Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

First MRP (of England) - don't know how reliable the pollsters are (don't recognise them), everything can change, I still think the polls will narrow....But

Politics UK
@PolitlcsUK
🚨 BREAKING: The first general election MRP poll in seats

🔴 LAB: 476 
🔵 CON: 66
🟠 LD: 59 
🟢 Green: 2
🟣 Reform: 0 

10,000 people
Via @ElectCalculus & @findoutnow

Canada 93 intensifies

Genuinely not that far from Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and LOTO Sir Ed Davey. Not sure how far back you'd need to go for two knights across the dispatch box?

Also add in Labour pushing for every seat in Scotland. This would be a majority of over 300.

Edit: Oh very disappointing the polling experts have explained this isn't an MRP, it's just a very big poll

[Josquius]

Unrelated to elections. But these happenings in Wales sound very positive.
Huge investment in transit.
Recently I recall they dropped the speed limit in towns to 20 too.
Fingers crossed for national Labour to be on the same path.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c888j7722q6o.amp

[Sheilbh]

Also not election related but this:

C20 Society
@C20Society
🚨BREAKING NEWS // The High Court has granted a Judicial Review into the Secretary of State's approval of the monstrous 72 Upper Ground development:

❌Damaging the unique heritage of the South Bank
❌Speculative offices not homes
❌Unacceptable carbon cost

Time to #StopTheSlab

I can't really see what's so offensive about the proposed building and while I think there are 20th century buildings on the South Bank worth preserving, I'm really not sure the current site is one of them:


I feel like the new proposal is probably better.

[HVC]

Unrelated to elections. But these happenings in Wales sound very positive.
Huge investment in transit.
Recently I recall they dropped the speed limit in towns to 20 too.
Fingers crossed for national Labour to be on the same path.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c888j7722q6o.amp

Our public transit union is probably going on strike again soon. That's why cars are better

[Valmy]

❌Unacceptable carbon cost

Just have them plant a million trees or something.

And why is it always some kind of hideous eye-sore these activists are trying to save?

[Josquius]

Unrelated to elections. But these happenings in Wales sound very positive.
Huge investment in transit.
Recently I recall they dropped the speed limit in towns to 20 too.
Fingers crossed for national Labour to be on the same path.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c888j7722q6o.amp

Our public transit union is probably going on strike again soon. That's why cars are better

Cheaper to pay train drivers properly than to build and maintain miles upon miles of road.

[HVC]

Roads are already built, just have to maintain them

[Sheilbh]

Roads are already built, just have to maintain them

Although Wales has actually scrapped all new road building plans:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-64640215

[Josquius]

Roads are already built, just have to maintain them

Except they aren't. They keep being built. Every new suburban development demands vast quantities of unsustainable new road.

And "we just have to maintain them" in reality is a lot easier (and cheaper) said than done.

One ignorantly pro car documentary I recently saw for instance.

https://www.channel4.com/press/news/channel-4s-dispatches-reveals-exclusive-findings-potholes-traffic-reducing-schemes-ltns

Rod Dennis, Senior Policy Officer at RAC tells Dispatches that the government's pledge doesn't go far enough: "We don't feel the national government has got a proper grip on just how bad the situation on our roads really is. £8.3 billion, while it sounds like a lot, is staggered over the course of a decade, and all that would be enough to do would be to resurface Essex's roads and leave the rest of the country's roads exactly as they are today."

And on the US... The whole way of living over there is a giant ponzi scheme.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/8/28/the-growth-ponzi-scheme-a-crash-course

Consider the sheer amount that was built in the mid 20th century and is now basically over it's expected lifespan...

Car centric civilization is on the way out. Governments need to embrace the future.

[Tamas]

So the idea is to build more housing without new streets/roads? i.e. high rises?

[Josquius]

So the idea is to build more housing without new streets/roads? i.e. high rises?

That's jumping from one extreme to another.
Current typical lived in density in the UK for 3/4 of the population  is 2-7k.
For a decent economical bus service the cut off is 5k, for a tram 7k, 11.5k for a metro (according to one study. There's no hard and fast rule but it's a decent stab).

We could go all Hong Kong, terrify the small c conservatives and demand everyone moves into crowded high rises with typical 50k+ density....
But theres a huge range in between the two.
Most older pre 20th century towns and villages hew more towards the 10k mark. And they're very popular places where people want to live.

[Tamas]

Yes my point is though, if you want more housing than we have currently, you either expand horizontally or vertically. The former means new streets the latter means high rises.

[Josquius]

Yes my point is though, if you want more housing than we have currently, you either expand horizontally or vertically. The former means new streets the latter means high rises.

The choices aren't American style suburbs or Hong Kong high rises. There's lots of other ways to do things.

Go look around a historic village for instance. It has streets and houses. The streets aren't wider than the houses though and they're laid out in such a way to make efficient use of space.
Consider too a lot of historic town buildings will tend to have 3, 4 stories rather than just two.

Even in more modern developments, very possible to have flats that aren't high rise. This is the norm in much of Europe.

[Tamas]

OK so you want flats built to replace houses. I agree, to a degree.

[Sheilbh]

Yes my point is though, if you want more housing than we have currently, you either expand horizontally or vertically. The former means new streets the latter means high rises.

Don't need to do either if you just don't build housing