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UK politics: Veni Vidi Vaccinati


polishgenius

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Boris Johnson's plan for four giant tunnels under the Irish Sea meeting at a colossal underground "roundabout" beneath the Isle of Man.

Reportedly dubbed "Boris Junction" by insiders, civil servants have been franticly trying to convince BJ that this idea is utterly unfeasible and to shoot it down before it becomes an official idea, submitted to a feasibility study, which ill open Number 10 to ridicule. Boris seems rather set on it, though, especially after the previous ideas of a Scotland-NI bridge and direct tunnel were both scuppered by wind and several million tons of high explosives sunk at the bottom of Beaufort Dyke.

At this point you might as well build a tunnel direct from Holyhead to Dublin (which has its own massive problems) and call it done, this idea is absurd.

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2 hours ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

Was Boris a known politician when Pratchett first wrote about Bloody Stupid Johnson?

They both have a fondness for big projects.

No, he would still have been at the Telegraph back then. BS Johnson was mostly a pun on Capability Brown.

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The Channel Tunnel is 31.5 miles long (including the bits at either end under land) and cost £15 billion; that's £26 billion in today's money, and we split that with France. It also took six years to build, and linked two of the richest countries on Earth across the busiest shipping lane on the planet. In fact, the Channel Tunnel is now massively oversubscribed and in dire need of wholesale maintenance; the company that runs it has been talking about the argument to build a second set of tunnels there, let alone somewhere else.

The direct-line distance from Liverpool to the Isle of Man is 80 miles. The distance from Heysham is 60 miles. The Isle of Man to the Northern Irish coast, around Portaferry, is 33 miles. The distance from Stranraer to the Isle of Man of Man is 38 miles. The diameter of the "roundabout" would be 70 to 80 miles.

So we're talking about 286 miles of tunnel, probably closer to 300, with escape tunnels of roughly equal length, with vastly more safety features needed, since if an accident happens 50% of the way through the tunnel, people would theoretically have 40 miles to get to safety as opposed to the Channel Tunnel where it's only about 14 or 15. The project would cost over £200 billion at the mega-conservative end of things (given how HS2 has inflated to almost half that with very limited comparable problems, I think it could easily be closer to £500 billion). It also links internal divisions only of the UK (for now!), including two relatively sparsely-populated parts of the country already more-than-adequately serviced by airlines (when you can jump on a plane in Stansted and be in Belfast in 50 minutes for £20, the whole idea seems even more stupid than it first appears). The Irish Sea is extremely busy, but mainly between Liverpool and Dublin, or between Holyhead and Dublin, where it would make a shit load more sense to build a tunnel (at over 80 miles that's still a huge undertaking, but not as much as this other BS project, and the cost could be split with Ireland/the EU).

The Channel Tunnel was also feasible and cheap because the underlying soil between Dover and Calais is super-soft and easy to tunnel through. Under the Irish Sea there are very long stretches of solid granite which are more challenging to tunnel through (not impossible; Manhattan is also granite and they've managed to blast a new subway tunnel under half the island, though it's taken years and cost billions to travel just a few miles).

Obviously this plan is moronically stupid, utterly unfeasible, certainly unaffordable and politically unsellable.

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36 minutes ago, Maltaran said:

No, he would still have been at the Telegraph back then. BS Johnson was mostly a pun on Capability Brown.

And an inverse JSBach (IIRC the UU organ was his introduction), and another author called Bryan Stanley Johnson, who I think STP admired.

 

 

On the Isle of Mann roundabout - the architects seem unimpressed:

https://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/boris-johnson-wants-to-build-roundabout-under-the-isle-of-man

Another said the proposal ‘cannot die’ because of Johnson’s fervent belief in it, adding: ‘Just as Hitler moved around imaginary armies in the dying days of the Third Reich, so the No. 10 policy unit is condemned to keep looking at this idea, which exists primarily in the mind of the prime minister.’

Alan Dunlop, the architect who first proposed a Celtic crossing between Ireland and Scotland, said the latest idea ‘does not sound credible’.

He said: ‘I cannot think why Johnson would say that, particularly at a time when there is so much criticism being levelled at the prime minister and the so-called Boris’s Burrow is being ridiculed in much of the press.

‘It only serves to undermine that which I know to be structurally, technically and physically achievable, and that is a tunnel or bridge that connects Scotland with Ireland.’

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Anyone here work with kids? Professionally or otherwise?

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/phe-launches-new-psychological-first-aid-training

PHE launches new Psychological First Aid training


The online training, developed by PHE, is now available for those supporting children and young people affected by coronavirus (COVID-19).
From today, people who care for or work with children and young people aged up to 25 who have been affected by COVID-19 (or other emergencies or individual crises) will be able to access a new online Psychological First Aid (PFA) training course.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/21/uk-17-year-olds-mental-health-crisis

About 7% of UK children have attempted suicide by age of 17 – study


Covid crisis will worsen mental health of young people, say experts concerned at rise in self-harming.
About 7% of children have attempted suicide by the age of 17 and almost one in four say they have self-harmed in the past year, according to a paper in the British Journal of Psychiatry, and experts say the figures could rise as a result of the pandemic.

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3 minutes ago, A wilding said:

I think it is actually "No earlier than 21 June". But the news outlets are already ignoring the bolded part. :(

No that’s 100% guaranteed LA LA LA CAN’T HEAR YOU LA LA LA

Yea, I just copied the BBC text at the time but if it’s ‘from’ that’s a bad headline.

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27 minutes ago, A wilding said:

I think it is actually "No earlier than 21 June". But the news outlets are already ignoring the bolded part. :(

It is but there's no way they're not going to have to stick with that date now having given a firm number people can look towards. I think the situation would have to be pretty dire for them to push it back.

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5 hours ago, Werthead said:

. The Irish Sea is extremely busy, but mainly between Liverpool and Dublin, or between Holyhead and Dublin, where it would make a shit load more sense to build a tunnel (at over 80 miles that's still a huge undertaking, but not as much as this other BS project, and the cost could be split with Ireland/the EU).

Thought Holyhead is losing out massively thanks to Brexit, and haulers now rather go the more expensive ferry route of Dublin-France rather than spending time, energy and money on the new trade and customs regime. Of course the issue is that those ferries are at best running half empty on their way back, which makes it somewhat questionable, whether that is sustainable long term.

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10 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Why does mask wearing end on 21st june when not all adults will have been offered the vaccine? I get a lot of it, but if some dirty fucker is coughing all over my train without a mask people are going to be kicking off. 

Well the point is to whether all the vulnerable people who make up the overwhelming majority of deaths and hospitalisations have been vaccinated, and they should have been by then.

Boris has come out and said that Zero Covid is not an achievable aim and isn’t something we are going for, and I’m glad about that. It’s unrealistic. 

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