Will Britain Negotiate With A United Europe?
In this article on the BBC, which is entitled EU chief Jean-Claude Juncker ‘will not seek second term’, this is said.
Mr Juncker also said the UK could divide opinion among EU leaders once Brexit negotiations begin.
I think that will be highly likely, as putting 27 people in a room and asking themany question, will give several different answers.
Last year, I wrote Brexit – Signalling Implications For The UK, which was based on an an article on Rail Engineer.
This is a paragraph from the article, which talks about implementing signalling post-Brexit.
The endless committees to discuss and agree how the standards will be implemented do not get in the way. Whilst not suitable for main line usage (at least in the foreseeable future), there could be suburban routes around cities (for example Merseyrail) that could benefit from CBTC deployment.
I know it is talking about one small part of railway signalling, but if the states of Europe can’t agree a common position on that, how will they agree a common position on how to deal with the UK during and after Brexit?
In some ways, the biggest problem with Brexit, is that we will still be arguing about the details of the settlement well into the 2030s and beyond.
I can see some absolutely silly arguments going on and on!
The PM Can Make Trump Begin To Face Reality
This is the title of a comment in The Times by Justin Webb.
It is a good comment and if you get a chance read it.
But it made me think!
Trump is a difficult person to read, as in several times in the last few months, he’s changed his mind. So will Theresa be able to make him change his mind again?
I don’t know!
But I just wonder, if Trump has ever been in negotiation with a determined, intelligent woman!
This will be one meeting, where the flies will learn a lot.
Laura Kuenssberg On The Southern Rail Dispute
This article on the BBC by Laura Kuenssberg is entitled The politics behind the Southern rail dispute.
It is a must-read for everyone who uses trains to get to and from work or for important journeys.
This is said.
One former senior minister tells me that “successive secretaries of state” in charge at Transport have wanted to “get rid of guards on trains”. The ambition is to bring down the cost of rail travel for the tax payer and the train passenger.
With that considered to be a long term ambition, it’s no surprise that the RMT, the only union that represents guards, wants to fight this every step of the way. Union sources deny it, but it’s suggested that they have dug in in this dispute, because if they lose it, they also lose a big chunk of their industrial muscle.
If there have to be guards on trains, a strike works if they walk out. If services can run with drivers on their own, their power to disrupt would be reduced. It’s worth noting that the RMT has more than 80,000 members, nearly ten times as many as the drivers’ union, ASLEF. It’s ASLEF that has agreed to meet Southern for talks tomorrow.
So like it or not the traditional guard is going the way of the dinosaurs.
Can rail passengers and hard-pressed tax-payers afford to pay for a vanity job, which if abolished would result in no loss of employment, but as Laura points out, a considerable loss of industrial muscle.
It is interesting to look at the future in the shape of Merseyrail’s new trains, that I wrote about in Thoughts On Merseyrail’s New Trains.
- The trains will be designed to fit the platforms for step-free entry and exit for all passengers.
- The trains will be designed for as high a level of passenger safety as possible.
- The trains will have a high degree of automation.
- Automatic Train Operation may be implemented in the Loop Line under Liverpool.
The trains will be designed for Driver Only Operation. This article on the BBC, which is entitled Merseyrail driver-only trains: RMT sets guards decision deadline.
This is said.
A train operator has two weeks to give “cast-iron” assurances that guards will be retained or risk dispute, rail union RMT has said.
I have a feeling that Merseyrail have been cunning here and that as it is three years before the trains run, natural wastage and other factors, will mean that the second men and women on the trains by 2020, will be running under new contracts.
Liverpudlians like a good fight and I have a feeling that in this dispute the RMT and its guards will be severely outnumbered.
Gas-Lighting
This article on CNN is called Donald Trump is ‘gaslighting’ all of us.
It introduced me to term gas-lighting, which all goes back to a 1940 British film and an earlier play.
This is said about the term in the Wikipedia entry for the film.
The psychological term gaslighting, which describes a form of psychological abuse in which the victim is gradually manipulated into doubting his or her own reality, originated from the play and its two film adaptations.[7] Gaslighting, today, mostly refers to one of the methods of abuse used by a narcissist to emotionally control a victim, through which the narcissist gains pleasure.
Now CNN is accusing Trump of doing this to us all.
This is an extract.
After mimicking a disabled reporter and seeing the video used as evidence against him, he repeatedly denied it, claiming his opponents should be embarrassed to say he did. “I would NEVER mock disabled. Shame!” The denials continued after Meryl Streep brought up the subject this week at the Golden Globes. With the video easily available, Trump’s argument boiled down to “Who do you trust, me or your lying eyes?”
Here’s the video.
Trmp is going to gove the World’s comedians more material, than any other politician in history.
HS2 Euston Hub May Not Be Viable, LBC Discovers
This is title of this article on the LBC web site. This is the first paragraph.
The time saved by travelling on HS2 could be wasted waiting for a tube at Euston, a the Deputy Mayor of London for Transport has told LBC.
I don’t know whether the statement will prove correct, but I’ve always thought that Crossrail 2, should be built before HS2..
In Call For Crossrail 2, I said this.
HS2 is currently planned to terminate at Euston station, although I think that could be changed by a more innovative solution. But whatever happens to the London end of HS2, it needs to be simply connected into the knitting of the Underground, so terminating somewhere in the area between Kings Crossand Euston, is probably a certainty.
Every recent design for Crossrail 2 shows it serving the three important London stations of Kings Cross, St. Pancras and Euston. It also links these stations to Victoria and Clapham Junction.
Have you ever tried to use the Victoria Line between Euston and Victoria with a heavy case or a baby in a buggy? It’s bad enough at normal times and impossible in the rush hour.
So when HS2 starts squeezing more passengers through the congested Euston Underground station, it will be a disaster.
I believe that the only way to connect HS2 into London is to build Crossrail 2 first.
But what do politicians know about building things, except messes and debts?
Trump Recruits A Mad Dog
The title of this article on the BBC is Trump names Gen James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis as defence secretary.
It needs no comment!
Autumn Statement: Is Rail Devolution In London Dead?
This is the title of an article on the BBC web site.
This is how the article starts.
Sadiq Khan is not the first mayor to want more control over London’s rail service.
Previous mayors have managed it – Ken Livingstone took over Silverlink and Boris Johnson gained control of West Anglia.
But it looks like the chances of more takeovers are not that promising.
The article then goes on to make the point, that the timescale for taking over Southeastern metro services is very tight.
As time is a very absolute constraint, action needs to be taken now!
An Understated Headline
This article on Business Insider is entitled A rail link between Oxford and Cambridge could help create a massive tech hub in the UK.
Could is not the word I’d use!
This page on the Government web site, contains a summary of the report, on which the article is based.
This is the second paragraph of the report.
The Commission’s central finding is that a lack of sufficient and suitable housing presents a fundamental risk to the success of this area. Without a joined-up plan for housing, jobs and infrastructure across the corridor, it will be left behind its international competitors. By providing the foundations for such a strategy, new east-west transport links present a once in a generation opportunity to secure the area’s future success.
As housing is so important to any development, this is crucial. The interim report makes a series of recommendations. This is the first.
- Government should go ahead with East West Rail’s initial phase, a new link cutting journey times by more than half on the route from Oxford to Bedford and Milton Keynes, ensuring it is delivered before 2024; and it should invest in developing as soon as possible detailed plans for both the next phase of East West Rail (which would complete the link to Cambridge) and for a new Oxford-Cambridge Expressway.
So why is the Government farting about?
I blame the following.
- The route via Bedford, contains lots of great-crested newts, in all the disused brick works.
- The name; East West Rail Link, doesn’t have North in it.
- Oxford doesn’t want a railway, that might encourage more visitors who would interfere with academic life.
- The Sir Humphries of this world went to one of two universities; Oxford or Cambridge. They believe the two academic cities shouldn’t be connected and certainly not via Milton Keynes.
- Addenbrooke’s hospital has objected, as it will bring lots of patients from the route to their world-class facilities.
- It doesn’t go near Islington for the Labour Party or Edinburgh for the SNP.
- Democracy
The Chinese would have built it last week or possibly yesterday, as it calls at Bicester Village!
It’s Time To Look On The Bright Side Of Trump
This was the title of a comment by Matt Ridley in The Times yesterday.
He may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I have read a couple of his books; Genome and Nature via Nurture and found they added to my knowledge.
This is a precis of his comment.
He starts like this.
So here, after a few days of talking to people in America’s two biggest economies, California and Texas, are ten reasons why I think a Trump residency may not be as awful as many think, even if, like me, you heard of the news of his victory with a sinking feeling.
The article has ten main sections.
- Just as after Brexit, the markets went up, not down. Despite the predictions of analysts.
- He is already watering down his more outlandish threats.
- The Presidency is nothing like as powerful a job as it seems.
- The Democratic Party will soon be back and hounding Mr. Trump, if only in the Courts.
- Mr. Trump is already surrounding himself with reasonably sensible people.
- Some of his policies are not so bad.
- His adviser on climate and energy, Myron Ebell, is right that climate change policy has become a gravy train for the rich that hurts the poor.
- The promised “swamp draining” – in the unlikely event Mr. Trump pulls it off – will be cathartic.
- His reprehensible attitude to women, minorities and the disabled, though setting a terrible example, is fortunately unlikely to result in actual persecution by the government.
- The idea that this is the end of democracy or the start of fascism, as some hyperventilating luvvies are saying, is nonsense.
Ridley finishes with.
If he really does kill the North American Free Trade Agreement, as well as the transpacific and transatlantic trade treaties, he will assuredly cause a recession that hurts blue-collar workers in the rust belt more than free trade ever did. And he might craqsh the world economy.
I can see few silver linings there.
Here are some quotes from the article I can agree with.
- Mr. Pence is a creationist and religious conservative, which is not my cup of tea.
- The House Speaker, Paul Ryan, is a formidable figure who will effectively decide how much of Trump’s programme will happen.
- Steven Mnuchin, the likely Treasury Secretary, is from Goldman Sachs, for goodness sake.
- If Mr. Trump unleashes more gas production, that will cut emissions and drive out coal faster than renewable energy ever could.
- Compared with many Republicans, Mr. Trump is positively liberal on matters such as abortion and religion.
- If Mr. Trump makes a mess of things, he will be gone in four years – or sooner.
If you get a chance to read the whole article, you should.
Could The Brexit Ruling Be Beneficial To All?
This article on the BBC is entitled PM urged to calm the backlash against Brexit ruling.
It is all getting very nasty out there.
The judges were asked for their opinion and they gave it.
Some reaction is like that of a heavy smoker, who has just asked his doctor, if smoking will cause lung cancer and he hasn’t liked the reply.
I am by training a Control Engineer, who in his time has modelled very complex systems.
I can remember a couple of difficult problems, where to find a working solution, some form of delay had to be introduced.
After that, everything was hunky-dory!
The biggest effect of the Brexit ruling, will be to introduce a delay in the calling of Article 50, which will now hang like a Sword of Damacles over everybody, be they a politician, captain of industry or just an ordinary Jack or Jill like me.
So as Doctor Johnson said about hanging concentrating the mind, could we see the ultimate British solution; a compromise?
Thank the Devil for lawyers!
The Anonymous Widower 