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let me see if I can find them
No need, I've read them all.
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I'd be surprised if even the most pious get close to the letter of the law.
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Have we done Sweden yet? Lots of Covid skeptics pointing to Sweden saying that they got it right...i.e no lockdown means fewer deaths and greater immunity.
The thing that makes me think that this is utter bollocks is that Sweden has a deaths per million figure X10 higher that their Scandinavian neighbours. It might be low for Europe but it is astronomical for Scandinavia.
Could it just be that Swedish pensioners are healthier?
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High speed services on the continent have exactly the same mix of business and leisure travel, expensive and cheap fares, etc as UK Intercity services.
Sure, anyone can use the trains, if they can afford them. However, the primary reason why they were invested in in the first place, quite apart from the political glory associated with futuristic technology, was to facilitate business travel. On fares, there is a lot of variation on the Continent, but many countries do it completely differently to the UK. For instance, in Germany you can buy cheaper non-exchangeable tickets that commit you to a particular train, but there is no other mix of fares (apart from first and second class) in Germany, either on Intercity or ICE services, as, fortunately, airline-style pricing and the other nonsensical features of the UK's ticketing chaos were staved off there. Fares are calculated using a base rate per km, which is higher depending on the class of train. 'Normal' exchangeable, open train choice tickets (first or second class) have a fixed tariff, and they don't change irrespective of when you buy them.
I should also make clear that I'm not against high-speed trains per se. I use them, e.g. the Eurostar, several times a year. I just don't think they've done the railways nearly as much good as other measures can or could have done.
The lost railway lines either went nowhere and were closed for good reason, have been built over in key sections, or do nothing to add capacity in congested urban areas. Usually, all three.
I'm well aware of these sorts of arguments, and I used to subscribe to them, too, but I don't any more, mainly because they're all contingent on the political will not being there. It's true that many successive governments have simply not shown it. However, adducing technical difficulties like that is very much like the tail wagging the dog. They're technical difficulties; of course they can be overcome. They cost money? Sure, so you do them as slowly or as fast as you can, but you simply need to start somewhere. Yes, without backing by the Government these things will indeed continue not to be done indefinitely, but that's hardly news.
As an example, in London, one of the Livingstone administration's achievements was to reinstate most of the Broad Street line for a reported £800 million (obviously minus the terminus in the demolished Broad Street station). This was a long-delayed project and one of the policies Livingstone brought out of deep freeze from the 80s. OK, it resulted in some terrible development in Dalston and the destruction of most of the Shoreditch Goods Station undercroft, which is a sad loss, but it was done. It's been followed by quite a few railway upgrades all around London. I'm not particularly fond of improving London at the expense of everywhere else, but if you start somewhere you will be able to continue to tackle projects one by one.
Reprioritising an alignment for a railway line is generally not difficult with the right legislation backing it. Just look at the destruction currently being perpetrated in the name of HS2, backed by a powerful Act of Parliament. Compared to that, acquiring/re-acquiring the land for smaller lines is a doddle. Sure, it's not as spectacular and you don't get to make as many notches for ancient woods on your bulldozers, but with political will, as above, compensating landowners who have built on old alignments is not rocket science and would in any case be a small part of any budget for re-opening most lines.
Also, no railway lines went 'nowhere', of course. They all went to towns, villages, or industrial sites, many of which have been disconnected from the rail network for some considerable time. There are many examples of disconnected towns, e.g. Devizes, which is quite a sizeable town but which lost its two railway stations. Even if one were not to reconnect them all, there are plenty where this would be worth doing (and as a public service, not for profit).
On capacity: it's really not about that in the first instance. 'Capacity' is one of the great mythical concepts of transportation (not only in rail). What people usually use it to refer to is greater concentrations of trips to a few, or even just one, central destination(s). I've spent many, many meetings arguing with traffic engineers about capacity. However, for the most part what is missing are connections (e.g., orbital ones in London) that spread trips so that there is a more even distribution of economic activity (which needs to be backed by the right kind of development in the right places), and great concentrations of capacity aren't needed, all the while supporting a sustainable level of centralisation.
Transport policy needs to improve connections for everyone, not just serve ever higher capacity to only a few places. Think about how there are roads that go everywhere; the principle is still very much alive in policy, but for many decades now it's only been consistently applied to road traffic, and mostly motorised road traffic at that. It needs to become re-established for rail(roads).
If you have a major 'capacity' problem somewhere, you generally already know that something is wrong in either the development in a central place, e.g. the recent ridiculous over-development of Central London, or how the lopsided distibution of railway lines and other transport links create(d) wrong development incentives. None of these things are immutable and can be changed with, again, the right political determination (which, as ad nauseam in this post, I know very well doesn't currently exist) and sensible long-term planning and foresight (which, admittedly, humans are not too good at). It would take decades in some cases, e.g. the decline of Croydon has been a long time in the making, partly because Central London has been set up to out-Croydon Croydon.
Expanding existing mainlines is ludicrously expensive and disruptive for limited gain.
I'm not talking about megaprojectitis in this case, e.g. applying HS2-style megabucks to an existing mainline. I don't like that sort of project. I'm talking about the steady, continuous, and not particularly disruptive improvements that used to be routine for all railway lines but that decades of under-investment have slowed or stymied. (Studying histories of such continuous improvement and how it works is something I find very interesting and have done a lot.) The same applies to non-urban lines. None of them were built in one piece or the way they are today. Like most things, they're never finished. On another note, I'm not even talking about mainline capacity, but the many other ways in which lines can be improved. Greater capacity can be a result, and can be especially useful where smaller lines connect to larger lines, but is by no means the only objective.
Cancelling HS2 doesn't do anything to make money appear for local transport schemes.
True, HS2 money doesn't come from a pot ring-fenced for rail improvements generally, but again, policy on railways simply depends on whether anyone has the political courage to support a different railway strategy. Going ahead with HS2 means a lot of transport funding is used in a way that I don't think is strategically good (and I'm not a NIMBY here, as the routing of the line doesn't affect me personally in my own circumstances). Nor do I think all the arguments against HS2 are sound.
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while typically having a negative impact on the rest of the rail network, when it is far, far more important, and far cheaper, to reinstate lost railway lines and create other useful local-ish rail links.
Adding HS2 mean the regional line won’t be as busy allowing more trains on the existing line.
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I haven't followed statistics in detail, but most of what I've seen of the 'Covid sceptic' tendency has been simplistic, e.g. monocausal. I think the following things apply generally:
1) We didn't understand what the virus does when it first became clear that there was a problem. It's easy enough to say that just letting it spread while protecting the vulnerable/susceptible would be the best strategy, but I just don't agree that we really knew who was vulnerable; we didn't know about 'long Covid', which seems to affect a lot of not particularly vulnerable-seeming people, e.g. younger people (see the thread), we didn't yet know that children don't seem to spread it much, that contact transmission isn't all that likely, how best to test for it, and so forth, not to mention the UK's general unpreparedness for it, which seems to continue seamlessly into being ill-equipped for dealing with it six/seven months on. Sure, if you already know what exactly a virus does, you can take appropriate precautions, but this one had spread far and wide by political failure to contain it, which was probably at least in part caused by the above factors.
2) I do think that measures such as lockdowns, social distancing, or face masks are undesirable policies, but ones that nonetheless became called for once the horse had bolted. I can understand people's misgivings about them, and the general atmosphere probably isn't helped by some in the Government probably enjoying bringing in measures at the wrong time, seemingly capriciously, without much notice, and unscientifically under the cloak of 'we're monitoring the situation all the time' based on poor data.
Politics at a high level had failed, so low-level measures that imposed a tremendous burden on everyone, except Dominic Cummings, had to come in. These were initially followed remarkably well by most people, but the Cummings affair was a turning-point, and since then we've seen a lot of civil disobedience and conspiracy (covidspiracy) theories seem to have multiplied.
3) Immense amounts of text have been written about testing and contact tracing and their importance. What it highlights for me is the constant contrast between theory and practice. In theory, we should implement measures based on accurate data and information, i.e. that gained from the above activities. In practice, we don't have much, and it's hard to prepare for testing (tests seem to have been created quickly, but may have been too sensitive, etc.), and contact tracing requires a lot of surveillance, which is not desirable. I think it again highlights that there needs to be a lot more investment in prevention of virus spreading if at all possible, e.g. better monitoring of symptom clusters. In China, there also seems to have been a problem of politicians, and quite possibly other doctors, not listening to whistleblowers.
4) I'm sure that effective action has also been hampered by this tendency of people to try to justify their pre-existing political interests by the arrival of the pandemic. This is not only in the seemingly totally wasteful awarding of government contracts without competition or scrutiny to Tory donors etc., but in other areas, too. That can't help and better political co-ordination is desperately needed. Obviously, having a responsible government in the first instance would help a lot.
I suspect that Sweden can only be presented as acceptable because people make poor use of statistics and because it can be contrasted favourably with the utter political failure in this country, which (not uniquely, but among only a few countries) had a lockdown and failed to protect vulnerable people, in fact in some ways endangering them more directly than I imagine was done in Sweden.
Anyway, some witterings on what I think generally, which may be nonsense, but that's where I've got to.
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In theory, yes, but it's not that simple. If you have a market-led model, and you carry on road-building away from the railways, as this Government seemingly still intends to do, you may end up with a less used older line and more motor traffic on parallel roads, leading to fewer trains. As above, it's not just about the simple measure of 'capacity' but about different qualities that a network can possess, and how different networks influence each other and interact. It might happen as you say in some areas, but in others the effect might be affected by extraneous factors.
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in Germany, either on Intercity or ICE services, as, fortunately, airline-style pricing and the other nonsensical features of the UK's ticketing chaos were staved off there
Really? I have been noticing prices going up closer to booking date, a very foreign concept for a Dutchman. We can buy a ticket in advance but nobody does it as you just check in and out at the beginning and end of your journey and prices are calculated based on km traveled regardless of mode of transport (save for a few regional services, but those are very rare).
Could be that it’s still far worse in the UK though, I recall us having a cheap flight to Stansted or somesuch and having to take an eye-wateringly expensive train making the overal trip about as expensive with a lot of hassle.
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Really? I have been noticing prices going up closer to booking date, a very foreign concept for a Dutchman. We can buy a ticket in advance but nobody does it as you just check in and out at the beginning and end of your journey and prices are calculated based on km traveled regardless of mode of transport (save for a few regional services, but those are very rare).
D'oh, I managed to forget that you can buy cheaper non-exchangeable tickets that commit you to a particular train. This was introduced, following the passenger revolt, as a kind of first step towards airline-style pricing. It still doesn't amount to the latter, as there are only two tariffs for 'normal' exchangeable, open train choice tickets (first or second class), and they don't change irrespective of when you buy them. Post edited.
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https://consultations.dhsc.gov.uk/5f43b8aca0980b6fc0198f9f
Consultation closes at 11:59pm on Friday 18 September 2020.
The proposals we are consulting on:
Do not create powers to make receiving a COVID-19 vaccine mandatory for the UK population.
Do not create powers to rush through development of a vaccine that has not been subjected to extensive clinical trials and a thorough assessment of the evidence.
Do not create powers to rollout an untested vaccine for the UK population. (...)
Do not create powers for untrained personnel to administer the vaccine.
Just when I thought 2020 was calming down, the Govt. is literally asking for powers to roll out untested vaccines, and even make them mandatory.
That’s a heck of a consultation, and it’s asking for a heck of a lot of trust in institutions that haven’t performed well at all this year...
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As above--tl;dr--politics.
As I said above, I used to subscribe to all those views, but I've been looking at rail politics more and more. It's the same as in other branches of transport politics--those who don't have political power think that XYZ can't be done until someone comes along who just does it.
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Just when I thought 2020 was calming down, the Govt. is literally asking for powers to roll out untested vaccines, and even make them mandatory.
No, it isn’t. I had to read it and the attached document but it’s basically a massive fuck up in the way that statement is written.
The consultation is about whether they can unilaterally licence a vaccine for use in the U.K. before it has approval from the European licensing authority. And whether they can expand the definition of the persons who can be licensed to administer it. Or something.
The proposals we are consulting on:
Do not create powers to make receiving a COVID-19 vaccine mandatory for the UK population.
Do not create powers to rush through development of a vaccineYou should read the statement as ‘this consultation has nothing to do with the following whatsoever”. Not sure why they had to list off a whole load of things that people don’t like that the consultation has nothing to do with then cock the copy up to the point where it looks like that’s actually what the consultation is about but there you go. You couldn’t make this shit up.
Amazed that it passed editorial the way it currently is.
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The Government only employs crazies and misfits these days, editors went out the door a long time ago, surely?
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You should read the statement as ‘this consultation has nothing to do with the following whatsoever”.
I guess the publishing team either didn’t read or didn’t understand the proposed legislation.
The only point point I disagree with you on is that the wording of the proposal does seem to create scope for potentially allowing the rollout of vaccines that haven’t been subjected to the usual testing and control regimes, and creating immunity for medical providers for unforeseen consequences thereof. Not that they’re proposing allowing ‘untested vaccines’ like the consultation says, but they are creating a loophole to give certain groups a whole lot of cash quickly, and then shield them from possible fallout that may happen in 3, 5, 10 years.
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they are creating a loophole to give certain groups a whole lot of cash quickly, and then shield them from possible fallout that may happen in 3, 5, 10 years.
Yea this... Not that I am anti vax but I don't really want them to rush through a vaccine only to be able to shrug all responsibility if it goes tits up.
Too late now tho...
Probably should have posted last night but ended up watching 'this is spinal tap' brilliant movie.
Settle
n3il
Oliver Schick
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Stonehedge
Chalfie
Howard
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Tijmen
Dammit
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That's positive!
I think there'll be a lot of shaming in the media of young people again.