I love the way they see themselves as serious commentators when they're ridiculous buffoons.
Perpetual UK Politics Thread Part Two
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I love the way they see themselves as serious commentators when they're ridiculous buffoons.
Blair had "education, education, education", Starmer's mantra appears to be cuts, cuts, cuts.
£5bn by 2030 hardly seems worth the negative press and reduction in people's quality of life. Surely by 2030 they'll have fixed the NHS anyway so the contributing factors they mention will be solved naturally? Right?
It's just a green paper (PDF link) but it really would be nice to see some positive domestic policy out of this government at some point.
£5bn by 2030 hardly seems worth the negative press and reduction in people's quality of life. Surely by 2030 they'll have fixed the NHS anyway so the contributing factors they mention will be solved naturally? Right?
It's just a green paper (PDF link) but it really would be nice to see some positive domestic policy out of this government at some point.
Well, it's a good job so many people voted Labour or else we would have ended up with Tories in charge.
Wes Streeting is feeling confident enough to shed his skin - publicly admiring what Trump is doing to the US Government and stating that there is no point in the Conservative Party because Labour can actually deliver all the things the Tories say they are going to do.
Wes Streeting is feeling confident enough to shed his skin - publicly admiring what Trump is doing to the US Government and stating that there is no point in the Conservative Party because Labour can actually deliver all the things the Tories say they are going to do.
It seems our Nigel is off to help fundraise for Trump some more:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...h-at-25000-ticket-trump-fundraiser-in-florida
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...h-at-25000-ticket-trump-fundraiser-in-florida
He’s stated publicly he has a duty to raise Clayton’s international profile, which to be fair he has done so wonderfully.
No problems there then.
Wow. Heathrow totally shut down. Over 1000 flights cancelled, over 100,000 stranded travelers. A very key part of the infrastructure was destroyed in the 'mystery fire' that just so happened to cause maximum damage. Could have political implications...surly. After 14 hours, some electricity is now temporarily rerouted and parts of the Airport have electricity again.
It is pleasingly unusually quiet in West London today. But yes, you’d think they’d plan some degree of redundancy.
The lack of redundancy and backups is pretty wild.
I have done DR&BC work for critical infra, and why I am not surprised at all that Shitrow doesn't have enough on-site generation power to sustain the entire airport at full spec, I would have expected enough power generation to continue operating at least a number of crucial routes, as well as some aircraft repatriation.
Likewise, redundancy. If I paid for separate A/B feeds and then found out that they both trace back to a single substation, there would be Questions. If there were no separate A/B feeds, given the nature of the infrastructure in question, then we might be talking more about Metaphorical Pitchforks than Questions.
I suspect the Questions were "how can this save us money?"
Seems the usual for UK infrastructure.
Seems the usual for UK infrastructure.
This is going to cost the airport so much money in claims from airlines alone. The fire may well be classified as a circumstance beyond the airports control, but the lack of redundancy won't.
I also expect BA to extract some additional concessions from the airport, considering it is their hub.
Oh yeah, but that's consequences. Consequences weren't supposed to actually happen.
Hartsfield in Atlanta had a very similar issue a few years ago
Possibly upgrades require outages that management wont agree to.
It doesn't matter if you believe in consequences or not, because their nature is such that they believe in you.
It doesn't matter if you believe in consequences or not, because their nature is such that they believe in you.
But what if instead of that we can report a really good quarter and I get a bonus?
It's a commercial air hub, not the power network (although that's involved). How much redundancy do you think is "required", legally? We already had the entirety of BA's flights cancelled a few years ago because their DR was shit, so how can they try to claim Heathrow needs to do better?
Ahh, but it saved money yesterday, and nobody cares about the long-term costs. They didn't impact last year's bonuses, and anyway, now I get a golden parachute.
I am mainly coming from a commercial and liability perspective. One way to look at Heathrow (Airport Holding) is a commercial enterprise that has a yearly turnover of 3.6 billion, a profit after tax of 500 million, only a single production site, and obligations to customers it cannot discharge with the production site being unavailable.
Running A/B feeds from separate substations isn't that expensive compared to the size of that operation, loss of upstream power is, like, one of the most basic DR scenarios available, and the realization that no power = no planes = can't render services as owed doesn't require a rocket surgeon. There's a disconcerting potential for liability in there.
The substation also handled the power to 67,000 homes - it wasn’t just Heathrow that was affected.
Sure, there is, but, who cares? They got a little more profit for years, and, now that the bill is coming due, they are important enough that the government will be present to pick up the pieces. So, they get to privatize the profits and the public ends up footing the bill. Short term profit over all else.
My touch points through LHR are limited—most of my flights to/from Europe go through FRA. Have been told by friends for years to avoid LHR when possible. Because of this, on a recent trip to London to see family, we came in via LCY, but left via LHR. No problems at either.
My question is—London has multiple airports (Stansfield, Luton, Gatwick, London City). Why isn’t there a plan in place to reroute to them in case of situations like this?
I’d guess there is a plan, and it was enacted, but Heathrow is the busiest airport in the Europe and there were over a thousand flights that had to get redirected, and there doesn’t appear to be enough capacity in the country to handle them all.
I go twice a year. It's an amazingly busy airport with a ton of long-haul traffic. There are not enough runways of that size to accept the planes when almost all of them are running near capacity.
Beitish Government and management planning love to put their eggs in one basket.
To be fair, there's an argument that, if there was more capacity, there would simply be more flights to use that capacity, which is a bit of an environmental issue.
Yeah, the thing about redundancy is that if you do it right it doesn't add more capacity it just means you can't lose the capacity you have quite as easily but it does increase cost.
So they don't like it, no sir.
So they don't like it, no sir.
True. But Heathrow has wanted a third runway for years and this Government are looking like giving it to them instead of looking at Gatwick or others. (Or considering the longer term environmental issues and changes in working practices.)
London is arguably the best served city in the world in terms of airports, and even the current five doesn’t seem to be enough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_with_more_than_one_commercial_airport
According to Wikipedia London has six airports, the sixth being Southend (eh?), bested only by NYC with seven (double eh?). Three of NYC’s listed airports are even further away than Southend so if we exclude both Southend and these three as being unrealistic for travel, then London leads the global rankings with five, followed by NYC with four.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_with_more_than_one_commercial_airport
According to Wikipedia London has six airports, the sixth being Southend (eh?), bested only by NYC with seven (double eh?). Three of NYC’s listed airports are even further away than Southend so if we exclude both Southend and these three as being unrealistic for travel, then London leads the global rankings with five, followed by NYC with four.
London City is tiny. It can only handle small planes - A318 size max. Its location means it has lots of restrictions and you need specially qualified pilots for the approach angle.
London Gatwick is nearly at capacity during normal operation and only has one runway. Luton and Stanstead also only have one runway and I wouldn't be surprised if they aren't far off capacity. The largest planes wouldn't be able to land at some of the other airports as the runways won't be long enough.
Seems like high time to at least extend one of the runways at an alternate. Here in DC, there was an issue with DC-10 needing to make an emergency diversion to DCA some years ago. It needed quite some skill and all the runway available. Like LCY, the airport is surrounded by water, so real estate limited, and considered too small for widebody aircraft like that. But at least we have BWI.
The problem isn’t the number of airports or indeed the capacity at Heathrow. It’s that it is all concentrated at Heathrow at the expense of everything else.
I admit. I’m biased in this. Because I live in Manchester, which is the third busiest airport in the country and the 19th busiest in Europe. And do you know how many flights the national airline operates out of the airport?
One. To fucking Heathrow.
That’s whack.
Having previously been in the conferences and events field, know of resort areas in the US like Telluride that have an arrangement like this. It makes for sky-high airfares, due to no competition. But for a major city?
Yeah. And it is the only flight by any airline to any London airport, so nothing to London City or Gatwick. I suspect it only exists to prevent other companies coming in on the routes. Meanwhile we have two direct flights daily to JFK - operated by Virgin and Aer Lingus - and 3 Airbus 380s a day to and from Dubai.
It's indicative of the shitty London-centric attitude that BA have. Thankfully we have a decent train service, but that is hella expensive if you don't plan ahead or want to travel at peak times.
Edit: I just looked it up. BA don't fly anywhere out of Birmingham or Liverpool. So that's the three biggest cities in England and the national airline operates a grand total of one commuter shuttle type service to one single destination and zero international flights.
It's indicative of the shitty London-centric attitude that BA have. Thankfully we have a decent train service, but that is hella expensive if you don't plan ahead or want to travel at peak times.
Edit: I just looked it up. BA don't fly anywhere out of Birmingham or Liverpool. So that's the three biggest cities in England and the national airline operates a grand total of one commuter shuttle type service to one single destination and zero international flights.
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I never understood why a second runway at Birmingham was never floated. It's literally in the middle of the country with less of a carcrash of motorways (if you'll pardon the pun) than heathrow. Has good rail links even before we talk about HS2 and even if that goes (more) off the rails (if you'll pardon the pun) it could nonetheless alleviate freight. Boris island, fuck that, Gatwick, wrong end of the country.
Hard to overstate how bad the M4/M25 are at Heathrow.
Hard to overstate how bad the M4/M25 are at Heathrow.
The M42 isn't great by Birmingham Airport. It is frequently a crawl at busy times. I'm not sure where you could even think to put a second runway there either. The only space would be the other side of the A45.
Birmingham International's current single runway is underutilised for much of the day, to be fair.
Because it's not in - or close enough to - London.
There are other technical reasons too, but on a fairly fundamental level, infrastructure spending is only politically justifiable if London gets the majority, or all, of the benefit.
To be sure, there are some justifications - London and the surrounding commuter belt represents by far the highest (productivity x population density) product in the country, so there are correspondingly greater returns on such - but no politician is ever willing to actually discuss the chicken-and-egg problem inherent in that observation, or to acknowledge that it is a compromise - but nevertheless, that is the way it is (and why most of the non-London regions tend to hold the south east, and London in particular, in at least slight contempt).
It was obvious when, e.g., HS2 was started from the London end instead of from Manchester or Leeds, and split into multiple legs - so that the additional legs could be sacrificed due to the entirely predictable budget overruns. It was obvious when, e.g., railway electricifcation largely stopped in the 70s after the main lines to London were complete. It was evident when every aspect of the Northern Powerhouse was quietly dropped as soon as the Tories won in 2019. It's why the planned expansion of the Newcastle Metro system was mysteriously cancelled in the early 1980s, and no other city in the country (other than Glasgow, which predated the London-centricity by about 30 years) has ever gotten the funding to build something similar, while the London Underground has had three new major lines added since then and another planned.
I could go on, but you get the point (and probably also perceive a certain railway-related theme to my interests).
Can't argue with any of your post but an anecdote: quickest I've ever done New Street to Euston was 59 minutes. That was pre-Pendolino and I'm resonably positive that I was a student and that the quickest timetabled time was 1h6. If that was doable 25-30 years ago just how close does close need to be
The East Coast electrified line remains a marvel. I used to live in Nottingham, from where it takes an absolute minimum of 1hr45m to get to St Pancras (two hours is the norm) but moved to a small town equidistant from Nottingham and Grantham. Grantham to King’s Cross on the East Coast line is do-able in 55min, costs less, and has better at-seat service for food and drink.
LNER, which runs the service, is state-owned. However, anyone who suggests renationalising the railways is obviously a Marxist Corbynista hell-bent on turning the country into a Venezuela-style socialist hellhole.
Birmingham was the most productive per capita region of the UK until the 1970s, when government policy sought both to move away from the heavy engineering that drove Birmingham's productivity, but also to spread industrial investment around the country to level the other areas up.
Glasgow holds the distinction of having not only the third oldest underground in the world, but also by far the oldest underground system never to have been extended.
But at least British Airways fly to other destinations from Glasgow aside from London Heathrow. They have London Gatwick and London City services too. I guess the London City flights are just a reflection of the train service on either the East Coast or West Coast main lines not being fast enough to compete over the 400 miles. It would also be nice if there was some sort of train station at Glasgow Airport, but it would still connect to the "wrong" Glasgow train station for most of Scotland.