I don't think the speed would be an enormous problem; the legal (powered) speed limit for e-bikes in the UK is essentially the same as when the C5 was new, at 25km/h. So as long as you stick with a stock EU/UK standard controller you should be fine.
And you'd get a fantastic amount more grunt uphill and a longer range with a modern battery and motor.
The larger vans used by tradespeople in the UK, like a full size Ford Transit, would be fine with those loads (though I agree I wouldn't stick a dead deer in one as they're harder to hose out than a pickup bed). 10ft long loadspace, 1400kg payload, plenty of room for couches, beds and things. They're quite different beasts than the smaller kind like a minivan with removable seats. Plus it rains so much here that having a roof on is generally an advantage.
There are some pickups here, having said that: more rural utilities people, or landscapers who move lots of dirt, or farmers, might have one. They tend to be smaller than an F-150, but then everything's smaller in Britain including the roads...
Yes, though I'd be careful about assuming that votes are Conservatives <-> Reform on a left-right median voter model. The other aspect that Reform has (and will have at least until it forms a government) is anti-system/populist credentials. Labour had a little of that last time (they are a deeply establishment party, especially under current leadership, but they were coming off a period as very public opposition to the government and the current state of things) but will have very little next time.
It's certainly not a given that all the 2024 Reform vote would have gone to the Conservatives: a good chunk of it would have likely been disgusted abstention, another chunk to other anti-system parties (mostly of the right fringe, I suspect, but not excluding the Greens despite wild ideological differences), and likely a further (if smaller) chunk to other parties which were simply not the Conservatives (including Labour and the Lib Dems).
Edit: the best analysis on this is likely to be in the latest volume of the long-standing The British General Election of XXXX series, which has just been published online[0]. I haven't had time to look at it yet, though.
The 31 months was for literally inciting a mob to burn down a building with asylum seekers inside, in the middle of a riot. Yes, from the Internet rather than in person, and she's now very vigorous in claiming she didn't intend anyone to actually do it. But yeah. Likely criminal even in the US under the "imminent lawless action" exception.
Musk had bugger all to do with the rape gangs scandal, which broke literally years ago, and has been brought up with regularity by the newspapers here since. (For what it's worth there have also been plenty of non-Pakistani groups doing similar things and getting away with it. The main problem seems to be that no one in authority misses, or listens to, dropout teenage girls who have fallen off the radar - which makes them easy pickings for nonces.)
I don't know about the others. The sign holder was likely within the 150m buffer zone put around abortion clinics last year, though. Given the content of the sign (which just steps over the letter of the statutory prohibition not to influence patients' decisions while being entirely morally unobjectionable) I suspect it was a deliberate setup for arrest for outrage, just like the Palestine Action people. But I could be wrong.
It's perhaps also worth noting that Britain's traditions of free speech have never been as absolutist as the US (the last successful prosecution for blasphemous libel was as recent as the 70s and it's still technically a crime to advocate for a republic) but that raucous objections to government have very rarely been the target in recent centuries. The major difference in practice is that being grossly offensive isn't constitutionally protected. You're still not likely to get done for it, though.
I mean, you're supposed to call the police or Network Rail: there are placards on the (remains of the) bridge with the telephone number. But yes, it's not uncommon to have to send a train to examine the line (at slow speed, able to stop within line-of-sight) after extreme weather.
There is technology that could detect rail breaks, in the form of track circuits: feed a current into a rail, detect whether it gets to the other end (or bridge the two rails at the other end of the circuit and see if it gets back to the start of the other rail). A variation of this is commonly used in signalling systems to verify that the track is clear: if a pair of wheels is in the track section then the signal will short across the rails and make the circuit show 'occupied'.
Ultimately, though, this kind of stuff is expensive (semi-bespoke safety-critical equipment every few miles across an enormous network) and doesn't reduce all risks. Landslides don't necessarily break rails (but can cause derailments), embankments and bridges can get washed out but the track remains hanging, and lots of other failure modes.
There are definitely also systems to confirm that the power lines aren't down, but unfortunately the wires can stay up and the track be damaged or vice versa, so proving one doesn't prove the other. CCTV is probably a better bet, but that's still a truly enormous number of cameras, plus running power supplies all along the railway and ensuring a data link, plus monitoring.
His personal philosophy was very Catholic. My reading of LotR is that it is consistent with that, valorising faithfulness, the personal in place of the modern, and avoiding the temptation to sin for power. I agree it's centre-right (though idiosyncratically) but not about military capability: the orcs are the most modern military capability and they are decidedly not valorised. The central heros are a member of the rural gentry and his gardener, who barely fight. The Shire is defiantly non-military and pre-industrial.
> The Shire is defiantly non-military and pre-industrial.
The Shire stands as a symbol for a rural and peaceful life but their protected way of life is only possible because of the the military might of others and this is explicitly alluded to several times...for example in a conversation between Merry and Pippin (which I just happened to read to my kid yesterday!):
"Still there are things deeper and higher; and not a gaffer could tend his garden in what he calls peace but for them, whether he knows about them or not."
This is not entirely correct. The hobbits were very good with slings and spears and bows according to Tolkien.
Before the events of The Lord of the Rings, hobbits maintained a tradition of archery and other martial skills, partly due to past conflicts such as the Battle of Greenfields (1). By the time of the Scouring off the Shire, Merry, Pippin, and other veterans of the War of the Ring organized quickly taking up arms. According to the appendices, they managed to eliminate nearly two-thirds of Saruman’s invading force , displaying both tactical coordination and surprising courage. (Treebeard also notes this in The two towers) It’s a powerful reminder that, in Tolkien’s world, even the humblest people are capable of heroism when defending their home.
When there are multiple simultaneous elections happening in the UK you get multiple ballot papers - one per race. You then put them into separate ballot boxes. This obviously doesn't scale elegantly to the kind of ballots that go from President to dog-catcher, but you could certainly separate them into pink, blue, yellow, and white ballots and count in parallel.
You don't have to use the same system for the higher risk ballots.
A foreign state isn't going to spend millions trying to subvert the vote for the head of "Wyoming School Board 45".
When I was at university our student elections were done on computer. 20 years ago. Nobody really cared about them, it was perfectly reasonable, you'd only have to bribe/threaten 3 people to make the result whatever you wanted.
If you put the national election in the hands of 3 people though, then you have a major problem.
Carlisle is small (and not currently licensed for public use) - not an ideal place to drop a 737 if there's a choice. It's also not that far from Prestwick so may have had similar weather. Newcastle and Teesside are both on the East coast and likely to be affected by similar weather to Edinburgh given the storm coming in from the North East. The next closest will be Manchester or Leeds/Bradford, with Manchester being larger, closer to where passengers want to go (Glasgow) and further away from the storm.
There's precedent for this kind of situation to generate quite extensive investigations. An incident in 2017 where a flight from the Isle of Man to Belfast was unable to land in a storm, diverted back to the IOM, then landed in unsafe weather conditions because of insufficient fuel to divert again got a 48 page report[0], safety recommendations, and the airline being banned from the UK.
Common until a hundred years or so ago. We also don't have the jail/prison distinction that the US has, and they're all officially called "His Majesty's Prison X" so it's not a common word in British English anymore, except in US import. So "jail" is now standard if used.
And you'd get a fantastic amount more grunt uphill and a longer range with a modern battery and motor.
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