Predictions of the future

[Gee]

Thank you and i appologise for some obvious typeo's i made.

[Gee]

The problem with AI is it is fallable, its obvious achillies heal is its need for energy to be constantly fed to it, which is easier to disrupt than human robots.

[kj35]

12 minutes ago, Gee said:

Thank you and i appologise for some obvious typeo's i made.

I am a grammar Nazi and therefore feel you should be shot :-)

 

*joke everyone...us oddballs still make them*

[kj35]

On 5/27/2020 at 9:47 PM, ink said:

 

 

They are a part of this realm and cannot leave it so they want to hold you here ....... many partial truths combined with interesting lies.

 

I am happy that I 'looked' at them .... and I shall continue to do so but it is only another 'narrative' to become self dramatized within ....... but if you know that then you can read the words to find the small trues!

 

 

 

I can read it now. That weird mental block has gone. Was interesting to see that others had experienced the same block.

 

Think it can be part of my narrative now whereas if I'd got into it when you first shared it on the forum it might have become all consuming for me.  To the distraction of other things. Now I can see where it confirms or detracts. Or puts questions would be a better way of phrasing it.

 

*warning*

 

 ink is refering to a website .  Be extremely careful what you read watch or listen to there.  Ink suggested back on the old forum that no one watch videos as they seem to hold subliminal messages. I'd add ditto don't listen to the music from what I've read as it also can influence without you realising So I haven't watched or listened to either. I might do in the future but that would be under extreme caution. 

 

 

Edited May 29, 2020 by kj35
Grammar pedantry

[Orange Alert]

1 hour ago, kj35 said:

Have you considered that the police and or military could be Artificial intelligence based and drone in the future? Compassion issues would totally disappear.

 

 

[kj35]

3 hours ago, hokuspokus said:

1. We won't go to the moon despite "exciting" announcements from NASA every few years claiming the opposite

2. Every decade there will be  "10 years to save the planet " hysteria .

3. In time. The interweb will be old technology that  young people will laugh at .

4. 2050. The Labour party with Ash Sarkar as leader and Owen Jones as deputy return

   10 MPs at the general election.

It's good to capture these thoughts.  And look back. I read ingo Swann's book of predictions where he said you could only expect around 60% hit rate. Which is still incredible.  His decription of future books (kindle) as a sheet of glass with postage stamps just blew me away. 

[kj35]

15 hours ago, kj35 said:

I've read more. I'd not read this site since around last October. I think I needed to see that the facts correlate.

 

Know the facts for myself.

 

They collect knowledge and knowledge in their view is power. They don't 'create' HOWEVER and are so blinded by knowledge which gives them the bigger bigger bigger  picture therefore their insight which creates their illusion of power. This is their downfall. Creativity threatens their superiority.  They cannot create. They've lost the ability. Both physically and mentally/spiritually. This is why humanity threatens them. Whether they acknowledge that or not. 

 

They are a knowledgocracy. Informationocracy. Their masters are not 'leaders' but revered knowledge holders.  Idiots.

 

They can't even spell properly for language experts.:-)

 

Appreciate this might sound like bollocks to some people so shall continue with our fictional future shortly. 

 

Sorry . Don't want to sound 'spooky' I'm much more hopeful that there are solutions to this. 

 

 

 

 

idiots was a bit rude. I was feeling crotchety.

[kj35]

 

Bold emphasis mine

 

From the times link here : https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/comment/how-to-breathe-new-life-into-city-living

 

Roger Boyes

Friday May 29 2020, 5.00pm, The Times

 

I’m writing this in a classic garden square, built in the 19th-century age of cholera when London recognised the need for green lungs. Now, as then, clean air was a luxury. Through the iron railings that surround the square, a youngish passer-by swears at me, relishing the chance to insult a class enemy. The pandemic has exposed the gulf between the space-poor and the space-rich to create a new politics of resentment, a coarsening of discourse.

Perhaps it is too much to expect urban planners and architects to resolve these tensions. But as we inch out of lockdown it is clear that the cities we inhabit, that seemingly offered us so much choice and tolerance, have somehow let us down. The promiscuous coronavirus ran rampant in London, New York, Moscow. The same qualities that made them attractive and vibrant places turned them into hotspots for Covid-19. It turned out that a virus could be transmitted in much the same way as ideas. The essence of urban business culture was brainstorming. But in city hospitals all you hear now is talk of cytokine storms, the way that an overactive immune response can kill Covid-19 patients. The metropolitan is becoming necropolitan. Cities have turned into disease transmitters because of their density — the small apartments, the cheek-by-jowl commute — and because they are global gateways. Yet as Stephen Engblom, global cities director for a US infrastructure group, says, shutting down global networks and thinning out urban settlements is not the answer. It’s about resilience, harnessing technology, and making the public health response part of a city’s institutional DNA. “I lived in Hong Kong during the Sars epidemic of 2003,” he explains, “and witnessed the short-term response and recovery, and have long admired its ability to deliver infrastructure at a pace and scale like nowhere else.”

Good governance, then, is essential in considering the city of the future. It’s not just about the many improvisations that will be needed to make life half-way safe after the lifting of lockdown (I’ve just been offered a Covid hook which allows me to open doors without touching handles). It’s also about addressing how life has changed over the past five years, and how our urban habitat should look in the next decade. Streets left empty by the stay-at-home dogma have made critics question the point of megacities. A city stripped of its theatres, cinemas, restaurants and commerce quickly loses its attractive edge: it becomes sub-urban. Coronavirus seclusion has drawn attention to what might be called the soft underbelly of cities: the need for collective gatherings, for creative friction between people, for human touch and bodily warmth. How do you design a city that can keep these qualities alive while simultaneously bursting at the seams?

A Shell study on urban futures predicted that more than six billion people, three quarters of the projected population, will be living in cities by 2050. “We will be building the equivalent of a new city of over 1.4 million every week,” calculated the forecasting team. “The greatest growth in urban population will be in China, India, the US and sub-Saharan Africa.”

There is no stopping the rise of the megacity, whatever the zooming-in-the-shires, get-out-of-London-quick lobby may think. The solution is to make the megacity work for people, not abolish it. This is the moment to learn from the weaknesses exposed by the pandemic but also from cities that have been grappling with the problems thrown up by 21st-century living. War and disease act as social catalysts. The Black Death, which killed about half of the population of 14th-century Europe, was the first warning of what can happen when humans and animals lived in proximity in insanitary conditions. The Venetians grasped how disease could spread between continents and introduced the principle of a 40-day isolation for ships: the quarantino.

In London variants of the plague resurfaced every 20 years between 1348 and 1665. Forty outbreaks killed, each time, around 20 per cent of the London population. Then came smallpox and the bane of the 19th century, cholera and yellow fever. At first, the explanation was bad air, the miasma rising from rotting organic matter. That was the beginning of the garden squares in London, and public green spaces. And even when John Snow, the anaesthetist-turned-medical detective, discovered the connection between dirty water and cholera, the planners of green London continued their extraordinary work.

Yet it took many decades, sometimes centuries, before the lessons were absorbed into cityscapes. The very idea that scientists, doctors, urban designers and engineers could reach a consensus about how disease was spread and come up with solutions was the great unsung revolution of the 19th century. But it was a very slow one. Today, with galloping population growth and a stampede into the cities, there is no excuse for foot-dragging. There has never been so much data available about the needs of city dwellers; and brilliant Victorian civil engineers have been replaced by digital innovators.

Urban planners must begin by considering mobility — the modernity of cities is defined by speed of travel. In the 1990s an Italian physicist, Cesare Marchetti, came up with the idea of the “Marchetti hour”. Throughout history, he argued, the acceptable level of commuting was 30 minutes each way. That’s how long it took to walk across ancient Rome from wall to wall, or to walk from the Bastille to the Louvre in medieval Paris. Railways, first steam then electric, changed the distance you could cover in the Marchetti hour. The thesis still holds planners in its thrall: the physical size of cities is determined by the speed of the transportation system. When trains, and the Tube, got faster, cities developed dormitory suburbs inhabited by the wealthy: the stockbroker belt to the west of London, St Germain-en-Laye near Paris, Scarsdale outside New York. But over time, as land prices rose and transport infrastructure wore down, the Marchetti hour has become an anachronism. Many in London travel 70 minutes from home to work and the dysfunctional process of getting to the office has soured people’s attitudes to the city in general.

So the priority for planners is to take what is already being done in piecemeal fashion and turn it into a cultural marker for the future. London’s clean-air campaign was well under way before Covid-19 struck. Bicycle highways have caught on during the lockdown and are being expanded to deal with the expected return of heavy traffic when office life resumes. There will be residual distrust of rush-hour public transport. London could learn from Japan where bullet trains are cleaned at terminals in a crisp seven minutes but the power of the rail unions makes rapid innovation unlikely. And a surge in private car use would put paid to the promises of cleaning up London’s air.

That leaves urbanists with the thin but worthy option of whipping up enthusiasm for pedestrianism, scooters and the bicycle or e-bike. The city planning logic is clear, says Will Norman, London’s walking and cycling commissioner: roads and bridges have to be repurposed for two wheels and two legs. Inner London is becoming a mesh of pop-up bike lanes that are likely to stay. Copenhagen and Amsterdam are well ahead; their royals were on two wheels decades ago while ours resolutely prefer four-legged transport. Amsterdam should serve as our model for how windy, narrow streets can become push-bike heaven. Some 60 per cent of Amsterdamers use bikes every day and it has the highest density of charging stations for electric cars in the world. Since 2013 it has had a privately-operated electric car-sharing scheme.

The bicycle repair shops that have sprung up close to the London cycling routes are turning a profit. To reinvent the wheel, they need to do more: they should double up as government information centres on road safety and offer bike-riding courses for children; they should be advising on protective gear, certifying road-worthiness and not just fixing chains and tightening brakes. This does not need to wait until some sci-fi version of the future city takes shape. It should be happening now. As Mr Norman says: “You can change a city following a crisis but you have to move quickly before things go back to normal.”

Cities should not be an indeterminate space where the worse-off are transported from lousy estates, crammed like cattle into trains and deposited in workplaces where they are lucky to get a locker to stow their belongings. These lives were already blighted before Covid-19, the flipside of the vibrancy and excitement of places like Paris or New York. Blueprints of the future need to take into account not only the yearning for community and companionship, for dignity in travel and work, but also address the bone-deep fatigue of city life. Architects and designers are chipping in. The London-based interior designer Ilse Crawford suggests that apartment buildings with balconies and a central courtyard could get the right balance between the need for privacy, for pandemic safety and yet foster a sense of community. As in Naples and other Mediterranean cities, people chat over balconies and grow closer. The courtyards I remember from prewar Warsaw apartment blocks would be filled with old men playing accordions and singing partisan songs. People would throw down coins. Now they’re gated and inaccessible but there’s no reason why high-density city accommodation can’t embrace a little theatricality. “Being able to see each other is so important,” says Ms Crawford.

From scholars of urban design like Richard Florida to architects like Norman Foster, there is broad agreement that megacities will survive. Covid-19 has, however, accelerated thinking about how a sustainable city should look. The trend towards working from home, not concentrating employees in one place or assessing their performance by their physical presence, will continue and the world will be better for it. The open-plan office may give way to cubicles and with it the notion that work was more creative if boundaries between teams were broken down. It will, as so often after a plague, be a boom time for plumbers. Offices and residences will have hand-washing facilities installed near the entrance. Office canteens may require staff to place their meal order by app, collect it and take it to a solitary place to eat. It will be the death of gossip. For the most part, these are tweaks to the built environment. There have been some extraordinary pieces of design, such as a contactless pathway built in Sharjah in the UAE by the Zaha Hadid Architects group. It will lead an employee from the street to her workplace without having to touch a single surface. It could be that office redesign in general will have a knock-on effect on the skyline. The point of high-rise offices may seem less obvious. And the intrusiveness of new “smart buildings” should be a cause for concern. Entry into an office, a lift or a restaurant in China demands the surrender of a great deal of information, from face recognition to travel history. That could be coming to the West soon.

Co-working space is undergoing a rethink too. The experience of lockdown is that home — as in “working from home” — is anything but a refuge. It is, instead, a place of constant distraction with a lurking sense that big tech has moved in on our domestic set-up, mopping up huge amounts of data about our personal tastes. Some entrepreneurial spirits have understood that there has to be space again for a third dimension: reasonably priced, socially distant, away from domestic responsibilities, “work near home”. These half-way houses will feature in the city of the future.

Perhaps, rather than the End of the Office, though, we should be alarmed about the End of the West End, the death of leisure. Expensive cinemas were already under threat from streaming before the virus struck. After their long closure and delayed release of summer blockbusters, cinemas seem to be singularly unattractive. Do you want to sit in the dark for two hours surrounded by strangers? Even with a few empty chairs in between, there will be a sense of heightened risk. The Lithuanian capital of Vilnius has a drive-in cinema on a runway of its mothballed airport but whether this will survive lockdown remains to be seen. As long as Netflix gobbles up stay-at-home subscriptions, the price of a night out may seem too high. What to do with the multiplex cinemas if this turns out to be the case? One suggestion: they could be turned into digital learning centres. It will be all but impossible to survive in the city of the future without apps and greater digital fluency. Without it, social and generational divides will deepen.

As for commercial sex, the undercurrent of every big city, it has been laid waste in the Covid-19 era. Brothels, massage parlours, gay saunas are all shuttered by a fear of physical intimacy. Porn channels are doing well and some prostitutes are earning a pittance by “camming” — filming themselves for clients. But the uncertainty surrounding testing and tracing will drive off punters for a long time to come. This modern plague may usher in a new era of prudishness, a kind of Victorian values 2.0. Wilkie Collins wrote to Charles Dickens: “The morality of England is firmly based on the immorality of Paris.” Now we can’t even get across the Channel as they did for their lads’ weekends.

In drawing up his own Saudi megacity for the post-oil world, the ambitious crown prince Mohammed bin Salman sucked in every urbanist idea and came up with a one-pot wonder. Heavy-duty drones would carry people into the centre of the city — 33 times the size of New York — where they would land in a droneport and proceed by foot to their workplace. Buildings would be flexible: part office, part apartment blocks. There would be green rooftops, hanging gardens, solar panels, rainwater cleansing instead of guttering. There would be urban farms, robot home help and teachers would appear in the home as holograms. These extrapolations from ideas circulating around the tech community come across as a bit Dan Dare, with its flying taxis and super-intelligent buildings. The question is not so much whether he can afford this over-freighted project as whether it misses the point. He has identified the toys he wants but not the issues underpinning a built-from-scratch city. How much automation, how much artificial intelligence, can be tolerated by people who are heading into what will probably be a long recession? His vision proceeds from the premise that manual work is demeaning (hence the enthusiasm for robots). It’s not a productive vision but a reductive one that assumes the inhabitants (the city is called Neom) will be satisfied consumers, and out of that satisfaction will come a new pride in a modernising Saudi state.

But humans are at the heart of any city, with or without drone taxis. The great American commentator Jane Jacobs, who called herself a “city naturalist”, said the question to be asked of urban planning was: how does it promote the good life, liberty and pursuit of happiness? Crucial, she said, was that the modern city did not stamp out a sense of community. Diversity was the key: “A city cannot succeed without it — residential and commercial, racial and class, governing bodies, transport and architectural styles. Large numbers of people concentrated in small areas should not be regarded primarily as a health risk but rather as the foundation of a healthy community.”

That’s why shaping the city of the future can’t be left to an autocratic leader. In the end, behind the impressive skylines thrown up by the likes of communist China, the desire to control a city’s inhabitants trumps the need to let them breathe freely. “The least we can do,” wrote Jacobs in the 1960s, “is to respect in the deepest sense the strips of chaos that have amassed a wisdom of their own.” That’s not just a message for the young people of Hong Kong who are experiencing the dismantling of their limited democracy. It’s a warning note for everyone who believes in using surveillance tools, bulldozers and police muscle to create new contagion-proof utopias out of unruly, living, vibrant urban space.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 30, 2020 by kj35

[kj35]

 

 

Again the Times ( don't judge me leftwing liberal elite, shake your Guardian at a mail reader, they're all controlled anyway. The Times is my light reading)

 

This might not seem immediately apparent until you understand that the financial services sector is the UK's biggest GDP sector

 

This from Wiki : 

 

The service sector dominates, contributing around 80% of GDP;[41] the financial services industry is particularly important, and London is the second-largest financial centre in the world

 

 

 

Bold emphasis Mine . full link here : https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/coronavirus-set-to-transform-working-life-at-lloyd-s-of-london-and-london-metal-exchange

 

They are two of the City of London’s oldest and most arcane financial institutions and they may find that coronavirus has changed their working practices for ever.

Lloyd’s of London is the world’s oldest insurance market, established more than 330 years ago in a City coffee house. It still carries out a large part of its activities using paper contracts processed in its vast underwriting room, stretching over four floors in its flamboyant building, designed by the architect Lord Rogers of Riverside, on Lime Street in the City of London.

The London Metal Exchange is the operator of the only open outcry market left in Europe and dates back 143 years. Since March, this trading venue, known as the Ring, has been shut. It is the first time that Ring trading, usually involving about 60 traders, has been halted since the Second World War and the closure has forced the exchange to shift to fully electronic pricing of metals.

Normally up to 4,000 staff would occupy the Lloyd’s of London building

 

Lloyd’s has similarly had to cease all activities on site, shutting the underwriting room for the longest time in its history. Normally, between 3,000 and 4,000 staff would occupy the building, handling about $100 million of contracts a day.

For Hiscox, one of the market’s largest underwriters and a big advocate of modernising the system, the shutdown has meant proving that every part of the business of negotiating insurance protection can be handled electronically rather than using paper forms.

Bronek Masojada, 58, chief executive of Hiscox, said the market had shown that the electronic model works. He added that insurers were realising that office life would never be the same again. “The world of five days a week in the office, 52 weeks a year before holidays, is finished,” he said.

Mr Masojada oversaw the removal of virtually all of the insurer’s 4,000 strong workforce — including 1,750 in offices in the UK — a week before lockdown was imposed in late March.

“We now need to define what the office is for. It’s a work in progress, but I’m up for it,” he said. Mr Masojada has a loose plan that involves teams — the 200 staff who work directly at Lloyd’s, say — working three days every fortnight in the office and the rest remotely. “It would be for the teams to co-ordinate when those days are,” he said.

For LME traders it has raised questions about when, and in what form, the Ring will restart.

Simon van den Born, president of Marex Spectron, which is one of the nine member firms allowed to take part in open outcry, said that it could restart when the government allowed larger gatherings.

“I can see a correlation with sporting events being allowed to open up to the public as being used as a similar guideline for the LME floor,” he said.

Amid speculation that it is merely a matter of time before the metals market becomes all-electronic, he added: “I think it’s logical to assume that the longer the exchange leaves the floor closed the more chance there is that client behaviour changes.”

A spokeswoman for the LME said: “We, with the support of the majority of our Ring dealing members, do not currently plan to reopen the Ring until such time as it would be consistent with the government’s social-distancing guidance.” Life has also been transformed at Marsh in the UK, part of the US-based Marsh & McLennan. As a broker, the company stands between insurers providing cover and those that want to buy it.

Chris Lay, 59, the company’s chief executive for the UK and Ireland, oversees just under 7,000 employees, all of whom are working remotely.

“It’s been a time to see the world through new eyes,” Mr Lay said, adding that the process of negotiating contracts and winning new customers was being carried out remotely “perhaps more successfully than colleagues thought; electronic trading has literally doubled”. He said that Marsh’s brokers had won new customers through pitches using Zoom video conferencing and were keeping in touch with existing contacts through webinars and online meetings, including social events.

For the brokers, it has meant hosting online cooking sessions, bake-offs and wine tasting rather than quaffing drinks in one of London’s usually bustling bars as a way of building relationships.

Mr Lay, too, thinks that the world of work has changed forever. He has a “playbook” based on getting an initial 10 per cent of the workforce back into the office, moving to 20 per cent over time based on social-distancing rules but advocates flexibility. “Do we need everybody in the office, every day, 9 to 5? Probably not.”

City brokers, who formerly met up in bustling bars, now host online bake-offs

Lloyd’s has also been working on plans to reopen the building. It has identified a “pathfinder group” of about 100 or so of its 800-odd staff whose jobs are more easily carried out on site. They will be the first to return to work, followed a fortnight later by more returning in stages to get the occupancy level to no more than 25 per cent.

The market has designed a system that divides returning staff into two groups that will rotate respectively working three weeks in the office, then three weeks at home.

As part of the preparations, it has secured personal protective equipment for its 800 staff, consisting of gloves, masks and sanitiser packs, which will be sent to their homes in advance of their return.

Lloyd’s has also accelerated work on a “virtual” underwriting room, a 3D system that would replicate the experience of the real thing and facilitate trade between underwriters and brokers.

It has used virtual reality headsets with brokers overseas to show them round the room and the way it works.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 30, 2020 by kj35

[awake]

On 5/29/2020 at 8:05 PM, Gee said:

The problem with AI is it is fallable

 

Exactly. Even Cognitive AI is fallable. Both are ways to guarantee the outcome they want by taking humans out of the loop

 

Cognitive Computing	Artificial Intelligence
Cognitive Computing focuses on mimicking human behavior and reasoning to solve complex problems.	AI augments human thinking to solve complex problems. It focuses on providing accurate results.
It simulates human thought processes to find solutions to complex problems.	AI finds patterns to learn or reveal hidden information and find solutions.
They simply supplement information for humans to make decisions.	AI is responsible for making decisions on their own minimizing the role of humans.
It is mostly used in sectors like customer service, health care, industries, etc.	It is mostly used in finance, security, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, etc.

 

https://www.edureka.co/blog/cognitive-ai/

[kj35]

On 5/26/2020 at 8:50 AM, kj35 said:

People in these city domes / hubs feel secure and safe and on many levels happy as they appear to have needs met. 

 

SATISFIED.That's the word. I was searching for.

36 minutes ago, kj35 said:

 It’s not a productive vision but a reductive one that assumes the inhabitants (the city is called Neom) will be satisfied consumers, and out of that satisfaction will come a new pride in a modernising Saudi state.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[kj35]

On 5/26/2020 at 11:43 AM, kj35 said:

 

 

The human no longer has hair. New evolved human doesn't need it. Synthetic food constant uv showers to replace the sun that can't be seen in the hubs is creating a lean bald human.

What evolutionary use is hair anyway? 

 

Decorating the body with pictures and AI appendages is the norm and seen as marking out own 

 

 

 

Tick

[kj35]

Watch this hairless creep. It seems unthinkable at the minute 

[kj35]

They will find and disclose microbes on Mars.

 

This is to further wreak havoc on the religious systems which are the main barrier against world dominance as religious influence is greater to the human than any government, if they have strong faith. It will further cement scientists as our new "leaders" away from the traditional religious leaders. 

[Orange Alert]

On 6/5/2020 at 8:28 PM, kj35 said:

Tick

 

The AI controlled drone in the 1979 film StarTrek - The Motion Picture.

 

 

 

[kj35]

Trains (electric) will be the only transport left to the commoners. The more well off will use electric cars and snart motorways.Air flight will only be for the mega rich. As I said in May....see hs2 and hs1 for the blueprint of which city hubs remain. London Manchester Birmingham. Maybe Leeds.  To go abroad it will be one route out for most through eurotunnel. 

 

 

Coronavirus: Rail network to get billions from taxpayers to keep trains running

new

In March the Department for Transport unveiled a £3.5 billion rescue package for private train companies after fare income dried up because 

The rail network will be propped up by the taxpayer until at least 2022 to keep loss-making services running, it was announced today.

The Department for Transport said emergency contracts signed at the start of the pandemic would be extended for another 18 months in a multi-billion pound investment. It means that the taxpayer will take on private operators’ revenue and cost risks.

About £3.5 billion has already been spent to maintain the railway since March after passenger numbers plummeted to a fraction of pre-pandemic levels, making it financially impossible for private companies to run services. At the start of last week, trains carried just over a third of passenger numbers seen before the lockdown.

 

Train travel after lockdown

All train companies have signed up to the new deals, temporarily ending the threat that some lines will be fully renationalised by the government. They will receive up to £130 million in fees to run trains over the next 18 months.

Today’s announcement spells the end of the franchising system introduced by John Mayor’s government in the mid-90s when the railways were privatised.

Over the next 18 months the government will move to a new system of London Overground-style “management contracts” in which private companies receive a fixed fee to run services, with financial penalties for poor performance.

Ministers also insisted that it would herald long-awaited reforms to rail fares, simplifying the system to prevent passengers paying too much for tickets.

Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, said: “The model of privatisation adopted 25 years ago has seen significant rises in passenger numbers but this pandemic has proven that it is no longer working.

“Our new deal for rail demands more for passengers. It will simplify people’s journeys, ending the uncertainty and confusion about whether you are using the right ticket or the right train company.

 

 

“It will keep the best elements of the private sector, including competition and investment, that have helped to drive growth — but deliver strategic direction, leadership and accountability.”

In March, the DfT unveiled a £3.5 billion rescue package for private train companies after fare income dried up when lockdown began.

Previous franchise contracts — in which private companies took on the revenue risk to run a line for up to a decade — were replaced with “emergency measures agreements”, ensuring the state covered all overheads needed to keep trains running.

These agreements expired on Sunday and the government announced today that they would be replaced with “emergency remedial measures agreements” (Ermas) which will last until March 2022.

It is likely that it will cost the taxpayer billions of pounds although the government refused to be drawn on the exact cost, saying it would depend on the number of fare-paying passengers being attracted to the railway.

Passenger numbers dropped to 4 per cent of pre-pandemic levels in April before recovering to as much as 42 per cent earlier this month. Numbers were at 36 per cent at the start of last week.

Fees handed to private companies to run services will be capped at 1.5 per cent of total costs, with sources saying that between £2.3 million and £6.8 million will be spent every four weeks. This suggests a total payment to private companies of up to £130 million over the course of the agreements.

The DfT described the announcement as “the prelude” to a white paper which will respond to the recommendations of Keith Williams, the Royal Mail chairman, who was commissioned by the government to carry out a review of the railways two years ago.

Mr Williams said: “These new agreements represent the end of the complicated franchising system, demand more from the expertise and skills of the private sector, and ensure passengers return to a more punctual and co-ordinated railway.

“I am ensuring the recommendations I propose are fit for a post-Covid world, but these contracts kick-start a process of reform that will ensure our railways are entirely focused on the passenger, with a simpler, more effective system that works in their best interest.”

Matthew Gregory, chief executive of FirstGroup, which owns four franchises, said the Ermsa could lead to “a more appropriate balance of risk and reward for all parties”.

He added: “We have long advocated for a more sustainable long-term approach to the railway, with passengers at its centre, and we look forward to working constructively with the DfT to make this a reality.”

However, Mick Cash, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union, said “private rail companies are a waste of time and a waste of money”.

He insisted that “public ownership is the only model that works”.

 

Edited September 21, 2020 by kj35

[kj35]

President Markle.......democratic party after nicking the Californian governorship from Arnie.

 

Now I've said it you won't be able to unsee it

Edited September 24, 2020 by kj35

[kj35]

On 5/25/2020 at 10:56 AM, kj35 said:

Having read two of David's books last year I went on holiday with the family and woke up in a most extraordinary and sudden fashion. Looking back there had obviously been a slow burn to awakening before that. But this was a sledgehammer.  

 

During that holiday I started making the following predictions purely based on the totalitarian tiptoe that David talks of. I didn't meditate on these. Nothing. It just started to seem like one obvious future outcome if we 

 

2. There will be no more offices in city centres. People will live and work in home hubs which are converted office blocks of the past 

 

monday september 28 2020

New

CORONAVIRUS

Coronavirus: Office conversions mean shops have shut for good

Nearly 14,000 high street stores have been forced to close this year — 25 per cent more than the same period in 2019

ALAMY

Tom Howard

Monday September 28 2020, 12.01am, The Times

The make-up of Britain’s high streets is expected to permanently change as landlords increasingly seek to convert abandoned shops into offices and flats.

Nearly 14,000 high street stores have been forced to close this year — 25 per cent more than the same period in 2019 — having missed out on an estimated £9 billion worth of sales during lockdown.

Of those that have closed, about one in ten will never be used as a retail outlet again, according to the Centre for Retail Research, although it cautioned that numbers could be greater in bigger towns and cities with commuters staying at home.

Instead, landlords are looking to repurpose some of their boarded-up shops that are proving difficult to re-let in the current environment.

“There is no alternative to repurposing,” said Joshua Bamfield, director of the Centre for Retail Research. “As much as 10 per cent of retail floor space might need to be repurposed in the short to medium term but could be much higher in major cities eventually.”

A poll of hundreds of executives in property development showed that more than a third of British high street landlords are already repurposing some of their retail assets.

A further 57 per cent are now considering doing so in response to the pandemic, according to the survey, which was carried out by Altus Group, the real estate consultancy.

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Bricks and mortar retailers had already been under huge pressure as shoppers started to spend more of their money online, while rising wages and rents hit their profitability even further. Lockdown, during which most stores were forced to temporarily close, only served to accelerate this shift.

“The global pandemic will be a catalyst for fundamental change,” concluded Altus.

 

Edited September 28, 2020 by kj35

[Sirius2020]

On 5/25/2020 at 10:56 AM, kj35 said:

Having read two of David's books last year I went on holiday with the family and woke up in a most extraordinary and sudden fashion. Looking back there had obviously been a slow burn to awakening before that. But this was a sledgehammer.  

 

During that holiday I started making the following predictions purely based on the totalitarian tiptoe that David talks of. I didn't meditate on these. Nothing. It just started to seem like one obvious future outcome if we don't act.

 

1. There will be only one world shop. Amazon. There will be experience hubs where you can visit and see all brands and products under one roof but all ordering will be done online or on a click on that product. Individual shops will no longer exist except perhaps very exclusive ones in very large cities. 

 

2. There will be no more offices in city centres. People will live and work in home hubs which are converted office blocks of the past.

 

3. People will have centrally government distributed food. Cooked in large kitchens as home cooked facilities are removed because of space and food supply issues. Food is also synthetic but will apparently contain all the vitamins and minerals you are said to need. Food is tailored and medicated to your individual requirements based on daily compulsory medical checks. Via urine and scan techniques 

 

4. Countryside living and growth of own food will be forgotten and skills lost as people have to work and live in these city centre hubs because broadband and Wi-Fi speeds in those areas mean only populous areas are served with enough data to actually be able to earn a living.

 

5. Commute is obviously no longer necessary and those rail links will disappear.  Leaving only major rail links between city hubs (see hs2 eurotunnel)

 

 

6. It is possible that continued climate change and air pollution is used as a wrench to seal these cities under domes so even air is controlled. 

 

Just thoughts. 

 

Hello, some of your ideas are a little too far out there like the domes for instance. That's just ridiculous (sorry). There not getting rid of rail anytime soon either. Idea 3 is never gonna happen. I do have a story for you though, well a few and they will amaze you I'm certain. They'll amaze anyone reading. So if you message back Hello as it's my first time messaging here I don't know if you'll get this. I'll then tell you all my truths

[Sirius2020]

On 5/29/2020 at 1:04 AM, KingKitty said:

For some reason, we puny humans are needed on this planet/ perceived dimension. If not, we'd been done away with long ago...and for good. So, to that end I'd have to conclude that we will still be here (as long as there is a 'here') in the future.

 

I can see the merging of humans and AI via androids which will be taken (purchased) as mates. We have all already read of laws being drafted for giving "human right" to AI/ robots.

 

You and your robo-mate which for a few Duracells you can call your own? Your DNA info is processed through to the baby generating data base. Two-day shipping from Amazon will have your perfectly functional baby. "Ah, just like we designed her online, honey."

 

The goal of merging the human mind/soul within a machine/AI, if ever obtained, would be for the very, very few. God help the rest of us should that ever happen. No human could handle that type of power without going full blown mad.

 

I don't believe it can be done. I think that's our Ace in the hole, our genuine power that we just haven't been able to properly, fully operate. I genuinely believe it would be akin to Neo's revelation at the end of the movie ( the first one...don't even get me started on the sequels...yes, I own them all on DVD, Animatrix, too...it's bad enough I've found myself referring to the Matrix in the first place...feels so cliched...still, those sequels are just terrible...don't get me started )

 

Folks generally think of the Matrix movie from the vitual reality aspect. It's more about that inner power and tapping into it. What ever we humans are, we are needed...or perhaps we are actually feared.

 

Maybe we are reincarnated because, after we've died and gone back to home base, we are aware of our mission to "wake up" as humans, back on planet Earth. Like soldiers, "Get back in there and get the job done, kid!" "Sir, yes sir!" Then, schhhoooop! Blerp. Start all over again as a baby. Will you be the baby Neo? It's documented that babies up to about two or three years old, some older, having very clear recollections of their immediate, previous life. (Look 'em up on YT if you ain't seen any yet. Will freak you out, dude!

 

The "Second Coming" of Christ could be just that, the inner God in us being fully tapped. This should be our world, free of aggressions, free from toiling and slaving for any man...or thing.

 

Outside of that happening, I can't conceive any other future outcome that has a optimistic slant. Watch the movie version of 1984 to get a good idea of the very immediate future. Then we'll merge into a Blade Runner/Running Man world, followed by the Road Warrior (or Water World, if ManBearPig was actual on to something). All the AI/robot stuff would be for the few elite, living like in those Hungry Huntress movies I've obviously never seen.

 

By the way...and I promise I'm just about through...I tried rewatching 1984 recently, after having not seen it in a few decades. Hokey smokes, kids! I couldn't make it more than about twenty minutes before having to abort. Too damned real, now.

 

So, there you go, my challenge to you: How far can you get through 1984 (the movie) before freaking out, having an anxiety attack or vomiting. The winner will get a free The King Kitty Band t-shirt and beer koozie. Good luck!

Yep Humans are in the right time, they are exactly where they should be and yes the universe is using US for something like everything in this universe. 

 

On the topic of the matrix. We as humans perceive reality as humans seeing very little of true reality, I think we perceive something like 8% of the visible wavelengths in the universe. So that's begs the question what does true reality look like ? The image of a blind Neo enters my head and his perspective  of reality at that moment was code it was all a computer.  Make of that what you will

 

Ps We do reincarnate and we are also all God. Hard for me to explain but essentially we are all a piece of the one and everything in a way is reincarnate because nothing is ever gone or dead. Just change, another form. 

 

I'm not religious myself but the Bible and the Qur'an state this.

 

Bible : Jesus said "Have I not told you, ye are all God's.

 

Qur'an : Allah is nearer than the jugular vein.

 

The answers are all around us, you just have to know how to filter out the BS because there are alot of people making money of the public pretending they know what's going on.

[kj35]

3 hours ago, Sirius2020 said:

Hello, some of your ideas are a little too far out there like the domes for instance. That's just ridiculous (sorry). There not getting rid of rail anytime soon either. Idea 3 is never gonna happen. I do have a story for you though, well a few and they will amaze you I'm certain. They'll amaze anyone reading. So if you message back Hello as it's my first time messaging here I don't know if you'll get this. I'll then tell you all my truths

Time will tell. Look at hyperloops. I think you'll find I'm saying they'll keep rail so you've not read it properly.  And yes. Maybe they are. Never said I was nostradamus

[Sirius2020]

36 minutes ago, kj35 said:

Time will tell. Look at hyperloops. I think you'll find I'm saying they'll keep rail so you've not read it properly.  And yes. Maybe they are. Never said I was nostradamus

I wasn't trying to be mean. I'm sorry. Just the way my brain works. I'm at work ATM but later I'll write up what I've learnt so far. Thanks for replying.

[kj35]

Anyway. I've got a new one. For 2021 /2022. The 'JOYOUS ' news that babies born to vaccinated mothers are born immune to covid . And so the rush to kill ALL disease with mRNA vaccines.  

Edited November 20, 2020 by kj35

[kj35]

Can't remember whether I put this here or in another thread. However the current move to the countryside is deliberate and engineered in my opinion. Cities will appear desolate with lack of office workers and an exodus to the countryside.  city centre properly will then be bought up cheaply. Renovated into tiny apartments and flooded with 5g and its equivalent. Leaving countryside dwellers eventually unable to compete with the fast speeds of 5g. And the city properties will become very valuable indeed as people have to clamour back to the centres. Remember how short range 5g and upwards are... meaning infrastructure will need to be concentrated. 

Edited November 20, 2020 by kj35

[kj35]

4 hours ago, Sirius2020 said:

I wasn't trying to be mean. I'm sorry. Just the way my brain works. I'm at work ATM but later I'll write up what I've learnt so far. Thanks for replying.

No offence taken.  It's important to remember this thread was for possible futures.Musings only but obviously educated guesses based on what we've learnt following waking up and extrapolating what we know of the NWO and their plans with likely scenarios. That's it. As I said earlier in the thread...No wacky visions or psychic predictions are claimed by me. None at all. Just what seem obvious scenarios based on what we can already see and hear and read and watch...around us.

Edited November 20, 2020 by kj35