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Politics, politics, politics (so long and thanks for all the fish)

Good to know our most important airport was connected to a single sub-station. Could not make this s**t up. And either this will have been repeatedly flagged in operational resilience and conflict/terrorism threat assessment reports across the desks of cabinet ministers and senior civil servants and just f***ing ignored by the self-indulgent incompetent narcissists that have been running our country or the people doing operational resilience and threat assessments relating to key national infrastructure are incompetent. We really have been turned into an international laughing stock over the past 20 odd years.
 
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Silly McSilly Face said:
Good to know our most important airport was connected to a single sub-station. Could not make this s**t up. And either this will have been repeatedly flagged in operational resilience and conflict/terrorism threat assessment reports across the desks of cabinet ministers and senior civil servants and just f***ing ignored by the self-indulgent incompetent narcissists that have been running our country or the people doing operational resilience and threat assessments relating to key national infrastructure are incompetent. We really have been turned into an international laughing stock over the past 20 odd years.
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We shouldn't be surprised about this sort of thing, it's also a good reason to have excess capacity elsewhere. Flights could be diverted but there's not much spare capacity in the south east. Still find it unbelievable they've been arguing about a runway for almost 50 years. Really we should have built a new airport years ago with plenty of capacity, linked to high speed rail, ports and motorways but we're behind the curve yet again.
 
P.D. said:
We shouldn't be surprised about this sort of thing, it's also a good reason to have excess capacity elsewhere. Flights could be diverted but there's not much spare capacity in the south east. Still find it unbelievable they've been arguing about a runway for almost 50 years. Really we should have built a new airport years ago with plenty of capacity, linked to high speed rail, ports and motorways but we're behind the curve yet again.
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You're not saying ...Boris knew? :)
 
Ed Davey - "We’re facing real threats - Putin in the east, Trump in the west, and Farage doing his best tribute act here at home. Today, we made it clear: the Liberal Democrats won’t back down."
 
SpiderSpurs said:
Ed Davey - "We’re facing real threats - Putin in the east, Trump in the west, and Farage doing his best tribute act here at home. Today, we made it clear: the Liberal Democrats won’t back down."
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He might be at a political minnow but he isn't wrong. Even the reform party don't know how right wing is too much, at least Farage TBF seems to have some sense of conscience now where he can see right wing nutters like Musk and Lowe crossing the line, GHod I feel sick, never thought I would say that about Farage. But there we are
 
Baleforce said:
It definitely fell under the last one.
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Living standards is actually a multi-metric measure but they've overall crept slowly upwards in every Parliamenr since 2010, albeit at a significantly slower pace than before the financial crash (we've never fully recovered from the financial crash and significant public expenditure is still put aside every year for servicing loss-making assets the government took on from failed banks and building societies, e.g. Bradford & Bingley, Northern Rock etc.

The last Parliament is a weird one to measure though: you had a decline in most metrics that measure living standards such as wages due to the 80% furlough scheme during the pandemic, followed by significant increases in the same metrics post-pandemic as the economy bounced back strongly followed by a decline again across the board as the energy/cost of living crisis hit. Overall it was a par performsnce probably but yeah, overall things have been creeping upwards but are predicted to start to fall. Incidentally, population size is linked to living standards and poverty. The UK's population growth is outstripping available well paid jobs at a time when AI and automation is reducing the need for workers and we can expect a decline in living standards and increase in poverty as the population continues to swell, particularly driven by significant immigration from poor countries involving many people with poor educational backgrounds thar can only take low paid work
 
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P.D. said:
We shouldn't be surprised about this sort of thing, it's also a good reason to have excess capacity elsewhere. Flights could be diverted but there's not much spare capacity in the south east. Still find it unbelievable they've been arguing about a runway for almost 50 years. Really we should have built a new airport years ago with plenty of capacity, linked to high speed rail, ports and motorways but we're behind the curve yet again.
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Can't really get any major infrastructure project done in this country as there are always people that oppose them that have enough time and money to challenge them via the courts. HS2 was a case in point, it has had to basically fight for almost every mile of track through court challenges, and divert track away from residential areas through tunnels and bridges over marshland and hilly areas. Then you've got stuff like hangers for bats and the whole thing bloated in cost to the point where the cost and time involved in building it are probably more then any economc benefit it is going to deliver once the tired, 20 year old scheme (or the rump that's left of it) has made it to production. The Heathruw 3rd runway has never been greenlighted due to the same issues and any new airport would be even worse.
 
ricky2tricky4city said:
You're not saying ...Boris knew? :)
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He loved coming out with big ideas but hindsight I think this was a good one. No idea if the Estuary was/is the right location but sometimes you can't keep tinkering with existing stuff and need to build something fresh and modern with the latest design. I mean no one building an airport not would lay it out like Heathrow. I think the new runway is meant to be a 15-20 minute taxi from most of the terminals. Will give additional capacity but it's not optimal - if you look at the new airports in China, Poland and Dubai etc they all have layouts specifically designed around efficiency and connecting to other forms of transports and ports etc.
 
Baleforce said:
Fair enough, I do therefore question how they measure it.
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Part of the problem is they keep changing how they measure it which makes assessing trends over time pretty hard. Definition of poverty (Part of the overall living standards metric) has significantly changed over time, basically to account for significant uplifts in living standards (which effectively meant hardly anyone in the UK lived in poverty under old measurements making it hard to track life at the bottom of the economy).

These sort of changes do impact on the rate at which living standards have improved in the data because in the 1980s, if you lived in poverty you likely didn't have an adult in the household that worked, you possibly lived in tenement and possibly shared an outside toilet with other residents. Now poverty can include families in work, that own a car and other things that account for the fact that living standards have risen to the point where the majority of people in the country have these things now which are almost regarded as "essential" to live a respectable life.

What that has meant is that the growth in metrics probably underestimate the huge rise in living standards that has been experienced over the past 50 years in particular.
 
Iconic image from the protests in Turkey (photo by Umit Bektas)
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P.D. said:
He loved coming out with big ideas but hindsight I think this was a good one. No idea if the Estuary was/is the right location but sometimes you can't keep tinkering with existing stuff and need to build something fresh and modern with the latest design. I mean no one building an airport not would lay it out like Heathrow. I think the new runway is meant to be a 15-20 minute taxi from most of the terminals. Will give additional capacity but it's not optimal - if you look at the new airports in China, Poland and Dubai etc they all have layouts specifically designed around efficiency and connecting to other forms of transports and ports etc.
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Good idea imo. On the City/Docklands/Excel side of London...combine it with new freight/ports area in the Thames estuary (closest M25 side to Dover as well), connect into Stratford/ebbsfleet Eurostar (HS1)
Plus not adding to the amount of traffic to the busiest section of the M25 (A3-M40)

Air traffic flying East lesser effect on populated areas.
 
Silly McSilly Face said:
Part of the problem is they keep changing how they measure it which makes assessing trends over time pretty hard. Definition of poverty (Part of the overall living standards metric) has significantly changed over time, basically to account for significant uplifts in living standards (which effectively meant hardly anyone in the UK lived in poverty under old measurements making it hard to track life at the bottom of the economy).

These sort of changes do impact on the rate at which living standards have improved in the data because in the 1980s, if you lived in poverty you likely didn't have an adult in the household that worked, you possibly lived in tenement and possibly shared an outside toilet with other residents. Now poverty can include families in work, that own a car and other things that account for the fact that living standards have risen to the point where the majority of people in the country have these things now which are almost regarded as "essential" to live a respectable life.

What that has meant is that the growth in metrics probably underestimate the huge rise in living standards that has been experienced over the past 50 years in particular.
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What is the current metric(s)?
 
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