Mr. Jessop, one hopes Sheffield's council is doing a better job deciding on the HS2 route than it did on the seemingly insane tree contract.
What's the tree contract?
1. Sheffield's roads were last maintained in 1954 2. Sheffield is the greenest city in the country with trees along most streets - roots breaking through pavements and roads due to point 1 3. Council is broke due to Tories cutting central government grant to £0 4. Council signs PFI project which mandates removal of trees from roads. Residents protest, trees are historic, council threatens legal action against protestors 5. Apparently it costs more to add variance to the contract (to not remove trees) than to run it as is regardless of sanity
Slightly puzzled by events in Germany. While I can understand the "Jamaica" option was always going to be difficult to put together, it seems odd that the FDP have walked out of the talks yet at the same time no one seems to be trying to put together a CDU/CSU/FDP coalition which you'd think would be the logical fit (even as a minority).
No-one trusts the FDP leadership anymore.
But everyone loves Mrs Merkel, right?
Merkel seems keen to ignore the parties which made the biggest gains - brave.
The AfD want to ignore the mainstream so that's only fair.
Towards the end of company X, we had an incredibly poor timekeeping system. Originally we had to fill out our timesheets on a Monday morning for the previous week. That was fair enough, even for people like me who worked on many different projects - I just kept track of what I was doing during the week. Then they shifted it to Friday afternoons, so the last thing we did in the week was fill out our timesheets. That was more annoying, if only because we wanted to get away.
They then started taking the p*ss. We had to fill them out on Friday mornings, and finally Thursday afternoons. Which meant we had to guess what we'd be doing the next day, and which project(s) to bill it to. The changes were, apparently, to make the office and billing work more efficiently. They had no idea that some of us who actually worked for a living had to respond to customers, and therefore had no idea what we'd be doing day-by-day.
I'm not joking about this: we had to fill timesheets out over a day before the end of the timesheet's period!
I said 'towards the end of company X', and I meant it. I put much of the reason the company failed down to this sort of stupid b/s.
That’s funny. How much rechargeable time never made the customers’ invoices because of crap like that? Would have cost them a fortune. Unfortunately corporate history is littered with dead companies that got taken over by the penpushers and papershufflers. As is government.
If I remember correctly, the reason was that management had a big meeting on Monday mornings to decide on stuff for the week ahead. Someone complained they were doing this on data that was a week out of date, so they asked for the timekeeping data of the last week for the meeting on Monday mornings. Since the timesheet system was paper based (in a tech company!), they involved a great deal of collating and data entry.
If the information was that critical, the obvious answer would have been to pay someone to come in over the weekend and do it. Instead, they were getting invented data and pi**ed off employees.
That’s bad. Either have the board meeting on Tuesday or pay admin people overtime to work Saturday. Or get rid of the bloody papers! A good system would have the workers submit their time sheets electronically over the weekend and the reports run at 3am Monday - with a tech guy paid to wake up at 7am and dial in to run the report manually if required.
That sounds like one of my current customers, who struggles to see the productivity they’re losing by not having a single source of the truth emailed to everyone in the business overnight.
A decade ago I worked for a company with 10,000 employees that had their entire HR system on paper. Hundreds of holiday approval papers each requiring half a dozen signatures were on the desk of senior management every morning. They thought it was okay because the admin staff were cheap and those high up enough to make the decisions on upgrading to a proper HR system didn’t see the amount of time those just below them were wasting on shuffling papers around.
Towards the end of company X, we had an incredibly poor timekeeping system. Originally we had to fill out our timesheets on a Monday morning for the previous week. That was fair enough, even for people like me who worked on many different projects - I just kept track of what I was doing during the week. Then they shifted it to Friday afternoons, so the last thing we did in the week was fill out our timesheets. That was more annoying, if only because we wanted to get away.
They then started taking the p*ss. We had to fill them out on Friday mornings, and finally Thursday afternoons. Which meant we had to guess what we'd be doing the next day, and which project(s) to bill it to. The changes were, apparently, to make the office and billing work more efficiently. They had no idea that some of us who actually worked for a living had to respond to customers, and therefore had no idea what we'd be doing day-by-day.
I'm not joking about this: we had to fill timesheets out over a day before the end of the timesheet's period!
I said 'towards the end of company X', and I meant it. I put much of the reason the company failed down to this sort of stupid b/s.
Thursday afternoon? Luxury. I'm told IBM has Thursday morning as its timesheet deadline, almost 2 full days in advance. From wikipedia: IBM employees have been awarded five Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, ten National Medals of Technology and five National Medals of Science.
So this is located in London - the capital city of the UK.
Now compare some of the other cities on the list:
Milan - not the capital of Italy Barcelona - not the capital of Spain Lille - not the capital of France Bonn - not the capital of Germany
Do you get the idea that the 'benefits' of EU membership were too concentrated in too few places in the UK ?
Though London is now effectively the capital of Europe just as New York is the effective capital of North America.
Not any more. We voted against that last year.
Hasn’t London been a lot bigger than anywhere since the Plantagenets? (or thereabouts)
I think Paris was bigger till about 1800, Venice till about 1600.
Sorry, silly error. I meant anywhere else in England.
Not sure about size, but in terms of GDP I think Birmingham was ahead of London until relatively recently - the late 60s or early 70s. What did for provincial England was deindustrialisation. It not only took away the factories, but a lot of the support services that went with them - banks, accountants, law firms etc. An entire infrastructure was lost and never replaced.
So this is located in London - the capital city of the UK.
Now compare some of the other cities on the list:
Milan - not the capital of Italy Barcelona - not the capital of Spain Lille - not the capital of France Bonn - not the capital of Germany
Do you get the idea that the 'benefits' of EU membership were too concentrated in too few places in the UK ?
Though London is now effectively the capital of Europe just as New York is the effective capital of North America.
Not any more. We voted against that last year.
Oh yeah? So where IS this new capital of Europe?
And how come nobody told Mr Market?
Cities rise and fall in size and prestige - it was only last year that London surpassed its 1939 population. London has emerged (again) as one of the World's principal cities, but there is no guarantee that this will continue. Brexit will do nothing to promote London's pre-eminence and is quite likely to put it into reverse.
That sounds like one of my current customers, who struggles to see the productivity they’re losing by not having a single source of the truth emailed to everyone in the business overnight.
A decade ago I worked for a company with 10,000 employees that had their entire HR system on paper. Hundreds of holiday approval papers each requiring half a dozen signatures were on the desk of senior management every morning. They thought it was okay because the admin staff were cheap and those high up enough to make the decisions on upgrading to a proper HR system didn’t see the amount of time those just below them were wasting on shuffling papers around.
Towards the end of company X, we had an incredibly poor timekeeping system. Originally we had to fill out our timesheets on a Monday morning for the previous week. That was fair enough, even for people like me who worked on many different projects - I just kept track of what I was doing during the week. Then they shifted it to Friday afternoons, so the last thing we did in the week was fill out our timesheets. That was more annoying, if only because we wanted to get away.
They then started taking the p*ss. We had to fill them out on Friday mornings, and finally Thursday afternoons. Which meant we had to guess what we'd be doing the next day, and which project(s) to bill it to. The changes were, apparently, to make the office and billing work more efficiently. They had no idea that some of us who actually worked for a living had to respond to customers, and therefore had no idea what we'd be doing day-by-day.
I'm not joking about this: we had to fill timesheets out over a day before the end of the timesheet's period!
I said 'towards the end of company X', and I meant it. I put much of the reason the company failed down to this sort of stupid b/s.
Thursday afternoon? Luxury. I'm told IBM has Thursday morning as its timesheet deadline, almost 2 full days in advance. From wikipedia: IBM employees have been awarded five Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, ten National Medals of Technology and five National Medals of Science.
Really? I haven't heard that, and I doubt IBM would work that way.
I think a high speed station at Victoria would make the most sense. It'd avoid the disruption (Which will last for years) of changing the current station, also the current Sheffield station has absolubtely nowhere to park at (The new station's parking could be designed ground up with electric charge points for instance). Meadowhall sounds good in theory, and it could create a central point of Rotherham/Sheffield to truly amalgamate the two cities into one more efficient entity, but the disruption around the M1 there could be truly mind boggling. So I think a high speed line through Sheffield Victoria would make the most sense.
Slightly puzzled by events in Germany. While I can understand the "Jamaica" option was always going to be difficult to put together, it seems odd that the FDP have walked out of the talks yet at the same time no one seems to be trying to put together a CDU/CSU/FDP coalition which you'd think would be the logical fit (even as a minority).
No-one trusts the FDP leadership anymore.
Do you have any evidence of that throwaway jibe ? A link to an erudite piece of analysis whether in German or English would be nice.
Christian Lindner jedoch hat die Liberalen auch in dieser Hinsicht gründlich umgekrempelt: Mit seiner Partei ist heute kein Staat mehr zu machen.
A benefit of Brexit could well be that the international community forces the UK to accept the reality of its position as a prosperous, middle-ranking European country that is best off leaving the big boys to make the decisions. Our UN Security Council seat is also likely to come under intense review.
I tend to agree. The problem is that, although the Tories are now its advocates, they are the least suited to meeting the consequences that Brexit implies for our politics, economic policy and role in the world (making the reasonable assumption that the so-called 'Singapore option' is a non-starter, given our size, society and culture). I suspect the hard lifting will fall to the non-Conservative government that follows close behind.
So this is located in London - the capital city of the UK.
Now compare some of the other cities on the list:
Milan - not the capital of Italy Barcelona - not the capital of Spain Lille - not the capital of France Bonn - not the capital of Germany
Do you get the idea that the 'benefits' of EU membership were too concentrated in too few places in the UK ?
Though London is now effectively the capital of Europe just as New York is the effective capital of North America.
Not any more. We voted against that last year.
Hasn’t London been a lot bigger than anywhere since the Plantagenets? (or thereabouts)
I think Paris was bigger till about 1800, Venice till about 1600.
Sorry, silly error. I meant anywhere else in England.
Not sure about size, but in terms of GDP I think Birmingham was ahead of London until relatively recently - the late 60s or early 70s. What did for provincial England was deindustrialisation. It not only took away the factories, but a lot of the support services that went with them - banks, accountants, law firms etc. An entire infrastructure was lost and never replaced.
Birmingham's post industrialisation was deliberately strangled in an effort to force companies to move to other failing parts of the country.
I think a high speed station at Victoria would make the most sense. It'd avoid the disruption (Which will last for years) of changing the current station, also the current Sheffield station has absolubtely nowhere to park at (The new station's parking could be designed ground up with electric charge points for instance). Meadowhall sounds good in theory, and it could create a central point of Rotherham/Sheffield to truly amalgamate the two cities into one more efficient entity, but the disruption around the M1 there could be truly mind boggling. So I think a high speed line through Sheffield Victoria would make the most sense.
Surely better interchange to other lines at Sheffield too?
So this is located in London - the capital city of the UK.
Now compare some of the other cities on the list:
Milan - not the capital of Italy Barcelona - not the capital of Spain Lille - not the capital of France Bonn - not the capital of Germany
Do you get the idea that the 'benefits' of EU membership were too concentrated in too few places in the UK ?
Though London is now effectively the capital of Europe just as New York is the effective capital of North America.
Not any more. We voted against that last year.
Hasn’t London been a lot bigger than anywhere since the Plantagenets? (or thereabouts)
I think Paris was bigger till about 1800, Venice till about 1600.
Sorry, silly error. I meant anywhere else in England.
Not sure about size, but in terms of GDP I think Birmingham was ahead of London until relatively recently - the late 60s or early 70s. What did for provincial England was deindustrialisation. It not only took away the factories, but a lot of the support services that went with them - banks, accountants, law firms etc. An entire infrastructure was lost and never replaced.
The West Midlands was the wealthiest part of the country for a time in the early 1960s.
The FDP have always been classical liberals and - in as far as these terms mean much when applied crudely - to the right of the CDU/CSU, on economic issues while to the left on social ones. A coalition with the Greens was always a hard sell and indeed, the FDP ruled it out before the election, only to go back on that afterwards - though clearly with an extremely wary eye as to what they might be getting into. It does help that the German Greens are a good deal more sensible than they once were, or than the UK version is.
However, I really don't see a sustainable way out. There were only ever two numerically viable options: Jamaica and Grand Coalition 3 (excluding excessive and/or bonkers combinations). Both were unlikely because of the lack of willingness of the necessary participants. It is possible that a CDU-led minority government might strike a C&S deal with one or more parties but it'd be extremely flaky. New elections within a year seems to me, as it did as soon as the results came in, to remain the most likely outcome.
Quite why media commentators were proclaiming a solid win for Merkel is a mystery. The only reasonable explanation is that they didn't know what they were talking about and had been distracted by the awful result for the SPD from noticing how weak the CDU's position had become.
As always, David, a thoughtful and erudite response.
I'm not wholly convinced the FDP have always been classical liberals - Genscher was quite happy to work with Brandt, Schmidt and Kohl. More recently, yes, I would agree the FDP has occupied the kind of ground the British Liberal Party held in the 1950s with some Orange Book tendencies. I can well understand why an accommodation with the Greens on that basis would be difficult.
A benefitdisadvantage of Brexit could well be that the international community forces the UK to accept the reality of its position as a prosperous, middle-ranking European country that is best off leaving the big boys to make the decisions. Our UN Security Council seat is also likely to come under intense review, unfortunately.
On topic the idea that we would remain the host of EU institutions having left the EU is so absurd that I refuse to believe that anyone entertained it after a moment's thought. That said, there have been persistent rumours that the staff in both institutions don't want to leave.
I'm sure - nobody likes bring compulsorily uprooted anyway. But it'll be an interesting test of the apparently frivolous idea that Frankfurt can't attract much new banking business because its nightlife is less exciting and brokers therefore don't want it. If the EMA goes to Bratislava (nice place, but probably not a hum of social whirl), it'll be an indication that the decision-makers shrug off whatthe staff fancy.
People have families and uprooting families is much harder. Spouses have careers of their own. Children are in schools. There may be elderly parents you want to be near to. It’s not just a question of a social life, though that matters too.
Some people may move but others may decide that they don’t want to and skilled people like that have alternatives. And it may become harder to recruit.
What the staff fancy may not determine the decision but it would be a foolish organisation which did not take account of how easy or otherwise it is to recruit and maintain highly skilled staff when making its decision.
Puts all the stuff about everyone in the City moving out if Ed Miliband had won in 2015 into context.
Yes I bet now a lot wish Ed Milliband had won No referendum and a moderate Labour government.
I think a high speed station at Victoria would make the most sense. It'd avoid the disruption (Which will last for years) of changing the current station, also the current Sheffield station has absolubtely nowhere to park at (The new station's parking could be designed ground up with electric charge points for instance). Meadowhall sounds good in theory, and it could create a central point of Rotherham/Sheffield to truly amalgamate the two cities into one more efficient entity, but the disruption around the M1 there could be truly mind boggling. So I think a high speed line through Sheffield Victoria would make the most sense.
The Victoria option not only makes the most sense it would be cheaper and faster. At the moment they propose a "classic" loop route through Chesterfield and Sheffield. Or, a triangular junction off the mainline near Aston, running straight into a terminus at Sheffield Victoria. Forget the rest of the northern route towards Leeds, they're plowing through Mexborough. A spur off the mainline - thats the plan.
Assuming there is ever a mainline running alongside the M1 to spur off...
The FDP have always been classical liberals and - in as far as these terms mean much when applied crudely - to the right of the CDU/CSU, on economic issues while to the left on social ones. A coalition with the Greens was always a hard sell and indeed, the FDP ruled it out before the election, only to go back on that afterwards - though clearly with an extremely wary eye as to what they might be getting into. It does help that the German Greens are a good deal more sensible than they once were, or than the UK version is.
However, I really don't see a sustainable way out. There were only ever two numerically viable options: Jamaica and Grand Coalition 3 (excluding excessive and/or bonkers combinations). Both were unlikely because of the lack of willingness of the necessary participants. It is possible that a CDU-led minority government might strike a C&S deal with one or more parties but it'd be extremely flaky. New elections within a year seems to me, as it did as soon as the results came in, to remain the most likely outcome.
Quite why media commentators were proclaiming a solid win for Merkel is a mystery. The only reasonable explanation is that they didn't know what they were talking about and had been distracted by the awful result for the SPD from noticing how weak the CDU's position had become.
As always, David, a thoughtful and erudite response.
I'm not wholly convinced the FDP have always been classical liberals - Genscher was quite happy to work with Brandt, Schmidt and Kohl. More recently, yes, I would agree the FDP has occupied the kind of ground the British Liberal Party held in the 1950s with some Orange Book tendencies. I can well understand why an accommodation with the Greens on that basis would be difficult.
That's a fair point. I don't know enough about the FPD's history to be able to comment with any authority about why they went into coalition with Brandt and Schmidt, though I imagine that 20 years of CDU chancellors (even allowing for Grand Coalition I) played strongly to 'time for a change' by the end. I'd guess (though this is only an assumption) that Strauss's leadership of the CDU/CSU coalition may have helped push the FPD towards the SPD in those years, as would the simple act of governing together.
I also wonder whether with the rise of the Greens and the absorption of the Left into German politics post-reunification, the FPD simply had fewer votes to fish for on the left-of-centre?
Mr. Jessop, the contract hasn't been published but the implied contents, borne out by actions, is that the firm gets paid for every tree cut down. Even if it's a rare elm tree that survived Dutch Elm Disease and is therefore not only unusual but of scientific importance.
On topic the idea that we would remain the host of EU institutions having left the EU is so absurd that I refuse to believe that anyone entertained it after a moment's thought. That said, there have been persistent rumours that the staff in both institutions don't want to leave.
I'm sure - nobody likes bring compulsorily uprooted anyway. But it'll be an interesting test of the apparently frivolous idea that Frankfurt can't attract much new banking business because its nightlife is less exciting and brokers therefore don't want it. If the EMA goes to Bratislava (nice place, but probably not a hum of social whirl), it'll be an indication that the decision-makers shrug off whatthe staff fancy.
People have families and uprooting families is much harder. Spouses have careers of their own. Children are in schools. There may be elderly parents you want to be near to. It’s not just a question of a social life, though that matters too.
Some people may move but others may decide that they don’t want to and skilled people like that have alternatives. And it may become harder to recruit.
What the staff fancy may not determine the decision but it would be a foolish organisation which did not take account of how easy or otherwise it is to recruit and maintain highly skilled staff when making its decision.
Puts all the stuff about everyone in the City moving out if Ed Miliband had won in 2015 into context.
Looking back, it’s truly hilarious the stuff they said about Ed M. Especially given how so many right wingers are now depicting dystopian scenarios about a Corbyn government. Ed Balls, who some of them praise today was also supposed to be some kind of socialist nightmare as well, lol....
On Ed M: he’s revealed himself to be a very thoughtful commentator since he resigned as leader. A shame that he received so much pressure to try and mimic the Conservative line on issues such as welfare and immigration. If he’d have been more true to himself, I think he could have done a bit better last time round.
Also saw this on my twitter feed today: https://twitter.com/theneweuropean/status/932287919867465728 That’s quite something, given on twitter so much of the ‘free speech under under threat’ crowd are right leaning Brexiteer types, who spend a significant amount of time talking about free speech on campus, right wing persecution, and how terrible the millennials all are.
So this is located in London - the capital city of the UK.
Now compare some of the other cities on the list:
Milan - not the capital of Italy Barcelona - not the capital of Spain Lille - not the capital of France Bonn - not the capital of Germany
Do you get the idea that the 'benefits' of EU membership were too concentrated in too few places in the UK ?
Though London is now effectively the capital of Europe just as New York is the effective capital of North America.
Not any more. We voted against that last year.
Oh yeah? So where IS this new capital of Europe?
And how come nobody told Mr Market?
Cities rise and fall in size and prestige - it was only last year that London surpassed its 1939 population. London has emerged (again) as one of the World's principal cities, but there is no guarantee that this will continue. Brexit will do nothing to promote London's pre-eminence and is quite likely to put it into reverse.
IN YOUR OPINION, Brexit will do nothing to promote London's pre-eminence and is quite likely to put it into reverse.
a) A poor Brexit settlement/cliff-edge Brexit may have a negative impact on London. (Although that will probably have a much greater impact on Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool....) But for London to be overtaken, it still requires somewhere with a better attitude to world trade and all-round better facilities to come into focus. Berlin? Maybe. Paris? No chance.
b) A so-so settlement will see London remain pre-eminent.
c) A London shorn of the worst of EU red-tape could in turn prove much more attractive to investment - near Europe, but not in Europe. London powers ahead....
Sad news, I remember when she won Wimbledon in the late 90s. Doesn't seem that long ago.
She played proper attacking grasscourt tennis. None of this baseline borefest you get these days, just waiting for your opponent to duff one into the net.
The existing one, or a recreation of Victoria - also High speed or normal.
I assume because they're devoid of imagination it is the existing station just retrofitted to be HS2 spur compaitble.
It is the existing station. I don't know Sheffield well, so it'd be interesting to gt local takes on the decision.
From memory, the reasoning against the old Victoria site was flooding (it is low level), more tunnelling being required, and its orientation being inconvenient (nw-se rather than n-s).
So this is located in London - the capital city of the UK.
Now compare some of the other cities on the list:
Milan - not the capital of Italy Barcelona - not the capital of Spain Lille - not the capital of France Bonn - not the capital of Germany
Do you get the idea that the 'benefits' of EU membership were too concentrated in too few places in the UK ?
Though London is now effectively the capital of Europe just as New York is the effective capital of North America.
Not any more. We voted against that last year.
Hasn’t London been a lot bigger than anywhere since the Plantagenets? (or thereabouts)
I think Paris was bigger till about 1800, Venice till about 1600.
Sorry, silly error. I meant anywhere else in England.
Not sure about size, but in terms of GDP I think Birmingham was ahead of London until relatively recently - the late 60s or early 70s. What did for provincial England was deindustrialisation. It not only took away the factories, but a lot of the support services that went with them - banks, accountants, law firms etc. An entire infrastructure was lost and never replaced.
The West Midlands was the wealthiest part of the country for a time in the early 1960s.
IIRC, at one time, Bradford had more millionaires per x000 population than any other city in the empire.
Mr. Richard, worth noting that the UK/England has been more heavily centralised than most countries in Europe for a long time. Our second cities (Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham) are significantly smaller than the capital, whereas Germany's (Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Cologne) are, I think, a lot closer. That's just because of the way their country evolved.
I think it's more indicative of the lopsided nature of the UK and the political/media class than the EU, to be honest. You can also look at the disproportionate number of museums and art galleries in London.
Indeed.
Its a problem caused by the UK not the EU.
The bias towards London in transport spending is another example. Even things such as locating an HS2 station in Sheffield rather than at Meadowhall have the imprint of what benefits London most.
Although the current government has been much better at building useful roads.
Why does an HS2 station in Sheffield rather than Meadowhall benefit London most, given that a station in Sheffield is what Sheffield were actively campaigning for?
A station at Meadowhall would benefit the rest of South Yorkshire (and even some of Sheffield) far more than a station in the centre of Sheffield.
Whereas, I rather suspect, that someone in London would be thinking in terms of going to central Sheffield rather than to the vast, free car park with excellent communications which Meadowhall is.
I'd prefer it in Sheffield city centre.
Congestion around Meadowhall is a nightmare, doubly so now that Ikea has opened, and I can't imagine what it'll be like when there's a gig on at the Arena.
What pillock let IKEA build a store there? Its stupidly busy down that way at the best of times without Swedish furniture land as well.
As for HS2 I'll believe it when I see it. This is BRITAIN. We don't do planning or long term - the first leg will over-run and be vastly more expensive than expected. They'll long grass the eastern leg (which isn't remotely needed from a capacity perspective the way the southern core and western legs are) and it'll never be built.
If nothing else it will be fabulously expensive to stick extra tracks in past Midland station, never mind the space for 400m long platforms.
Rail infrastructure costs are OTT compared to BR pre-1994. It cost £800M to rebuild Reading station.
People have families and uprooting families is much harder. Spouses have careers of their own. Children are in schools. There may be elderly parents you want to be near to. It’s not just a question of a social life, though that matters too.
Some people may move but others may decide that they don’t want to and skilled people like that have alternatives. And it may become harder to recruit.
What the staff fancy may not determine the decision but it would be a foolish organisation which did not take account of how easy or otherwise it is to recruit and maintain highly skilled staff when making its decision.
Fair point, but in the end that consideration gets overridden. In the 90's and Noughties there was a sustained attempt to relocate civil service offices to outside London. All or part of Health went to Quarry House in Leeds, ONS went to Newport, Inland/Revenue/HMRC works regionally with offices in Brum, Belfast, Nottingham et al, and - of course - BBC relocated to Salford. There's usually a small office left behind in London to satisfy the upper echelons, but most of it is moved. The argument that staff are difficult to replace may well be true but is usually overridden.
Ms. Apocalypse, there's been plenty of condemnation of the 'mutineers' front page here, from all sides.
Miliband's price cap policy remains utterly stupid, as does the Government's seeming desire to ape it. I do agree people (including myself) over-egged the cake, but, frankly, I never thought we'd have a sodding Marxist as the Leader of the Opposition, who would make Miliband look like the most sensible of lefties.
Looking back, it’s truly hilarious the stuff they said about Ed M. Especially given how so many right wingers are now depicting dystopian scenarios about a Corbyn government. Ed Balls, who some of them praise today was also supposed to be some kind of socialist nightmare as well, lol....
On Ed M: he’s revealed himself to be a very thoughtful commentator since he resigned as leader. A shame that he received so much pressure to try and mimic the Conservative line on issues such as welfare and immigration. If he’d have been more true to himself, I think he could have done a bit better last time round.
Also saw this on my twitter feed today: https://twitter.com/theneweuropean/status/932287919867465728 That’s quite something, given on twitter so much of the ‘free speech under under threat’ crowd are right leaning Brexiteer types, who spend a significant amount of time talking about free speech on campus, right wing persecution, and how terrible the millennials all are.
Absolutely agree on Ed M. He should have been bolder and more true to himself. I actually joined the Labour party in part because I liked him, and I thought he was being rather courageous changing the membership rules. Funny how that worked out.
He is still pretty young though - it's not inconceivable that he could still become PM.
The existing one, or a recreation of Victoria - also High speed or normal.
I assume because they're devoid of imagination it is the existing station just retrofitted to be HS2 spur compaitble.
It is the existing station. I don't know Sheffield well, so it'd be interesting to gt local takes on the decision.
From memory, the reasoning against the old Victoria site was flooding (it is low level), more tunnelling being required, and its orientation being inconvenient (nw-se rather than n-s).
I’m not a fan of HS2, I’d rather see the money spent on inter city routes like Sheffield to Manchester, Leeds to Manchester/Sheffield.
But if we’re going to have HS2 having the HS2 station at Meadowhall is a mistake as the area suffers from very bad congestion.
So this is located in London - the capital city of the UK.
Now compare some of the other cities on the list:
Milan - not the capital of Italy Barcelona - not the capital of Spain Lille - not the capital of France Bonn - not the capital of Germany
Do you get the idea that the 'benefits' of EU membership were too concentrated in too few places in the UK ?
Though London is now effectively the capital of Europe just as New York is the effective capital of North America.
Not any more. We voted against that last year.
Oh yeah? So where IS this new capital of Europe?
And how come nobody told Mr Market?
Cities rise and fall in size and prestige - it was only last year that London surpassed its 1939 population. London has emerged (again) as one of the World's principal cities, but there is no guarantee that this will continue. Brexit will do nothing to promote London's pre-eminence and is quite likely to put it into reverse.
IN YOUR OPINION, Brexit will do nothing to promote London's pre-eminence and is quite likely to put it into reverse.
a) A poor Brexit settlement/cliff-edge Brexit may have a negative impact on London. (Although that will probably have a much greater impact on Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool....) But for London to be overtaken, it still requires somewhere with a better attitude to world trade and all-round better facilities to come into focus. Berlin? Maybe. Paris? No chance.
b) A so-so settlement will see London remain pre-eminent.
c) A London shorn of the worst of EU red-tape could in turn prove much more attractive to investment - near Europe, but not in Europe. London powers ahead....
Paris is a global first-class city in a way that Berlin isn't and is unlikely ever to be. Apart from anything else, Berlin isn't even Germany's financial capital. Paris also benefits from a positive historic and cultural image; Berlin, not so much.
Already a remarkable victory for the Richard Leonard led campaign re BiFad, only full protection of these 1,400 will do. SLAB is back in business again.
Derby station's being rebuilt next year at a cost of £200 million, for only a minor upgrade to service patterns. This is the problem with upgrading railway lines that are running at, or near, capacity.
On topic the idea that we would remain the host of EU institutions having left the EU is so absurd that I refuse to believe that anyone entertained it after a moment's thought. That said, there have been persistent rumours that the staff in both institutions don't want to leave.
I'm sure - nobody likes bring compulsorily uprooted anyway. But it'll be an interesting test of the apparently frivolous idea that Frankfurt can't attract much new banking business because its nightlife is less exciting and brokers therefore don't want it. If the EMA goes to Bratislava (nice place, but probably not a hum of social whirl), it'll be an indication that the decision-makers shrug off whatthe staff fancy.
People have families and uprooting families is much harder. Spouses have careers of their own. Children are in schools. There may be elderly parents you want to be near to. It’s not just a question of a social life, though that matters too.
Some people may move but others may decide that they don’t want to and skilled people like that have alternatives. And it may become harder to recruit.
What the staff fancy may not determine the decision but it would be a foolish organisation which did not take account of how easy or otherwise it is to recruit and maintain highly skilled staff when making its decision.
Puts all the stuff about everyone in the City moving out if Ed Miliband had won in 2015 into context.
Looking back, it’s truly hilarious the stuff they said about Ed M. Especially given how so many right wingers are now depicting dystopian scenarios about a Corbyn government. Ed Balls, who some of them praise today was also supposed to be some kind of socialist nightmare as well, lol....
On Ed M: he’s revealed himself to be a very thoughtful commentator since he resigned as leader. A shame that he received so much pressure to try and mimic the Conservative line on issues such as welfare and immigration. If he’d have been more true to himself, I think he could have done a bit better last time round.
Also saw this on my twitter feed today: https://twitter.com/theneweuropean/status/932287919867465728 That’s quite something, given on twitter so much of the ‘free speech under under threat’ crowd are right leaning Brexiteer types, who spend a significant amount of time talking about free speech on campus, right wing persecution, and how terrible the millennials all are.
Ed should never have been Labour leader. He was an ideas man, not a salesman. That's become even more obvious since he stood down.
At the moment would you rather be Theresa May or Angela Merkel?
A toughie...
Merkel. Her country is in an easier place to govern and her opposition is divided. She might end up losing her leadership but in that, she's not in much worse a position than May is (though she is in a worse position there); however, as long as she can keep it, she has an easier job as Chancellor.
@Morris_Dancer While I agree that the condemnation on here was genuine, more generally speaking a lot of it has come as a result of the GE, and the aftermath of it: that the strategy of only appeasing Leavers doesn’t actually work if you want to heal divisions in this country. And also if you want to win a majority as well.
Ed M was always a reasonable leftie, with or without Corbyn as leader as a comparison. The Left cannot seriously be represented only by hardcore Blairites like Oliver Kamm and Dan Hodges.
Already a remarkable victory for the Richard Leonard led campaign re BiFad, only full protection of these 1,400 will do. SLAB is back in business again.
Lol!
It's BiFab btw, let's hope Richard is a little better informed.
So this is located in London - the capital city of the UK.
Now compare some of the other cities on the list:
Milan - not the capital of Italy Barcelona - not the capital of Spain Lille - not the capital of France Bonn - not the capital of Germany
Do you get the idea that the 'benefits' of EU membership were too concentrated in too few places in the UK ?
Though London is now effectively the capital of Europe just as New York is the effective capital of North America.
Not any more. We voted against that last year.
Oh yeah? So where IS this new capital of Europe?
And how come nobody told Mr Market?
Cities rise and fall in size and prestige - it was only last year that London surpassed its 1939 population. London has emerged (again) as one of the World's principal cities, but there is no guarantee that this will continue. Brexit will do nothing to promote London's pre-eminence and is quite likely to put it into reverse.
IN YOUR OPINION, Brexit will do nothing to promote London's pre-eminence and is quite likely to put it into reverse.
a) A poor Brexit settlement/cliff-edge Brexit may have a negative impact on London. (Although that will probably have a much greater impact on Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool....) But for London to be overtaken, it still requires somewhere with a better attitude to world trade and all-round better facilities to come into focus. Berlin? Maybe. Paris? No chance.
b) A so-so settlement will see London remain pre-eminent.
c) A London shorn of the worst of EU red-tape could in turn prove much more attractive to investment - near Europe, but not in Europe. London powers ahead....
Paris is a global first-class city in a way that Berlin isn't and is unlikely ever to be. Apart from anything else, Berlin isn't even Germany's financial capital. Paris also benefits from a positive historic and cultural image; Berlin, not so much.
Paris is wonderful. It is magnificent. But Paris suffers one fundamental flaw to being The City of Europe.
The French.
Now that may sound flippant, but the French are just not sufficiently communautaire.
I disagree. The referendum was fought on a prospectus. That prospectus has a mandate. No matter how much some Remain supporters might dislike it, that mandate is to be pursued.
Within the parameters of that mandate, of course, the QC identifies the right question.
Ms. Apocalypse, commodity price-fixing was known to lead to shortages or famine even in the 4th century. If Ammianus Marcellinus realised this there's no excuse for Miliband or May failing to do so.
I’m not a fan of HS2, I’d rather see the money spent on inter city routes like Sheffield to Manchester, Leeds to Manchester/Sheffield.
But if we’re going to have HS2 having the HS2 station at Meadowhall is a mistake as the area suffers from very bad congestion.
Much better to have it in the city centre.
HS2 is a buggers muddle of a "plan". But it does at least try and address the crippling lack of rail capacity that we have in the UK on key routes. Whether we build HS2 or not, the southern West Coast main line from London to Rugby is pretty much full, as is the West Midlands loop through Coventry into Birmingham. If we don't end up building HS2 we'll need to do *something* - alternative schemes proposed have been a quadrified electrified Chiltern spine route, and the Midlands Spine route proposal which basically followed the M1 with spurs off to the east and west.
For me our myopia on planning is the same as our mypoia on other infrastructure and business. We're encouraged not to think long term, or that investment is even investment (how often is it referred to as "subsidy" and "where will we find the money" as if it doesn't deliver a return). So we focus on the now and quarterly profits, and dismiss out of hand the vast infrastructure spend elsewhere and the economic benefits they bring.
Referendum: should we have the lights on, or lights off?
Lights-off wins.
Lights-on Brigade: How about we install dimmers?
Brexit should have been seen as a national project, not solely one for 52% of voters who took part in the referendum.
Well, it still can be. If you have bright ideas, shout them out.
Too many Remainers though are sat in a sulk. There's damn all expressions of conciliation that I see coming from their direction. Given that they lost the argument.
Referendum: should we have the lights on, or lights off?
Lights-off wins.
Lights-on Brigade: How about we install dimmers?
Brexit should have been seen as a national project, not solely one for 52% of voters who took part in the referendum.
Well, it still can be. If you have bright ideas, shout them out.
Too many Remainers though are sat in a sulk. There's damn all expressions of conciliation that I see coming from their direction. Given that they lost the argument.
People have families and uprooting families is much harder. Spouses have careers of their own. Children are in schools. There may be elderly parents you want to be near to. It’s not just a question of a social life, though that matters too.
Some people may move but others may decide that they don’t want to and skilled people like that have alternatives. And it may become harder to recruit.
What the staff fancy may not determine the decision but it would be a foolish organisation which did not take account of how easy or otherwise it is to recruit and maintain highly skilled staff when making its decision.
Fair point, but in the end that consideration gets overridden. In the 90's and Noughties there was a sustained attempt to relocate civil service offices to outside London. All or part of Health went to Quarry House in Leeds, ONS went to Newport, Inland/Revenue/HMRC works regionally with offices in Brum, Belfast, Nottingham et al, and - of course - BBC relocated to Salford. There's usually a small office left behind in London to satisfy the upper echelons, but most of it is moved. The argument that staff are difficult to replace may well be true but is usually overridden.
How many international schools are there in Bratislava, that are acceptable to those doctors and scientists relocating from London? Huge opportunity for GEMS and other private education providers to separate the children of the EU elites from those around them.
The existing one, or a recreation of Victoria - also High speed or normal.
I assume because they're devoid of imagination it is the existing station just retrofitted to be HS2 spur compaitble.
It is the existing station. I don't know Sheffield well, so it'd be interesting to gt local takes on the decision.
From memory, the reasoning against the old Victoria site was flooding (it is low level), more tunnelling being required, and its orientation being inconvenient (nw-se rather than n-s).
I’m not a fan of HS2, I’d rather see the money spent on inter city routes like Sheffield to Manchester, Leeds to Manchester/Sheffield.
But if we’re going to have HS2 having the HS2 station at Meadowhall is a mistake as the area suffers from very bad congestion.
Much better to have it in the city centre.
You mean that tsunami of money George promised for the Northern Powerhouse hasnt turned up ?
I disagree. The referendum was fought on a prospectus. That prospectus has a mandate. No matter how much some Remain supporters might dislike it, that mandate is to be pursued.
Within the parameters of that mandate, of course, the QC identifies the right question.
Of course - the prospectus was leaving the EU. Beyond that, though, the government had (has) a free hand in deciding how to do it.
Referendum: should we have the lights on, or lights off?
Lights-off wins.
Lights-on Brigade: How about we install dimmers?
Brexit should have been seen as a national project, not solely one for 52% of voters who took part in the referendum.
Well, it still can be. If you have bright ideas, shout them out.
Too many Remainers though are sat in a sulk. There's damn all expressions of conciliation that I see coming from their direction. Given that they lost the argument.
The semi-detached relationship we had fallen into since the creation of the Euro jarred with our sense of being a great nation and couldn't go on. We now have the chance to put it right.
Referendum: should we have the lights on, or lights off?
Lights-off wins.
Lights-on Brigade: How about we install dimmers?
Brexit should have been seen as a national project, not solely one for 52% of voters who took part in the referendum.
Well, it still can be. If you have bright ideas, shout them out.
Too many Remainers though are sat in a sulk. There's damn all expressions of conciliation that I see coming from their direction. Given that they lost the argument.
I’m not a fan of HS2, I’d rather see the money spent on inter city routes like Sheffield to Manchester, Leeds to Manchester/Sheffield.
But if we’re going to have HS2 having the HS2 station at Meadowhall is a mistake as the area suffers from very bad congestion.
Much better to have it in the city centre.
HS2 is a buggers muddle of a "plan". But it does at least try and address the crippling lack of rail capacity that we have in the UK on key routes. Whether we build HS2 or not, the southern West Coast main line from London to Rugby is pretty much full, as is the West Midlands loop through Coventry into Birmingham. If we don't end up building HS2 we'll need to do *something* - alternative schemes proposed have been a quadrified electrified Chiltern spine route, and the Midlands Spine route proposal which basically followed the M1 with spurs off to the east and west.
For me our myopia on planning is the same as our mypoia on other infrastructure and business. We're encouraged not to think long term, or that investment is even investment (how often is it referred to as "subsidy" and "where will we find the money" as if it doesn't deliver a return). So we focus on the now and quarterly profits, and dismiss out of hand the vast infrastructure spend elsewhere and the economic benefits they bring.
Share prices are set at an average of over 15 times annual earnings. If companies were only acting for the short term they would not be valued on a long term basis.
Similarly changes in strategies make a big difference to the share price (up and down) because they are seen to act on future years iff into the distance.
In short, share prices reflect the present value of future dividends into infinity although the further into the future the more they are discounted because of the time value of money and uncertainty.
The existing one, or a recreation of Victoria - also High speed or normal.
I assume because they're devoid of imagination it is the existing station just retrofitted to be HS2 spur compaitble.
It is the existing station. I don't know Sheffield well, so it'd be interesting to gt local takes on the decision.
From memory, the reasoning against the old Victoria site was flooding (it is low level), more tunnelling being required, and its orientation being inconvenient (nw-se rather than n-s).
I’m not a fan of HS2, I’d rather see the money spent on inter city routes like Sheffield to Manchester, Leeds to Manchester/Sheffield.
But if we’re going to have HS2 having the HS2 station at Meadowhall is a mistake as the area suffers from very bad congestion.
Much better to have it in the city centre.
You mean that tsunami of money George promised for the Northern Powerhouse hasnt turned up ?
Unless I'm missing something obvious, he's not mentioned money at all.
I disagree. The referendum was fought on a prospectus. That prospectus has a mandate. No matter how much some Remain supporters might dislike it, that mandate is to be pursued.
Within the parameters of that mandate, of course, the QC identifies the right question.
It doesn't matter a toss what inference voters choose to put on "Should the UK remain part of the EU or leave the EU" - the mandate is very specific. What we need to know is what kind of Brexit is feasible whilst honouring that specific mandate
I suppose she fell into the trap of thinking it was just another election. Everyone says, prior to a GE, that they intend to govern for everyone, although of course none do (the policies espoused during the campaign effectively rule that out).
The failure in vision was for the team not to realise that this time it was different. Helped by the departure of a prominent Leaver (Dave) after which they probably thought - well that's them all out of the way then.
The existing one, or a recreation of Victoria - also High speed or normal.
I assume because they're devoid of imagination it is the existing station just retrofitted to be HS2 spur compaitble.
It is the existing station. I don't know Sheffield well, so it'd be interesting to gt local takes on the decision.
From memory, the reasoning against the old Victoria site was flooding (it is low level), more tunnelling being required, and its orientation being inconvenient (nw-se rather than n-s).
I’m not a fan of HS2, I’d rather see the money spent on inter city routes like Sheffield to Manchester, Leeds to Manchester/Sheffield.
(Snip)
Thanks.
Then you'll be glad to know that the government's committing to give Network Rail nearly £48 billion over CP6, which runs from 2019 and 2024. And there will be other projects on top of this. It is £10 billion over and above what they're getting in the current CP5.
Perhaps there should be a debate over whether NR deserves to get that sort of money, given the way they've (*) utterly failed on many projects at a cost of billions. But the existing network is getting massive investment levels, as well as HS2. They are not either-or.
(*) That should, of course, read "the way the nationalisedNetwork Rail has utterly failed ...
I disagree. The referendum was fought on a prospectus. That prospectus has a mandate. No matter how much some Remain supporters might dislike it, that mandate is to be pursued.
Within the parameters of that mandate, of course, the QC identifies the right question.
Of course - the prospectus was leaving the EU. Beyond that, though, the government had (has) a free hand in deciding how to do it.
No it doesn't. How we do it requires the agreement of the other party in the negotiations and is not in the government's gift. But we should be looking to achieve a soft Brexit. Ironically, I think that requires us to prepare for a hard Brexit to give us a negotiating position.
I disagree. The referendum was fought on a prospectus. That prospectus has a mandate. No matter how much some Remain supporters might dislike it, that mandate is to be pursued.
Within the parameters of that mandate, of course, the QC identifies the right question.
The question should be "what version of Brexit is a coherent solution". For example, staying in the EU customs union is not compatible with being sufficiently independent to negotiate free trade deals with other countries.
Referendum: should we have the lights on, or lights off?
Lights-off wins.
Lights-on Brigade: How about we install dimmers?
Brexit should have been seen as a national project, not solely one for 52% of voters who took part in the referendum.
Well, it still can be. If you have bright ideas, shout them out.
Too many Remainers though are sat in a sulk. There's damn all expressions of conciliation that I see coming from their direction. Given that they lost the argument.
That's the spirit!!
The truth is harsh sometimes.
The truth is that the PM has allowed the Tory right to commandeer Brexit, so that is the version of it we will get. As a result, the country will be far more divided for a far longer period than it had to be. But we are where we are.
I disagree. The referendum was fought on a prospectus. That prospectus has a mandate. No matter how much some Remain supporters might dislike it, that mandate is to be pursued.
Within the parameters of that mandate, of course, the QC identifies the right question.
The question should be "what version of Brexit is a coherent solution". For example, staying in the EU customs union is not compatible with being sufficiently independent to negotiate free trade deals with other countries.
If you truly consider that question with an open mind, you have to consider answers which involve dissolving the UK.
People have families and uprooting families is much harder. Spouses have careers of their own. Children are in schools. There may be elderly parents you want to be near to. It’s not just a question of a social life, though that matters too.
Some people may move but others may decide that they don’t want to and skilled people like that have alternatives. And it may become harder to recruit.
What the staff fancy may not determine the decision but it would be a foolish organisation which did not take account of how easy or otherwise it is to recruit and maintain highly skilled staff when making its decision.
Fair point, but in the end that consideration gets overridden. In the 90's and Noughties there was a sustained attempt to relocate civil service offices to outside London. All or part of Health went to Quarry House in Leeds, ONS went to Newport, Inland/Revenue/HMRC works regionally with offices in Brum, Belfast, Nottingham et al, and - of course - BBC relocated to Salford. There's usually a small office left behind in London to satisfy the upper echelons, but most of it is moved. The argument that staff are difficult to replace may well be true but is usually overridden.
How many international schools are there in Bratislava, that are acceptable to those doctors and scientists relocating from London? Huge opportunity for GEMS and other private education providers to separate the children of the EU elites from those around them.
Indeed.
If the doctors and scientists won't relocate, then they will become unemployed and smart people who will go to Bratislava will get their jobs in their place, and in ten years time you won't know the difference. The graveyards are full of people who thought they were indispensable.
The main point of HS2 for me was that you'd be able to get on a train in Edinburgh and get off in Paris. Because of the Euston mess up that won't happen. Thanks Camden.
Well, it still can be. If you have bright ideas, shout them out.
Too many Remainers though are sat in a sulk. There's damn all expressions of conciliation that I see coming from their direction. Given that they lost the argument.
As I said in the first week after the referendum, I would have been perfectly happy with EFTA/EEA. That option would have satisfied me, the Liberal Leavers and a majority of the MPs. Then May did the Lancaster House speech, the term "Remoaner" was coined, the UKIP wing of Leave won, and the wheels started to come off. And 500 days later, we are still arseing around.
I disagree. The referendum was fought on a prospectus. That prospectus has a mandate. No matter how much some Remain supporters might dislike it, that mandate is to be pursued.
Within the parameters of that mandate, of course, the QC identifies the right question.
It doesn't matter a toss what inference voters choose to put on "Should the UK remain part of the EU or leave the EU" - the mandate is very specific. What we need to know is what kind of Brexit is feasible whilst honouring that specific mandate
There was much more of a prospectus than just that. All those xenophobic lying posters cannot be wished away.
Derby station's being rebuilt next year at a cost of £200 million, for only a minor upgrade to service patterns. This is the problem with upgrading railway lines that are running at, or near, capacity.
We accept that NICE generally analyses the costs and benefit of different interventions fairly well? Admittedly some diseases still get overfunded and overtreated, compared to others where the ££ might have more benefit, but it isn't usually NICE's fault.
The existing one, or a recreation of Victoria - also High speed or normal.
I assume because they're devoid of imagination it is the existing station just retrofitted to be HS2 spur compaitble.
It is the existing station. I don't know Sheffield well, so it'd be interesting to gt local takes on the decision.
From memory, the reasoning against the old Victoria site was flooding (it is low level), more tunnelling being required, and its orientation being inconvenient (nw-se rather than n-s).
I’m not a fan of HS2, I’d rather see the money spent on inter city routes like Sheffield to Manchester, Leeds to Manchester/Sheffield.
But if we’re going to have HS2 having the HS2 station at Meadowhall is a mistake as the area suffers from very bad congestion.
Much better to have it in the city centre.
The reason for HS2 in the first place is to address massive capacity issues in the south of England. The WCML is over capacity, freight trains are being forced to travel at night which closes maintainance windows and so on..
Doing nothing isn’t an option, rather like the endless discussions about the LHR runway. These projects have to go forward and quickly, to avoid massive trade bottlenecks in the economy.
Derby station's being rebuilt next year at a cost of £200 million, for only a minor upgrade to service patterns. This is the problem with upgrading railway lines that are running at, or near, capacity.
So this is located in London - the capital city of the UK.
Do you get the idea that the 'benefits' of EU membership were too concentrated in too few places in the UK ?
Though London is now effectively the capital of Europe just as New York is the effective capital of North America.
Not any more. We voted against that last year.
Oh yeah? So where IS this new capital of Europe?
And how come nobody told Mr Market?
Cities rise and fall in size and prestige - it was only last year that London surpassed its 1939 population. London has emerged (again) as one of the World's principal cities, but there is no guarantee that this will continue. Brexit will do nothing to promote London's pre-eminence and is quite likely to put it into reverse.
IN YOUR OPINION, Brexit will do nothing to promote London's pre-eminence and is quite likely to put it into reverse.
a) A poor Brexit settlement/cliff-edge Brexit may have a negative impact on London. (Although that will probably have a much greater impact on Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool....) But for London to be overtaken, it still requires somewhere with a better attitude to world trade and all-round better facilities to come into focus. Berlin? Maybe. Paris? No chance.
b) A so-so settlement will see London remain pre-eminent.
c) A London shorn of the worst of EU red-tape could in turn prove much more attractive to investment - near Europe, but not in Europe. London powers ahead....
Paris is a global first-class city in a way that Berlin isn't and is unlikely ever to be. Apart from anything else, Berlin isn't even Germany's financial capital. Paris also benefits from a positive historic and cultural image; Berlin, not so much.
Paris is wonderful. It is magnificent. But Paris suffers one fundamental flaw to being The City of Europe.
The French.
Now that may sound flippant, but the French are just not sufficiently communautaire.
That may well be true but, London apart, there aren't any other options.
Brussels, Frankfurt: too grey Berlin: too much psychological history Rome: too much physical history Amsterdam, Dublin, Stockholm, Barcelona, Milan, Prague: too small Madrid, Athens, Helsinki: too peripheral Moscow: too Russian
etc.
It's London, Paris or nowhere. in reality, it'll be nowhere. Not that that's a problem: the US has two global cities and a capital in a third.
The main point of HS2 for me was that you'd be able to get on a train in Edinburgh and get off in Paris. Because of the Euston mess up that won't happen. Thanks Camden.
To be fair, the HS2<->HS1 link was a very dodgy affair anyway. A single-track railway, AIUI running along the already congested North London Line. If it was to be done, best it was done properly.
The existing one, or a recreation of Victoria - also High speed or normal.
I assume because they're devoid of imagination it is the existing station just retrofitted to be HS2 spur compaitble.
It is the existing station. I don't know Sheffield well, so it'd be interesting to gt local takes on the decision.
From memory, the reasoning against the old Victoria site was flooding (it is low level), more tunnelling being required, and its orientation being inconvenient (nw-se rather than n-s).
I’m not a fan of HS2, I’d rather see the money spent on inter city routes like Sheffield to Manchester, Leeds to Manchester/Sheffield.
But if we’re going to have HS2 having the HS2 station at Meadowhall is a mistake as the area suffers from very bad congestion.
Much better to have it in the city centre.
TBH HS2 will be a white elephant wherever its terminals are situated. Best not get too hung up about it, just resign yourself to the utter waste we're going to see over the next couple of decades. The main issue in terms of project management is to get the contracts locked in for later stages before the first stage can be shown to be an utterly wasteful failure, so that the penalties from cancellation appear to exceed those from going ahead.
In Birmingham, the terminal will be in the City Centre but it makes no real difference. It's in a location that is still too far away from New Street. The extra half hour you'll need to allow to get from one to the other will wipe out the promised time savings, so people looking to travel from the West Midlands to London will still by and large go via New Street on the West Coast Main Line or by the Chiltern Link. It won't take any longer, and will be a lot cheaper. I imagine that most of the (few) users of HS2 will drive to its stations, including Meadowhall.
The main point of HS2 for me was that you'd be able to get on a train in Edinburgh and get off in Paris. Because of the Euston mess up that won't happen. Thanks Camden.
I agree. It is utterly bonkers and only in UK would you not connect HS2 into Pancras and straight on to HS1 and the continent.
The main point of HS2 for me was that you'd be able to get on a train in Edinburgh and get off in Paris. Because of the Euston mess up that won't happen. Thanks Camden.
To be fair, the HS2<->HS1 link was a very dodgy affair anyway. A single-track railway, AIUI running along the already congested North London Line. If it was to be done, best it was done properly.
Yes, not building a ghost junction in to the HS1 tunnel out of St Pancras was very silly. But apparently, they didn't want to run trains from Birmingham to Paris/Brussels because they'd then need to build international platforms (i.e. with passport control etc.) at the Birmingham station which would take up a lot of space.
The main point of HS2 for me was that you'd be able to get on a train in Edinburgh and get off in Paris. Because of the Euston mess up that won't happen. Thanks Camden.
To be fair, the HS2<->HS1 link was a very dodgy affair anyway. A single-track railway, AIUI running along the already congested North London Line. If it was to be done, best it was done properly.
Dig a fr**ing tunnel. London gets Crossrail. Rest of country doesn't get a direct link to continent. UK centralisation of major investment in a nutshell.
That’s only half a dozen annual salaries, before we find them offices and phones. The bid cost is probably 100 hours though, so the selected bidder has to big up the costs to win in the first place.
Easier way is to pay £30k for the same work, and have a single consultant bash it out in six months, and get another consultant in for one month to check and balance it.
Referendum: should we have the lights on, or lights off?
Lights-off wins.
Lights-on Brigade: How about we install dimmers?
Brexit should have been seen as a national project, not solely one for 52% of voters who took part in the referendum.
Well, it still can be. If you have bright ideas, shout them out.
Too many Remainers though are sat in a sulk. There's damn all expressions of conciliation that I see coming from their direction. Given that they lost the argument.
That's the spirit!!
The truth is harsh sometimes.
The truth is that the PM has allowed the Tory right to commandeer Brexit, so that is the version of it we will get. As a result, the country will be far more divided for a far longer period than it had to be. But we are where we are.
The trouble is that if Teresa May goes the Tory grassroots will vote for a hard brexiteer.
I don't think she had the luxury of doing that, she should have started with "what can I come up with that's at least minimally conceptually coherent" and worked from there.
The reason the whole process is stopped is because the British want things that are logically self-contradictory, like a hard border with the EU but no hard border with a country that's part of the EU. It wouldn't have helped to listen to the "remain" people more if the result was a just going to be different set of self-contradictory red lines.
Comments
2. Sheffield is the greenest city in the country with trees along most streets - roots breaking through pavements and roads due to point 1
3. Council is broke due to Tories cutting central government grant to £0
4. Council signs PFI project which mandates removal of trees from roads. Residents protest, trees are historic, council threatens legal action against protestors
5. Apparently it costs more to add variance to the contract (to not remove trees) than to run it as is regardless of sanity
We're not leaving Europe.
Thursday afternoon? Luxury. I'm told IBM has Thursday morning as its timesheet deadline, almost 2 full days in advance. From wikipedia: IBM employees have been awarded five Nobel Prizes, six Turing Awards, ten National Medals of Technology and five National Medals of Science.
Meadowhall sounds good in theory, and it could create a central point of Rotherham/Sheffield to truly amalgamate the two cities into one more efficient entity, but the disruption around the M1 there could be truly mind boggling.
So I think a high speed line through Sheffield Victoria would make the most sense.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/fdp-beendet-jamaika-aus-dem-staub-gemacht-kommentar-a-1179274.html
https://twitter.com/GeorgePeretzQC/status/931956976170553345
https://www.economist.com/blogs/blighty/2013/05/birmingham
Surely this was a feature not a side effect?
I assume because they're devoid of imagination it is the existing station just retrofitted to be HS2 spur compaitble.
I'm not wholly convinced the FDP have always been classical liberals - Genscher was quite happy to work with Brandt, Schmidt and Kohl. More recently, yes, I would agree the FDP has occupied the kind of ground the British Liberal Party held in the 1950s with some Orange Book tendencies. I can well understand why an accommodation with the Greens on that basis would be difficult.
Assuming there is ever a mainline running alongside the M1 to spur off...
https://twitter.com/StevePeers/status/932538686465564672
https://twitter.com/GiselaStuart/status/932291496442777601
A toughie...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/tennis/article-5099691/Former-Wimbledon-champion-Jana-Novotna-died-aged-49.html
I also wonder whether with the rise of the Greens and the absorption of the Left into German politics post-reunification, the FPD simply had fewer votes to fish for on the left-of-centre?
If true, it's utterly crackers.
Sorry for delay replying.
On Ed M: he’s revealed himself to be a very thoughtful commentator since he resigned as leader. A shame that he received so much pressure to try and mimic the Conservative line on issues such as welfare and immigration. If he’d have been more true to himself, I think he could have done a bit better last time round.
Also saw this on my twitter feed today:
https://twitter.com/theneweuropean/status/932287919867465728
That’s quite something, given on twitter so much of the ‘free speech under under threat’ crowd are right leaning Brexiteer types, who spend a significant amount of time talking about free speech on campus, right wing persecution, and how terrible the millennials all are.
a) A poor Brexit settlement/cliff-edge Brexit may have a negative impact on London. (Although that will probably have a much greater impact on Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool....) But for London to be overtaken, it still requires somewhere with a better attitude to world trade and all-round better facilities to come into focus. Berlin? Maybe. Paris? No chance.
b) A so-so settlement will see London remain pre-eminent.
c) A London shorn of the worst of EU red-tape could in turn prove much more attractive to investment - near Europe, but not in Europe. London powers ahead....
From memory, the reasoning against the old Victoria site was flooding (it is low level), more tunnelling being required, and its orientation being inconvenient (nw-se rather than n-s).
Planning?! Waterloo has a white elephant HS1 terminal. HS2 has largely lost support: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jun/07/hs2-the-zombie-train-that-refuses-to-die We need a NICE-like body whose remit is to do honest cost-benefit analysis and help to block vanity projects.
Miliband's price cap policy remains utterly stupid, as does the Government's seeming desire to ape it. I do agree people (including myself) over-egged the cake, but, frankly, I never thought we'd have a sodding Marxist as the Leader of the Opposition, who would make Miliband look like the most sensible of lefties.
I actually joined the Labour party in part because I liked him, and I thought he was being rather courageous changing the membership rules. Funny how that worked out.
He is still pretty young though - it's not inconceivable that he could still become PM.
But if we’re going to have HS2 having the HS2 station at Meadowhall is a mistake as the area suffers from very bad congestion.
Much better to have it in the city centre.
Referendum: should we have the lights on, or lights off?
Lights-off wins.
Lights-on Brigade: How about we install dimmers?
SLAB is back in business again.
https://www.railengineer.uk/2017/08/25/79-days-at-derby-in-2018/
Who defines what is a 'vanity' project, and how would you guarantee the body is 'honest' ?
Ed M was always a reasonable leftie, with or without Corbyn as leader as a comparison. The Left cannot seriously be represented only by hardcore Blairites like Oliver Kamm and Dan Hodges.
It's BiFab btw, let's hope Richard is a little better informed.
The French.
Now that may sound flippant, but the French are just not sufficiently communautaire.
Within the parameters of that mandate, of course, the QC identifies the right question.
For me our myopia on planning is the same as our mypoia on other infrastructure and business. We're encouraged not to think long term, or that investment is even investment (how often is it referred to as "subsidy" and "where will we find the money" as if it doesn't deliver a return). So we focus on the now and quarterly profits, and dismiss out of hand the vast infrastructure spend elsewhere and the economic benefits they bring.
Too many Remainers though are sat in a sulk. There's damn all expressions of conciliation that I see coming from their direction. Given that they lost the argument.
Similarly changes in strategies make a big difference to the share price (up and down) because they are seen to act on future years iff into the distance.
In short, share prices reflect the present value of future dividends into infinity although the further into the future the more they are discounted because of the time value of money and uncertainty.
Odd.
The failure in vision was for the team not to realise that this time it was different. Helped by the departure of a prominent Leaver (Dave) after which they probably thought - well that's them all out of the way then.
Then you'll be glad to know that the government's committing to give Network Rail nearly £48 billion over CP6, which runs from 2019 and 2024. And there will be other projects on top of this. It is £10 billion over and above what they're getting in the current CP5.
http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/infrastructure/single-view/view/focus-on-renewals-in-pound479bn-network-rail-funding-plan-for-2019-24.html
Perhaps there should be a debate over whether NR deserves to get that sort of money, given the way they've (*) utterly failed on many projects at a cost of billions. But the existing network is getting massive investment levels, as well as HS2. They are not either-or.
(*) That should, of course, read "the way the nationalisedNetwork Rail has utterly failed ...
https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/32b0f329-6318-4732-8d8c-0ad617cd5d49
Is that really needed ?!
If the doctors and scientists won't relocate, then they will become unemployed and smart people who will go to Bratislava will get their jobs in their place, and in ten years time you won't know the difference. The graveyards are full of people who thought they were indispensable.
https://twitter.com/garvanwalshe/status/932561370578608128
We accept that the OBR is relatively honest? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_for_Budget_Responsibility
We accept that NICE generally analyses the costs and benefit of different interventions fairly well? Admittedly some diseases still get overfunded and overtreated, compared to others where the ££ might have more benefit, but it isn't usually NICE's fault.
Doing nothing isn’t an option, rather like the endless discussions about the LHR runway. These projects have to go forward and quickly, to avoid massive trade bottlenecks in the economy.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaJguZvpAklDR-E0kkioCGg/live
Democracy isn't just about winners and losers. It isn't a football match.
Tactically, competition is good. Strategically, cooperation beats competition.
Brussels, Frankfurt: too grey
Berlin: too much psychological history
Rome: too much physical history
Amsterdam, Dublin, Stockholm, Barcelona, Milan, Prague: too small
Madrid, Athens, Helsinki: too peripheral
Moscow: too Russian
etc.
It's London, Paris or nowhere. in reality, it'll be nowhere. Not that that's a problem: the US has two global cities and a capital in a third.
In Birmingham, the terminal will be in the City Centre but it makes no real difference. It's in a location that is still too far away from New Street. The extra half hour you'll need to allow to get from one to the other will wipe out the promised time savings, so people looking to travel from the West Midlands to London will still by and large go via New Street on the West Coast Main Line or by the Chiltern Link. It won't take any longer, and will be a lot cheaper. I imagine that most of the (few) users of HS2 will drive to its stations, including Meadowhall.
Thanks very much Leavers.
There was tragedy at the weekend when a Nottinghamshire man, Dan Hegarty, lost his life in a crash during the motorbike grand prix.
However for a bi of levity, here's what happened in the GT pre-race:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0XyOpg84mk&t=19s
The bid cost is probably 100 hours though, so the selected bidder has to big up the costs to win in the first place.
Easier way is to pay £30k for the same work, and have a single consultant bash it out in six months, and get another consultant in for one month to check and balance it.
The reason the whole process is stopped is because the British want things that are logically self-contradictory, like a hard border with the EU but no hard border with a country that's part of the EU. It wouldn't have helped to listen to the "remain" people more if the result was a just going to be different set of self-contradictory red lines.