Politics Thread!

[gilesgoat]

<intermezzo>

I think we are arrived "at a critical point" .. "Green and shit and all the rest" .. ok check this out, I just bought a TRAIN TICKET, return, from Carmarthen to Stansted Airport ..

.. costs THE SAME ( actually MORE if I removed the checked-in luggage ) than a FLIGHT RETURN TICKET from Stansted to ITALY !

One hundred and something pounds for a TRAIN !

Same amount for a FLIGHT !

But I tell you what "there are MORE people ( jam packed ) in that flight than on UK trains !!"

They have to do something about those train prices !!!

</intermezzo>

[Rhythm]

In Tory news we're seeing MPs rail against "15 minute cities" by citing conspiracy theories in Parliament.

And talk about an enormous misunderstanding. The concept of a 15 minute city is that, for people who live in cities, all amenities (schools, dentists, doctors, supermarkets etc) should be within a 15 minute walkable distance. That's it.

City planners will be encouraged to create Low Traffic Networks (preventing people using cars on small local streets to bypass main routes) in order to boost numbers on people who walk or cycle. This all means air quality improves, local high streets get business boost (people walking/cycling buy more than car users), streets become somewhere that kids can play safely and car users get decreased traffic to deal with.

All sounds pretty fucking great to me. But to Tories it's a plan that will "trap people in their homes and cause untold economic damage".

What the actual fuck problem do people have with being given options that mean they don't have to use their cars?

[zip accident]

local high streets get business boost (people walking/cycling buy more than car users)

I have never seen that, at supermarkets car users fill the boots of their cars, walkers and cyclists can carry far less.

What the actual fuck problem do people have with being given options that mean they don't have to use their cars?

Some people like driving, crazy, but apparently true.

[Rhythm]

local high streets get business boost (people walking/cycling buy more than car users)

I have never seen that, at supermarkets car users fill the boots of their cars, walkers and cyclists can carry far less.

Tautological argument. Of course you'd see car users packing more than cyclists. What you don't see is how many repeat visits those cyclists are making.

Plus the model of what a cyclist even is changes when you make everything accessible. We're not talking high-speed MAMILs on road bikes here. The concept is about making it safe for everyone to get around. That old adage of "cycling should be safe for everyone from 8-80" is the key goal.

But think about the high street rather than places served by car parks. If you're passing a shop in a car you're *much* less likely to stop because something in a shop window has caught your attention. And you're much less likely to be in a town centre anyway because why wouldn't you just go to the big hypermarket and get a bootful of stuff from the same shop? Cyclists and pedestrians passing shops are more likely to spend money there. Where a shop might have a bay or two outside the front for cars, that's enough room for 20 bikes.

What the actual fuck problem do people have with being given options that mean they don't have to use their cars?

Some people like driving, crazy, but apparently true.

People come to enjoy driving, sure, but most get into it in the first place because they're not given adequate other options. But even then that's not the argument. It's the perpetuation of the myth that by restricting car usage you're "controlling" people, which is nonsensical.

Forgive me if I've misunderstood but I'd say walking and cycling are far less restrictive to "personal freedom" than a system where you can't even start your vehicle without making you're you've passed a test, taxed the vehicle, insured the vehicle and where you're about to run the vehicle past several ANPR cameras.

[gilesgoat]

Should also mean you'd have to open "A ton of more business" because if everything needs to be in a radius of 15 mins walks, you'd need "N copies" of the same stuff each one within a 15 mins walk radius ?

Like, if someone lives within 1 hour walk of something ,then you need to split that 1 hour in 15 mins intervals which means you'll need 4 shops, 4 dentists, 4 whatever to cover all that 1 hour walk radius ?

[zip accident]

Should also mean you'd have to open "A ton of more business" because if everything needs to be in a radius of 15 mins walks, you'd need "N copies" of the same stuff each one within a 15 mins walk radius ?

Like, if someone lives within 1 hour walk of something ,then you need to split that 1 hour in 15 mins intervals which means you'll need 4 shops, 4 dentists, 4 whatever to cover all that 1 hour walk radius ?

It's worse than that, ground is effectively two dimensional, so you need 16, not just 4.

[KlaxonCow]

It's worse than that, ground is effectively two dimensional, so you need 16, not just 4.

Ah, but it's a radius of 15 minutes, so we're really talking about circles and circle packing here:

[zip accident]

It's worse than that, ground is effectively two dimensional, so you need 16, not just 4.

Ah, but it's a radius of 15 minutes, so we're really talking about circles and circle packing here:

If you're in the triangles, you are out of range?

Whose 15 minutes is it anyway? Since my stroke I walk slower than most, where I used to be above average.

[KlaxonCow]

If you're in the triangles, you are out of range?

Well, yes, that's "the circle packing problem" in a nutshell. It just cannot be done perfectly.

So, in practice, what you would have to do is make each circle have a radius of, say, 14 minutes*. So the little triangles are actually within a 15 minute radius as well... and, yes, we'd have some overlap of the circles, but we'd be making sure that every inch is within range.

(* Okay, that's just a guess. To do it properly, of course, you'd have to crack out 3.141592 and do some maths.)

It's worth considering that this problem would also be how you'd work out where to put mobile cellular towers, in order to get full coverage. Good "circle packing" is more of an issue than you might initially imagine.


And, yes, I was also going to comment that "15 minutes" is not a unit of distance. I walk 5km to work and 5km back (because, at work, I just sit at a desk all day long, so I walk to work to get daily exercise). I walk faster than most people because of this. So my "15 minutes" is likely bigger than most people's.

Indeed, to my mind, as I'm used to walking one hour into work and an hour back, 15 minutes sounds... much too small a radius to me. These people who came up with this don't actually do much walking, do they? Come on, half an hour is a good radius (as it makes a roundtrip a nice round hour).

[gilesgoat]

It's worse than that, ground is effectively two dimensional, so you need 16, not just 4.

Ah, but it's a radius of 15 minutes, so we're really talking about circles and circle packing here:

And if I stand correct that problem has NO KNOWN SOLUTION in 4 dimensions, but does have "easy solutions" in 5 and above ( or IIRC there are again some 'dimensional holes' where they cannot find solutions ).

[KlaxonCow]

And if I stand correct that problem has NO KNOWN SOLUTION in 4 dimensions

Yup.

Although, of course, it becomes "sphere packing", rather than "circle packing", in three dimensions. I don't know what a sphere is called in four dimensions - but as a cube is called a "hypercube", then let's call it a "hyper-sphere".

But, yeah, you're right. Which is why I brought this up. It's a more complicated problem to solve, than you might have initially thought.

[gilesgoat]

And if I stand correct that problem has NO KNOWN SOLUTION in 4 dimensions

Yup.

Although, of course, it becomes "sphere packing", rather than "circle packing", in three dimensions. I don't know what a sphere is called in four dimensions - but as a cube is called a "hypercube", then let's call it a "hyper-sphere".

But, yeah, you're right. Which is why I brought this up. It's a more complicated problem to solve, than you might have initially thought.

It's STILL and always called "sphere packings" .. in math a "N-sphere" starts with "dimension 2" "a circle", "dimension 3" "the sphere" and from 4 upwards is the "N-hypersphere" or "N-dimensional-sphere".

The case "2" ( circle ) is still a N-dimensional "sphere".

https://mathworld.wolfram.com/SpherePacking.html

Oh turns out there's "Circle Packing" too as a problem by its own ..

https://mathworld.wolfram.com/CirclePacking.html

Also : https://mathworld.wolfram.com/Hypersphere.html

[KlaxonCow]

I just want to say "well done" to Gary Lineker for saying what needs to be said about the immigration policies, and having the integrity and endurance to not be bullied into retraction by press and ministers trying to force him to retract and bringing up irrelevancy, as far as I'm concerned, about BBC neutrality policies.

Because, like, that would only apply to Gary Lineker when he's on the screen, presenting Match of the Day, as a BBC presenter. It should not, I feel, apply to him as a private citizen on Twitter.

Selling human beings to Rwanda is a form of slavery.

If Rwanda was paying to have these people given to them, then everyone would instantly see this as what it is: the slave trade.

But what's going on here is that exact same act, the difference is that it's a negative price. Human beings are being bought and sold as "property" - where the UK has no claim of "ownership" over these people. So they are being kidnapped and then sold - with a negative price - to Rwanda.

The Tories are, in effect, re-introducing the slave trade to the world. Un-abolishing slavery.

They claim they're fighting modern slavery. But this is a "fight fire with fire" version of that, as it is, in fact, a variant of modern slavery itself.

Rwanda is being paid money to take human beings. People who, by definition, the UK has no claim of "ownership" over - so this is kidnap and this is "rendition".

[Mat]

Yeah, those Tories saying stuff like "Gary Lineker offends me like a person because my Grandma escaped Nazi Germany!", they really need to look in the mirror and have that Mitchell & Webb "Are we the baddies?" moment.
Like, I feel totally comfortable saying that Netanyahu's government in Israel is fascist. Doesn't matter that Israel is the home of Judaism. Call out evil when you see evil.

And it winds me up when colleagues start buying into the nationalistic rhetoric being spewed by the company I work for, effectively saying "They're taking our jobs / benefits!" while sitting comfortably on upwards of £50K a year, never having known poverty or hardship in their lives at all.

"But we have to take care of our own first!"
Look, it may sound like child-like, naive logic, but immigrants/refugees are human beings. They ARE our own.

"But our economy's in the shitter!"
Yeah, whose fault is that, you fucking Brexiteer numpties?

CUNTS. The lot of them.

[KlaxonCow]