Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[mongers]

What is so hard to understand that makes some idoitic lorry drivers think they can get a tall HGV under it?

Upshot thousands of other people, including me* couldn't get in and out of South Wales or Bristol, today. 

How fun.  I almost got stuck in downtown Mobile, Alabama once because an accident closed the nice, large tunnel under the ship channel into the port of Mobile on Interstate 10.  There's a much older, much smaller alternate tunnel just to the north, and I went for that one; I was already cutting through downtown Mobile anyway.  Some dumbass tried to use it in his giant RV and got wedged in.  That tunnel has a lot more warning about the height restriction than this bridge, including a warning light/alarm system that he definitely triggered.  I was behind him, but fortunately close enough that the police routed me through the tunnel in the opposing lane in order to clear out the area.  All the people behind me were screwed, though.

Yep, you can't legislate for people's stupidity, and which despite the news, is fairly evenly spread across the world.

[Sheilbh]

Future generations when trying to explain the decline of the UK will just point to HS2.

My favourite detail is that part of the reason it would be cheaper to go slower is that the high-speed trains need testing. Which means either sending them to China with its abundance of 21st century infrastructure, or building a third smaller high-speed line for testing But yes everything is quite Late Soviet Britain right now.

On a similar decline vibed story, as as been mentioned the government has to release all sorts of messages with Peter Mandelson and about his appointment.

It turns out that Starmer's former Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney, who is very close to Mandelson reportedly had his phone stolen in October and there is no way to recover those messages. So a huge chunk of those messages are just not available now. Apparently the Met's response, which is standard for anyone who has had their phone (or bike etc) stolen, was that they were "too busy" to speak to him, but gave him a crime reference number to claim on the insurance, confirmed there wasn't likely to be any CCTV in the area and closed the case (it alos looks like they recorded the wrong location of the theft - they recorded Belgrave Road in Limehouse not Belgrave Street in Pimlico).

Six months later, now this has become public, they have reportedly now re-opened the case and are re-assessing the severity of the Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister having his phone stolen.

Genuinely torn between incredulity at how convenient this is and utter credulity at this level of incompetence and indifference to petty crime by the Met.

[Duque de Bragança]

I'm surprised to see there is no dedicated high-speed train test tracks on the mainland. 

[HVC]

It'd keep the bats up.

[Tamas]

The phone stealing thing is insultingly transparent bullshit.

[garbon]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpwjxx5eyn1o

Church attendance report pulled after YouGov finds 'fraudulent' responses

A report claiming the number of young people attending church in England and Wales had skyrocketed has been retracted, after the underlying data was found to be flawed.

The Bible Society's "Quiet Revival" report had been widely reported on since its publication last year and became an accepted part of discourse among many Christians.

Now YouGov, which carried out the research, has told the Bible Society that an internal review of the data found that some of the respondents who completed its survey were "fraudulent".

It has said that quality control measures, which usually remove such responses, were not applied due to human error.

The original report claimed to show that 4% of 18-24 year olds surveyed in 2018 told YouGov they were Christian and went to church at least once a month, rising to 16% by 2024.

The so-called "Quiet Revival" in young people going to church was mentioned in Parliament, lead to in-depth press coverage, and churches around the country presented their own evidence of young people "turning to Jesus".

Last year, 600 people attended a church conference in Woking called "turning up the volume on the Quiet Revival", hearing the phenomenon likened to "a great wave sent by God".

But academics questioned the findings, pointing out that the results seemed out of step with other data. Results from the long-running British Social Attitudes Survey, and even the Church of England's own figures, show a long term decline in church attendance.

Experts said that YouGov's methodology - gathering data from volunteers who received cash rewards for their time - left it vulnerable to "bogus respondents" skewing the data.

YouGov now says that tools meant to eliminate data from such respondents – who may have participated and given random answers just to claim the rewards – "were not administered in the optimal way".

It says the review of the figures it gave to the Bible Society had taken place "due to the ongoing scrutiny this work received."

"YouGov takes full responsibility for the outputs of the original 2024 research, and we apologise for what has happened," says its CEO Stephan Shakespeare.

"We would like to stress that Bible Society has at all times accurately and responsibly reported the data we supplied to them," he said.

The Bible Society says it is "frustrated and disappointed to be in this position", adding: "YouGov repeatedly assured us in private before publication, and several times in public following publication, that the results were reliable."

Professor David Voas, emeritus professor of social science at University College London, was one of those who raised suspicion over the Bible Society's findings.

"We've been telling them (the Bible Society) for the better part of a year that there were serious problems with the data - and even what those problems were likely to be - and they refused to engage with us," says Professor Voas.

"I don't know whether to feel gratified by the vindication or annoyed by the amount of time I wasted in pointing out that the numbers were clearly wrong," he says.

[Valmy]

There was a similar rumor and data going around the US. That somehow there was a big increase in Gen Z going to church. I found that pretty laughable. I go to a church and there sure as fuck aren't any Gen Z showing up there. Or any other church I am familiar with.

Granted that is anecdotal but the probability Gen Z are just far more religious outside of Texas seemed unlikely.

[Sheilbh]

There was a similar rumor and data going around the US. That somehow there was a big increase in Gen Z going to church. I found that pretty laughable. I go to a church and there sure as fuck aren't any Gen Z showing up there. Or any other church I am familiar with.

Granted that is anecdotal but the probability Gen Z are just far more religious outside of Texas seemed unlikely.

It seemed plausible to me in part because of immigration. Diaspora communities tend to be significantly more religious and observant, they also tend to be younger. I suspected it was as much if not mainly something that reflected that than anything else.

It's why London is by some distance the most socially conservative part of the country on things issues of sexual morality (divorce, pre-marital sex, homosexuality), because it is the most religious and diverse. By contrast the area with most lax attitudes on those issues is the North-East (or the Jos homeland) which is also the least diverse, most irreligious - and also classic "Red Wall" territory. If you want a religious, socially conservative society then you need to be a lot more like London

So I thought those numbers made sense and largely confirmed/were part of that wider picture (which is still true). Even without it I think it is where you get the weird contradiction of especially the online far-right and the contradiction of a sort of blood and soil Europeanism/Christendom. See the recent example of racists being outraged at an African gospel choir in the enthronement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury (or indeed at the coronation), when as a consequence of empire, in the worldwide Anglican of about 100 million people - two thirds of thsoe believers are in Africa. And even if you limit to England, churches that are keeping or growing attendance (whether Catholic, CofE, pentecostal or whatever else) are very likely to be in a diverse community with British Nigerian, Latino etc congregations (and clergy). I think it's a tension between people for whom religion (and particularly Christianity) is just an aesthetic aspect of racist idea of Europe, who I suspect don't actually attend church very often (no doubt they'd argue because it's now "woke"/not doing latin mass etc) v people who actually identify as Christian (or any other religion) and are involved in their local faith community.

[garbon]

Well, you were wrong.

[Sheilbh]

I was