Let's repeat the HS2 success story

Labour denies railways will be given 'lower priority' under renationalisation plans - as Tories warn of 'wildcat strikes'

Shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh promised to deliver the biggest shake-up to rail "in a generation" by establishing the long-delayed Great British Railways (GBR) organisation and bringing routes back into public ownership, if Labour forms the next government...

Sam Coates, Sky News' deputy political editor, asked Ms Haigh how she was going to avoid the "trap" of British Railways - the former national railway system that was privatised in the 1990s - which was forced to compete for central government cash.

"How are you going to make sure that you don't end up falling into the same old trap as British Railways, where effectively, to get train upgrades, you are competing for cash with schools and hospitals, and given money is going to be very tight, aren't the trains actually going to be a lower priority?" he asked.


Labour knows it isn't going to work, GBR cannot compete successfully with the budgetary demands of the NHS, education and other loud voices on the political stage. It isn't going to work and Labour knows it. We may as well assume that there is an internal calculation suggesting that enough voters don't know it, particularly younger voters.

Luxury Crackpottery

Tony Thomas has a useful Climate Depot reminder of the sayings of Naomi Oreskes.


Harvard Professor Naomi Oreskes dubbed ‘The Queen of Climate Crackpottery’

Trigger warning: if your household companions include a cat, dog, canary, goldfish or turtle, this article is not a safe space. I’m writing about Harvard’s distinguished agnatologist Professor Naomi Oreskes (above) and her 2014 warning that global warming would kill your pets in 2023. The warning is in her acclaimed but glum book The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future. Given margins of error in climate science, the pet die-off might be this year instead. Oreskes wrote,

The loss of pet cats and dogs garnered particular attention among wealthy Westerners , but what was anomalous in 2023 soon became the new normal . … A shadow of ignorance and denial had fallen over people who considered themselves children of the Enlightenment (p9).


The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of something we've known for decades - it is possible to be a successful professional crackpot if you take care to promote what are clearly luxury beliefs. It helps to have a strong totalitarian theme too, but we already know that.


The Collapse book is about Western civilisation’s ruin while China saves the planet with its enlightened anti-CO2 measures. She is writing from the future in 2393 when she will be aged 435. Oreskes (as at 2393) is cross because we have refused to build enough windmills to stop at 11degC warming (p32) and eight-metre sea rises (p30). We should not have eaten so many fillet steaks and, personally, I should not have tooled around in my reasonably priced, petrol-powered Hyundai i30 when Teslas were available at $80,000.

Online Dentist

 

Classy

Angela Rayner aims ‘pint-sized loser’ jibe at Rishi Sunak during PMQs

Angela Rayner labelled Rishi Sunak a “pint-sized loser” after urging the Conservatives to stop “obsessing” about her living arrangements.

Labour’s deputy leader also accused Oliver Dowden of having “stabbed” the Tories’ “biggest election winner” Boris Johnson in the back in order to get his “mate into No 10”.

Prestigious

Artist who covered a car with a doily up for Turner Prize

The shortlist for 2024’s Turner Prize has been announced and includes Scottish artist Jasleen Kaur who covered a red sports car with an ornamental doily mat.

Manilla-born Pio Abad, Manchester-born Claudette Johnson, Glasgow-born Kaur and Worthing-born Delaine Le Bas have been nominated in the prize’s 40th anniversary as the prestigious art event returns to London’s Tate Britain for the first time in six years.

The artists are competing for £25,000, while those shortlisted will be awarded £10,000.

It's an extremely large doily, so maybe that makes a statement. 

It's still mildly surprising that anyone enters this competition. Being artistically naïve I'd expect other artists to snigger at the winner to such an extent that it would be a significant career setback. Something to miss off the CV perhaps, but apparently not.

Must be the moolah.

Ban, mandate, tax, subsidise or give a speech

Robert Colvile has a useful CAPX piece on the dead hand of regulation.


Why Britain needs a regulation revolution

There have been many academic theses written about the powers and role of government. But perhaps the neatest summary comes from an anonymous minister, quoted by former civil servant Tim Leunig.

They would explain to stakeholders begging for intervention that ultimately, there were five things they could do: ban something, mandate something, tax something, subsidise something, or give a speech about something. And of those, only the first four actually did anything.


The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder that when it comes to cutting stifling regulations the Conservatives have achieved nothing and a Labour government is virtually certain to achieve less than that. Starmer believes in regulation, his party knows nothing else. 


Getting a handle on regulation isn’t a party-political issue. You can believe that some new regulations, or even many new regulations, are good and necessary. But even then, you should surely also want to know how much they cost, and whether they are actually working as you intended.

Regulation is arguably the least scrutinised part of government. But it may well be the most important. At the moment, Government too often sees imposing costs on business as a pain-free solution. Unless that changes, we can kiss goodbye to any hope of growth.

Once I dipt into the future

Weather maps reveal when four-day 'mini-heatwave' to bring balmy 19C highs to UK

A four-day spell of hot weather is set to bring balmy highs of 19C to the UK next week. Brits will soon enjoy warmer weather, with the mercury anticipated to rise across many parts of the country.

Weather maps from WX Charts indicate it will start to heat up as we approach the early May bank holiday. It comes after heavy downpours and harsh winds have been sweeping Britain lately.

There will be highs of 17C on Thursday, May 2. The Midlands is predicted to see between 15C and 16C, while the south of the country could feel the warmest of the weather.


There seems to be a widespread editorial policy of slipping in words such as 'hot', 'heat' or 'heating' into UK weather stories where the weather isn't undeniably cold. Those huge fans we see all over the countryside must be something to do with official cooling policy.

Weather
Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be--
Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
With a record of unreason seldome paralleled on earth.
While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent youth,
From the coals that he'd preferred to the advantages of truth.
He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote
On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote--
For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow:
"Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow."
Ambrose Bierce