UKC

Boris couldn't get his Thames Bridge project sorted or his Thames Estuary airport idea accepted. We still haven't worked out what we're doing with HS2/3 and yet a bridge from N Ireland to Scotland is being mooted!

I'm sure it will be great having trucks thundering through Kintyre.

Great programme and Saga a fantastic character.  Much missed.

An even better novel by Iain Banks.

Yes but does he chew tobacco and wear leather trousers?

Well you know the tories have suddenly found a magic money tree...

Just thinking about it makes me laugh. Have these idiot even ever set foot there ?

Amazing amount of cynicism for a country that already has a tunnel that is considerably longer than this new bridge might be.

Obviously there would be a lot more to consider about the Mull of Kintyre location than just the bridge - you would probably want to put another couple of smaller bridges in on the way to reduce the distance to Glasgow and certainly upgrade the road to get there to a dual carriageway. The other location looks a lot more sensible from down in Galloway - a lot less additional road to be laid to get there.

It wouldn't be anywhere near the top of my infrastructure list for the UK but that isn't to say that it it's not worth spending a few quid getting a proper estimate of the potential costs and benefits.

Dare to dream naysayers of UKC!

It will go from Portpatrick to Larne, longer bridge but less infrastructure upgrade required

In 1857 Brunel designed a 1000 bed hospital  in 4 days. It was then built , shipped and rebuilt in the Crimea 2 months later  

 Of course it can be done  

Whether it’s a good economic idea is another thing  

It went on a bit.

Why not a tunnel? Would that be a lot more expensive to dig? Can imagine it would be less effected by poor weather in building and usage.

I’ve got an idea, why don’t we instead put lorries and cars on a boat and sail through ?

My favourite bit is the estimated 1.5m tons of disposed military ordnance lurking in the depths. There are no maps showing exactly where any of it was dumped.

As a project manager working in construction, I’d *love* to see the first draft risk register.

Don't worry, if Boris says it's happening it sure as shit wont happen.

That would never work.

Agree, the Beaufort Dyke seems to be full of all sorts of potentially unpleasant stuff and as we know from HS2, or just about every other major project, any estimate of the cost will increase dramatically.

I think there are many other things that need to solved before we think about an NI/Scotland bridge.

Dave

That’s alright, we’ll get the English taxpayer to pay for it, then we declare independence and keep the damn thing. :-p

Getting under Beaufort's dyke is apparently one of the main challenges.  Not only is it a rather big and deep ditch but it has about a million tons of munitions in it including chemical weapons. Also a bit of a challenge for the bridge.

By the time the bridge would be built it could be linking a unified Ireland and an independent Scotland - both in the EU - with a hard border required between Scotland and England once more

Give it a go yourself. Take a squiz at curent levels of traffic and shipping, googl the outturn cost of a few major projects. 

I doubt youll need to factor in discounted to present value maintenance costs and such to see which way the wind is blowing... 

This Mr Johnson is pretty good at getting everybody in the country to talk about topics he wants them to talk about, isn't he?

He doesn’t talk about much really, almost an absent leader. So when some morsel of policy arrives like a fresh steamy turd on our doorsteps we feel compelled to pull it apart.

This is a double vanity project, if it was even vaguely feasible and was embarked upon then it would be a classic vanity project. Like HS2. But this is vanity at one remove, it will never happen, just the idea of it is vanity.

There's an abridged version.

Scotland and Ireland linked by road? Bring on the Celtic union! It's almost like that's what Boris wants.

And bankrupt both countries while he's doing it.

This is a stupid idea. 

Really? I could have continued reading it if it were twice the length. My favourite Banks novel, just a shade better that Walking on glass.

Since when was a vaguely modern train infrastructure been a vanity ? Most modern countries manage to build one.

I believe the correct term for this kind of activity is spaffing against a wall.

We have opposing tastes.  Glass was one of my least favourite of Banks’ novels.  Crow Road and Espedair Street too my list.

My first post was also alluding to the scale of the bridge in the novel however...

You talk about "we", as if in some sense you are part of that. Whereas in reality you buggered off in a huff the moment you didn't get your own way to Cypress. Your Mediterranean island paradise from where you continue to lecture us from your pulpit of superior wisdom about how cr*p we are as if somehow it made any difference to you.

You bugger, I completely failed to get that. Either you are too subtle Or I’m too thick.

Subtle is my middle name.  

No, I'm Spartacus (too soon?)

When May needed the DUP onside it cost the treasury a few billion. 

Boris manages to signal that he cares about NI and that he cares about Scotland, all at no cost (or, rather, the cost of a civil servant drafting an outline plan on two sides of A4, after which the idea can be dropped).

You have serious issues. I suggest you speak to your healthcare professional.

And no, we are not crap, despite your rather dedicated efforts.

Like with Trump's wall, a despot needs a vanity projet, what a thundering mega-prat, I hate him 🤯

Please, please stop spouting on about a country you can't even spell. Kindergarden level really. You probably think you live in Ingland.

Kindergarden!
Oh dear...

One big stupid project does not make a modern train infrastructure. Note please that the first bit is to be London to Birmingham, if it ever get’s built at all the second phase of connecting northern cities seems to be at risk. If you can’t think of a better way to spend 100 billion to modernise our rail network then you aren’t thinking at all.

When you look at how filthy polluting both air travel and ferry travel is, and how hard they are to decarbonise, a railway or roadway link makes sense as both can be or become fully electric.

Unless it’s a bridge built from a metric f—kton of concrete or a tunnel lined with thick concrete.  I know bugger all about the subsea geology there so have no idea how much tunnel lining would be needed, but a tunnel seems like it could be done lower carbon with the all-electric tunnel boring kit The Boring Company are developing.

Bridges are more beautiful though.

A proper mega-project would be damming the route of the bridge and damming from Pembroke to Roslarre and draining/reclaiming the Irish Sea.

Apologies for the spelling error but in what possible sense am I "spouting on" about it? The country in question is largely irrelevant to my point. If you can't see that then your literacy problems are worse than my spelling.

It’s also a correct spelling though

Hoist with his own petard, marvellous

It's Kindergarten...

Or the anglicised version, Kindergarden. Should also be perfectly correct.

Nuts, he’d be better giving the money to the nhs. He does seem fixated on buses and bridges. Pity he doesn’t fall off one and under the other

Yes, it's sad that the German word has been spelt like that in England for a long time. So I apologise for that. But really, does anyone spell Cyprus, Cypress? It just looks so wrong (like the name of a tree). A bit like hearing about the island of Creet.

Only if you're a bit of a philistine.

Well, yes, I don’t really mind that much though.

It was more the fact that he apparently hates me with his guts just because of where I live that was quite worrying. He’s got issues best left to a professional.

On the contrary, you came to the UK from some sh*thole (according to your own reports), used what the UK had to offer to greatly better yourself but spent most of your time on here slagging us off. You took what you could get and f*cked off as soon as it didn't suit you.

Have you ever stopped to consider why so many of your postings end up in bitter arguments with other posters as you metaphorically jab your finger in their faces telling them why you're always absolutely right about everything?

I'd suggest it's you that has serious issues.

Who are "we"? You can hardly claim to be one of "us" whatever it may say on a bit of paper.                     

But it's a bit odd, though, isn't it, getting the name of a well-known Mediterranean country wrong? His topic was Cyprus, yet he couldn't spell it. It's not as if it's an obscure, out-of-the-way place, is it?

Anyhow, I'm signing off now because I have no interest at this time of night in discussing various species of Mediterranean tree.

Gordon, it was a spelling mistake FFS, get over it.

Try focussing on the issue.

I didn’t take anything from anybody. And I certainly won’t take your insults.

No Rom, I hate the way that in all the years of posting on here you never have a good word to say about the country you chose to come to to make your life better. Not one ounce of acknowledgement for what this country offered you, just an endless diatribe of criticism of everything we do.

If you think where you chose to live once you decided Britain wasn't for you is the issue you are staggeringly wide of the mark.

Yes.  People who never wasted part of their brain learning that there are different spellings for words that sound the same.  This is a facet of dyslexia, which falls within a protected characteristic in the Equalities Act 2010.  This should mean that laying in to people for dyslexia is as unacceptable as laying in to them on grounds of race, sexuality or physical disability.  Despite this, people are routinely mocked on UKC by a great many posters for something that may well be a very real struggle for them.  Spell checkers are no help here, and telling a dyslexic to work harder at improving it is similar to telling a blind person to look harder.  It doesn’t work like that.

The way I see it, written language came after spoken a language as a way of recording and storing what was heard.  Spelling has changed immeasurably over the centuries.  I read and thoroughly enjoyed Feersum Endjinn where 1/4th of the book is spelt entirely phonetically.  Interestingly some dyslexics like me have less problems reading that sort of text than others.

You got Pec’s point, you understood it, you picked on their spelling and you misrepresented their point - they didn’t “spout off” anything about Cyprus.  You can do better than that.

Edit: I’m not saying Pec is dyslexia but I am and I am very unhappy at the idea of anyone else who is receiving grief over it.  I’m also not venturing an opinion on their contribution to the thread but if you wanted to comment on it there are better ways than picking on spelling and misrepresenting things.  

Or rather you are just a total racist nutter with extreme jingoistic tendencies.

Plus you are so completely wrong about me, it’s laughable. If anything I’m known amongst my friends to be the guy who can’t stop blabbing about how great Scotland is...

I think I’ll leave you in your little bubble made of envy and hatred, because you are really, really, boring.

Yeah, the Tories will spend a ton of the budget in London, they'll put the bridge in the south of Scotland so it benefits the north of England more than Scotland then they'll declare the cost 'for the benefit of Scotland' and lump an extra £20billion (probably way more by the time they are done) onto the GERS numbers and use it to claim Scotland is skint, has a massive deficit and is subsidised by England for the next 100 years.

Boris can f*ck off with his bridge, his HS2, his Trident and his 34 Admirals and get his sticky spendthrift fingers off Scotland's credit card.  Scotland's share of HS2 will be £10billion, far more than any transport scheme actually in Scotland. 

If we decide we want a bridge we will wait until after independence and the Scottish Government will commission it, as much of the work as possible will be done in Scotland and we will probably use the northerly option and join it up with a ferry port at Rosyth so Independent Scotland and reunited Ireland can trade within the EU single market without going through Brexit England.

To be fair if the bridge ended on Arthur's Seat you'd still say it was for the English! 

The only benefit of the bridge is to keep NI tied to the UK. It's political, not practical. We all know it won't really happen. 

I clearly remember you arguing for a bridge previously. 

I’d say the only reason he’s peddling this is because whilst we are talking about this ridiculous idea which we all know will never happen, we are not talking about the car crash that will be his brexit negotiation, or his massive pension tax raid.

According to figures from the telegraph, following the changes on pension tax relief, a 30 year old, saving a £1000 a month, assuming 5% investment growth, would lose circa £300,000 on their final pension pot.

As usual it’s the youth who’s going to pay for his brexit nonsense.

How would a bridge to southern Scotland benefit the north of England? 

Have you looked a map of the UK recently  

Prediction 1: any pension relief changes will benefit lower earners.

Prediction 2: any changes will be less radical than suggested currently. 

English orthography is more woefully inelegant and illogical than any other language I know. I spent thirty years teaching it. Ghoti = fish. 

I love your anti English rants. 

As for the 'we'. Who are 'we'? The 44 and a bit %, or the 55 and a bit %

Maybe yes, maybe not, but it wasn’t the point.

Same as above.

The bridge, or at least a feasibility study, had the support of the Scottish Government at least until 2018. A particular supporter was Mike Russell MSP who apparently suggested that HIE contribute to the cost of the study. Both the Northern Irish and Irish governments were in support. Mr Coveney being very supportive.

If it is possible and affordable how could it be a bad thing? (an environmental impact study might answer that question). 

BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK!

Thanks, an interesting post.

I've never had a diagnosis or even been tested for dyslexia but for some reason spelling has always been a weakness for me. I've worked very hard at it over the years and usually proof read everything, sometimes multiple times, but occasionally (now there's a word I always have to check!) things slip through, even though when it's pointed out it's blindingly obvious and I think how the hell did that get past me.

I have sometimes wondered if I do have some mild dyslexia type condition?

If I'd spelled Cyprus in some obviously incorrect way I'd have noticed but Cypress being an actual word just slipped by me this time even though I'm perfctly well aware it's a tree. But as you say, the spelling is irrelevant to my point, Gordon's inability to just point out my mistake and move on to deal with the actual substance of my post says something about him.

Christ, its no like they can keep the ferry link from Rosyth running just now is it - would an independent Scotland make it more financially viable to run this ferry again?

I appreciate that, but outside a small bubble of high earners the vast majority of the country's youth isn't in the 40 or 45% tax bracket and able to put £1k a month into a pension.

What's racism got to do with it? I've no idea what race you are.

Its not jingoistic to be annoyed by someone constantly denigrating your country, especially when they've benefitted from it so much but chose to abandon it once they couldn't get their own way. I'm certainly not the first person on UKC to raise that about you.

I'm well aware that a person's online persona can be very different from the reality which is why, despite what you said above, I don't hate you, I just hate your attitude to Britain and the way you metaphorically jab your finger in our faces when you're telling us. Again, I'm not the first to point that out.

Perhaps if you blabbed about how great Britain is on here once in a while we'd have a different opinion of you.

If anyone wants to see who's living in a bubble they only need to click on your profile and look back through your posting history. Something very obvious leaps out, just look at the topic icons.

Anyway, I'm not going to get dragged any further into a debating death spiral like so many of your online debates do, with you and some poor unwitting poster getting into a last man standing fight to the death. Feel free to have the last word, you invariably do.

Presumably once we are free of the Tory bastards Scotland will run like a Swiss watch. There will be pastures of plenty and liquid gold will flow from our taps.

"...and liquid gold will flow from our taps."

Irn Bru?

So what was your point about vaguely possible pension reforms that come up in advance of every budget?

Uisge Beatha?

Campbeltown loch is already full of it

It was pretty clear in my post I hoped, sorry if it wasn’t. 
My point was that the bridge story is just there to distract us away from the difficult choices the government is having to do, on brexit, pensions, and others.

Successfully it seems.

And yet you seem to hold me to a higher standard than anybody else. You are not asking anybody else not even yourself to thank Great Britannia for their good fortunes every day.

Just because I don’t like Boris Johnson or Brexit doesn’t mean “I denigrate your country” you massive twit.

As for “benefitting from it so much” my tax bills and the number of jobs I’ve helped create over the years suggest it’s been a two way street.

Guess what, not unlike most immigrants to this  country I’ve put it in far, far more than I’ve taken out, and still do. 
It’s unfortunate that we have to cope with a minority of utter bigots like you who keep pissing on us at every occasion they get.

You really are totally nuts. It’s sad, despite your patriotism you spend your time wrecking your own country.

This is Johnson to a tee. He sees himself as some sort of modern day Caesar. He wants everything named for himself - Boris Buses, Boris Bridges, a Boris Airport. Presumably he also wants statues erected in his honour, adoring crowds of worshipers and his pick of the young women.

We need to make sure his name is instead forever associated with the thing he wants us all to forget about: Brexit.

You would help yourself by not overstating your case. That’s just my opinion.

Johnson doesn't need Scotland or Northern Ireland onside. He has no seats to defend in Northern Ireland and very few in Scotland. I suppose the only reason he may want to keep them onside would be to try and quieten the calls for another Scottish referendum by claiming to support an idea that the SNP have supported previously (I'm not sure whether they still do?).

I expect the whole thing will just be an expensive waste of time and money, before being scrapped without the ground ever being in danger of being broken. Sound familiar?

While people are talking about some pie in the sky infrastructure project, nobody is talking about the B word and nobody is scrutinising the government regarding a complete lack of progress on the defining political issue of this generation.

Exactly right. A bit too transparent though.

Enough of this frivolity, just how would we build a bridge in 100+m of tidal water subject to bad weather?  A quick look at the charts shows the dyke being spannable with one of the longest suspension bridge spans in the world with its towers built in 120m of water.  How does one build reinforced concrete legs underwater without getting corrosion problems in the steel?

I will still argue for a bridge or tunnel to Ireland as something which an independent Scotland should seriously consider building in partnership with Ireland and the EU.  That is a very different thing to having it built 'on our behalf' by the Tories in Westminster and then handed the bill for whatever inappropriate sh*t they cook up with their advisers in London.

The benefit of a bridge/tunnel on the northerly route is to tie independent Scotland and reunited Ireland together within the EU single market and make us less dependent on England.   A side effect of the northern bridge would be to make some areas of Scotland far less remote from Glasgow. The exact opposite of what Boris wants to achieve with his bridge on the southern route.

How does it compare with say the ones in Denmark and the ones in Japan linking islands? Japan has to contend with earthquakes, Denmark- weather.

With Scotland in the EU and England out the economics would be completely different.  Rosyth to Rotterdam would be an intra-EU connection with no customs checks.   Scotland would stop using ports in Northern England to trade with the EU.

Also, with a bridge to Ireland the Irish get access to a port on the east coast of Scotland with far shorter journey times to Rotterdam.

everyone seems to have forgotten his famous garden bridge , sponsored by Johnson cos his family friend Joanna Lumley thought it was a great idea    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_Bridge

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/13/garden-bridge-charity-spent...

Last opinion poll is 52% for independence and Boris Johnson is increasing that every day.

Tories haven't won a national election in Scotland since the second world war  SNP won the GE in Scotland in December by a bigger margin than Boris won in the UK.  A couple of months before that they won the EU parliament elections.  They won the last Holyrood election and the one before that.

That's a really interesting comment.

'We all know it won't really happen'.   And your are right, nobody really believes £20bn will be found to join Scotland and Ireland.

But everybody is sure £100 billion will be found for HS2 or £20 billion for Crossrail.   The UK is conditioned to think that it is ridiculous to put extremely expensive infrastructure anywhere outside of London.  

This is one of the reasons Scotland needs to leave.  It needs to get its self confidence back and end the pernicious influence of BBC Scotland and the other unionist media with their steady drip of stories about how crap we are.

Today the Tories and their pals in the media are crowing about how the new Queensferry crossing bridge was shut last night due to ice build up as if that was a failure of the SNP and evidence for Scotland not being able to do anything right.   In a normal country the Queensferry crossing would be seen as a great success and nobody would play politics about shutting a bridge during the kind of sh*tty weather we had yesterday.

I guess that if people actually believed the £20bn price tag (including roads to Glasgow etc), then they might believe that it would be found.  

But NI isn't really a massive population centre to be a priority to join to.

As someone living in Scotland I'd love to tell the English to clean up their nerve gas and nuclear waste, and the bombs as well while they are at it.  F*cking unbelievable they think its OK to just dump that sh*t right next to us.

The vast majority is from the second world war and was therefore used to defend Scotland as much as the rest of the UK.
Is your petty/bitter nationalism so great that it makes you twist everything into a 'English Vs Scots' thing?

What was it before - when it wasn't financially viable? Why did freight continue to use Northern English ferries as opposed to Rosyth?

Anyway, as for the bridge, lets get it looked at, select preferred route and build it - along with all the infrastructure to serve it.

I'm sure there are decent engineers from within London that could design the bridge, an international design competition though may help your fears of Englishness, like what happened with Scottish Parliament building

You know, Scotland is actually being told to fork out £9.6 billion towards the cost of HS2.  If we spent our money on infrastructure that was actually in Scotland gradually building out from Glasgow with road improvements and bridges initially to bring areas of Argyll and Cowall closer by road and eventually to connect to Ireland might not be unreasonable.   It could be spread out over a long period of time.

The goal needs to be an Edinburgh/Glasgow/Belfast/Dublin transport corridor so the economies of Scotland and Ireland can integrate more closely and link to the EU via a ferry connection from the Forth to Rotterdam.   It isn't about what is there now, it is about enabling things to improve in the future.

The other justification for the Northern route might be more economic development and an increase in population in Argyll as new bridges greatly reduced the driving distance to Glasgow.

When you read his comments you understand why I am not very optimistic of the Scottish independence issue ever being settled peacefully.

A 30-year-old, saving £1k a month into a pension? That's 40% of the UK median salary for a full time employee. The average 30-year-old doesn't own their own home yet so is probably saving for a house deposit, not retirement.

This would seem the most relevant comparison:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seikan_Tunnel

distance, depth and harsh winter weather of the crossing would be comparable. Japan chose tunnel rather than bridge. I don’t know if there is something about the geology of the Scotland- NI channel that would make tunnelling difficult; but if not, under rather than over looks more realistic. Hence why this announcement seems to be more in the “look- a squirrel!” category rather than a serious proposal 

How is that figure arrived at?  Is it just taking the overall bill to the taxpayer and dividing it into a notional contribution from Scotland?  If so, that's not all that sensible a calculation.

I presume you're aware that UK public spending per head is higher in Scotland than in England, and that also the SE of England is a massive net contributor of tax money?  

But is your complaint that the UK taxpayer doesn't fairly fund infrastructure in Scotland?  Fairly obviously that's not a priority for the rUK taxpayer. 

I don't see them dumping nerve gas and nuclear waste in the Thames.  But the Clyde estuary is no problem.  An SNP MP asked questions about this in the commons last week and they don't even feel the need to monitor it to see if the crap is leaking.  Just dump it in Scotland and forget about it.

I 100% agree, but the reality is that to have a half decent pension £1000 a month is roughly how much you should save every month from your 30s, and that’s with very optimistic assumption on the performance of the funds.
 

Which only serves to highlight that, if you are in your 30s, I would start planning on the basis that you will probably work until you die.

How much was spent on the m74 over 20 years ago, when many far busier roads like the a1 were left as sub standard dual carriageway? Others like the a66 still are. 

As fun as it is to blame the nasty English for everything that either the UK government or private firms did perhaps you could do a bit more research.

Plenty of waste dumped in the North Sea. Mostly, for the UK, its nuclear but other countries dumped their chemical and conventional munitions there.

build at the deepwater site at Kishorn like the Ninian Central then float out and sink.   They could re use the massive drydock for the base sections and then float it out to the deep wet site

Get out your copybook and pencil and watch the following film.  Make careful notes in your copybook as you may have to answer questions later.

https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/5973

quite nostalgic and nice scenic shots.

It's the fraction of the 100 billion cost assessed to be 'for the benefit of Scotland' and dumped into the GERS statistics.  Basically, they declared it to be a nationally beneficial project and handed us a tenth of the bill.    The whole point of GERS accounting is to book cost on Scotland and revenue in England so it looks like we are skint.   It's not even a secret, just look at the name.  In Scotland if something gets called GERS it is pretty obvious that it was invented by Rangers supporting unionists and that all the bosses right up to the top of the decision making hierarchy think it is amusing to call stuff after Rangers.   I don't think they'd get away with that name now but it is a hangover from when Labour was in power and the civil service was stuffed with unionists and they didn't see any need to pretend.

Only because they bill Scotland for a ton of stuff that actually benefits England and takes place in England.    SE England is only a massive contributor of tax money because everything of value has been centralised there by Westminster.   The UK takes all the civil servants in London and says a tenth of them are working 'for the benefit of Scotland'.  Then it sticks 1/10 of the salary bill and all the other costs - offices, accountants, lawyers, travel etc on the GERS numbers as a cost to Scotland.  But the tax paid by those civil servants and all their suppliers in London gets booked as coming from London so it looks like London is subsidising the rest of the country.

Tens of billions of London infrastructure gets billed like it benefited the whole country rather than just London.   It doesn't.  In fact London having better infrastructure than Edinburgh makes Edinburgh less competitive for attracting private sector investment and is actually detrimental to Scotland.

Scotland is always going to look like it is subsidised by England under GERS because the statistics are designed to do that.  Just like the numbers that showed the US colonies and India were subsidised by the Empire.  Funnily enough when they got independence the numbers looked completely different.

My complaint is they won't go away and let us run our own affairs.   The accounts will become clear after independence and we will be able to make rational spending decisions with our own money and implement economic policies designed to take private sector business back to Scotland.

Loads of stuff under farmers fields and old military bases all over England too. They've just got instructions to never dig! 

You're hilarious. Do you spout this kind of anti English crap in real life?  Still, at least you beat us in the rugby... Oh no wait. 

I have seen enough Scots trundling up and down the Glasgow Euston Line to understand that they too will beneift from the HS2 link both from a business and pleasure perspective.It will be a lot quicker for them for a start.

Stop whinging.

Well, there was a referendum on that, not that long ago.

Yes, but that will involve having a healthy political centre-right.   Policies such as no tuition fees, free personal care, etc, will have to be funded by equal attention to revenue raising and ensuring that businesses are attracted and successful.

And why do so many Scots have to spend their life on the train to London in order to pursue their career?

Because all the f*cking power and money is in London.  Independence will sort that.  We won't need HS2 because we won't be travelling to London to ask permission from the English to do stuff.  We will be doing it ourselves in Scotland.

HS2 is an enabler for London centralisation and directly against the interest of Scotland (and most of England for that matter).   We need infrastructure which attracts business to move to Scotland not infrastructure which makes London even more attractive.

Sure.  In the late 1940s the decision to dump munitions in the Irish was made to snub Scotland.  Nothing to do with it being a quick way to dispose of dangerous material by an exhausted, bankrupt nation that at the time was united and not engaged in petty low level racism between its constituent parts.

It will knock close on an hour off the current travelling time.

You know who Jim O'Neill is, well he already reckons there is a move to Birmingham from London going on as a result of the proposals.So you will be even closer to the new centre..

On the other hand you can build a great big wall across the border which is what you would prefer.

Even if Scotland is independent, London will still be a major city in the West. Nothing will change, the two Scottish cities won't suddenly become more important, Edinburgh might a little over time, but it will still only be a capital city of a relatively small population. Like the Leeds of Yorkshire. London will for the time being remain the capital city of a top ten global economy. There are cities we haven't even heard of in china with more people than all of Scotland. 

Like with the Edinburgh tram system...

What I don’t understand is why on earth it’s so expensive.

As an example, LGV est in France cost 4bn, for a high speed line that is 252 mi, twice that of HS2 phase one, which is planned to cost several multiples of that.

Seems to me there must be a lot of milking the cow going on at different levels.

Is Holyrood due for demolition this year? 😁🙃😃

https://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/cheaper-to-tear-down-scottish-parlia...

£414 million to build, over 10 to 40 times the original estimated cost!!!!

for comparison, refurb of Westminster is estimated to cost 3 to 5bn....

Here is an interesting picture comparing tunnel infrastructure in Scotland vs Norway.  Guess which country has the 'union dividend'.

https://twitter.com/scot_tunnels/status/1222957469812633602/photo/1

They are currently very slow at boring compared to the CrossRail boring machines so a bit of work to go!

Indeed. Where is the Russia dossier ?

Isn’t crossrail mainly through clay compared to rock under Las Vegas?  I could be wrong...

What's your point?  The Scottish Parliament was commissioned by the UK government's Scottish Office and Labour Party politicians are primarily responsible.  If anything it shows that a new bridge in Scotland should not be commissioned by Westminster.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Parliament_Building

The SNP has an excellent track record on infrastructure projects.  Sure, there are overruns and delays but nothing on the scale of the stuff that comes out of London with Crossrail, HS2 etc.  

Which is doing OK.   

France has a much lower population density than the relevant parts of England.  The cost is in dealing with all the stuff currently in the way.  Across virgin farm land or forest would be vastly cheaper. 

Yes,  London will still be the capital city of a top ten economy.  So is Berlin. You don't need to go to Berlin to raise money for a business in Scotland or to deal with regulators for a business in Scotland.  You need to go to London.  After independence you won't.   

Just like companies in Ireland can raise money in Dublin and deal with regulators in Dublin companies in Scotland will raise money in Scotland and deal with regulators in Scotland and the government paid for by Scottish taxes will hire lawyers/acccountants/consultants in Scotland rather than in London.

He's like an naughty schoolboy who's been caught in the act, the question is what act?

Russia report: Eaten by the dog miss!

Austerity: Found it again!

Brexit: Gove's a liar liar pants on fire, he did the border mess!

Windrush: You can't touch me, my electorate's bigger than your electorate!

HS2: Look, cheaper than the bridge, look at the bridge!

Retrospective sentencing: Russia's worse, look at the... er... the, erm... SQUIRREL!

It's almost certainly technically possible to bridge the islands one way or another, the question is is it economically (no chance) or politically worthwhile given the increasingly significant probability it'll be linking two foreign nations with which we have hard borders by the time it's complete (sorry, I mean abandoned).

jk

100% agree, how on earth can it be costing so much? It's hardly sending humans to start a colony on Mars!

The channel tunnel cost £9b which allowing for inflation is around £20b today.

Or fractionally less ecologically ruinous: tapping it for moon power.

jk

Dumping nerve gas and nuclear waste in the Clyde estuary shows complete contempt for Scotland.  They couldn't even be arsed taking it out into the middle of the Atlantic or North Sea.

 Berlin in turn  goes to London. Its not a global financial centre. 

It didn't go through Nimbyshire though did it.

jk

Good point there are less towns in the way but really, 4 times the cost for half the length ? Appreciate costs don’t scale linearly but still... seems like a lot.

I smell of whiff of nimbyism... a strong intuition at this point given that getting clear and transparent cost breakdown seems completely impossible.

Here's some suggestions of how small tunnels could be used in Scotland and make the northern bridge route more feasible.

https://twitter.com/Stoviesplz/status/1215034965890600968

Interesting article here about all the munitions dumped where they want to build a bridge

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14820042-200-the-ww2-bombs-dumped-of...

FTFY

No, it shows a reckless disregard for the consequences of getting rid of dangerous chemicals.  It says nothing about views of Scotland. 

I have just purchased a house in Scotland. Pretty much every post of yours reminds why I have such distaste for the independence movement  - it is the exact analogue of Boris but with populist-nationalism rather right-wing populism.

How would you describe the dumping of similar materials and ammunition in the Hurd deep and Whitesand Bay? (and various other sites around the UK). Contempt for England?

Is this really an issue to do with nationality or is it more a poorly considered but understandable set of decisions with unforseen consequences? 

As much as Frankfurt can dream. It isn't London. 

Who will then consult with the big 4, because they have the global experience and expertise. 

Even allowing for that, I still struggle with the £100b + figure.

Although the US did reportedly spend £12.5b a year just on air conditioning for tents in Iraq and Afghanistan wars so maybe it's a realistic figure lol

If you have a meeting room full of people who live in London and you ask them where they should chuck the nerve gas and nuclear waste the answer is a lot more likely to be the Clyde than the Thames.

If Scotland was independent there would be no radium pollution in the Forth, no nuclear submarines rotting in a dock in Rosyth and no nerve gas and nuclear waste chucked into the Clyde because civil servants and politicians who live in Scotland wouldn't take the chance of getting poisoned themselves.  Those are the actions of people who live far enough away not to care.

And you'd be paying an annual fee for the UK to defend you, just like the isle of man does. 

If they want the work from the Scottish Government they'll expand their offices in Scotland.  Sure, some really specialised things will need to use experts outside of Scotland, but not necessarily in London.

Actually the answer now would be neither.

Back in the late 40s through to 60-90s it was wherever was handiest.

Hence why waste from Chatham dockyards was dropped in the channel  and thats if they could be arsed to make an effort. When they couldnt be arsed it was just dumped on land. There are several sites in the medway area which are sealed off due to having various unpleasant materials dumped there.

We already pay 1/10 of the UK defence budget, when we split up we will be claiming 1/10 of the UK military hardware or we'll be deducting money off any debt the UK tries to pass on to us.

Far less than 1/10 of the UK defence budget is spent on defending Scotland.  We'd take our money and spend it on forces which are useful to a small, non aggressive country in a relatively safe part of the world which wishes to integrate into NATO and EU defence supply chain.

I would prefer England and Scotland to be countries within the EU single market with no border.

England have taken away that option.

I think it has more to do with lack of consequence for taking shitty decision than nationality.

Politicians aren’t as likely to take a decision that will poison the water they have to drink it every day. 

If NATO would allow a country to join that has no intention of either owning or hosting nuclear weapons.
If the EU would allow Scotland to become a member without passing various criteria regarding currency, etc.
You seem to assume that Scotland could become independent and then just automatically join NATO and the EU at its behest.

NATO is dead anyway, anybody can see that. Trump doesn’t care and Turkey actually kills our allies. That’s how dead it is.

Joining the EU isn’t really a problem nor an absolute necessity.
Joining the single market would be more than sufficient in the short to medium term.

It isn’t the relationship with the EU or the rest of the world that would be much a problem in an independent Scotland.
Rather, I suspect the main issue would be the relationship with England.

Most of the countries in NATO do not own nuclear weapons or provide bases for nuclear submarines.

Not this sh*t again.   Of course Scotland would get back into the EU, the only people who say it wouldn't are the English who just voted to leave the EU.  Nobody cares about England's opinion any more.

Yes.  Scotland has been in both organisations for decades.  Both organisations welcome new members. 

Let's not go through the normal conflation of criteria to join the Euro with criteria to join the EU or pretend that there can't be transitional arrangements under an accession deal which give access to key EU services long before full membership is granted.

England did not. A majority of people in the UK did (leaving aside those who didnt vote etc). If everyone in the rest of the UK had voted remain then we would be remaining.

https://www.eata.ee/en/nato-2/nato-member-states/

https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/countries_en

Can't see Scotland on either of these.  Are you sure you're spelling it right?

I think in Tom's world UK=Scotland when he sees this as a good thing but UK=England when he doesn't.  

They already have offices in all the Scottish cities any way. 

You realise that you can't just wear a kilt, bare your ar$e and cry "freedom" when Putin is sending his exploratory planes over?

Unless you have a credible defence force, spend 2% and agree to protect everyone else then NATO isn't going to welcome you.  

An irreconcilable problem which won’t be fixed until Scotland is made accountable for its own decision. 
Which is what he is asking for.

Why would Putin attack us with planes when he has already bought our Prime Minister and half the cabinet.   Putin is a spy and he's conducting a completely different type of war.  One of his main goals was splitting the UK off from the EU.  

How many NATO countries actually hit the 2% target?

I think independence to sort out Tom's cognitive dissonance is a bit drastic 

Which is my point.  After independence if the government wants to hire one of the big 4 accountants the work will go to an office in Scotland rather than one in London and the people doing it will spend their money and pay their taxes in Scotland.

Any evidence this isn't already happening? 

Just like the last thing the eu needs or wants is another country that isn't a net contributor, NATO won't want another country that isn't pulling its weight either. 

if there was anything to concern us we'd have heard about it by now.  It's just none of our business ...

Well latest polls suggest support for indyref at 51% and in my experience he is fairly representative.

You can bury your head in the sand or listen and find a compromise. Unfortunately I don’t think this will happen.

FYI, NATO is dead. Time to wake up world has changed.

I'd have an EU passport again, if Scotland went solo and rejoined the EU. I wonder how one goes about programming a social media bot to influence people?

Following the first referendum when staying within the UK was portrayed as the only sure way to stay in the EU, I'd probably be wanting another vote too if I lived in Scotland, given them voting to Remain, and voting to stay in the UK given the mood music at the time regarding EU membership etc.

I've nothing against another vote, and see there is now an arguable case for independence.  Populist nationalism and blaming the English for everything is it, however.  If fact, that is just brexitist populism with another mask on - smashing up alliances won't lead to prosperity and "freedom".

The same bankrupted country could just as easily have dumped the chemical weapons  in the Thames estuary or English Channel but instead chose Scottish waters to dump it.

The same country could have put nuclear weapons 30 miles from London but chose Glasgow instead, there is a pattern here. 

Err, I think you'll find it did. You might want to look at a chart of the Isle of Wight...

As above, that happened too.

Harder, given the need to avoid them being bombed, deep water etc etc.

Now.. Maybe..  give it 5 years and Trump has gone, who knows. 

I'm more than happy to look for the 1 million tons of weapon munitions and 14,000 tons of chemical weapons dropped 6 miles off the English coast like the ones dropped in the Scottish coast 6 miles from Stranraer.

Please show me where they are thanks. 

Waste was dumped in the English channel.

They didnt choose Glasgow though. They chose a site near Glasgow since it was one of a few suitable for nuclear submarines which needed to be able to sneak out under water.

Aldermaston is 46 miles from London but could have been located in Glasgow.

Greenham Common is 55 miles away. Again other locations further away were an option.

Lakenheath and its fellow bases are 80 miles away.

A cursory look shows that if the idea was to keep nukes away from London they did a bad job of it.

What is NATO for anyway? Other than imperialism and being above all law. 

Was already dying before Trump. This started under Obama. I wouldn’t expect a democrat win to change the underlying shifting of the geopolitical tectonic plates. Only something totally radical will.

That, my dear Pefa, is called "trying to change the subject".

You've tried to claim that all the nasty stuff is in Scotland and, when called out on it and having been proved wrong, want to distract attention away.

There’s a particularly nasty boat laden with high explosives sunk in the Thames estuary that’s never been cleared up...

Sorry I must have missed the bit where you showed me the 1 million tons of munitions and 14,000 tons of chemical weapons dropped 6 miles off an English coast.please forgive me and show me where that happened. 

Where is the only operational nuclear weapons base in the UK? I think its 30 miles from Glasgow. 

You'd be wrong then. Have a little shuftie at RAF Lakenheath which, if Google can be relied on, is a mere 80 miles from London and a bloody long way from Scotland.

Blaming the English for everything is stupid.

However as long as Scotland is in the U.K., Westminster is the supreme authority, and therefore it should be accountable.

.

Granted there were nukes at Greenham not far from London so that wrecks my little theory of only Scotland being used for nuclear weapons but my point still stands about us being a huge chemical weapons and munitions dump.

You could also add the quarantined Scottish Island now known as Anthrax island on to that list to show how much London thinks about Northerners. 

Nice criteria there to try and exclude all the inconvenient counter evidence.

During the cold war there were multiple nuclear weapons bases located close to London. 

Brize Norton was a nuclear equipped base for a while and then for most of the cold war there were several bases not far from London including Greenham common.

Plus there is Aldermaston a mere 46 miles from London.

I relying on Wikipedia which says-

Since 1998, when the UK decommissioned its tactical WE.177 bombs, the Trident has been the only operational nuclear weapons system in British service. The delivery system consists of four Vanguard-class submarines based at HMNB Clyde in Scotland. Each submarine is armed with up to sixteen Trident II missiles, each carrying warheads in up to eight Multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs). With at least one submarine always on patrol, the Vanguards perform a strategic deterrence role and also have a sub-strategic capability.

See above I now see I was wrong on that point but tell me where is the only operational nuclear weapons base we have left in the UK?

It's 30 miles from Glasgow and 450 miles from London or Essex. 

There is, of course, the AWE at Aldermasterton. Even nearer at only 42 miles from London.

That's a good counter point, have a like. 

You are conveniently focusing on nuclear weapons and ignoring nuclear power stations which I would say in the last 70 years have been a bigger threat. Two operating in Scotland I believe, and five in England.  Dungeness isn't too far away from London. 

L Mondite got there first. I'll give him/her a like to even the score.

80% of the UK's nuclear waste is held on a dangerously decrepit site in England.

It's not been quarantined for the last 30 years.

From who?

E

Quite.  Wind is blowing from Seascale over the hills right to me tonight...

The argument that business is too London centric - think of all the commuters, central heating and particulate emissions concentrated in London not Edinburgh.  Far more English people are having their lives shortened by the infrastructure supporting income generation in London which goes into the tax coffers for the benefit of all, including in Scotland.
 

Terrorists? Might be worth monitoring who is sailing around the oil rigs or fishing in the waters? Or see who is trying to smuggle drugs or people in? 

This lot would be complaining about Porton Down if it were somewhere in Scotland.

You seriously think that civil servants based in London are buying consulting/accountancy services from accountants in Scotland?

Look at Boris's climate conference in Glasgow.  The first thing the London based people in charge think of is getting the guys who did the London Olympics to organise it.  Not whoever did the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

It's not even malice, they honestly think London is best at everything.

I'd be very surprised if that happened.  There's lots of well paid science jobs in Porton Down.  We just get the waste and to provide little islands when they want to test anthrax.

Not just Porton Down although that does win the prize for the most nasty stuff. All the Cat 4 biosafety labs are located in Southern England including several in and around London. 

What about people who want to live in Scotland and make a decent living?

Scotland hasn't been benefiting from being in the UK.  It has been losing out badly through inappropriate economic and immigration policies, lack of support for our industries, depopulation and theft of our natural resources.

I'd expect London staff to use London offices. Holyrood and other Scotland staff to use Scottish. Unless expertise dictates otherwise, say oil industry in Aberdeen etc.

Logical? 

Weak distraction technique because you can't prove that Scottish offices aren't already being used? 

Ours? Edinburgh belongs to Northumbria at the point in time I wish to freeze history. You're English my friend. The oil belongs to old Celtic highland tribes and descendents of Norwegian Viking tribes.

Unless you are freezing history at a different time? 

I'm thinking that it's possibly because of the way networking happens, there will people be in mind or people they know who'll be able to recommend somebody?  It's probably just an easier path to follow than looking somewhere new, but I agree it's Londoncentric. A retired business person I know of got more of their work via networking during the earlier days, before going international. 

Right.  So the UK government departments in London providing services which they decide are 'for the benefit of Scotland' according to GERS accounting are using suppliers in London.   

The UK raises about £60Bn in tax from Scotland, if you accept the way it accounts for oil revenue.  About half £30Bn gets sent back to the Scottish Government as a 'grant'.  The other £30Bn plus allegedly another £10Bn of 'English money' gets spent 'on Scotland's behalf' much of it in England.

So the 'deficit' question comes down to whether:

a. the spending booked as 'on Scotland's behalf' is actually for stuff that Scotland wants rather than for stuff like HS2 and Trident which we would drop if we had a choice.

b. whether Scotland would be better off having the Scottish Government provide those services we actually want in Scotland where the tax on the salaries of the civil servants and the economic benefit of their spending would go into the Scottish economy.  If the Scottish Government spends money in Scotland it gets a fair chunk of it back as tax.  Or, if we decide to outsource the service, it doesn't need to be outsourced to England, maybe we could find a cheaper supplier.

c. whether the Scottish economy would grow if decisions were made in Edinburgh rather than London and we could apply a different immigration policy and tax/trade policies designed to protect Scottish industries and bring new business to Scotland.

About as far north in England as you can get without being in Scotland.  Scotland and Ireland will be more f*cked than London if Sellafield goes wrong.

Well that's great.   No problem at all with dumping anthrax in Scotland if it only takes 40 years to be safe again.

If you find a boat doing that today it would belong to the Scottish Government.  So no change,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Fisheries_Protection_Agency

Sellafield is about the same distance from Scotland as Edinburgh is from England. Does that mean you're practically in England Tom?

Not according to stuff like facts.

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D8yFQC6IuDk/XUIkX2XeWRI/AAAAAAACHWo/0e0xW8QUMRc2...

It was never dumped there and it was never considered to be 'no problem at all'. It was an uninhabited island, requisitioned from the owner and since returned. A few Scottish sheep were disadvantaged. Meanwhile at about the same time, the MOD requisitioned a whole village evicted 160 residents and never gave it back, despite promising otherwise. Can you guess where that village was? (give you a clue; wasn't Scotland).

The location of the anthrax testing was down to wartime expediency, not a plot to victimise the Scots.

When you say 'much of it in England' the actual figure you're looking for is around 12%, meaning Scotland is still quids in and the rest of your post is irrelevant.

Just like the nerve gas/radioactive waste/munitions in the Clyde estuary.  The radium dumped in the Forth and only now being cleaned up.   The decades old nuclear subs with their reactors still fueled tied up in a dock in Rosyth and of course the occasional accidental release of radioactivity from the sub base.

The MOD piss all over Scotland and they find money to buy new nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers but not to clean up their mess.   If you did the maths as a resident of Scotland the chances of getting killed by a nuclear accident at an MOD facility or poisoned by some crap leaking from one of their dumps are probably a fair bit higher than those of getting nuked by the Russians.

Can you imagine if a civilian agency suggested dumping nuclear waste into the Clyde Estuary and not documenting where it was or monitoring it.   And then said - oh yeah we'll chuck in a few tonnes of nerve gas too and just to make it interesting a few thousand tonnes of unstable explosives.  Because it is a really good idea to mix explosives with nuclear waste and nerve gas.  And if that's not enough we will sail nuclear submarines over the top of it all.

You means it's a devolved power, something you already control and can't blame the English for? No need for independence then.

I give in Tom, you're completely correct. There's no decades old nuclear subs with their reactors still fuelled tied up in Devonport, no nuclear waste being shipped from Scotland to England for storage, no nuclear weapons being assembled at Aldermaston, no chemical weapons and explosives dumped off the coasts of Cornwall, in the Solway Firth (it does have an English side you know) and in the North Sea, no contaminated munitions dumps in Gosport, Cumbria, Wiltshire and Shropshire, no bombing ranges near Lincolnshire, no tanks driving all over Salisbury Plain, no artillery ranges near Warcop or Otterburn, no chemical weapons being disposed of at Porton Down.

This bridge between Scotland and Ireland, if it finally got built and was ready in say 15 years. It would be like France financing a bridge between Italy and Greece

E

Something more factual. 

https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/the-great-war-clean-up/3009456.arti...

If you think it's bad in scotland, try a ww1 battlefield. Notice in the article it was a treaty formed in London that banned the dumping at sea. 

https://greece-italy.eu/discover-project/multimodal-sustainable-transport-s...

Truth is often stranger than fiction. No bridges though! 

surely the oil belongs to the people who worked to build and operate the rigs.  That definitely includes a lot from NE England including myself!

Working up there was a wonderful education for understanding broad accents, West coast, Glasgow, Brummie/Black country, Cockney etc etc etc.  

I hope the canny scots will pay me a pension for the years I spent up there

I'm sorry but the fact that Westminster and the London establishment also treats many regions of England like sh*t is completely irrelevant to the question of whether Scotland should put up with it.

It's like saying you can't complain about getting punched in the mouth because the guy punched five other people and they didn't mind.

I think you will find I can blame the English for pretty much anything.

Maybe. But it shows your anti-English paranoia above to be bollocks. 

*Our* nerve gas and nuclear waste. "British Armed Forces", remember? Protecting British citizens yes? Even you?

FFS.   When it gets to the point people are defending dumping thousands of tonnes of explosives next to nerve gas and nuclear waste in the Clyde estuary things have got way beyond a joke.

A gram or two of Novichok pretty much shut down an English town and these cretins dumped tonnes of nerve gas mixed in with nuclear waste and high explosives.

They should be in jail.  You don't have to be a genius to figure out that high explosives don't belong near nerve gas and nuclear waste.   You also don't need to be a genius to realise that you don't want people that allow it governing your country.

Quite so. No one has, however, so all good. 

Surely not...

No one is defending it as such. Just pointing out your attacks on the English are rather misdirected in this case.

Although I would point out the intention was the munitions and chemical agents was they werent being dumped in the estuary but instead into the deep dyke further out. That said it seems to be the case that those doing the dumping sometimes did dump closer inland against orders.

For the chemical weapons the ones dumped in the dyke were those supposed to break down in seawater although this didnt turn out to be the case with mustard gas. The really vicious stuff (mostly captured from the Germans) was dumped further out in the atlantic.

Whereas your stance is to blame the five other people who've been punched in the mouth for punching you, based purely on your prejudice against them.

I'll make sure to vote out the government of *checks notes* 1973 at the earliest opportunity.

If I didn't dislike Scottish people and think they had a chip on their shoulder over historical wrongs that no one in the current living generations had a control over, before... I sure as hell do now.

You are literally a bad parody

You might want to avoid the generalisations or you sound as bad as Tom.  As a whole,  Scots live up to their positive reputation - educated, open, measured and competent - in my experience.

Unfortunately I think he isn't

But that's the thing most Scots aren't like TiE at all. Yeah ask them a leading question about if they think Scotland should be independent, they go; och aye, why the f*** not, we can give it a go, can't be any worse etc.. But most aren't excited about it at all.  

You can have a protest about indef2 in the central belt, housing the vast majority of Scotland's population within an hour's drive and you'll get a very small proportion of Scotland's population. 

The same with religious and cultural clashes of rangers and Celtic..  there are a very small number (a few pub fulls) who take it very seriously, but most don't give a $hit. 

99% of Scots are happy just to crack on with life. Just like everyone else.

That was my point... He's giving Scots a bad name. 

Exactly. Anyone reading this might think he was the voice of everyone north of the border. He isn’t. He’s loud and obnoxious and xenophobic. It’s laughable. 
 

He’s the Nigel Farage of Scotland. 

Meanwhile, the Queensferry Bridge turns out to be a death trap in mildly cold and stormy weather, collecting ice on the cables then shedding it onto vehicles below.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-51456296

No doubt a fault of the Westminster government and not Holyrood...

come now, thats a little harsh!

He’s the Nigel Farage of Scotland. 

Haha perfect!! Wee Gobby Fergus Farage aka Tom In Edinburgh

If a Boris statue is erected , I will delight at every pigeon that  craps on it.

Ice build up is a general problem with that kind of bridge in certain conditions.  There were a bunch of bridges in England shut too, and the bridge between Denmark and Sweden.    Compared with the old Forth Road Bridge which was regularly shut for high winds the new one is great.

https://www.newcivilengineer.com/archive/bridge-brilliance-falling-ice-10-0...

Yeah except the slip road totally sucks. People don’t know how to use it.

Generally they get shut *before* they start shelling traffic with potentially lethal lumps of ice...  Seems to me a major embarrassment to have got that wrong if as you say ice build up on cable stayed bridges is well known or “a general problem”...

This is why support for independence is at 52% in the latest opinion polls, the SNP have won every national election for at least 10 years and AUOB marches can put 200,000 people on the streets of Edinburgh.

The way the UK government are throwing £5 million at unionist advertising and have the unionist media churning out SNP bad stories on overdrive suggests they are scared.

Not really, it is a relatively new bridge and they are installing sensors.  Like it says in the article it is hard to test this stuff because the conditions hardly ever happen.

It's quite funny that the leader of the Tories in Scotland is stirring this sh*t today about how incompetent the SNP are for building this bridge when the day the bridge opened he was bragging about being the convener of the parliamentary committee which selected the design.

The Oresund bridge closed for 2 hrs due to technical problems, cameras i believe, as they don't run trains and cars unless they can observe them. Nothing to do with the weather or its design. 

One poll out of how many, over the last how ever long? I presume you'll just ignore all those where support was under 50%?

That's a vote for a party, not a referendum. 

The reality is this. Boris Johnson won't allow a referendum. Unless he does something catastrophically wrong he will be prime minister for the next 10 years. It will take at least 1 year of a new government to decide on a 2nd referendum. 1-2 years to implement, and if Brexit is anything to go by 2-3 years to actually happen. That's about 15 years away and only if the latest polls are wrong. The latest polls show a lead for no. 

In 15 years you may have changed your mind, reached a certain age and become a Tory.  

I predict he won’t last this term out as pm, he will be so awful that the tories will dump him

^ this

Realistically Scotland is of more interest to NATO with its controlling position in the North Atlantic and the North Sea than NATO is to Scotland since an invasion of or attack on Scotland, NATO member or not, would be viewed as an intolerable threat to bordering England and other North Sea members.

I see no reason why Scotland couldn't join NATO anyway and Brexit has knocked down most of the hurdles to EU membership for a secessionist Scotland.

jk

Without some sort of black swan event Johnson, he'll get at least 7 years. The glaring failure of brexit by 2024 to deliver anything but widespread pain will be someone else's fault, easily dismissed as such with the press so complicit.

jk

I agree with jkarran. I cannot see any chain of events that would lead to Johnson not completing at least one term.

The reality is that if there isn't a referendum and the SNP win the 2021 Holyrood Election convincingly there's going to be a confrontation.

The reality is that no-deal Brexit is going to be such a disaster when the transition period ends that support for Indy will be way over 50% next year.   If the Dems win in the US the whole Trump centric strategy of the Tories is going to look really stupid.

I'd be so bold as to stake £5 on it with you I reckon his judgement is so bad that there will be a scandal which will force his resignation.

With Labour about to indulge itself in a civil war over "trans rights", Boris is probably set fair for the next election already.

Boris and the Tories are not "Trump centric" (you're aware of the recent Hauwei decision?), and would deal fine with a Democratic president.   

Indeed, given that US politics is further right than UK politics, a Democratic president would be pretty much in line with the Tories.

Just to be clear I'm not saying the Tories will lose the next election, with the way that Labour is carrying on (anyone see McLuskey on Peston last night?) they'll win. I am saying that the tories will replace Johnson as his personal credibility will become so damaged.

Boris and Trump are funded by the same Republican donors.    The Democrats are not going to be friendly towards him,  more likely they'll get really stuck in to the prosecutions that Trump has being blocking and some of the leads will implicate the whole Brexiteer gang. 

The Democrats will probably go back to Obama's policy of prioritising a comprehensive trade deal with the EU and the UK will be left hanging. 

https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2020/02/11/scotland-the-dump-2/

Nice picture.
Amuses me that they've published it in the Arts section

Re the Queensferry crossing, the newest of the Forth bridges.

The problem of ice shedding started with a lack of oversight from the Scottish (SNP) government. After problems became apparent the Government promised to have sensors installed by last year.

We're still waiting.

This is one of Scotland's most important roads and it seems incredible that a design prone to ice accretion was given the go ahead in the first place. Installing sensors will not solve the problem, obviously, but will only reduce the risk to motorists. Who knows how much the sensors will cost and whether removal of ice when the bridge is closed will be quick or even practical.

It's ok to heartily dislike Brexit, but, sorry, this is conspiracy-theory lunacy. 

From the map its much worse than it says on Wikipedia as it was 1 million tons of munitions, 250,000 tons of nerve gas, 120,000 tons of chemical weapons, 4 tons of nuclear waste that were dropped in the sea 6 miles off the Scottish coast. And since then 5000 phosphorus flares have washed up on shore.

A quote from the comments section-

And we wonder why we are top of the poll for just about every Western disease: cancer; heart disease; neurological illnesses. I was laughed at by Unionists (and others) when I mentioned these facts about weapons dumping some time ago, and how that might well affect our health. 

Which would have to be a pretty spectacular one; there have been a continual stream of, er, "misjudgements" by Boris that he has survived without a scratch. I wonder if there are any takers for your £5?

Not on the map but in the comments section two sailors state how tons of everything from paint to weapons was always routinely dumped off the Isle of May prior to entering Rosyth by returning Royal Navy ships for years !! And off the Ayrshire coast. 

I've no idea about how long it was shut last week but according to the BBC it has been shut 'numerous times' by ice buildup.   The Professor of Civil Engineering from Aarhus University that specialises in ice on bridges is a lot more moderate in his comments than the Tory politicians that know f*ck all about the subject.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-51473419

That isn't in any way limited to scotland though, is it? The area around ports of all sorts has historically been a massive dump.

In fact the main takeaway from that map for me is that we're a lot better at dealing with waste than we were 50-75 years ago.

I'll take that, with luck it'll still buy one of us a half when we come to redeem it

Everyone knows his judgement and character is terrible from the security services down to his various betrayed families. Like Trump, he's teflon, his party won't touch him with that majority. The press won't and the brexit electorate (all any government will need with a little careful gerrymandering) won't because they're all complicit in the mess he makes. To depose him we all need to own our mistakes from the humble voter facing the consequences of their actions to the press barons who urged us on and the donors who bought this government, powerful people who need to maintain the lie Johnson is bound to in order to secure their return. No chance.

jk

I don't know tbh. 

It would be interesting to see a similar map of England to see how they compare or if indeed there is much comparison at all. 

Looks like Sajid Javid's decided it's a "Bridge Too Far"- amongst other things

Because ice accretion in very specific sets and relatively rare set of circumstances is way down the list of priorities when you are choosing a bridge design.    It isn't something that happens every time it snows e.g.  there was no problem in the 'Beast from the East' storm,   The got a good bridge for reasonable price and one that addresses the problems with high winds that frequently closed the original bridge.

If you want a river crossing that will work in all possible weathers then you need a tunnel and they didn't want to spend that kind of money.

Here's one of UK nuclear sites: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fstatic.guim.co.u...

'We' appear to have 5 times as many as 'You'.

The SNP asked questions in parliament about the Beaufort’s Dyke dump last week.  They don't know where half the stuff is and they don't monitor it.   You'd think that 14,500 tonnes of phosgene gas and a couple of tonnes of radioactive waste plus massive quantities of high explosives would be worth keeping an eye on.   Unless you were scared that if you found out they were leaking you'd need to do something incredibly expensive to sort the problem and quite likely get sued.

A civilian agency that was trying to get a licence to put a nuclear repository in geologically stable rock under a mountain would get all kinds of questions and if they went on to say 'Oh yeah, we'll fill it up with nerve gas and unstable explosives as well, and then we'll not bother watching it' I very much doubt it would get approved.

The MOD needs to start facing up to its environmental responsibilities.  Even if that means not buying new weapons for a while or firing a bunch of overpriced suits in Whitehall.   We are in greater risk from some of these things than we are from Russia.

According to the public register of licensed nuclear sites:

http://www.onr.org.uk/regulated-sites.htm

2 in Wales

6 in Scotland

28 in England

Also worth noting that all spent fuel from Welsh and Scottish reactors will be transported to England for storage, as will submarine reactors and warheads for decommissioning.

Now yes thankfully. 50 years ago maybe not or, more accurately, they would have been told to dump it in the sea assuming the "nuclear repository" was low grade waste and the nerve agents were on the less vicious end of the spectrum. Even then they went for dumping the really vicious nerve agents way, way out to sea.

Dont suppose you have some evidence for this threat? How, exactly, is it manifesting itself?

"In Denmark, the Oresund Bridge has had to close numerous times under similar circumstances"

It doesn't actually say when, how long for or how many times.. I've never heard of it shutting due to ice, it can be -15 and 1/2metre of snow coming down and the adjacent airport closes, but the bridge remains open. 

However let's say you are right and pretend the bridge is always closing, why did Scotland's designers not do something to mitigate it? 

The exact same way Fukushima, Three Mile Island and Chernobyl manifested themselves before the day it all went wrong.

Because...

Because, as the Uni Prof from Denmark says it is a low probability event.  It is not something that happens every time it snows, we've had worse snow without the ice problem.

The other factor this week is the second carriageway on the old bridge is getting resurfaced.  Usually they could have opened that to cars/lorries as a workaround.   It's actually a pretty robust system.

Everyone agrees with you... Dumping stuff in a big hole in the sea and running away is bad. It's your assertion that it's because London hates the Scottish which people are arguing against. Get over yourself. 

So you are saying they were happy to build something inferior with known defects, will this be the first of many under an snp led independent Scotland? 

Not SNP led but...........https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-38921614

Don't be a dick.   It is totally rational to spend £1.3 billion on a bridge which might need to shut in extreme weather rather than twice as much for a tunnel which wouldn't.  It is a completely standard way to build a bridge used in many places in the world.

If you get all your information about Scotland from the press you'd think all these projects were  disasters.  If you actually live in Scotland you drive across that bridge and you think this is really cool and far better than the old one used to be.  Same with driving to Glasgow and it is motorway all the way instead of a chunk of the old A8 in the middle.  Or you visit someone in the new QE hospital in Glasgow and compare it to the old Southern General and Victoria Infirmary and think it is f*cking brilliant where the press paints it as some kind of death trap.   That's why the SNP keep winning elections.

I don't think London hates the Scottish people.   I think London isn't interested in Scotland and the people who live there behave quite rationally based on a world view which revolves around London.

I think the Tories are starting to hate the SNP, you can see it in their language in the commons e.g. referring to the SNP MPs as 'those people' and the intensity of the lying about Scotland which is going on.   They don't like having their failures in England compared to relative success in Scotland and they don't like the Scottish Government standing up to them and questioning the limits of their authority.  

Phosgene decomposes to basically harmless byproducts in water, the best thing that could happen to it is staying right where it is, leave it to rot. It's not a problem money can fix, quite a bit of the stuff was dumped at serious risk to those involved because it was dangerously unstable even back then. 70 years in the sea will have calmed some of it down but mostly it'll just be buried in contaminated sludge which would be better left disturbed by digging for the bombs or the inevitable releases as they're disturbed.

Realistically there is nothing can be done about it other than leave it alone, deal with what little washes up as and when it does.

It's not just a Scotland/Irish Sea thing, there are untouchable WWII era disasters waiting to happen in the Thames and elsewhere too.

jk

Derek Mackay has written a letter of complaint to ebay because the Wii Gameboy he received was not what he was expecting.

Looking deeper (sorry) it appears the nuclear waste is 2t of lab equipment, luminous dials etc encased in concrete in steel drums.

Only recorded chemical agent is phosgene (water soluble) no mention of nerve agents (which the UK hadn't developed in WW2).

Plus a massive amount of explosives/incendiaries..

As everyone agrees, not good for the environment and you'd rightly be prosecuted if you did it today. At the time chucking it into the nearest convenient deep water trench was seen as acceptable.

It isn't as such. Recent surveys show no trace of chemicals agents, radiation above whats accumulated pretty everywhere else in the Irish sea or explosive residues in the area. It's a shit state of affairs, but attempting to clean it up would be unfeasible, as well as being massively more dangerous than leaving it alone.

It's just one more bit of man made pollution in the seas that been accumulating over the lsst couple of hundred years, not some genocidal plot by the evil English.

Edit: jkarran beat me to it 😁

If they knew there was an icing risk why wasn't it observed before vehicles were damaged. The reality is they either didn't know or ignored it. 

The whole bridge thing is utter nonsense. A distraction technique from a stagnant economy and the fumbling anxiety of facing the practical consequences of Brexit. Putting aside the structural issues, there is no viable commercial case for such a bridge and the small matter of Irish reunification looms on the horizon. Ireland might want a say in all of this. We'll see many more of these hyperbolic promises and gestures aimed at Scotland particularly from this government, as it tries to hold together a broken union and ignore the fact they are now governing Scotland without the consent of Scottish voters.

The snp win because there is no competent opposition. 

Can you link the indef2 results? 

The Scottish Parliament did not give consent to the Withdrawal Agreement. Same for Stormont.

The long-held politician convention that the central government doesn’t legislate on devolved matters without the consent of the devolved administration has been obliterated to pieces.

perhaps he didn't want to be the Airborne Carpet?

quite a lot of luminous dials and meters at Drigg too - WW2 military radio and electronic stuff plus Larkspur stuff used into the 80s that had to be seen at night and subsequently got rid of

but compared to the fate of the girls whp painted those dials and licked their brushes and were forgotten ...

I bet that there have been clock and watch makers in Scotland who have used radioactive paint in the past