FlyTheNest

" School teachers were also ignored. They saw guidance being sent out on Sunday nights to be implemented Monday morning; there was a failure to provide support for remote learning; and a failure to appreciate airborne nature of virus, long after evidence was clear, and as a result a failure to invest in ventilation and filtration. The Government did not seem to understand the challenges of teaching in person and online, and its impact on workload and burnout. And there was a lack of appreciation of challenges of running a school with high rates of absence of children and staff. This was not helped by disingenuous activities from some UK paediatricians who were in denial about major role of schools in transmission of infection and risks to children. One teacher said: “The DfE goes on television promising all sorts and telling people this is going to happen – but it is left for the schools and the parents to pick up the pieces when it doesn’t.” "

Mark Bostock, a former Arup consultant who successfully led the construction of HS1 from St Pancras to the Channel Tunnel and a former client of ours, would have had a few things to say about it. Sadly he passed away in August but he has been proven totally right about HS2. In fact, it is the greatest vindication in UK transport policy since promoters of the Stockton & Darlington Railway said it would be better than relying on canals.

Mark led a proposal on behalf of Arup which would have seen HS2 go via a different route. It would link up with HS1 north of St Pancras. The route would have gone via a hub station connecting with Heathrow and the Great Western Railway near Iver. As now, the route would come into Old Oak Common, but never come into Euston which is simply too small. I can hear him saying now “They’ve got the alignment wrong, the most important decision in a railway. It is going to be a disaster.”

Mark and his associate Steve Costello also recommended the HS2 alignment follow the M40 corridor to minimise environmental impacts. He warned, correctly, that the target speed of 400kph was far too fast on such a small island and that 300kph (185mph) would do. HS2’s high design speed (since reduced) necessitates an arrow-straight route through the widest part of the Chilterns, excessive tunnelling and such high design-specification that the costs have escalated dramatically. The energy demands at such high speeds are also astronomical.

His other recommendations – born of his experience of HS1 – included that construction should have been started in the North, not the south, as this delivered the most economic benefits in the right sequence. Terminal stations should be avoided and instead hub through-stations connecting with the existing infrastructure preferred, as at Stratford (his idea with HS1, which helped make the 2012 Olympics possible). These stations deliver the most economic benefits. Terminal stations are gradually being phased out in Europe, including at Stuttgart and in Florence, at considerable expense.

The Labour party has issued a response to Rishi Sunak’s speech saying he can’t run the country because he cannot even run his own party. In a statement Pat McFadden, Labour’s national campaign coordinator, said:

After 13 years and five Tory prime ministers, Rishi Sunak’s latest desperate attempt to reset his weak leadership and divided government won’t fool the British public who are looking at Tory failures all around them.

Sunak’s weakness is having a decaying effect on his party and the country. Members of his cabinet have spent this week jockeying for position to replace him, while Liz Truss, Nigel Farage and conspiracy theories lifted from the darkest corners of the internet have dominated his conference. How can a man who can’t even run his own party seriously claim he’s capable of running the country?

gilsey wrote: ↑Wed 04 Oct, 2023 2:44 pm
Sparrow's own assessment of Sunak's speech is more cutting than that. God forbid they should have an opinion on the actual policies.

Where the speech was weakest was in the passages where Sunak sought to argue that these problems were all symptomatic of a 30-year malfunction with British politics that he was uniquely qualified to fix


There are plenty of structural problems with British politics, and it would be nice to have a PM willing to address them, but Sunak did not even begin to make an argument in this space, or say anything that suggested he might be different. For example, one problem is that prime ministers keep reshuffling their cabinets every five minutes, as he’s done. Another is that we have a governing party with rules that allow the PM to be chosen by 140,000 members, most of whom thought Liz Truss would be a good option. If Sunak were serious about improving the way politics is conducted, he could start by addressing that.

As a result, the “candidate for change” shtick just did not work. And as a result, Sunak was left with three policies, one of which sounded a bit New Labourish (in that it was reminiscent of the ban on smoking in pubs), another of which was sensible, but politically quite neutral (education), and the third of which (HS2) sounded like a valiant attempt to extract some political capital from a humiliating U-turn.

Overall verdict? Good try, but it’s not enough to reverse this.( the POLLS )

tinyclanger2 wrote: ↑Wed 04 Oct, 2023 7:54 pm was there ever a time we just had fun?

AnatolyKasparov wrote: ↑Wed 04 Oct, 2023 7:57 pm

tinyclanger2 wrote: ↑Wed 04 Oct, 2023 7:54 pm was there ever a time we just had fun?

Yes, it was horrid

refitman wrote: ↑Wed 04 Oct, 2023 9:10 pm Oh dear, never mind

tinyclanger2 wrote: ↑Wed 04 Oct, 2023 9:12 pm Morris's girlfriend Gillian Gilbert, and she was invited to join the band in early October 1980 as keyboardist and guitarist. Her first live performance with the band occurred at The Squat in Manchester on 25 October 1980.[11][12] (from wikipedia)

Was there. In a band. (But not the No Names)