Westminstenders: War and Weirdos

[RedToothBrush]

With weirdos set to run No10 and Trump seemingly having started a new war in the Middle East, 2020 already looks set to be a cracking year.

To start off your year, it turns out that chinese curse about interesting times is actually a fallacy...

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times

Happy New Year.

May we make 2030...

Jennifer Williams @JenWilliamsMEN
There was a Rebecca Long Bailey event in Newcastle Under Lyme today. I wasn’t there because Keir Starmer was here and...it was nearer and I was informed sooner. But from what I can understand, things haven’t been super happy in the RLB campaign over the last 24 hours

Broadly speaking it might have been a listening event and might have been a launch, nobody seems clear. If it WAS a launch, it failed to make an impact. Regardless, there’s been a power struggle between the Lansmann side and the McDonnell side.

Trouble down the pit ?
They may be worried about losing power

Or it could be one of those very important disagreements on a fine point of ideology:

Brian:
Excuse me. Are you the Judean People's Front?

Reg:
Fuck off! We're the People's Front of Judea"

I posted about devoted Corbynite Barry Gardiner entering the leadership contest,
because some on the hard left are concerned RLB may not win

Latest news:
Gardiner's campaign lasted about 24 hours before he pulled out again !

• apparently he was having trouble getting enough nominations from MPs

A reduced pool of MPs, an already large pool of contenders and a lot of MPs who won't want to damage their careers by backing a losing candidate .....
makes it difficult for late candidates to join the scrum

Especially those fighting for the votes of MPs in the very small hard left clique

It seems that RLB ("Face of an angry six-year-old at a birthday party," - Dead Ringers) has all the electoral appeal of a bucket of cold catsick.

Whoda thortit?

I really hope that RLB doesn't get it. With a big majority the Tories can continue to get away with murder, but I at least want an Opposition who will hold them to account as far as they are able.

For me, I think the dream ticket would be Starmer/Nandy. I don't have a vote - DH does. I have know idea who he would vote for.

Axe HS2 in the south and use cash in the north? Now you might think that this would piss off the voters in the south east, but if you know leafy Bucks where the route is planned to go, you will know that there is a lot of opposition to HS2.

"Axe HS2 in the South" makes as much sense as "Axe Crossrail in the middle" and just have stop at Paddington and Liverpool St.

Mockers - not sure about that. At the moment, as I understand, despite ££££ being spent, not a metre (sorry foot) of track has been laid. There is a lack of rail capacity in the south, but there may be other ways to tackle that.

Putting money into rail in the north is badly overdue. Would it matter to one time Labour voters if the Tories really did stump up the cash? The thing is, I can't see them doing it - public sector bad, private sector good, and the private sector seems very loathe to put its hand in its pocket.

Whilst on the subject of transport and the Tories - TfL is going adapt or phase out Johnson's new Routemasters - introduced because bendy buses encouraged fare dodging, but the Routemasters have twice as much fare dodging as ordinary double deckers. Who would have thought that this would be another Johnson money waster?

The rightwing media onslaught on Long-Bailey already (!) means that presumably she is the biggest threat to their vested interests. I don't like watching it though, it seems even worse with a younger woman with a family etc. And whilst I think it will happen to anyone who doesn't toe the line, it seems crazy to start with the most disliked.

I like Starmer, Nandy and Lewis
Not keen on the others
Strongly disagree with Phillips on some issues, but will support her if she's chosen. I will certainly not be slinging mud at her for years then demanding people vote for her!

There is a lot of talk of "purging" labour of anyone left leaning or young. If they all fuck off to the greens, I don't really think that will help anyone.

I'm a lot less interested in labour than in what the tories are doing (or not doing) currently.

my A&E 250% occupancy this week.

There's a lot of stuff that's not making the news that seems quite important really. Like huge strikes in France. Like 250 million people protesting in India. (It's almost like the establishment don't want us to get any ideas...!)

Like catastrophic climate change floods in Indonesia.

A coordinated media plan to attack and debunk the murdoch press should be one of labour's top priorities I think. Some of the dark ad facebook stuff is really horrendous, and some people have been so uncritical of it. Look at Australia, their election was won in a very similar way to ours - now literally burning (and still parroting the lies )

I feel helpless and angry and not sure where to direct it.

Well this will all be very fascinating reading 30 years down the line, if we're not in some sorta mad max existence by then

Me and DP both have a vote, but I'm not sure I'm going to vote - feel very unwelcome in the party right now.

The whole point of HS2 is to connect the North (and Midlands) into the global economy. The airports cannot do that, so you have to give them world-class train links to London comparable to what France has acheived with the TGV.

The argument for starting to build in the North is one thing, but that gives you very limited return until you get to Euston. The argument for stopping north of London is that a fast link will pull investment south rather than push it north. The problem with that is, if true, all you've done is moved that pull factor to Brum instead of the smoke.

Birmingham cannot believe its luck at the moment. After a century of zero global recognition, it has Peaky Blinders and the Commonwealth Games. An HS2 that stops at Curzon Street would seal it.

Black Pudding Batches and Baltis all round.

I'd like to see a Starmer/Rayner leadership or perhaps Phillips as deputy, sort of a Blair/Prescott ticket, addressing the cosmopolitan side of Labour as well as its more working class roots.

RLB would be portrayed as "Carry-on Corbyn" by the MSM and she seems to be a poor public speaker.

But a lot can happen in 5 years, what seems the ideal now, may not be in a few years time.

RLB said, "I'm nobody's continuity candidate."

So people asked, "So what's the difference between you and Corbyn?"

"I have a different voice," she said, in her different voice.

DP likes RLB's policies/record the best and was going to vote for her, but is wavering in the face of the personal attacks having started so early and so strongly. There's probably a lot of labour party members feeling the same way

I think myself that HS2 will pull people towards London. I recall when the now decommissioned HST trains were introduced back in 1976. Suddenly Didcot and Oxford came within 45 minutes of commuting time to London. Within two months property prices shot up in Didcot because of this.

But why should it be either/or? Johnson has apparently found the magic money tree, it should be both.

Mockers

I think Brexit kind of wrecks that notion, HS railway into europe seems rather pointless, whatever happens next, it won't be closer integration with europe.
From an internal pov, the UK isn't really big enough to justify the 100s of billions required to put HS railway from London to Edinburgh, esp as the rest of the rail network withers away under congestion and hyper rail fares.

Isn't HS2 going to be unaffordable for normal people? To use I mean, the tickets?

I am sure I have said this before but for me the two rail priorities would be upgrading the trans -pennine links from Liverpool across to Hull taking in Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, and the other one would be re-opening the route past Exeter via Oakhampton. When the weather is bad, the current West country route via Dawlish and Teignmouth can get completely washed out, severing rail links to the whole of the West country south of Exeter.

I am sure I have said this before but for me the two rail priorities would be upgrading the trans -pennine links from Liverpool across to Hull taking in Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds,

Yes this is a complete embarrassment between major cities

Brexit arguably increases the need to get the execs from Heathrow (once they've got BJ out from under the bulldozer) out beyond the M25 and existing motorway corridors.

Ticket prices are an issue. Rather like all the broken franchises who promise millions of new customers (formerly known as passengers) but keep on asking for price rises above inflation, then look bemused when the punters don't turn up.

(Yes, SW Rail, looking at you)

If you want a French railway, you need Gerbiggawatts of spare nuclear electricity to feed it and massive ticket subsidies.

But hey ho, the Tories already hold the south west so why bother to invest in railways there?

Transpenine Crossrail is a must. That line from Sheffield to Stockport s gorgeous. A bit of leckie on a pantograph would not go amiss.

But Please stop calling it HS3. It is not and cannot be a highspeed line, with all the bends and stops.

But hey ho, the Tories already hold the south west so why bother to invest in railways there?

The 2012 Olympic sailing was based in Weymouth because of its direct rail link to Waterloo.

Only later when they tried it did they realise the single track beyond Wareham lacked the juice to pull more than four carriages.

Roads clogged, just like they said would never happened.

My problem with HS2 is by the time it's completed the entire logistics landscape of the UK will have changed. It's the equivalent of planning a massive upgrade to the canal network just as steam locomotion is taking off.

...or building new steam trains in the 1950s designed to run to the end of the century.

Shouda bin Maglev. They said TGV would be cheaper. But they lied.