I found Bean to be the best client - but it’s gone. What’s everyone using instead?

Predictably, it’s the 15-minute-city conspiracy crap.

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said the strikes would have cost the hospitality industry £50m alone, and the suspension “shows what can be achieved by engaging and working with trade unions and transport staff, rather than working against them”.

“The result of a three-year inquiry by a group of the nation’s top academics, businesspeople and policymakers, the study warned that a generation of younger adults was being failed in particular – with 9 million having never worked in an economy with sustained average wage rises.”

So it’s not purely anecdotal then… link to the original paper is here.

“TEES VALLEY regional mayor Lord (Ben) Houchen's South Tees Development Corporation (STDC), responsible for Europe's largest brownfield regeneration project, is using Enron-style accounting to mask the remarkable deals it has struck with local businessmen and their effects on the body's finances, an examination of its latest accounts shows.

Epitomising the smoke-and-mirrors is the single most expensive project at the heart of Rishi Sunak's flagship freeport: the construction of a £113m quay on the south bank of the Tees, planned to serve green industrial companies such as the Korean wind turbine monopile manufacturer SeAH, which is building a plant next to it.”

Brexit. Benefits.

“Poll after poll has shown that the biggest reason for people not wanting to cycle is perceived danger. And anyone who has dared to ride a bike on unprotected roads will soon discover that a large part of this danger comes from pure illegality, not least the vast proportion of drivers who speed, especially on residential roads.

This neatly leads us to the other factor highlighted by the report, and its reaction to it: the howls of outrage if people politely suggest that people could perhaps be less of a danger to others when they drive.

Before the report’s launch, the only one of 10 recommendations highlighted in the media was the idea of removing the so-called tolerances in speeding offences, whereby you can currently go about 10% plus 2mph above a limit and not be penalised.”

The link to the parliamentary group report (.pdf file) is here.

“The ultimate problem is perhaps the lack of seriousness with which local authorities are regarded and the lack of seriousness with which councils are run. More than in 1890, our political culture is dominated by Westminster and Whitehall. We are an over-centralised polity. We do not take local government seriously enough to give councils significant powers and adequate resources and tax-raising abilities. And we do not take local government seriously enough for the powers and resources and revenue-raising abilities that local authorities do have to be used well.

Few take any serious interest in local government matters. An account of the government of a large city other than London will rarely get 12 paragraphs in an earnest newspaper, let alone the 12 pages of a fashionable transatlantic journal. The sort of individuals who in 1890 would manage major acquisitions and improvement projects for provincial cities as part of their civic roles are not often the local councillors of 2023. And why should they be? Local authorities have limited independence, apart from in making mistakes.

Local elections are largely treated as national opinion polls. Councils are expected to do a great deal, but with fewer resources and almost no real autonomy. This is a problem wider than Birmingham, even if the city provides a good illustration of it.”

Some footnotes from the author are here.

Abstract

As our planet warms, a critical research question is when and where temperatures will exceed the limits of what the human body can tolerate. Past modeling efforts have investigated the 35°C wet-bulb threshold, proposed as a theoretical upper limit to survivability taking into account physiological and behavioral adaptation. Here, we conduct an extreme value theory analysis of weather station observations and climate model projections to investigate the emergence of an empirically supported heat compensability limit. We show that the hottest parts of the world already experience these heat extremes on a limited basis and that under moderate continued warming parts of every continent, except Antarctica, will see a rapid increase in their extent and frequency. To conclude, we discuss the consequences of the emergence of this noncompensable heat and the need for incorporating different critical thermal limits into heat adaptation planning.

Zhao J, Xu L, Sun J, et al Global trends in incidence, death, burden and risk factors of early-onset cancer from 1990 to 2019 BMJ Oncology 2023;2:e000049. doi: 10.1136/bmjonc-2023-000049

Abstract

Objective This study aimed to explore the global burden of early-onset cancer based on the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2019 study for 29 cancers worldwid.

Methods and analysis Incidence, deaths, disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) and risk factors for 29 early-onset cancer groups were obtained from GBD.

Results Global incidence of early-onset cancer increased by 79.1% and the number of early-onset cancer deaths increased by 27.7% between 1990 and 2019. Early-onset breast, tracheal, bronchus and lung, stomach and colorectal cancers showed the highest mortality and DALYs in 2019. Globally, the incidence rates of early-onset nasopharyngeal and prostate cancer showed the fastest increasing trend, whereas early-onset liver cancer showed the sharpest decrease. Early-onset colorectal cancers had high DALYs within the top five ranking for both men and women. High-middle and middle Sociodemographic Index (SDI) regions had the highest burden of early-onset cancer. The morbidity of early-onset cancer increased with the SDI, and the mortality rate decreased considerably when SDI increased from 0.7 to 1. The projections indicated that the global number of incidence and deaths of early-onset cancer would increase by 31% and 21% in 2030, respectively. Dietary risk factors (diet high in red meat, low in fruits, high in sodium and low in milk, etc), alcohol consumption and tobacco use are the main risk factors underlying early-onset cancers.

Conclusion Early-onset cancer morbidity continues to increase worldwide with notable variances in mortality and DALYs between areas, countries, sex and cancer types. Encouraging a healthy lifestyle could reduce early-onset cancer disease burden.

After sharing the article from the London Economic about possible votes of no confidence in Mr Sunak, this is what I find on ConHome this morning:

“There comes a point in the electoral cycle when voters have simply had enough – and their cry is “kindly leave the stage”. Every bit of good news, such as the sensational upgrading of Britain’s post-Covid growth figures, is met by quibbles and qualifications that, for some reason, never greeted the bad.”

These guys are spinning so hard I want to make a joke about harnessing that motion for electricity generation.

Rishi Sunak refused to properly fund a school rebuilding programme when he was chancellor, despite officials presenting evidence that there was “a critical risk to life” from crumbling concrete panels, the Department for Education’s former head civil servant has said.

After the department told Sunak’s Treasury that there was a need to rebuild 300 to 400 schools a year in England, he gave funding for only 100, which was then halved to 50, said Jonathan Slater, the permanent secretary of the department from 2016 to 2020.

Conservative ministers more widely believed a greater funding priority was to build new free schools, Slater told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday, as pupils returned to many schools in England for the new term.

“For me as an official, it seemed that should have been second to safety,” Slater said. “But politics is about choices. And that was a choice they made.”

In the words of Brenda from Bristol “you’re joking, not another one!”

No idea how much substance there is to this.

That’s the story now; it was different in the morning.

The morning article included:

“He added: “The moment the education secretary has heard about any problem in a school, any risk to children, she has acted.

“And we have 22,000 schools in the country and there has been since that incident a huge programme going through this Raac/asbestos issue because we want to be absolutely sure that every child is safe.

“And we have then made sure as soon as we have information of any risk that something is done to mitigate that risk.”

Hunt, who later told the BBC that the government would “spend what it takes to sort out this problem as quickly as possible”, denied the problem could cause a repeat of lockdown-style teaching, where substantial numbers of children missed out on attending classes for long periods of time.”

A day is a long time in politics.

“Except that’s not the case. For the first time, British audiences get to see entire episodes of Takeshi’s Castle as it was designed to be seen by Japanese viewers. Not sneered at by Chris Tarrant, or packaged with a culturally insensitive “oriental riff” influenced theme tune. No, these are new episodes, in full, with graphics, in-studio analysis and actual rules. We even get to know the contestants, which is refreshing after decades of seeing them as, essentially, a procession of screaming crash test dummies.”

[…]

“But you know what might have been even better? Giving us the show just as it is. The success of Netflix’s Old Enough last year should be proof that global audiences are now sophisticated enough to enjoy non-scripted Japanese shows without having their hands held via the medium of jokey commentary. As fun as Romesh and Tom are, perhaps a better idea would have been a straight, subtitled version of Takeshi’s Castle. Clearly, our relationship to the show is still evolving. Maybe in another 30 years we’ll get what we actually want from it.”

Unfortunately, seems to be on Prime Video only.

“The government has given financial assistance to Birmingham, Bristol and Portsmouth to help fund their clean air zones but has refused to support London’s scheme, arguing that powers over transport and air quality are devolved to the capital.”

“In four years Mike van Erp has filmed 1,400 drivers using their phones, leading to 1,800 penalty points, £110,000 of fines — and him being assaulted by disgruntled motorists. Is he a road safety hero or just a darned nuisance? Nick Rufford joins him on patrol”

I’ve watched a few of his videos. I should be surprised that he catches so many drivers in their phones, but in and around London? Not surprised at all.