Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Tamas]

I am sure its beneficial because the slower you go the sooner you can stop, but gawd it's annoying to keep the car under 20mph.

[Grey Fox]

My town lowered almost every street (over 90% of them) by 10kmh. 50 streets became 40, 40 became 30, etc.

The 50 to 40 is the most annoying one. Going 40 on long straight wide streets is excruatingly slow.

[Tamas]

My town lowered almost every street (over 90% of them) by 10kmh. 50 streets became 40, 40 became 30, etc.

The 50 to 40 is the most annoying one. Going 40 on long straight wide streets is excruatingly slow.

In Slough there is a long, straight 2x2 lanes (with directions separated by barriers) main road coming right off the motorway with the occasional traffic lights. It has a 30mph limit. In light/medium traffic you have to break it and go closer to 40 to avoid danger to yourself and others as nobody bothers with the limit.

[Valmy]

Maybe Welsh roads are just really bad?

[Josquius]

In Lausanne they've done something weird where roads have a standard 50kph speed limit during regular hours but then in the wee hours of the night between 22 and 6 this drops to 30.
I'm not sure what I think about this.

We've a section of road near here outside a large school. It used to have one of those 20 when the lights flash systems but now is a flat 20.
People tend not to obey it.
I recall one awesome occasion where I followed the speed limit and some idiot came up right behind me his engine roaring to try and get me to speed up.

Overall I get how it is annoying to suddenly be going slower than normal... but if it was normal I expect people would get used to this slower speed. And the data speaks for itself on the benefits that may not be immediately tangible.

[Sheilbh]

RIP John Prescott

Really enjoyed the clip of him on Top Gear that's gone viral today.

Also just a great example of what people mean when they talk about "authenticity" being something they like in a politician. You were never in any doubt who he was or what his views were.

My town lowered almost every street (over 90% of them) by 10kmh. 50 streets became 40, 40 became 30, etc.

The 50 to 40 is the most annoying one. Going 40 on long straight wide streets is excruatingly slow.

I think London's 20mph.

And John Prescott would be loving this chat

[Barrister]

My town lowered almost every street (over 90% of them) by 10kmh. 50 streets became 40, 40 became 30, etc.

The 50 to 40 is the most annoying one. Going 40 on long straight wide streets is excruatingly slow.

In Slough there is a long, straight 2x2 lanes (with directions separated by barriers) main road coming right off the motorway with the occasional traffic lights. It has a 30mph limit. In light/medium traffic you have to break it and go closer to 40 to avoid danger to yourself and others as nobody bothers with the limit.

30 mph?

I drive 2 of my kids, plus 2 other kids, to school every morning.  They attend a hockey school so frequently they have to take their hockey gear, which makes them taking the bus impractical.

Anyways... the route to their school passes by two lengthy playground zones.  Despite it being winter, and 7:30 am, and dark, because it's next to a playground zone that means extended periods of 30 kph speed limits (18 mph).  And it's monitored by photo radar.

[Josquius]

One to enrage Sheilbh. Seems awfully close to that favourite story of his about the French connector.

https://capx.co/nimby-watch-who-needs-power-in-paradise/

For this week's edition of 'Nimby Watch', we're off to the South West coast, where the locals want to stop a boatload of foreign electricity from coming ashore...

Where oh where oh where? North Devon.

Lovely place for a holiday. So's Morocco.

Sorry, what? All will become clear. It's not houses this week, it's a massive renewable power facility: a 77 square mile solar farm, plus a 580 square mile wind farm. Throw in some batteries, and the Xlinks project should be able to supply enough electricity for 7 million homes, as much as 8% of the UK's electricity consumption at a stroke – and at any time of day, too.

But that's enormous! It's not even that sunny in Devon! No, but it is in Morocco. Devon – to be specific, near Abbotsham – is where the cable connecting us to it would come ashore.

And it's North Devon? Isn't Morocco, y'know, south of Devon? The world's longest undersea cable – 2,500 miles of it – will be bypassing a lot of places in its quest to bring renewable energy to the good people of Britain. It will pass Portugal, Spain and France without stopping, because, hilariously, doing so would over-complicate the planning process. It'll also go a slightly long way round to hug the coast, and thus avoid the abyssal depths of the Bay of Biscay. After all that, going a few dozen extra miles to get round Land's End, so it can join the National Grid without major infrastructure upgrades, probably seems like no big deal.

And the people of Morocco are fine with having a British power facility the size of Hertfordshire dropped on them are they? Hard to be sure, as their views on the matter have not, that I can see, garnered a BBC write-up. Those of the people of North Devon by contrast...

'Why can't they send it to Cornwall'? If anything, you flatter them. The issue is that nine miles of cable need to be buried – not strung from the pylons people are always complaining about, you note, but buried, where they can't ruin anyone's view – but that'll take a few years, and it turns out that people don't like that either. One retired couple is complaining 'lights, lorries and drilling' would ruin their 'perfect paradise'.

To be fair, five years is a fair chunk of a retirement, you can see why they'd be upset. Sure, but there will always be people to whom five years of construction work is going to be a bit disruptive: that doesn't mean they should get a veto on a project which would supply a measurable proportion of the nation's energy needs.

There's also a farmer, who says he'll lose 20% of his productive agricultural land during construction.

That 20% is a lot. For the few years it takes to bury the cable. Yes, it'll be disruptive. Yes, it'll mean a lot of lorries. Yes, god knows, the people affected should be properly compensated, and perhaps under current plans they aren't being! It wouldn't be the first time.

But this is a corridor a mere 65m wide, that'll be bothering anyone for just a few years, and which will, when completed, provide nearly one-twelfth of the entire country's energy needs from renewable sources. It's possible that building the National Grid or West Coast Main Line or London made a bit of noise and meant a few more lorries, too. It is still, on balance, good that we built those things.

[Tamas]

Fucking NIMBYs