The same thing applies in the US doesn't it? There has essentially only been two political parties (three if you squint hard enough) for nearly the entire existence of the country?
The US constitution is very similar, except in two important regards: amendments require two thirds majority votes in both houses and ratification by 75% of the states.
We don't have the state mechanism. You could argue the four nations could serve a similar purpose, though there's a debate about how democratic that is when England makes up something like 85% of the UK population (and doesn't have its own legislature).
To "fall foul", i.e. be required to add highly effective age assurance, there's a number of tests you have to pass
One of the tests is:
> Are there a significant number of children using the service or is the service likely to attract a significant number of children.
I'd guess that HN would be in scope for the act overall - they provide user-to-user functionality and have a lot of users in the UK. Either they answer no to the questions above, or they answer yes and should have performed a risk assessment where they look at things like what kind of content is allowed, how the site is moderated, how do users contact each other etc etc.
> Terminating a train and turning it around takes a lot of space, space that is usually unavailable in a city center.
This doesn't happen in London in my experience. Trains don't turn around, instead every train is double-ended. The driver gets out of the cab at the terminus, walks to the other end of the train and gets in the other cab. They can do it faster than the passengers disembark.
Is there a reason you couldn't build new light rail trains to a higher level of crashworthiness than they are currently? I don't know the full details, but that's how tram-trains in Sheffield, UK were allowed access to the main railway network.
> We're drunk on the ease of implicitly painting people who can't read as much as us as simply dumb modern westerners.
I'm not sure we're doing that. That's certainly not my intention. I know and respect many people who read zero books per year.
I think what we're doing is showing surprise that reading ten books per year is seen as a flex or is worth lying about very publicly, and demonstrating (albeit unscientifically) that it's not that unusual.
This is a ludicrous take. I was on vacation last week and read three books, albeit not weighty novels. I can't remember when I read as few as 10 novels per year. I'm not a CEO, but reading is also far from my only hobby.
You still have to send back your cut up old driver's license, though I have my doubts that someone is sat there checking and cross referencing each one they receive.
Strong is relative. The regional differences in my generation (40) and younger mostly come from accent and not from the vocabulary, whereas for my parents and grandparents it would be both.
There is still local vocabulary: nesh, mardy, cob, duck being obvious answers, but more of it is dying out: tuffee, sile, causie.
For perspective, the family - currently headed by the 12th duke, were estimated to be worth £910 million in 2024. They are not out of the top echelon, and are now structured much better for avoiding inheritance tax, which is also at a lower rate now.
There were 100s of Newcomen engines throughout Europe which were mostly used to pump water. They were being deployed ~50 years before Watt improved the design.
Not at all. It means that the UK police can compel you to turn over your decryption keys if it is deemed necessary and proportionate to prevent or investigate a crime.
> If instead, I would otherwise be wasting time playing video games or watching TV, then it always makes sense to do the job yourself.
It depends on how much you value your free time and how much you enjoy fixing your washing machine. I spend five days working, I get two days for the weekend. The weekend days are scarcer and more valuable to me - I'm not going to give them up at the same price I give up a weekday.
Given a choice between fixing my washing machine myself and paying a repairman to fix it while I enjoy some hobby time, well up to a certain cost, I'd rather relax with a hobby.
> I'd put less blame on London and more on secondary cities
> HS2 is cut short because of money that people outside of London demand be spent on making it so expensive on a per-mile basis.
I'm not sure that's accurate. Cost overruns have also come from inability to find efficiencies, high inflation in the construction sector, low contingency estimate (half cross rails) and a misunderstanding of ground conditions.
The expense increases due to consultation / public demand have come from demands made on the route between London and Birmingham. For example the Chiltern tunnel extension. There aren't many cities in that gap, and most of that area is London facing rather than Birmingham or north facing.
HS2 between London and Birmingham has the worse cost:benefit ratio of the whole initial plan, and yet it's the only bit being built.
> the boundaries of the original private railway companies (GWR, LNER, LMS, SR)
Minor point, though maybe less minor in context of the original post. They are not the original private railway companies. They are the companies created in the 1920s by the London government as it forced railway companies together after it had took them under state control during ww1.
The original private railway companies were originally primarily northern companies, some of who eventually developed mainlines to the rich south eastern markets.