BC NIGHT TRAINS
Saved by @Alex1Powell

A quick thread about night trains

The transport ministers from 🇩🇪🇦🇹🇫🇷🇨🇭, and the CEOs of the state-owned 🚅 operators in each (DB, ÖBB, SNCF, SBB), held a press conference about night trains today...

This slide summarises what they'd agreed

 Don't get me wrong: night trains are *good*, and the trains on these routes will be ÖBB NightJet services, and ÖBB runs the best night trains there are in Europe.

I personally will be very happy to take these trains.
But so much for the good news.

Most of these routes have *already* been announced (Zürich to BCN, Rome, Amsterdam) - see https://t.co/7JnAo74tIX

Or have been even trialled (Vienna-Brussels) - see https://t.co/kYCambVXph
That means only really the parts of the trains going to Paris and Berlin are in some way new - and even then we don't know how this will work (old Berlin-Paris night train went *through* Brussels)

In short: we're talking today about something like 4-6 new train services a day
In comparison: DB has 400 ICE units, SNCF 600 TGVs.

All of this is a *drop in the ocean*.
One of the headaches with ÖBB's NightJet trains to date has been combining tickets for them with tickets for other providers (even with those at this press conference!)

Was there word on how to solve that? No, of course not
Also bunging money at state railways is only one way to solve this - actually achieving genuine competition in EU-wide rail would be another.

ÖBB CEO Matthä talked of fair competition - but only with other transport modes.
And there was of course one notable absentee at today's event: the politician actually supposedly responsible for all of this - @AdinaValean, the European Commissioner for Transport.
So today was a tiny, tiny step forward.

The press will no doubt lap it up, because everyone likes a shiny new train.

But in reality if we're to get more Europeans out of planes and onto long distance trains, we need a LOT more and a LOT better than this!

/ends

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P. 57
If this 'no deal' scenario occurs, to what extent would you be
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And John Redwood said the 🇬🇧 fishing industry would adjust

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And they said don't worry, it's just teething problems

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OK, so it's a fortnight away - the "Digital Party Conference" of the CDU to decide who the next party leader will be

And whoever wins this is going to have a good chance of being Chancellor, succeeding Merkel after the election in September this year

There are three main candidates in the running - all middle aged men from Nordrhein Westfalen
- Friedrich Merz
- Armin Laschet
- Norbert Röttgen

So who's going to win?

For ages it looked like Laschet was the clear front runner. Prime Minister of Nordrhein Westfalen (NRW), and with a kind of folksy-beergarten manner, it looked good for him.

But then came COVID, and in the first wave it looked like NRW was pushing to open up too early, and questions started to be raised as to whether he would be up to the job...

Laschet's star is falling

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To those saying that those who have got their public health advice wrong earlier in the pandemic should put up their hands and apologise... a little cautionary lesson from another sector

A short 🧵

1/

Public health is not my thing

But Brexit is

And throughout 2019 and 2020 I have been trying to make predictions as to what will happen in that story. Lives do not depend on this, only my professional reputation (marginally) does

2/12

The three series of #BrexitDiagram I made in 2019 were extraordinarily accurate

Series 1/2
https://t.co/wOSzIXxJ2M

Series 3
https://t.co/E4fKeGoa5n

Series 4
https://t.co/yRsQ8mLGj1

Each series got that stage of Brexit right

3/12

The 2020 series was nowhere near as good - at one stage I had No Deal Brexit at 78% chance in early December - and that was not what

I own this error - I was wrong

I know *why* I was wrong - I thought the European Parliament would fight more on Provisional Application, and I thought agreeing everything in a week wouldn't work. I wasn't right

The Manston crisis / borders closing changed something too

5/12
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OK then.

So the new CDU Party Leader #CDUvorsitz is known - it's Armin Laschet.

This 🧵 will explain why he won, explain what he means, and outline what happens next.

1/20


At the CDU's party congress today, the three candidates - Laschet, Friedrich Merz & Norbert Röttgen - gave 15 min speeches

That was the first signal of what was to come... Today we saw the very best of Laschet - playing the reliable, careful person, not heavy on detail

2/20

Merz by contrast gave an ill focused speech, and did not make a single reference to Merkel or AKK, the outgoing party leader. He seems to have learned nothing

Röttgen, long the outsider, gave a speech with a lot more detail - especially on green issues and the future

3/20

1001 Delegates - these were the results

Round 1 🗳
Merz 385
Laschet 380
Röttgen 224

Round 2 🗳
Laschet 521
Merz 466

About 1/3 of Röttgen's vote went to Merz, 2/3 to Laschet

4/20

It's important to emphasise how absolutely *average* Laschet is in the CDU. If you were to imagine your archetypal CDU politician it would be him. Not to edgy, not too sharp, not too radical, not too conservative, not too dashing... it would be him

5/20
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