Heartofice

How do they cross the river if the nearest crossing is miles away?

It’s a river crossing, it might help solve the problem for people who need to cross the river

Feels like you are dodging the question here. Saying ‘projects go over budget’ doesn’t really touch the sides of £9bn for a river crossing plus the insane amount of time and paperwork involved. The question is whether it is reasonable and whether there might be a signal here that there is something broken with UK planning processes which makes it unreasonably difficult to ever get anything made. Making comparisons to China is totally inappropriate too, again there is a massive difference between ‘less convoluted planning’ and ‘Chinese corruption and white elephant projects’. It’s about a level that is reasonable.

Tell that to the people who live in the area. Anyway. Not the point.

Yeah saw first couple of episodes of Xmen 97. It’s perfectly serviceable and seems like a direct sequel to the original show. So much that I’m not sure who the target audience is. I don’t know how easy it would be for new viewers to jump in, so is it just for fans of the old show?? In which case it’s heavily nostalgia baiting, but is that enough to carry a show?

You think it’s reasonable then do you?

You might want to check out the Lower Thames crossing application, the planning stage of which has cost £300m before any building work has even begun. The application itself is 356,000 pages long, and it’s taken 13 years to even get to this stage. One of the things holding up that application was figuring out the best place for newts to live. The overall cost of the crossing has ballooned to £9bn. For context, Norway built the longest tunnel in the world for about £290m. So please don’t go telling me the problem is a lack of funding.

How is it a delusion?

Caught a bit of England Brazil last night. Really brought home the massive gap between how good the players up front are compared to the backline. Bellingham and Foden are fantastic players, Kane and Saka weren’t even playing… but holy shit did Maguire look out of place in that system. Southgate pressed high and Maguire was hugely exposed. England being bigged up as favourites for the Euros but we have no chance if we still have Maguire, and worse, Dunk as his understudy. Thats not to say that England were great going forward either, but the skill level is at least there.

One of the major issues in this country is the sheer inability to actually build things, which is more than just an issue of lack of funds. Putting up a shed in the middle of a field would probably require sign off from 200 different groups, a 7 year planning process, £1.2bn in consultation and would still lead to wild outrage from the local NIMBYs.

Well let’s just say I’m highly sceptical of it, despite you speaking about it as if it’s a fact every week here.

Well he hasn't said he's going to 'carry on with austerity', he's just pointed to the bad state of public finances, the highest tax burden in 70 years and said he can't just rashly start turn on the magic money tap.

Hahaha 1. Uses ‘world socialist network’ as a source and expects to be taken seriously. 2. Starmer doesnt say he’s going to privatise the NHS. ‘Reform’ is something that is widely recognised as being necessary for the NHS by basically everyone .

Well someone has already sold you a bridge if you think the NHS is being privatised.

Starmer has done a decent job of holding off any connection to the far left of the Labour Party, because that element is not going to connect with the majority of the country. Yes there are policies like nationalisation of some industries that would be popular ( but probably impractical and not necessarily the right choice) but there are a ton of other policies and ideological positions that just turn off most voters. Starmer has to keep signaling to the electorate that he isn’t in thrall to the craziest leftist elements of his party. Another point is it’s very easy to make unrealistic promises when you are in opposition. But now it’s obvious Labour are going to win they are going to have to be held to those promises. So saying they will implement policies that they cannot afford and won’t create much benefit ( except in the heads of far left voters) isn’t going to help them. Suddenly they have to be realistic.

The Pheasant thing I really had to google because I couldn’t imagine anyone hanging out stinking rotting birds, even back then. Apparently it’s sort of true, but would work better in hotter climates, and it’s basically winter in Japan there. Surely Blackthorne would understand that.

I can see them approaching it like that. I guess it depends what the goal of the trilogy is as well. One criticism of the movies seems to be that they focus more on the religious angle than the galaxy wide politics, the navigators barely getting a look in during part two. If they kept with that theme you can see how they might cut out stuff like Scytale. Would they also cut out Duncan Idaho? I kind of wish they would if I’m honest.

Sad news. Thread title not so funny now.

Not when they are that attractive

Me too. Very much enjoyed it, it had all the great points and less of the bad points of a Guy Ritchie production. Sometimes it veered too much into Ritchi-isms, and I didn't think the last episode was very good. But overall I think it was a lot of fun and managed to get the balance right.

Yeah it was hideous. They didn’t touch the flag though curiously.

I started to watch the first episode, it seems.. ok. I was quite distracted by how impossibly hot the professor 'Auggie' is.. this is almost a Denise Richard as Dr Christmas Jones from 'The world is not enough' situation.

I'm not gonna belabour the point, but if you are buying the kit, going to watch their matches etc.. then you kind of are supporting the Saudi regime. But that's fine.. however you want to lock it off in your head to make it feel ok is up to you.

Lol! What are my political views!? I mean if you want to continue to support Saudi Arabia FC, that is totally on you, you absolutely have to power to not support them.

Owned by a Theocratic Petrostate.. good priorities there.