KentVillan

Ian Wright is the real hero of all this

Next target will be that man who attacked a terrorist with a narwhal tusk

Thing is, *everyone* is ideological and has political views. What matters is whether you put promoting your political views ahead of truth / reality / your job. IMO Lineker has always performed his MOTD role with basically no hint whatsoever of what he thinks about the wider world. I also feel the same way about right winger Andrew Neil tbh - he would happily destroy right wing guests on the Daily Politics, and then Tweet his own right wing views. Re the FT, they clearly have a position. They’re internationalist, pro markets, socially liberal, etc. But as you say, they let the facts do the talking most of the time. Contrast with GB News or someone like Braverman, where everything just feels like a game of baiting people, twisting facts, and getting one over political opponents.

Also, as much as I think drawing comparisons with the Nazis is rarely wise, there is this weird thing going on at the moment where Nazism is presented purely as a movement against Judaism - rather than a set of violent nationalist, anti-liberal views of which antisemitism was the worst feature, but not the only feature. Of course Braverman isn’t about to deliver Holocaust 2.0. But a lot of the paranoia, othering, anti-liberal, anti-cosmopolitan language and targeting of political opponents, winding back of human rights laws, etc… come on, it’s not “offensive to Jews” to say this is far right. I think a lot of Poles, French, Czechs, Danes, etc would be slightly bemused by the idea that Jewish people are the sole arbiters of what is a legitimate comparison with Nazi Germany. And as others have said, the idea Lineker is doing anything particularly unusual here, when Andrew Neill, Geoff Boycott, and many others have combined BBC presenting roles with (shock horror) personal political views expressed via other channels. A big bunch of **** bollocks.

Complete madness. Braverman is gleefully claiming he compared her policies with the Holocaust (which started in 1941) when he of course compared the language with 1930s Germany. But also the way the BBC can’t resist reporting on itself and tying itself in knots when so many more important things are happening in the world. Just infuriating.

This obsession with double patties has ruined burgers for me. Just make a normal burger ffs and call it a “hamburger” or a “cheeseburger” not the Elvis Notorious BIG Piggy Wiggy Kiwi Double Dirty

That wasn't a conscious political decision, though, but a mix of its relatively late unification in the 19th century (similar to Italy), its natural geography and position in the centre of Europe, and to a lesser extent the Iron Curtain The issue with the UK is London has been the major city since at least the 10th century, and the south east of England has always been the closest point to mainland Europe, so it's very hard to avoid that geographical pull when it comes to trade and migration and foreign investment. I'd be interested in any examples of countries where they've managed to rebalance away from an obvious established centre. The French have never done it, and we've never done it. Is there anywhere that has?

Tbf, why on earth would you want to speed up your journey to Ipswich or Norwich

Just looking at infrastructure spend as % of GDP. I'll ignore a few smaller countries here, but a few interesting ones: China 5.80% Hungary 1.86% Australia 1.69% Norway 1.58% South Korea 1.32% Switzerland 1.18% Japan 1.10% India 1.08% Sweden 1.06% UK 0.89% France 0.88% New Zealand 0.82% Denmark 0.81% Germany 0.80% Canada 0.57% USA 0.55% From https://www.statista.com/statistics/566787/average-yearly-expenditure-on-economic-infrastructure-as-percent-of-gdp-worldwide-by-country/ Very surprised by some of the countries below the UK. Suggests our problems are a mix of weak GDP growth since 2007, poor decision making with the investments we do make, and maybe also we just aren't as bad as we think we are.

I thought you were worried about destroying historic countryside and nature?

I'm biased, but I don't actually think London is the problem. I think it's actually Middle England. Londoners are in general somewhat more high tax / high investment / internationalist / progressive in their mindset than average. It's Middle England that wants the government to spend absolutely nothing, keep taxes to a bare minimum, and **** rebalancing and lifting regional cities.

Found a couple of interesting pieces on these questions. One from the FT in 2017, and one on Substack last year by an ex-Adam Smith Institute (ultra free market economics "think tank"). What's interesting is anyone who looks at these issues from left or right in any depth seems to arrive at similar conclusions on most points, but just highlighting different angles. https://www.ft.com/content/c907081e-80c7-11e7-94e2-c5b903247afd And https://samdumitriu.substack.com/p/why-britain-struggles-to-build-infrastructure Basically to summarise, the key issues are: During a decade of record low interest rates we had a Govt committed to "balancing books" which meant they rejected the cheapest form of financing (govt borrowing) in favour of private financing which required projects to be profitable for the investors (= more expensive for wider economy / end users). Planning laws / Nimbyism in London / SE Obsession with what the French call "Grands Projets" - i.e. monumental vanity projects which will be a glorious ruler's legacy - instead of low-level building and fixing. Lack of long-term thinking on local / regional transport infrastructure, leaving big cities outside London underperforming. Think you can explain pretty much everything with some combination of these factors.

Yes, in areas where rail usage is higher (eg anywhere in London and its commuter belt). The roads become unusable during rail strikes (ok advance warning and remote working ease this load a little, but it’s still very much the case). In Birmingham / West Mids, the argument is a bit different I guess, which is that the road network has become this vast sprawl that has nearly reached its limits, and the only way to ease the load is with other modes of transport.

It will drive down prices / increase capacity on all equivalent routes via any mode of transport. You can see the inverse of this during rail strikes - traffic jams on road networks.

@OutByEaster?LD = Lib Dem Re the speed vs capacity thing, I think you run into this same issue with “affordable housing”. People say we need more affordable housing, not more unaffordable / luxury housing. In practice, all that matters is building more houses, as that depresses prices and increases availability across the market - which indirectly makes more houses “affordable”.

The other problem is the narrow accountant’s mindset that has infested UK politics since the global financial crisis, which means that projects which clearly have positive externalities across the economy have to justify their existence as self-financing / profitable enterprises. Which sounds sensible and prudent, but is mostly just dumb.

And the alternative is what? Widening motorways? Building more runways? People present these arguments as if there is a way of just freezing society and the countryside and all the other things they love in a moment in time. But demand for transport, jobs and homes keeps going up, so something has to be built somewhere!?

Surely a train departing from or terminating in London doesn’t just benefit London…

The main issue in the UK with strategic planning is that so much of the economy revolves around house prices. Nobody wants to take a hit to their house price because there’s now a new railway line or flight path or whatever. And the voting system means any project that affects a Tory LD or Lab LD marginal constituency will be used by the LDs to whip up the NIMBY vote. Local independent groups and Greens also tend to do same thing. So you just end up with inertia.

Disagree. There is a long history of major public transport projects (London Underground, Channel Tunnel, Heathrow expansion, TGV in France, etc) bringing economic benefits. You can argue about the details, but conceptually the idea of a new high speed railway line bringing long term economic benefits has plenty of sound evidence to back it up. Whereas unilaterally leaving a trade agreement with your main trading partners was very much uncharted territory.

Which law is that? I don’t think there’s any “illegal immigrant” category in law, except perhaps in the new bill put forward by Braverman

The problem with HS2 is that it is genuinely a shitstorm, but also most of its most vocal opponents are completely disingenuous NIMBYs. The thing its proponents never seem to have been able to explain effectively is that more rail capacity has knock on positive effects on other lines, on roads, airports, etc. The more options you have to travel between two places, the easier it is to travel by any of those, and that’s why more capacity is a good thing…

The issue is that people who use the phase “illegal immigrants” in this debate usually make a distinction between illegal immigrants and “refugees” or “legitimate asylum seekers”, and yet the latter often enter the country via unauthorised routes - so would be “illegal immigrants” by your definition. For that reason, the term “illegal immigrant” doesn’t really mean a great deal, as there are two separate things being elided, and people can be illegal/unauthorised in none, either or both categories. One is unauthorised entry, and the other is living / working in the country illegally. You can have unauthorised entrants who nonetheless have legitimate asylum claims, and you can have so-called “undocumented” people who initially entered the country via authorised routes but now live/work here illegally. The Govt proposal is to completely merge the two categories, but this is unworkable because it’s not how any other country handles it, and it causes problems further upstream which will just lead to retaliation from France (etc). There’s no unilateral solution to this problem.

He makes little backpacks and lunchboxes for pigeons

Bit gutted I wasted my evening watching that game. One of the worst I've seen in a long time. Kane is completely wasted on Spurs.