Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[HVC]

She can still make a come back! I mean the lettuce has to have spoiled by now, and that was her strongest competitor


*edit(Just checked, the l head of lettuce has a wiki page

[Josquius]

FFS Abolish the Treasury and the Home Office.

No article yet but from Times' Political Editor. HS2 being further delayed by the Treasury to save money now despite being shown that this increase the cost in the long run and have other costly consequences:

Steven Swinford
@Steven_Swinford
Breaking:

Labour says it has obtained a leaked DfT document showing that HS2 delay will increase costs, lead to job cuts and could see construction firms go bust

Louise Haigh says that the document suggests HS2 could terminate on the outskirts of London until 2041
Louise Haigh says that the document 'blows apart' government's claim that HS2 delays were about balancing nation's books

'Isn't it time the minister came clean about this absurd plan that will hit jobs, hurt growth and cost taxpayers even more?'
Fury from Tory MPs over HS2:

Alec Shelbrooke says rail plan is 'cobblers' and that HS2 from Crewe to Manchester will never happen

Greg Smith, Tory MP for Buckingham, says govt has inflicted 'misery' on his constituents and HS2 should be scrapped altogether
Chris Bryant, Labour MP for Rhondda, says he does not think there is any chance of HS2 trains 'chugging into central London' in his lifetime

'And I'm not intending to shuffle off this mortal coil very soon,' he says after laughter from colleagues

Also what a fucking shambles if HS2 ends up linking a suburb in North-West Greater London with Crewe

This sort of nonsense is, with planning, the biggest obstacle for a Labour government with plans to move to a zero carbon grid by 2030 or have largescale industrial strategy. Only positive is that I think policy people on left and right are starting to realise this is the problem and the scale of it as it's a great example of what Robert Colville's (right-winger) very simple diagram of every British infrastructure project ever (also reminiscent of many IT projects I've worked on ):

Aye?
I've heard nothing of a great awakening to the reality of PWPF (at this point it's worth making it a proper acronym) Britain. But would be wonderful if it does happen!!

[Duque de Bragança]

I think we're down to about 4,000 people (from over 200,000 in 2000 ). Yeah they can't get digital Freeview but I assume they still dial in to analog broadcasts - so just the five channels I imagine.

Although I suspect they're not big TV watchers

Analog broadcasts stopped years ago in most countries (Russia still had SECAM broadcasts in 2018 I can vouch for it).

Lastly, B&W sets had no Euroscart port. Only compulsory for TVs made after 1979 till 2015 (!), a Macron "reform" while he was still in Flanby's government, as part of an "administrative simplification".

PS: HSL2  The good ol' "Belgian" jokes of yesteryear in France need to be replaced by English/British jokes. 

[Sheilbh]

Aye?
I've heard nothing of a great awakening to the reality of PWPF (at this point it's worth making it a proper acronym) Britain. But would be wonderful if it does happen!!

Yeah I see it a lot from both left-wing think tankers and those one the right. See also Tom Harwood of GB News "just build it" rant about energy. I think there's a generational split but basically all the bright young things on both sides seem to have basically the same conclusions on the need for planning reform, more infrastructure etc - it's just those on the right think it should go with more general deregulation and tax cuts, those on the left are a bit more interested in it being state directed.

[Savonarola]

This sort of nonsense is, with planning, the biggest obstacle for a Labour government with plans to move to a zero carbon grid by 2030 or have largescale industrial strategy. Only positive is that I think policy people on left and right are starting to realise this is the problem and the scale of it as it's a great example of what Robert Colville's (right-winger) very simple diagram of every British infrastructure project ever (also reminiscent of many IT projects I've worked on ):

In rail on large project (at least in the Americas, I've never worked on a project in Europe) you can never get to the right side of the graph.  There's just not that many qualified rail crews or rail engineers, the regulatory bodies don't have enough people to do much more testing and approvals and there's only so much rail equipment that can be manufactured.  A lot of my projects have had "Plans" like the one on the graph, but they always end up simply getting delayed instead of seeing a big ramp up.

[The Larch]

Anyone fancies some venison?

'Deer are destroying habitats': push to get venison on to UK dinner plates
Pilot scheme distributing meat to food banks aims to help combat cost of living crisis and deer problem at same time

"It's crazy and indefensible," says the MP Charles Walker. "Venison is a wonderful, sustainable resource but is seen as too posh to eat, ergo – very few people eat it and it ends up being made into dog food. It's a contradiction of mind-bending proportions."

From ancient Celtic folklore and Arthurian romance to the Harry Potter films and Warcraft games, it is the iconic stag that is conjured up to symbolise the spirit of ancient England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

But now conservationists, environmentalists and the farming community have come together to warn that Milton's "behemoth biggest born of earth" is destroying the countryside it has come to represent.

Thanks to a two-year pause in culling during Covid, the deer population is at its highest level for 1,000 years: at about 2 million animals – 50 years ago, the population was at 450,000 – there are more deer nibbling away at trees and crops now than when William the Conqueror arrived.

These herds are growing exponentially: at the current rate, there will be almost 2.4 million deer in the UK by the end of the year.

"It has no natural predators any more," said Jim Lee, the lead wildlife manager of Forestry England. "Bears, wolves and lynxes are long gone. Control through culling is the only plausible answer, otherwise deer destroy the habitats of our native flora and fauna, and the ability of trees and soils to capture carbon from the atmosphere."

Given the speed with which deer breed, at least 750,000 animals need to be culled this year just to stop this enormous population increasing further. Thanks to post-Brexit complications in exporting the meat, however, and the lack of a UK market for venison, only 350,000 animals are currently being culled each year.

At the same time, a growing number of families hit by the cost of living crisis need healthy food, particularly from protein-rich food groups including meat.

There are now more food banks across the UK than ever: far more than there are McDonald's outlets. But while demand has soared, donations have plummeted – in some cases by up to 70%. Protein-rich foods donations in particular have become a scarcity.

A pilot scheme says it can help solve all these urgent issues at the same time: Forestry England, Farm Wilder and the Country Food Trust, of which Walker is chair, is determined to get wild venison on to dinner plates across the country. Increasing demand, the Conservative MP said, would enable more animals to be culled and give the countryside a chance to recover from the herds.

To increase demand in a resistant market, the three organisations have created a pipeline funnelling protein-rich, low-fat, low-cholesterol venison meals to food banks, schools, hospitals, the armed forces and prisons across the country.

The pilot is starting with food banks: Forestry England will supply 5,000kg of wild venison from forests in Devon and Cornwall to Farm Wilder this year. It will process the venison into ragu and the Country Food Trust will distribute it.

"These meals have literally been a lifesaver," said Gill Bates, the manager of the Bexley food bank in Erith. "Demand from families is up by 150% but we often have no protein in stock at all. This is a problem because from a health point of view, proteins are the building blocks of life, far more so than the white carbohydrates we get donated in far greater bulk."

By the end of the year, it is hoped 1 million visitors to food banks will have dined on wild venison ragu. And that's just the pilot: the aim is to roll the scheme out nationally.

SJ Hunt, the chief executive of the Country Food Trust, has been told to expect a call from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) shortly to set up a meeting. "I'm hoping they're going to agree to scale us up," she said. "Then we can really address the food poverty issue right across the country."

[HVC]

Gill Bates? Overly clever parents

deer are a nuisance in Canada too. Lots of car accidents in Ontario, and I was in Alberta it was even worse, so many dead deer on the road. Happy crows though.

Poshness isn't an issue here, people just don't like gamey meat. Even hunters often just take the back strap (section of loin) and don't do much with the rest beyond dog food.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah I encourage everyone I know to eat venison for precisely this reason (plus it's tasty). It's absolutely sustainable, ethically fine and necessary for the countryside. I think I posted about it before.

The Brexit angle is funny because, before covid we imported venison (largely farmed and from New Zealand and Poland) because there'd been a boom in the restaurant trade (precisely because of the sustainability/ethical angle). Our consumption was way above the annual production from the cull. Following two years with no cull, plus one year when restaurant were mostly closed and hospitality really struggling now is what's led to the glut - and Brexit makes it more difficult to export the excess.

Although there are plans to reintroduce wolves and lynxes to the UK (which I think is possibly a bad idea ) so we'd at least solve the "no natural predator" issue...

[Tamas]

Are these bars on the windows here called "bars" indeed and are they installed as burglar deterrent or is there some other reason?

[HVC]

Looks like faux tudor windows.

[Sheilbh]

No. They're purely decorative. They're called lead-paned windows to look like traditional, I want to say Tudor, style lead-paned glass.

This is still relatively decorative but this is what we'd call bars and that also serve a security purpose:

[crazy canuck]

In case of fire, use hacksaw?

[Sheilbh]

Well I assume you'd use the (by the looks of it, glass) door next to the window. Which seems to also maybe undermine the security angle?

[Jacob]

Well I assume you'd use the (by the looks of it, glass) door next to the window. Which seems to also maybe undermine the security angle?

Well, with the bars you can leave the window open and get fresh air without having to worry about intruders... or at least intruders with heads too large to fit between the bars.

[Valmy]

Are these bars on the windows here called "bars" indeed and are they installed as burglar deterrent or is there some other reason?

It is how they used to do windows back in the day.

Did they only start using windows in Hungary in the 20th century or something?



My house also has fake divided windows in some places. Tradition!