Do you want to discuss boring politics? (26 Viewers)

[Deleted member 5849]

Would love to get this guy onto SBT

Sounds like Philosopher's (not philosoraptor!) political gymnastics tbf

 

---

[shmmeee]

I have my issues with Novara, but the last line of this interview alone is pure gold.

 

[SIR ERNIE]

We should really be part of Birmingham economically. As in it should be easy and quick to commute via train or tram to Birmingham. Getting to London is only important because that’s where all the economic activity is.



Not popular in Coventry but probably true. I only work in London cos there’s fuck all decent jobs in Brum.

You work? Seriously?

You're on here literally 24/7.

 

[shmmeee]

You work? Seriously?

You're on here literally 24/7.

Its OK cos I’m private sector now so the huge productivity boost makes up for it.

 

[Sky_Blue_Dreamer]

It’s treasury brain, because London is so much more productive the sums always show a bigger benefit to building in London so that’s what they approve.

Yep. Another area that needs a rethink in the calculations.

Need to consider the benefit of redevelopment in other areas and the knock on social benefits and reduced costs dealing with the problems.

 

[PVA]

 

[skybluetony176]

Finally the polls narrow. Not how Sunak was banking on but they have narrowed.

 

[Sick Boy]

Would love to get this guy onto SBT

@skybluetony176 ?

 

[shmmeee]

Yep. Another area that needs a rethink in the calculations.

Need to consider the benefit of redevelopment in other areas and the knock on social benefits and reduced costs dealing with the problems.

Been reading a lot of Centre for Cities stuff recently and they talk about how our second cities just aren’t of the size/density of other countries and so massive underperform. Birmingham and Manchester are “cramped rather than dense”, so you don’t get the agglomeration affect you do in London with a large population who can commute in quickly.

They say the biggest bang for your buck is bringing Manchester, Birmingham and even Leeds/Bradford up to the level of some of the German second cities. And it takes dense housing, and transport links. Trams/underground over buses ideally for reliability of travel time. You got to any European second city and it’ll have teams and city centres full of four or five storey mixed use developments at least.

We should be building them up to 2m+ with easy access to the centre.

The thing that struck me today watching some of the debate clips on immigration is that the real problem is we stopped building stuff. Previous large influxes have accompanied building out the road and rail or NHS, and then we stopped. We should be glad people want to come to England, and instead it feels like we’re embarrassed because it doesn’t feel like anything’s getting better and now more people are coming to share the declining country.

Welcome people in, put them to work building out our infrastructure. Get metro networks build out, zone areas for density in those cities and around key transport links. Get high speed rail built to connect Glasgow’s down to London via Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham. Get prisons and reservoirs and everything else we gave up on the last fifty years done.

Make outside London prosperous and no doubt the Midlands and the North would feel a lot happier with immigration, especially as the entire vibe of someone coming over and publicly building shit (and in the process having to have a grasp of English), is different to a balaclava’d youth on a dodgy electric bike grunting as he hands you a Deliveroo.

So maybe I’m a bit all I’ve got is a hammer right now (appropriate metaphor) but I think let’s build some shit and solve immigration integration issues at the same time. The declinalist (new word) narrative of British politics has been so fucking depressing. You don’t make a country great again by preserving it in aspic and shutting the borders. No one wants to emigrate to Scotland even though there’s no border to speak of because it’s shite and miles from anything. People wanting to come here means at least we’ve got the raw human capital to make greatness.

 

[Brighton Sky Blue]

Been reading a lot of Centre for Cities stuff recently and they talk about how our second cities just aren’t of the size/density of other countries and so massive underperform. Birmingham and Manchester are “cramped rather than dense”, so you don’t get the agglomeration affect you do in London with a large population who can commute in quickly.

They say the biggest bang for your buck is bringing Manchester, Birmingham and even Leeds/Bradford up to the level of some of the German second cities. And it takes dense housing, and transport links. Trams/underground over buses ideally for reliability of travel time. You got to any European second city and it’ll have teams and city centres full of four or five storey mixed use developments at least.

We should be building them up to 2m+ with easy access to the centre.

The thing that struck me today watching some of the debate clips on immigration is that the real problem is we stopped building stuff. Previous large influxes have accompanied building out the road and rail or NHS, and then we stopped. We should be glad people want to come to England, and instead it feels like we’re embarrassed because it doesn’t feel like anything’s getting better and now more people are coming to share the declining country.

Welcome people in, put them to work building out our infrastructure. Get metro networks build out, zone areas for density in those cities and around key transport links. Get high speed rail built to connect Glasgow’s down to London via Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham. Get prisons and reservoirs and everything else we gave up on the last fifty years done.

Make outside London prosperous and no doubt the Midlands and the North would feel a lot happier with immigration, especially as the entire vibe of someone coming over and publicly building shit (and in the process having to have a grasp of English), is different to a balaclava’d youth on a dodgy electric bike grunting as he hands you a Deliveroo.

So maybe I’m a bit all I’ve got is a hammer right now (appropriate metaphor) but I think let’s build some shit and solve immigration integration issues at the same time. The declinalist (new word) narrative of British politics has been so fucking depressing. You don’t make a country great again by preserving it in aspic and shutting the borders. No one wants to emigrate to Scotland even though there’s no border to speak of because it’s shite and miles from anything. People wanting to come here means at least we’ve got the raw human capital to make greatness.

An odd post that simultaneously wants to better connect Scotland to England while also calling the former a shithole, yet I agree and still have a vision for a UK government that properly cares for every corner of it.

The problem is that Labour too have bought into ‘no we can’t’ instead of ‘yes we can’.

 

[Sky_Blue_Dreamer]

Been reading a lot of Centre for Cities stuff recently and they talk about how our second cities just aren’t of the size/density of other countries and so massive underperform. Birmingham and Manchester are “cramped rather than dense”, so you don’t get the agglomeration affect you do in London with a large population who can commute in quickly.

They say the biggest bang for your buck is bringing Manchester, Birmingham and even Leeds/Bradford up to the level of some of the German second cities. And it takes dense housing, and transport links. Trams/underground over buses ideally for reliability of travel time. You got to any European second city and it’ll have teams and city centres full of four or five storey mixed use developments at least.

We should be building them up to 2m+ with easy access to the centre.

The thing that struck me today watching some of the debate clips on immigration is that the real problem is we stopped building stuff. Previous large influxes have accompanied building out the road and rail or NHS, and then we stopped. We should be glad people want to come to England, and instead it feels like we’re embarrassed because it doesn’t feel like anything’s getting better and now more people are coming to share the declining country.

Welcome people in, put them to work building out our infrastructure. Get metro networks build out, zone areas for density in those cities and around key transport links. Get high speed rail built to connect Glasgow’s down to London via Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham. Get prisons and reservoirs and everything else we gave up on the last fifty years done.

Make outside London prosperous and no doubt the Midlands and the North would feel a lot happier with immigration, especially as the entire vibe of someone coming over and publicly building shit (and in the process having to have a grasp of English), is different to a balaclava’d youth on a dodgy electric bike grunting as he hands you a Deliveroo.

So maybe I’m a bit all I’ve got is a hammer right now (appropriate metaphor) but I think let’s build some shit and solve immigration integration issues at the same time. The declinalist (new word) narrative of British politics has been so fucking depressing. You don’t make a country great again by preserving it in aspic and shutting the borders. No one wants to emigrate to Scotland even though there’s no border to speak of because it’s shite and miles from anything. People wanting to come here means at least we’ve got the raw human capital to make greatness.

Trouble with dense housing is it tends to also see poor mental health levels.

I know you're supportive of the 'build shit and don't care what people think'. I agree that people can get in the way of development for very spurious and short0minded reasons and i don't want to see the country preserved in aspic.

But at the same time we also need to be aware that there are issues with large development and not having green space etc, on declining physical and mental health, the natural environment and ecosystem as well as issues like flooding.

Give me green spaces, a garden and green/blue corridors over a dense urban sprawl with very good transport any day.

 

[fernandopartridge]

Pretty vacuous this

 

[shmmeee]

An odd post that simultaneously wants to better connect Scotland to England while also calling the former a shithole, yet I agree and still have a vision for a UK government that properly cares for every corner of it.

The problem is that Labour too have bought into ‘no we can’t’ instead of ‘yes we can’.

We will see. They should have a chance to do some bold stuff, one thing not mentioned that I’d love to see is local tax raising powers for infrastructure instead of having to beg the treasury.

Trouble with dense housing is it tends to also see poor mental health levels.

I know you're supportive of the 'build shit and don't care what people think'. I agree that people can get in the way of development for very spurious and short0minded reasons and i don't want to see the country preserved in aspic.

But at the same time we also need to be aware that there are issues with large development and not having green space etc, on declining physical and mental health, the natural environment and ecosystem as well as issues like flooding.

Give me green spaces, a garden and green/blue corridors over a dense urban sprawl with very good transport any day.

Not everyone is like you. Some are young, some want to be near work, etc. Good transport also allows you to be less dense, but there’s no reason living in a 4/5 storey building should be damaging to your mental health, especially as it should allow larger footprints per unit. No should it damage your mental health. People given holiday to Barcelona, Paris, Athens, London, etc.

Fundamentally we’ve built nothing in my lifetime, and yes if we start we might make the odd mistake, but it’s better than the status quo.

 

[shmmeee]

Would you really rather live here:


Than here:



Or here:



Than here:



Or here:


than here:



Extreme examples, but not all high density is awful to be around and not all low density is good. If we could legislate for taste the world would be a very different place. But I’m not sure we can.

And all of these can have private gardens or face onto public green space. In fact the higher the density the more space available for public green space.

 

[Ashdown]

Been reading a lot of Centre for Cities stuff recently and they talk about how our second cities just aren’t of the size/density of other countries and so massive underperform. Birmingham and Manchester are “cramped rather than dense”, so you don’t get the agglomeration affect you do in London with a large population who can commute in quickly.

They say the biggest bang for your buck is bringing Manchester, Birmingham and even Leeds/Bradford up to the level of some of the German second cities. And it takes dense housing, and transport links. Trams/underground over buses ideally for reliability of travel time. You got to any European second city and it’ll have teams and city centres full of four or five storey mixed use developments at least.

We should be building them up to 2m+ with easy access to the centre.

The thing that struck me today watching some of the debate clips on immigration is that the real problem is we stopped building stuff. Previous large influxes have accompanied building out the road and rail or NHS, and then we stopped. We should be glad people want to come to England, and instead it feels like we’re embarrassed because it doesn’t feel like anything’s getting better and now more people are coming to share the declining country.

Welcome people in, put them to work building out our infrastructure. Get metro networks build out, zone areas for density in those cities and around key transport links. Get high speed rail built to connect Glasgow’s down to London via Leeds, Manchester and Birmingham. Get prisons and reservoirs and everything else we gave up on the last fifty years done.

Make outside London prosperous and no doubt the Midlands and the North would feel a lot happier with immigration, especially as the entire vibe of someone coming over and publicly building shit (and in the process having to have a grasp of English), is different to a balaclava’d youth on a dodgy electric bike grunting as he hands you a Deliveroo.

So maybe I’m a bit all I’ve got is a hammer right now (appropriate metaphor) but I think let’s build some shit and solve immigration integration issues at the same time. The declinalist (new word) narrative of British politics has been so fucking depressing. You don’t make a country great again by preserving it in aspic and shutting the borders. No one wants to emigrate to Scotland even though there’s no border to speak of because it’s shite and miles from anything. People wanting to come here means at least we’ve got the raw human capital to make greatness.

You just want a land concreted over don't you …….nothing but a wasteland of blocks of flats full of foreign born brickies so they can carry on the mission !

 

[MalcSB]

We will see. They should have a chance to do some bold stuff, one thing not mentioned that I’d love to see is local tax

raising powers for infrastructure instead of having to beg the treasury.


Not everyone is like you. Some are young, some want to be near work, etc. Good transport also allows you to be less dense, but there’s no reason living in a 4/5 storey building should be damaging to your mental health, especially as it should allow larger footprints per unit. No should it damage your mental health. People given holiday to Barcelona, Paris, Athens, London, etc.

Fundamentally we’ve built nothing in my lifetime, and yes if we start we might make the odd mistake, but it’s better than the status quo.

You want us to pay yet more tax? Raised locally, would that be by Maton and the like?

 

[MalcSB]

Would you really rather live here:

View attachment 36169
Than here:

View attachment 36168

Or here:


View attachment 36170
Than here:

View attachment 36171

Or here:

View attachment 36172
than here:

View attachment 36173

Extreme examples, but not all high density is awful to be around and not all low density is good. If we could legislate for taste the world would be a very different place. But I’m not sure we can.

And all of these can have private gardens or face onto public green space. In fact the higher the density the more space available for public green space.

You know very well this is what we would get, not the very attractive buildings you have picked. It’s Moscow by the way.

 

[Ashdown]

You know very well this is what we would get, not the very attractive buildings you have picked. It’s Moscow by the way.

Quite ! Schmmeee and his ilk worry me greatly if this is the sort of nation destroying nonsense that swills through their twisted minds in the heart of the Labour party

 

[PVA]

You just want a land concreted over don't you …….nothing but a wasteland of blocks of flats full of foreign born brickies so they can carry on the mission !

What is 'the mission'?

 

[MalcSB]

What is 'the mission'?

The mission of building more flats to house more foreign brickies to build more flats to house more foreign brickies to build more flats to house more foreign brickies to build more flats to house more foreign brickies to build more flats to house more foreign brickies to build more flats to house more foreign brickies to build more flats to house more foreign brickies to build more flats to house more foreign brickies.

 

[SBAndy]

Quite ! Schmmeee and his ilk worry me greatly if this is the sort of nation destroying nonsense that swills through their twisted minds in the heart of the Labour party

What hyperbolic nonsense.

 

[clint van damme]

You know very well this is what we would get, not the very attractive buildings you have picked. It’s Moscow by the way.

We need to make sure we don't, again, you can't keep not doing things in case we fuck them up.

If we do it right we could follow Singapore rather than Russia.

 

[PVA]

The mission of building more flats to house more foreign brickies to build more flats to house more foreign brickies to build more flats to house more foreign brickies to build more flats to house more foreign brickies to build more flats to house more foreign brickies to build more flats to house more foreign brickies to build more flats to house more foreign brickies to build more flats to house more foreign brickies.

 

[shmmeee]

You want us to pay yet more tax? Raised locally, would that be by Maton and the like?

I want more money spent locally on defined things yes. We are a massive outlier on how centralised our economy is and it’s a big reason London does so much better than the rest of the UK.

You want better local politicians, stand or elect them. Otherwise it’s just bitching.

 

[Grendel]

 

[shmmeee]

You know very well this is what we would get, not the very attractive buildings you have picked. It’s Moscow by the way.

Why though? Because we’re just congenitally shit? I don’t believe that. Look at how other places have managed it and replicate if that is the case. But 3/4 of those pictures are in the UK.

You limit building to say five or six storeys and you won’t get high rise blocks, you can legislate for street fronts and greenery and floor space if that’s what you want (and i do). I just don’t buy the idea that we’ve hit peak Britain and the aim from here on out is to protect what we’ve got.

 

[Liquid Gold]

I bet those that are against building own their one home and haven't paid more than the value of where they're currently living in rent despite having been told they aren't allowed a mortgage.

 

[Ian1779]

Quite ! Schmmeee and his ilk worry me greatly if this is the sort of nation destroying nonsense that swills through their twisted minds in the heart of the Labour party

 

[It’sabatch87]

He’s told us an untruth

 

[SwanLane]

HS2 has turned into a gashy mess. Northern bits axed and the main termini of HS1 & HS2 located miles apart. On top of poor messaging all the way through its like how you’d do it if you wanted it to fail. Like saying “Here’s a dirty great big white elephant shit thing that we did - all those moaners were right all along”

But the basic idea was sound:

- Speed up connections between UK cities
- Free up capacity for local rail
- Free up space on road networks
- Reduce demand for flights
- Potential in future to use renewable power
- Less measurable (but real) economic benefits from the project build

They got dragged into the weeds early on re this last point by the noisy anti public transport vested interests, nimbys and media loudmouths. Lots of people I’ve spoken to and heard are vehemently anti HS2 but ambivalent on Crossrail, extra runway at Heathrow, constant motorway widening projects etc etc.

I still have a bit of hope that what does get built can still form the basis of a proper HS network. We do also need a proper East to West link up North equivalent to the M62.

 

[Ashdown]

View attachment 36177

And that is what the loony lefties always resort to. Very childish for a teacher.

 

[Liquid Gold]

HS2 has turned into a gashy mess. Northern bits axed and the main termini of HS1 & HS2 located miles apart. On top of poor messaging all the way through its like how you’d do it if you wanted it to fail. Like saying “Here’s a dirty great big white elephant shit thing that we did - all those moaners were right all along”

But the basic idea was sound:

- Speed up connections between UK cities
- Free up capacity for local rail
- Free up space on road networks
- Reduce demand for flights
- Potential in future to use renewable power
- Less measurable (but real) economic benefits from the project build

They got dragged into the weeds early on re this last point by the noisy anti public transport vested interests, nimbys and media loudmouths. Lots of people I’ve spoken to and heard are vehemently anti HS2 but ambivalent on Crossrail, extra runway at Heathrow, constant motorway widening projects etc etc.

I still have a bit of hope that what does get built can still form the basis of a proper HS network. We do also need a proper East to West link up North equivalent to the M62.

It should have definitely linked up with HS1. You should be able to get on a high speed train from Birmingham/Manchester to Paris.

 

[Ashdown]

HS2 has turned into a gashy mess. Northern bits axed and the main termini of HS1 & HS2 located miles apart. On top of poor messaging all the way through its like how you’d do it if you wanted it to fail. Like saying “Here’s a dirty great big white elephant shit thing that we did - all those moaners were right all along”

But the basic idea was sound:

- Speed up connections between UK cities
- Free up capacity for local rail
- Free up space on road networks
- Reduce demand for flights
- Potential in future to use renewable power
- Less measurable (but real) economic benefits from the project build

They got dragged into the weeds early on re this last point by the noisy anti public transport vested interests, nimbys and media loudmouths. Lots of people I’ve spoken to and heard are vehemently anti HS2 but ambivalent on Crossrail, extra runway at Heathrow, constant motorway widening projects etc etc.

I still have a bit of hope that what does get built can still form the basis of a proper HS network. We do also need a proper East to West link up North equivalent to the M62.

Many of these transport issues could be alleviated by not taking another 600,000 people every year. Someone mentioned, we’ve not reached our ‘peak’ but what is our peak ? 80 million, 100 million ? We are becoming a nation of housing estates without any accompanying services.

 

[Deleted member 5849]

Quite ! Schmmeee and his ilk worry me greatly if this is the sort of nation destroying nonsense that swills through their twisted minds in the heart of the Labour party

But you choose to ignore those lefties that argue with him...?

 

[SwanLane]

Many of these transport issues could be alleviated by not taking another 600,000 people every year. Someone mentioned, we’ve not reached our ‘peak’ but what is our peak ? 80 million, 100 million ? We are becoming a nation of housing estates without any accompanying services.

Even if we didn’t let anyone in the country from tomorrow our infrastructure is not fit for purpose and is holding us back.