Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 5m There appears nothing more to Burnham's "popularity" than a souffle effect. As soon as the oven was opened to see if there was anything inside, it collapsed.
Such is the cynicism and impatience of the modern age, I wonder if we'll ever get a politician who's popular for any length of time again. I actually fear for Nigel because his supporters are probably the most unforgiving of the lot. Rupert will be in the ascendency within weeks of Nigel taking office.
I have never understood, and have never had it satisfactorily explained to me, why Keir Starmer generates such hatred. Sure he's made a few mistakes, and he doesn't come across as particularly likeable, but the hatred I just don't understand. Wilson was unpopular...... and how ...... with Tories, but I don't recall him generating the same level of hatred.
I think what I loathe about Starmer isn’t anything he’s actually done. It’s that he’s such a personality vacuum.
Most politicians, good or bad, have something recognisable about them. Thatcher had conviction. Blair had charm. Brown had a big clunking fist. Johnson was a clown. Starmer feels like a placeholder.
After years in public life, the things we know about him are that he was DPP, supports Arsenal, and his father was a tool-maker. He’s become a cipher onto which everyone projects whatever they dislike about modern Britain: managerialism, technocracy, caution, the establishment. The visceral dislike isn’t really about Starmer himself. It’s about what people think he represents.
Though being an Arsenal supporter doesn’t help.
Starmer is in the wrong sector of government. He would have been more successful as Sir Humphrey than as Jim Hacker.
If you wanted a Yes, Prime Minister comparison, Starmer is closer to one of the senior Treasury officials who appears for three minutes, explains why nothing can be done, and then disappears again.
The real irony is that Humphrey was charismatic. Not in a voter-friendly way, but charismatic nonetheless. People still quote him forty years later.
Nobody is going to be quoting Keir Starmer’s greatest hits in 2066 unless they really, really care about his father being a tool-maker.
On topic: Well, AOC doesn't look bad in a bikini, so I can understand her appeal to some.
In the past, American voters have tended to value military experience, executive experience, and, to a lesser extent, legislative accomplishments. If she has any of those, I have missed them.
Older women in the US tend to admire women who have made good marriages, and raised good children, (Rightly.)
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
I'll use my daily image to show the geographic split (Image for 2021-22 but I expect it hasn't changed much)
Er...not changed much from the Covid/post covid era?
That was the Covid Era (well the year after).
It's also (intentionally) before the launch of the Elizabeth line which is 200m journeys a year.
Chatgpt reckons (For 2025) Birmingham - London has far more trains now than London-Peterborough compared to that 2020-21 map, although asking it to emphasise the Elizabeth line had it in Purple going all the way to Birmingham....
Asked ChatGPT to tidy it up, it now has Abbey Wood at Dover !
Why would anyone ask ChatGPT anything and trust the answer?
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Have you any idea what that would cost? It would have to be designed for each type of unit (there are dozens), each type of unit would need its safety case recalculating to see how the different glass altered it's crash performance, then you actually have to get the stuff manufactured and installed.
A younger and more foolish version of myself once tried to get a small modification approved in the railway industry to remove 16 redundant holes filled with rivets that did nothing from a design of bogie frame plate we were refurbishing (we were fitting new plates, drilling the holes and putting rivets in to fill them up again). I was told it was vasty cheaper to keep drilling unwanted holes and fill them with rivets - the design review process costs to approve the "modification" would probably be in six figures.
Does the older, wiser version of yourself now get in at the beginning of the process to get design approval so they can't remove your product or fail to pay "reasonable" price escalation?
Trump's a spokesman for Iran now, though, having agreed their surrender terms. Given Russia and America are both practically vassal states of Iran, that's quite the new world order.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
I'll use my daily image to show the geographic split (Image for 2021-22 but I expect it hasn't changed much)
Er...not changed much from the Covid/post covid era?
That was the Covid Era (well the year after).
It's also (intentionally) before the launch of the Elizabeth line which is 200m journeys a year.
Chatgpt reckons (For 2025) Birmingham - London has far more trains now than London-Peterborough compared to that 2020-21 map, although asking it to emphasise the Elizabeth line had it in Purple going all the way to Birmingham....
Asked ChatGPT to tidy it up, it now has Abbey Wood at Dover !
Why would anyone ask ChatGPT anything and trust the answer?
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
I'll use my daily image to show the geographic split (Image for 2021-22 but I expect it hasn't changed much)
Er...not changed much from the Covid/post covid era?
That was the Covid Era (well the year after).
It's also (intentionally) before the launch of the Elizabeth line which is 200m journeys a year.
Chatgpt reckons (For 2025) Birmingham - London has far more trains now than London-Peterborough compared to that 2020-21 map, although asking it to emphasise the Elizabeth line had it in Purple going all the way to Birmingham....
Asked ChatGPT to tidy it up, it now has Abbey Wood at Dover !
Why would anyone ask ChatGPT anything and trust the answer?
Easy.
Because they're an idiot who can't think for themselves and does not understand the limitations of ChatGPT.
On topic: Well, AOC doesn't look bad in a bikini, so I can understand her appeal to some.
In the past, American voters have tended to value military experience, executive experience, and, to a lesser extent, legislative accomplishments. If she has any of those, I have missed them.
Older women in the US tend to admire women who have made good marriages, and raised good children, (Rightly.)
What Military experience, execuitive experience (Not dodgy dealing) or Legislative accomplishments did Trump have when he decended teh golden escalator?
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
I'll use my daily image to show the geographic split (Image for 2021-22 but I expect it hasn't changed much)
Er...not changed much from the Covid/post covid era?
That was the Covid Era (well the year after).
It's also (intentionally) before the launch of the Elizabeth line which is 200m journeys a year.
Chatgpt reckons (For 2025) Birmingham - London has far more trains now than London-Peterborough compared to that 2020-21 map, although asking it to emphasise the Elizabeth line had it in Purple going all the way to Birmingham....
Asked ChatGPT to tidy it up, it now has Abbey Wood at Dover !
Why would anyone ask ChatGPT anything and trust the answer?
Based on the latest output it gave me with Heathrow in the middle of the Wessex Downs, no.
Those who are backing Newsom should look at this column by Fareed Zakaria:
The paradox of California today is that its successful economy is attached to a failing model of governance.
Consider the fiscal record. Since 2000, California’s population has grown by roughly 15 percent. But the state’s general expenditures have grown more than 200 percent, from $78 billion to about $248 billion. General spending per person has risen from about $2,300 to about $6,300. The number of state employees has grown by more than 50 percent by one count. Does anyone think that California’s government and its benefits have gotten 200 percent better in the last 25 years? . . . And people are leaving. Over the past seven years, the state has lost a net 1.9 million people through domestic migration, according to the Center for Jobs and the Economy.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
I'll use my daily image to show the geographic split (Image for 2021-22 but I expect it hasn't changed much)
Er...not changed much from the Covid/post covid era?
That was the Covid Era (well the year after).
It's also (intentionally) before the launch of the Elizabeth line which is 200m journeys a year.
Chatgpt reckons (For 2025) Birmingham - London has far more trains now than London-Peterborough compared to that 2020-21 map, although asking it to emphasise the Elizabeth line had it in Purple going all the way to Birmingham....
Asked ChatGPT to tidy it up, it now has Abbey Wood at Dover !
Why would anyone ask ChatGPT anything and trust the answer?
Easy.
Because they're an idiot who can't think for themselves and does not understand the limitations of ChatGPT.
The genuinely sensible position is:
ChatGPT is a useful tool that is sometimes wrong. Verify important facts.
Which is also the sensible position for Google, Wikipedia, journalists, politicians, economists and random posters on Political Betting.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 5m There appears nothing more to Burnham's "popularity" than a souffle effect. As soon as the oven was opened to see if there was anything inside, it collapsed.
Such is the cynicism and impatience of the modern age, I wonder if we'll ever get a politician who's popular for any length of time again. I actually fear for Nigel because his supporters are probably the most unforgiving of the lot. Rupert will be in the ascendency within weeks of Nigel taking office.
Boris remained reasonably popular (with his supporters at least, typically less than 10% net negative or positive) for 2 years as Prime Minister.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 5m There appears nothing more to Burnham's "popularity" than a souffle effect. As soon as the oven was opened to see if there was anything inside, it collapsed.
Such is the cynicism and impatience of the modern age, I wonder if we'll ever get a politician who's popular for any length of time again. I actually fear for Nigel because his supporters are probably the most unforgiving of the lot. Rupert will be in the ascendency within weeks of Nigel taking office.
I have never understood, and have never had it satisfactorily explained to me, why Keir Starmer generates such hatred. Sure he's made a few mistakes, and he doesn't come across as particularly likeable, but the hatred I just don't understand. Wilson was unpopular...... and how ...... with Tories, but I don't recall him generating the same level of hatred.
I think what I loathe about Starmer isn’t anything he’s actually done. It’s that he’s such a personality vacuum.
Most politicians, good or bad, have something recognisable about them. Thatcher had conviction. Blair had charm. Brown had a big clunking fist. Johnson was a clown. Starmer feels like a placeholder.
After years in public life, the things we know about him are that he was DPP, supports Arsenal, and his father was a tool-maker. He’s become a cipher onto which everyone projects whatever they dislike about modern Britain: managerialism, technocracy, caution, the establishment. The visceral dislike isn’t really about Starmer himself. It’s about what people think he represents.
Though being an Arsenal supporter doesn’t help.
Starmer is in the wrong sector of government. He would have been more successful as Sir Humphrey than as Jim Hacker.
To be fair he's more successful as Jim Hacker in the sense that he became Prime Minister having won a General Election. The Yes Prime Minister book says that Hacker narrowly lost the next General Election having become PM mid term. In that sense he's like a slightly more successful Rishi Sunak. There's a mock obituary for him in one of the books that says something like 'he was someone who was more elevated by his office than someone who elevated his office'. That line could apply well to Starmer.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 5m There appears nothing more to Burnham's "popularity" than a souffle effect. As soon as the oven was opened to see if there was anything inside, it collapsed.
Such is the cynicism and impatience of the modern age, I wonder if we'll ever get a politician who's popular for any length of time again. I actually fear for Nigel because his supporters are probably the most unforgiving of the lot. Rupert will be in the ascendency within weeks of Nigel taking office.
Boris remained reasonably popular (with his supporters at least, typically less than 10% net negative or positive) for 2 years as Prime Minister.
“My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.”
Trump's a spokesman for Iran now, though, having agreed their surrender terms. Given Russia and America are both practically vassal states of Iran, that's quite the new world order.
All this winning from Trump. It’s just too much winning.
This is the worst American Foreign policy initiative of my lifetime.
I just hope they take the time to get pipelines (they can protect) and alternative means of moving oil and LNG out of the gulf without the need for Hormuz. Otherwise the Mullahs have their jackboots on the global economies neck for the future.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
I’ve always wondered . These so called IDF warnings to evacuate certain areas of a town in Lebanon , can’t Hezbollah fighters then just leave aswell so what’s the point of razing whole neighbourhoods to the ground ?
Unless of course it’s just an excuse to make those areas inhabitable. Given the scenes in Gaza it’s pretty clear that the plan all along was to turn Gaza into a wasteland .
Are we to believe every single building was full of Hamas fighters ?
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
Thank you for your kind words.
How would it make no difference to any journey you’ve made? Every single one of those lines you’ve mentioned have gaps due to poor cellular coverage, whilst fine beside the line is weaker inside the carriage because of the attenuation of the windows.
I try and talk about things I know about. And I spent many years working in the telecoms industry. So off you fuck.
On topic: Well, AOC doesn't look bad in a bikini, so I can understand her appeal to some.
In the past, American voters have tended to value military experience, executive experience, and, to a lesser extent, legislative accomplishments. If she has any of those, I have missed them.
Older women in the US tend to admire women who have made good marriages, and raised good children, (Rightly.)
As I recall, very similar comments were made about Obama. (And, at the risk of being unfair, weren't you a fan of Doug Burgum's executive experience ?)
Also, for the record, AOC seems to have made a fairly successful marriage.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 5m There appears nothing more to Burnham's "popularity" than a souffle effect. As soon as the oven was opened to see if there was anything inside, it collapsed.
Such is the cynicism and impatience of the modern age, I wonder if we'll ever get a politician who's popular for any length of time again. I actually fear for Nigel because his supporters are probably the most unforgiving of the lot. Rupert will be in the ascendency within weeks of Nigel taking office.
I have never understood, and have never had it satisfactorily explained to me, why Keir Starmer generates such hatred. Sure he's made a few mistakes, and he doesn't come across as particularly likeable, but the hatred I just don't understand. Wilson was unpopular...... and how ...... with Tories, but I don't recall him generating the same level of hatred.
I think what I loathe about Starmer isn’t anything he’s actually done. It’s that he’s such a personality vacuum.
Most politicians, good or bad, have something recognisable about them. Thatcher had conviction. Blair had charm. Brown had a big clunking fist. Johnson was a clown. Starmer feels like a placeholder.
After years in public life, the things we know about him are that he was DPP, supports Arsenal, and his father was a tool-maker. He’s become a cipher onto which everyone projects whatever they dislike about modern Britain: managerialism, technocracy, caution, the establishment. The visceral dislike isn’t really about Starmer himself. It’s about what people think he represents.
Though being an Arsenal supporter doesn’t help.
He's got anti-charisma. It's quite fascinating. Just as some people can get away with quite awful behaviour through simple charm and panache, SKS can do something on the face of it unobjectionable - like, as someone who has always genuinely liked football, appear in an England shirt - and still find his behaviour grates even on those who might otherwise be quite well-disposed to that sort of thing. I personally think he's a terrible prime minister objectively - but even those who might be politically well-disposed to whatever Starmerism is find it very hard not to dislike him. It's just the way he is.
1) Announce a policy which fundamentally unpopular with both your party and many others. 2) Defend the policy with a dogged insistence 3) Force your few allies to expend political capital defending it. 4) At the last moment, do a compromised u-turn that continues the worst aspects of the policy, plus makes it a mess.
So now you’ve upset the supporters of the policy, the opponents of the policy and those who went along because they were your allies.
Do that a few times….
The systematic planned character assassination by UK Media, 90% right of centre, pre planned, ore ordained has worked perfectly.
No more No less
Although I agree with this point - one conspiracy I believe in is that UK press (particularly Associated) will never give Starmer a fair shake because of his role in prosecuting Journalists for breaking the law post Leveson - I don’t think it is the full story because:
A) Starmer and his team should have known he wouldn’t have got a fair shake and developed an approach that attempted to meet the public in an unmediated way - as far as I can tell they run their operation like the world is back in the Blair days (front pages, today show, world at one and the news at ten are all that matter).
B ) As Malmsbury said he spent political capital in very curious ways - and more often than not he ended up in a U-turn.
C) Starmer and very few of his Ministers appear to want to really sell the policies they are implementing. It is not enough to do stuff and hope folk notice, you’ve got to be out there banging the drum.
Providing insight and expertise is what I thought we were looking for on this board.
People here talk about how the UK is crap at doing things and yet when solutions are proposed they’re instantly shot down.
As I said, the Germans, the French, the Swiss have all decided that 100% coverage is an important thing to achieve. Because it produces large productivity gains relative to investment. I’ve proposed many things here that would put us on parity with other countries.
The UK is laughably unambitious when it comes to infrastructure in general.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 5m There appears nothing more to Burnham's "popularity" than a souffle effect. As soon as the oven was opened to see if there was anything inside, it collapsed.
Such is the cynicism and impatience of the modern age, I wonder if we'll ever get a politician who's popular for any length of time again. I actually fear for Nigel because his supporters are probably the most unforgiving of the lot. Rupert will be in the ascendency within weeks of Nigel taking office.
Boris remained reasonably popular (with his supporters at least, typically less than 10% net negative or positive) for 2 years as Prime Minister.
Indeed and many of them found their way to Reform (though Boris has never defected, what kind of impact would that have had?).
I always thought Boris Johnson won the 2019 election more than the Conservative Party.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
Thank you for your kind words.
How would it make no difference to any journey you’ve made? Every single one of those lines you’ve mentioned have gaps due to poor cellular coverage, whilst fine beside the line is weaker inside the carriage because of the attenuation of the windows.
I try and talk about things I know about. And I spent many years working in the telecoms industry. So off you fuck.
You want to do things on the cheap and if that doesn't work - push the costs on to someone else.
See as an example the I don't use it desire to cancel work on the Brighton Line to pay for a pet peeve of yours.
I’ve always wondered . These so called IDF warnings to evacuate certain areas of a town in Lebanon , can’t Hezbollah fighters then just leave aswell so what’s the point of razing whole neighbourhoods to the ground ?
Unless of course it’s just an excuse to make those areas inhabitable. Given the scenes in Gaza it’s pretty clear that the plan all along was to turn Gaza into a wasteland .
Are we to believe every single building was full of Hamas fighters ?
Another example of the power draining away from Trump. Everyone ignores him even SKS.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 5m There appears nothing more to Burnham's "popularity" than a souffle effect. As soon as the oven was opened to see if there was anything inside, it collapsed.
Such is the cynicism and impatience of the modern age, I wonder if we'll ever get a politician who's popular for any length of time again. I actually fear for Nigel because his supporters are probably the most unforgiving of the lot. Rupert will be in the ascendency within weeks of Nigel taking office.
I have never understood, and have never had it satisfactorily explained to me, why Keir Starmer generates such hatred. Sure he's made a few mistakes, and he doesn't come across as particularly likeable, but the hatred I just don't understand. Wilson was unpopular...... and how ...... with Tories, but I don't recall him generating the same level of hatred.
I think what I loathe about Starmer isn’t anything he’s actually done. It’s that he’s such a personality vacuum.
Most politicians, good or bad, have something recognisable about them. Thatcher had conviction. Blair had charm. Brown had a big clunking fist. Johnson was a clown. Starmer feels like a placeholder.
After years in public life, the things we know about him are that he was DPP, supports Arsenal, and his father was a tool-maker. He’s become a cipher onto which everyone projects whatever they dislike about modern Britain: managerialism, technocracy, caution, the establishment. The visceral dislike isn’t really about Starmer himself. It’s about what people think he represents.
Though being an Arsenal supporter doesn’t help.
He's got anti-charisma. It's quite fascinating. Just as some people can get away with quite awful behaviour through simple charm and panache, SKS can do something on the face of it unobjectionable - like, as someone who has always genuinely liked football, appear in an England shirt - and still find his behaviour grates even on those who might otherwise be quite well-disposed to that sort of thing. I personally think he's a terrible prime minister objectively - but even those who might be politically well-disposed to whatever Starmerism is find it very hard not to dislike him. It's just the way he is.
1) Announce a policy which fundamentally unpopular with both your party and many others. 2) Defend the policy with a dogged insistence 3) Force your few allies to expend political capital defending it. 4) At the last moment, do a compromised u-turn that continues the worst aspects of the policy, plus makes it a mess.
So now you’ve upset the supporters of the policy, the opponents of the policy and those who went along because they were your allies.
Do that a few times….
The systematic planned character assassination by UK Media, 90% right of centre, pre planned, ore ordained has worked perfectly.
No more No less
Although I agree with this point - one conspiracy I believe in is that UK press (particularly Associated) will never give Starmer a fair shake because of his role in prosecuting Journalists for breaking the law post Leveson - I don’t think it is the full story because:
A) Starmer and his team should have known he wouldn’t have got a fair shake and developed an approach that attempted to meet the public in an unmediated way - as far as I can tell they run their operation like the world is back in the Blair days (front pages, today show, world at one and the news at ten are all that matter).
B ) As Malmsbury said he spent political capital in very curious ways - and more often than not he ended up in a U-turn.
C) Starmer and very few of his Ministers appear to want to really sell the policies they are implementing. It is not enough to do stuff and hope folk notice, you’ve got to be out there banging the drum.
Look at the lefties, here, that Starmer has lost.
How many of them left for the Greens etc because of the Daily Mail?
If Starmer hadn’t alienated his own supporters, to little effect, the old Labour coalition would still be running.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
Yes on every train upgrade project, add new glass or repeaters. Do it iteratively. Fine.
But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.
I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.
But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
Thank you for your kind words.
How would it make no difference to any journey you’ve made? Every single one of those lines you’ve mentioned have gaps due to poor cellular coverage, whilst fine beside the line is weaker inside the carriage because of the attenuation of the windows.
I try and talk about things I know about. And I spent many years working in the telecoms industry. So off you fuck.
You want to do things on the cheap and if that doesn't work - push the costs on to someone else.
See as an example the I don't use it desire to cancel work on the Brighton Line to pay for a pet peeve of yours.
You don’t even know what I’m referring to on the BML, that’s obvious.
It’s also not a “pet peeve”, it’s one of the cheapest things we could do to unlock productivity. Increased mobile coverage = cheap = more productivity.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
Thank you for your kind words.
How would it make no difference to any journey you’ve made? Every single one of those lines you’ve mentioned have gaps due to poor cellular coverage, whilst fine beside the line is weaker inside the carriage because of the attenuation of the windows.
I try and talk about things I know about. And I spent many years working in the telecoms industry. So off you fuck.
You want to do things on the cheap and if that doesn't work - push the costs on to someone else.
See as an example the I don't use it desire to cancel work on the Brighton Line to pay for a pet peeve of yours.
You can’t do rail overhaul on the cheap. You cannot just put any cheap crap on. Unless it has Grandfather rights.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
Thank you for your kind words.
How would it make no difference to any journey you’ve made? Every single one of those lines you’ve mentioned have gaps due to poor cellular coverage, whilst fine beside the line is weaker inside the carriage because of the attenuation of the windows.
I try and talk about things I know about. And I spent many years working in the telecoms industry. So off you fuck.
You want to do things on the cheap and if that doesn't work - push the costs on to someone else.
See as an example the I don't use it desire to cancel work on the Brighton Line to pay for a pet peeve of yours.
You don’t even know what I’m referring to on the BML, that’s obvious.
It’s also not a “pet peeve”, it’s one of the cheapest things we could do to unlock productivity. Increased mobile coverage = cheap = more productivity.
Why are you so against it?
If a mobile phone on a train equals more productivity - what on earth is your definition of productivity?
On topic: Well, AOC doesn't look bad in a bikini, so I can understand her appeal to some.
In the past, American voters have tended to value military experience, executive experience, and, to a lesser extent, legislative accomplishments. If she has any of those, I have missed them.
Older women in the US tend to admire women who have made good marriages, and raised good children, (Rightly.)
As I recall, very similar comments were made about Obama. (And, at the risk of being unfair, weren't you a fan of Doug Burgum's executive experience ?)
Also, for the record, AOC seems to have made a fairly successful marriage.
She also cross examines better than anyone in Congress, despite half them being lawyers.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
Thank you for your kind words.
How would it make no difference to any journey you’ve made? Every single one of those lines you’ve mentioned have gaps due to poor cellular coverage, whilst fine beside the line is weaker inside the carriage because of the attenuation of the windows.
I try and talk about things I know about. And I spent many years working in the telecoms industry. So off you fuck.
You want to do things on the cheap and if that doesn't work - push the costs on to someone else.
See as an example the I don't use it desire to cancel work on the Brighton Line to pay for a pet peeve of yours.
You can’t do rail overhaul on the cheap. You cannot just put any cheap crap on. Unless it has Grandfather rights.
Honeycomb glass would be cheaper than thousands of new sites. Which I initially proposed but was opposed here “because they don’t look nice”.
As I said, people claim they want better coverage and to increase our productivity but oppose anything that actually helps.
NIMBYism is alive and well on PB. This isn’t just for masts either, it’s anything we want to build.
Dan Jarvis has taken a hospital pass by accepting the job without the precondition of more money. And a large part of the "increase"the MoD is being allowed is smoke and mirrors financing. And the MoD is proposing to cut useful stuff to preserve obsolescent stuff like the Challenger upgrade.
Dan Jarvis ‘will make big cuts’ unless money appears
https://www.thetimes.com/article/94a84928-736c-4ebf-b488-df472f0e72e0?shareToken=cb9823dac10c1e7b6de48c0104a0fa9f ..Sir Keir Starmer’s offer of an extra £13.5 billion in defence spending over four years, made to Jarvis’s predecessor John Healey last week, would have meant that the ministry’s existing equipment programme was unaffordable and the strategic defence review unachievable, a source familiar with those discussions said. Defence officials working to make the numbers add up last week proposed delaying new investments in drones and artificial intelligence, cancelling reserve days and cancelling exercises, it can be revealed. Such cuts — to be outlined in the long-awaited defence investment plan — would have made the armed forces less prepared for conflict and ill-equipped to fight with the likes of Russia..
..Of the £13.5 billion offered to Healey before he resigned on Thursday, the Times understands that £3.5 billion would have been made up by “changing contingency levels with MoD budgets”...
..Also included in the £3.5 billion was the Treasury “taking on the cost of things the MoD was never going to pay for anyway”, a second source added. “On a huge budget, a tweak to the accepted risk levels over several years will free up lots of money. A classic Treasury trick,” said John Foreman, former defence attaché to Moscow who previously worked on equipment acquisition in the Ministry of Defence..
PeterCairns asked: "What Military experience, execuitive experience (Not dodgy dealing) or Legislative accomplishments did Trump have when he decended teh golden escalator?"
But he was lucky enough to run against three weak Democratic candidates and, only once, in those three attempts, won the popular vote.
(One detail that has long interested me: Trump never managed a single large organization before becoming president. Instead, he set up small ones, and then left them mostly alone. So it does not surprise me that he has been so bad at running large bureacracies, whihc require different talents than running small businesses.)
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
Yes on every train upgrade project, add new glass or repeaters. Do it iteratively. Fine.
But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.
I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.
But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.
The UK just does it so badly.
So is the glass approved for use on rolling stock in the U.K. ?
Has it been tested and validated to see how it behaves to our standards in a crash, for example ?
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
Thank you for your kind words.
How would it make no difference to any journey you’ve made? Every single one of those lines you’ve mentioned have gaps due to poor cellular coverage, whilst fine beside the line is weaker inside the carriage because of the attenuation of the windows.
I try and talk about things I know about. And I spent many years working in the telecoms industry. So off you fuck.
You want to do things on the cheap and if that doesn't work - push the costs on to someone else.
See as an example the I don't use it desire to cancel work on the Brighton Line to pay for a pet peeve of yours.
You don’t even know what I’m referring to on the BML, that’s obvious.
It’s also not a “pet peeve”, it’s one of the cheapest things we could do to unlock productivity. Increased mobile coverage = cheap = more productivity.
Why are you so against it?
If a mobile phone on a train equals more productivity - what on earth is your definition of productivity?
There have been plenty of studies done. Increasing coverage increases productivity.
As you don’t know that or won’t look at the evidence, this conversation is fairly pointless.
Do you think we should all be stuck on 2G? Or dial up for fixed line?
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
Yes on every train upgrade project, add new glass or repeaters. Do it iteratively. Fine.
But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.
I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.
But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.
The UK just does it so badly.
So is the glass approved for use on rolling stock in the U.K. ?
Has it been tested and validated to see how it behaves to our standards in a crash, for example ?
They won’t have even got that far because they’ll have decided it’s too expensive to do.
It’s been certified for use on German trains.
As I said, there can be other things. Build more masts. But that also was opposed here.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
Thank you for your kind words.
How would it make no difference to any journey you’ve made? Every single one of those lines you’ve mentioned have gaps due to poor cellular coverage, whilst fine beside the line is weaker inside the carriage because of the attenuation of the windows.
I try and talk about things I know about. And I spent many years working in the telecoms industry. So off you fuck.
You want to do things on the cheap and if that doesn't work - push the costs on to someone else.
See as an example the I don't use it desire to cancel work on the Brighton Line to pay for a pet peeve of yours.
You don’t even know what I’m referring to on the BML, that’s obvious.
It’s also not a “pet peeve”, it’s one of the cheapest things we could do to unlock productivity. Increased mobile coverage = cheap = more productivity.
Why are you so against it?
If a mobile phone on a train equals more productivity - what on earth is your definition of productivity?
The theory is that by allowing people to work while on trains, they get more done, more promptly.
There are not a small number of people who subscribe to that analysis.
On topic: Well, AOC doesn't look bad in a bikini, so I can understand her appeal to some.
In the past, American voters have tended to value military experience, executive experience, and, to a lesser extent, legislative accomplishments. If she has any of those, I have missed them.
Older women in the US tend to admire women who have made good marriages, and raised good children, (Rightly.)
As I recall, very similar comments were made about Obama. (And, at the risk of being unfair, weren't you a fan of Doug Burgum's executive experience ?)
Also, for the record, AOC seems to have made a fairly successful marriage.
Sometimes I sit and wonder how we ended up with HS2 having to take years and have a bat tunnel built but it is obvious. NIMBYism and safety first has completely destroyed the state’s ability to do anything.
It is incredibly embarrassing we are in this state and shame on Labour for doing bugger all about it.
Development should be a default yes. Right now it’s a default no.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
Thank you for your kind words.
How would it make no difference to any journey you’ve made? Every single one of those lines you’ve mentioned have gaps due to poor cellular coverage, whilst fine beside the line is weaker inside the carriage because of the attenuation of the windows.
I try and talk about things I know about. And I spent many years working in the telecoms industry. So off you fuck.
You want to do things on the cheap and if that doesn't work - push the costs on to someone else.
See as an example the I don't use it desire to cancel work on the Brighton Line to pay for a pet peeve of yours.
You can’t do rail overhaul on the cheap. You cannot just put any cheap crap on. Unless it has Grandfather rights.
Honeycomb glass would be cheaper than thousands of new sites. Which I initially proposed but was opposed here “because they don’t look nice”.
As I said, people claim they want better coverage and to increase our productivity but oppose anything that actually helps.
NIMBYism is alive and well on PB. This isn’t just for masts either, it’s anything we want to build.
You can’t just pick something off the shelf. They wouldbe buying to a Performance spec the window would have to meet rather than just an off the shelf product.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
Thank you for your kind words.
How would it make no difference to any journey you’ve made? Every single one of those lines you’ve mentioned have gaps due to poor cellular coverage, whilst fine beside the line is weaker inside the carriage because of the attenuation of the windows.
I try and talk about things I know about. And I spent many years working in the telecoms industry. So off you fuck.
You want to do things on the cheap and if that doesn't work - push the costs on to someone else.
See as an example the I don't use it desire to cancel work on the Brighton Line to pay for a pet peeve of yours.
You can’t do rail overhaul on the cheap. You cannot just put any cheap crap on. Unless it has Grandfather rights.
Honeycomb glass would be cheaper than thousands of new sites. Which I initially proposed but was opposed here “because they don’t look nice”.
As I said, people claim they want better coverage and to increase our productivity but oppose anything that actually helps.
NIMBYism is alive and well on PB. This isn’t just for masts either, it’s anything we want to build.
You can’t just pick something off the shelf. They wouldbe buying to a Performance spec the window would have to meet rather than just an off the shelf product.
It was the principle. RF-transparent glass is something we could implement if we wanted to. We could build something that works for our trains, as many other countries have. Honeycomb glass is just the latest example.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
Yes on every train upgrade project, add new glass or repeaters. Do it iteratively. Fine.
But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.
I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.
But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.
The UK just does it so badly.
So is the glass approved for use on rolling stock in the U.K. ?
Has it been tested and validated to see how it behaves to our standards in a crash, for example ?
They won’t have even got that far because they’ll have decided it’s too expensive to do.
It’s been certified for use on German trains.
As I said, there can be other things. Build more masts. But that also was opposed here.
Being approved for German rolling stock is only relevant if our standards are aligned.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
Thank you for your kind words.
How would it make no difference to any journey you’ve made? Every single one of those lines you’ve mentioned have gaps due to poor cellular coverage, whilst fine beside the line is weaker inside the carriage because of the attenuation of the windows.
I try and talk about things I know about. And I spent many years working in the telecoms industry. So off you fuck.
You want to do things on the cheap and if that doesn't work - push the costs on to someone else.
See as an example the I don't use it desire to cancel work on the Brighton Line to pay for a pet peeve of yours.
You don’t even know what I’m referring to on the BML, that’s obvious.
It’s also not a “pet peeve”, it’s one of the cheapest things we could do to unlock productivity. Increased mobile coverage = cheap = more productivity.
Why are you so against it?
If a mobile phone on a train equals more productivity - what on earth is your definition of productivity?
The theory is that by allowing people to work while on trains, they get more done, more promptly.
There are not a small number of people who subscribe to that analysis.
And yet I work continually on trains (often multiple times a week) and have never had any problem.
Now I don't use onboard Wifi because it's beyond useless but my personal hotspot attached to an EE sim works fine and has allowed me to work issue free.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
Thank you for your kind words.
How would it make no difference to any journey you’ve made? Every single one of those lines you’ve mentioned have gaps due to poor cellular coverage, whilst fine beside the line is weaker inside the carriage because of the attenuation of the windows.
I try and talk about things I know about. And I spent many years working in the telecoms industry. So off you fuck.
You want to do things on the cheap and if that doesn't work - push the costs on to someone else.
See as an example the I don't use it desire to cancel work on the Brighton Line to pay for a pet peeve of yours.
You don’t even know what I’m referring to on the BML, that’s obvious.
It’s also not a “pet peeve”, it’s one of the cheapest things we could do to unlock productivity. Increased mobile coverage = cheap = more productivity.
Why are you so against it?
If a mobile phone on a train equals more productivity - what on earth is your definition of productivity?
The theory is that by allowing people to work while on trains, they get more done, more promptly.
There are not a small number of people who subscribe to that analysis.
Indeed and there’s a logic to that but it’s not as simple as simply buying a job lot of German windows and fitting to our trains which seems to be what Horse thinks.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
Thank you for your kind words.
How would it make no difference to any journey you’ve made? Every single one of those lines you’ve mentioned have gaps due to poor cellular coverage, whilst fine beside the line is weaker inside the carriage because of the attenuation of the windows.
I try and talk about things I know about. And I spent many years working in the telecoms industry. So off you fuck.
You want to do things on the cheap and if that doesn't work - push the costs on to someone else.
See as an example the I don't use it desire to cancel work on the Brighton Line to pay for a pet peeve of yours.
You don’t even know what I’m referring to on the BML, that’s obvious.
It’s also not a “pet peeve”, it’s one of the cheapest things we could do to unlock productivity. Increased mobile coverage = cheap = more productivity.
Why are you so against it?
If a mobile phone on a train equals more productivity - what on earth is your definition of productivity?
The theory is that by allowing people to work while on trains, they get more done, more promptly.
There are not a small number of people who subscribe to that analysis.
And yet I work continually on trains (often multiple times a week) and have never had any problem.
Now I don't use onboard Wifi because it's beyond useless but my personal hotspot attached to an EE sim works fine and has allowed me to work issue free.
Well your anecdotal experience is completely contrary to metrics from: Ookla, Umlaut, the networks themselves
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
Thank you for your kind words.
How would it make no difference to any journey you’ve made? Every single one of those lines you’ve mentioned have gaps due to poor cellular coverage, whilst fine beside the line is weaker inside the carriage because of the attenuation of the windows.
I try and talk about things I know about. And I spent many years working in the telecoms industry. So off you fuck.
You want to do things on the cheap and if that doesn't work - push the costs on to someone else.
See as an example the I don't use it desire to cancel work on the Brighton Line to pay for a pet peeve of yours.
You don’t even know what I’m referring to on the BML, that’s obvious.
It’s also not a “pet peeve”, it’s one of the cheapest things we could do to unlock productivity. Increased mobile coverage = cheap = more productivity.
Why are you so against it?
If a mobile phone on a train equals more productivity - what on earth is your definition of productivity?
The theory is that by allowing people to work while on trains, they get more done, more promptly.
There are not a small number of people who subscribe to that analysis.
Indeed and there’s a logic to that but it’s not as simple as simply buying a job lot of German windows and fitting to our trains which seems to be what Horse thinks.
I didn’t say it was easy. I said we should do it because we should be more ambitious.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
Yes on every train upgrade project, add new glass or repeaters. Do it iteratively. Fine.
But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.
I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.
But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.
The UK just does it so badly.
So is the glass approved for use on rolling stock in the U.K. ?
Has it been tested and validated to see how it behaves to our standards in a crash, for example ?
They won’t have even got that far because they’ll have decided it’s too expensive to do.
It’s been certified for use on German trains.
As I said, there can be other things. Build more masts. But that also was opposed here.
Being approved for German rolling stock is only relevant if our standards are aligned.
If it is too expensive to be it.
Okay fine so more masts trackside. What’s your issue with that if any?
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
Yes on every train upgrade project, add new glass or repeaters. Do it iteratively. Fine.
But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.
I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.
But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.
The UK just does it so badly.
Why not just switch your bloody phone off and read a book. I would ban phones and tablets from all trains, except for one designated noisy coach where I would cram in all the tech pests and noisy kids to give the rest of us peace. I would remove the glass from the windows so you can get better phone reception. I’m sure you won’t mind freezing and getting soaked as long as you can use your beloved tech stuff.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
Yes on every train upgrade project, add new glass or repeaters. Do it iteratively. Fine.
But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.
I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.
But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.
The UK just does it so badly.
Why not just switch your bloody phone off and read a book. I would ban phones and tablets from all trains, except for one designated noisy coach where I would cram in all the tech pests and noisy kids to give the rest of us peace. I would remove the glass from the windows so you can get better phone reception. I’m sure you won’t mind freezing and getting soaked as long as you can use your beloved tech stuff.
Lol. And there you have it Pb. We want managed decline.
I don't see why he can't go to Westminster City School like everyone else. If it's not good enough for him, then it's not good enough for the rest of us.
Slight problem, William and Catherine live in Windsor not Kensington Palace.
Ah - I heard he was boarding at Eton so assumed they were in London! If they live in Windsor then why board? Oh well the top brass are a mystery...
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
Thank you for your kind words.
How would it make no difference to any journey you’ve made? Every single one of those lines you’ve mentioned have gaps due to poor cellular coverage, whilst fine beside the line is weaker inside the carriage because of the attenuation of the windows.
I try and talk about things I know about. And I spent many years working in the telecoms industry. So off you fuck.
You want to do things on the cheap and if that doesn't work - push the costs on to someone else.
See as an example the I don't use it desire to cancel work on the Brighton Line to pay for a pet peeve of yours.
You can’t do rail overhaul on the cheap. You cannot just put any cheap crap on. Unless it has Grandfather rights.
Honeycomb glass would be cheaper than thousands of new sites. Which I initially proposed but was opposed here “because they don’t look nice”.
As I said, people claim they want better coverage and to increase our productivity but oppose anything that actually helps.
NIMBYism is alive and well on PB. This isn’t just for masts either, it’s anything we want to build.
You can’t just pick something off the shelf. They wouldbe buying to a Performance spec the window would have to meet rather than just an off the shelf product.
It was the principle. RF-transparent glass is something we could implement if we wanted to. We could build something that works for our trains, as many other countries have. Honeycomb glass is just the latest example.
Fine, but that would take time and you’d have to consider different specs for different lines too.
It’s not insurmountable but it’s not easy too and would need some cash up,front to start the development project.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
Yes on every train upgrade project, add new glass or repeaters. Do it iteratively. Fine.
But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.
I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.
But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.
The UK just does it so badly.
Why not just switch your bloody phone off and read a book. I would ban phones and tablets from all trains, except for one designated noisy coach where I would cram in all the tech pests and noisy kids to give the rest of us peace. I would remove the glass from the windows so you can get better phone reception. I’m sure you won’t mind freezing and getting soaked as long as you can use your beloved tech stuff.
Lol. And there you have it Pb. We want managed decline.
No I want growth, I just don't see a massive amount coming from allowing greater mobile connectivity on trains. It's a nice to have when commuting but it's not worth a drop everything we are doing item.
Also given how much Huawei equipment still seems to be part of some networks I would be sorting that out first..
I don't see why he can't go to Westminster City School like everyone else. If it's not good enough for him, then it's not good enough for the rest of us.
You mean Westminster school surely? His parents aren't members of the Labour or Green party so no hypocrisy sending their children private
I was thinking more they should set an example and give a vote of confidence in the state sector, which most of their subjects use.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
Yes on every train upgrade project, add new glass or repeaters. Do it iteratively. Fine.
But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.
I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.
But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.
The UK just does it so badly.
Why not just switch your bloody phone off and read a book. I would ban phones and tablets from all trains, except for one designated noisy coach where I would cram in all the tech pests and noisy kids to give the rest of us peace. I would remove the glass from the windows so you can get better phone reception. I’m sure you won’t mind freezing and getting soaked as long as you can use your beloved tech stuff.
Lol. And there you have it Pb. We want managed decline.
No I want growth, I just don't see a massive amount coming from allowing greater mobile connectivity on trains. It's a nice to have when commuting but it's not worth a drop everything we are doing item.
Also given how much Huawei equipment still seems to be part of some networks I would be sorting that out first..
So you just refuse to engage with cheap things that increase growth.
What about more FTTP coverage or do you oppose that too?
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
Yes on every train upgrade project, add new glass or repeaters. Do it iteratively. Fine.
But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.
I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.
But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.
The UK just does it so badly.
So is the glass approved for use on rolling stock in the U.K. ?
Has it been tested and validated to see how it behaves to our standards in a crash, for example ?
They won’t have even got that far because they’ll have decided it’s too expensive to do.
It’s been certified for use on German trains.
As I said, there can be other things. Build more masts. But that also was opposed here.
Being approved for German rolling stock is only relevant if our standards are aligned.
If it is too expensive to be it.
Okay fine so more masts trackside. What’s your issue with that if any?
I couldn’t care less either way, I’m just relating my experience of train overhaul and maintenance having worked both in a depot environment and an overhauler environment.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
Yes on every train upgrade project, add new glass or repeaters. Do it iteratively. Fine.
But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.
I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.
But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.
The UK just does it so badly.
Why not just switch your bloody phone off and read a book. I would ban phones and tablets from all trains, except for one designated noisy coach where I would cram in all the tech pests and noisy kids to give the rest of us peace. I would remove the glass from the windows so you can get better phone reception. I’m sure you won’t mind freezing and getting soaked as long as you can use your beloved tech stuff.
You can use your phone for more than talking. I use the ECML occasionally, Edinburgh to London. I like to get some work done whilst travelling, my phone is the wifi hotspot. No talking, no videos/music, just gentle keyboard sounds as I do some admin or write unit tests etc. Having actual, reliable, strong signal for the entire journey would be a real boost. People who need to take calls should be mindful of their surroundings, that is true and something that seems to have been completely forgotten.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
Yes on every train upgrade project, add new glass or repeaters. Do it iteratively. Fine.
But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.
I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.
But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.
The UK just does it so badly.
So is the glass approved for use on rolling stock in the U.K. ?
Has it been tested and validated to see how it behaves to our standards in a crash, for example ?
They won’t have even got that far because they’ll have decided it’s too expensive to do.
It’s been certified for use on German trains.
As I said, there can be other things. Build more masts. But that also was opposed here.
Being approved for German rolling stock is only relevant if our standards are aligned.
If it is too expensive to be it.
Okay fine so more masts trackside. What’s your issue with that if any?
I couldn’t care less either way, I’m just relating my experience of train overhaul and maintenance having worked both in a depot environment and an overhauler environment.
Sure, I defer to you on implementation. But we should try.
WRT to discussions recently over sentencing and how the defence was allowed and not allowed to run its defence in the palestine action case, it is worth looking at the excellent Joshua Rozenberg's balanced comment. IMHO he gets it exactly right. Including this:
Anyone reading this might think that the activists were convicted of terrorism offences or, at the very least, that their sentences were substantially increased because Palestine Action was subsequently banned as a terrorist organisation. Neither is true.
Their sentences were increased because so-called "terrorism" (disrupting an Israeli arms factory whose products are used to aid an illegal occupation and to kill innocent women and children) was an aggravating factor in the case, as the article notes in the judge's sentencing remarks.
Try reading it again. The judge took account of aggravating and mitigating factors, which largely balanced each other out. Anyone causing criminal damage of over a million pounds would have faced sentences of this length. They are entirely in line with what would be expected for such offences. The judge's sentencing was in line with the relevant laws which have been in place for some time. And the terror angle has been used in another recent case about arson (which had nothing to do with arms factories).
Defence counsel's closing speech for one of the defendants went into very great detail about the defendant's political motivations / concern for victims etc and why he should be acquitted so the idea that the jury was not made fully aware of why the defendants did what they did is for the birds.
As for the claim that the jury was not told about sentencing and what an outrage this all is, juries play no role in sentencing at all. Ever. It is utterly irrelevant to their role.
I read it. The sentence was increased because "terrorism" (lol) was an aggravating factor. I can read.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
Yes on every train upgrade project, add new glass or repeaters. Do it iteratively. Fine.
But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.
I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.
But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.
The UK just does it so badly.
Why not just switch your bloody phone off and read a book. I would ban phones and tablets from all trains, except for one designated noisy coach where I would cram in all the tech pests and noisy kids to give the rest of us peace. I would remove the glass from the windows so you can get better phone reception. I’m sure you won’t mind freezing and getting soaked as long as you can use your beloved tech stuff.
Lol. And there you have it Pb. We want managed decline.
No I want growth, I just don't see a massive amount coming from allowing greater mobile connectivity on trains. It's a nice to have when commuting but it's not worth a drop everything we are doing item.
Also given how much Huawei equipment still seems to be part of some networks I would be sorting that out first..
So you just refuse to engage with cheap things that increase growth.
What about more FTTP coverage or do you oppose that too?
What about masses of new houses?
Houses - not a problem, we don't have enough FTTP is a solved ongoing project U believe
But when it comes to phone masts and other parts of the telecom industry (BT's replacement of telephone boxes with advertising boards being another example) the industry has abused it's position so often that its now subjected to consequences of upsetting everyone..
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
Yes on every train upgrade project, add new glass or repeaters. Do it iteratively. Fine.
But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.
I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.
But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.
The UK just does it so badly.
Why not just switch your bloody phone off and read a book. I would ban phones and tablets from all trains, except for one designated noisy coach where I would cram in all the tech pests and noisy kids to give the rest of us peace. I would remove the glass from the windows so you can get better phone reception. I’m sure you won’t mind freezing and getting soaked as long as you can use your beloved tech stuff.
Lol. And there you have it Pb. We want managed decline.
No I want growth, I just don't see a massive amount coming from allowing greater mobile connectivity on trains. It's a nice to have when commuting but it's not worth a drop everything we are doing item.
Also given how much Huawei equipment still seems to be part of some networks I would be sorting that out first..
So you just refuse to engage with cheap things that increase growth.
What about more FTTP coverage or do you oppose that too?
What about masses of new houses?
Questions are what they always should be. How cheap/expensive would it be? How much growth would it generate? Are there cheaper/faster ways of achieving the same benefits?
Changing all the windows in all the trains specially seems like an awfully big project, and doing so on the normal replacement cycle awfully slow.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
Thank you for your kind words.
How would it make no difference to any journey you’ve made? Every single one of those lines you’ve mentioned have gaps due to poor cellular coverage, whilst fine beside the line is weaker inside the carriage because of the attenuation of the windows.
I try and talk about things I know about. And I spent many years working in the telecoms industry. So off you fuck.
You want to do things on the cheap and if that doesn't work - push the costs on to someone else.
See as an example the I don't use it desire to cancel work on the Brighton Line to pay for a pet peeve of yours.
You don’t even know what I’m referring to on the BML, that’s obvious.
It’s also not a “pet peeve”, it’s one of the cheapest things we could do to unlock productivity. Increased mobile coverage = cheap = more productivity.
Why are you so against it?
If a mobile phone on a train equals more productivity - what on earth is your definition of productivity?
The theory is that by allowing people to work while on trains, they get more done, more promptly.
There are not a small number of people who subscribe to that analysis.
And yet I work continually on trains (often multiple times a week) and have never had any problem.
Now I don't use onboard Wifi because it's beyond useless but my personal hotspot attached to an EE sim works fine and has allowed me to work issue free.
Well your anecdotal experience is completely contrary to metrics from: Ookla, Umlaut, the networks themselves
Have you got a link to this data?
My experience has been the same as eek's - I didn't have a problem with mobile connectivity when I was travelling regularly crosscountry on the trains prior to the pandemic, with the exception of inner London services when the volume of people trying to connect exceeded the network capacity.
On topic: Well, AOC doesn't look bad in a bikini, so I can understand her appeal to some.
In the past, American voters have tended to value military experience, executive experience, and, to a lesser extent, legislative accomplishments. If she has any of those, I have missed them.
Older women in the US tend to admire women who have made good marriages, and raised good children, (Rightly.)
As I recall, very similar comments were made about Obama. (And, at the risk of being unfair, weren't you a fan of Doug Burgum's executive experience ?)
Also, for the record, AOC seems to have made a fairly successful marriage.
A curiosity. An advert for DDT I ran across from the 1940s. Is the correct term for this type of publication? Propaganda ad? Public inforamtional? Brand promotion? It should be legible if opened as an image.
It was first called out in 1952 in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, but was used everywhere. It was not banned in the UK until 1986.
There are a lot of lessons to remember, from all sides.
Andrew Lilico @andrew_lilico · 5m There appears nothing more to Burnham's "popularity" than a souffle effect. As soon as the oven was opened to see if there was anything inside, it collapsed.
Such is the cynicism and impatience of the modern age, I wonder if we'll ever get a politician who's popular for any length of time again. I actually fear for Nigel because his supporters are probably the most unforgiving of the lot. Rupert will be in the ascendency within weeks of Nigel taking office.
I have never understood, and have never had it satisfactorily explained to me, why Keir Starmer generates such hatred. Sure he's made a few mistakes, and he doesn't come across as particularly likeable, but the hatred I just don't understand. Wilson was unpopular...... and how ...... with Tories, but I don't recall him generating the same level of hatred.
I think what I loathe about Starmer isn’t anything he’s actually done. It’s that he’s such a personality vacuum.
Most politicians, good or bad, have something recognisable about them. Thatcher had conviction. Blair had charm. Brown had a big clunking fist. Johnson was a clown. Starmer feels like a placeholder.
After years in public life, the things we know about him are that he was DPP, supports Arsenal, and his father was a tool-maker. He’s become a cipher onto which everyone projects whatever they dislike about modern Britain: managerialism, technocracy, caution, the establishment. The visceral dislike isn’t really about Starmer himself. It’s about what people think he represents.
Though being an Arsenal supporter doesn’t help.
He's got anti-charisma. It's quite fascinating. Just as some people can get away with quite awful behaviour through simple charm and panache, SKS can do something on the face of it unobjectionable - like, as someone who has always genuinely liked football, appear in an England shirt - and still find his behaviour grates even on those who might otherwise be quite well-disposed to that sort of thing. I personally think he's a terrible prime minister objectively - but even those who might be politically well-disposed to whatever Starmerism is find it very hard not to dislike him. It's just the way he is.
1) Announce a policy which fundamentally unpopular with both your party and many others. 2) Defend the policy with a dogged insistence 3) Force your few allies to expend political capital defending it. 4) At the last moment, do a compromised u-turn that continues the worst aspects of the policy, plus makes it a mess.
So now you’ve upset the supporters of the policy, the opponents of the policy and those who went along because they were your allies.
Do that a few times….
The systematic planned character assassination by UK Media, 90% right of centre, pre planned, ore ordained has worked perfectly.
No more No less
Although I agree with this point - one conspiracy I believe in is that UK press (particularly Associated) will never give Starmer a fair shake because of his role in prosecuting Journalists for breaking the law post Leveson - I don’t think it is the full story because:
A) Starmer and his team should have known he wouldn’t have got a fair shake and developed an approach that attempted to meet the public in an unmediated way - as far as I can tell they run their operation like the world is back in the Blair days (front pages, today show, world at one and the news at ten are all that matter).
B ) As Malmsbury said he spent political capital in very curious ways - and more often than not he ended up in a U-turn.
C) Starmer and very few of his Ministers appear to want to really sell the policies they are implementing. It is not enough to do stuff and hope folk notice, you’ve got to be out there banging the drum.
Look at the lefties, here, that Starmer has lost.
How many of them left for the Greens etc because of the Daily Mail?
If Starmer hadn’t alienated his own supporters, to little effect, the old Labour coalition would still be running.
And Labour would be in the lead.
Oh I don’t disagree - I was more focused on the idea that they can only sell what they are actually doing (not what they aren’t). And it is the Government that gets to decide what they are going to do. So they have decide what they are going to do, do it and then sell it. And in a hostile media environment they have to work out how to sell it without using the media. I feel that none of that has happened.
Albeit inevitably there was always going to be loss of support post election (and some will probably come back).
It also seems they are almost ashamed of what little achievements they have. Any government would want to do “more,” and we can always argue about whether they are really achievements. But if you only sell the things you do as sh!tty little compromises then even those that back you are not going to be enthused. (albeit I get your point that Ministers and MPs aren’t going to put on armour to fight for something with all their might if they have a sneaky suspicion that your general is plotting to run away).
This is in addition to the daft things the administration has done in daft ways along the way that only served to alienate existing supporters.
Dan Jarvis has taken a hospital pass by accepting the job without the precondition of more money. And a large part of the "increase"the MoD is being allowed is smoke and mirrors financing. And the MoD is proposing to cut useful stuff to preserve obsolescent stuff like the Challenger upgrade.
Dan Jarvis ‘will make big cuts’ unless money appears
https://www.thetimes.com/article/94a84928-736c-4ebf-b488-df472f0e72e0?shareToken=cb9823dac10c1e7b6de48c0104a0fa9f ..Sir Keir Starmer’s offer of an extra £13.5 billion in defence spending over four years, made to Jarvis’s predecessor John Healey last week, would have meant that the ministry’s existing equipment programme was unaffordable and the strategic defence review unachievable, a source familiar with those discussions said. Defence officials working to make the numbers add up last week proposed delaying new investments in drones and artificial intelligence, cancelling reserve days and cancelling exercises, it can be revealed. Such cuts — to be outlined in the long-awaited defence investment plan — would have made the armed forces less prepared for conflict and ill-equipped to fight with the likes of Russia..
..Of the £13.5 billion offered to Healey before he resigned on Thursday, the Times understands that £3.5 billion would have been made up by “changing contingency levels with MoD budgets”...
..Also included in the £3.5 billion was the Treasury “taking on the cost of things the MoD was never going to pay for anyway”, a second source added. “On a huge budget, a tweak to the accepted risk levels over several years will free up lots of money. A classic Treasury trick,” said John Foreman, former defence attaché to Moscow who previously worked on equipment acquisition in the Ministry of Defence..
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
Yes on every train upgrade project, add new glass or repeaters. Do it iteratively. Fine.
But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.
I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.
But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.
The UK just does it so badly.
Why not just switch your bloody phone off and read a book. I would ban phones and tablets from all trains, except for one designated noisy coach where I would cram in all the tech pests and noisy kids to give the rest of us peace. I would remove the glass from the windows so you can get better phone reception. I’m sure you won’t mind freezing and getting soaked as long as you can use your beloved tech stuff.
Lol. And there you have it Pb. We want managed decline.
No I want growth, I just don't see a massive amount coming from allowing greater mobile connectivity on trains. It's a nice to have when commuting but it's not worth a drop everything we are doing item.
Also given how much Huawei equipment still seems to be part of some networks I would be sorting that out first..
So you just refuse to engage with cheap things that increase growth.
What about more FTTP coverage or do you oppose that too?
What about masses of new houses?
Questions are what they always should be. How cheap/expensive would it be? How much growth would it generate? Are there cheaper/faster ways of achieving the same benefits?
Changing all the windows in all the trains specially seems like an awfully big project, and doing so on the normal replacement cycle awfully slow.
But that’s not what we’re engaging with. It’s whether you think increased coverage on trains is worthwhile pursuing. If you don’t then any project is pointless.
Loving this objection to a proposed housing development in an affluent area of Dublin.
Another to lodge an objection against the new scheme is Killiney resident and one time editor of The Economist magazine and author, Bill Emmott.
In his submission, Mr Emmott said that "as a general remark addressed to those reading this who may wish to dismiss objectors as merely the selfish affluent residents of Killiney - please note that the ONLY reason this or its predecessor application has been made is that the developer wishes to exploit the affluence and high land values of Killiney by creating profitably high priced housing".
Mr Emmott - who served as editor of The Economist between 1993 and 2006 - contends that "the developer is the selfish affluent party here".
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
Yes on every train upgrade project, add new glass or repeaters. Do it iteratively. Fine.
But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.
I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.
But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.
The UK just does it so badly.
Why not just switch your bloody phone off and read a book. I would ban phones and tablets from all trains, except for one designated noisy coach where I would cram in all the tech pests and noisy kids to give the rest of us peace. I would remove the glass from the windows so you can get better phone reception. I’m sure you won’t mind freezing and getting soaked as long as you can use your beloved tech stuff.
Lol. And there you have it Pb. We want managed decline.
No I want growth, I just don't see a massive amount coming from allowing greater mobile connectivity on trains. It's a nice to have when commuting but it's not worth a drop everything we are doing item.
Also given how much Huawei equipment still seems to be part of some networks I would be sorting that out first..
So you just refuse to engage with cheap things that increase growth.
What about more FTTP coverage or do you oppose that too?
What about masses of new houses?
Houses - not a problem, we don't have enough FTTP is a solved ongoing project U believe
But when it comes to phone masts and other parts of the telecom industry (BT's replacement of telephone boxes with advertising boards being another example) the industry has abused it's position so often that its now subjected to consequences of upsetting everyone..
We could stop the FTTP rollout right now and divert the state subsidy for the final 10% or so to something else, what would you rather spend it on?
Why do you want to keep around phone boxes that aren’t used by anyone? I take the point about advertising but they also provide mobile phone charging and WiFi amongst other things. To me that’s a smart repurposing but what would you prefer instead?
How has it abused its position? Telecoms companies aren’t allowed to build basically anything without a long process.
Loving this objection to a proposed housing development in an affluent area of Dublin.
Another to lodge an objection against the new scheme is Killiney resident and one time editor of The Economist magazine and author, Bill Emmott.
In his submission, Mr Emmott said that "as a general remark addressed to those reading this who may wish to dismiss objectors as merely the selfish affluent residents of Killiney - please note that the ONLY reason this or its predecessor application has been made is that the developer wishes to exploit the affluence and high land values of Killiney by creating profitably high priced housing".
Mr Emmott - who served as editor of The Economist between 1993 and 2006 - contends that "the developer is the selfish affluent party here".
Dan Jarvis has taken a hospital pass by accepting the job without the precondition of more money. And a large part of the "increase"the MoD is being allowed is smoke and mirrors financing. And the MoD is proposing to cut useful stuff to preserve obsolescent stuff like the Challenger upgrade.
Dan Jarvis ‘will make big cuts’ unless money appears
https://www.thetimes.com/article/94a84928-736c-4ebf-b488-df472f0e72e0?shareToken=cb9823dac10c1e7b6de48c0104a0fa9f ..Sir Keir Starmer’s offer of an extra £13.5 billion in defence spending over four years, made to Jarvis’s predecessor John Healey last week, would have meant that the ministry’s existing equipment programme was unaffordable and the strategic defence review unachievable, a source familiar with those discussions said. Defence officials working to make the numbers add up last week proposed delaying new investments in drones and artificial intelligence, cancelling reserve days and cancelling exercises, it can be revealed. Such cuts — to be outlined in the long-awaited defence investment plan — would have made the armed forces less prepared for conflict and ill-equipped to fight with the likes of Russia..
..Of the £13.5 billion offered to Healey before he resigned on Thursday, the Times understands that £3.5 billion would have been made up by “changing contingency levels with MoD budgets”...
..Also included in the £3.5 billion was the Treasury “taking on the cost of things the MoD was never going to pay for anyway”, a second source added. “On a huge budget, a tweak to the accepted risk levels over several years will free up lots of money. A classic Treasury trick,” said John Foreman, former defence attaché to Moscow who previously worked on equipment acquisition in the Ministry of Defence..
Wes Streeting's haven't fallen as much as Burnham's.
Wes Streeting has likewise seen his net favourability ratings worsen following his resignation as health secretary
12-13 May Favourable: 16% Unfavourable: 44% Net: -28
14-15 June Favourable: 12% Unfavourable: 50% Net: -38
Nevertheless not in the least surprising. Wes is one of those combative never-outgrown-his-student-politics-days politicians, whom members are willing to tolerate so long as he’s batting effectively for their own side, socking it to Reform or the Tories. Once he distances himself from his own party and starts fighting battles for himself, often against his own colleagues, they don’t like him so much.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
Yes on every train upgrade project, add new glass or repeaters. Do it iteratively. Fine.
But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.
I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.
But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.
The UK just does it so badly.
So is the glass approved for use on rolling stock in the U.K. ?
Has it been tested and validated to see how it behaves to our standards in a crash, for example ?
They won’t have even got that far because they’ll have decided it’s too expensive to do.
It’s been certified for use on German trains.
As I said, there can be other things. Build more masts. But that also was opposed here.
Being approved for German rolling stock is only relevant if our standards are aligned.
If it is too expensive to be it.
Class 745, 755, 756 (Greater Anglia), Class 555 (Tyne & Wear), Class 777 (Merseyrail), Glasgow Subway new stock, Class 231 (Wales) all built in Switzerland.
Class 398 (Wales), Class 399 (Sheffield Supertram) built in Spain.
Class 195, 331 (Northern), Class 397 (Trans-Pennine), mostly built in Spain.
Class 185 (Transpennine) built in Germany
Class 350 (LNWR) built in Austria, Czechia, Poland, and Germany
Class 360 (Luton Express) built in Austria and Germany
Class 380 (Scotrail) built in Germany
Class 444 (Southwest) built in Austria
Class 450 (Southwest) built in Austria and Germany
Class 700 (Thameslink, Grt Northern) and Class 717 (Grt Northern) built in Germany
Loving this objection to a proposed housing development in an affluent area of Dublin.
Another to lodge an objection against the new scheme is Killiney resident and one time editor of The Economist magazine and author, Bill Emmott.
In his submission, Mr Emmott said that "as a general remark addressed to those reading this who may wish to dismiss objectors as merely the selfish affluent residents of Killiney - please note that the ONLY reason this or its predecessor application has been made is that the developer wishes to exploit the affluence and high land values of Killiney by creating profitably high priced housing".
Mr Emmott - who served as editor of The Economist between 1993 and 2006 - contends that "the developer is the selfish affluent party here".
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
Yes on every train upgrade project, add new glass or repeaters. Do it iteratively. Fine.
But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.
I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.
But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.
The UK just does it so badly.
Why not just switch your bloody phone off and read a book. I would ban phones and tablets from all trains, except for one designated noisy coach where I would cram in all the tech pests and noisy kids to give the rest of us peace. I would remove the glass from the windows so you can get better phone reception. I’m sure you won’t mind freezing and getting soaked as long as you can use your beloved tech stuff.
Lol. And there you have it Pb. We want managed decline.
No I want growth, I just don't see a massive amount coming from allowing greater mobile connectivity on trains. It's a nice to have when commuting but it's not worth a drop everything we are doing item.
Also given how much Huawei equipment still seems to be part of some networks I would be sorting that out first..
So you just refuse to engage with cheap things that increase growth.
What about more FTTP coverage or do you oppose that too?
What about masses of new houses?
Houses - not a problem, we don't have enough FTTP is a solved ongoing project U believe
But when it comes to phone masts and other parts of the telecom industry (BT's replacement of telephone boxes with advertising boards being another example) the industry has abused it's position so often that its now subjected to consequences of upsetting everyone..
We could stop the FTTP rollout right now and divert the state subsidy for the final 10% or so to something else, what would you rather spend it on?
Why do you want to keep around phone boxes that aren’t used by anyone? I take the point about advertising but they also provide mobile phone charging and WiFi amongst other things. To me that’s a smart repurposing but what would you prefer instead?
How has it abused its position? Telecoms companies aren’t allowed to build basically anything without a long process.
Did I say scrap FTTP, it’s an agreed project so rule 1 - get on with it.
For the advertising boards given that the standard objection is because of their use by the clients of drug dealers - just removing them would work
Back to more important matters and my selections for the opening day at Ascot:
Queen Anne: MORE THUNDER
Coventry: CUT A DASH (each way)
King Charles III: OVERPASS
St James's Palace: BOW ECHO
I know you are referring to horse races, but for a moment I thought it was the best Dr. Who episode ever
#tootoosoon?
My Betfair account history suggests that these random horse racing or formula one tips that pop up now and again on PB are always best ignored, unless you value a bit of fun over your bank balance.
At least when it comes to politics, a fair few of PB’s regulars have some useful insight and intelligence to contribute to the discussion.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
Yes on every train upgrade project, add new glass or repeaters. Do it iteratively. Fine.
But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.
I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.
But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.
The UK just does it so badly.
Why not just switch your bloody phone off and read a book. I would ban phones and tablets from all trains, except for one designated noisy coach where I would cram in all the tech pests and noisy kids to give the rest of us peace. I would remove the glass from the windows so you can get better phone reception. I’m sure you won’t mind freezing and getting soaked as long as you can use your beloved tech stuff.
Lol. And there you have it Pb. We want managed decline.
No I want growth, I just don't see a massive amount coming from allowing greater mobile connectivity on trains. It's a nice to have when commuting but it's not worth a drop everything we are doing item.
Also given how much Huawei equipment still seems to be part of some networks I would be sorting that out first..
So you just refuse to engage with cheap things that increase growth.
What about more FTTP coverage or do you oppose that too?
What about masses of new houses?
Questions are what they always should be. How cheap/expensive would it be? How much growth would it generate? Are there cheaper/faster ways of achieving the same benefits?
Changing all the windows in all the trains specially seems like an awfully big project, and doing so on the normal replacement cycle awfully slow.
Massive project. Also bearing in mind you’d need different shapes or windows for different lines and you’d need to put in sufficient stock in the depot to deal with vandalism.
@Richard_Tyndall a couple of days back you mentioned your book on British intervention in southern Russia at the end of WWI. This sounds like a book I want to read! Can you tell us more?
Its a long term project that I started a few years ago and have picked up again. It revolves around the British fears of Turkish Pan Turanianism expansion into central Asia following the Russian collapse in 1917. To try and prevent this the British organised a series of interventions in the Caucaus and Southern central Asia - Dunsterforce and the Malleson Mission amongst them. As a result the British/Empire troops ended up defending Baku against the Turks and also fighting the Red Russians on the South Central Asian railway in Turkmenistan.
Its real boys own stuff and includes a small group of about 20 Australian and British soldiers defending the retreat of the last of the Assyrians from Urmia down into Persia, holding off thousands of Turks and Kurds to get 80,000 refugees to safety.
My plan is to have the first draft finished middle of next year. I have a couple of military publishers interested.
All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.
This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.
Implausible. How many use the trains daily?
About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)
That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.
So millions will benefit. Get on with it.
No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
Yes on every train upgrade project, add new glass or repeaters. Do it iteratively. Fine.
But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.
I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.
But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.
The UK just does it so badly.
So is the glass approved for use on rolling stock in the U.K. ?
Has it been tested and validated to see how it behaves to our standards in a crash, for example ?
They won’t have even got that far because they’ll have decided it’s too expensive to do.
It’s been certified for use on German trains.
As I said, there can be other things. Build more masts. But that also was opposed here.
Being approved for German rolling stock is only relevant if our standards are aligned.
If it is too expensive to be it.
Class 745, 755, 756 (Greater Anglia), Class 555 (Tyne & Wear), Class 777 (Merseyrail), Glasgow Subway new stock, Class 231 (Wales) all built in Switzerland.
Class 398 (Wales), Class 399 (Sheffield Supertram) built in Spain.
Class 195, 331 (Northern), Class 397 (Trans-Pennine), mostly built in Spain.
Class 185 (Transpennine) built in Germany
Class 350 (LNWR) built in Austria, Czechia, Poland, and Germany
Class 360 (Luton Express) built in Austria and Germany
Class 380 (Scotrail) built in Germany
Class 444 (Southwest) built in Austria
Class 450 (Southwest) built in Austria and Germany
Class 700 (Thameslink, Grt Northern) and Class 717 (Grt Northern) built in Germany
Class 707 (Southeastern) Built in Germany
No Mark 3 carriages ? I used to work on them at Litchurch Lane.
Dan Jarvis has taken a hospital pass by accepting the job without the precondition of more money. And a large part of the "increase"the MoD is being allowed is smoke and mirrors financing. And the MoD is proposing to cut useful stuff to preserve obsolescent stuff like the Challenger upgrade.
Dan Jarvis ‘will make big cuts’ unless money appears
https://www.thetimes.com/article/94a84928-736c-4ebf-b488-df472f0e72e0?shareToken=cb9823dac10c1e7b6de48c0104a0fa9f ..Sir Keir Starmer’s offer of an extra £13.5 billion in defence spending over four years, made to Jarvis’s predecessor John Healey last week, would have meant that the ministry’s existing equipment programme was unaffordable and the strategic defence review unachievable, a source familiar with those discussions said. Defence officials working to make the numbers add up last week proposed delaying new investments in drones and artificial intelligence, cancelling reserve days and cancelling exercises, it can be revealed. Such cuts — to be outlined in the long-awaited defence investment plan — would have made the armed forces less prepared for conflict and ill-equipped to fight with the likes of Russia..
..Of the £13.5 billion offered to Healey before he resigned on Thursday, the Times understands that £3.5 billion would have been made up by “changing contingency levels with MoD budgets”...
..Also included in the £3.5 billion was the Treasury “taking on the cost of things the MoD was never going to pay for anyway”, a second source added. “On a huge budget, a tweak to the accepted risk levels over several years will free up lots of money. A classic Treasury trick,” said John Foreman, former defence attaché to Moscow who previously worked on equipment acquisition in the Ministry of Defence..
I don't see why he can't go to Westminster City School like everyone else. If it's not good enough for him, then it's not good enough for the rest of us.
Slight problem, William and Catherine live in Windsor not Kensington Palace.
Ah - I heard he was boarding at Eton so assumed they were in London! If they live in Windsor then why board? Oh well the top brass are a mystery...
Probably because his parents spend an inordinate amount of time not at home or indeed in the same country.
Not a monarchist by any means or a fan of Eton, but i think this just might make practical sense to them as a family.
I’ve always wondered . These so called IDF warnings to evacuate certain areas of a town in Lebanon , can’t Hezbollah fighters then just leave aswell so what’s the point of razing whole neighbourhoods to the ground ?
Unless of course it’s just an excuse to make those areas inhabitable. Given the scenes in Gaza it’s pretty clear that the plan all along was to turn Gaza into a wasteland .
Are we to believe every single building was full of Hamas fighters ?
It's like the Hamas Command post in a hospital.
Is it a fully set up HQ in the basement or is it a low level field commander with a mobile phone and a half dozen men sheltering in the foyer, a group more than willing to shoot any doctor brave enough to tell them to leave.
Either way does either justify an Airstrike on a hospital.
The second certainly doesn't and as to the first, well in order to capture and recover Intelegence a commando raid might work better. That involves the potential loss of Israeli troops so if that matters more than civilian casualties then you bomb.
As to whether it should is another matter.
I suppose you could argue that more civilans would die in a raid than if you bombed.
Alternatively given the capabilities of teh Israeli army they could always just jam it's communications.
It says something about Starmers seeping authority, if he even has any left that is, that the Chief of the Defence staff is openly saying stuff like this.
Yes they warn of challenges and ask for more but, whether you agree with it or not, this is very close to crossing the line between advice and insubordination.
@Richard_Tyndall a couple of days back you mentioned your book on British intervention in southern Russia at the end of WWI. This sounds like a book I want to read! Can you tell us more?
Its a long term project that I started a few years ago and have picked up again. It revolves around the British fears of Turkish Pan Turanianism expansion into central Asia following the Russian collapse in 1917. To try and prevent this the British organised a series of interventions in the Caucaus and Southern central Asia - Dunsterforce and the Malleson Mission amongst them. As a result the British/Empire troops ended up defending Baku against the Turks and also fighting the Red Russians on the South Central Asian railway in Turkmenistan.
Its real boys own stuff and includes a small group of about 20 Australian and British soldiers defending the retreat of the last of the Assyrians from Urmia down into Persia, holding off thousands of Turks and Kurds to get 80,000 refugees to safety.
My plan is to have the first draft finished middle of next year. I have a couple of military publishers interested.
My family tree includes a great* uncle (or something like that) who, while serving with the Army, married the daughter of a senior British diplomat in Baku in 1920. He'd been a civilian before the war, some sort of trader in Tsarist Russia, but of course. that all went pear-shaped after the Revolution.
WRT to discussions recently over sentencing and how the defence was allowed and not allowed to run its defence in the palestine action case, it is worth looking at the excellent Joshua Rozenberg's balanced comment. IMHO he gets it exactly right. Including this:
Anyone reading this might think that the activists were convicted of terrorism offences or, at the very least, that their sentences were substantially increased because Palestine Action was subsequently banned as a terrorist organisation. Neither is true.
Their sentences were increased because so-called "terrorism" (disrupting an Israeli arms factory whose products are used to aid an illegal occupation and to kill innocent women and children) was an aggravating factor in the case, as the article notes in the judge's sentencing remarks.
Try reading it again. The judge took account of aggravating and mitigating factors, which largely balanced each other out. Anyone causing criminal damage of over a million pounds would have faced sentences of this length. They are entirely in line with what would be expected for such offences. The judge's sentencing was in line with the relevant laws which have been in place for some time. And the terror angle has been used in another recent case about arson (which had nothing to do with arms factories).
Defence counsel's closing speech for one of the defendants went into very great detail about the defendant's political motivations / concern for victims etc and why he should be acquitted so the idea that the jury was not made fully aware of why the defendants did what they did is for the birds.
As for the claim that the jury was not told about sentencing and what an outrage this all is, juries play no role in sentencing at all. Ever. It is utterly irrelevant to their role.
I don’t think anyone on PB is arguing that the judge made some sort of flat error. Not do we think that juries should have a role in sentencing. Hiding behind those arguments is useful though because it means you don’t need to confront the underlying injustice, which would be uncomfortable for you because it affects people you instinctively dislike. There are multiple issues here:
1) Terrorism as an aggravating factor for something like criminal damage is absurd. The implications and consequences of each crime are entirely different, and should be prosecuted separately 2) Happily, Terrorism exists as a crime in isolation - that the CPS didn’t charge them with that indicates there was little chance of a conviction for the crime for which they have been sentenced 3) The motivation for the crime was concealed from the jury, but influenced the sentence. An important element of jury trials is to let citizens consider the facts and actually have a say - they have been hoodwinked into a conviction. The inconsistency is the problem. 4) It undermines all jury trials if the jury can’t know of what they are deciding. You should vote to acquit in all instances now, lest your careless driving decision morphs into murder.
And separately, but linked: 5)Wearing a t-shirt isn’t terrorism. It just isn’t. It’s the least aggressive form of political activism imaginable. The PA prohibition makes it so. 6) There are multiple examples of other politically motivated criminal damage (ULEZ cameras, for a start) not sentenced for terrorism. Why are the CPS picking favourites?
3) The motivation was concealed because the defence asked for this.
4) The jury convicted on the charges brought. The charges were NOT changed after conviction. This is a flat out lie. Your analogy is a stupid one. Aggravating and mitigating factors are always factors in sentencing.
The complaint here is that something the defence chose to conceal from the jury because they thought it would prejudice the jury was lawfully used as one of the factors which the judge, in accordance with the law, The Sentencing Act of 2020, took into account in sentencing. If any hoodwinking was going on, it was the defence which tried to do this.
As for your point 1 this is equally stupid. Try saying that racial hatred as an aggravating factor for criminal damage is absurd. It isn't. Nor is terror.
There are different charges which can be brought on the basis of particular facts. Deciding which charges to be brought is an art. Saying that because something can be used as an aggravating factor means only a certain charge should be brought is absurdly reductive and not how the process of charging works.
What all these complaints boil down to is this: the defendants thought that because they were right to do what they did they should be acquitted and should face no consequences for their actions and are now learning that the law, which has been clear for some time, should not apply to them. And they - and some of their supporters - think this because they were doing this for Palestine. That is the heart of the complaint. Not the jury system or inconsistency in the law or anything else. It's because you like their cause that you are complaining. If these people had been attacking mosques because they hated the Taliban or pharmaceutical factories because they hated vaccines or black churches because they hated the slaughter of Christians in some parts of Africa there wouldn't be this concern about unfair trials.
As for me, I thought the judge was wrong to try to bring contempt of court proceedings against the defence barrister and am glad that this was dropped. I read the defence barrister's speech (have you?). It went into a lot of detail about motivation, Palestine, their reasons for doing what they did, why it was an injustice etc, etc. The jury had ample evidence and advocacy on which if they had wanted to they could have acquitted. They chose not to.
There is a separate argument to be made about whether the legal provision which allows a court to take into account something which might be deemed to be terrorism should have been passed. This was debated in Parliament at the time. Only one Lib Dem Lord raised a concern. If you want to debate that we can have a debate about removing all aggravating and mitigating factors from sentencing and just charging people with the most serious possible offence.
And finally if the judge has got the law wrong here then this will be appealed.
To be absolutely clear, because you apparently missed this the first time - I give zero shits about the legal minutia and I’m not claiming the judge got it wrong. Continuing to pretend otherwise is convenient for anyone struggling to defend this though.
And in there you’ve made a disgusting misrepresentation of my position, however coyly phrased. I do not think they should have no consequences for their actions, and I’m glad they’ve been rightly convicted of criminal damage and GBH.
And you’ve cleverly disguised the fact the defence barrister made that speech at the first trial, where they were acquitted funnily enough.
Rich Liberal leftie terrorist lover up in arms
Don't be a plonker, malc.
why not , beats whining about some nutters getting jailed
Comments
The real irony is that Humphrey was charismatic. Not in a voter-friendly way, but charismatic nonetheless. People still quote him forty years later.
Nobody is going to be quoting Keir Starmer’s greatest hits in 2066 unless they really, really care about his father being a tool-maker.
In the past, American voters have tended to value military experience, executive experience, and, to a lesser extent, legislative accomplishments. If she has any of those, I have missed them.
Older women in the US tend to admire women who have made good marriages, and raised good children, (Rightly.)
Because they're an idiot who can't think for themselves and does not understand the limitations of ChatGPT.
Peter.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2026/06/13/how-california-became-case-study-failed-governance/
ChatGPT is a useful tool that is sometimes wrong. Verify important facts.
Which is also the sensible position for Google, Wikipedia, journalists, politicians, economists and random posters on Political Betting.
So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..
You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.
This is the worst American Foreign policy initiative of my lifetime.
I just hope they take the time to get pipelines (they can protect) and alternative means of moving oil and LNG out of the gulf without the need for Hormuz. Otherwise the Mullahs have their jackboots on the global economies neck for the future.
Unless of course it’s just an excuse to make those areas inhabitable. Given the scenes in Gaza it’s pretty clear that the plan all along was to turn Gaza into a wasteland .
Are we to believe every single building was full of Hamas fighters ?
How would it make no difference to any journey you’ve made? Every single one of those lines you’ve mentioned have gaps due to poor cellular coverage, whilst fine beside the line is weaker inside the carriage because of the attenuation of the windows.
I try and talk about things I know about. And I spent many years working in the telecoms industry. So off you fuck.
(And, at the risk of being unfair, weren't you a fan of Doug Burgum's executive experience ?)
Also, for the record, AOC seems to have made a fairly successful marriage.
A) Starmer and his team should have known he wouldn’t have got a fair shake and developed an approach that attempted to meet the public in an unmediated way - as far as I can tell they run their operation like the world is back in the Blair days (front pages, today show, world at one and the news at ten are all that matter).
B ) As Malmsbury said he spent political capital in very curious ways - and more often than not he ended up in a U-turn.
C) Starmer and very few of his Ministers appear to want to really sell the policies they are implementing. It is not enough to do stuff and hope folk notice, you’ve got to be out there banging the drum.
People here talk about how the UK is crap at doing things and yet when solutions are proposed they’re instantly shot down.
As I said, the Germans, the French, the Swiss have all decided that 100% coverage is an important thing to achieve. Because it produces large productivity gains relative to investment. I’ve proposed many things here that would put us on parity with other countries.
The UK is laughably unambitious when it comes to infrastructure in general.
It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.
We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.
We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.
I always thought Boris Johnson won the 2019 election more than the Conservative Party.
See as an example the I don't use it desire to cancel work on the Brighton Line to pay for a pet peeve of yours.
How many of them left for the Greens etc because of the Daily Mail?
If Starmer hadn’t alienated his own supporters, to little effect, the old Labour coalition would still be running.
And Labour would be in the lead.
But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.
I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.
But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.
The UK just does it so badly.
It’s also not a “pet peeve”, it’s one of the cheapest things we could do to unlock productivity. Increased mobile coverage = cheap = more productivity.
Why are you so against it?
It’s like people want decline. Even when companies want to build we say “no” and they go elsewhere. Really baffling.
As I said, people claim they want better coverage and to increase our productivity but oppose anything that actually helps.
NIMBYism is alive and well on PB. This isn’t just for masts either, it’s anything we want to build.
And a large part of the "increase"the MoD is being allowed is smoke and mirrors financing.
And the MoD is proposing to cut useful stuff to preserve obsolescent stuff like the Challenger upgrade.
Dan Jarvis ‘will make big cuts’ unless money appears
https://www.thetimes.com/article/94a84928-736c-4ebf-b488-df472f0e72e0?shareToken=cb9823dac10c1e7b6de48c0104a0fa9f
..Sir Keir Starmer’s offer of an extra £13.5 billion in defence spending over four years, made to Jarvis’s predecessor John Healey last week, would have meant that the ministry’s existing equipment programme was unaffordable and the strategic defence review unachievable, a source familiar with those discussions said.
Defence officials working to make the numbers add up last week proposed delaying new investments in drones and artificial intelligence, cancelling reserve days and cancelling exercises, it can be revealed. Such cuts — to be outlined in the long-awaited defence investment plan — would have made the armed forces less prepared for conflict and ill-equipped to fight with the likes of Russia..
..Of the £13.5 billion offered to Healey before he resigned on Thursday, the Times understands that £3.5 billion would have been made up by “changing contingency levels with MoD budgets”...
..Also included in the £3.5 billion was the Treasury “taking on the cost of things the MoD was never going to pay for anyway”, a second source added.
“On a huge budget, a tweak to the accepted risk levels over several years will free up lots of money. A classic Treasury trick,” said John Foreman, former defence attaché to Moscow who previously worked on equipment acquisition in the Ministry of Defence..
And the settlement provides nothing at all towards funding the necessary equipment for outrapid response brigade for NATO:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/britain-bolsters-natos-eastern-flank-with-new-pact-with-estonia-and-new-cooperation-on-missile-defence
Let alone new programs like GCAP.
In order, none, some, and none.
Though his executive experience was exaggerated greatly by his time on "The Apprentice": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apprentice_(American_TV_series)
But he was lucky enough to run against three weak Democratic candidates and, only once, in those three attempts, won the popular vote.
(One detail that has long interested me: Trump never managed a single large organization before becoming president. Instead, he set up small ones, and then left them mostly alone. So it does not surprise me that he has been so bad at running large bureacracies, whihc require different talents than running small businesses.)
Has it been tested and validated to see how it behaves to our standards in a crash, for example ?
As you don’t know that or won’t look at the evidence, this conversation is fairly pointless.
Do you think we should all be stuck on 2G? Or dial up for fixed line?
It’s been certified for use on German trains.
As I said, there can be other things. Build more masts. But that also was opposed here.
There are not a small number of people who subscribe to that analysis.
It is incredibly embarrassing we are in this state and shame on Labour for doing bugger all about it.
Development should be a default yes. Right now it’s a default no.
If it is too expensive to be it.
Now I don't use onboard Wifi because it's beyond useless but my personal hotspot attached to an EE sim works fine and has allowed me to work issue free.
It’s not insurmountable but it’s not easy too and would need some cash up,front to start the development project.
Also given how much Huawei equipment still seems to be part of some networks I would be sorting that out first..
What about more FTTP coverage or do you oppose that too?
What about masses of new houses?
https://x.com/TheDemocrats/status/2066558650420781215
Having actual, reliable, strong signal for the entire journey would be a real boost.
People who need to take calls should be mindful of their surroundings, that is true and something that seems to have been completely forgotten.
FTTP is a solved ongoing project U believe
But when it comes to phone masts and other parts of the telecom industry (BT's replacement of telephone boxes with advertising boards being another example) the industry has abused it's position so often that its now subjected to consequences of upsetting everyone..
How cheap/expensive would it be?
How much growth would it generate?
Are there cheaper/faster ways of achieving the same benefits?
Changing all the windows in all the trains specially seems like an awfully big project, and doing so on the normal replacement cycle awfully slow.
My experience has been the same as eek's - I didn't have a problem with mobile connectivity when I was travelling regularly crosscountry on the trains prior to the pandemic, with the exception of inner London services when the volume of people trying to connect exceeded the network capacity.
https://x.com/Wahlen_DE/status/2066766251045552458
Sonntagsfrage YouGov
AfD: 29% (+1)
Union: 20% (-2)
GRÜNE: 14% (+1)
SPD: 12% (-1)
LINKE: 12% (+1)
FDP: 5% (+1)
BSW: 4%
Sonstige: 5%
For example:
https://people.com/obamas-unveil-joint-portrait-obama-presidential-center-11998699
For the record, they were delighted.
A curiosity. An advert for DDT I ran across from the 1940s. Is the correct term for this type of publication? Propaganda ad? Public inforamtional? Brand promotion? It should be legible if opened as an image.
It was first called out in 1952 in Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, but was used everywhere. It was not banned in the UK until 1986.
There are a lot of lessons to remember, from all sides.
Albeit inevitably there was always going to be loss of support post election (and some will probably come back).
It also seems they are almost ashamed of what little achievements they have. Any government would want to do “more,” and we can always argue about whether they are really achievements. But if you only sell the things you do as sh!tty little compromises then even those that back you are not going to be enthused. (albeit I get your point that Ministers and MPs aren’t going to put on armour to fight for something with all their might if they have a sneaky suspicion that your general is plotting to run away).
This is in addition to the daft things the administration has done in daft ways along the way that only served to alienate existing supporters.
(He is right.)
NEW: The Army’s new Challenger 3 tank is facing delays due to engineering problems.
Some suppliers have been told to halt work while the issues are resolved.
But sources say it could cause a 2yr delay. IOC is supposed to be in 2027. ..
https://x.com/mattotele/status/2066777791207518267
I very much think it is so I propose solutions.
Another to lodge an objection against the new scheme is Killiney resident and one time editor of The Economist magazine and author, Bill Emmott.
In his submission, Mr Emmott said that "as a general remark addressed to those reading this who may wish to dismiss objectors as merely the selfish affluent residents of Killiney - please note that the ONLY reason this or its predecessor application has been made is that the developer wishes to exploit the affluence and high land values of Killiney by creating profitably high priced housing".
Mr Emmott - who served as editor of The Economist between 1993 and 2006 - contends that "the developer is the selfish affluent party here".
https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2026/0616/1578727-locals-oppose-apartment-scheme-at-montebello-house-lands/
Why do you want to keep around phone boxes that aren’t used by anyone? I take the point about advertising but they also provide mobile phone charging and WiFi amongst other things. To me that’s a smart repurposing but what would you prefer instead?
How has it abused its position? Telecoms companies aren’t allowed to build basically anything without a long process.
NEW THREAD
Class 398 (Wales), Class 399 (Sheffield Supertram) built in Spain.
Class 195, 331 (Northern), Class 397 (Trans-Pennine), mostly built in Spain.
Class 185 (Transpennine) built in Germany
Class 350 (LNWR) built in Austria, Czechia, Poland, and Germany
Class 360 (Luton Express) built in Austria and Germany
Class 380 (Scotrail) built in Germany
Class 444 (Southwest) built in Austria
Class 450 (Southwest) built in Austria and Germany
Class 700 (Thameslink, Grt Northern) and Class 717 (Grt Northern) built in Germany
Class 707 (Southeastern) Built in Germany
For the advertising boards given that the standard objection is because of their use by the clients of drug dealers - just removing them would work
At least when it comes to politics, a fair few of PB’s regulars have some useful insight and intelligence to contribute to the discussion.
Its real boys own stuff and includes a small group of about 20 Australian and British soldiers defending the retreat of the last of the Assyrians from Urmia down into Persia, holding off thousands of Turks and Kurds to get 80,000 refugees to safety.
My plan is to have the first draft finished middle of next year. I have a couple of military publishers interested.
https://knds.com/media/KNDS_CAPINT_02_1d23f7326f.jpg
https://knds.com/media/KNDS_PR_ESY_2026_June_15th_2026_LORAS_and_CAPINT_Final_eef499320a.pdf
Peter.
Not a monarchist by any means or a fan of Eton, but i think this just might make practical sense to them as a family.
Peter.
Peter.
Is it a fully set up HQ in the basement or is it a low level field commander with a mobile phone and a half dozen men sheltering in the foyer, a group more than willing to shoot any doctor brave enough to tell them to leave.
Either way does either justify an Airstrike on a hospital.
The second certainly doesn't and as to the first, well in order to capture and recover Intelegence a commando raid might work better. That involves the potential loss of Israeli troops so if that matters more than civilian casualties then you bomb.
As to whether it should is another matter.
I suppose you could argue that more civilans would die in a raid than if you bombed.
Alternatively given the capabilities of teh Israeli army they could always just jam it's communications.
Peter.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20ydx06ym2o
Yes they warn of challenges and ask for more but, whether you agree with it or not, this is very close to crossing the line between advice and insubordination.
Peter.
He'd been a civilian before the war, some sort of trader in Tsarist Russia, but of course. that all went pear-shaped after the Revolution.