UK Politics: Not even a Penny for a new Prime Minister

[Heartofice]

41 minutes ago, polishgenius said:

On the price note, @Heartofice: while it does still seem very very high, I would say that the cost involved isn't just for the tunnel itself- it's for a whole new major road, including a completely new junction on the M25 and maneuvering bypasses around several towns. And for all that environmental activism is easy to mock, the Thames Estuary has always been a pretty highly-focused area of conservation, so I'm not surprised there were issues around that.  I'm not sure it should cost 9 billion, but I can imagine that would be complicated. 

Sure, the location is relevant, but I think the Lower Thames Crossing is a case study in how not to build infrastructure and it involves many of the elements that are holding back UK construction. The conservation element is a part of it but it's a much bigger picture.

This is a pretty good summary of many of the issues
Budget blowouts and delays: why the UK struggles with infrastructure
 

[Bironic]

1 hour ago, polishgenius said:

Okay, you're not wrong in your general point that 'increasing roads doesn't decrease traffic'. But you're arguing with a generality and not with the specifics of this case, which is that it's being considered, in part, to relieve pressure on the Dartford Crossing specifically. Which it would almost certainly do. There is already a rail link between Essex and Kent relatively close to the area, but the problem in question here is that pretty much everyone in the east of England who wants to cross the Thames by car has precisely one crossing to choose from. The planning here acknowledges that it would increase traffic in general, because like you say it always does- but someone travelling from, say, Chelmsford, or Norwich to Dover not needing to get onto the M25 to do so would almost definitely decrease pressure there. Which is the point. 

 

In that respect, really none of your alternatives make sense. Building a new metro system all the way out to Gravesend just to link it to Tilbury would be very expensive and solve almost none of the problem, since people travelling from Gravesend to Tilbury aren't really the major cause of traffic at Dartford. Since there already is a rail link in the area, another one right there without any other changes probably wouldn't make a huge difference. Making a more robust network probably would, but it'd need a completely new rail network all the way around England's south-east, running crossways to London and not just in-out - it'd be a ludicrously more complicated project than building a tunnel and connecting the roads on. I'm not actually against that- the Beeching Cuts were a load of shite and hurt Britain to this day- but it's not a viable immediate alternative, or a project any politician would feel able to justify. The bus lane idea... well, I'm all for having a bus lane but (1) it wouldn't solve the main problem the thing is being built for and (2) you still need to build the tunnel anyway. Making it just for buses would, again, not solve the problem

I don’t want to derail the UK topic (literally ) 

but your argument can and actually is made about every single car oriented development in the whole world: we want to build this bridge to have less traffic on the other bridge that is always congested etc. we want to build this new ringroad further out of the inner City ringroad so that people that just want to move across the city don’t have to go so close to the center  and so on and so forth…

once this highway is built there will be more traffic on both crossings leading to congestion (unless they reduce the lanes at the dartford crossing, which I assume it’s not in the plan) so there will be a planning to make another crossing between Southend on Sea and sheerness to relieve the traffic on the lower Thames crossing, and then having reached the North Sea there will be more lanes on the dartford crossing first and then the lower Thames crossing and so on and so forth…

if there’s so much demand for people from Chelmsford, colchester Norwich etc to go to Dover/Kent in general then make a railroad connection to there and run trains at fast intervals on that line… 

Yes the beeching axe was probably one of the stupidest things ever done in the UK, as was the privatization of the railways…

a single double track railway has the carrying capacity of an 8 lane highway (4per direction). Cars are Great to move small amounts of people in remote areas such as the Lake District or the Scottish highlands, they’re the least efficient method of mass transportation and shouldn’t be used for that… (people that actually need a car/truck/tractor such as farmers or plumbers are obviously excluded…

about Norway I wasn’t talking about Norwegian rail (that I don’t have a particularly good experience with either) but about the fact that due to its geography all buildings etc are difficult to do 

Edited March 24 by Bironic

[Rorshach]

6 hours ago, Bironic said:

Yes comparing with France or sweden is not very sound, but there are other comparable countries and they do seem to have their own problems and still be more efficient than the UK: Norway for example is massive but most of it is mountains so actually very difficult/expensive to build there

 

As one of the resident Norwegians here, and as a heavy user of trains (I have never had a driver's lisence), let me tell you that our train system is extremely inefficient and will compare poorly to just about any European provider. 

I've only taken a train in the UK once (Cambridge - Southampton and back), and I didn't have issues on that trip. I do know that my local train is delayed as a matter of priciple, and the regional train (Stavanger - Oslo) has a 1 in 3 chance of being late. Also, it takes 49 minutes longer than what it did 20 years ago.

/derail

[HexMachina]

44 minutes ago, Rorshach said:

As one of the resident Norwegians here, and as a heavy user of trains (I have never had a driver's lisence), let me tell you that our train system is extremely inefficient and will compare poorly to just about any European provider. 

I've only taken a train in the UK once (Cambridge - Southampton and back), and I didn't have issues on that trip. I do know that my local train is delayed as a matter of priciple, and the regional train (Stavanger - Oslo) has a 1 in 3 chance of being late. Also, it takes 49 minutes longer than what it did 20 years ago.

/derail

UK trains (and also more localised transport like metros) are also routinely delayed, just FYI, sounds like you hit lucky when you used them! From what you describe I'd say we're probably about equivalent. I feel fortunate that I don't have to rely on public transport to get to work (I'm within walking distance, luckily)

[The Anti-Targ]

For those in appropriate jobs one thing that will guarantee reduction in congestion is work from home by default. Sure that will mean CBD businesses will suffer and some will close, but that personal spending doesn't disappear, it just gets relocated to the community where the people reside, so its economic redistribution. In a city like London so much work could be done from home (govt, financial services), or even small distributed suburban office spaces. It's certainly been my experience over the last 4 years that I am at least as productive at home as in the office, and when taking commuting into account definitely more productive. But too many people are stuck in the 20th century notion that people have to be in offices every day for 8 hours.

Plus I get to work in my PJs half the day.

[karaddin]

This is of absolutely no consequence but...

8 hours ago, Werthead said:

 The likes of Norway and Sweden are fucking massive countries with comparatively tiny populations

I'm amused by how well this illustrates the difference in perspectives lol. Double checking the numbers I think yours is probably the more reasonable one too, especially for the purpose of the point you were making. England is indeed incredibly compact and densely populated and that increases the complexity of finding land for public infrastructure projects.

Even with all the sparsely populated land like Aus this is a huge challenge for new transport infrastructure because you want the transport to be running through/near the populated areas.

[Spockydog]

The Kate video is a deepfake, apparently.

The (so-called) evidence:

1. She looks more or less exactly the same as a promotional video released in 2016. Same hair. Same stripey jumper. (I'll admit, this does seems a little bit weird. I mean she looks the same, wearing the same jumper as she did eight years ago. Maybe she just really likes that jumper).

2. Why is she completely alone in the film? Surely the palace would want to show Kate in the bosom of her family at such a time of crisis. Compare and contrast with all her previous, family-heavy video releases. (Again, seems a bit weird. I feel like they should at least have released some b-roll of her walking down some leafy pathway with her kids or something).

3. A ring on her left hand that supposedly disappears and reappears. (None of the evidence for this is all that compelling).

4. Some dodgy pixelation, proving it's a deepfake, or some shit. (Really, who the hell knows).

I'm not passing judgement either way. In this timeline, anything is possible.

Edited March 25 by Spockydog

[karaddin]

Deepfake or not I assume the news about her is true which should be enough for people to back off. That said... If it is actually deepfake and they do another post from her Instagram account apologizing for her amateur dabbling in AI created video I will laugh my ass off.

[The Anti-Targ]

If she doesn't want to appear in public because she feels like shit, why isn't it enough for her PR team to simply say that, and for the public to just move on? Or have those who care about these things gone far enough down the rabbit hole that physical proof of life (with her hooked up to a chemo drip, looking pale and miserable, with tabloid journos and photographers hovering around her snapping pics like vultures on a carcass) is the only thing that will stop them from continuing to speculate that the cancer announcement is false and something much worse is true?

Putting out deepfake photos or video doesn't help shut down the conspiracy talk.

[DMC]

4 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Putting out deepfake photos or video doesn't help shut down the conspiracy talk.

At this point the conspiracy talk is only among willing - and even enthusiastic - participants in such nattering.

[Zorral]

What Have Fourteen Years of Conservative Rule Done to Britain?
Living standards have fallen. The country is exhausted by constant drama. But the U.K. can’t move on from the Tories without facing up to the damage that has occurred.
By Sam Knight

March 25, 2024

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/01/what-have-fourteen-years-of-conservative-rule-done-to-britain

The concluding paragraphs, which, essentially, predict further economic and cultural decline. Recall, the author is a Brit, and has/is living in it.

Quote

 

.... When will it end? Sunak says that he will call a general election in the second half of the year. The gossip in Westminster says that probably that means mid-November: a British encore, to follow the main event in the U.S. But it could come as soon as May. The Prime Minister began preparing the ground last fall, after his first year in office, by presenting himself as a change candidate—a big claim, considering the circumstances.

In October, I went to Manchester to watch Sunak address the Conservative Party’s annual conference. He was introduced onstage by his wife, Akshata Murty, the daughter of N. R. Narayana Murthy, a founder of Infosys, the Indian I.T. conglomerate. (According to the London Sunday Times, Sunak and Murty have an estimated net worth of about five hundred million pounds.) Murty wore an orange pants suit, and she addressed Britain’s most successful political organization as if it were a local gardening society. “Please know that Rishi is working hard,” she said. “He shares your values and he knows how much you care about the future of the U.K.”

Sunak has a quietly imploring tone. British politics was in a bad way, he explained. People were fed up. “It isn’t anger,” Sunak said. “It’s an exhaustion with politics, in particular politicians saying things and then nothing ever changing.” Sunak dated the rot back thirty years without explaining why, but, presumably, to indicate the fall of Thatcher. (Thatcher was everywhere in Manchester; she is the modern Party’s only ghost.) Having positioned himself as the country’s next, truly transformative, leader, Sunak offered his party a weirdly pallid program: the dismantling of HS2, plus two long-range, complex policies, to abolish smoking and to reform the A-levels—England’s standard end-of-school exams. “We will be bold. We will be radical,” Sunak promised. “We will face resistance and we will meet it.”

Increasingly, Sunak has been pulled between the Party’s diverging instincts: to retreat to the dry, liberal competence of the Cameron-Osborne regime or to head off in a more explicitly protectionist, anti-immigrant, anti-woke direction. In Manchester, the energy was unmistakably on the Party’s right. Suella Braverman, then the Home Secretary, magnetized delegates with a speech warning of a “hurricane” of mass migration. Truss staged a growth rally, and Nigel Farage cruised the conference hall, posing for selfies. (There is talk of Farage standing as a Conservative M.P.) Back in London, I had lunch with David Frost, an influential Conservative peer. “Rishi, I feel for him, in a way,” Frost said. “He’s just trying to keep the show on the road and not upset all these different wings of the Party. But the consequence of that is you end up with a sort of agenda which is not politically meaningful at all.”

On January 14th, a poll of fourteen thousand people, which Frost facilitated, suggested that the Party is on course for a huge defeat later this year. The question is what kind of haunted political realm it will leave behind. Under Starmer, Labour has been tactical in the extreme, exorcising Corbyn’s left-wing policies (Corbyn has been blocked from standing for the Party at the election), while making vague noises about everything else. It has nothing new to say about Brexit and equivocates about its own tax and spending plans, if it wins power. The Party recently scaled back a plan to invest twenty-eight billion pounds a year in green projects. There is no rescue on the way for Britain’s welfare state.

Osborne noted all this with satisfaction. “The underlying economic arguments have basically been accepted,” he said, of austerity. “It’s rather like the Thatcher period. Everyone complained that Thatcher did deindustrialization, and yet no one wants to unpick it.” By contrast, Cummings sees the two cautious, hedging leaders in charge of Britain’s main political parties—and the relief among some centrists that the candidates are not so different from each other—in rather darker terms. “They are deluded when they think it’s great that Sunak and Starmer are in. It’s just like they’re arguing over trivia,” he said. “The politics of it are insane.”

I am afraid that I agree. It is unnerving to be heading into an election year in Britain with the political conversation so small, next to questions that can feel immeasurable. I put this to Hayes, the Tory M.P., when I went to see him in the House of Commons. “You’re arguing we have very vanilla-flavor politics, in a richly colored world. There’s something in that,” he said. Then he surprised me. “I think the key thing for the Conservatives now is to be more conservative,” he said. We were sitting in a bay window, overlooking the Thames. A waiter poured tea. Hayes seemed to relish the coming election. It was as if, after almost fourteen years of tortuous experiment, real conservatism might finally be at hand. “Outside metropolitan Britain and the university towns, it’s all up for grabs,” Hayes assured me. “Toryism must have its day again.” ♦

 

 

[Rippounet]

There's a funny theory out there saying economic Conservative policies have always had an adverse effect on the economy, but Thatcher was lucky to come to power shortly before oil prices started to decrease. With the collapse of oil prices around the mid-1980s, the Conservatives took the credit for economic growth that had absolutely nothing to do with them.
Same for Reagan in the US*.

Dunno how valid the theory is tbh. Economists tend to say that "the relationship between oil price changes and GDP growth is non-linear" or that "oil price increases are much more important than oil price decreases, and increases have significantly less predictive content if they simply correct earlier decreases." (I've perused the work of James D. Hamilton).
And yet, the theory is intriguing, because the idea that lower oil prices eventually stimulate economic growth is perfectly logical - and even intuitive. It's just that "counter-shocks" are far slower and less obvious than "shocks."

So anyway, the big idea here is that the UK has gone to the dogs because Conservative economics are bullshit and the real mystery isn't why people are despirited, but why the fuck did anyone believe that "austerity" would stimulate the economy in the first place.
Keynesian economics worked well for decades, and "voodoo economics" has already been debunked - including by head of the IMF Olivier Blanchard and tons of other "orthodox" economists.
Or to put it differently: why does anyone take these rich motherfuckers seriously, when their record is abysmal?
I suppose they wear nice suits and talk proper English.

Though the real problem for you guys is that Starmer hasn't exactly denounced Conservative economics, which means who works at 10 Downing St may not matter that much in the end. I mean, I kinda forgot why Starmer was supposed to on the "left" tbh, because he seems like a pretty standard neolib to me, but what do I know...

*: though to be fair, Reagan did negotiate a serious oil price decrease with the Saudis to sink the Soviet Union, so on some level he might very well be credited with economic growth in the 1980s, just not through his economic policies lol.

Edited March 25 by Rippounet

[Werthead]

There was an analysis a decade or so back which showed that historical Conservative economic performance was horrendous, and as a whole was largely outperformed by Labour economic policies (when equalised, given the Tories have been in power for twice as much as Labour in the last century).

However, the Tories have had several strokes of good luck which have delivered good economic performance on their watch, such as inheriting various low-hanging fruit situations they can exploit (Thatcher selling off council house stock built up over many decades, for example, or winning the Falklands War). Labour has also had awful luck in some of their timing, such as both the 1970s economic meltdown, partially caused by things like the Yom Kippur War and high oil prices, or the 2008 economic crash. Tory policies are usually ideologically-driven rather than practically-driven, though, basically falling into the category of, "We say this is a good idea so it inarguably is, even when we enact it and it torpedoes the economy." That makes it incredibly hard for them to about-face when things are going bad (having the foresight to boot out Truss rather than grin and bear the resounding chaos that would have followed is a notable moment of good sense from the modern Tory party).

The main problem modern Labour has encountered that, as politics lurch further rightwards, they have followed, putting them either more in the centre (under Blair) and the suspicion that Starmer could even be just right-of-centre, and thus mostly doomed to following Tory policies-lite. This might be better than under a Conservative government, but things might not get noticeably "better" overall, because that would require policies that Starmer does not seem to want to enact (despite embracing some of them just a few years ago).

Blair did have big ideas and talked a big game in 1997 and these helped him win, despite the economic rebound of the prior couple of years meaning that things we actually already improving under Major. In 2024 Starmer's ideas seem to boil down to, "We probably won't suck as much as leaving the Tories in charge."

For the Conservatives, opposition might be a good time to regroup. Something they probably need to tackle is that, manifestly, going further and further to the right on social issues doesn't actually seem to be nudging the dial with the country as a whole; Britain is not inherently a bastion of super-liberalness but I do think it has a deep-set attitude of "Meh, whatever, live and let live," which seems to be getting more and more annoyed with some Tories banging on about some of these issues, not to mention inherent Tory-voters amongst minorities getting alarmed at some of their rhetoric and decamping to milquetoast-Labour.

[maarsen]

6 minutes ago, Werthead said:

There was an analysis a decade or so back which showed that historical Conservative economic performance was horrendous, and as a whole was largely outperformed by Labour economic policies (when equalised, given the Tories have been in power for twice as much as Labour in the last century).

However, the Tories have had several strokes of good luck which have delivered good economic performance on their watch, such as inheriting various low-hanging fruit situations they can exploit (Thatcher selling off council house stock built up over many decades, for example, or winning the Falklands War). Labour has also had awful luck in some of their timing, such as both the 1970s economic meltdown, partially caused by things like the Yom Kippur War and high oil prices, or the 2008 economic crash. Tory policies are usually ideologically-driven rather than practically-driven, though, basically falling into the category of, "We say this is a good idea so it inarguably is, even when we enact it and it torpedoes the economy." That makes it incredibly hard for them to about-face when things are going bad (having the foresight to boot out Truss rather than grin and bear the resounding chaos that would have followed is a notable moment of good sense from the modern Tory party).

The main problem modern Labour has encountered that, as politics lurch further rightwards, they have followed, putting them either more in the centre (under Blair) and the suspicion that Starmer could even be just right-of-centre, and thus mostly doomed to following Tory policies-lite. This might be better than under a Conservative government, but things might not get noticeably "better" overall, because that would require policies that Starmer does not seem to want to enact (despite embracing some of them just a few years ago).

Blair did have big ideas and talked a big game in 1997 and these helped him win, despite the economic rebound of the prior couple of years meaning that things we actually already improving under Major. In 2024 Starmer's ideas seem to boil down to, "We probably won't suck as much as leaving the Tories in charge."

For the Conservatives, opposition might be a good time to regroup. Something they probably need to tackle is that, manifestly, going further and further to the right on social issues doesn't actually seem to be nudging the dial with the country as a whole; Britain is not inherently a bastion of super-liberalness but I do think it has a deep-set attitude of "Meh, whatever, live and let live," which seems to be getting more and more annoyed with some Tories banging on about some of these issues, not to mention inherent Tory-voters amongst minorities getting alarmed at some of their rhetoric and decamping to milquetoast-Labour.

Other countries have had similar experiences with conservative policies and finding out that in the end that they really don't work. People as a whole seem to worry more that 'others' are getting ahead when times are good rather than when those 'others' fall back in times of economic stress even as people as a whole fall back. This is why conservatives keep coming back into power even as their record of economic management is abysmal.

[The Big Stink]

Infinite migration  Shite economy  Arrest people for stickers 

 

Conservatives constantly complain that the Conservative government funds leftist groups who produce reports saying Conservatives are extremists. An organization this stupid should not be allowed to exist.

[Kalbear]

Interesting that the Kate bullshit was Yet Another likely Russian disinfo campaign. It's remarkable how cheap and effective this has continued to be:

https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-68637136

 

[DMC]

12 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Interesting that the Kate bullshit was Yet Another likely Russian disinfo campaign. It's remarkable how cheap and effective this has continued to be

Between the British tabloids and Kate's photoshopping, seems like an unnecessary use of resources on Russia's part.

[The Anti-Targ]

Gotta keep the workers at the troll farms busy. The west is doing so much to bring itself to ruin without Russia's help that they need to do a bit of busy work to keep them occupied, and not give them time to think about what Russia is doing to itself.

 

[Heartofice]

Yeah I think lunatics on social media don't need much of a push to get sucked into that sort of stuff. 

[kissdbyfire]

On 3/24/2024 at 8:52 PM, Spockydog said:

The Kate video is a deepfake, apparently.

The (so-called) evidence:

1. She looks more or less exactly the same as a promotional video released in 2016. Same hair. Same stripey jumper. (I'll admit, this does seems a little bit weird. I mean she looks the same, wearing the same jumper as she did eight years ago. Maybe she just really likes that jumper).

2. Why is she completely alone in the film? Surely the palace would want to show Kate in the bosom of her family at such a time of crisis. Compare and contrast with all her previous, family-heavy video releases. (Again, seems a bit weird. I feel like they should at least have released some b-roll of her walking down some leafy pathway with her kids or something).

3. A ring on her left hand that supposedly disappears and reappears. (None of the evidence for this is all that compelling).

4. Some dodgy pixelation, proving it's a deepfake, or some shit. (Really, who the hell knows).

I'm not passing judgement either way. In this timeline, anything is possible.

I would take the fact that she’s wearing an old jumper as a positive? Like, she can wear something at least twice? 
The other arguments sound very flimsy as well… Even if the setting is some type of AI backdrop scenery or whatever, so what?

I for one have no doubt that the story is true. In fact, when it was first announced that she had surgery and was fine but would be recovering until after Easter or something, that’s exactly what I thought, “ooops they’ve found something there”. The only variation or the only thing I can question is whether they already knew before the sx or if it was indeed something they’ve found during it.