General Politics Thread

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

2 hours ago, Binos said:

The snp with green influences,  have completely lost their shit

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-65178708

 

 

Read that just there. 30mph on the fucking m8? They have completely lost it. The greens wont be happy until everyone is a miserable lentil muncher who doesnt travel on anything more than a solar powered tandem. 

[StellarHibee]

18 minutes ago, Inanimate Carbon Rod said:

Read that just there. 30mph on the fucking m8? They have completely lost it. The greens wont be happy until everyone is a miserable lentil muncher who doesnt travel on anything more than a solar powered tandem. 

The section that goes through the city. Not the entirety of the M8, just for context.

[Binos]

2 minutes ago, StellarHibee said:

The section that goes through the city. Not the entirety of the M8, just for context.

Having worked in both, one of the things that is better about Glasgow than Edinburgh, is that you can actually get through the fucking place

I just don't think the snp are still aware of what the average joe is thinking 

Which was always the criticism of Westminster 

I'm a lifelong voter for them until last couple of council and whatever and I just haven't bothered voting 

 

[sophia]

43 minutes ago, Inanimate Carbon Rod said:

Read that just there. 30mph on the fucking m8? They have completely lost it. The greens wont be happy until everyone is a miserable lentil muncher who doesnt travel on anything more than a solar powered tandem. 

Murdo found

 

[Buzz Killington]

23 hours ago, carpetmonster said:

It let me read it - I presume it's a one free article per however long and I'm not liable to use it again so here you go mate:

 

 

If anyone thought that the public sector strikes were fading out, this week marks a resurgence, with Passport Office staff striking for five weeks – apparently on behalf of other civil servants whose absence might be less noticed – along with the National Education Union (NEU). The education union voted by a margin of 98 to 2 per cent for two days’ strikes on 27 April and 2 May. Pleas to save children further disruption to their education following months of school closures during Covid-19 appear to have fallen on deaf ears.

The NEU vote shows one thing which has been little commented upon during this round of strikes: the true cost of the Barnett formula. One of the factors behind the vote seems to be that Scottish teachers have recently settled a pay dispute with the Scottish government by accepting a 14 per cent deal – 7 per cent backdated to last April, a further 5 per cent this month and another 2 per cent next January. Next to that, the offer made to teachers in England might seem mean. In England, NEU members voted to reject a pay rise of 4.3 per cent plus a one-off payment of £1,000, as a well as a minimum salary for new recruits of £30,000.

 

Why has the Scottish government been able to be so generous? Certainly not because the SNP-Green government has managed the public finances better. The Barnett formula, established in the 1970s to set a formula for block grants to Scotland in the pre-devolution 1970s, offers the Scottish government a handsome bonus in terms of per capita spending. Over time, the disparity between public spending in England and that in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland was expected to narrow, but it has failed to do so.

 

This has quite a lot to do with faster population growth in England than in Scotland during the intervening years. For every pound spent on public services in England, Holyrood gets to spend £1.21 (a figure for the year 2018/19, calculated by the Institute for Government). True, there are isolated parts of the Highlands where demographics is always going to make it expensive to provide services such as education – small schools, long journeys from home to school etc. – but then again, living costs are also lower in Scotland than in the south of England.

If what happens in Scotland stays in Scotland the extra money available to spend on public services might seem a tad unfair, but if the Scottish government is going to use its extra to cash to fund hefty pay deals, and those pay deals are going to be used by public sector unions south of the border, we have an even bigger problem.

Trouble is, which Westminster government, trying to keep the union together, is going to risk reforming the Barnett formula? A House of Lords report in 2009 did propose reform, but nothing came of it. As a result, the UK government faces serious blowback in the form of higher wage demands in England as a result of extra money being made available to fund higher wages in Scotland. With the SNP government drifting leftwards as a result of Humza Yousaf’s election as first minister it is hard to see how this is going to be resolved in the near future.

No commitment. Cancel any time.

All that’s missing is the “and they’re doing it deliberately”

[carpetmonster]

5 minutes ago, Buzz Killington said:

All that’s missing is the “and they’re doing it deliberately”

Aye, I got pished breeks vibes off the title, but it turned out worse. 

[StellarHibee]

49 minutes ago, Binos said:

I just don't think the snp are still aware of what the average joe is thinking

Or they are, but realize that there's a distinct difference between doing the right thing and doing the popular thing.

[Salt n Vinegar]

On the odd occasion when I've been driving on the M8 through Glasgow City centre, doing 30 miles an hour would be a considerable improvement. Heading west from before Caly Uni to the Kingston Bridge it's been like a car park. 

[Leith Green]

 

13 hours ago, Binos said:

The snp with green influences,  have completely lost their shit

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-65178708

I suppose for context, its not like Glasgow is the first city to look at speed restrictions on roads within their city - one difference is that Glasgow has a motorway running through the middle and that brings it some specific problems.

I think that they have been soft trialling this anyway with the "variable speed limits" that are in place during busy periods - wouldnt surprise me if it didnt end as a blanket 30mph, but the VSL was just extended to more hours.

n.b. The section through the city was completed ~50 years ago, when there were far fewer vehicles on the roads and we knew less about the negative side effects. The M8 thru Glasgow simply wouldnt be allowed to be built today, due to the impact on peoples health via emissions, noise, environment etc.

Whether people like it or not, the future - in cities - is (cheap and reliable) mass transport.

24 minutes ago, Salt n Vinegar said:

On the odd occasion when I've been driving on the M8 through Glasgow City centre, doing 30 miles an hour would be a considerable improvement. Heading west from before Caly Uni to the Kingston Bridge it's been like a car park. 

This is the part people also forget - when Edinburgh introduced the 20mph limit, people were losing their shit about it................conveniently forgetting that 20mph as an average through any city is aspirational at best !

(I used to commute by bike from the city centre to the Gyle, and got home quicker than any car at peak time).

[coprolite]

We've got a 50mph limit on large sections of the M4 that go through urban areas. It's to cut pollution levels. Maybe 30mph is an opening bid in the expectation of splitting the difference and ending up at 50?

[thisal]

3 hours ago, coprolite said:

We've got a 50mph limit on large sections of the M4 that go through urban areas. It's to cut pollution levels. Maybe 30mph is an opening bid in the expectation of splitting the difference and ending up at 50?

It is normally 50. Currently 40 due temporary roadworks (4years and counting). 

[Iain]

Hope this doesn't end up with more people taking the M73/74 and clogging it up.

[Binos]

19 hours ago, StellarHibee said:

Or they are, but realize that there's a distinct difference between doing the right thing and doing the popular thing.

They won't have the choice to make the way they're headed

And the right thing would be to subsidise public transport further,  which would actually make it comparable with those in Europe,  and encourage people to use greener transport 

Not big stick style policy

[Binos]

9 hours ago, Leith Green said:

 

I suppose for context, its not like Glasgow is the first city to look at speed restrictions on roads within their city - one difference is that Glasgow has a motorway running through the middle and that brings it some specific problems.

I think that they have been soft trialling this anyway with the "variable speed limits" that are in place during busy periods - wouldnt surprise me if it didnt end as a blanket 30mph, but the VSL was just extended to more hours.

n.b. The section through the city was completed ~50 years ago, when there were far fewer vehicles on the roads and we knew less about the negative side effects. The M8 thru Glasgow simply wouldnt be allowed to be built today, due to the impact on peoples health via emissions, noise, environment etc.

Whether people like it or not, the future - in cities - is (cheap and reliable) mass transport.

This is the part people also forget - when Edinburgh introduced the 20mph limit, people were losing their shit about it................conveniently forgetting that 20mph as an average through any city is aspirational at best !

(I used to commute by bike from the city centre to the Gyle, and got home quicker than any car at peak time).

Try cycling from either city centre to stirling 

[Leith Green]

7 minutes ago, Binos said:

Try cycling from either city centre to stirling 

I have.......

[StellarHibee]

12 minutes ago, Binos said:

And the right thing would be to subsidise public transport further,  which would actually make it comparable with those in Europe,  and encourage people to use greener transport 

That all sounds great on paper. How do they make it work in practice? Where do they pull the funding from in order to further subsidise public transport, a notoriously expensive endeavour?

[Binos]

1 hour ago, StellarHibee said:

That all sounds great on paper. How do they make it work in practice? Where do they pull the funding from in order to further subsidise public transport, a notoriously expensive endeavour?

Ask other European countries how they've done it,  would be my opening gambit

Edited April 5, 2023 by Binos

[StellarHibee]

51 minutes ago, Binos said:

Ask other European countries how they've done it,  would be my opening gambit

Scotland isn't other European Countries. We're an occupied territory with a fixed allowance.

[Guest]

It hasn't stopped them being lumbered with a neoliberal president but it's amazing to see how much more politically educated your average French worker is compared to UK. Here we'd only see scenes like this from fash arseholes storming a refugee centre or something.

[Arch Stanton]

10 years ago already.