Some good news about Britain. Seems that by 2030 all the damage done by the 2020-2025 Conservative government (which included Kemi) will be reversed by our glorious leaders. (Source is Casino's report from earlier). Japan which doesn't like immigration is in freefall.
Disclaimer: I used to do these sorts of economic forecasts and they never work out as planned.
"The government will commit to a new rail link between Birmingham and Manchester, reviving HS2’s northern phase in all but name.
Sources earlier told ITV News that it will come as part of a multi-billion-pound infrastructure investment in the long-delayed Northern Powerhouse Rail project, with the plans expected to be announced on Wednesday.
The chancellor will signal her intention to build a new rail line connecting Birmingham and Manchester - but only once other upgrades in the north have been completed.
It could be decades until work on rail lines connecting Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield is completed."
Question for northern England train buffs, what is the best route for a High speed rail into Manchester, could it get in and out of Piccadilly easy enough, or would a separate terminal/Oak common set up be needed? Are the other cities easy to get high speed lines in and out of, or would they need to restrict the speed in urban areas?
Tunnel from just west of the airport, then either rise to a surface station around Ardwick (HS2 plans) or build a huge underground through station (preferred by Burnham) that continues on to Liverpool / Leeds connections.
*Cough* I think by 'north of England train buffs' he meant me.
Though ManchesterKurt's answer is entirely accurate and has the advantage that I rarely achieve of brevity. What follows is merely to expand on his point.
The point is that you either use the existing (full) infrastructure or you need a largely or wholly tunnelled route. If you are using a tunnelled route you have almost limitless options (the North is rather easier, geologically, to tunnel under than London) - the route Manchester Kurt describes has the advantage that it is the one described by the HS2 bill which has not yet been killed, so gives a head start in legislative terms. But other tunnelled routes have been (and indeed, I am sure, are being) considered (such as one which would go rather more directly from Warrington towards Manchester over Carrington Moss, diving underground near J8 of the M60).
Having an underground station in central Manchester has two big advantages over a surface station: 1) A surface station implies a lot of surface infrastructure - mainly the viaducts which would approach the new station - which kill off the opportunity of development on that land. At the moment that land is dead - sterilised by uncertainty, and occupied by low grade industrial/storage - but it has the potential to be some of the highest value land in the North (see: all the other city-centre-adjacent parcels of land around Manchester). The benefits of allowing that land to be developed are £billions. 2) A surface station must be a turnback station: through trains between Liverpool and Leeds (say) would need to reverse and go out the other way. This is frsutrating for passengers, but also builds in unreliability and is a massively inefficient way of using capacity. Through stations just work better than turnback stations operationally.
An underground station would be more expensive than a surface station, but (because more efficient, therefore smaller) not actually THAT much more expensive (see also my early point about northern geology being more favourable than London's). My view is that the benefits of undergrounding are likely to exceed the costs.
Liverpool faces slightly different challenges: Liverpool is at the edge, so the need for a through station is less. You could in theory get the trains to go into Lime Street. The problem is that Lime Street (and, more importantly, the railway approaching Lime Street) is almost full. That can be addressed to some extent by diverting some of the existing Lime Street services to Central and expanding Central (this is not as daft as it sounds - Central is underground, but there are old tunnels which approach it from the Chat Moss line, and the oppotunity to expand the station is not fanciful).
This sort of report is becoming increasingly common. If any member of the public had used such threatening language against ICE, they would seriously risk being shot.
ICE agents in Minneapolis violently detained, threatened, and arrested a U.S. citizen for one reason only, he refused to prove his citizenship.
In the video, agents immediately escalate to physical force. A man stands with his hands up, repeatedly saying, “I’m not doing anything,” while agents shove him, force him against his car, and begin an illegal search.
No crime. No warrant. No probable cause.
An agent falsely claims, “That’s assault,” while they are actively assaulting a U.S. citizen who is complying and not resisting.
Moments later, the agent admits the truth, saying, “And all we needed was your ID,” openly acknowledging this was an unlawful detention based solely on a refusal to produce identification.
That is not legal.
The short agent then threatens, “Don’t move or you will be fucking tased.”
The man calmly responds, “I’m not moving.”
The short agent escalates again, snarling, “You’re a fucking bitch, and you’re going to learn the hard way.”
That is a direct threat of violence against a U.S. citizen whose hands are already behind his back.
They dig through his pockets anyway, repeating, “I just asked you for an ID,” as if that excuses violating the Fourth Amendment.
Then, in a moment that exposes the entire operation, the short agent announces, “He has a gun on him! Wouldn’t you look at that.”
As if Minnesota is not a conceal-carry state.
The man immediately responds, “A fully registered firearm. Because I’m a U.S. citizen.”
The short agent casually tosses the firearm onto the car after removing the magazine, demonstrating reckless handling of a legally owned weapon.
By this point, they have removed his wallet, yet, still do not check his ID, and still continue the arrest.
It's First Amendment Protected Speech to insult a police officer, anyway, even if he had done so. There have been Supreme Court cases setting precendent.
It's the usual cop problem - undertrained and too sensitive. I saw a vid yesterday with leaked briefings suddenly being used to try and upskill ICE agents - but it was on Meidastouch who do about 47 videos per day so hard to find again.
Several federal court decisions have found that expressing contempt for police officers is protected speech under the First Amendment. In City of Houston v. Hill (1987), the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment "protects a significant amount of verbal criticism and challenge directed at police officers." In Swartz v. Insogna (2013), the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that extending the middle finger at an officer is not grounds to stop or arrest an individual.
Of course. But I think it's slightly naive to think that the instigators of this policy are particularly bothered about the law.
The training pays lip service to constitutional rights, but the message from above is "absolute immunity".
I'm willing to bet this guy faces no criminal charges.
A 21-year-old in Santa Ana was permanently blinded in one eye after a DHS agent fired a “less-lethal” round at close range. He underwent six hours of surgery to remove plastic, glass, and metal embedded in his face... https://x.com/TheWarMonitor/status/2011243359705448923
Hard agree. That's a huge problem in the USA system imo, including with existing undertrained policemen in the 18k police agencies. It's all down to every individual member of the public to enforce their individual rights, or in practice they are lost.
And as we know the Trump's Corrupted Government in a corrupted State are out to ensure that they are lost.
I think that as a mass protest movement builds, they will follow the Martin Luther King model of being highly disciplined.
Some good news about Britain. Seems that by 2030 all the damage done by the 2020-2025 Conservative government (which included Kemi) will be reversed by our glorious leaders. (Source is Casino's report from earlier). Japan which doesn't like immigration is in freefall.
Disclaimer: I used to do these sorts of economic forecasts and they never work out as planned.
"The government will commit to a new rail link between Birmingham and Manchester, reviving HS2’s northern phase in all but name.
Sources earlier told ITV News that it will come as part of a multi-billion-pound infrastructure investment in the long-delayed Northern Powerhouse Rail project, with the plans expected to be announced on Wednesday.
The chancellor will signal her intention to build a new rail line connecting Birmingham and Manchester - but only once other upgrades in the north have been completed.
It could be decades until work on rail lines connecting Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield is completed."
Question for northern England train buffs, what is the best route for a High speed rail into Manchester, could it get in and out of Piccadilly easy enough, or would a separate terminal/Oak common set up be needed? Are the other cities easy to get high speed lines in and out of, or would they need to restrict the speed in urban areas?
Tunnel from just west of the airport, then either rise to a surface station around Ardwick (HS2 plans) or build a huge underground through station (preferred by Burnham) that continues on to Liverpool / Leeds connections.
*Cough* I think by 'north of England train buffs' he meant me.
Though ManchesterKurt's answer is entirely accurate and has the advantage that I rarely achieve of brevity.
The point is that you either use the existing (full) infrastructure or you need a largely or wholly tunnelled route. If you are using a tunnelled route you have almost limitless options (the North is rather easier, geologically, to tunnel under than London) - the route Manchester Kurt describes has the advantage that it is the one described by the HS2 bill which has not yet been killed, so gives a head start in legislative terms. But other tunnelled routes have been (and indeed, I am sure, are being) considered (such as one which would go rather more directly from Warrington towards Manchester over Carrington Moss, diving underground near J8 of the M60).
Having an underground station in central Manchester has two big advantages over a surface station: 1) A surface station implies a lot of surface infrastructure - mainly the viaducts which would approach the new station - which kill off the opportunity of development on that land. At the moment that land is dead - sterilised by uncertainty, and occupied by low grade industrial/storage - but it has the potential to be some of the highest value land in the North (see: all the other city-centre-adjacent parcels of land around Manchester). The benefits of allowing that land to be developed are £billions. 2) A surface station must be a turnback station: through trains between Liverpool and Leeds (say) would need to reverse and go out the other way. This is frsutrating for passengers, but also builds in unreliability and is a massively inefficient way of using capacity. Through stations just work better than turnback stations operationally.
An underground station would be more expensive than a surface station, but (because more efficient, therefore smaller) not actually THAT much more expensive (see also my early point about northern geology being more favourable than London's). My view is that the benefits of undergrounding are likely to exceed the costs.
Liverpool faces slightly different challenges: Liverpool is at the edge, so the need for a through station is less. You could in theory get the trains to go into Lime Street. The problem is that Lime Street (and, more importantly, the railway approaching Lime Street) is almost full. That can be addressed to some extent by diverting some of the existing Lime Street services to Central and expanding Central (this is not as daft as it sounds - Central is underground, but there are old tunnels which approach it from the Chat Moss line, and the oppotunity to expand the station is not fanciful).
LOL 😹
Sarah Pochin seems to have gone a little of script, contradicting the Reform policy of opposing NPR (or Brum to Manc) rail lines.
"The government will commit to a new rail link between Birmingham and Manchester, reviving HS2’s northern phase in all but name.
Sources earlier told ITV News that it will come as part of a multi-billion-pound infrastructure investment in the long-delayed Northern Powerhouse Rail project, with the plans expected to be announced on Wednesday.
The chancellor will signal her intention to build a new rail line connecting Birmingham and Manchester - but only once other upgrades in the north have been completed.
It could be decades until work on rail lines connecting Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield is completed."
Question for northern England train buffs, what is the best route for a High speed rail into Manchester, could it get in and out of Piccadilly easy enough, or would a separate terminal/Oak common set up be needed? Are the other cities easy to get high speed lines in and out of, or would they need to restrict the speed in urban areas?
Tunnel from just west of the airport, then either rise to a surface station around Ardwick (HS2 plans) or build a huge underground through station (preferred by Burnham) that continues on to Liverpool / Leeds connections.
The stupidity of the British HS network is that it is / was supposed to be a series of terminal stations. Birmingham Curzon Street*. Euston. St Pancras. Leeds. Manchester.
For Manchester the idea was that the HS tunnel would rise near Ardwick then run alongside the existing line with a station alongside Piccadilly on the east side. Trains on NRP would need to reverse. An alternative proposal is for an underground east-west connection across the city centre to bypass the Castlefield viaduct. Would be able to connect towards Liverpool and HS2 in the west and Leeds in the east. But won't happen because this country is shit**
*Got to love Curzon Street. Built to accommodate trains to London and to the north via the Y-shaped lines north of the delta junction. All that has been scrapped - as has the plan for 2 x 400m trainsets. But Curzon Street is still being built with platforms for these services that nobody expects to ever run and for trains they are not going to build. Why? Because the construction cost of all that unused infrastructure is less than the variation cost in the contract.
The Islamic takeover of Iran in 1979 was one of the most consequential events of the second half of the last century, whose ghastly effects are with us still. Its possible collapse matters. Iranians are being massacred in their thousands and the world, especially those usually shrieking about every bad thing as if it were The End of Times, is silent and standing by. Our indifference will cost us.
Some good news about Britain. Seems that by 2030 all the damage done by the 2020-2025 Conservative government (which included Kemi) will be reversed by our glorious leaders. (Source is Casino's report from earlier). Japan which doesn't like immigration is in freefall.
Disclaimer: I used to do these sorts of economic forecasts and they never work out as planned.
How would this work out on GDP per capita? I suspect the trajectories for Japan and the UK would be reversed.
There's nothing useful about growing GDP if you're not growing GDP per capita; nor anything to fear about falling GDP if GDP per capita is not falling.
The Islamic takeover of Iran in 1979 was one of the most consequential events of the second half of the last century, whose ghastly effects are with us still. Its possible collapse matters. Iranians are being massacred in their thousands and the world, especially those usually shrieking about every bad thing as if it were The End of Times, is silent and standing by. Our indifference will cost us.
What are you thinking? A bit of the old regime change via invasion? Maybe it'll be brilliant this time.
The Islamic takeover of Iran in 1979 was one of the most consequential events of the second half of the last century, whose ghastly effects are with us still. Its possible collapse matters. Iranians are being massacred in their thousands and the world, especially those usually shrieking about every bad thing as if it were The End of Times, is silent and standing by. Our indifference will cost us.
The Islamic takeover of Iran in 1979 was one of the most consequential events of the second half of the last century, whose ghastly effects are with us still. Its possible collapse matters. Iranians are being massacred in their thousands and the world, especially those usually shrieking about every bad thing as if it were The End of Times, is silent and standing by. Our indifference will cost us.
What do you want to happen insofar as this company of impotents can make the slightest difference?
This sort of report is becoming increasingly common. If any member of the public had used such threatening language against ICE, they would seriously risk being shot.
ICE agents in Minneapolis violently detained, threatened, and arrested a U.S. citizen for one reason only, he refused to prove his citizenship.
In the video, agents immediately escalate to physical force. A man stands with his hands up, repeatedly saying, “I’m not doing anything,” while agents shove him, force him against his car, and begin an illegal search.
No crime. No warrant. No probable cause.
An agent falsely claims, “That’s assault,” while they are actively assaulting a U.S. citizen who is complying and not resisting.
Moments later, the agent admits the truth, saying, “And all we needed was your ID,” openly acknowledging this was an unlawful detention based solely on a refusal to produce identification.
That is not legal.
The short agent then threatens, “Don’t move or you will be fucking tased.”
The man calmly responds, “I’m not moving.”
The short agent escalates again, snarling, “You’re a fucking bitch, and you’re going to learn the hard way.”
That is a direct threat of violence against a U.S. citizen whose hands are already behind his back.
They dig through his pockets anyway, repeating, “I just asked you for an ID,” as if that excuses violating the Fourth Amendment.
Then, in a moment that exposes the entire operation, the short agent announces, “He has a gun on him! Wouldn’t you look at that.”
As if Minnesota is not a conceal-carry state.
The man immediately responds, “A fully registered firearm. Because I’m a U.S. citizen.”
The short agent casually tosses the firearm onto the car after removing the magazine, demonstrating reckless handling of a legally owned weapon.
By this point, they have removed his wallet, yet, still do not check his ID, and still continue the arrest.
There are situations where you have to comply and not doing so can be an offense i believe. The big problem is police (not just US police) act as though failure to obey them is unacceptable in all circumstances, even if they give unlawful or contradictory commands. And will get violent.
And that the practical reality is if you object you may be assaulted or shot, and if you are lucky can challenge them legally later (before the SC says police are above the law), meaning for your safety you should do what they say even if they are unlawful, only makes it worse.
This isn't the police; it's immigration agents who do not have police powers regarding citizens. (And in this case, even if they were regular police, they'd still be well outside their powers.)
And there are thousands of these agents, purposefully deployed in a relatively small US city so that such common interactions can have a disproportionate effect.
The practical reality is that it is a campaign of both intimidation and provocation.
They see themselves as a counterinsurgency force, carrying out raids against a terrorist-supporting population. They behave as if US suburbs are West Belfast in 1973, or Basra in 2007.
Or Tehran 2026...
The trouble with that kind of analogy is it might seem a good way to bash Trump by comparing the US to the mullahs but what you actually end up doing is understating what is happening in Iran. Thousands massacred in a matter of days. Do you really want to compare that to the situation in the US?
However if you're fixated on cultural relativism and a narrow obsession with western populists its a comparison that does its job.
"The government will commit to a new rail link between Birmingham and Manchester, reviving HS2’s northern phase in all but name.
Sources earlier told ITV News that it will come as part of a multi-billion-pound infrastructure investment in the long-delayed Northern Powerhouse Rail project, with the plans expected to be announced on Wednesday.
The chancellor will signal her intention to build a new rail line connecting Birmingham and Manchester - but only once other upgrades in the north have been completed.
It could be decades until work on rail lines connecting Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield is completed."
Question for northern England train buffs, what is the best route for a High speed rail into Manchester, could it get in and out of Piccadilly easy enough, or would a separate terminal/Oak common set up be needed? Are the other cities easy to get high speed lines in and out of, or would they need to restrict the speed in urban areas?
Tunnel from just west of the airport, then either rise to a surface station around Ardwick (HS2 plans) or build a huge underground through station (preferred by Burnham) that continues on to Liverpool / Leeds connections.
*Cough* I think by 'north of England train buffs' he meant me.
Though ManchesterKurt's answer is entirely accurate and has the advantage that I rarely achieve of brevity.
The point is that you either use the existing (full) infrastructure or you need a largely or wholly tunnelled route. If you are using a tunnelled route you have almost limitless options (the North is rather easier, geologically, to tunnel under than London) - the route Manchester Kurt describes has the advantage that it is the one described by the HS2 bill which has not yet been killed, so gives a head start in legislative terms. But other tunnelled routes have been (and indeed, I am sure, are being) considered (such as one which would go rather more directly from Warrington towards Manchester over Carrington Moss, diving underground near J8 of the M60).
Having an underground station in central Manchester has two big advantages over a surface station: 1) A surface station implies a lot of surface infrastructure - mainly the viaducts which would approach the new station - which kill off the opportunity of development on that land. At the moment that land is dead - sterilised by uncertainty, and occupied by low grade industrial/storage - but it has the potential to be some of the highest value land in the North (see: all the other city-centre-adjacent parcels of land around Manchester). The benefits of allowing that land to be developed are £billions. 2) A surface station must be a turnback station: through trains between Liverpool and Leeds (say) would need to reverse and go out the other way. This is frsutrating for passengers, but also builds in unreliability and is a massively inefficient way of using capacity. Through stations just work better than turnback stations operationally.
An underground station would be more expensive than a surface station, but (because more efficient, therefore smaller) not actually THAT much more expensive (see also my early point about northern geology being more favourable than London's). My view is that the benefits of undergrounding are likely to exceed the costs.
Liverpool faces slightly different challenges: Liverpool is at the edge, so the need for a through station is less. You could in theory get the trains to go into Lime Street. The problem is that Lime Street (and, more importantly, the railway approaching Lime Street) is almost full. That can be addressed to some extent by diverting some of the existing Lime Street services to Central and expanding Central (this is not as daft as it sounds - Central is underground, but there are old tunnels which approach it from the Chat Moss line, and the oppotunity to expand the station is not fanciful).
LOL 😹
Sarah Pochin seems to have gone a little of script, contradicting the Reform policy of opposing NPR (or Brum to Manc) rail lines.
That's interesting - do you have a link to that?
This is relevant because one of my worries about the Liverpool to Manchester section is that while - for now - it has the political backing of all the authorities along the route (in contrast to HS2), there is a combined Cheshire and Warrington mayoral election due whenever it is allowed to be held. I had thought Reform winning that would be something of a hindrance to the project. But perhaps Reform NW view things differently?
Some good news about Britain. Seems that by 2030 all the damage done by the 2020-2025 Conservative government (which included Kemi) will be reversed by our glorious leaders. (Source is Casino's report from earlier). Japan which doesn't like immigration is in freefall.
Disclaimer: I used to do these sorts of economic forecasts and they never work out as planned.
Per capita or its meaningless.
The question being answered with that graph was economic weight (total GDP). Monaco and Ireland have high GDP/head but wouldn't be much good in a fight. Perhaps a few economists on a front line checking their theories from an empirical POV would be both interesting and amusing.
"The government will commit to a new rail link between Birmingham and Manchester, reviving HS2’s northern phase in all but name.
Sources earlier told ITV News that it will come as part of a multi-billion-pound infrastructure investment in the long-delayed Northern Powerhouse Rail project, with the plans expected to be announced on Wednesday.
The chancellor will signal her intention to build a new rail line connecting Birmingham and Manchester - but only once other upgrades in the north have been completed.
It could be decades until work on rail lines connecting Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield is completed."
Question for northern England train buffs, what is the best route for a High speed rail into Manchester, could it get in and out of Piccadilly easy enough, or would a separate terminal/Oak common set up be needed? Are the other cities easy to get high speed lines in and out of, or would they need to restrict the speed in urban areas?
Tunnel from just west of the airport, then either rise to a surface station around Ardwick (HS2 plans) or build a huge underground through station (preferred by Burnham) that continues on to Liverpool / Leeds connections.
*Cough* I think by 'north of England train buffs' he meant me.
Though ManchesterKurt's answer is entirely accurate and has the advantage that I rarely achieve of brevity.
The point is that you either use the existing (full) infrastructure or you need a largely or wholly tunnelled route. If you are using a tunnelled route you have almost limitless options (the North is rather easier, geologically, to tunnel under than London) - the route Manchester Kurt describes has the advantage that it is the one described by the HS2 bill which has not yet been killed, so gives a head start in legislative terms. But other tunnelled routes have been (and indeed, I am sure, are being) considered (such as one which would go rather more directly from Warrington towards Manchester over Carrington Moss, diving underground near J8 of the M60).
Having an underground station in central Manchester has two big advantages over a surface station: 1) A surface station implies a lot of surface infrastructure - mainly the viaducts which would approach the new station - which kill off the opportunity of development on that land. At the moment that land is dead - sterilised by uncertainty, and occupied by low grade industrial/storage - but it has the potential to be some of the highest value land in the North (see: all the other city-centre-adjacent parcels of land around Manchester). The benefits of allowing that land to be developed are £billions. 2) A surface station must be a turnback station: through trains between Liverpool and Leeds (say) would need to reverse and go out the other way. This is frsutrating for passengers, but also builds in unreliability and is a massively inefficient way of using capacity. Through stations just work better than turnback stations operationally.
An underground station would be more expensive than a surface station, but (because more efficient, therefore smaller) not actually THAT much more expensive (see also my early point about northern geology being more favourable than London's). My view is that the benefits of undergrounding are likely to exceed the costs.
Liverpool faces slightly different challenges: Liverpool is at the edge, so the need for a through station is less. You could in theory get the trains to go into Lime Street. The problem is that Lime Street (and, more importantly, the railway approaching Lime Street) is almost full. That can be addressed to some extent by diverting some of the existing Lime Street services to Central and expanding Central (this is not as daft as it sounds - Central is underground, but there are old tunnels which approach it from the Chat Moss line, and the oppotunity to expand the station is not fanciful).
LOL 😹
Sarah Pochin seems to have gone a little of script, contradicting the Reform policy of opposing NPR (or Brum to Manc) rail lines.
That's interesting - do you have a link to that?
This is relevant because one of my worries about the Liverpool to Manchester section is that while - for now - it has the political backing of all the authorities along the route (in contrast to HS2), there is a combined Cheshire and Warrington mayoral election due whenever it is allowed to be held. I had thought Reform winning that would be something of a hindrance to the project. But perhaps Reform NW view things differently?
I was watching the statement on BBC Parliament.
About 5mins after her question, she also got called out for calling a Labour MP a liar for stating the Reform policy was to bin off NPR.
Probably about 13:40 ish on iPlayer on BBC Parliament
Some good news about Britain. Seems that by 2030 all the damage done by the 2020-2025 Conservative government (which included Kemi) will be reversed by our glorious leaders. (Source is Casino's report from earlier). Japan which doesn't like immigration is in freefall.
Disclaimer: I used to do these sorts of economic forecasts and they never work out as planned.
Japan is in freefall because of no immigration but India is rocketing up the charts despite net emigration?
"The government will commit to a new rail link between Birmingham and Manchester, reviving HS2’s northern phase in all but name.
Sources earlier told ITV News that it will come as part of a multi-billion-pound infrastructure investment in the long-delayed Northern Powerhouse Rail project, with the plans expected to be announced on Wednesday.
The chancellor will signal her intention to build a new rail line connecting Birmingham and Manchester - but only once other upgrades in the north have been completed.
It could be decades until work on rail lines connecting Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield is completed."
Question for northern England train buffs, what is the best route for a High speed rail into Manchester, could it get in and out of Piccadilly easy enough, or would a separate terminal/Oak common set up be needed? Are the other cities easy to get high speed lines in and out of, or would they need to restrict the speed in urban areas?
Tunnel from just west of the airport, then either rise to a surface station around Ardwick (HS2 plans) or build a huge underground through station (preferred by Burnham) that continues on to Liverpool / Leeds connections.
*Cough* I think by 'north of England train buffs' he meant me.
Though ManchesterKurt's answer is entirely accurate and has the advantage that I rarely achieve of brevity.
The point is that you either use the existing (full) infrastructure or you need a largely or wholly tunnelled route. If you are using a tunnelled route you have almost limitless options (the North is rather easier, geologically, to tunnel under than London) - the route Manchester Kurt describes has the advantage that it is the one described by the HS2 bill which has not yet been killed, so gives a head start in legislative terms. But other tunnelled routes have been (and indeed, I am sure, are being) considered (such as one which would go rather more directly from Warrington towards Manchester over Carrington Moss, diving underground near J8 of the M60).
Having an underground station in central Manchester has two big advantages over a surface station: 1) A surface station implies a lot of surface infrastructure - mainly the viaducts which would approach the new station - which kill off the opportunity of development on that land. At the moment that land is dead - sterilised by uncertainty, and occupied by low grade industrial/storage - but it has the potential to be some of the highest value land in the North (see: all the other city-centre-adjacent parcels of land around Manchester). The benefits of allowing that land to be developed are £billions. 2) A surface station must be a turnback station: through trains between Liverpool and Leeds (say) would need to reverse and go out the other way. This is frsutrating for passengers, but also builds in unreliability and is a massively inefficient way of using capacity. Through stations just work better than turnback stations operationally.
An underground station would be more expensive than a surface station, but (because more efficient, therefore smaller) not actually THAT much more expensive (see also my early point about northern geology being more favourable than London's). My view is that the benefits of undergrounding are likely to exceed the costs.
Liverpool faces slightly different challenges: Liverpool is at the edge, so the need for a through station is less. You could in theory get the trains to go into Lime Street. The problem is that Lime Street (and, more importantly, the railway approaching Lime Street) is almost full. That can be addressed to some extent by diverting some of the existing Lime Street services to Central and expanding Central (this is not as daft as it sounds - Central is underground, but there are old tunnels which approach it from the Chat Moss line, and the oppotunity to expand the station is not fanciful).
LOL 😹
Sarah Pochin seems to have gone a little of script, contradicting the Reform policy of opposing NPR (or Brum to Manc) rail lines.
That's interesting - do you have a link to that?
This is relevant because one of my worries about the Liverpool to Manchester section is that while - for now - it has the political backing of all the authorities along the route (in contrast to HS2), there is a combined Cheshire and Warrington mayoral election due whenever it is allowed to be held. I had thought Reform winning that would be something of a hindrance to the project. But perhaps Reform NW view things differently?
I was watching the statement on BBC Parliament.
About 5mins after her question, she also got called out for calling a Labour MP a liar for stating the Reform policy was to bin off NPR.
Probably about 13:40 ish on iPlayer on BBC Parliament
Some good news about Britain. Seems that by 2030 all the damage done by the 2020-2025 Conservative government (which included Kemi) will be reversed by our glorious leaders. (Source is Casino's report from earlier). Japan which doesn't like immigration is in freefall.
Disclaimer: I used to do these sorts of economic forecasts and they never work out as planned.
Per capita or its meaningless.
International GDP comparisons are pretty worthless anyway, because countries differ widely in how they collect and process GDP data. The methodology is partly standardised under the SNA (System of National Accounts) standard, but that still allows countries considerable discretion in vital areas. Obviously the journalists and podcasters who make these glib comparisons have no idea about methodological controversies in national income data, but as usual they make ill-informed and meaningless comparisons.
One glaring example: The SNA allows for GDP to be measured using three equivalent approaches: output (production), expenditure, or income. In theory, all three should yield the same result. In practice, they diverge widely due to data collection challenges, and countries prioritize one method over the others. The UK primarily focuses on the output (production) approach. The US primarily focuses on the expenditure approach (GDP = Consumption + Investment + Government spending + Net Exports).
Again, data collection and surveying methodologies differ internationally, as do base year revisions. And some countries update production indices on yearly bases, others, more rarely. And countries have different methods for calculating GDP deflators. And of course there's the matter of converting different currencies into a standard currency in a world of floating exchange rates.
For all these reasons, the more you know about how they are calculated, the more you realise that international GDP or GDP per capita comparisons have huge margins of error and are pretty worthless.
Some good news about Britain. Seems that by 2030 all the damage done by the 2020-2025 Conservative government (which included Kemi) will be reversed by our glorious leaders. (Source is Casino's report from earlier). Japan which doesn't like immigration is in freefall.
Disclaimer: I used to do these sorts of economic forecasts and they never work out as planned.
Japan is in freefall because of no immigration but India is rocketing up the charts despite net emigration?
India has over 10x the number of people and disproportionately younger too. Of course it should climb.
"The government will commit to a new rail link between Birmingham and Manchester, reviving HS2’s northern phase in all but name.
Sources earlier told ITV News that it will come as part of a multi-billion-pound infrastructure investment in the long-delayed Northern Powerhouse Rail project, with the plans expected to be announced on Wednesday.
The chancellor will signal her intention to build a new rail line connecting Birmingham and Manchester - but only once other upgrades in the north have been completed.
It could be decades until work on rail lines connecting Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield is completed."
Question for northern England train buffs, what is the best route for a High speed rail into Manchester, could it get in and out of Piccadilly easy enough, or would a separate terminal/Oak common set up be needed? Are the other cities easy to get high speed lines in and out of, or would they need to restrict the speed in urban areas?
Tunnel from just west of the airport, then either rise to a surface station around Ardwick (HS2 plans) or build a huge underground through station (preferred by Burnham) that continues on to Liverpool / Leeds connections.
*Cough* I think by 'north of England train buffs' he meant me.
Though ManchesterKurt's answer is entirely accurate and has the advantage that I rarely achieve of brevity.
The point is that you either use the existing (full) infrastructure or you need a largely or wholly tunnelled route. If you are using a tunnelled route you have almost limitless options (the North is rather easier, geologically, to tunnel under than London) - the route Manchester Kurt describes has the advantage that it is the one described by the HS2 bill which has not yet been killed, so gives a head start in legislative terms. But other tunnelled routes have been (and indeed, I am sure, are being) considered (such as one which would go rather more directly from Warrington towards Manchester over Carrington Moss, diving underground near J8 of the M60).
Having an underground station in central Manchester has two big advantages over a surface station: 1) A surface station implies a lot of surface infrastructure - mainly the viaducts which would approach the new station - which kill off the opportunity of development on that land. At the moment that land is dead - sterilised by uncertainty, and occupied by low grade industrial/storage - but it has the potential to be some of the highest value land in the North (see: all the other city-centre-adjacent parcels of land around Manchester). The benefits of allowing that land to be developed are £billions. 2) A surface station must be a turnback station: through trains between Liverpool and Leeds (say) would need to reverse and go out the other way. This is frsutrating for passengers, but also builds in unreliability and is a massively inefficient way of using capacity. Through stations just work better than turnback stations operationally.
An underground station would be more expensive than a surface station, but (because more efficient, therefore smaller) not actually THAT much more expensive (see also my early point about northern geology being more favourable than London's). My view is that the benefits of undergrounding are likely to exceed the costs.
Liverpool faces slightly different challenges: Liverpool is at the edge, so the need for a through station is less. You could in theory get the trains to go into Lime Street. The problem is that Lime Street (and, more importantly, the railway approaching Lime Street) is almost full. That can be addressed to some extent by diverting some of the existing Lime Street services to Central and expanding Central (this is not as daft as it sounds - Central is underground, but there are old tunnels which approach it from the Chat Moss line, and the oppotunity to expand the station is not fanciful).
LOL 😹
Sarah Pochin seems to have gone a little of script, contradicting the Reform policy of opposing NPR (or Brum to Manc) rail lines.
That's interesting - do you have a link to that?
This is relevant because one of my worries about the Liverpool to Manchester section is that while - for now - it has the political backing of all the authorities along the route (in contrast to HS2), there is a combined Cheshire and Warrington mayoral election due whenever it is allowed to be held. I had thought Reform winning that would be something of a hindrance to the project. But perhaps Reform NW view things differently?
I was watching the statement on BBC Parliament.
About 5mins after her question, she also got called out for calling a Labour MP a liar for stating the Reform policy was to bin off NPR.
Probably about 13:40 ish on iPlayer on BBC Parliament
Thanks for hunting that down Kurt. Not clear whether Sarah Pochin was articulating a view or just reacting to a criticism of Reform, however accurate. But interesting nonetheless.
Shabana Mahmood declares that she has lost confidence in Craig Guildford, the West Midlands chief constable, over the ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans
She says that there has been a failure of leadership and that ultimate responsibility rests with Guildford
She says the HMIC report into the decision by West Midlands police to ban Israeli fans is 'damning'
She says there was 'little engagement' with the Jewish community. Intelligence used to justify the ban was exaggerated or simply untrue
The report also highlights misleading public statements from West Midlands police, and that extends to the chief constable himself
Mahmood: 'On an issue of huge significance we have witnessed a failure of leadership that has harmed its reputation and eroded public confidence more widely.'
The lack of transcription - even automated - on 'parliamentlive.tv' is irritating. And the export restrictions block anyone else building a better alternative.
Shabana Mahmood declares that she has lost confidence in Craig Guildford, the West Midlands chief constable, over the ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans
She says that there has been a failure of leadership and that ultimate responsibility rests with Guildford
She says the HMIC report into the decision by West Midlands police to ban Israeli fans is 'damning'
She says there was 'little engagement' with the Jewish community. Intelligence used to justify the ban was exaggerated or simply untrue
The report also highlights misleading public statements from West Midlands police, and that extends to the chief constable himself
Mahmood: 'On an issue of huge significance we have witnessed a failure of leadership that has harmed its reputation and eroded public confidence more widely.'
"The government will commit to a new rail link between Birmingham and Manchester, reviving HS2’s northern phase in all but name.
Sources earlier told ITV News that it will come as part of a multi-billion-pound infrastructure investment in the long-delayed Northern Powerhouse Rail project, with the plans expected to be announced on Wednesday.
The chancellor will signal her intention to build a new rail line connecting Birmingham and Manchester - but only once other upgrades in the north have been completed.
It could be decades until work on rail lines connecting Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield is completed."
Question for northern England train buffs, what is the best route for a High speed rail into Manchester, could it get in and out of Piccadilly easy enough, or would a separate terminal/Oak common set up be needed? Are the other cities easy to get high speed lines in and out of, or would they need to restrict the speed in urban areas?
Tunnel from just west of the airport, then either rise to a surface station around Ardwick (HS2 plans) or build a huge underground through station (preferred by Burnham) that continues on to Liverpool / Leeds connections.
*Cough* I think by 'north of England train buffs' he meant me.
Though ManchesterKurt's answer is entirely accurate and has the advantage that I rarely achieve of brevity. What follows is merely to expand on his point.
The point is that you either use the existing (full) infrastructure or you need a largely or wholly tunnelled route. If you are using a tunnelled route you have almost limitless options (the North is rather easier, geologically, to tunnel under than London) - the route Manchester Kurt describes has the advantage that it is the one described by the HS2 bill which has not yet been killed, so gives a head start in legislative terms. But other tunnelled routes have been (and indeed, I am sure, are being) considered (such as one which would go rather more directly from Warrington towards Manchester over Carrington Moss, diving underground near J8 of the M60).
Having an underground station in central Manchester has two big advantages over a surface station: 1) A surface station implies a lot of surface infrastructure - mainly the viaducts which would approach the new station - which kill off the opportunity of development on that land. At the moment that land is dead - sterilised by uncertainty, and occupied by low grade industrial/storage - but it has the potential to be some of the highest value land in the North (see: all the other city-centre-adjacent parcels of land around Manchester). The benefits of allowing that land to be developed are £billions. 2) A surface station must be a turnback station: through trains between Liverpool and Leeds (say) would need to reverse and go out the other way. This is frsutrating for passengers, but also builds in unreliability and is a massively inefficient way of using capacity. Through stations just work better than turnback stations operationally.
An underground station would be more expensive than a surface station, but (because more efficient, therefore smaller) not actually THAT much more expensive (see also my early point about northern geology being more favourable than London's). My view is that the benefits of undergrounding are likely to exceed the costs.
Liverpool faces slightly different challenges: Liverpool is at the edge, so the need for a through station is less. You could in theory get the trains to go into Lime Street. The problem is that Lime Street (and, more importantly, the railway approaching Lime Street) is almost full. That can be addressed to some extent by diverting some of the existing Lime Street services to Central and expanding Central (this is not as daft as it sounds - Central is underground, but there are old tunnels which approach it from the Chat Moss line, and the oppotunity to expand the station is not fanciful).
If the land for the approaches is used for lowered stuff, you can purchase it, dig cut-and-cover tunnels, then reuse the land.
Cut-and-cover being orders of magnitude cheaper than fully underground tunnelling.
The lack of transcription - even automated - on 'parliamentlive.tv' is irritating. And the export restrictions block anyone else building a better alternative.
‘The rejections are piling up’: why computer science graduates can’t get a job Tech students find even a first-class degree can’t secure an entry-level role https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/5076b3c4c06f3cdd
Gift link so paywall-free in case you have a sixth-form child unsure whether to pursue a Mickey Mouse degree like computer science or a more vocational degree like golf course maintenance.
The Islamic takeover of Iran in 1979 was one of the most consequential events of the second half of the last century, whose ghastly effects are with us still. Its possible collapse matters. Iranians are being massacred in their thousands and the world, especially those usually shrieking about every bad thing as if it were The End of Times, is silent and standing by. Our indifference will cost us.
The world is watching, what else can it do?
The U.K. can proscribe the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as other countries have done. It has refused to. Why? It could provide satellite links to help the protestors.
And a political discussion forum should - I dunno - maybe discuss what the implications might be if the uprising succeeds or if it doesn't.
Some good news about Britain. Seems that by 2030 all the damage done by the 2020-2025 Conservative government (which included Kemi) will be reversed by our glorious leaders. (Source is Casino's report from earlier). Japan which doesn't like immigration is in freefall.
Disclaimer: I used to do these sorts of economic forecasts and they never work out as planned.
Per capita or its meaningless.
Depends what you intend using the numbers for.
If you're talking delivering a good life for citizens, GDP/head is more useful.
If you're talking global heft wielded by the government, total GDP is nearer the mark.
"The government will commit to a new rail link between Birmingham and Manchester, reviving HS2’s northern phase in all but name.
Sources earlier told ITV News that it will come as part of a multi-billion-pound infrastructure investment in the long-delayed Northern Powerhouse Rail project, with the plans expected to be announced on Wednesday.
The chancellor will signal her intention to build a new rail line connecting Birmingham and Manchester - but only once other upgrades in the north have been completed.
It could be decades until work on rail lines connecting Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield is completed."
Question for northern England train buffs, what is the best route for a High speed rail into Manchester, could it get in and out of Piccadilly easy enough, or would a separate terminal/Oak common set up be needed? Are the other cities easy to get high speed lines in and out of, or would they need to restrict the speed in urban areas?
Tunnel from just west of the airport, then either rise to a surface station around Ardwick (HS2 plans) or build a huge underground through station (preferred by Burnham) that continues on to Liverpool / Leeds connections.
*Cough* I think by 'north of England train buffs' he meant me.
Though ManchesterKurt's answer is entirely accurate and has the advantage that I rarely achieve of brevity. What follows is merely to expand on his point.
The point is that you either use the existing (full) infrastructure or you need a largely or wholly tunnelled route. If you are using a tunnelled route you have almost limitless options (the North is rather easier, geologically, to tunnel under than London) - the route Manchester Kurt describes has the advantage that it is the one described by the HS2 bill which has not yet been killed, so gives a head start in legislative terms. But other tunnelled routes have been (and indeed, I am sure, are being) considered (such as one which would go rather more directly from Warrington towards Manchester over Carrington Moss, diving underground near J8 of the M60).
Having an underground station in central Manchester has two big advantages over a surface station: 1) A surface station implies a lot of surface infrastructure - mainly the viaducts which would approach the new station - which kill off the opportunity of development on that land. At the moment that land is dead - sterilised by uncertainty, and occupied by low grade industrial/storage - but it has the potential to be some of the highest value land in the North (see: all the other city-centre-adjacent parcels of land around Manchester). The benefits of allowing that land to be developed are £billions. 2) A surface station must be a turnback station: through trains between Liverpool and Leeds (say) would need to reverse and go out the other way. This is frsutrating for passengers, but also builds in unreliability and is a massively inefficient way of using capacity. Through stations just work better than turnback stations operationally.
An underground station would be more expensive than a surface station, but (because more efficient, therefore smaller) not actually THAT much more expensive (see also my early point about northern geology being more favourable than London's). My view is that the benefits of undergrounding are likely to exceed the costs.
Liverpool faces slightly different challenges: Liverpool is at the edge, so the need for a through station is less. You could in theory get the trains to go into Lime Street. The problem is that Lime Street (and, more importantly, the railway approaching Lime Street) is almost full. That can be addressed to some extent by diverting some of the existing Lime Street services to Central and expanding Central (this is not as daft as it sounds - Central is underground, but there are old tunnels which approach it from the Chat Moss line, and the oppotunity to expand the station is not fanciful).
If the land for the approaches is used for lowered stuff, you can purchase it, dig cut-and-cover tunnels, then reuse the land.
Cut-and-cover being orders of magnitude cheaper than fully underground tunnelling.
Well yes, but a) from a mile out they'll be properly underground tunnels, and b) you can't cut and cover north of Piccadilly because existing high value Manchester is in the way. And there's only a limited extent to which you can come up and then go down again within a mile or so.
This sort of report is becoming increasingly common. If any member of the public had used such threatening language against ICE, they would seriously risk being shot.
ICE agents in Minneapolis violently detained, threatened, and arrested a U.S. citizen for one reason only, he refused to prove his citizenship.
In the video, agents immediately escalate to physical force. A man stands with his hands up, repeatedly saying, “I’m not doing anything,” while agents shove him, force him against his car, and begin an illegal search.
No crime. No warrant. No probable cause.
An agent falsely claims, “That’s assault,” while they are actively assaulting a U.S. citizen who is complying and not resisting.
Moments later, the agent admits the truth, saying, “And all we needed was your ID,” openly acknowledging this was an unlawful detention based solely on a refusal to produce identification.
That is not legal.
The short agent then threatens, “Don’t move or you will be fucking tased.”
The man calmly responds, “I’m not moving.”
The short agent escalates again, snarling, “You’re a fucking bitch, and you’re going to learn the hard way.”
That is a direct threat of violence against a U.S. citizen whose hands are already behind his back.
They dig through his pockets anyway, repeating, “I just asked you for an ID,” as if that excuses violating the Fourth Amendment.
Then, in a moment that exposes the entire operation, the short agent announces, “He has a gun on him! Wouldn’t you look at that.”
As if Minnesota is not a conceal-carry state.
The man immediately responds, “A fully registered firearm. Because I’m a U.S. citizen.”
The short agent casually tosses the firearm onto the car after removing the magazine, demonstrating reckless handling of a legally owned weapon.
By this point, they have removed his wallet, yet, still do not check his ID, and still continue the arrest.
It's First Amendment Protected Speech to insult a police officer, anyway, even if he had done so. There have been Supreme Court cases setting precendent.
It's the usual cop problem - undertrained and too sensitive. I saw a vid yesterday with leaked briefings suddenly being used to try and upskill ICE agents - but it was on Meidastouch who do about 47 videos per day so hard to find again.
Several federal court decisions have found that expressing contempt for police officers is protected speech under the First Amendment. In City of Houston v. Hill (1987), the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment "protects a significant amount of verbal criticism and challenge directed at police officers." In Swartz v. Insogna (2013), the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that extending the middle finger at an officer is not grounds to stop or arrest an individual.
Of course. But I think it's slightly naive to think that the instigators of this policy are particularly bothered about the law.
The training pays lip service to constitutional rights, but the message from above is "absolute immunity".
I'm willing to bet this guy faces no criminal charges.
A 21-year-old in Santa Ana was permanently blinded in one eye after a DHS agent fired a “less-lethal” round at close range. He underwent six hours of surgery to remove plastic, glass, and metal embedded in his face... https://x.com/TheWarMonitor/status/2011243359705448923
They are refusing to even investigate the ICE agent who shot Renee Good (something that would be absolutely routine in the UK). The US Department of Justice instead tried to find dirt on Good's widow. The DoJ is no longer interested in justice, just in doing MAGA's bidding.
"The government will commit to a new rail link between Birmingham and Manchester, reviving HS2’s northern phase in all but name.
Sources earlier told ITV News that it will come as part of a multi-billion-pound infrastructure investment in the long-delayed Northern Powerhouse Rail project, with the plans expected to be announced on Wednesday.
The chancellor will signal her intention to build a new rail line connecting Birmingham and Manchester - but only once other upgrades in the north have been completed.
It could be decades until work on rail lines connecting Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield is completed."
Question for northern England train buffs, what is the best route for a High speed rail into Manchester, could it get in and out of Piccadilly easy enough, or would a separate terminal/Oak common set up be needed? Are the other cities easy to get high speed lines in and out of, or would they need to restrict the speed in urban areas?
Tunnel from just west of the airport, then either rise to a surface station around Ardwick (HS2 plans) or build a huge underground through station (preferred by Burnham) that continues on to Liverpool / Leeds connections.
*Cough* I think by 'north of England train buffs' he meant me.
Though ManchesterKurt's answer is entirely accurate and has the advantage that I rarely achieve of brevity. What follows is merely to expand on his point.
The point is that you either use the existing (full) infrastructure or you need a largely or wholly tunnelled route. If you are using a tunnelled route you have almost limitless options (the North is rather easier, geologically, to tunnel under than London) - the route Manchester Kurt describes has the advantage that it is the one described by the HS2 bill which has not yet been killed, so gives a head start in legislative terms. But other tunnelled routes have been (and indeed, I am sure, are being) considered (such as one which would go rather more directly from Warrington towards Manchester over Carrington Moss, diving underground near J8 of the M60).
Having an underground station in central Manchester has two big advantages over a surface station: 1) A surface station implies a lot of surface infrastructure - mainly the viaducts which would approach the new station - which kill off the opportunity of development on that land. At the moment that land is dead - sterilised by uncertainty, and occupied by low grade industrial/storage - but it has the potential to be some of the highest value land in the North (see: all the other city-centre-adjacent parcels of land around Manchester). The benefits of allowing that land to be developed are £billions. 2) A surface station must be a turnback station: through trains between Liverpool and Leeds (say) would need to reverse and go out the other way. This is frsutrating for passengers, but also builds in unreliability and is a massively inefficient way of using capacity. Through stations just work better than turnback stations operationally.
An underground station would be more expensive than a surface station, but (because more efficient, therefore smaller) not actually THAT much more expensive (see also my early point about northern geology being more favourable than London's). My view is that the benefits of undergrounding are likely to exceed the costs.
Liverpool faces slightly different challenges: Liverpool is at the edge, so the need for a through station is less. You could in theory get the trains to go into Lime Street. The problem is that Lime Street (and, more importantly, the railway approaching Lime Street) is almost full. That can be addressed to some extent by diverting some of the existing Lime Street services to Central and expanding Central (this is not as daft as it sounds - Central is underground, but there are old tunnels which approach it from the Chat Moss line, and the oppotunity to expand the station is not fanciful).
If the land for the approaches is used for lowered stuff, you can purchase it, dig cut-and-cover tunnels, then reuse the land.
Cut-and-cover being orders of magnitude cheaper than fully underground tunnelling.
There's space next to the line on the Salford side. The new platforms at Piccadilly could be in a station box on the land where the Network Rail building is and surrounding land where there is little of substance.
Question is what would NPR look like to the east. Very very little planned - once there was to be a new Pennine tunnel but I suspect that has been scrapped as would cost the same as a Ladder to Heaven.
Some good news about Britain. Seems that by 2030 all the damage done by the 2020-2025 Conservative government (which included Kemi) will be reversed by our glorious leaders. (Source is Casino's report from earlier). Japan which doesn't like immigration is in freefall.
Disclaimer: I used to do these sorts of economic forecasts and they never work out as planned.
Per capita or its meaningless.
If you're talking global heft wielded by the government, total GDP is nearer the mark.
Some good news about Britain. Seems that by 2030 all the damage done by the 2020-2025 Conservative government (which included Kemi) will be reversed by our glorious leaders. (Source is Casino's report from earlier). Japan which doesn't like immigration is in freefall.
Disclaimer: I used to do these sorts of economic forecasts and they never work out as planned.
Per capita or its meaningless.
No, it's not. Total GDP tells you something about a country's (economic) power in the world.
‘The rejections are piling up’: why computer science graduates can’t get a job Tech students find even a first-class degree can’t secure an entry-level role https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/5076b3c4c06f3cdd
Gift link so paywall-free in case you have a sixth-form child unsure whether to pursue a Mickey Mouse degree like computer science or a more vocational degree like golf course maintenance.
A friend of mine from school actually did a degree in golf-course maintenance (although TBF it may have been something like groundskeeping, golf courses were involved though) and now actually and factually owns a successful (well, last time I looked) grounds maintenance business.
The Islamic takeover of Iran in 1979 was one of the most consequential events of the second half of the last century, whose ghastly effects are with us still. Its possible collapse matters. Iranians are being massacred in their thousands and the world, especially those usually shrieking about every bad thing as if it were The End of Times, is silent and standing by. Our indifference will cost us.
The world is watching, what else can it do?
The U.K. can proscribe the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as other countries have done. It has refused to. Why? It could provide satellite links to help the protestors.
And a political discussion forum should - I dunno - maybe discuss what the implications might be if the uprising succeeds or if it doesn't.
How does the UK proscribing the IRG help? They're not shooting protestors in the UK.
How can we provide satellite links to protestors?
The implications are, unfortunately, difficult to know. We can look at the Arab Spring, where very few popular revolutions stuck. In some cases, one questionable leader was replaced by another. We're still working out whether Syria is in a better position with Assad replaced by someone who used to be in al-Qaeda. Iran is a great country (with a horrific leadership) and could do much good in the world. There could be an economic boom with countries rushing to invest in an education populace. Iran could stop formenting conflict elsewhere in the Middle East, and stop supporting Russia. But equally they might not happen!
‘The rejections are piling up’: why computer science graduates can’t get a job Tech students find even a first-class degree can’t secure an entry-level role https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/5076b3c4c06f3cdd
Gift link so paywall-free in case you have a sixth-form child unsure whether to pursue a Mickey Mouse degree like computer science or a more vocational degree like golf course maintenance.
A friend of mine from school actually did a degree in golf-course maintenance (although TBF it may have been something like groundskeeping, golf courses were involved though) and now actually and factually owns a successful (well, last time I looked) grounds maintenance business.
Also have a number of school friends who work on golf courses. From the holidays, cars and houses, very good money.
The Islamic takeover of Iran in 1979 was one of the most consequential events of the second half of the last century, whose ghastly effects are with us still. Its possible collapse matters. Iranians are being massacred in their thousands and the world, especially those usually shrieking about every bad thing as if it were The End of Times, is silent and standing by. Our indifference will cost us.
The world is watching, what else can it do?
The U.K. can proscribe the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as other countries have done. It has refused to. Why? It could provide satellite links to help the protestors.
And a political discussion forum should - I dunno - maybe discuss what the implications might be if the uprising succeeds or if it doesn't.
It has been discussed several times and will come up further I'm sure, indeed it is right now through you. I think the regime is too well entrenched and after some futher bloodshed there will be a period of quiet before the next burst of opposition as their problems are very high. I think it may not last the decade but will get even nastier.
The Islamic takeover of Iran in 1979 was one of the most consequential events of the second half of the last century, whose ghastly effects are with us still. Its possible collapse matters. Iranians are being massacred in their thousands and the world, especially those usually shrieking about every bad thing as if it were The End of Times, is silent and standing by. Our indifference will cost us.
If "Trump Always Chickens Out" perhaps an easier option would be to invade Wales rather than Iran.
Fox: The State Department will stop processing visas for people from dozens of countries, per Fox News Digital. A department memo says the US is freezing visa processing indefinitely for 75 countries.
Twenty more Tory councillor defections to Reform apparently this morning.
Just becoming the New Tory Party rebrand basically.
No idea why Farage thinks this will help.
I suppose he might assume that the Tories at least come pre-vetted?
The ex-Tories also have some idea of the mechanics of running things – how council committees work and so on. Reform has seen many problems on that front. The difficulty for Reform is staying turquoise rather than pale blue.
Why do people think that these politicians leaving their rosettes on a sunny windowsill for a few weeks will make them any less incompetent at protecting and running our public services?
Some good news about Britain. Seems that by 2030 all the damage done by the 2020-2025 Conservative government (which included Kemi) will be reversed by our glorious leaders. (Source is Casino's report from earlier). Japan which doesn't like immigration is in freefall.
Disclaimer: I used to do these sorts of economic forecasts and they never work out as planned.
Japan is in freefall because of no immigration but India is rocketing up the charts despite net emigration?
India has over 10x the number of people and disproportionately younger too. Of course it should climb.
"The government will commit to a new rail link between Birmingham and Manchester, reviving HS2’s northern phase in all but name.
Sources earlier told ITV News that it will come as part of a multi-billion-pound infrastructure investment in the long-delayed Northern Powerhouse Rail project, with the plans expected to be announced on Wednesday.
The chancellor will signal her intention to build a new rail line connecting Birmingham and Manchester - but only once other upgrades in the north have been completed.
It could be decades until work on rail lines connecting Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield is completed."
Question for northern England train buffs, what is the best route for a High speed rail into Manchester, could it get in and out of Piccadilly easy enough, or would a separate terminal/Oak common set up be needed? Are the other cities easy to get high speed lines in and out of, or would they need to restrict the speed in urban areas?
Tunnel from just west of the airport, then either rise to a surface station around Ardwick (HS2 plans) or build a huge underground through station (preferred by Burnham) that continues on to Liverpool / Leeds connections.
*Cough* I think by 'north of England train buffs' he meant me.
Though ManchesterKurt's answer is entirely accurate and has the advantage that I rarely achieve of brevity. What follows is merely to expand on his point.
The point is that you either use the existing (full) infrastructure or you need a largely or wholly tunnelled route. If you are using a tunnelled route you have almost limitless options (the North is rather easier, geologically, to tunnel under than London) - the route Manchester Kurt describes has the advantage that it is the one described by the HS2 bill which has not yet been killed, so gives a head start in legislative terms. But other tunnelled routes have been (and indeed, I am sure, are being) considered (such as one which would go rather more directly from Warrington towards Manchester over Carrington Moss, diving underground near J8 of the M60).
Having an underground station in central Manchester has two big advantages over a surface station: 1) A surface station implies a lot of surface infrastructure - mainly the viaducts which would approach the new station - which kill off the opportunity of development on that land. At the moment that land is dead - sterilised by uncertainty, and occupied by low grade industrial/storage - but it has the potential to be some of the highest value land in the North (see: all the other city-centre-adjacent parcels of land around Manchester). The benefits of allowing that land to be developed are £billions. 2) A surface station must be a turnback station: through trains between Liverpool and Leeds (say) would need to reverse and go out the other way. This is frsutrating for passengers, but also builds in unreliability and is a massively inefficient way of using capacity. Through stations just work better than turnback stations operationally.
An underground station would be more expensive than a surface station, but (because more efficient, therefore smaller) not actually THAT much more expensive (see also my early point about northern geology being more favourable than London's). My view is that the benefits of undergrounding are likely to exceed the costs.
Liverpool faces slightly different challenges: Liverpool is at the edge, so the need for a through station is less. You could in theory get the trains to go into Lime Street. The problem is that Lime Street (and, more importantly, the railway approaching Lime Street) is almost full. That can be addressed to some extent by diverting some of the existing Lime Street services to Central and expanding Central (this is not as daft as it sounds - Central is underground, but there are old tunnels which approach it from the Chat Moss line, and the oppotunity to expand the station is not fanciful).
If the land for the approaches is used for lowered stuff, you can purchase it, dig cut-and-cover tunnels, then reuse the land.
Cut-and-cover being orders of magnitude cheaper than fully underground tunnelling.
There's space next to the line on the Salford side. The new platforms at Piccadilly could be in a station box on the land where the Network Rail building is and surrounding land where there is little of substance.
Question is what would NPR look like to the east. Very very little planned - once there was to be a new Pennine tunnel but I suspect that has been scrapped as would cost the same as a Ladder to Heaven.
Mike Johnson was going around saying talk of invading Greenland is a media confection. He and Rubio are doing their best to clean up after Trump, but how much shit can they shovel when he has verbal diarrhoea?
"The government will commit to a new rail link between Birmingham and Manchester, reviving HS2’s northern phase in all but name.
Sources earlier told ITV News that it will come as part of a multi-billion-pound infrastructure investment in the long-delayed Northern Powerhouse Rail project, with the plans expected to be announced on Wednesday.
The chancellor will signal her intention to build a new rail line connecting Birmingham and Manchester - but only once other upgrades in the north have been completed.
It could be decades until work on rail lines connecting Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield is completed."
Question for northern England train buffs, what is the best route for a High speed rail into Manchester, could it get in and out of Piccadilly easy enough, or would a separate terminal/Oak common set up be needed? Are the other cities easy to get high speed lines in and out of, or would they need to restrict the speed in urban areas?
Tunnel from just west of the airport, then either rise to a surface station around Ardwick (HS2 plans) or build a huge underground through station (preferred by Burnham) that continues on to Liverpool / Leeds connections.
*Cough* I think by 'north of England train buffs' he meant me.
Though ManchesterKurt's answer is entirely accurate and has the advantage that I rarely achieve of brevity. What follows is merely to expand on his point.
The point is that you either use the existing (full) infrastructure or you need a largely or wholly tunnelled route. If you are using a tunnelled route you have almost limitless options (the North is rather easier, geologically, to tunnel under than London) - the route Manchester Kurt describes has the advantage that it is the one described by the HS2 bill which has not yet been killed, so gives a head start in legislative terms. But other tunnelled routes have been (and indeed, I am sure, are being) considered (such as one which would go rather more directly from Warrington towards Manchester over Carrington Moss, diving underground near J8 of the M60).
Having an underground station in central Manchester has two big advantages over a surface station: 1) A surface station implies a lot of surface infrastructure - mainly the viaducts which would approach the new station - which kill off the opportunity of development on that land. At the moment that land is dead - sterilised by uncertainty, and occupied by low grade industrial/storage - but it has the potential to be some of the highest value land in the North (see: all the other city-centre-adjacent parcels of land around Manchester). The benefits of allowing that land to be developed are £billions. 2) A surface station must be a turnback station: through trains between Liverpool and Leeds (say) would need to reverse and go out the other way. This is frsutrating for passengers, but also builds in unreliability and is a massively inefficient way of using capacity. Through stations just work better than turnback stations operationally.
An underground station would be more expensive than a surface station, but (because more efficient, therefore smaller) not actually THAT much more expensive (see also my early point about northern geology being more favourable than London's). My view is that the benefits of undergrounding are likely to exceed the costs.
Liverpool faces slightly different challenges: Liverpool is at the edge, so the need for a through station is less. You could in theory get the trains to go into Lime Street. The problem is that Lime Street (and, more importantly, the railway approaching Lime Street) is almost full. That can be addressed to some extent by diverting some of the existing Lime Street services to Central and expanding Central (this is not as daft as it sounds - Central is underground, but there are old tunnels which approach it from the Chat Moss line, and the oppotunity to expand the station is not fanciful).
If the land for the approaches is used for lowered stuff, you can purchase it, dig cut-and-cover tunnels, then reuse the land.
Cut-and-cover being orders of magnitude cheaper than fully underground tunnelling.
There's space next to the line on the Salford side. The new platforms at Piccadilly could be in a station box on the land where the Network Rail building is and surrounding land where there is little of substance.
Question is what would NPR look like to the east. Very very little planned - once there was to be a new Pennine tunnel but I suspect that has been scrapped as would cost the same as a Ladder to Heaven.
Alternatively, build over the tracks.
At Piccadilly the station is above ground level on a substantial viaduct. An underground station would be several levels below. Easy to build cut and cover without having to demolish anything of substance.
"The government will commit to a new rail link between Birmingham and Manchester, reviving HS2’s northern phase in all but name.
Sources earlier told ITV News that it will come as part of a multi-billion-pound infrastructure investment in the long-delayed Northern Powerhouse Rail project, with the plans expected to be announced on Wednesday.
The chancellor will signal her intention to build a new rail line connecting Birmingham and Manchester - but only once other upgrades in the north have been completed.
It could be decades until work on rail lines connecting Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield is completed."
Question for northern England train buffs, what is the best route for a High speed rail into Manchester, could it get in and out of Piccadilly easy enough, or would a separate terminal/Oak common set up be needed? Are the other cities easy to get high speed lines in and out of, or would they need to restrict the speed in urban areas?
Tunnel from just west of the airport, then either rise to a surface station around Ardwick (HS2 plans) or build a huge underground through station (preferred by Burnham) that continues on to Liverpool / Leeds connections.
*Cough* I think by 'north of England train buffs' he meant me.
Though ManchesterKurt's answer is entirely accurate and has the advantage that I rarely achieve of brevity. What follows is merely to expand on his point.
The point is that you either use the existing (full) infrastructure or you need a largely or wholly tunnelled route. If you are using a tunnelled route you have almost limitless options (the North is rather easier, geologically, to tunnel under than London) - the route Manchester Kurt describes has the advantage that it is the one described by the HS2 bill which has not yet been killed, so gives a head start in legislative terms. But other tunnelled routes have been (and indeed, I am sure, are being) considered (such as one which would go rather more directly from Warrington towards Manchester over Carrington Moss, diving underground near J8 of the M60).
Having an underground station in central Manchester has two big advantages over a surface station: 1) A surface station implies a lot of surface infrastructure - mainly the viaducts which would approach the new station - which kill off the opportunity of development on that land. At the moment that land is dead - sterilised by uncertainty, and occupied by low grade industrial/storage - but it has the potential to be some of the highest value land in the North (see: all the other city-centre-adjacent parcels of land around Manchester). The benefits of allowing that land to be developed are £billions. 2) A surface station must be a turnback station: through trains between Liverpool and Leeds (say) would need to reverse and go out the other way. This is frsutrating for passengers, but also builds in unreliability and is a massively inefficient way of using capacity. Through stations just work better than turnback stations operationally.
An underground station would be more expensive than a surface station, but (because more efficient, therefore smaller) not actually THAT much more expensive (see also my early point about northern geology being more favourable than London's). My view is that the benefits of undergrounding are likely to exceed the costs.
Liverpool faces slightly different challenges: Liverpool is at the edge, so the need for a through station is less. You could in theory get the trains to go into Lime Street. The problem is that Lime Street (and, more importantly, the railway approaching Lime Street) is almost full. That can be addressed to some extent by diverting some of the existing Lime Street services to Central and expanding Central (this is not as daft as it sounds - Central is underground, but there are old tunnels which approach it from the Chat Moss line, and the oppotunity to expand the station is not fanciful).
If the land for the approaches is used for lowered stuff, you can purchase it, dig cut-and-cover tunnels, then reuse the land.
Cut-and-cover being orders of magnitude cheaper than fully underground tunnelling.
There's space next to the line on the Salford side. The new platforms at Piccadilly could be in a station box on the land where the Network Rail building is and surrounding land where there is little of substance.
Question is what would NPR look like to the east. Very very little planned - once there was to be a new Pennine tunnel but I suspect that has been scrapped as would cost the same as a Ladder to Heaven.
Alternatively, build over the tracks.
I raise you the Circle/Metropolitan Line platforms at Moorgate. They used to be in the open air!
Government of Greenland: “Starting today, the military presence will be strengthened on the island and its surrounding areas in close cooperation with allies.”
There's a poll showing 8% of Republicans support taking Greenland by force. 1% Democrats (I'd like to meet them).
Trump threatens people with the US military. And then usually they give him stuff so he backs off. He's threatening to support the people of Iran. Perhaps the Qataris will give him a new aeroplane?
On Casino's maps and trains, I've been reading round the nature of the task we have in the UK and the fact is the area of dense population we could agglomerate much better is the biggest in Europe.
There will be slightly different ways of drawing this out exactly, but broadly you can encompass over 60% of the UK population in a contiguous area taking well under 25% of the land area. Such an area is actually a little smaller and more populous than the only other comparable bit of Europe, essentially the Rhein-Ruhr and the neighbouring densely populated Flemish and Dutch areas, yet their multi-point interconnectivity is well ahead of ours.
Two ways of roughly drawing out the area: if you are within 25 miles or so of either the M25 or a route up the M1, along the M62 and back down the M6 then you are in the dense bit. Or drawing overlapping 60 mile radius circles centred on Milton Keynes and Ashbourne in Derbyshire.
The latter pulls in Oxford and Cambridge, which aren't strictly in the densely populated bit, and also by centring in the Peak District highlights on the main challenges of being fully any-to-any agglomerated in the northern half - there is a hole in the north.
But we should aim towards something like max 20 min gap between services, min 60 mph average line speed all northern interconnects, whether Liv-Man-Lds-Yk; Liv-Man-Shf, Shf-Not-Lei-Cov-Bham, Lds-Shf-Der-Bham, Man/Liv-SoT-Bham, SoT-Der-Not, then plumb smaller centres into the nearest nodes at similar frequency and decent but lower speeds.
It's seriously bizarre. I know the GOP are all prostrate before him or they'll be primaried, but this really seems like something more than a bare handful of them could object to given even the base is less enthused than usually is the case, probably out of confusion.
Government of Greenland: “Starting today, the military presence will be strengthened on the island and its surrounding areas in close cooperation with allies.”
Trump defenders: this is all he really wanted, if you ignore most of what he said and undermining relations with close allies which, albeit not today, will have longterm consequences.
‘The rejections are piling up’: why computer science graduates can’t get a job Tech students find even a first-class degree can’t secure an entry-level role https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/5076b3c4c06f3cdd
Gift link so paywall-free in case you have a sixth-form child unsure whether to pursue a Mickey Mouse degree like computer science or a more vocational degree like golf course maintenance.
I have said on here for ages, as somebody who has degrees / PhDs in Computer science and in the ML space, that I advise my friends kids to think very carefully about computer / IT related degrees. You absolutely don't want to be doing "computer programming", if you are going down the computer science route, it must be a degree strong on the science part, particularly maths.
Also the "Mickey Mouse" degrees aren't even vocational ones, they are ones that really don't have a use in academia or industry. As for vocational things like golf course maintenace, my issue is always, these kind of courses do they a) need to be a degree and b) they really are very practical, you don't need to go full time for 3-4 years, live away from home, run up huge costs, they are ideally suited to you be trained on the job, earning and learning.
I am personally not that bothered if you call it a degree or not, but as I have said a million times, this very linear approach we have to higher education of full time plus living away from home is very expensive, not sure it is the right approach for vocational fields and not the way many Europeans do it.
"The government will commit to a new rail link between Birmingham and Manchester, reviving HS2’s northern phase in all but name.
Sources earlier told ITV News that it will come as part of a multi-billion-pound infrastructure investment in the long-delayed Northern Powerhouse Rail project, with the plans expected to be announced on Wednesday.
The chancellor will signal her intention to build a new rail line connecting Birmingham and Manchester - but only once other upgrades in the north have been completed.
It could be decades until work on rail lines connecting Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield is completed."
Question for northern England train buffs, what is the best route for a High speed rail into Manchester, could it get in and out of Piccadilly easy enough, or would a separate terminal/Oak common set up be needed? Are the other cities easy to get high speed lines in and out of, or would they need to restrict the speed in urban areas?
Tunnel from just west of the airport, then either rise to a surface station around Ardwick (HS2 plans) or build a huge underground through station (preferred by Burnham) that continues on to Liverpool / Leeds connections.
*Cough* I think by 'north of England train buffs' he meant me.
Though ManchesterKurt's answer is entirely accurate and has the advantage that I rarely achieve of brevity. What follows is merely to expand on his point.
The point is that you either use the existing (full) infrastructure or you need a largely or wholly tunnelled route. If you are using a tunnelled route you have almost limitless options (the North is rather easier, geologically, to tunnel under than London) - the route Manchester Kurt describes has the advantage that it is the one described by the HS2 bill which has not yet been killed, so gives a head start in legislative terms. But other tunnelled routes have been (and indeed, I am sure, are being) considered (such as one which would go rather more directly from Warrington towards Manchester over Carrington Moss, diving underground near J8 of the M60).
Having an underground station in central Manchester has two big advantages over a surface station: 1) A surface station implies a lot of surface infrastructure - mainly the viaducts which would approach the new station - which kill off the opportunity of development on that land. At the moment that land is dead - sterilised by uncertainty, and occupied by low grade industrial/storage - but it has the potential to be some of the highest value land in the North (see: all the other city-centre-adjacent parcels of land around Manchester). The benefits of allowing that land to be developed are £billions. 2) A surface station must be a turnback station: through trains between Liverpool and Leeds (say) would need to reverse and go out the other way. This is frsutrating for passengers, but also builds in unreliability and is a massively inefficient way of using capacity. Through stations just work better than turnback stations operationally.
An underground station would be more expensive than a surface station, but (because more efficient, therefore smaller) not actually THAT much more expensive (see also my early point about northern geology being more favourable than London's). My view is that the benefits of undergrounding are likely to exceed the costs.
Liverpool faces slightly different challenges: Liverpool is at the edge, so the need for a through station is less. You could in theory get the trains to go into Lime Street. The problem is that Lime Street (and, more importantly, the railway approaching Lime Street) is almost full. That can be addressed to some extent by diverting some of the existing Lime Street services to Central and expanding Central (this is not as daft as it sounds - Central is underground, but there are old tunnels which approach it from the Chat Moss line, and the oppotunity to expand the station is not fanciful).
If the land for the approaches is used for lowered stuff, you can purchase it, dig cut-and-cover tunnels, then reuse the land.
Cut-and-cover being orders of magnitude cheaper than fully underground tunnelling.
Well yes, but a) from a mile out they'll be properly underground tunnels, and b) you can't cut and cover north of Piccadilly because existing high value Manchester is in the way. And there's only a limited extent to which you can come up and then go down again within a mile or so.
Even a mile of cut and cover would massively reduce the overall cost of tunnelling.
If the Western Alliance is over, when should we close the US bases on British soil? Surely to God we can't keep them open when this treachery is going on?
"The government will commit to a new rail link between Birmingham and Manchester, reviving HS2’s northern phase in all but name.
Sources earlier told ITV News that it will come as part of a multi-billion-pound infrastructure investment in the long-delayed Northern Powerhouse Rail project, with the plans expected to be announced on Wednesday.
The chancellor will signal her intention to build a new rail line connecting Birmingham and Manchester - but only once other upgrades in the north have been completed.
It could be decades until work on rail lines connecting Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield is completed."
Question for northern England train buffs, what is the best route for a High speed rail into Manchester, could it get in and out of Piccadilly easy enough, or would a separate terminal/Oak common set up be needed? Are the other cities easy to get high speed lines in and out of, or would they need to restrict the speed in urban areas?
Tunnel from just west of the airport, then either rise to a surface station around Ardwick (HS2 plans) or build a huge underground through station (preferred by Burnham) that continues on to Liverpool / Leeds connections.
*Cough* I think by 'north of England train buffs' he meant me.
Though ManchesterKurt's answer is entirely accurate and has the advantage that I rarely achieve of brevity. What follows is merely to expand on his point.
The point is that you either use the existing (full) infrastructure or you need a largely or wholly tunnelled route. If you are using a tunnelled route you have almost limitless options (the North is rather easier, geologically, to tunnel under than London) - the route Manchester Kurt describes has the advantage that it is the one described by the HS2 bill which has not yet been killed, so gives a head start in legislative terms. But other tunnelled routes have been (and indeed, I am sure, are being) considered (such as one which would go rather more directly from Warrington towards Manchester over Carrington Moss, diving underground near J8 of the M60).
Having an underground station in central Manchester has two big advantages over a surface station: 1) A surface station implies a lot of surface infrastructure - mainly the viaducts which would approach the new station - which kill off the opportunity of development on that land. At the moment that land is dead - sterilised by uncertainty, and occupied by low grade industrial/storage - but it has the potential to be some of the highest value land in the North (see: all the other city-centre-adjacent parcels of land around Manchester). The benefits of allowing that land to be developed are £billions. 2) A surface station must be a turnback station: through trains between Liverpool and Leeds (say) would need to reverse and go out the other way. This is frsutrating for passengers, but also builds in unreliability and is a massively inefficient way of using capacity. Through stations just work better than turnback stations operationally.
An underground station would be more expensive than a surface station, but (because more efficient, therefore smaller) not actually THAT much more expensive (see also my early point about northern geology being more favourable than London's). My view is that the benefits of undergrounding are likely to exceed the costs.
Liverpool faces slightly different challenges: Liverpool is at the edge, so the need for a through station is less. You could in theory get the trains to go into Lime Street. The problem is that Lime Street (and, more importantly, the railway approaching Lime Street) is almost full. That can be addressed to some extent by diverting some of the existing Lime Street services to Central and expanding Central (this is not as daft as it sounds - Central is underground, but there are old tunnels which approach it from the Chat Moss line, and the oppotunity to expand the station is not fanciful).
If the land for the approaches is used for lowered stuff, you can purchase it, dig cut-and-cover tunnels, then reuse the land.
Cut-and-cover being orders of magnitude cheaper than fully underground tunnelling.
There's space next to the line on the Salford side. The new platforms at Piccadilly could be in a station box on the land where the Network Rail building is and surrounding land where there is little of substance.
Question is what would NPR look like to the east. Very very little planned - once there was to be a new Pennine tunnel but I suspect that has been scrapped as would cost the same as a Ladder to Heaven.
Alternatively, build over the tracks.
I raise you the Circle/Metropolitan Line platforms at Moorgate. They used to be in the open air!
Was it built before planning consultants and lawyers were invented?
If the Western Alliance is over, when should we close the US bases on British soil? Surely to God we can't keep them open when this treachery is going on?
Tempting but no. We burn no bridges; just wait for a more conventional American president to come along.
Interesting intervention from Russia yesterday suggesting Russia and the USA could jointly run Greenland. The Russians were in hysterical laughter at the Nazi ( Elon Musk's analysis not mine) Starmer.
Interesting intervention from Russia yesterday suggesting Russia and the USA could jointly run Greenland. The Russians were in hysterical laughter at the Nazi ( Elon Musk's analysis not mine) Starmer.
"The government will commit to a new rail link between Birmingham and Manchester, reviving HS2’s northern phase in all but name.
Sources earlier told ITV News that it will come as part of a multi-billion-pound infrastructure investment in the long-delayed Northern Powerhouse Rail project, with the plans expected to be announced on Wednesday.
The chancellor will signal her intention to build a new rail line connecting Birmingham and Manchester - but only once other upgrades in the north have been completed.
It could be decades until work on rail lines connecting Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Sheffield is completed."
Question for northern England train buffs, what is the best route for a High speed rail into Manchester, could it get in and out of Piccadilly easy enough, or would a separate terminal/Oak common set up be needed? Are the other cities easy to get high speed lines in and out of, or would they need to restrict the speed in urban areas?
Tunnel from just west of the airport, then either rise to a surface station around Ardwick (HS2 plans) or build a huge underground through station (preferred by Burnham) that continues on to Liverpool / Leeds connections.
*Cough* I think by 'north of England train buffs' he meant me.
Though ManchesterKurt's answer is entirely accurate and has the advantage that I rarely achieve of brevity. What follows is merely to expand on his point.
The point is that you either use the existing (full) infrastructure or you need a largely or wholly tunnelled route. If you are using a tunnelled route you have almost limitless options (the North is rather easier, geologically, to tunnel under than London) - the route Manchester Kurt describes has the advantage that it is the one described by the HS2 bill which has not yet been killed, so gives a head start in legislative terms. But other tunnelled routes have been (and indeed, I am sure, are being) considered (such as one which would go rather more directly from Warrington towards Manchester over Carrington Moss, diving underground near J8 of the M60).
Having an underground station in central Manchester has two big advantages over a surface station: 1) A surface station implies a lot of surface infrastructure - mainly the viaducts which would approach the new station - which kill off the opportunity of development on that land. At the moment that land is dead - sterilised by uncertainty, and occupied by low grade industrial/storage - but it has the potential to be some of the highest value land in the North (see: all the other city-centre-adjacent parcels of land around Manchester). The benefits of allowing that land to be developed are £billions. 2) A surface station must be a turnback station: through trains between Liverpool and Leeds (say) would need to reverse and go out the other way. This is frsutrating for passengers, but also builds in unreliability and is a massively inefficient way of using capacity. Through stations just work better than turnback stations operationally.
An underground station would be more expensive than a surface station, but (because more efficient, therefore smaller) not actually THAT much more expensive (see also my early point about northern geology being more favourable than London's). My view is that the benefits of undergrounding are likely to exceed the costs.
Liverpool faces slightly different challenges: Liverpool is at the edge, so the need for a through station is less. You could in theory get the trains to go into Lime Street. The problem is that Lime Street (and, more importantly, the railway approaching Lime Street) is almost full. That can be addressed to some extent by diverting some of the existing Lime Street services to Central and expanding Central (this is not as daft as it sounds - Central is underground, but there are old tunnels which approach it from the Chat Moss line, and the oppotunity to expand the station is not fanciful).
If the land for the approaches is used for lowered stuff, you can purchase it, dig cut-and-cover tunnels, then reuse the land.
Cut-and-cover being orders of magnitude cheaper than fully underground tunnelling.
There's space next to the line on the Salford side. The new platforms at Piccadilly could be in a station box on the land where the Network Rail building is and surrounding land where there is little of substance.
Question is what would NPR look like to the east. Very very little planned - once there was to be a new Pennine tunnel but I suspect that has been scrapped as would cost the same as a Ladder to Heaven.
Alternatively, build over the tracks.
I raise you the Circle/Metropolitan Line platforms at Moorgate. They used to be in the open air!
Was it built before planning consultants and lawyers were invented?
"Moorgate station Circle line platforms in 1969, before the sub-surface platforms were rafted over."
If the Western Alliance is over, when should we close the US bases on British soil? Surely to God we can't keep them open when this treachery is going on?
We're are going to need some bigly runways for our huuuuuuuuuuuuge new Tempestuous Hairyplanes.
Some good news about Britain. Seems that by 2030 all the damage done by the 2020-2025 Conservative government (which included Kemi) will be reversed by our glorious leaders. (Source is Casino's report from earlier). Japan which doesn't like immigration is in freefall.
Disclaimer: I used to do these sorts of economic forecasts and they never work out as planned.
Per capita or its meaningless.
Depends what you intend using the numbers for.
If you're talking delivering a good life for citizens, GDP/head is more useful.
If you're talking global heft wielded by the government, total GDP is nearer the mark.
A good life for citizens is what is meaningful, so yes GDP/capita is the meaningful one.
As far as global heft is concerned, then yes more people can lead to more heft but the problem is that governmental expenditure demands scales with population too, so having a plethora of impoverished people does not make you wealthy.
Nigeria and Greece have the same approximate GDP, but with Nigeria having over 20x the population. Which has more meaningful 'heft'? I would argue Greece, by far.
Thanks for the replies to the Manchester underground high speed rail question, to ManchesterKurt, Cookie, Rochdale and everyone else who has contributed.
It seems like a new underground station either directly under or somewhere near Piccadilly could be built, with a High speed line continuing north, or to a Liverpool spur.
Anything which improves on the current platform 14 heading north would be a bonus, ha
One of the worst decisions Sunak made, in my opinion, is abolishing HS2 north of Birmingham, should have been built to continue up north, eventually joining up to connect with Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Good to know it could be done, and underground tunnelling in Manchester wouldn't uncover as many problems as it does in London
If the Western Alliance is over, when should we close the US bases on British soil? Surely to God we can't keep them open when this treachery is going on?
Impractical in short term, but essential in the long term. The US seems pretty clear they don't want allies, and their power means little to be done for now, but inch by inch steps should be taken to give them what they want.
And Trump going wouldnt change that, given any president might act the same.
Comments
Disclaimer: I used to do these sorts of economic forecasts and they never work out as planned.
Though ManchesterKurt's answer is entirely accurate and has the advantage that I rarely achieve of brevity. What follows is merely to expand on his point.
The point is that you either use the existing (full) infrastructure or you need a largely or wholly tunnelled route. If you are using a tunnelled route you have almost limitless options (the North is rather easier, geologically, to tunnel under than London) - the route Manchester Kurt describes has the advantage that it is the one described by the HS2 bill which has not yet been killed, so gives a head start in legislative terms. But other tunnelled routes have been (and indeed, I am sure, are being) considered (such as one which would go rather more directly from Warrington towards Manchester over Carrington Moss, diving underground near J8 of the M60).
Having an underground station in central Manchester has two big advantages over a surface station:
1) A surface station implies a lot of surface infrastructure - mainly the viaducts which would approach the new station - which kill off the opportunity of development on that land. At the moment that land is dead - sterilised by uncertainty, and occupied by low grade industrial/storage - but it has the potential to be some of the highest value land in the North (see: all the other city-centre-adjacent parcels of land around Manchester). The benefits of allowing that land to be developed are £billions.
2) A surface station must be a turnback station: through trains between Liverpool and Leeds (say) would need to reverse and go out the other way. This is frsutrating for passengers, but also builds in unreliability and is a massively inefficient way of using capacity. Through stations just work better than turnback stations operationally.
An underground station would be more expensive than a surface station, but (because more efficient, therefore smaller) not actually THAT much more expensive (see also my early point about northern geology being more favourable than London's). My view is that the benefits of undergrounding are likely to exceed the costs.
Liverpool faces slightly different challenges: Liverpool is at the edge, so the need for a through station is less. You could in theory get the trains to go into Lime Street. The problem is that Lime Street (and, more importantly, the railway approaching Lime Street) is almost full. That can be addressed to some extent by diverting some of the existing Lime Street services to Central and expanding Central (this is not as daft as it sounds - Central is underground, but there are old tunnels which approach it from the Chat Moss line, and the oppotunity to expand the station is not fanciful).
Seems a who's who of terrible people for much of that.
And as we know the Trump's Corrupted Government in a corrupted State are out to ensure that they are lost.
I think that as a mass protest movement builds, they will follow the Martin Luther King model of being highly disciplined.
Woody, Andy and OJ make a toothsome trio.
Sarah Pochin seems to have gone a little of script, contradicting the Reform policy of opposing NPR (or Brum to Manc) rail lines.
For Manchester the idea was that the HS tunnel would rise near Ardwick then run alongside the existing line with a station alongside Piccadilly on the east side. Trains on NRP would need to reverse. An alternative proposal is for an underground east-west connection across the city centre to bypass the Castlefield viaduct. Would be able to connect towards Liverpool and HS2 in the west and Leeds in the east. But won't happen because this country is shit**
*Got to love Curzon Street. Built to accommodate trains to London and to the north via the Y-shaped lines north of the delta junction. All that has been scrapped - as has the plan for 2 x 400m trainsets. But Curzon Street is still being built with platforms for these services that nobody expects to ever run and for trains they are not going to build. Why? Because the construction cost of all that unused infrastructure is less than the variation cost in the contract.
**Seriously, we're a joke
The Islamic takeover of Iran in 1979 was one of the most consequential events of the second half of the last century, whose ghastly effects are with us still. Its possible collapse matters. Iranians are being massacred in their thousands and the world, especially those usually shrieking about every bad thing as if it were The End of Times, is silent and standing by. Our indifference will cost us.
There's nothing useful about growing GDP if you're not growing GDP per capita; nor anything to fear about falling GDP if GDP per capita is not falling.
However if you're fixated on cultural relativism and a narrow obsession with western populists its a comparison that does its job.
This is relevant because one of my worries about the Liverpool to Manchester section is that while - for now - it has the political backing of all the authorities along the route (in contrast to HS2), there is a combined Cheshire and Warrington mayoral election due whenever it is allowed to be held. I had thought Reform winning that would be something of a hindrance to the project. But perhaps Reform NW view things differently?
About 5mins after her question, she also got called out for calling a Labour MP a liar for stating the Reform policy was to bin off NPR.
Probably about 13:40 ish on iPlayer on BBC Parliament
This year I am now looking forward to a week on the Norfolk B roads.
The question was about 5mins before that
One glaring example: The SNA allows for GDP to be measured using three equivalent approaches: output (production), expenditure, or income. In theory, all three should yield the same result. In practice, they diverge widely due to data collection challenges, and countries prioritize one method over the others. The UK primarily focuses on the output (production) approach. The US primarily focuses on the expenditure approach (GDP = Consumption + Investment + Government spending + Net Exports).
Again, data collection and surveying methodologies differ internationally, as do base year revisions. And some countries update production indices on yearly bases, others, more rarely. And countries have different methods for calculating GDP deflators. And of course there's the matter of converting different currencies into a standard currency in a world of floating exchange rates.
For all these reasons, the more you know about how they are calculated, the more you realise that international GDP or GDP per capita comparisons have huge margins of error and are pretty worthless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n73SRvrAVZg
Well worth watching the 5mins or so if interested in just how badly the populist suggestions are in the real world that HS2 and NPR have to deal with.
BREAKING
Shabana Mahmood declares that she has lost confidence in Craig Guildford, the West Midlands chief constable, over the ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans
She says that there has been a failure of leadership and that ultimate responsibility rests with Guildford
She says the HMIC report into the decision by West Midlands police to ban Israeli fans is 'damning'
She says there was 'little engagement' with the Jewish community. Intelligence used to justify the ban was exaggerated or simply untrue
The report also highlights misleading public statements from West Midlands police, and that extends to the chief constable himself
Mahmood: 'On an issue of huge significance we have witnessed a failure of leadership that has harmed its reputation and eroded public confidence more widely.'
Shabana Mahmood says she will reintroduce the power for the home secretary to sack chief constables for persistent failures
Lucy Connolly opening door to standing as an MP, say GBN:
https://www.gbnews.com/politics/lucy-connolly-standing-mp-major-rallying-cry-reform-uk
Cut-and-cover being orders of magnitude cheaper than fully underground tunnelling.
Tech students find even a first-class degree can’t secure an entry-level role
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/5076b3c4c06f3cdd
Gift link so paywall-free in case you have a sixth-form child unsure whether to pursue a Mickey Mouse degree like computer science or a more vocational degree like golf course maintenance.
And a political discussion forum should - I dunno - maybe discuss what the implications might be if the uprising succeeds or if it doesn't.
If you miss an invisible right angle bend, you'll be doing the Broads as well.
If you're talking delivering a good life for citizens, GDP/head is more useful.
If you're talking global heft wielded by the government, total GDP is nearer the mark.
Question is what would NPR look like to the east. Very very little planned - once there was to be a new Pennine tunnel but I suspect that has been scrapped as would cost the same as a Ladder to Heaven.
A Kama Sutra based 'joke'...
How can we provide satellite links to protestors?
The implications are, unfortunately, difficult to know. We can look at the Arab Spring, where very few popular revolutions stuck. In some cases, one questionable leader was replaced by another. We're still working out whether Syria is in a better position with Assad replaced by someone who used to be in al-Qaeda. Iran is a great country (with a horrific leadership) and could do much good in the world. There could be an economic boom with countries rushing to invest in an education populace. Iran could stop formenting conflict elsewhere in the Middle East, and stop supporting Russia. But equally they might not happen!
Fox: The State Department will stop processing visas for people from dozens of countries, per Fox News Digital. A department memo says the US is freezing visa processing indefinitely for 75 countries.
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5688273-factory-worker-trump-confrontation/
‘Unacceptable’ for Greenland not to be in US hands, says Trump
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/14/greenland-us-trump-talks-denmark
Trump threatens people with the US military. And then usually they give him stuff so he backs off. He's threatening to support the people of Iran. Perhaps the Qataris will give him a new aeroplane?
There will be slightly different ways of drawing this out exactly, but broadly you can encompass over 60% of the UK population in a contiguous area taking well under 25% of the land area. Such an area is actually a little smaller and more populous than the only other comparable bit of Europe, essentially the Rhein-Ruhr and the neighbouring densely populated Flemish and Dutch areas, yet their multi-point interconnectivity is well ahead of ours.
Two ways of roughly drawing out the area: if you are within 25 miles or so of either the M25 or a route up the M1, along the M62 and back down the M6 then you are in the dense bit. Or drawing overlapping 60 mile radius circles centred on Milton Keynes and Ashbourne in Derbyshire.
The latter pulls in Oxford and Cambridge, which aren't strictly in the densely populated bit, and also by centring in the Peak District highlights on the main challenges of being fully any-to-any agglomerated in the northern half - there is a hole in the north.
But we should aim towards something like max 20 min gap between services, min 60 mph average line speed all northern interconnects, whether Liv-Man-Lds-Yk; Liv-Man-Shf, Shf-Not-Lei-Cov-Bham, Lds-Shf-Der-Bham, Man/Liv-SoT-Bham, SoT-Der-Not, then plumb smaller centres into the nearest nodes at similar frequency and decent but lower speeds.
(innocent face )
'If the US fails to honor the president's boastful promise to help the Iranian people, seems the culprits will be some combination of:
1) Trump's scheme to rotate dictators in Venezuela ;
2) Trump's plans for war with Denmark;
3) Veto by the Trump family's Saudi paymasters.'
Also the "Mickey Mouse" degrees aren't even vocational ones, they are ones that really don't have a use in academia or industry. As for vocational things like golf course maintenace, my issue is always, these kind of courses do they a) need to be a degree and b) they really are very practical, you don't need to go full time for 3-4 years, live away from home, run up huge costs, they are ideally suited to you be trained on the job, earning and learning.
I am personally not that bothered if you call it a degree or not, but as I have said a million times, this very linear approach we have to higher education of full time plus living away from home is very expensive, not sure it is the right approach for vocational fields and not the way many Europeans do it.
https://x.com/Haggis_UK/status/2011447188489146636
"Moorgate station Circle line platforms in 1969, before the sub-surface platforms were rafted over."
And here is same view in 2008:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Moorgate_station_Circle_through_look_east.JPG
As far as global heft is concerned, then yes more people can lead to more heft but the problem is that governmental expenditure demands scales with population too, so having a plethora of impoverished people does not make you wealthy.
Nigeria and Greece have the same approximate GDP, but with Nigeria having over 20x the population. Which has more meaningful 'heft'? I would argue Greece, by far.
It seems like a new underground station either directly under or somewhere near Piccadilly could be built, with a High speed line continuing north, or to a Liverpool spur.
Anything which improves on the current platform 14 heading north would be a bonus, ha
One of the worst decisions Sunak made, in my opinion, is abolishing HS2 north of Birmingham, should have been built to continue up north, eventually joining up to connect with Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Good to know it could be done, and underground tunnelling in Manchester wouldn't uncover as many problems as it does in London
And Trump going wouldnt change that, given any president might act the same.