The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[sidcow]

1 hour ago, mjmooney said:

Camels? 

Sopwith Camels are WW1

[mjmooney]

4 minutes ago, sidcow said:

Sopwith Camels are WW1

That's what I initially read it as. 

[The Fun Factory]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

I don’t think you were right back then. When it was first raised as an idea by Labour in 2010 it was about connecting places to each other and raising rail capacity and other shiny new laboury things.

Its morphed under the last 11 years since work started into something quite different. It’s morphed into a means for Tory pals to enrich themselves, with an incidental railway line added on. Now there’s less opportunity for further enrichment there’s not much point carrying on with it. Just finish the bits already half done and wrap it up and hope to gain a bit of kudos for saving money, rather than being responsible for humongous waste.

No if they actually completed it with it going to Manchester and Leeds it would have been a transformational project. Now it is an utter waste of time which they have spent billions on over 13 years.  Brexit and this, wow that is some legacy for this  government along with increasing inequalities and rising poverty levels.

[Xann]

32 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Yep, I’ll hold my hands up and admit I was wrong to be so cynical.

Pfffft - What do you know about government construction projects that haemorrhage money?

[sidcow]

How long before all the Midlands and Northern rail projects get scaled back and cancelled because of runaway costs? 

[sidcow]

So according to train buffs, the thing about HS2 being designed as high speed from the outset meant all tracks were straight and therefore the HS2 trains won't tilt. 

As they don't tilt they can't run as fast on standard railway tracks as Virgin Pendolinos do. 

So when running from Brum to Manchester they will have to run much slower than existing trains meaning the overall time from Manchester to London will actually be LONGER than it is currently

Edited October 4, 2023 by sidcow

[Rustibrooks]

1 hour ago, Mozzavfc said:

Just seen the video of Farage dancing at the conference. He's going to be their next leader isn't he

I currently have a bet on with a few mates that he’ll eventually become the leader of the tories/PM by 2030. We made this bet after the Brexit Referendum, only 7 years to go lol.

[Genie]

2 minutes ago, Rustibrooks said:

I currently have a bet on with a few mates that he’ll eventually become the leader of the tories/PM by 2030. We made this bet after the Brexit Referendum, only 7 years to go lol.

That’s a disgusting thought that will keep me awake tonight, thanks.

[cyrusr]

3 minutes ago, Rustibrooks said:

I currently have a bet on with a few mates that he’ll eventually become the leader of the tories/PM by 2030. We made this bet after the Brexit Referendum, only 7 years to go lol.

He won't ever be PM as it would actually need to do something. All he does is say what should be done. If/when they follow through with it and it inevitably fails, he can call out criticise and say "that's not how I would have done it" but I will happily tell you all about it for £.... No need to actually put his money where his mouth is. 

A grifter through and through. 

[Rustibrooks]

3 minutes ago, Genie said:

That’s a disgusting thought that will keep me awake tonight, thanks.

Oh don’t worry I don’t personally want him to ever have that position (PM) but I’m learning my lessons from Brexit/Tories under Boris. 
 

Unfortunately Farage has a similar personality to Boris and I can see people in this country falling for his personality (just like Boris) rather than what they are about

[Hobsons Choice]

Soooo... HS2 cancelled. 

As someone who has done a fair bit of engineering work on the section of line just cancelled, it in no way surprises me that it has gone way overbudget. I had to deal with so many mid-level idiots who demanded levels of bureaucracy hitherto unseen by humankind that it was obscene. The levels of H&S documentation that have otherwise been fine for every other large scale principal contractor I've ever worked for were suddenly woefully inadequate for this job for some reason. Well actually the reason was that you had reams of people justifying their oversight jobs by dissecting every word of a document that is essentially an internal Health and Safety scope. 

One comment I got, and bear in mind that this is not a report, it's a Risk Assessment (in most cases never read by anyone except the person who writes it and using it as a guide to safe site operation), was that it was 'too repetitive'. So I needed to write scintillating prose in an internal RAMS.  Long story short, I spent nearly a week on various iterations of a document that normally takes me 20 minutes to complete, and is perfectly adequate to folks like me and my subbies who have 20 years of site experience.

Anyway, it was probably all a way to get people involved in a large scale project to keep unemployment figures down after a period of financial meltdown for the country, so who gives a monkeys.  

[bickster]

17 minutes ago, sidcow said:

So according to train buffs, the thing about HS2 being designed as high speed from the outset meant all tracks were straight and therefore the HS2 trains won't tilt. 

As they don't tilt they can't run as fast on standard railway tracks as Virgin Pendolinos do. 

So when running from Brum to Manchester they will have to run much slower than existing trains meaning the overall time from Manchester to London will actually be LONGER than it is currently

The only direct trains from Manchester to Birmingham are slow stopping trains, there is no fast express service. Takes an hour and a half minimum

[sidcow]

2 minutes ago, bickster said:

The only direct trains from Manchester to Birmingham are slow stopping trains, there is no fast express service. Takes an hour and a half minimum

I meant the time from Manchester to London.  They will have to run really slowly on the tracks from Manchester to Birmingham then only achieve high speed after they've got south of Brum.  Which will overall take longer than a current Manc to London time on a Virgin.

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, HKP90 said:

Soooo... HS2 cancelled. 

As someone who has done a fair bit of engineering work on the section of line just cancelled, it in no way surprises me that it has gone way overbudget. I had to deal with so many mid-level idiots who demanded levels of bureaucracy hitherto unseen by humankind that it was obscene. The levels of H&S documentation that have otherwise been fine for every other large scale principal contractor I've ever worked for were suddenly woefully inadequate for this job for some reason. Well actually the reason was that you had reams of people justifying their oversight jobs by dissecting every word of a document that is essentially an internal Health and Safety scope. 

One comment I got, and bear in mind that this is not a report, it's a Risk Assessment (in most cases never read by anyone except the person who writes it and using it as a guide to safe site operation), was that it was 'too repetitive'. So I needed to write scintillating prose in an internal RAMS.  Long story short, I spent nearly a week on various iterations of a document that normally takes me 20 minutes to complete, and is perfectly adequate to folks like me and my subbies who have 20 years of site experience.

Anyway, it was probably all a way to get people involved in a large scale project to keep unemployment figures down after a period of financial meltdown for the country, so who gives a monkeys.  

 

That’s interesting. I’ve been involved in a couple of projects lately that have been moderately large and have had quite a few identical phases. Essentially, a repeat programme of work over multiple floors.

I wrote the base set of risks. It was rejected as it was simply repeating the same risks for every phase. I pointed out that was because it was the same work in every phase. I was told I had to re write it so each (floor) was written differently so it wasn’t ‘copy and paste’.

Again, that’s someone with a couple of decades of experience, having to re write a document, for someone that won’t be the person using it.

I’m really not the ‘elf n safety gone mad’ type. But there are layers of governance on some projects that have no clear purpose.

 

[bickster]

8 minutes ago, sidcow said:

I meant the time from Manchester to London.  They will have to run really slowly on the tracks from Manchester to Birmingham then only achieve high speed after they've got south of Brum.  Which will overall take longer than a current Manc to London time on a Virgin.

There is no Virgin Railways. It's Avanti West Coast but that does raise a completely different issue.

Also why would they have to run trains designed for HSR on non-HSR tracks? The trains won't be going to Manchester / Euston via Birmingham they'll continue to use the WCML as now and probably continue with the same rolling stock and replace with similar

The reason there is no Virgin is because the Virgin consortium lost the bid on renewal. The reason stated for Avanti winning was that Virgin had no experience of running a HSR network whereas the Avanti consortium did (Italian Railway Co).

Can't imagine Branson is happy

[bickster]

1 minute ago, chrisp65 said:

 

That’s interesting. I’ve been involved in a couple of projects lately that have been moderately large and have had quite a few identical phases. Essentially, a repeat programme of work over multiple floors.

I wrote the base set of risks. It was rejected as it was simply repeating the same risks for every phase. I pointed out that was because it was the same work in every phase. I was told I had to re write it so each (floor) was written differently so it wasn’t ‘copy and paste’.

Again, that’s someone with a couple of decades of experience, having to re write a document, for someone that won’t be the person using it.

I’m really not the ‘elf n safety gone mad’ type. But there are layers of governance on some projects that have no clear purpose.

 

Have you never heard of Chat GPT

Rewrite this "...Insert text..." so that it reads differently

Seriously, I use it all the time to rewrite my stuff in plain English

[Hobsons Choice]

1 minute ago, chrisp65 said:

 

That’s interesting. I’ve been involved in a couple of projects lately that have been moderately large and have had quite a few identical phases. Essentially, a repeat programme of work over multiple floors.

I wrote the base set of risks. It was rejected as it was simply repeating the same risks for every phase. I pointed out that was because it was the same work in every phase. I was told I had to re write it so each (floor) was written differently so it wasn’t ‘copy and paste’.

Again, that’s someone with a couple of decades of experience, having to re write a document, for someone that won’t be the person using it.

I’m really not the ‘elf n safety gone mad’ type. But there are layers of governance on some projects that have no clear purpose.

 

Yeah, same. I never shirk H&S as we all want to go home safely, but this was mental. The work we were doing was pre-construction ground investigation, and was IN THE MIDDLE OF A FIELD. It's hard to get a location with fewer complications. Borehole drillers I was using are one of the biggest in the country, with each driller having decades of SI work under their belt. I suppose cows are a risk? Not that there were any, but you know. Cows in potentia. Quantum cows. 

[chrisp65]

Just now, bickster said:

Have you never heard of Chat GPT

Rewrite this "...Insert text..." so that it reads differently

Seriously, I use it all the time to rewrite my stuff in plain English

I’ve had to do some really basic education in the office due to people using Chat.

It’s potentially a very good tool as long as people don’t use it in replacement of their knowledge. You’ve got to proof read it and know the contents are correct. To date, its looked really good but always contains some horrific errors.

Luckily for me, years on here have honed my skills for saying the same thing over and over again in a slightly different way!

[bickster]

Just now, chrisp65 said:

I’ve had to do some really basic education in the office due to people using Chat.

It’s potentially a very good tool as long as people don’t use it in replacement of their knowledge. You’ve got to proof read it and know the contents are correct. To date, its looked really good but always contains some horrific errors.

Luckily for me, years on here have honed my skills for saying the same thing over and over again in a slightly different way!

Oh yep, definitely needs a proof read but if all you are doing is preventing it looking like "a cut and paste" then it'll save you hours

[sidcow]

3 minutes ago, bickster said:

There is no Virgin Railways. It's Avanti West Coast but that does raise a completely different issue.

Also why would they have to run trains designed for HSR on non-HSR tracks? The trains won't be going to Birmingham via Manchester they'll continue to use the WCML as now and probably continue with the same rolling stock and replace with similar

The reason there is no Virgin is because the Virgin consortium lost the bid on renewal. The reason stated for Avanti winning was that Virgin had no experience of running a HSR network whereas the Avanti consortium did (Italian Railway Co).

Can't imagine Branson is happy

Sorry, I meant Avanti.  Cant get Virgin out of my mind (KW).

This is exactly my understanding.  The HS2 High Speed trains will run to Manchester via the HS2 tracks then crossover to West Coast Mainline just North of Brum.

If the plan is to build a small fleet of new Pendolino type trains to run further North and a second small fleet of true HS trains to run to Brum that's also going to add a **** ton to build and running costs.  Maintaining 2 small fleets of different trains compared to 1 big fleet of trains is going to add So much cost.