The problem is a combination of the Treasury where Green Book / Computer says No and the sheer amount of time it takes to get things done.
That would, of course, apply the scheme in the header, too.
Another impediment is Reeves admitting her sums don't add up, since "the world has changed".
If it were me, I would be starting consultations on a new fiscal framework right now (in preference, a few months back). Austerity (which will probably still be necessary) on its own is not going to get the economy growing again, or improve our borrowing position.
Infrastructure investment with a decent fiscal multiplier (which emphatically does not mean stuff like the carbon capture nonsense) needs to be brought forward asap.
The header says "All these projects would spur GDP growth" No, they will all result in a one-off increase in output. Economic growth requires continuing increases in output. The POPPY fund would itself also have to grow continuously. Do one-off jumps in output spur further growth? There's no evidence of that. But a one-off shift in technology which opens up a range of new opportunities can do that. However that is not in any government's powers.
That's all true of course but the main problem with the fund suggested is that the government is extraordinarily poor both at choosing which infrastructure projects to deliver, and in delivering them effectively.
Government chooses politically sexy, economically illiterate rubbish like HS2, delivers it (or not) decades late and many times over budget, and then moves on to the next expensive disaster, while much more worthwhile schemes with much better cost-benefit ratios are ignored.
Also in many cases it is government that is itself the barrier to infrastructure projects rather than lack of funding - the appalling planning system is the most obvious, but far from the only, example. The reason the new towns referred to in the header aren't being built is not that there isn't enough money to go around, it's because we have simply the worst planning system in the world.
So if we want to build decent infrastructure in this country, prioritising economically beneficial projects (in transport, for example, mostly road-building in the south-east, which often return £6 or £7 in economic benefits for every £ invested, compared to 50p for HS2 under current cost estimates) and above all liberalising planning, would be much better than wasting hundreds of billions more on expensive white elephants.
The HS2 benefit-cost ratio was deeply flawed, IMO. We routinely underestimate the passenger numbers on public transport (eg Crossrail) and Treasury-think always makes investment in the SE of England look good, a vicious cycle which leaves the rest of England and Wales behind.
Much of the cost associated with infrastructure in the UK is because weak politicians get cold feet. Only an idiot would make any kind of serious private investment in training/equipment on the assumption of government infrastructure spending - chances are it will be cancelled. And it was.
I see Dow futures are up again after Trump hints at postponing some tariffs.
If he or at least some of his inner coterie are not insider trading and making a fortune from this volatility - volatility which they can control in a linear fashion with a single tweet or press comment - then I will be shocked.
It feels like the political equivalent of watching a cricket team bowling a predictable one no ball per over. Someone somewhere is getting rich on this.
Yeah I think we paid to do the search, found nothing there, dug a hole, found a sewage pipe, told them about the pipe, and then paid them again to come and look at it, which they didn't do. The whole thing is a racket but what do you expect? This is how much of the private sector operates in this country - extortion.
I'd have quite a severe go at a company which charged me £700 to do something then didn't do it.
I think they claimed to have done it remotely. We never saw any evidence they'd done it. I've previously had Thames Water demanding I pay them a £20k water bill for the pub property next door so £700 seemed quite reasonable! They are total jokers.
They probably have a register with - "@OnlyLivingBoy - mark. Can be extorted easily.", in it.
Push back on the ludicrous shit like that, for the love of God.
I can't prove they didn't do the survey. And frankly, I don't care if they did the survey or not, they weren't doing it for my benefit. You may have the bandwidth to get into an exhausting legal dispute with a multi billion pound company but I certainly don't... and at the time I was paying £000s on an almost daily basis for building work so £700 was almost small change.
An interesting and creative idea as you'd expect from somebody called Professor Idea. I certainly agree with most of those things that 'Poppy' would invest in. But it's essentially magic money tree, isn't it. Not sure we'd get away with it.
We have just become too frit. The markets won't mind us spending on good infrastructure. And they don't need it wrapped up in jargon to make it sound more complicated than infrastructure spending either.
In which case borrow it. If we could print huge sums to invest without adverse consequences I think we'd have done it by now. So would others.
There are no easy answers and this looks like another attempt at one.
We consistently cock it up, see HS2 or the endless Heathrow saga. We are short termists who can't see the woods fromt the trees unfortunately.
This was a factor in Brexit. "What did the EU ever do for me?" The French spent their Social Fund money on the Milau Viaduct, we spent ours on cobblestones (now tarmacked over in several places) in Cemaes Bay.
Oh god, Tiger Woods is marrying into the Trump family. So so disappointed. I've only ever had three idols, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and him. Down to two now.
With pols etc that one doesn't like, an objectivity filter has to be applied ie they're probably not entirely awful. The Trumps are ALWAYS the horrible, cheap scumbags that you expect them to be.
'On November 12, 2005, Vanessa married Donald Trump Jr. The wedding was held at the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida; the service was officiated by Trump Jr.'s aunt, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry. Trump Jr. had proposed to her with a US $100,000 ring (equivalent to $161,000 in 2024) that he had received as a gift from a jeweler in exchange for proposing to her in front of paparazzi outside of the jeweler's store at the Short Hills mall in New Jersey.'
Rudakubana wiped much of his internet search history before the attack and it is not known whether he ever viewed material linked to Mr Tate.
It makes the "it wasn't terrorism" claims even more bizarre.
Are you saying that if he'd read the words of Mr Tate that would make him a terrorist? I really don't understand your point. He could have watched any number of films ore read any number of books but unless he acted under instruction or in concert it would tell you nothing
My starting point with Southport is that it was a terrorist attack against women and girls. Does acting alone prevent such an attack being classified as terrorism? From what I can tell, the man that perpetrated the mosque shooting in New Zealand acted alone. Do you consider that to NOT be terrorism?
We later found out that it may have been the case that Rudakubana had wanted to shoot up his school/college but was prevented from doing so by his father. That may suggest he wanted to shoot people he knew but was prevented from doing so. However, we also know that he had picked out his target before he got in the taxi. He had found that dance class somewhere, most likely the internet.
Ultimately it doesn't really matter because the outcome is the same. But on balance of probabilities, I think the Southport stabbings were an anti-women/girl terrorist attack.
To delve into the distinctions of the metaphysics and mental intentions of someone who intends to kill a roomful of seven year old little girls is distasteful and degrading. To say that it is somehow worse if his motivation is terrorism (or whatever) is of course to say that in some way his actions are improved, and he should be let out earlier, if his motivation is merely that he likes doing it or because the local council doesn't fill potholes.
The concept is utterly shameful and it is a path we should never have started down.
If the powers that be declared that terrorism doesn't exist, only murder exists, I'd be fine with that. But it has to be applied universally.
Oh god, Tiger Woods is marrying into the Trump family. So so disappointed. I've only ever had three idols, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and him. Down to two now.
With pols etc that one doesn't like, an objectivity filter has to be applied ie they're probably not entirely awful. The Trumps are ALWAYS the horrible, cheap scumbags that you expect them to be.
'On November 12, 2005, Vanessa married Donald Trump Jr. The wedding was held at the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida; the service was officiated by Trump Jr.'s aunt, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry. Trump Jr. had proposed to her with a US $100,000 ring (equivalent to $161,000 in 2024) that he had received as a gift from a jeweler in exchange for proposing to her in front of paparazzi outside of the jeweler's store at the Short Hills mall in New Jersey.'
Yes, 100% ghastly bunch. No exceptions or mitigations.
Tiger Tiger, turning shite.
Everything they are associated with is just so tacky. I think I have little taste, but I can see very bad taste a mile off. The following phrase comes to mind regarding the proposal (and most other things they do):
'Knows the price of everything and the value of nothing'
The header says "All these projects would spur GDP growth" No, they will all result in a one-off increase in output. Economic growth requires continuing increases in output. The POPPY fund would itself also have to grow continuously. Do one-off jumps in output spur further growth? There's no evidence of that. But a one-off shift in technology which opens up a range of new opportunities can do that. However that is not in any government's powers.
That's all true of course but the main problem with the fund suggested is that the government is extraordinarily poor both at choosing which infrastructure projects to deliver, and in delivering them effectively.
Government chooses politically sexy, economically illiterate rubbish like HS2, delivers it (or not) decades late and many times over budget, and then moves on to the next expensive disaster, while much more worthwhile schemes with much better cost-benefit ratios are ignored.
Also in many cases it is government that is itself the barrier to infrastructure projects rather than lack of funding - the appalling planning system is the most obvious, but far from the only, example. The reason the new towns referred to in the header aren't being built is not that there isn't enough money to go around, it's because we have simply the worst planning system in the world.
So if we want to build decent infrastructure in this country, prioritising economically beneficial projects (in transport, for example, mostly road-building in the south-east, which often return £6 or £7 in economic benefits for every £ invested, compared to 50p for HS2 under current cost estimates) and above all liberalising planning, would be much better than wasting hundreds of billions more on expensive white elephants.
The HS2 benefit-cost ratio was deeply flawed, IMO. We routinely underestimate the passenger numbers on public transport (eg Crossrail) and Treasury-think always makes investment in the SE of England look good, a vicious cycle which leaves the rest of England and Wales behind.
Much of the cost associated with infrastructure in the UK is because weak politicians get cold feet. Only an idiot would make any kind of serious private investment in training/equipment on the assumption of government infrastructure spending - chances are it will be cancelled. And it was.
The real crime was not borrowing heavily to invest significantly in infrastructure when long term interest rates were around 1%.
Yeah I think we paid to do the search, found nothing there, dug a hole, found a sewage pipe, told them about the pipe, and then paid them again to come and look at it, which they didn't do. The whole thing is a racket but what do you expect? This is how much of the private sector operates in this country - extortion.
When I was much younger, I did some work in a large factory complex that used to take lots of water out of river. The factory had first been built around WW1, and maps of facilities were poor. If there was a burst pipe, we would have to go down to the valve farm - an area with lots of valves sticking out of the ground, put a bar through the valve head, and turn many, many times. Someone would then report if the leak was reducing or not. If not, try another valve.
Over time. they had developed *some* knowledge of what valve did what, but due to interconnectors you may have to turn several to stop the water.
So I can understand utilities with infrastructure more than a century old not knowing precisely where everything is. If you haven't had reason to investigate it, it might be poorly placed on your maps.
Then there's this, where builders piled through a tube tunnel:
"The augers were being used for boring piles from a construction site about 13 metres above the top of the tunnel. The operators of the piling rig involved were unaware that they were working above an operational railway tunnel. Its position was not shown on the site plan, or on any map available to either the developer or the local planning authority. As a consequence, Network Rail was not consulted during the planning application stage and was unaware of the construction activity."
I see Dow futures are up again after Trump hints at postponing some tariffs.
If he or at least some of his inner coterie are not insider trading and making a fortune from this volatility - volatility which they can control in a linear fashion with a single tweet or press comment - then I will be shocked.
It feels like the political equivalent of watching a cricket team bowling a predictable one no ball per over. Someone somewhere is getting rich on this.
Do any of his "inner coterie" actually have any confidence in whether they will be pro more tariffs or anti more tariffs by this afternoon? Maybe, but I'm not convinced, I suspect the changes are more instinctive to the Don than that.
Carl Bildt @carlbildt · 2h Truly remarkable with Vice President JD Vance 🇺🇸 saying that 🇩🇰 “is not a good ally” and indicates 🇺🇸 will do whatever with 🇬🇱 in spite of “the screaming of the Europeans”.
I do wonder what JDV would have to say for any European leader to offer the slightest chirp of criticism. I guess Denmark (and everyone else) knows what NATO and the EU are really worth when it comes down to it.
Yeah I think we paid to do the search, found nothing there, dug a hole, found a sewage pipe, told them about the pipe, and then paid them again to come and look at it, which they didn't do. The whole thing is a racket but what do you expect? This is how much of the private sector operates in this country - extortion.
When I was much younger, I did some work in a large factory complex that used to take lots of water out of river. The factory had first been built around WW1, and maps of facilities were poor. If there was a burst pipe, we would have to go down to the valve farm - an area with lots of valves sticking out of the ground, put a bar through the valve head, and turn many, many times. Someone would then report if the leak was reducing or not. If not, try another valve.
Over time. they had developed *some* knowledge of what valve did what, but due to interconnectors you may have to turn several to stop the water.
So I can understand utilities with infrastructure more than a century old not knowing precisely where everything is. If you haven't had reason to investigate it, it might be poorly placed on your maps.
Then there's this, where builders piled through a tube tunnel:
"The augers were being used for boring piles from a construction site about 13 metres above the top of the tunnel. The operators of the piling rig involved were unaware that they were working above an operational railway tunnel. Its position was not shown on the site plan, or on any map available to either the developer or the local planning authority. As a consequence, Network Rail was not consulted during the planning application stage and was unaware of the construction activity."
Oh god, Tiger Woods is marrying into the Trump family. So so disappointed. I've only ever had three idols, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and him. Down to two now.
With pols etc that one doesn't like, an objectivity filter has to be applied ie they're probably not entirely awful. The Trumps are ALWAYS the horrible, cheap scumbags that you expect them to be.
'On November 12, 2005, Vanessa married Donald Trump Jr. The wedding was held at the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida; the service was officiated by Trump Jr.'s aunt, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry. Trump Jr. had proposed to her with a US $100,000 ring (equivalent to $161,000 in 2024) that he had received as a gift from a jeweler in exchange for proposing to her in front of paparazzi outside of the jeweler's store at the Short Hills mall in New Jersey.'
Yes, 100% ghastly bunch. No exceptions or mitigations.
Tiger Tiger, turning shite.
Everything they are associated with is just so tacky. I think I have little taste, but I can see very bad taste a mile off. The following phrase comes to mind regarding the proposal (and most other things they do):
'Knows the price of everything and the value of nothing'
You can tell Trump is a wrong un just from his home decor.
Notable on that tweet the ease with which journalists describe Italy’s government as far right, in contrast to the painful contortions they go through to avoid labelling the US government in the same way.
To my eyes Trump and his administration are significantly further to the right than Meloni’s party. Certainly in the conspiracy theory / pro-Russian foreign policy / anti vax / rule of law space.
Meloni's government has remained fairly mainstream in, eg, foreign policy terms, but is quite reactionary on some domestic issues. Eg removing the parental recognition of same-sex parents, which I find pretty extreme.
I think it's also because there is a clear far-right tradition in Italy going back to Mussolini. The FdL originated from the AN which was the successor to the neo-fascist MSI founded in 1946 by supporters of Mussolini. Meloni was in the youth wing of the MSI.
The header says "All these projects would spur GDP growth" No, they will all result in a one-off increase in output. Economic growth requires continuing increases in output. The POPPY fund would itself also have to grow continuously. Do one-off jumps in output spur further growth? There's no evidence of that. But a one-off shift in technology which opens up a range of new opportunities can do that. However that is not in any government's powers.
That's all true of course but the main problem with the fund suggested is that the government is extraordinarily poor both at choosing which infrastructure projects to deliver, and in delivering them effectively.
Government chooses politically sexy, economically illiterate rubbish like HS2, delivers it (or not) decades late and many times over budget, and then moves on to the next expensive disaster, while much more worthwhile schemes with much better cost-benefit ratios are ignored.
Also in many cases it is government that is itself the barrier to infrastructure projects rather than lack of funding - the appalling planning system is the most obvious, but far from the only, example. The reason the new towns referred to in the header aren't being built is not that there isn't enough money to go around, it's because we have simply the worst planning system in the world.
So if we want to build decent infrastructure in this country, prioritising economically beneficial projects (in transport, for example, mostly road-building in the south-east, which often return £6 or £7 in economic benefits for every £ invested, compared to 50p for HS2 under current cost estimates) and above all liberalising planning, would be much better than wasting hundreds of billions more on expensive white elephants.
The HS2 benefit-cost ratio was deeply flawed, IMO. We routinely underestimate the passenger numbers on public transport (eg Crossrail) and Treasury-think always makes investment in the SE of England look good, a vicious cycle which leaves the rest of England and Wales behind.
Much of the cost associated with infrastructure in the UK is because weak politicians get cold feet. Only an idiot would make any kind of serious private investment in training/equipment on the assumption of government infrastructure spending - chances are it will be cancelled. And it was.
We routinely underestimate all transportation, public and private.
Our motorways now are carrying not only massively more than was forecast when they were constructed, but in most instances massively more than the maximum capacity expected at the time too.
Getting on with major construction of all transportation infrastructure - roads, rails, cycle paths and more - would unlock much potential growth. Aka induced demand.
The problem is too many idiots think preventing growth, preventing demand, is a good thing.
The Prime Minister demonstrates his commitment to local democracy.
My question here is why they want the "I really did spend this on potholes" reports. Do they have past experience from other ring fenced grants that there is risk of local authority mismanagement or failure to actually spend the cash? Or have they just dumped a bureaucratic reporting requirement on councils to make it seem like they're being careful with public funds?
Er .. yes. But there may be questions around the firmness of the ring fencing.
See Scotland. Or for that matter Nottingham.
With English Local Authorities, it's perhaps tied up with chronic underfunding over two decades or more.
Oh god, Tiger Woods is marrying into the Trump family. So so disappointed. I've only ever had three idols, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and him. Down to two now.
With pols etc that one doesn't like, an objectivity filter has to be applied ie they're probably not entirely awful. The Trumps are ALWAYS the horrible, cheap scumbags that you expect them to be.
'On November 12, 2005, Vanessa married Donald Trump Jr. The wedding was held at the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida; the service was officiated by Trump Jr.'s aunt, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry. Trump Jr. had proposed to her with a US $100,000 ring (equivalent to $161,000 in 2024) that he had received as a gift from a jeweler in exchange for proposing to her in front of paparazzi outside of the jeweler's store at the Short Hills mall in New Jersey.'
Yes, 100% ghastly bunch. No exceptions or mitigations.
Tiger Tiger, turning shite.
Everything they are associated with is just so tacky. I think I have little taste, but I can see very bad taste a mile off. The following phrase comes to mind regarding the proposal (and most other things they do):
'Knows the price of everything and the value of nothing'
A phrase that can equally be applied to the Treasury.
Carl Bildt @carlbildt · 2h Truly remarkable with Vice President JD Vance 🇺🇸 saying that 🇩🇰 “is not a good ally” and indicates 🇺🇸 will do whatever with 🇬🇱 in spite of “the screaming of the Europeans”.
I do wonder what JDV would have to say for any European leader to offer the slightest chirp of criticism. I guess Denmark (and everyone else) knows what NATO and the EU are really worth when it comes down to it.
He got a bit of pushback for his remarks back in February, but there isn't much mileage in saying GFY at this juncture.
Once EU leaders have a couple of hundred billion defence spending increases actually done, then they might feel emboldened to tell the little shit a few home truths. Until then, discretion is the better part, etc.
Rudakubana wiped much of his internet search history before the attack and it is not known whether he ever viewed material linked to Mr Tate.
It makes the "it wasn't terrorism" claims even more bizarre.
How? Whatever else Andrew Tate might be, he is not Head of Isis.
Some people would consider him a terrorist (or consider an incel inspired attack to be terrorism).
But that's not what I'm getting at. We don't know what he'd be searching. Presumably he looked up the Al-Qaeda manual, but we're told he wasn't an Islamist terrorist.
The police should have been saying "we're keeping an open mind as to the motivation for this attack".
Ah the Al-Qaeda manual. Our authorities have a strange history with that one.
It is available from US Govt websites, and back in 2008 a research student in Nottingham researching terrorism was detained by police and locked up for 7 days for having downloaded a copy to a University computer. It can also be bought from Amazon. This was in the New Labour 'authoritarian' period - which was one of the things that got me into blogging back then.
AI summary, which is about right:
In the "Nottingham Two" case, Rizwaan Sabir, a University of Nottingham student, was arrested in 2008 and held for seven days after downloading an al-Qaeda training manual for his research, but was later released without charge and received a £20,000 settlement and apology from the police.
Once EU leaders have a couple of hundred billion defence spending increases actually done, then they might feel emboldened to tell the little shit a few home truths.
Oh god, Tiger Woods is marrying into the Trump family. So so disappointed. I've only ever had three idols, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and him. Down to two now.
With pols etc that one doesn't like, an objectivity filter has to be applied ie they're probably not entirely awful. The Trumps are ALWAYS the horrible, cheap scumbags that you expect them to be.
'On November 12, 2005, Vanessa married Donald Trump Jr. The wedding was held at the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida; the service was officiated by Trump Jr.'s aunt, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry. Trump Jr. had proposed to her with a US $100,000 ring (equivalent to $161,000 in 2024) that he had received as a gift from a jeweler in exchange for proposing to her in front of paparazzi outside of the jeweler's store at the Short Hills mall in New Jersey.'
Oh god, Tiger Woods is marrying into the Trump family. So so disappointed. I've only ever had three idols, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and him. Down to two now.
With pols etc that one doesn't like, an objectivity filter has to be applied ie they're probably not entirely awful. The Trumps are ALWAYS the horrible, cheap scumbags that you expect them to be.
'On November 12, 2005, Vanessa married Donald Trump Jr. The wedding was held at the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida; the service was officiated by Trump Jr.'s aunt, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry. Trump Jr. had proposed to her with a US $100,000 ring (equivalent to $161,000 in 2024) that he had received as a gift from a jeweler in exchange for proposing to her in front of paparazzi outside of the jeweler's store at the Short Hills mall in New Jersey.'
Just in case you are worried, my sheep don’t have bird flew, and I feel fine thank you. The problem with looking out for Bird Flu in sheep is watery eyes, weak, not eating, and sudden death can all be other things too!
It’s sent my mum into another rant about not to bring those ‘dirty things’ into the house 🤦♀️ the easiest way to clean lambs is in my on suitshower and then bottle feed them in bed as part of my morning routine.
Rudakubana wiped much of his internet search history before the attack and it is not known whether he ever viewed material linked to Mr Tate.
It makes the "it wasn't terrorism" claims even more bizarre.
How? Whatever else Andrew Tate might be, he is not Head of Isis.
Some people would consider him a terrorist (or consider an incel inspired attack to be terrorism).
But that's not what I'm getting at. We don't know what he'd be searching. Presumably he looked up the Al-Qaeda manual, but we're told he wasn't an Islamist terrorist.
The police should have been saying "we're keeping an open mind as to the motivation for this attack".
Ah the Al-Qaeda manual. Our authorities have a strange history with that one.
It is available from US Govt websites, and back in 2008 a research student in Nottingham researching terrorism was detained by police and locked up for 7 days for having downloaded a copy to a University computer. It can also be bought from Amazon. This was in the New Labour 'authoritarian' period - which was one of the things that got me into blogging back then.
AI summary, which is about right:
In the "Nottingham Two" case, Rizwaan Sabir, a University of Nottingham student, was arrested in 2008 and held for seven days after downloading an al-Qaeda training manual for his research, but was later released without charge and received a £20,000 settlement and apology from the police.
Oh god, Tiger Woods is marrying into the Trump family. So so disappointed. I've only ever had three idols, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and him. Down to two now.
With pols etc that one doesn't like, an objectivity filter has to be applied ie they're probably not entirely awful. The Trumps are ALWAYS the horrible, cheap scumbags that you expect them to be.
'On November 12, 2005, Vanessa married Donald Trump Jr. The wedding was held at the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida; the service was officiated by Trump Jr.'s aunt, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry. Trump Jr. had proposed to her with a US $100,000 ring (equivalent to $161,000 in 2024) that he had received as a gift from a jeweler in exchange for proposing to her in front of paparazzi outside of the jeweler's store at the Short Hills mall in New Jersey.'
How in the name of holy chuffing buggery do Thames Water not have a fixed asset register?
Fresh doubt has been cast over the race to find a white knight buyer for Thames Water as it struggles to provide details of its labyrinthine network of pipes, sewage works and reservoirs.
Thames Water has stepped up the hunt for new investors willing to pump in billions of pounds of emergency capital after the Court of Appeal approved a £3bn emergency debt bailout from its existing creditors.
However, prospective suitors fear the search will be held up by the company’s failure to keep an accurate record of the mountain of assets that it has accumulated over the decades.
Thames Water has just weeks to hammer out a deal or one of the country’s most vital utilities faces a prolonged hand-to-mouth existence in which lenders drip-feed the company enough money every month to pay its bills.
“The board has to advance to the due diligence quickly but this makes that much harder. How do you put a value on the company if you don’t know what it owns?” a source close to the talks said.
Anyone who has done any building work in London will be aware of this. When we built our kitchen extension we discovered a sewer pipe running under our garden that Thames Water was unaware of. We informed them and then they sent us a letter telling us the pipe had "come to their attention" and demanding £700 to survey it, which we paid although we never saw any sign of a survey happening... This year some builders on the other side of the road damaged the sewer pipe on that side, presumably because they had no idea it was there, and there's been a Thames Water tanker pumping sewage out for months, no doubt at massive cost. Someone told me that all their plans had been destroyed on privatization, which sounds believable.
Why are you paying for their sewer pipe survey. At our holiday home the plans show a sewer pipe running under our backgarden. We noticed some minor subsidence in the ground about where the sewer pipe would likely to be. They came to investigate. Put cameras down it, etc, but none of it was at our expense.
I dunno, they told us to pay, we paid, and as far as I know they didn't even do the survey.
This could be dependent on date - the ownership of sewage pipes on domestic property changed in 2011 to being the responsibility of the water company if they carried waste from more than one property (roughly).
But such survey fees may well be negotiable in practise - eg "I can buy my own camera for £200 and make a video."
If someone (or their spouse) turns up on your property, having previously openly stated their intentions to seize it for themselves, do you have any moral responsibility for their safety?
Oh god, Tiger Woods is marrying into the Trump family. So so disappointed. I've only ever had three idols, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and him. Down to two now.
With pols etc that one doesn't like, an objectivity filter has to be applied ie they're probably not entirely awful. The Trumps are ALWAYS the horrible, cheap scumbags that you expect them to be.
'On November 12, 2005, Vanessa married Donald Trump Jr. The wedding was held at the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida; the service was officiated by Trump Jr.'s aunt, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry. Trump Jr. had proposed to her with a US $100,000 ring (equivalent to $161,000 in 2024) that he had received as a gift from a jeweler in exchange for proposing to her in front of paparazzi outside of the jeweler's store at the Short Hills mall in New Jersey.'
Yes, 100% ghastly bunch. No exceptions or mitigations.
Tiger Tiger, turning shite.
Everything they are associated with is just so tacky. I think I have little taste, but I can see very bad taste a mile off. The following phrase comes to mind regarding the proposal (and most other things they do):
'Knows the price of everything and the value of nothing'
Oh god, Tiger Woods is marrying into the Trump family. So so disappointed. I've only ever had three idols, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and him. Down to two now.
Tiger Woods may have been very upstanding, but he wasn't exactly very morally upstanding.
His score was reportedly higher than a 48 handicap golfer making par at Troon.
The Prime Minister demonstrates his commitment to local democracy.
My question here is why they want the "I really did spend this on potholes" reports. Do they have past experience from other ring fenced grants that there is risk of local authority mismanagement or failure to actually spend the cash? Or have they just dumped a bureaucratic reporting requirement on councils to make it seem like they're being careful with public funds?
Er .. yes. But there may be questions around the firmness of the ring fencing.
See Scotland. Or for that matter Nottingham.
With English Local Authorities, it's perhaps tied up with chronic underfunding over two decades or more.
I think at least 80% of the pothole problem is heavier cars.
Road wear is proportional to the 4th power of axle weight, remember...
How in the name of holy chuffing buggery do Thames Water not have a fixed asset register?
Fresh doubt has been cast over the race to find a white knight buyer for Thames Water as it struggles to provide details of its labyrinthine network of pipes, sewage works and reservoirs.
Thames Water has stepped up the hunt for new investors willing to pump in billions of pounds of emergency capital after the Court of Appeal approved a £3bn emergency debt bailout from its existing creditors.
However, prospective suitors fear the search will be held up by the company’s failure to keep an accurate record of the mountain of assets that it has accumulated over the decades.
Thames Water has just weeks to hammer out a deal or one of the country’s most vital utilities faces a prolonged hand-to-mouth existence in which lenders drip-feed the company enough money every month to pay its bills.
“The board has to advance to the due diligence quickly but this makes that much harder. How do you put a value on the company if you don’t know what it owns?” a source close to the talks said.
Anyone who has done any building work in London will be aware of this. When we built our kitchen extension we discovered a sewer pipe running under our garden that Thames Water was unaware of. We informed them and then they sent us a letter telling us the pipe had "come to their attention" and demanding £700 to survey it, which we paid although we never saw any sign of a survey happening... This year some builders on the other side of the road damaged the sewer pipe on that side, presumably because they had no idea it was there, and there's been a Thames Water tanker pumping sewage out for months, no doubt at massive cost. Someone told me that all their plans had been destroyed on privatization, which sounds believable.
Why are you paying for their sewer pipe survey. At our holiday home the plans show a sewer pipe running under our backgarden. We noticed some minor subsidence in the ground about where the sewer pipe would likely to be. They came to investigate. Put cameras down it, etc, but none of it was at our expense.
I dunno, they told us to pay, we paid, and as far as I know they didn't even do the survey.
This could be dependent on date - the ownership of sewage pipes on domestic property changed in 2011 to being the responsibility of the water company if they carried waste from more than one property (roughly).
But such survey fees may well be negotiable in practise - eg "I can buy my own camera for £200 and make a video."
Yeah maybe. My reasoning was that holding up the ongoing building works was going to be way more expensive than any discount I could negotiate through time consuming negotiations with a firm as unresponsive and incompetent as Thames Water. Far better to pay the protection money and get on with pouring the concrete.
Rudakubana wiped much of his internet search history before the attack and it is not known whether he ever viewed material linked to Mr Tate.
It makes the "it wasn't terrorism" claims even more bizarre.
How? Whatever else Andrew Tate might be, he is not Head of Isis.
Some people would consider him a terrorist (or consider an incel inspired attack to be terrorism).
But that's not what I'm getting at. We don't know what he'd be searching. Presumably he looked up the Al-Qaeda manual, but we're told he wasn't an Islamist terrorist.
The police should have been saying "we're keeping an open mind as to the motivation for this attack".
Ah the Al-Qaeda manual. Our authorities have a strange history with that one.
It is available from US Govt websites, and back in 2008 a research student in Nottingham researching terrorism was detained by police and locked up for 7 days for having downloaded a copy to a University computer. It can also be bought from Amazon. This was in the New Labour 'authoritarian' period - which was one of the things that got me into blogging back then.
AI summary, which is about right:
In the "Nottingham Two" case, Rizwaan Sabir, a University of Nottingham student, was arrested in 2008 and held for seven days after downloading an al-Qaeda training manual for his research, but was later released without charge and received a £20,000 settlement and apology from the police.
I don't know enough about Rudakubana to be able to judge. I concur with whoever said it may be in a grey area on definition of "terrorism". I think that political motivation probably needs to be involved, but I might be quite broad in my definition of "political".
The Prime Minister demonstrates his commitment to local democracy.
My question here is why they want the "I really did spend this on potholes" reports. Do they have past experience from other ring fenced grants that there is risk of local authority mismanagement or failure to actually spend the cash? Or have they just dumped a bureaucratic reporting requirement on councils to make it seem like they're being careful with public funds?
Er .. yes. But there may be questions around the firmness of the ring fencing.
See Scotland. Or for that matter Nottingham.
With English Local Authorities, it's perhaps tied up with chronic underfunding over two decades or more.
I think at least 80% of the pothole problem is heavier cars.
Road wear is proportional to the 4th power of axle weight, remember...
We live on a short side road leading to our town's central car park. For some time there were three potholes in the road, which were occasionally repaid, but invariably and rapidly re-appeared. Eventually the County's Highways people appeared to get fed up with the frequent complaints and resurfaced the road completely. Took about a day and a night. Result; no more potholes. There was a disadvantage; it's quite a narrow road and the double yellow lines weren't replaced, mean that occasionally people parked, causing blockages. However the yellow lines have now been replaced and all is well.
Rudakubana wiped much of his internet search history before the attack and it is not known whether he ever viewed material linked to Mr Tate.
It makes the "it wasn't terrorism" claims even more bizarre.
How? Whatever else Andrew Tate might be, he is not Head of Isis.
Some people would consider him a terrorist (or consider an incel inspired attack to be terrorism).
But that's not what I'm getting at. We don't know what he'd be searching. Presumably he looked up the Al-Qaeda manual, but we're told he wasn't an Islamist terrorist.
The police should have been saying "we're keeping an open mind as to the motivation for this attack".
Ah the Al-Qaeda manual. Our authorities have a strange history with that one.
It is available from US Govt websites, and back in 2008 a research student in Nottingham researching terrorism was detained by police and locked up for 7 days for having downloaded a copy to a University computer. It can also be bought from Amazon. This was in the New Labour 'authoritarian' period - which was one of the things that got me into blogging back then.
AI summary, which is about right:
In the "Nottingham Two" case, Rizwaan Sabir, a University of Nottingham student, was arrested in 2008 and held for seven days after downloading an al-Qaeda training manual for his research, but was later released without charge and received a £20,000 settlement and apology from the police.
I don't know enough about Rudakubana to be able to judge. I concur with whoever said it may be in a grey area on definition of "terrorism". I think that political motivation probably needs to be involved, but I might be quite broad in my definition of "political".
I meant more in terms of possession of ricin (harder to justify, to be fair) and that manual. I think you make a fair point re possessing something that's not that difficult to get hold of.
The Prime Minister demonstrates his commitment to local democracy.
My question here is why they want the "I really did spend this on potholes" reports. Do they have past experience from other ring fenced grants that there is risk of local authority mismanagement or failure to actually spend the cash? Or have they just dumped a bureaucratic reporting requirement on councils to make it seem like they're being careful with public funds?
Er .. yes. But there may be questions around the firmness of the ring fencing.
See Scotland. Or for that matter Nottingham.
With English Local Authorities, it's perhaps tied up with chronic underfunding over two decades or more.
I think at least 80% of the pothole problem is heavier cars.
Road wear is proportional to the 4th power of axle weight, remember...
True, but also consider van mileage. LCV mileage has increased by 124% in the last 30 years - cars by 20%. Otoh, Buses fallen by -35% and HGVs only up 12%.
The Prime Minister demonstrates his commitment to local democracy.
My question here is why they want the "I really did spend this on potholes" reports. Do they have past experience from other ring fenced grants that there is risk of local authority mismanagement or failure to actually spend the cash? Or have they just dumped a bureaucratic reporting requirement on councils to make it seem like they're being careful with public funds?
Er .. yes. But there may be questions around the firmness of the ring fencing.
See Scotland. Or for that matter Nottingham.
With English Local Authorities, it's perhaps tied up with chronic underfunding over two decades or more.
I think at least 80% of the pothole problem is heavier cars.
Road wear is proportional to the 4th power of axle weight, remember...
Yes but no but ...
I think 80% may be a bit high for "heavier cars".
Given that he max axle weight of a lorry is about 6-7x that of a 3 ton Tonka Tanker SUV or pickup, that makes it that a max lorry doing something like 4000x as much damage as a max SUV.
Given that lorries do a lot more mileage, I'm inclined to put quite a chunk of the damage on them.
And a significant chunk on slow repairs.
But I've argued on PB before that VED should be set proportional to the 4th power of the axle weight. I suggest that it also be multiplied by the number of axles. We need to come out with a number providing a BIG incentive to have smaller vehicles. Then maybe levied per mile driven !
I'd agree to a similar formula for cycles .. maybe.
The Prime Minister demonstrates his commitment to local democracy.
My question here is why they want the "I really did spend this on potholes" reports. Do they have past experience from other ring fenced grants that there is risk of local authority mismanagement or failure to actually spend the cash? Or have they just dumped a bureaucratic reporting requirement on councils to make it seem like they're being careful with public funds?
Er .. yes. But there may be questions around the firmness of the ring fencing.
See Scotland. Or for that matter Nottingham.
With English Local Authorities, it's perhaps tied up with chronic underfunding over two decades or more.
I think at least 80% of the pothole problem is heavier cars.
Road wear is proportional to the 4th power of axle weight, remember...
True, but also consider van mileage. LCV mileage has increased by 124% in the last 30 years - cars by 20%. Otoh, Buses fallen by -35% and HGVs only up 12%.
If someone (or their spouse) turns up on your property, having previously openly stated their intentions to seize it for themselves, do you have any moral responsibility for their safety?
How in the name of holy chuffing buggery do Thames Water not have a fixed asset register?
Fresh doubt has been cast over the race to find a white knight buyer for Thames Water as it struggles to provide details of its labyrinthine network of pipes, sewage works and reservoirs.
Thames Water has stepped up the hunt for new investors willing to pump in billions of pounds of emergency capital after the Court of Appeal approved a £3bn emergency debt bailout from its existing creditors.
However, prospective suitors fear the search will be held up by the company’s failure to keep an accurate record of the mountain of assets that it has accumulated over the decades.
Thames Water has just weeks to hammer out a deal or one of the country’s most vital utilities faces a prolonged hand-to-mouth existence in which lenders drip-feed the company enough money every month to pay its bills.
“The board has to advance to the due diligence quickly but this makes that much harder. How do you put a value on the company if you don’t know what it owns?” a source close to the talks said.
Nationalisation might be the only answer. The only way the private sector will want to get involved is at such a low price that a profit is guaranteed for asset stripping. A period of government ownership while the basics are restored – an asset register; proper waste management rather than waiting for a storm and chucking it all in the river while limits are suspended; investment in new facilities. Account for the asset on the government's books so it does not look like the money has disappeared.
Why do we need to nationalise a profitable business?
Because if we don't, they'll just play the same game for the next couple of decades.
It's a monopoly utility. If you can guarantee it will be adequately regulated in future, then fine. You'll also probably deserve the Nobel prize for economics.
Why should we care if they do? The holding company can go broke every week, and it doesn't matter so long as it's just the shareholders and lenders who take the hit.
Eventually they might learn it's better not to load the business up with unsustainable debt in the first place.
The Prime Minister demonstrates his commitment to local democracy.
My question here is why they want the "I really did spend this on potholes" reports. Do they have past experience from other ring fenced grants that there is risk of local authority mismanagement or failure to actually spend the cash? Or have they just dumped a bureaucratic reporting requirement on councils to make it seem like they're being careful with public funds?
Er .. yes. But there may be questions around the firmness of the ring fencing.
See Scotland. Or for that matter Nottingham.
With English Local Authorities, it's perhaps tied up with chronic underfunding over two decades or more.
I think at least 80% of the pothole problem is heavier cars.
Road wear is proportional to the 4th power of axle weight, remember...
Yes but no but ...
I think 80% may be a bit high for "heavier cars".
Given that he max axle weight of a lorry is about 6-7x that of a 3 ton Tonka Tanker SUV or pickup, that makes it that a max lorry doing something like 4000x as much damage as a max SUV.
Given that lorries do a lot more mileage, I'm inclined to put quite a chunk of the damage on them.
And a significant chunk on slow repairs.
But I've argued on PB before that VED should be set proportional to the 4th power of the axle weight. I suggest that it also be multiplied by the number of axles. We need to come out with a number providing a BIG incentive to have smaller vehicles. Then maybe levied per mile driven !
I'd agree to a similar formula for cycles .. maybe.
Should allow for ground pressure. I recall a study that tractors were surprisingly benign (to the authors) - due to spreading the load with the big tires. Other farm machinery less so....
Rudakubana wiped much of his internet search history before the attack and it is not known whether he ever viewed material linked to Mr Tate.
It makes the "it wasn't terrorism" claims even more bizarre.
How? Whatever else Andrew Tate might be, he is not Head of Isis.
Some people would consider him a terrorist (or consider an incel inspired attack to be terrorism).
But that's not what I'm getting at. We don't know what he'd be searching. Presumably he looked up the Al-Qaeda manual, but we're told he wasn't an Islamist terrorist.
The police should have been saying "we're keeping an open mind as to the motivation for this attack".
Ah the Al-Qaeda manual. Our authorities have a strange history with that one.
It is available from US Govt websites, and back in 2008 a research student in Nottingham researching terrorism was detained by police and locked up for 7 days for having downloaded a copy to a University computer. It can also be bought from Amazon. This was in the New Labour 'authoritarian' period - which was one of the things that got me into blogging back then.
AI summary, which is about right:
In the "Nottingham Two" case, Rizwaan Sabir, a University of Nottingham student, was arrested in 2008 and held for seven days after downloading an al-Qaeda training manual for his research, but was later released without charge and received a £20,000 settlement and apology from the police.
I don't know enough about Rudakubana to be able to judge. I concur with whoever said it may be in a grey area on definition of "terrorism". I think that political motivation probably needs to be involved, but I might be quite broad in my definition of "political".
I meant more in terms of possession of ricin (harder to justify, to be fair) and that manual. I think you make a fair point re possessing something that's not that difficult to get hold of.
Rudakubana wiped much of his internet search history before the attack and it is not known whether he ever viewed material linked to Mr Tate.
It makes the "it wasn't terrorism" claims even more bizarre.
How? Whatever else Andrew Tate might be, he is not Head of Isis.
Some people would consider him a terrorist (or consider an incel inspired attack to be terrorism).
But that's not what I'm getting at. We don't know what he'd be searching. Presumably he looked up the Al-Qaeda manual, but we're told he wasn't an Islamist terrorist.
The police should have been saying "we're keeping an open mind as to the motivation for this attack".
Ah the Al-Qaeda manual. Our authorities have a strange history with that one.
It is available from US Govt websites, and back in 2008 a research student in Nottingham researching terrorism was detained by police and locked up for 7 days for having downloaded a copy to a University computer. It can also be bought from Amazon. This was in the New Labour 'authoritarian' period - which was one of the things that got me into blogging back then.
AI summary, which is about right:
In the "Nottingham Two" case, Rizwaan Sabir, a University of Nottingham student, was arrested in 2008 and held for seven days after downloading an al-Qaeda training manual for his research, but was later released without charge and received a £20,000 settlement and apology from the police.
I don't know enough about Rudakubana to be able to judge. I concur with whoever said it may be in a grey area on definition of "terrorism". I think that political motivation probably needs to be involved, but I might be quite broad in my definition of "political".
I meant more in terms of possession of ricin (harder to justify, to be fair) and that manual. I think you make a fair point re possessing something that's not that difficult to get hold of.
What’s the reason for governments wanting a distinct definition and set of processes for terrorism as opposed to other violent crimes?
It’s not about the morality or the degree of suffering caused, as I understand it. More to do with terrorism posing a wider threat to the functioning of the state and to public confidence, over and above the immediate threat to the victim. So a terrorist atrocity may form part of a campaign of similar attacks that could potentially be prevented by intelligence.
In that sense some similarity to the distinction police accord to organised crime.
I thought the Ed Davey speech posted at the w/e was sensible and very competent, but perhaps a bit softer than I would like on Mr Trump. He's not the man to do rhetoric.
The situation in Turkey is of increasing concern. The world seems to be descending into autocracy.
With technology allowing both ever increasing surveillance, both state and corporate, alongside new, powerful ways to manipulate our news and emotions, this path sadly seems inevitable......at least until the AI take over.
How in the name of holy chuffing buggery do Thames Water not have a fixed asset register?
Fresh doubt has been cast over the race to find a white knight buyer for Thames Water as it struggles to provide details of its labyrinthine network of pipes, sewage works and reservoirs.
Thames Water has stepped up the hunt for new investors willing to pump in billions of pounds of emergency capital after the Court of Appeal approved a £3bn emergency debt bailout from its existing creditors.
However, prospective suitors fear the search will be held up by the company’s failure to keep an accurate record of the mountain of assets that it has accumulated over the decades.
Thames Water has just weeks to hammer out a deal or one of the country’s most vital utilities faces a prolonged hand-to-mouth existence in which lenders drip-feed the company enough money every month to pay its bills.
“The board has to advance to the due diligence quickly but this makes that much harder. How do you put a value on the company if you don’t know what it owns?” a source close to the talks said.
Nationalisation might be the only answer. The only way the private sector will want to get involved is at such a low price that a profit is guaranteed for asset stripping. A period of government ownership while the basics are restored – an asset register; proper waste management rather than waiting for a storm and chucking it all in the river while limits are suspended; investment in new facilities. Account for the asset on the government's books so it does not look like the money has disappeared.
Why do we need to nationalise a profitable business?
Because if we don't, they'll just play the same game for the next couple of decades.
It's a monopoly utility. If you can guarantee it will be adequately regulated in future, then fine. You'll also probably deserve the Nobel prize for economics.
Why should we care if they do? The holding company can go broke every week, and it doesn't matter so long as it's just the shareholders and lenders who take the hit...
It's not The trick is to extract the cash and then get out - as Macquarie did.
If you had a strict regulator throughout, then the problem might be minimised, but that has never happened in the last three and half decades.
Public ownership, with a private secure management contract, with performance clauses, might just work. It would avoid a fair amount of what's basically legalised theft. And the borrowing for investment would be at government borrowing rates.
That's reminded me of the days when the TV ad breaks were full of adverts from companies wanting to sell you ring tones.
Whatever happened to them?
Aren't they just a victim of the migration of value added features into the core operating system, like nearly everything else?
I'm reminded of the Speech to Text innvation, and a review back in the 1990s where the quality winner was a hardware unit that looked like a tabletop prinnter, and came with a selection of expert systems inside.
It was made by an innovative hardware company which I can't recall but started with K and was named for the innovator who owned it, and cost £8000.
That's now in my phone (or Youtube) at a very high quality.
If someone (or their spouse) turns up on your property, having previously openly stated their intentions to seize it for themselves, do you have any moral responsibility for their safety?
"If you get eaten by my emotional support salt water crocodile, your estate will be sued for the trauma this will cause to poor Bubbles."
Rudakubana wiped much of his internet search history before the attack and it is not known whether he ever viewed material linked to Mr Tate.
It makes the "it wasn't terrorism" claims even more bizarre.
How? Whatever else Andrew Tate might be, he is not Head of Isis.
Some people would consider him a terrorist (or consider an incel inspired attack to be terrorism).
But that's not what I'm getting at. We don't know what he'd be searching. Presumably he looked up the Al-Qaeda manual, but we're told he wasn't an Islamist terrorist.
The police should have been saying "we're keeping an open mind as to the motivation for this attack".
Ah the Al-Qaeda manual. Our authorities have a strange history with that one.
It is available from US Govt websites, and back in 2008 a research student in Nottingham researching terrorism was detained by police and locked up for 7 days for having downloaded a copy to a University computer. It can also be bought from Amazon. This was in the New Labour 'authoritarian' period - which was one of the things that got me into blogging back then.
AI summary, which is about right:
In the "Nottingham Two" case, Rizwaan Sabir, a University of Nottingham student, was arrested in 2008 and held for seven days after downloading an al-Qaeda training manual for his research, but was later released without charge and received a £20,000 settlement and apology from the police.
I don't know enough about Rudakubana to be able to judge. I concur with whoever said it may be in a grey area on definition of "terrorism". I think that political motivation probably needs to be involved, but I might be quite broad in my definition of "political".
I meant more in terms of possession of ricin (harder to justify, to be fair) and that manual. I think you make a fair point re possessing something that's not that difficult to get hold of.
What’s the reason for governments wanting a distinct definition and set of processes for terrorism as opposed to other violent crimes?
It’s not about the morality or the degree of suffering caused, as I understand it. More to do with terrorism posing a wider threat to the functioning of the state and to public confidence, over and above the immediate threat to the victim. So a terrorist atrocity may form part of a campaign of similar attacks that could potentially be prevented by intelligence.
In that sense some similarity to the distinction police accord to organised crime.
There's a whole raft of legislation covering enhanced powers of investigation and detention, under the rubric of terrorism - along with a duty to investigate. If you add a whole load of categories to the definition, then the burden on the security services becomes unrealistic, and the enhanced powers of investigation etc begin to cover the entire population,
Oh god, Tiger Woods is marrying into the Trump family. So so disappointed. I've only ever had three idols, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and him. Down to two now.
With pols etc that one doesn't like, an objectivity filter has to be applied ie they're probably not entirely awful. The Trumps are ALWAYS the horrible, cheap scumbags that you expect them to be.
'On November 12, 2005, Vanessa married Donald Trump Jr. The wedding was held at the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida; the service was officiated by Trump Jr.'s aunt, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry. Trump Jr. had proposed to her with a US $100,000 ring (equivalent to $161,000 in 2024) that he had received as a gift from a jeweler in exchange for proposing to her in front of paparazzi outside of the jeweler's store at the Short Hills mall in New Jersey.'
Yes, 100% ghastly bunch. No exceptions or mitigations.
Tiger Tiger, turning shite.
Everything they are associated with is just so tacky. I think I have little taste, but I can see very bad taste a mile off. The following phrase comes to mind regarding the proposal (and most other things they do):
'Knows the price of everything and the value of nothing'
You can tell Trump is a wrong un just from his home decor.
Rudakubana wiped much of his internet search history before the attack and it is not known whether he ever viewed material linked to Mr Tate.
It makes the "it wasn't terrorism" claims even more bizarre.
How? Whatever else Andrew Tate might be, he is not Head of Isis.
Some people would consider him a terrorist (or consider an incel inspired attack to be terrorism).
But that's not what I'm getting at. We don't know what he'd be searching. Presumably he looked up the Al-Qaeda manual, but we're told he wasn't an Islamist terrorist.
The police should have been saying "we're keeping an open mind as to the motivation for this attack".
Ah the Al-Qaeda manual. Our authorities have a strange history with that one.
It is available from US Govt websites, and back in 2008 a research student in Nottingham researching terrorism was detained by police and locked up for 7 days for having downloaded a copy to a University computer. It can also be bought from Amazon. This was in the New Labour 'authoritarian' period - which was one of the things that got me into blogging back then.
AI summary, which is about right:
In the "Nottingham Two" case, Rizwaan Sabir, a University of Nottingham student, was arrested in 2008 and held for seven days after downloading an al-Qaeda training manual for his research, but was later released without charge and received a £20,000 settlement and apology from the police.
I don't know enough about Rudakubana to be able to judge. I concur with whoever said it may be in a grey area on definition of "terrorism". I think that political motivation probably needs to be involved, but I might be quite broad in my definition of "political".
I meant more in terms of possession of ricin (harder to justify, to be fair) and that manual. I think you make a fair point re possessing something that's not that difficult to get hold of.
What’s the reason for governments wanting a distinct definition and set of processes for terrorism as opposed to other violent crimes?
It’s not about the morality or the degree of suffering caused, as I understand it. More to do with terrorism posing a wider threat to the functioning of the state and to public confidence, over and above the immediate threat to the victim. So a terrorist atrocity may form part of a campaign of similar attacks that could potentially be prevented by intelligence.
In that sense some similarity to the distinction police accord to organised crime.
Right -- I think we should make this kind of distinction to the extent that it determines how we approach trying to prevent future occurrences. Detection and prevention of attacks resulting from political motivation and orchestrated by some wider organisation is going to be different from how we need to think about one-off attacks. We should also be careful that we don't let the definition drive our handling of risks exclusively either -- situations in the grey area between "obviously terrorism" and "obviously not" shouldn't be allowed to fall into gaps between parts of the state and go unaddressed.
The situation in Turkey is of increasing concern. The world seems to be descending into autocracy.
With technology allowing both ever increasing surveillance, both state and corporate, alongside new, powerful ways to manipulate our news and emotions, this path sadly seems inevitable......at least until the AI take over.
The problem is that maybe the opposition are corrupt. But how can you know for sure?
The situation in Turkey is of increasing concern. The world seems to be descending into autocracy.
With technology allowing both ever increasing surveillance, both state and corporate, alongside new, powerful ways to manipulate our news and emotions, this path sadly seems inevitable......at least until the AI take over.
Hitler's dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. His was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical development, a dictatorship which made complete use of all technical means in a perfect manner for the domination of its own nation.
Through technical devices such as radio and loudspeaker 80 million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man. The telephone, teletype and radio made it possible, for instance, for orders from the highest sources to be transmitted directly to the lowest-ranking units, where, because of the high authority, they were carried out without criticism. Another result was that numerous offices and headquarters were directly attached to the supreme leadership, from which they received their sinister orders directly. Also, one of the results was a far reaching supervision of the citizen of the state and the maintenance of a high degree of secrecy for criminal events.
Perhaps to the outsider this machinery of the state may appear like the lines of a telephone exchange - apparently without system. But like the latter, it could be served and dominated by one single will.
Earlier dictators during their work of leadership needed highly qualified assistants, even at the lowest level, men who could think and act independently. The totalitarian system in the period of modern technical development can dispense with them; the means of communication alone make it possible to mechanise the subordinate leadership. As a result of this there arises a new type: the uncritical recipient of orders.
We had only reached the beginning of the development. The nightmare of many a man that one day nations could be dominated by technical means, was all but realised in Hitler's totalitarian system.
Today the danger of being terrorized by technocracy threatens every country in the world. In modern dictatorship this appears to me inevitable. Therefore, the more technical the world becomes, the more necessary is the promotion of individual freedom and the individual's awareness of himself as a counterbalance.
That's reminded me of the days when the TV ad breaks were full of adverts from companies wanting to sell you ring tones.
Whatever happened to them?
Aren't they just a victim of the migration of value added features into the core operating system, like nearly everything else?
I'm reminded of the Speech to Text innovation, and a review back in the 1990s where the quality winner was a hardware unit that looked like a tabletop prinnter, and came with a selection of expert systems inside.
It was made by an innovative hardware company which I can't recall but started with K and was named for the innovator who owned it, and cost £8000.
That's now in my phone (or Youtube) at a very high quality.
Hmmm. It may have been Document Scanning, which is similar as an application.
And it may even have been the 1980s.
Update: Found it. It's OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and Ray Kurzweil.
The Prime Minister demonstrates his commitment to local democracy.
My question here is why they want the "I really did spend this on potholes" reports. Do they have past experience from other ring fenced grants that there is risk of local authority mismanagement or failure to actually spend the cash? Or have they just dumped a bureaucratic reporting requirement on councils to make it seem like they're being careful with public funds?
Er .. yes. But there may be questions around the firmness of the ring fencing.
See Scotland. Or for that matter Nottingham.
With English Local Authorities, it's perhaps tied up with chronic underfunding over two decades or more.
I think at least 80% of the pothole problem is heavier cars.
Road wear is proportional to the 4th power of axle weight, remember...
Yes but no but ...
I think 80% may be a bit high for "heavier cars".
Given that he max axle weight of a lorry is about 6-7x that of a 3 ton Tonka Tanker SUV or pickup, that makes it that a max lorry doing something like 4000x as much damage as a max SUV.
Given that lorries do a lot more mileage, I'm inclined to put quite a chunk of the damage on them.
And a significant chunk on slow repairs.
But I've argued on PB before that VED should be set proportional to the 4th power of the axle weight. I suggest that it also be multiplied by the number of axles. We need to come out with a number providing a BIG incentive to have smaller vehicles. Then maybe levied per mile driven !
I'd agree to a similar formula for cycles .. maybe.
A road tax for cycles set at 0.0001p would be quite funny, but we'd then have to go down the route of registration plates which is a bit problematic as it would discourage usage.
A lot of the potholes round here are on side streets where large artics never wander. I could see delivery vans being an issue though as they also tend not to have lots of axles to spread the weight.
There's definitely more wear as well as fewer repairs judging by how long a brand new relaid road lasts.
Thames Water, alongside Woking BC and Spelthorne BC and arguably the United Kingdom, joins the club of organisations with debts which can never be repaid.
Allister Heath, when he was still sane, proposed every organisation over a particular size, both private and public, needed a Will to determine what should happen if it became insolvent.
We all know what will happen - the debt will be written off and if necessary Government will fund the operation to keep it going. Northern Rock and the events of 2008 showed many organisations, both private and public, they were literally too big and too important to be allowed to fail.
Safeguarding depositors money in effectively zombie banks and building societies set a precedent rightly or wrongly - the Government knew the social, political and economic consequences of a major bank failure would be unsupportable.
Once EU leaders have a couple of hundred billion defence spending increases actually done, then they might feel emboldened to tell the little shit a few home truths.
I'll save you the wait. They won't.
There are other ways.
Arms exports are vital to US military supremacy. In just a few weeks, Trump has severely undermined the US defence industry by driving away its best customers. US arms exports were $318.7 billion in FY2024, while the US's own procurement plans for FY2025 are just $167.5 bn. https://x.com/jakluge/status/1904102871861219836
The Prime Minister demonstrates his commitment to local democracy.
My question here is why they want the "I really did spend this on potholes" reports. Do they have past experience from other ring fenced grants that there is risk of local authority mismanagement or failure to actually spend the cash? Or have they just dumped a bureaucratic reporting requirement on councils to make it seem like they're being careful with public funds?
Er .. yes. But there may be questions around the firmness of the ring fencing.
See Scotland. Or for that matter Nottingham.
With English Local Authorities, it's perhaps tied up with chronic underfunding over two decades or more.
I think at least 80% of the pothole problem is heavier cars.
Road wear is proportional to the 4th power of axle weight, remember...
Yes but no but ...
I think 80% may be a bit high for "heavier cars".
Given that he max axle weight of a lorry is about 6-7x that of a 3 ton Tonka Tanker SUV or pickup, that makes it that a max lorry doing something like 4000x as much damage as a max SUV.
Given that lorries do a lot more mileage, I'm inclined to put quite a chunk of the damage on them.
And a significant chunk on slow repairs.
But I've argued on PB before that VED should be set proportional to the 4th power of the axle weight. I suggest that it also be multiplied by the number of axles. We need to come out with a number providing a BIG incentive to have smaller vehicles. Then maybe levied per mile driven !
I'd agree to a similar formula for cycles .. maybe.
A road tax for cycles set at 0.0001p would be quite funny, but we'd then have to go down the route of registration plates which is a bit problematic as it would discourage usage.
A lot of the potholes round here are on side streets where large artics never wander. I could see delivery vans being an issue though as they also tend not to have lots of axles to spread the weight.
There's definitely more wear as well as fewer repairs judging by how long a brand new relaid road lasts.
It's like when you get shouted at for not paying "road tax". I'd be more than happy to pay £0 for my zero emissions bicycle.
The broader point is the whole suite of vehicle taxes is ripe for reform. They currently incentivise very heavy zero emission vehicles to make very short trips in urban areas. Bonkers.
No, that's motorcyclists. Hitting a big pothole and coming off at 20mph when you're cycling is much less hazardous than hitting it at 50mph on a motorcycle and being flung into the scenery.
No, that's motorcyclists. Hitting a big pothole and coming off at 20mph when you're cycling is much less hazardous than hitting it at 50mph on a motorcycle and being flung into the scenery.
Reaction time too. You usually have enough time to swerve on the bicycle. Why you should always take the secondary position, so you don't get squeezed into them.
The Prime Minister demonstrates his commitment to local democracy.
My question here is why they want the "I really did spend this on potholes" reports. Do they have past experience from other ring fenced grants that there is risk of local authority mismanagement or failure to actually spend the cash? Or have they just dumped a bureaucratic reporting requirement on councils to make it seem like they're being careful with public funds?
Er .. yes. But there may be questions around the firmness of the ring fencing.
See Scotland. Or for that matter Nottingham.
With English Local Authorities, it's perhaps tied up with chronic underfunding over two decades or more.
I think at least 80% of the pothole problem is heavier cars.
Road wear is proportional to the 4th power of axle weight, remember...
Yes but no but ...
I think 80% may be a bit high for "heavier cars".
Given that he max axle weight of a lorry is about 6-7x that of a 3 ton Tonka Tanker SUV or pickup, that makes it that a max lorry doing something like 4000x as much damage as a max SUV.
Given that lorries do a lot more mileage, I'm inclined to put quite a chunk of the damage on them.
And a significant chunk on slow repairs.
But I've argued on PB before that VED should be set proportional to the 4th power of the axle weight. I suggest that it also be multiplied by the number of axles. We need to come out with a number providing a BIG incentive to have smaller vehicles. Then maybe levied per mile driven !
I'd agree to a similar formula for cycles .. maybe.
Best selling family car of 1975 Ford Escort MK2 has a kerb weight of 880kg.
Best selling car of 2025 Ford Puma has a kerb weight of 1205kgs.
Usual sized family car of 2025 Ford Kuga has a kerb weight of up to 1844kg
The Prime Minister demonstrates his commitment to local democracy.
My question here is why they want the "I really did spend this on potholes" reports. Do they have past experience from other ring fenced grants that there is risk of local authority mismanagement or failure to actually spend the cash? Or have they just dumped a bureaucratic reporting requirement on councils to make it seem like they're being careful with public funds?
Er .. yes. But there may be questions around the firmness of the ring fencing.
See Scotland. Or for that matter Nottingham.
With English Local Authorities, it's perhaps tied up with chronic underfunding over two decades or more.
I think at least 80% of the pothole problem is heavier cars.
Road wear is proportional to the 4th power of axle weight, remember...
Yes but no but ...
I think 80% may be a bit high for "heavier cars".
Given that he max axle weight of a lorry is about 6-7x that of a 3 ton Tonka Tanker SUV or pickup, that makes it that a max lorry doing something like 4000x as much damage as a max SUV.
Given that lorries do a lot more mileage, I'm inclined to put quite a chunk of the damage on them.
And a significant chunk on slow repairs.
But I've argued on PB before that VED should be set proportional to the 4th power of the axle weight. I suggest that it also be multiplied by the number of axles. We need to come out with a number providing a BIG incentive to have smaller vehicles. Then maybe levied per mile driven !
I'd agree to a similar formula for cycles .. maybe.
A road tax for cycles set at 0.0001p would be quite funny, but we'd then have to go down the route of registration plates which is a bit problematic as it would discourage usage.
A lot of the potholes round here are on side streets where large artics never wander. I could see delivery vans being an issue though as they also tend not to have lots of axles to spread the weight.
There's definitely more wear as well as fewer repairs judging by how long a brand new relaid road lasts.
It's like when you get shouted at for not paying "road tax". I'd be more than happy to pay £0 for my zero emissions bicycle.
I pay (or did pay) £0 for my car so that idiotic shout never did make sense.
Which reminds me, I should probably renew that 6 months early before the price goes up...
No, that's motorcyclists. Hitting a big pothole and coming off at 20mph when you're cycling is much less hazardous than hitting it at 50mph on a motorcycle and being flung into the scenery.
Reaction time too. You usually have enough time to swerve on the bicycle. Why you should always take the secondary position, so you don't get squeezed into them.
But there's likely to be an Audi (or a bus in Edinburgh) up your chuff to kill you in case you fall off because they did not leave themselves enough room to stop, or 13cm to the right in case you have to swerve, or another one up the chuff of the first one that doesn't have time to stop either, to make sure you get killed even if the first one does manage to go around.
The Prime Minister demonstrates his commitment to local democracy.
My question here is why they want the "I really did spend this on potholes" reports. Do they have past experience from other ring fenced grants that there is risk of local authority mismanagement or failure to actually spend the cash? Or have they just dumped a bureaucratic reporting requirement on councils to make it seem like they're being careful with public funds?
Er .. yes. But there may be questions around the firmness of the ring fencing.
See Scotland. Or for that matter Nottingham.
With English Local Authorities, it's perhaps tied up with chronic underfunding over two decades or more.
I think at least 80% of the pothole problem is heavier cars.
Road wear is proportional to the 4th power of axle weight, remember...
Yes but no but ...
I think 80% may be a bit high for "heavier cars".
Given that he max axle weight of a lorry is about 6-7x that of a 3 ton Tonka Tanker SUV or pickup, that makes it that a max lorry doing something like 4000x as much damage as a max SUV.
Given that lorries do a lot more mileage, I'm inclined to put quite a chunk of the damage on them.
And a significant chunk on slow repairs.
But I've argued on PB before that VED should be set proportional to the 4th power of the axle weight. I suggest that it also be multiplied by the number of axles. We need to come out with a number providing a BIG incentive to have smaller vehicles. Then maybe levied per mile driven !
I'd agree to a similar formula for cycles .. maybe.
A road tax for cycles set at 0.0001p would be quite funny, but we'd then have to go down the route of registration plates which is a bit problematic as it would discourage usage.
A lot of the potholes round here are on side streets where large artics never wander. I could see delivery vans being an issue though as they also tend not to have lots of axles to spread the weight.
There's definitely more wear as well as fewer repairs judging by how long a brand new relaid road lasts.
It's like when you get shouted at for not paying "road tax". I'd be more than happy to pay £0 for my zero emissions bicycle.
The broader point is the whole suite of vehicle taxes is ripe for reform. They currently incentivise very heavy zero emission vehicles to make very short trips in urban areas. Bonkers.
Electric cars are going to be taxed next year. And the £40k+ ones are going to be heavily taxed (that being the "luxury" threshold).
They could have made a much better job of reform though.
The Prime Minister demonstrates his commitment to local democracy.
My question here is why they want the "I really did spend this on potholes" reports. Do they have past experience from other ring fenced grants that there is risk of local authority mismanagement or failure to actually spend the cash? Or have they just dumped a bureaucratic reporting requirement on councils to make it seem like they're being careful with public funds?
Er .. yes. But there may be questions around the firmness of the ring fencing.
See Scotland. Or for that matter Nottingham.
With English Local Authorities, it's perhaps tied up with chronic underfunding over two decades or more.
I think at least 80% of the pothole problem is heavier cars.
Road wear is proportional to the 4th power of axle weight, remember...
Yes but no but ...
I think 80% may be a bit high for "heavier cars".
Given that he max axle weight of a lorry is about 6-7x that of a 3 ton Tonka Tanker SUV or pickup, that makes it that a max lorry doing something like 4000x as much damage as a max SUV.
Given that lorries do a lot more mileage, I'm inclined to put quite a chunk of the damage on them.
And a significant chunk on slow repairs.
But I've argued on PB before that VED should be set proportional to the 4th power of the axle weight. I suggest that it also be multiplied by the number of axles. We need to come out with a number providing a BIG incentive to have smaller vehicles. Then maybe levied per mile driven !
I'd agree to a similar formula for cycles .. maybe.
A road tax for cycles set at 0.0001p would be quite funny, but we'd then have to go down the route of registration plates which is a bit problematic as it would discourage usage.
A lot of the potholes round here are on side streets where large artics never wander. I could see delivery vans being an issue though as they also tend not to have lots of axles to spread the weight.
There's definitely more wear as well as fewer repairs judging by how long a brand new relaid road lasts.
It's like when you get shouted at for not paying "road tax". I'd be more than happy to pay £0 for my zero emissions bicycle.
The broader point is the whole suite of vehicle taxes is ripe for reform. They currently incentivise very heavy zero emission vehicles to make very short trips in urban areas. Bonkers.
Electric cars are going to be taxed next year. And the £40k+ ones are going to be heavily taxed (that being the "luxury" threshold).
They could have made a much better job of reform though.
Absolutely.
For me this is another area where this Govt do not have the courage of their own convictions to write their own agenda, and are over-timid in the face of oppositionalist politics.
How in the name of holy chuffing buggery do Thames Water not have a fixed asset register?
Fresh doubt has been cast over the race to find a white knight buyer for Thames Water as it struggles to provide details of its labyrinthine network of pipes, sewage works and reservoirs.
Thames Water has stepped up the hunt for new investors willing to pump in billions of pounds of emergency capital after the Court of Appeal approved a £3bn emergency debt bailout from its existing creditors.
However, prospective suitors fear the search will be held up by the company’s failure to keep an accurate record of the mountain of assets that it has accumulated over the decades.
Thames Water has just weeks to hammer out a deal or one of the country’s most vital utilities faces a prolonged hand-to-mouth existence in which lenders drip-feed the company enough money every month to pay its bills.
“The board has to advance to the due diligence quickly but this makes that much harder. How do you put a value on the company if you don’t know what it owns?” a source close to the talks said.
I could fill pages with the very very many things that auditors manage not to notice in companies great and small in countries all over the world, despite being paid humongous fees to do so.
The situation in Turkey is of increasing concern. The world seems to be descending into autocracy.
With technology allowing both ever increasing surveillance, both state and corporate, alongside new, powerful ways to manipulate our news and emotions, this path sadly seems inevitable......at least until the AI take over.
Hitler's dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. His was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical development, a dictatorship which made complete use of all technical means in a perfect manner for the domination of its own nation.
Through technical devices such as radio and loudspeaker 80 million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man. The telephone, teletype and radio made it possible, for instance, for orders from the highest sources to be transmitted directly to the lowest-ranking units, where, because of the high authority, they were carried out without criticism. Another result was that numerous offices and headquarters were directly attached to the supreme leadership, from which they received their sinister orders directly. Also, one of the results was a far reaching supervision of the citizen of the state and the maintenance of a high degree of secrecy for criminal events.
Perhaps to the outsider this machinery of the state may appear like the lines of a telephone exchange - apparently without system. But like the latter, it could be served and dominated by one single will.
Earlier dictators during their work of leadership needed highly qualified assistants, even at the lowest level, men who could think and act independently. The totalitarian system in the period of modern technical development can dispense with them; the means of communication alone make it possible to mechanise the subordinate leadership. As a result of this there arises a new type: the uncritical recipient of orders.
We had only reached the beginning of the development. The nightmare of many a man that one day nations could be dominated by technical means, was all but realised in Hitler's totalitarian system.
Today the danger of being terrorized by technocracy threatens every country in the world. In modern dictatorship this appears to me inevitable. Therefore, the more technical the world becomes, the more necessary is the promotion of individual freedom and the individual's awareness of himself as a counterbalance.
To which Peter Thiel, and his coterie such as Vance, Musk and Yarvin, might probably believe that only they *deserve* true freedom.
They essentially believe that all the power of all this technological apparatus is just the external manifestation of their greater intefnal intelligence. If no one eise has managed to defeat it, or create an alternative to it, then they simply don't deserve the same level of power as the machine, or the tech bros behind it.
A conservative Danish MP is going publicly and amusingly postal live on X
“China has no presence in Greenland. None at all.
China also has no intentions of taking over Greenland. (China generally does not invade other countries).
Neither does Russia. While the Russians are brutally honest about their intentions to take over Ukraine, Poland, the Baltics and Central Asia, they never talk about Greenland….”
“Yes, they will. Pro-independence parties have won for 50 years in Greenland. That does not mean that they are about to become independent.
When you are completely ignorant about a topic, dont try to lecture people like me who actually know it. Instead take the opportunity to listen, learn and get smarter.”
How in the name of holy chuffing buggery do Thames Water not have a fixed asset register?
Fresh doubt has been cast over the race to find a white knight buyer for Thames Water as it struggles to provide details of its labyrinthine network of pipes, sewage works and reservoirs.
Thames Water has stepped up the hunt for new investors willing to pump in billions of pounds of emergency capital after the Court of Appeal approved a £3bn emergency debt bailout from its existing creditors.
However, prospective suitors fear the search will be held up by the company’s failure to keep an accurate record of the mountain of assets that it has accumulated over the decades.
Thames Water has just weeks to hammer out a deal or one of the country’s most vital utilities faces a prolonged hand-to-mouth existence in which lenders drip-feed the company enough money every month to pay its bills.
“The board has to advance to the due diligence quickly but this makes that much harder. How do you put a value on the company if you don’t know what it owns?” a source close to the talks said.
I could fill pages with the very very many things that auditors manage not to notice in companies great and small in countries all over the world, despite being paid humongous fees to do so.
Said collection of pages might well be longer than many auditors reports on things they do notice....
How in the name of holy chuffing buggery do Thames Water not have a fixed asset register?
Fresh doubt has been cast over the race to find a white knight buyer for Thames Water as it struggles to provide details of its labyrinthine network of pipes, sewage works and reservoirs.
Thames Water has stepped up the hunt for new investors willing to pump in billions of pounds of emergency capital after the Court of Appeal approved a £3bn emergency debt bailout from its existing creditors.
However, prospective suitors fear the search will be held up by the company’s failure to keep an accurate record of the mountain of assets that it has accumulated over the decades.
Thames Water has just weeks to hammer out a deal or one of the country’s most vital utilities faces a prolonged hand-to-mouth existence in which lenders drip-feed the company enough money every month to pay its bills.
“The board has to advance to the due diligence quickly but this makes that much harder. How do you put a value on the company if you don’t know what it owns?” a source close to the talks said.
I could fill pages with the very very many things that auditors manage not to notice in companies great and small in countries all over the world, despite being paid humongous fees to do so.
Said collection of pages might well be longer than many auditors reports on things they do notice....
No, that's motorcyclists. Hitting a big pothole and coming off at 20mph when you're cycling is much less hazardous than hitting it at 50mph on a motorcycle and being flung into the scenery.
Reaction time too. You usually have enough time to swerve on the bicycle. Why you should always take the secondary position, so you don't get squeezed into them.
But there's likely to be an Audi (or a bus in Edinburgh) up your chuff to kill you in case you fall off because they did not leave themselves enough room to stop, or 13cm to the right in case you have to swerve, or another one up the chuff of the first one that doesn't have time to stop either, to make sure you get killed even if the first one does manage to go around.
Sigh.
Yes, the behaviour of drivers is incredibly frustrating and dangerous. I get tailgated on my scooter basically every time I go out, and I'm not exactly Captain Slow. One scooterist I know has rigged up a device that uses a tiny radar unit to detect tailgating cars and flashes a bright red 'YOU ARE TOO CLOSE' led sign. Apparently it does actually have a noticeable effect, which I didn't expect.
No, that's motorcyclists. Hitting a big pothole and coming off at 20mph when you're cycling is much less hazardous than hitting it at 50mph on a motorcycle and being flung into the scenery.
Reaction time too. You usually have enough time to swerve on the bicycle. Why you should always take the secondary position, so you don't get squeezed into them.
But there's likely to be an Audi (or a bus in Edinburgh) up your chuff to kill you in case you fall off because they did not leave themselves enough room to stop, or 13cm to the right in case you have to swerve, or another one up the chuff of the first one that doesn't have time to stop either, to make sure you get killed even if the first one does manage to go around.
Sigh.
To be fair on the (local) bus drivers, they are among the best drivers in Edinburgh. But yes, that's probably how Zhin Min Soh was killed.
No, that's motorcyclists. Hitting a big pothole and coming off at 20mph when you're cycling is much less hazardous than hitting it at 50mph on a motorcycle and being flung into the scenery.
Reaction time too. You usually have enough time to swerve on the bicycle. Why you should always take the secondary position, so you don't get squeezed into them.
But there's likely to be an Audi (or a bus in Edinburgh) up your chuff to kill you in case you fall off because they did not leave themselves enough room to stop, or 13cm to the right in case you have to swerve, or another one up the chuff of the first one that doesn't have time to stop either, to make sure you get killed even if the first one does manage to go around.
Sigh.
Yes, the behaviour of drivers is incredibly frustrating and dangerous. I get tailgated on my scooter basically every time I go out, and I'm not exactly Captain Slow. One scooterist I know has rigged up a device that uses a tiny radar unit to detect tailgating cars and flashes a bright red 'YOU ARE TOO CLOSE' led sign. Apparently it does actually have a noticeable effect, which I didn't expect.
There must be a motorbike equivalent of a Garmin Varia? PassPixi might help too.
No 10 reports Starmer had a conversation with Trump about progress made in an 'economic prosperity deal ' last night
If Starmer does do a trade deal with US many will be furious, not least because it is likely to include eliminating the digital tax so much loved by the Lib Dems and make re- joining the EU a distant dream
Starmer is governing more as a Conservative PM than anywhere near a Labour one
No, that's motorcyclists. Hitting a big pothole and coming off at 20mph when you're cycling is much less hazardous than hitting it at 50mph on a motorcycle and being flung into the scenery.
Reaction time too. You usually have enough time to swerve on the bicycle. Why you should always take the secondary position, so you don't get squeezed into them.
But there's likely to be an Audi (or a bus in Edinburgh) up your chuff to kill you in case you fall off because they did not leave themselves enough room to stop, or 13cm to the right in case you have to swerve, or another one up the chuff of the first one that doesn't have time to stop either, to make sure you get killed even if the first one does manage to go around.
Sigh.
To be fair on the (local) bus drivers, they are among the best drivers in Edinburgh. But yes, that's probably how Zhin Min Soh was killed.
How times change
When I lived and worked in Edinburgh in the City centre [ early 60s] I always used the excellent bus services but rarely if ever saw a bicycle and bicycle lanes didn't exist to my knowledge
No 10 reports Starmer had a conversation with Trump about progress made in an 'economic prosperity deal ' last night
If Starmer does do a trade deal with US many will be furious, not least because it is likely to include eliminating the digital tax so much loved by the Lib Dems and make re- joining the EU a distant dream
Starmer is governing more as a Conservative PM than anywhere near a Labour one
What worries me more than an economic deal is the language Starner is using about "liking" Trump, and the increasingly pro-Trump mood music.
If Trump very clearly sides with Putin, or attempts to annex Canada or Greenland, on this path Britain is in trouble.
No 10 reports Starmer had a conversation with Trump about progress made in an 'economic prosperity deal ' last night
If Starmer does do a trade deal with US many will be furious, not least because it is likely to include eliminating the digital tax so much loved by the Lib Dems and make re- joining the EU a distant dream
Starmer is governing more as a Conservative PM than anywhere near a Labour one
It is virtually impossible to get a US-UK trade deal. What we can do is talk optimistically about it whenever a new President gets in, then everyone forgets about it for a few years. Does no harm.
No 10 reports Starmer had a conversation with Trump about progress made in an 'economic prosperity deal ' last night
If Starmer does do a trade deal with US many will be furious, not least because it is likely to include eliminating the digital tax so much loved by the Lib Dems and make re- joining the EU a distant dream
Starmer is governing more as a Conservative PM than anywhere near a Labour one
What worries me more than an economic deal is the language Starner is using about "liking" Trump, and the increasingly pro-Trump mood music.
If Trump very clearly sides with Putin, or attempts to annex Canada or Greenland, on this path Britain is in trouble.
It is a balance as nothing is achieved by attacking Trump directly or his bullies as we have to maintain a relationship but I agree not too much bon hommie
No, that's motorcyclists. Hitting a big pothole and coming off at 20mph when you're cycling is much less hazardous than hitting it at 50mph on a motorcycle and being flung into the scenery.
Reaction time too. You usually have enough time to swerve on the bicycle. Why you should always take the secondary position, so you don't get squeezed into them.
But there's likely to be an Audi (or a bus in Edinburgh) up your chuff to kill you in case you fall off because they did not leave themselves enough room to stop, or 13cm to the right in case you have to swerve, or another one up the chuff of the first one that doesn't have time to stop either, to make sure you get killed even if the first one does manage to go around.
Sigh.
To be fair on the (local) bus drivers, they are among the best drivers in Edinburgh. But yes, that's probably how Zhin Min Soh was killed.
How times change
When I lived and worked in Edinburgh in the City centre [ early 60s] I always used the excellent bus services but rarely if ever saw a bicycle and bicycle lanes didn't exist to my knowledge
I'm surprised. Bicycle mileage was 8x higher (per capita) back then than it is now.
A big chunk of the original A-road network also came with segregated cycle lanes, much of which has been sadly built over now.
No 10 reports Starmer had a conversation with Trump about progress made in an 'economic prosperity deal ' last night
If Starmer does do a trade deal with US many will be furious, not least because it is likely to include eliminating the digital tax so much loved by the Lib Dems and make re- joining the EU a distant dream
Starmer is governing more as a Conservative PM than anywhere near a Labour one
It is virtually impossible to get a US-UK trade deal. What we can do is talk optimistically about it whenever a new President gets in, then everyone forgets about it for a few years. Does no harm.
The reality will be tariffs and if they are applied to Europe and not the UK because of our trading relationship with Trump
Millions of people will have their DNA data put up for sale after major at-home testing company 23andMe filed for bankruptcy.
The company, which has tested more than 15m people’s genetic makeup using post-in saliva kits, including more than 250,000 in the UK, announced that it had entered US bankruptcy protection in an attempt to sell the company.
It said that data privacy would be an “important consideration” but added that it was seeking to “maximise the value of its assets”.
Privacy advocates have urged consumers to delete their 23andMe data as the company’s share price crash has raised concerns that the data could be sold off to data brokers or to target adverts.
No, that's motorcyclists. Hitting a big pothole and coming off at 20mph when you're cycling is much less hazardous than hitting it at 50mph on a motorcycle and being flung into the scenery.
Reaction time too. You usually have enough time to swerve on the bicycle. Why you should always take the secondary position, so you don't get squeezed into them.
But there's likely to be an Audi (or a bus in Edinburgh) up your chuff to kill you in case you fall off because they did not leave themselves enough room to stop, or 13cm to the right in case you have to swerve, or another one up the chuff of the first one that doesn't have time to stop either, to make sure you get killed even if the first one does manage to go around.
Sigh.
To be fair on the (local) bus drivers, they are among the best drivers in Edinburgh. But yes, that's probably how Zhin Min Soh was killed.
How times change
When I lived and worked in Edinburgh in the City centre [ early 60s] I always used the excellent bus services but rarely if ever saw a bicycle and bicycle lanes didn't exist to my knowledge
I'm surprised. Bicycle mileage was 8x higher (per capita) back then than it is now.
A big chunk of the original A-road network also came with segregated cycle lanes, much of which has been sadly built over now.
I didn't notice them but no doubt University students did
No 10 reports Starmer had a conversation with Trump about progress made in an 'economic prosperity deal ' last night
If Starmer does do a trade deal with US many will be furious, not least because it is likely to include eliminating the digital tax so much loved by the Lib Dems and make re- joining the EU a distant dream
Starmer is governing more as a Conservative PM than anywhere near a Labour one
It is virtually impossible to get a US-UK trade deal. What we can do is talk optimistically about it whenever a new President gets in, then everyone forgets about it for a few years. Does no harm.
The reality will be tariffs and if they are applied to Europe and not the UK because of our trading relationship with Trump
Tariffs will be imposed and fairly quickly removed/reduced throughout the Trump period. A basket case situation and a nightmare for business planning but Trump absolutely believes they work, until the stock market tells him they absolutely don't. A month later tariffs will be the answer again.
No 10 reports Starmer had a conversation with Trump about progress made in an 'economic prosperity deal ' last night
If Starmer does do a trade deal with US many will be furious, not least because it is likely to include eliminating the digital tax so much loved by the Lib Dems and make re- joining the EU a distant dream
Starmer is governing more as a Conservative PM than anywhere near a Labour one
What worries me more than an economic deal is the language Starner is using about "liking" Trump, and the increasingly pro-Trump mood music.
If Trump very clearly sides with Putin, or attempts to annex Canada or Greenland, on this path Britain is in trouble.
It is a balance as nothing is achieved by attacking Trump directly or his bullies as we have to maintain a relationship but I agree not too much bon hommie
Yes, and he's maintaining that balance very well, so far. However, I'm beginning to be concerned that it may now be starting to tip ovet into being a simpering butler, which would then leave us isolated from allies.
Rather than being an effective and influential bridge across the Atlantic, as he has been up to now, any scenario that, rather, leaves us on Trump's side against Europe, or Canada, has to be rejected unequivocally.
((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h The only possible rationale for sending Vance's wife to Greenland so soon after his incendiary comments is to provoke a reaction from the local population and authorities. The United States is clearly looking to create a casus belli for some form of action.
No, that's motorcyclists. Hitting a big pothole and coming off at 20mph when you're cycling is much less hazardous than hitting it at 50mph on a motorcycle and being flung into the scenery.
Reaction time too. You usually have enough time to swerve on the bicycle. Why you should always take the secondary position, so you don't get squeezed into them.
But there's likely to be an Audi (or a bus in Edinburgh) up your chuff to kill you in case you fall off because they did not leave themselves enough room to stop, or 13cm to the right in case you have to swerve, or another one up the chuff of the first one that doesn't have time to stop either, to make sure you get killed even if the first one does manage to go around.
Sigh.
To be fair on the (local) bus drivers, they are among the best drivers in Edinburgh. But yes, that's probably how Zhin Min Soh was killed.
How times change
When I lived and worked in Edinburgh in the City centre [ early 60s] I always used the excellent bus services but rarely if ever saw a bicycle and bicycle lanes didn't exist to my knowledge
I'm surprised. Bicycle mileage was 8x higher (per capita) back then than it is now.
A big chunk of the original A-road network also came with segregated cycle lanes, much of which has been sadly built over now.
I didn't notice them but no doubt University students did
It's interesting social history.
Car ownership in the UK in 1955 was 3.3 million for 50 million people (now ~40 million for 67 million people).
So urban travel would overwhelmingly be walk, cycle, bus, tram and train.
As far as I can see this is benign. The BoE demands high quality collateral for short term repos. It is transitioning to a repo-led operating framework for supplying reserves. Short term repos were introduced in 2022 to maintain control over interest rates by allowing banks to source reserves against collateral such as gilts at bank rate. As I understand it, the claim on X that the money is going to prop up pension funds and insurance companies is wrong. And the idea this is a full-blown emergency is also wrong.
No, that's motorcyclists. Hitting a big pothole and coming off at 20mph when you're cycling is much less hazardous than hitting it at 50mph on a motorcycle and being flung into the scenery.
Reaction time too. You usually have enough time to swerve on the bicycle. Why you should always take the secondary position, so you don't get squeezed into them.
But there's likely to be an Audi (or a bus in Edinburgh) up your chuff to kill you in case you fall off because they did not leave themselves enough room to stop, or 13cm to the right in case you have to swerve, or another one up the chuff of the first one that doesn't have time to stop either, to make sure you get killed even if the first one does manage to go around.
Sigh.
To be fair on the (local) bus drivers, they are among the best drivers in Edinburgh. But yes, that's probably how Zhin Min Soh was killed.
How times change
When I lived and worked in Edinburgh in the City centre [ early 60s] I always used the excellent bus services but rarely if ever saw a bicycle and bicycle lanes didn't exist to my knowledge
I'm surprised. Bicycle mileage was 8x higher (per capita) back then than it is now.
A big chunk of the original A-road network also came with segregated cycle lanes, much of which has been sadly built over now.
I didn't notice them but no doubt University students did
It's interesting social history.
Car ownership in the UK in 1955 was 3.3 million for 50 million people (now ~40 million for 67 million people).
So urban travel would overwhelmingly be walk, cycle, bus, tram and train.
Certainly bus in Edinburgh but for 6 months I commuted daily from and to Berwick by train [ the wonderful days of steam - the Flying Scotsman snd even Mallard once]
((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h The only possible rationale for sending Vance's wife to Greenland so soon after his incendiary comments is to provoke a reaction from the local population and authorities. The United States is clearly looking to create a casus belli for some form of action.
The strange melange of an "official" visit with the SLOTUS (official term - I think), a Minister (Walz) and a "delegation", combined with afaics little or no communication with the receiving Government, is fascinating.
It looks like a studied disrespect, then JD Vance publicly states, in slightly more words, 'so what?'.
((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h The only possible rationale for sending Vance's wife to Greenland so soon after his incendiary comments is to provoke a reaction from the local population and authorities. The United States is clearly looking to create a casus belli for some form of action.
The strange melange of an "official" visit with the SLOTUS (official term - I think), a Minister (Walz) and a "delegation", combined with afaics little or no communication with the receiving Government, is fascinating.
It looks like a studied disrespect, then JD Vance publicly states, in slightly more words, 'so what?'.
((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges · 1h The only possible rationale for sending Vance's wife to Greenland so soon after his incendiary comments is to provoke a reaction from the local population and authorities. The United States is clearly looking to create a casus belli for some form of action.
Yes, this does smack of US officials inspecting their planned acquisition before the grab. How things would play out if Trump went through with this is anyone's guess. Presumably Canada would go on high alert with troops at the border.
I see Dow futures are up again after Trump hints at postponing some tariffs.
If he or at least some of his inner coterie are not insider trading and making a fortune from this volatility - volatility which they can control in a linear fashion with a single tweet or press comment - then I will be shocked.
It feels like the political equivalent of watching a cricket team bowling a predictable one no ball per over. Someone somewhere is getting rich on this.
Yahoo finance were also reporting last week he was looking to be ‘flexible’ on the tariff issue.
What was also interesting is retail investors have been piling into Tesla.
As far as I can see this is benign. The BoE demands high quality collateral for short term repos. It is transitioning to a repo-led operating framework for supplying reserves. Short term repos were introduced in 2022 to maintain control over interest rates by allowing banks to source reserves against collateral such as gilts at bank rate. As I understand it, the claim on X that the money is going to prop up pension funds and insurance companies is wrong. And the idea this is a full-blown emergency is also wrong.
Comments
Another impediment is Reeves admitting her sums don't add up, since "the world has changed".
If it were me, I would be starting consultations on a new fiscal framework right now (in preference, a few months back).
Austerity (which will probably still be necessary) on its own is not going to get the economy growing again, or improve our borrowing position.
Infrastructure investment with a decent fiscal multiplier (which emphatically does not mean stuff like the carbon capture nonsense) needs to be brought forward asap.
Much of the cost associated with infrastructure in the UK is because weak politicians get cold feet. Only an idiot would make any kind of serious private investment in training/equipment on the assumption of government infrastructure spending - chances are it will be cancelled. And it was.
If he or at least some of his inner coterie are not insider trading and making a fortune from this volatility - volatility which they can control in a linear fashion with a single tweet or press comment - then I will be shocked.
It feels like the political equivalent of watching a cricket team bowling a predictable one no ball per over. Someone somewhere is getting rich on this.
You may have the bandwidth to get into an exhausting legal dispute with a multi billion pound company but I certainly don't... and at the time I was paying £000s on an almost daily basis for building work so £700 was almost small change.
The GOP will be watching and learning.
Just like Tiger Woods...
'Knows the price of everything and the value of nothing'
Over time. they had developed *some* knowledge of what valve did what, but due to interconnectors you may have to turn several to stop the water.
So I can understand utilities with infrastructure more than a century old not knowing precisely where everything is. If you haven't had reason to investigate it, it might be poorly placed on your maps.
Then there's this, where builders piled through a tube tunnel:
"The augers were being used for boring piles from a construction site about 13 metres above the top of the tunnel. The operators of the piling rig involved were unaware that they were working above an operational railway tunnel. Its position was not shown on the site plan, or on any map available to either the developer or the local planning authority. As a consequence, Network Rail was not consulted during the planning application stage and was unaware of the construction activity."
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/547c8fb940f0b60241000157/R032014_140213_Old_Street.pdf
A Peter Thiel product, again.
I think it's also because there is a clear far-right tradition in Italy going back to Mussolini. The FdL originated from the AN which was the successor to the neo-fascist MSI founded in 1946 by supporters of Mussolini. Meloni was in the youth wing of the MSI.
The US Republican Party has a different history.
Our motorways now are carrying not only massively more than was forecast when they were constructed, but in most instances massively more than the maximum capacity expected at the time too.
Getting on with major construction of all transportation infrastructure - roads, rails, cycle paths and more - would unlock much potential growth. Aka induced demand.
The problem is too many idiots think preventing growth, preventing demand, is a good thing.
See Scotland. Or for that matter Nottingham.
With English Local Authorities, it's perhaps tied up with chronic underfunding over two decades or more.
Once EU leaders have a couple of hundred billion defence spending increases actually done, then they might feel emboldened to tell the little shit a few home truths. Until then, discretion is the better part, etc.
It is available from US Govt websites, and back in 2008 a research student in Nottingham researching terrorism was detained by police and locked up for 7 days for having downloaded a copy to a University computer. It can also be bought from Amazon. This was in the New Labour 'authoritarian' period - which was one of the things that got me into blogging back then.
AI summary, which is about right:
In the "Nottingham Two" case, Rizwaan Sabir, a University of Nottingham student, was arrested in 2008 and held for seven days after downloading an al-Qaeda training manual for his research, but was later released without charge and received a £20,000 settlement and apology from the police.
Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottingham_Two
The problem with looking out for Bird Flu in sheep is watery eyes, weak, not eating, and sudden death can all be other things too!
It’s sent my mum into another rant about not to bring those ‘dirty things’ into the house 🤦♀️ the easiest way to clean lambs is in my on suitshower and then bottle feed them in bed as part of my morning routine.
Until it doesn't.
But such survey fees may well be negotiable in practise - eg "I can buy my own camera for £200 and make a video."
His score was reportedly higher than a 48 handicap golfer making par at Troon.
Road wear is proportional to the 4th power of axle weight, remember...
Eventually the County's Highways people appeared to get fed up with the frequent complaints and resurfaced the road completely. Took about a day and a night. Result; no more potholes.
There was a disadvantage; it's quite a narrow road and the double yellow lines weren't replaced, mean that occasionally people parked, causing blockages. However the yellow lines have now been replaced and all is well.
Cycling is best of course
I think 80% may be a bit high for "heavier cars".
Given that he max axle weight of a lorry is about 6-7x that of a 3 ton Tonka Tanker SUV or pickup, that makes it that a max lorry doing something like 4000x as much damage as a max SUV.
Given that lorries do a lot more mileage, I'm inclined to put quite a chunk of the damage on them.
And a significant chunk on slow repairs.
But I've argued on PB before that VED should be set proportional to the 4th power of the axle weight. I suggest that it also be multiplied by the number of axles. We need to come out with a number providing a BIG incentive to have smaller vehicles. Then maybe levied per mile driven !
I'd agree to a similar formula for cycles .. maybe.
Eventually they might learn it's better not to load the business up with unsustainable debt in the first place.
It’s not about the morality or the degree of suffering caused, as I understand it. More to do with terrorism posing a wider threat to the functioning of the state and to public confidence, over and above the immediate threat to the victim. So a terrorist atrocity may form part of a campaign of similar attacks that could potentially be prevented by intelligence.
In that sense some similarity to the distinction police accord to organised crime.
The Lib Dem call for Digital Services Tax to be trebled to 6% is ... interesting.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8j0dgym8w1o
I thought the Ed Davey speech posted at the w/e was sensible and very competent, but perhaps a bit softer than I would like on Mr Trump. He's not the man to do rhetoric.
Somebody should make a ring tone of Daisy Cooper's laugh. I think it was she.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtytjYNCG28&t=11202s
The Lib Dem intermission music was "Walking on Sunshine". What do Ref UK use?
Whatever happened to them?
The trick is to extract the cash and then get out - as Macquarie did.
If you had a strict regulator throughout, then the problem might be minimised, but that has never happened in the last three and half decades.
Public ownership, with a private secure management contract, with performance clauses, might just work.
It would avoid a fair amount of what's basically legalised theft. And the borrowing for investment would be at government borrowing rates.
I'm reminded of the Speech to Text innvation, and a review back in the 1990s where the quality winner was a hardware unit that looked like a tabletop prinnter, and came with a selection of expert systems inside.
It was made by an innovative hardware company which I can't recall but started with K and was named for the innovator who owned it, and cost £8000.
That's now in my phone (or Youtube) at a very high quality.
If you add a whole load of categories to the definition, then the burden on the security services becomes unrealistic, and the enhanced powers of investigation etc begin to cover the entire population,
Hitler's dictatorship differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history. His was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical development, a dictatorship which made complete use of all technical means in a perfect manner for the domination of its own nation.
Through technical devices such as radio and loudspeaker 80 million people were deprived of independent thought. It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man. The telephone, teletype and radio made it possible, for instance, for orders from the highest sources to be transmitted directly to the lowest-ranking units, where, because of the high authority, they were carried out without criticism. Another result was that numerous offices and headquarters were directly attached to the supreme leadership, from which they received their sinister orders directly. Also, one of the results was a far reaching supervision of the citizen of the state and the maintenance of a high degree of secrecy for criminal events.
Perhaps to the outsider this machinery of the state may appear like the lines of a telephone exchange - apparently without system. But like the latter, it could be served and dominated by one single will.
Earlier dictators during their work of leadership needed highly qualified assistants, even at the lowest level, men who could think and act independently. The totalitarian system in the period of modern technical development can dispense with them; the means of communication alone make it possible to mechanise the subordinate leadership. As a result of this there arises a new type: the uncritical recipient of orders.
We had only reached the beginning of the development. The nightmare of many a man that one day nations could be dominated by technical means, was all but realised in Hitler's totalitarian system.
Today the danger of being terrorized by technocracy threatens every country in the world. In modern dictatorship this appears to me inevitable. Therefore, the more technical the world becomes, the more necessary is the promotion of individual freedom and the individual's awareness of himself as a counterbalance.
And it may even have been the 1980s.
Update: Found it. It's OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and Ray Kurzweil.
A lot of the potholes round here are on side streets where large artics never wander. I could see delivery vans being an issue though as they also tend not to have lots of axles to spread the weight.
There's definitely more wear as well as fewer repairs judging by how long a brand new relaid road lasts.
Thames Water, alongside Woking BC and Spelthorne BC and arguably the United Kingdom, joins the club of organisations with debts which can never be repaid.
Allister Heath, when he was still sane, proposed every organisation over a particular size, both private and public, needed a Will to determine what should happen if it became insolvent.
We all know what will happen - the debt will be written off and if necessary Government will fund the operation to keep it going. Northern Rock and the events of 2008 showed many organisations, both private and public, they were literally too big and too important to be allowed to fail.
Safeguarding depositors money in effectively zombie banks and building societies set a precedent rightly or wrongly - the Government knew the social, political and economic consequences of a major bank failure would be unsupportable.
Arms exports are vital to US military supremacy. In just a few weeks, Trump has severely undermined the US defence industry by driving away its best customers. US arms exports were $318.7 billion in FY2024, while the US's own procurement plans for FY2025 are just $167.5 bn.
https://x.com/jakluge/status/1904102871861219836
The broader point is the whole suite of vehicle taxes is ripe for reform. They currently incentivise very heavy zero emission vehicles to make very short trips in urban areas. Bonkers.
Best selling car of 2025 Ford Puma has a kerb weight of 1205kgs.
Usual sized family car of 2025 Ford Kuga has a kerb weight of up to 1844kg
Hyundai Tucson (kerb weight circa 1500kg)
Tesla Model S. (kerb weight circa plus 2000kg)
Which reminds me, I should probably renew that 6 months early before the price goes up...
Sigh.
They could have made a much better job of reform though.
For me this is another area where this Govt do not have the courage of their own convictions to write their own agenda, and are over-timid in the face of oppositionalist politics.
They essentially believe that all the power of all this technological apparatus is just the external manifestation of their greater intefnal intelligence. If no one eise has managed to defeat it, or create an alternative to it, then they simply don't deserve the same level of power as the machine, or the tech bros behind it.
“China has no presence in Greenland. None at all.
China also has no intentions of taking over Greenland. (China generally does not invade other countries).
Neither does Russia. While the Russians are brutally honest about their intentions to take over Ukraine, Poland, the Baltics and Central Asia, they never talk about Greenland….”
“Yes, they will. Pro-independence parties have won for 50 years in Greenland. That does not mean that they are about to become independent.
When you are completely ignorant about a topic, dont try to lecture people like me who actually know it. Instead take the opportunity to listen, learn and get smarter.”
https://x.com/rasmusjarlov/status/1903948875557146772?s=46&t=bulOICNH15U6kB0MwE6Lfw
Pam Bondi warns Jasmine Crockett to ‘tread very carefully’ in what she says about Elon Musk
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/23/bondi-jasmine-crockett-musk-tesla-protests-00244256
No 10 reports Starmer had a conversation with Trump about progress made in an 'economic prosperity deal ' last night
If Starmer does do a trade deal with US many will be furious, not least because it is likely to include eliminating the digital tax so much loved by the Lib Dems and make re- joining the EU a distant dream
Starmer is governing more as a Conservative PM than anywhere near a Labour one
When I lived and worked in Edinburgh in the City centre [ early 60s] I always used the excellent bus services but rarely if ever saw a bicycle and bicycle lanes didn't exist to my knowledge
If Trump very clearly sides with Putin, or attempts to annex Canada or Greenland, on this path Britain is in trouble.
A big chunk of the original A-road network also came with segregated cycle lanes, much of which has been sadly built over now.
The company, which has tested more than 15m people’s genetic makeup using post-in saliva kits, including more than 250,000 in the UK, announced that it had entered US bankruptcy protection in an attempt to sell the company.
It said that data privacy would be an “important consideration” but added that it was seeking to “maximise the value of its assets”.
Privacy advocates have urged consumers to delete their 23andMe data as the company’s share price crash has raised concerns that the data could be sold off to data brokers or to target adverts.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/03/24/millions-of-peoples-dna-up-for-sale-as-23andme-goes-bankrup/
Rather than being an effective and influential bridge across the Atlantic, as he has been up to now, any scenario that, rather, leaves us on Trump's side against Europe, or Canada, has to be rejected unequivocally.
@DPJHodges
·
1h
The only possible rationale for sending Vance's wife to Greenland so soon after his incendiary comments is to provoke a reaction from the local population and authorities. The United States is clearly looking to create a casus belli for some form of action.
https://x.com/DPJHodges/status/1904136471541334322
Car ownership in the UK in 1955 was 3.3 million for 50 million people (now ~40 million for 67 million people).
So urban travel would overwhelmingly be walk, cycle, bus, tram and train.
Passing off with the Poppy Appeal
It looks like a studied disrespect, then JD Vance publicly states, in slightly more words, 'so what?'.
What was also interesting is retail investors have been piling into Tesla.