of so many instances where it fails and is clearly written by someone who is single and lives in London. No imagination whatsoever.
No consideration for families, people with dogs, taking stuff to the dump, people living in the middle of nowhere. The list is endless where this fails.
For a single person getting around a city it is excellent. For anything else it is crap.
So many town planner academic types hate cars with a passion, and think that everyone exists in a Utopia where they never change jobs and their wife doesn’t work three towns away, while buses run every five minutes direct to everywhere people could possibly work or socialise, buses that are free of homeless or unsavoury youth.
You know they are the sort of people who ride those cargo bikes...
I have a visceral, and probably slightly irrational, dislike of these bikes and the dummy mummies who ride them
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
Agree. One can think of so many instances where it fails and is clearly written by someone who is single and lives in London. No imagination whatsoever.
No consideration for families, people with dogs, taking stuff to the dump, people living in the middle of nowhere. The list is endless where this fails.
For a single person getting around a city it is excellent. For anything else it is crap.
So many town planner academic types hate cars with a passion, and think that everyone exists in a Utopia where they never change jobs and their wife doesn’t work three towns away, while buses run every five minutes direct to everywhere people could possibly work or socialise, buses that are free of homeless or unsavoury youth.
You know they are the sort of people who ride those cargo bikes...
I have a visceral, and probably slightly irrational, dislike of these bikes and the dummy mummies who ride them
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I was reflecting on this around my town.
As I see it, the big thing missing here is reasons to spend time in the town centre. We have a big ASDA (built on the old gasworks in the early 1980s), a nice covered shopping centre, indoor market etc, it's a big town (45k people). But there's not enough destination type development, and too much a little way outside the centre.
One of our issues is that we have a large MacArthur Glen outlet centre 2 miles away, which is literally just in Derbyshire (ie Business Rates go the other way), and draws about 4m visitors per annum - including some who would be in town.
One interesting stat from the presentation in on Leicester I posted last week is that they have increased the residents in their central area from 6k to 21k over 15-18 years.
I think @Foxy can perhaps tell us more from being there; it is on my list of places to explore in the next few months.
Interesting. from that I didn't even know it had a river running through it. I always imagined, had been led to believe, it is a bit of a dump, but from that it looks quite pleasant.
Being from N Notts / Derbys, I'm naturally slightly prejudiced against Leics as it is Southern and flat (used to annoy a former GF).
But they have had - like Nottingham and perhaps not like Derby - a consistent fairly long-term vision for their place. Local oppositional politics has been around "neglect of the suburbs", and the Council are pivoting that way for the next phase.
They are one of a small number of places with Level 3 ratings for delivery of active travel. We'll see what happens.
Nottingham is and always will be the regional capital, because it's a far more handsome city with a far bigger catchment – but if you live in central Leicester you can get there in 25 minutes (which seems to be part of their plan). Many of those homes are within a short walk of the station.
Elton is a big Labour supporter so he might have done it as "cost"...which for Elton is still £100k's :-)
Indeed. Even if he turns up at a small venue and pays everything himself, there’s still going to be a massive donation in kind which will read “Elton John: private concert for ministers and party officials.” in a register somewhere.
Elton is famous for his crazy riders....separate hotel room for his specs, fresh flowers everywhere, etc.
Of course, the bands of the ‘80s and ‘90s were brilliant at making sure any promoter needed to have a whole army of interns running around the city for a day or two before the concert, collecting silly items that the band themselves didn’t care about, most being happy with little more than a well-stocked bar in the dressing room and a car to take them either to their hotel or to the party afterwards. Oh, and no brown M&Ms.
I'm guessing you know @Sandpit but they had a very good reason for it. They wanted to make sure the contract had been read properly and that all the necessary important requirements were being done. The test being were there any Brown M&Ms.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
Agree. One can think of so many instances where it fails and is clearly written by someone who is single and lives in London. No imagination whatsoever.
No consideration for families, people with dogs, taking stuff to the dump, people living in the middle of nowhere. The list is endless where this fails.
For a single person getting around a city it is excellent. For anything else it is crap.
So many town planner academic types hate cars with a passion, and think that everyone exists in a Utopia where they never change jobs and their wife doesn’t work three towns away, while buses run every five minutes direct to everywhere people could possibly work or socialise, buses that are free of homeless or unsavoury youth.
You know they are the sort of people who ride those cargo bikes...
I have a visceral, and probably slightly irrational, dislike of these bikes and the dummy mummies who ride them
I’m a little ambivalent on this - it depends on the job and the circumstances. Being a member of parliament is not a job - it’s holding an office. And office holders often have other jobs or roles - government ministers, opposition spokespeople, party officials.
Where MPs want to retain professional standards in areas such as law or medicine I see no real issue. If their additional income is corrupting then we have a problem. But the problem is that we will just get a ban on “second jobs” without much rationale or detailed thinking as to what that means in practice.
Coming up with an approved list of second jobs is bound to be contentious. It simply has to be all or nothing.
What problem is this change designed to solve?
making teh barstewards do their supposedly fulltime job, stopping graft and setting up big payments for themselves etc. Could you excuse yourself from your day job to do outside work and still get handsomely paid , ie that fat tory roaster who made 400K in a tax haven doing "legal stuff"
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
Presumably the UK government are all in favour of everyone driving electric cars, and with a bit of thought might consider a massive electric car factory to not only be helping push that agenda but also generating plenty of automotive exports.
We will probably end up with a BYD or Geely one....
New EV buses on the 396 in the Ilford area seem to be a joint Alexander Dennis/BYD project.
I am not sure the new #10 spin team are showing improvements over the last lot. The ever changing and preposterous reasons for not inviting Elon Musk to investment summit are laughable. The new one being well if only he was investing globally we would talk to him, as if he only runs some some tiny niche business.
Yes, it’s more flailing nonsense and student politics from Labour. They were meant to be the adults bringing “quiet competence”
Instead we’ve got 18 year olds striking poses - ban Musk! Give away Chagos! Carbon capture! - which would be fine if restricted to the JCR but are powerfully harmful when enacted in government
And the Musk drama shows they’re not improving. They ban him from the investment summit the same week he captures spaceships with metal hands and debuts walking talking robots - proving that he is the greatest entrepreneur on the planet
Presumably the UK government are all in favour of everyone driving electric cars, and with a bit of thought might consider a massive electric car factory to not only be helping push that agenda but also generating plenty of automotive exports.
We will probably end up with a BYD or Geely one....
It's superior manufacturing tech, so why not ? (The software perhaps not.)
They stole the giga-press technology from Tesla.
It's batteries that matter most. And anyway, that was an Italian company, not Tesla.
Yes the machines are manufactured by an Italian company for Tesla, the technology was perfected by Tesla for use in car production, which was stolen from Telsa's operation in China.
Edit:- Just double checked and apparently the Italian company it itself a Chinese owned company, which looks like they had their tech stolen by other Chinese companies via Tesla's operation in China.
Elon, himself, previously commented on the uselessness of patents - suing Chinese companies for stealing tech simply doesn't work, and the patents just end up as blueprints for them.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
Agree. One can think of so many instances where it fails and is clearly written by someone who is single and lives in London. No imagination whatsoever.
No consideration for families, people with dogs, taking stuff to the dump, people living in the middle of nowhere. The list is endless where this fails.
For a single person getting around a city it is excellent. For anything else it is crap.
The other problem is that such vehicles need to be segregated from actual cars.
Various super light weight electric vehicles exist - they use an exemption for "4 wheeled motorcycles" to avoid requirements for crash protection etc. In collisions they are deadly.
So you'd need to separate them from cars, buses and lorries. And separate them from bicycles, probably. And pedestrians.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
28% of people in Wiltshire commute less than 10km (up to 30 minute cycle), compared with 30% in Camden. Taking into account WFH, 2/3rds of Wiltshire workers are moving less than 10km.
A reminder that even in our more rural areas, most people still live in towns or cities and are moving relatively short distances. I don't think the car will die off, bit this idea that it's London v everyone else is wrong. 80% of us live in urban areas. 40% of households in Liverpool don't have a car.
72% commute more than 10km on those figures. And don't forget hills and currently traffic. Some cyclists use the A36 to go to Bath from Westbury, Warminster etc, but not many. Its hilly (so electric assist an option, but most that you see are using road bikes) and hilly.
My point really is the author is well known for extrapolation to lunacy. Yes some may move away, but I doubt that many will, and as cars become 'greener' then there will be less pressure to do so.
Elton is a big Labour supporter so he might have done it as "cost"...which for Elton is still £100k's :-)
Indeed. Even if he turns up at a small venue and pays everything himself, there’s still going to be a massive donation in kind which will read “Elton John: private concert for ministers and party officials.” in a register somewhere.
Elton is famous for his crazy riders....separate hotel room for his specs, fresh flowers everywhere, etc.
Of course, the bands of the ‘80s and ‘90s were brilliant at making sure any promoter needed to have a whole army of interns running around the city for a day or two before the concert, collecting silly items that the band themselves didn’t care about, most being happy with little more than a well-stocked bar in the dressing room and a car to take them either to their hotel or to the party afterwards. Oh, and no brown M&Ms.
I'm guessing you know @Sandpit but they had a very good reason for it. They wanted to make sure the contract had been read properly and that all the necessary important requirements were being done. The test being were there any Brown M&Ms.
Yes, the Van Halen M&Ms story was completely true. They buried it in the middle of a technical rider (different from the catering rider) full of actually important stuff like stage weight limits and electrical requirements, saying that they needed a bowl of M&Ms on the side of the stage, but with no brown ones. The band’s crew on the day would look for the bowl, and know immediately whether or not the venue had read through the technical rider properly.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
Agree. One can think of so many instances where it fails and is clearly written by someone who is single and lives in London. No imagination whatsoever.
No consideration for families, people with dogs, taking stuff to the dump, people living in the middle of nowhere. The list is endless where this fails.
For a single person getting around a city it is excellent. For anything else it is crap.
So many town planner academic types hate cars with a passion, and think that everyone exists in a Utopia where they never change jobs and their wife doesn’t work three towns away, while buses run every five minutes direct to everywhere people could possibly work or socialise, buses that are free of homeless or unsavoury youth.
You know they are the sort of people who ride those cargo bikes...
I have a visceral, and probably slightly irrational, dislike of these bikes and the dummy mummies who ride them
So its not just me then....
Do you have a reason why?
Cargo bike users split into two groups -
1) Variants of the Angry Men With Bicycle Clips. 2) Well off housewives who have the money to buy a Christina brand Danish bike to ferry the kids to school. And the time to do so.
Speaking to Andrew Marr on the New Statesman’s NS podcast, Ms Reeves said: “I said during the election campaign we’re not going to be introducing a wealth tax.
“But I think people will be in no doubt when we do the Budget that those with the broadest shoulders will be bearing the largest burden.
“You saw that in our manifesto campaign. You know, non-doms, private equity, the windfall tax on the big profits the energy companies are making and putting VAT and business rates on private schools.”
Elton John to perform at exclusive private dinner for cabinet and selected investors reporting Guardian. Food by Clare Smyth.
" “I wish you could see the politicians’ faces. We spend a lot of time in meetings, we don’t get out very often,” Nandy replied. "
As the newspaper points out:
"Perhaps, but would it be unfair to suggest that Labour politicians have been in hot water of late for taking freebies to attend superstar gigs?"
Food by Clare Smyth, very nice. That won't be your bog standard gastro pub stuff.
they are desperate to get that black hole bigger, nothing is too good for Labour Nobs. Experts at spending and pocketing other people's hard earned cash.
Elton is a big Labour supporter so he might have done it as "cost"...which for Elton is still £100k's :-)
Indeed. Even if he turns up at a small venue and pays everything himself, there’s still going to be a massive donation in kind which will read “Elton John: private concert for ministers and party officials.” in a register somewhere.
Elton is famous for his crazy riders....separate hotel room for his specs, fresh flowers everywhere, etc.
Of course, the bands of the ‘80s and ‘90s were brilliant at making sure any promoter needed to have a whole army of interns running around the city for a day or two before the concert, collecting silly items that the band themselves didn’t care about, most being happy with little more than a well-stocked bar in the dressing room and a car to take them either to their hotel or to the party afterwards. Oh, and no brown M&Ms.
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
28% of people in Wiltshire commute less than 10km (up to 30 minute cycle), compared with 30% in Camden. Taking into account WFH, 2/3rds of Wiltshire workers are moving less than 10km.
A reminder that even in our more rural areas, most people still live in towns or cities and are moving relatively short distances. I don't think the car will die off, bit this idea that it's London v everyone else is wrong. 80% of us live in urban areas. 40% of households in Liverpool don't have a car.
72% commute more than 10km on those figures. And don't forget hills and currently traffic. Some cyclists use the A36 to go to Bath from Westbury, Warminster etc, but not many. Its hilly (so electric assist an option, but most that you see are using road bikes) and hilly.
My point really is the author is well known for extrapolation to lunacy. Yes some may move away, but I doubt that many will, and as cars become 'greener' then there will be less pressure to do so.
Ben Ainslie’s Ineos Britannia go 4-0 down vs Emirates Team New Zealand in America’s Cup
Good job that nobody gives a flying eff about sailing then...
The broadcasters are describing it as “Formula 1 on water”.
Which is actually pretty much true, they’re ridiculously expensive prototype boats, but they need to race them a little more often if they want the sport to take off with the casual viewer.
This is the incredibly difficult circle to square economically and politically...
New figures show that high-earning Britons are already paying more tax on their income for every extra £1 they earn than anywhere else in the G7.
Workers in the UK earning a salary of £120,000 a year, or roughly 2.5 times the average [mean] wage, have roughly 66p clawed back in taxes for every extra £1 they earn, according to data compiled by the OECD.
This “marginal tax wedge” of 66pc is higher than France’s rate of 60pc for someone earning 2.5 times the average wage, as well as in the US, where the marginal tax wedge is 33pc.
Official data show the top 1pc of earners – who have incomes exceeding £214,000 – are expected to account for 28.2pc of all income tax revenues this year. By contrast, the bottom 50pc will contribute 9.5pc of revenues, according to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC).
-----
Dan Neidle, a tax lawyer, noted on a recent IFS podcast that the feat would be unprecedented. “Every single developed country in the world that spends more on public services than the UK, raises that money through higher taxes on average earners than the UK, without exception.”
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
Agree. One can think of so many instances where it fails and is clearly written by someone who is single and lives in London. No imagination whatsoever.
No consideration for families, people with dogs, taking stuff to the dump, people living in the middle of nowhere. The list is endless where this fails.
For a single person getting around a city it is excellent. For anything else it is crap.
The other problem is that such vehicles need to be segregated from actual cars.
Various super light weight electric vehicles exist - they use an exemption for "4 wheeled motorcycles" to avoid requirements for crash protection etc. In collisions they are deadly.
So you'd need to separate them from cars, buses and lorries. And separate them from bicycles, probably. And pedestrians.
Cyclists can use the road. Why can't a cargo bike?
The former Tory chancellor George Osborne has thrown his weight behind a proposal nicknamed “HS2 light” that would deliver new high-speed train links between Manchester and Birmingham.
Osborne said the worst thing Rishi Sunak did as prime minister was cancelling the northern arm of HS2. “It was an act of infrastructure vandalism,” he said
I was just listening to that bit of the Osborne/Balls podcast this morning too...
HS2 has been a "how many ways can you screw this up" smorgasbord of government infrastructure investment failure -- sensible idea massively mismanaged and messed about with by civil service and politicians. If the government are serious about investing for growth they need to look at how to avoid repeats...
The way to avoid repeats is to never again attempt anything which is described as 'world leading' or 'biggest in Europe'.
Go to every place in the country and ask local people what transport improvements they need.
Not what politicians, bureaucrats and the whole 'process' sector wants.
If you ask locals what they need, you wouldn't have any motorways...
I disagree.
People often want more roads and people often want faster roads.
And that's because people use roads.
Now there will always be some who object but many will be in favour.
The classic example proving this wrong is LTNs, which often have overwhelming support from those who live inside them.
Stuff like this needs to be packaged up into something attractive for locals. So, a new bypass for a rural town allows pedestrianisation of the High Street. Wind turbines in your postcode area = cheap or free electricity. A large new housing estate includes a new bus service or cycle infrastructure to reduce cars traffic on adjacent roads.
And pedestrianisation means a couple more coffee shops while your big stores close if customers cannot drive to them.
A well-designed scheme allows motor vehicles appropriate access whilst protecting pedestrians from said motor vehicles and their drivers.
Mixing in the same physical space is usually avoidable.
All the big shops have already left the High Street for the retail parks in my home town, so turning those empty spots into coffee shops can only be a good thing.
I see the most read article in the new “Michael Gove” Spectator is an article predicting the death of the motor car. It is not going down well with the commentators below the line
Its a complete pile of wank, written by an idiot who (I think) lives in London. Most of the rest of the country will be using cars for decades to come to get to work etc. In London its fair to ask why have a car, as the public transport options are so good. Not so in SW Wiltshire. And as for electric Tuk-Tuks being the way ahead - if Tuk-Tuks were the way ahead they would be here now, surely?
28% of people in Wiltshire commute less than 10km (up to 30 minute cycle), compared with 30% in Camden. Taking into account WFH, 2/3rds of Wiltshire workers are moving less than 10km.
A reminder that even in our more rural areas, most people still live in towns or cities and are moving relatively short distances. I don't think the car will die off, bit this idea that it's London v everyone else is wrong. 80% of us live in urban areas. 40% of households in Liverpool don't have a car.
72% commute more than 10km on those figures. And don't forget hills and currently traffic. Some cyclists use the A36 to go to Bath from Westbury, Warminster etc, but not many. Its hilly (so electric assist an option, but most that you see are using road bikes) and hilly.
My point really is the author is well known for extrapolation to lunacy. Yes some may move away, but I doubt that many will, and as cars become 'greener' then there will be less pressure to do so.
That's incorrect. It's 24%.
Available from the E&W census.
Sorry was thinking you were talking total commuters and splitting into more than/less than.
Even so, its a fair chunk and not everyone is able to cycle.
Have the Russkis run out, and the Iranians won’t sell them any more until Iran has finished with their own messy little local conflict?
The Russians have largely localised production, but the Ukrainians did destroy a number in a warehouse recently with one of their long-range strikes into Russia.
But according to the White House, hitting targets in Russia is ineffective. Twats.
More to the point hitting targets in Russia could lead to nuclear war
They've been hitting targets in Russia for a long time. Heck, Ukraine have been holding Russian territory for months. And yet no nuclear war.
Putin's withdrawn from his red lines time and time again - because he knows the consequences of using nukes, even tactical ones.
It's a logical error to say that because Putin hasn't used nuclear weapons yet, he will never use nuclear weapons. If there came a point where Putin's personal safety was at risk, either from his enemies or his own people turning on him, then I'm sure he would indeed risk using them. More likely perhaps is that he'd feel justified in using some sort of weapon (though not a nuke) directly against a Western country, perhaps Germany or Poland, given their proximity, support for Ukraine and history.
Whenever have I said that he'd never use nuclear weapons?
The points are this:
*) Putin has repeatedly set red lines in this war. When those red lines are breached, he does nothing. Providing tanks and providing long-range weapons are just two examples.
*) There are limited use-cases for tactical or strategic nuclear weapons that will help Russia in their war effort.
*) The downsides from using nukes are very considerable.
The implication of your statements is that Putin would never use nuclear weapons, given you appear to be suggesting that because he hasn't done so when some of his red lines have been breached, there is no risk involved in continuing to breach his red lines. This is the logical error.
No. It's about *this war*.
If NATO troops were about to roll into the Kremlin, then yes, he may well use them. But losing his pathetic little war in Ukraine would not lead to that. In fact, Putin could withdraw all his troops from Ukraine's pre-2014 borders and his country would be intact - as I daresay the Ukrainians would be more than happy to withdraw from Kursk in kind.
And the natural consequence of what you say is to give Putin whatever he wants. Because as we cave in, his red lines will move, and he will demand more.
Where are your personal red lines? At what point should we tell Putin "No more?" Romania? The Baltics? Germany? Because unless you quite like fascist imperialism, there will come a point where we need to say "no more".
FFS, why is it always with me or against me with you? Are you incapable of following a nuanced argument without resorting to casting personal aspersions? FWIW, I fully support the current approach of resisting Russian aggression in Ukraine without actually attacking Russian territory. I'd even support the use of foreign troops in Ukraine. But it isn't defeatist to acknowledge the dangers of pushing Russia into a corner; indeed it is stupid to ignore those dangers.
Because your position is inconsistent, not nuanced. I think it's perfectly okay to ask you where your red lines are.
"FWIW, I fully support the current approach of resisting Russian aggression in Ukraine without actually attacking Russian territory."
Ukraine is attacking Russian territory, so that is not 'the current approach'.
Russia is attacking Ukraine, almost nightly, with long-range weapons it has got from Iran and North Korea. Why is it a red line for Ukraine to use long-range weapons obtained from the west against Russia, but Russia can use long-range weapons got from its mates without comment?
And I do acknowledge the dangers of "pushing Russia into a corner"; it is just that I also acknowledge the dangers of letting Russia do what it wants; as we did in 2008, 2014, 2016 etc.
Elton John to perform at exclusive private dinner for cabinet and selected investors reporting Guardian. Food by Clare Smyth.
" “I wish you could see the politicians’ faces. We spend a lot of time in meetings, we don’t get out very often,” Nandy replied. "
As the newspaper points out:
"Perhaps, but would it be unfair to suggest that Labour politicians have been in hot water of late for taking freebies to attend superstar gigs?"
Food by Clare Smyth, very nice. That won't be your bog standard gastro pub stuff.
they are desperate to get that black hole bigger, nothing is too good for Labour Nobs. Experts at spending and pocketing other people's hard earned cash.
Spitting Image would be brilliant now, with the whole load of them having a Soviet-era feast followed by a concert, while looking down at the Proles who get higher taxes and have seen 25% inflation in the last few years.
Elton John to perform at exclusive private dinner for cabinet and selected investors reporting Guardian. Food by Clare Smyth.
" “I wish you could see the politicians’ faces. We spend a lot of time in meetings, we don’t get out very often,” Nandy replied. "
As the newspaper points out:
"Perhaps, but would it be unfair to suggest that Labour politicians have been in hot water of late for taking freebies to attend superstar gigs?"
Food by Clare Smyth, very nice. That won't be your bog standard gastro pub stuff.
they are desperate to get that black hole bigger, nothing is too good for Labour Nobs. Experts at spending and pocketing other people's hard earned cash.
You just know these clowns will cave on this too, in spite of what they say.
"In recently resurfaced footage, Foreign Secretary David Lammy supported the case for measures to compensate for Britain’s role in the slave trade while he was a backbench Labour MP in the wake of the Windrush scandal.
“I’m afraid as Caribbean people we are not going to forget our history – we don’t just want to hear an apology, we want reparation,” Mr Lammy can be heard saying in the clip from 2018."
Speaking to Andrew Marr on the New Statesman’s NS podcast, Ms Reeves said: “I said during the election campaign we’re not going to be introducing a wealth tax.
“But I think people will be in no doubt when we do the Budget that those with the broadest shoulders will be bearing the largest burden.
“You saw that in our manifesto campaign. You know, non-doms, private equity, the windfall tax on the big profits the energy companies are making and putting VAT and business rates on private schools.”
Basically, anyone with the opportunity to go elsewhere.
Comments
Not sure about the wampum in North America.
How many @SeanT s have we got, for the Love of God?.....
As I see it, the big thing missing here is reasons to spend time in the town centre. We have a big ASDA (built on the old gasworks in the early 1980s), a nice covered shopping centre, indoor market etc, it's a big town (45k people). But there's not enough destination type development, and too much a little way outside the centre.
One of our issues is that we have a large MacArthur Glen outlet centre 2 miles away, which is literally just in Derbyshire (ie Business Rates go the other way), and draws about 4m visitors per annum - including some who would be in town.
One interesting stat from the presentation in on Leicester I posted last week is that they have increased the residents in their central area from 6k to 21k over 15-18 years.
Why not subsidise per unit of delivered power storage capability*, for ZEVs. Subsidy based on the level of UK content.
Given that it would take beyond the next election to get actually battery plants etc running, no money to be spent by the government until then...
*Not just batteries. Not picking winners.
The Specious lets archive.ph through, but I don't get the reactions from the commentariat.
I guess they can be cheerful that they will all probably pop their clogs first
I'm sure someone here has munched on a pooch.
" “I wish you could see the politicians’ faces. We spend a lot of time in meetings, we don’t get out very often,” Nandy replied. "
As the newspaper points out:
"Perhaps, but would it be unfair to suggest that Labour politicians have been in hot water of late for taking freebies to attend superstar gigs?"
(The software perhaps not.)
https://archive.ph/XTzby
Slightly baroque prose, and I think the author may be a little out of date wrt to Glasgow.
And I'm afraid I don't quite see self-driving e-tuktuks saving the world for this demographic.
How in such vehicle is the Specious late middle-aged columnist supposed to get a discrete Bobby J from this week's Girl in Pearls?
This is far from everyone in the country. But it is a not inconsiderable number of people.
A reminder that even in our more rural areas, most people still live in towns or cities and are moving relatively short distances. I don't think the car will die off, bit this idea that it's London v everyone else is wrong. 80% of us live in urban areas. 40% of households in Liverpool don't have a car.
Deep link - you need to watch about 2 minutes:
https://youtu.be/ASkX_aqLLSo?t=1043
I think @Foxy can perhaps tell us more from being there; it is on my list of places to explore in the next few months.
That kind of big tall terraced house, fairly high density, not much space for cars geography is incredibly expensive, which implies that people really want it. Think the sort of house the Browns live in in the Paddington movies. And if you have that many people in walking distance, the other desirable bits of urban life follow.
No, it's not for everyone, but right now we should be aiming to have a lot more of it, because that's where the unmet demand seems to be.
Their job is to make a judgement on what the government is doing and vote accordingly.
This is not a full time job. If they have time on their hands they should be free to earn money from it provided this does conflict with their primary task. There are lots of benefits to this. It makes politics both more attractive and more affordable for those with superior earning capacity. It keeps them more in contact with the real world. It facilitates their return to normality when
their time as an MP is done. Ultimately this is a matter for their constituents, not their jealous compatriots.
(Musicians almost never turn up to perform anywhere out of the kindness of their heart, because they always need to pay the band, production, roadies, and rent PA and lighting, which will absolutely run well into the five figures for someone like EJ, even in an hotel ballroom).
*If you love the nickname, it's all my own work. If you hate it, I stole it off the Planet Normal podcast.
And anyway, that was an Italian company, not Tesla.
But they have had - like Nottingham and perhaps not like Derby - a consistent fairly long-term vision for their place. Local oppositional politics has been around "neglect of the suburbs", and the Council are pivoting that way for the next phase.
They are one of a small number of places with Level 3 ratings for delivery of active travel. We'll see what happens.
Edit:- Just double checked and apparently the Italian company it itself a Chinese owned company, which looks like they had their tech stolen by other Chinese companies via Tesla's operation in China.
Given that it is the Most Read article it seems that the job was definitely done
Of all the freebies and donations in kind, these kind of things are the ones that it is hard to have any issue with.
No consideration for families, people with dogs, taking stuff to the dump, people living in the middle of nowhere. The list is endless where this fails.
For a single person getting around a city it is excellent. For anything else it is crap.
Unfortunately, the strength of the party whipping system means that approaching the jobs of MP in that way is a waste of time. The government will win every vote regardless, and you will almost always vote as you are told to vote. So why read what you are voting on?
Every so often you do need a viral article to remind editors of your value
How are you finding working for him? I have met him a few times at the counts after an election. I had a pleasant long chat with him once and found him very amiable. However I also saw him lose his temper once and that wasn't so pleasant.
https://thepostmillennial.com/liberal-caucus-in-revolt-against-trudeau-as-mps-circulating-petition-for-him-to-resign-report
It's a little bit funny ...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13945241/elton-john-elon-musk-attitude-awards-speech.html
Various super light weight electric vehicles exist - they use an exemption for "4 wheeled motorcycles" to avoid requirements for crash protection etc. In collisions they are deadly.
So you'd need to separate them from cars, buses and lorries. And separate them from bicycles, probably. And pedestrians.
My point really is the author is well known for extrapolation to lunacy. Yes some may move away, but I doubt that many will, and as cars become 'greener' then there will be less pressure to do so.
Ben Ainslie’s Ineos Britannia go 4-0 down vs Emirates Team New Zealand in America’s Cup
1) Variants of the Angry Men With Bicycle Clips.
2) Well off housewives who have the money to buy a Christina brand Danish bike to ferry the kids to school. And the time to do so.
“But I think people will be in no doubt when we do the Budget that those with the broadest shoulders will be bearing the largest burden.
“You saw that in our manifesto campaign. You know, non-doms, private equity, the windfall tax on the big profits the energy companies are making and putting VAT and business rates on private schools.”
Available from the E&W census.
Which is actually pretty much true, they’re ridiculously expensive prototype boats, but they need to race them a little more often if they want the sport to take off with the casual viewer.
New figures show that high-earning Britons are already paying more tax on their income for every extra £1 they earn than anywhere else in the G7.
Workers in the UK earning a salary of £120,000 a year, or roughly 2.5 times the average [mean] wage, have roughly 66p clawed back in taxes for every extra £1 they earn, according to data compiled by the OECD.
This “marginal tax wedge” of 66pc is higher than France’s rate of 60pc for someone earning 2.5 times the average wage, as well as in the US, where the marginal tax wedge is 33pc.
Official data show the top 1pc of earners – who have incomes exceeding £214,000 – are expected to account for 28.2pc of all income tax revenues this year. By contrast, the bottom 50pc will contribute 9.5pc of revenues, according to HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC).
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Dan Neidle, a tax lawyer, noted on a recent IFS podcast that the feat would be unprecedented. “Every single developed country in the world that spends more on public services than the UK, raises that money through higher taxes on average earners than the UK, without exception.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/10/14/the-proof-reeves-will-be-unable-to-squeeze-the-rich/
Even so, its a fair chunk and not everyone is able to cycle.
"FWIW, I fully support the current approach of resisting Russian aggression in Ukraine without actually attacking Russian territory."
Ukraine is attacking Russian territory, so that is not 'the current approach'.
Russia is attacking Ukraine, almost nightly, with long-range weapons it has got from Iran and North Korea. Why is it a red line for Ukraine to use long-range weapons obtained from the west against Russia, but Russia can use long-range weapons got from its mates without comment?
And I do acknowledge the dangers of "pushing Russia into a corner"; it is just that I also acknowledge the dangers of letting Russia do what it wants; as we did in 2008, 2014, 2016 etc.
Dig deep.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/let-lammy-secure-slavery-reparations-says-caribbean-leader/ar-AA1sc7a5?ocid=BingNewsSerp
Also from an article in the Independent
"In recently resurfaced footage, Foreign Secretary David Lammy supported the case for measures to compensate for Britain’s role in the slave trade while he was a backbench Labour MP in the wake of the Windrush scandal.
“I’m afraid as Caribbean people we are not going to forget our history – we don’t just want to hear an apology, we want reparation,” Mr Lammy can be heard saying in the clip from 2018."
Be thankful to Mr Radcliffe for putting up most of the funding for the British entry, even if we come second.