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  • welshowlwelshowl Posts: 4,460
    edited August 2018
    rcs1000 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    You can use the Thameslink to get to Gatwick without going through central London at all. That's what I do from West Hampstead. Ditto going to Luton. And I can easily drive north from where I am, which I shall be doing in about an hour.

    The road over the fells down into the Duddon estuary is one of the most beautiful in England: bleak but with such a view of the sky and then down to the sea and across to Black Combe. I can see my village in the distance. It lifts my heart every time, even in deepest winter.

    Obviously miles away from all known civilisation. Lord Adonis probably thinks there be dragons in these parts. But simply glorious. If my beloved ever pulls his finger out, we will have our beach hut repaired and I can simply disappear there with walls of books, stare at the sea and never have to bother with tube trains again.......

    Thameslink is (or was) fabulous. It made getting to Gatwick from North London painless.
    AHHHHH! Listen to you all!

    It might be fabulous to use Thameslink from West bleedin' Hampstead or Highgate or Camden or wherever, but I want to go from a large provincial city to an airport in London (because there are bugger all flights long haul from my neck of the woods) and I can't do it without faffing about and dragging bags about as I am forced to change on second class transport systems, because we are short of a few thousand yards of rail track here and there.

    But that's fine, because the decision makers live in London, and if the poor darlings have to wait seven minutes on the tube, there's another direct system to take them where they want to go.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    edited August 2018
    MaxPB said:

    Sandpit said:

    welshowl said:

    There was of course a scheme called AirTrack which was going to improve rail links to Heathrow from the south, but it was killed off by then-Transport Secretary Philip Hammond whose constituency the line happened to pass through despite the significant benefits to a large swathe of the country.

    A new scheme is currently being considered but even if it goes ahead is unlikely to open before the 2030s.

    There’s also a scheme called WRATH (Western Rail Access to Heathrow) which will allow passengers from the west to get to Heathrow without going via Paddington, but again don’t expect anything to be open any time soon.

    Bonkers isn't it.

    The Londoncentric nature of transport to places like Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted drives me nuts.

    I would love to get the bus from my house to Cardiff Central and get on the train and get off at Heathrow on a line which in a sane world would then go to Paddington, via a rail spur (of what 6 or seven miles of new track?). I'm sure lots of folk in the S West and S Wales and the Midlands agree with me. Instead of which I'm getting off a train at Reading and getting on a coach to finish the last 15 miles to Heathrow. So I drive.

    Gatwick is as much use as a chocolate fireguard to anyone living north of the Thames or west of about Basingstoke, and Stansted may as well be an Amsterdam terminal as far as public transport is concerned to anyone having to go through London.

    To add to the lunacy Cardiff has a runway big enough to take an A380 to go anywhere on the planet but whose rail "link" takes you to the opposite end of the airport to the terminal you need to be for the want of 1500 yards (yes yards) of track. So you have to get on a minibus. And they wonder why the airport struggles to attract business. It's never going to be Heathrow 2 for obvious reasons but 1500 yards of track for a proper rail link?
    When the 3rd runway opens at Heathrow it should be common sense for BA to run a scheduled service from LHR to CWL, (and Exeter, Bournemouth, Southampton, Bristol, Newquay... even Stanstead)

    Especially given that they have a maintaince base in Cardiff and send planes there all the time for servicing.
    "When the 3rd runway opens" that seems optimistic.
    Yeah, I know.

    One thing I hadn’t really thought of until today was the possibility that a lot of cars could be got off the road by the new runway allowing small commuter planes to fly from the south into Heathrow. They can’t do it now because slots cost millions, but airports like Bristol and Southampton could be “Park and Fly” destinations in a decade’s time.
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    So far as London airports go, as I'm to the north & west of the city (As most of the population of the UK is generally) Heathrow or (God Forbid) Luton are the only two I'd consider at a push.
  • MaxPBMaxPB Posts: 37,603
    rcs1000 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    You can use the Thameslink to get to Gatwick without going through central London at all. That's what I do from West Hampstead. Ditto going to Luton. And I can easily drive north from where I am, which I shall be doing in about an hour.

    The road over the fells down into the Duddon estuary is one of the most beautiful in England: bleak but with such a view of the sky and then down to the sea and across to Black Combe. I can see my village in the distance. It lifts my heart every time, even in deepest winter.

    Obviously miles away from all known civilisation. Lord Adonis probably thinks there be dragons in these parts. But simply glorious. If my beloved ever pulls his finger out, we will have our beach hut repaired and I can simply disappear there with walls of books, stare at the sea and never have to bother with tube trains again.......

    Thameslink is (or was) fabulous. It made getting to Gatwick from North London painless.
    It's a disaster zone now.
  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,684

    Does ATO mean driverless trains? In any case, the two minute delay is presumably caused either by a train being out-of-service for some reason or just passengers taking longer to get on or off at earlier stations.
    What a bell end though, a whole 6 minutes.
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    rcs1000 said:

    Alistair said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Alistair said:

    Off-topic: if bitcoin falls much further, they'll be giving them away free in cornflakes packs.

    Very strong psychological floor at 6000 it seems.

    Given Bitcoin price is all psychology if it breaches 5000 then it is on a one way trip to zero. Orrrr, all liquidity dries up as miners refuse to sell new coins beneath production price.
    Bitcoin has utility. It is a pseudononymous system for purchasing goods and services.

    However, it could probably still fulfil that role with a price of $500/BTC. This is not zero, however.
    I hope you heeded by advice and stayed well away from Tether.
    I stayed well away from Tether, thank you.

    In fact, I sold 99.99% of my crypto between November and January.

    I am intrigued by Lightning. If it reduces the cost of BTC transactions (and Ether) to $0.001, then it potentially makes it useful as a payment mechanism again.
    As you can probably tell I'm a cryptocurrency bear to an enormous degree and have got to the stage of not even bothering to read up on the next ludicrous technical specification that is being pushed as the next big thing.

    But, on my brief perusal, LightningNetwork is just another stab becoming the middleman. The initial Bitcoin surge, years ago now, was based on the techno-neckbeards thinking that the future of Bitcoin was lots of dumb clients and a few "full" nodes and they'd be the ones running the full-fat nodes and creaming off the transaction fees.

    Then they discovered that the Chinese with massively cheaper electricity would hugely out-mine them and actually capture the surplus value. Lightning Networks are, on the face of it, a ludicrously fiddly, complicated, non-intuitive mechanism of setting up a parallel node network to then own the processing nodes "off chain" and start capturing that surplus value again away from the Chinese.

    The cant about Bitcoin is about eliminating the middleman in financial transactions but the entirety of technical development around Bitcoin is about carving out the territory to become that middleman.
  • MonkeysMonkeys Posts: 755
    eek said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Alistair said:

    Off-topic: if bitcoin falls much further, they'll be giving them away free in cornflakes packs.

    Very strong psychological floor at 6000 it seems.

    Given Bitcoin price is all psychology if it breaches 5000 then it is on a one way trip to zero. Orrrr, all liquidity dries up as miners refuse to sell new coins beneath production price.
    Bitcoin has utility. It is a pseudononymous system for purchasing goods and services.

    However, it could probably still fulfil that role with a price of $500/BTC. This is not zero, however.
    surely its more likely that they will stop mining until the price rises above production costs.

    As for the purpose of bitcoin- it's bypassing currency controls in ways that were never before possible...
    Historically when the price has gone below the cost of production, hashpower has still increased which in turn makes it more expensive to mine. I expected it to do that in this downturn and I'm pretty disappointed it hasn't tbh. It seems to be being propped up around 6k as someone said down thread - mining production averages around $5800.

  • malcolmgmalcolmg Posts: 41,684
    Jonathan said:

    SIX WHOLE MINUTES!!!

    Jesus wept, on some days at the moment there is a THREE HOUR GAP in trains from York to Scarborough due to the shambles on TPE since the May timetable change.
    If the tube platform fills to dangerous levels every two minutes, six minutes is a big problem.
    poor diddums, a crowd as well as 6 minutes , the end of the world is nigh
  • daodaodaodao Posts: 821
    Sandpit said:


    The Londoncentric nature of transport to places like Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted drives me nuts.

    Gatwick is as much use as a chocolate fireguard to anyone living north of the Thames or west of about Basingstoke, and Stansted may as well be an Amsterdam terminal as far as public transport is concerned to anyone having to go through London.

    There is a regular hourly service from Gatwick via Guildford to Reading, providing good connections to places further west. There are also regular hourly services from Gatwick to both Portsmouth and Southampton (for connections to Bournemouth/Weymouth/Salisbury).

    There are also hourly trains from Stansted to Peterborough/Leicester/Birmingham.
  • welshowl said:

    There was of course a scheme called AirTrack which was going to improve rail links to Heathrow from the south, but it was killed off by then-Transport Secretary Philip Hammond whose constituency the line happened to pass through despite the significant benefits to a large swathe of the country.

    A new scheme is currently being considered but even if it goes ahead is unlikely to open before the 2030s.

    There’s also a scheme called WRATH (Western Rail Access to Heathrow) which will allow passengers from the west to get to Heathrow without going via Paddington, but again don’t expect anything to be open any time soon.

    Bonkers isn't it.

    The Londoncentric nature of transport to places like Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted drives me nuts.

    I would love to get the bus from my house to Cardiff Central and get on the train and get off at Heathrow on a line which in a sane world would then go to Paddington, via a rail spur (of what 6 or seven miles of new track?). I'm sure lots of folk in the S West and S Wales and the Midlands agree with me. Instead of which I'm getting off a train at Reading and getting on a coach to finish the last 15 miles to Heathrow. So I drive.

    Gatwick is as much use as a chocolate fireguard to anyone living north of the Thames or west of about Basingstoke, and Stansted may as well be an Amsterdam terminal as far as public transport is concerned to anyone having to go through London.

    To add to the lunacy Cardiff has a runway big enough to take an A380 to go anywhere on the planet but whose rail "link" takes you to the opposite end of the airport to the terminal you need to be for the want of 1500 yards (yes yards) of track. So you have to get on a minibus. And they wonder why the airport struggles to attract business. It's never going to be Heathrow 2 for obvious reasons but 1500 yards of track for a proper rail link?

    The real problem at Heathrow in terms of trains is that Heathrow not Network Rail own the track to the airport, because the Major government was so feckless when it came to infrastructure planning. So Heathrow as the owner of the track has a vested interest into forcing travellers onto the expensive Heathrow Express service.

    Infrastructure owned by private companies is a terrible idea. Just look at the M6 Toll, which were it part of the national motorway network would be shifting long distance traffic and haulage away from inner Birmingham, but because it's a toll road, instead sits empty
    while the old M6 is massively over capacity.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. Meeks, having suffered Mr. Eagles' nonsensical utterances on history, I fear you might be right :p
  • welshowlwelshowl Posts: 4,460


    @ Allypally_Rob


    I believe (can someone confirm?) the issue with the M6 toll was they didn't set proper targets for traffic usage when it was built. Which, if true, was a huge error and rather made the whole thing pointless (the point being from a public perspective to unclog Birmingham).

    Didn't know about the Heathrow Express but again, if that's the case, just wrong. It helps make life worse for the 50 odd million of us living to the north and west.
  • TOPPINGTOPPING Posts: 40,950
    edited August 2018
    Alistair said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Alistair said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Alistair said:

    Off-topic: if bitcoin falls much further, they'll be giving them away free in cornflakes packs.

    Very strong psychological floor at 6000 it seems.

    Given Bitcoin price is all psychology if it breaches 5000 then it is on a one way trip to zero. Orrrr, all liquidity dries up as miners refuse to sell new coins beneath production price.
    Bitcoin has utility. It is a pseudononymous system for purchasing goods and services.

    However, it could probably still fulfil that role with a price of $500/BTC. This is not zero, however.
    I hope you heeded by advice and stayed well away from Tether.
    I stayed well away from Tether, thank you.

    In fact, I sold 99.99% of my crypto between November and January.

    I am intrigued by Lightning. If it reduces the cost of BTC transactions (and Ether) to $0.001, then it potentially makes it useful as a payment mechanism again.
    As you can probably tell I'm a cryptocurrency bear to an enormous degree and have got to the stage of not even bothering to read up on the next ludicrous technical specification that is being pushed as the next big thing.

    But, on my brief perusal, LightningNetwork is just another stab becoming the middleman. The initial Bitcoin surge, years ago now, was based on the techno-neckbeards thinking that the future of Bitcoin was lots of dumb clients and a few "full" nodes and they'd be the ones running the full-fat nodes and creaming off the transaction fees.

    Then they discovered that the Chinese with massively cheaper electricity would hugely out-mine them and actually capture the surplus value. Lightning Networks are, on the face of it, a ludicrously fiddly, complicated, non-intuitive mechanism of setting up a parallel node network to then own the processing nodes "off chain" and start capturing that surplus value again away from the Chinese.

    The cant about Bitcoin is about eliminating the middleman in financial transactions but the entirety of technical development around Bitcoin is about carving out the territory to become that middleman.
    Please tell me that despite your enormous bearish attitude you bought some BTC at a few cents just for amusement value several years ago.
  • Cyclefree said:

    welshowl said:

    There was of course a scheme called AirTrack which was going to improve rail links to Heathrow from the south, but it was killed off by then-Transport Secretary Philip Hammond whose constituency the line happened to pass through despite the significant benefits to a large swathe of the country.

    A new scheme is currently being considered but even if it goes ahead is unlikely to open before the 2030s.

    There’s also a scheme called WRATH (Western Rail Access to Heathrow) which will allow passengers from the west to get to Heathrow without going via Paddington, but again don’t expect anything to be open any time soon.

    Bonkers isn't it.

    The Londoncentric nature of transport to places like Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted drives me nuts.

    I would love to get the bus from my house to Cardiff Central and get on the train and get off at Heathrow on a line which in a sane world would then go to Paddington, via a rail spur (of what 6 or seven miles of new track?). I'm sure lots of folk in the S West and S Wales and the Midlands agree with me. Instead of which I'm getting off a train at Reading and getting on a coach to finish the last 15 miles to Heathrow. So I drive.

    Gatwick is as much use as a chocolate fireguard to anyone living north of the Thames or west of about Basingstoke, and Stansted may as well be an Amsterdam terminal as far as public transport is concerned to anyone having to go through London.

    To add to the lunacy Cardiff has a runway big enough to take an A380 to go anywhere on the planet but whose rail "link" takes you to the opposite end of the airport to the terminal you need to be for the want of 1500 yards (yes yards) of track. So you have to get on a minibus. And they wonder why the airport struggles to attract business. It's never going to be Haethrow 2 for obvious reasons but 1500 yards of track for a proper rail link?




    Obviously miles away from all known civilisation. Lord Adonis probably thinks there be dragons in these parts. But simply glorious. If my beloved ever pulls his finger out, we will have our beach hut repaired and I can simply disappear there with walls of books, stare at the sea and never have to bother with tube trains again.......
    Also the best route up Coniston Old Man is from the Duddon Valley. Best views and no other walkers to disturb you.

    Follow up to yesterday's TSE post about the Clameur du Haro in Guernsey:

    https://guernseypress.com/news/2018/08/15/clameur-de-haro-raised-at-havelet-is-refused/

    Guernsey is on to 'Plan M' for the roundabout.

    Which plan is Brexit on to?
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    edited August 2018

    welshowl said:

    .

    Bonkers isn't it.

    The Londoncentric nature of transport to places like Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted drives me nuts.

    I would love to get the bus from my house to Cardiff Central and get on the train and get off at Heathrow on a line which in a sane world would then go to Paddington, via a rail spur (of what 6 or seven miles of new track?). I'm sure lots of folk in the S West and S Wales and the Midlands agree with me. Instead of which I'm getting off a train at Reading and getting on a coach to finish the last 15 miles to Heathrow. So I drive.

    Gatwick is as much use as a chocolate fireguard to anyone living north of the Thames or west of about Basingstoke, and Stansted may as well be an Amsterdam terminal as far as public transport is concerned to anyone having to go through London.

    To add to the lunacy Cardiff has a runway big enough to take an A380 to go anywhere on the planet but whose rail "link" takes you to the opposite end of the airport to the terminal you need to be for the want of 1500 yards (yes yards) of track. So you have to get on a minibus. And they wonder why the airport struggles to attract business. It's never going to be Heathrow 2 for obvious reasons but 1500 yards of track for a proper rail link?

    The real problem at Heathrow in terms of trains is that Heathrow not Network Rail own the track to the airport, because the Major government was so feckless when it came to infrastructure planning. So Heathrow as the owner of the track has a vested interest into forcing travellers onto the expensive Heathrow Express service.

    Infrastructure owned by private companies is a terrible idea. Just look at the M6 Toll, which were it part of the national motorway network would be shifting long distance traffic and haulage away from inner Birmingham, but because it's a toll road, instead sits empty
    while the old M6 is massively over capacity.
    What they should do with the M6 Toll is deristrict it like an Autobahn - which it was pretty much in practice when it first opened, before the local police realised what was going on and realised how many drivers they could take straight to court for speeding on a completely empty and safe road.
  • welshowl said:

    @welshowl - Gatwick actually has direct rail connections as far north as Bedford.

    I take your point, but that's still 75% of the populace fiddling about changing trains or buses if they don't want to drive.

    It has all the feel of that great episode of Yes Minister where the Sir Humphries of the Dept of Transport had come from Oxford for years so there were two good roads to Oxford before one had been built to Cambridge.

    Adonis' message this morning (this is nothing to do with his EU views - it's about his apparent Londoncentric mindset) betray so much of the problem. It's straight of the guacamole/mushy peas school of thought.

    Adonis has been pushing very strongly for both a new railway (East West Rail) and a new motorway (the Expressway) between Oxford and Cambridge. So he is both London centric and Oxbridge centric.
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,786
    daodao said:

    Sandpit said:


    The Londoncentric nature of transport to places like Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted drives me nuts.

    Gatwick is as much use as a chocolate fireguard to anyone living north of the Thames or west of about Basingstoke, and Stansted may as well be an Amsterdam terminal as far as public transport is concerned to anyone having to go through London.

    There is a regular hourly service from Gatwick via Guildford to Reading, providing good connections to places further west. There are also regular hourly services from Gatwick to both Portsmouth and Southampton (for connections to Bournemouth/Weymouth/Salisbury).

    There are also hourly trains from Stansted to Peterborough/Leicester/Birmingham.
    Stansted IIRC used to be OK for access from the north, a semi regular Manchester to Harwich service, via Sheffield/Nottingham, and it often used to flag up a change at Ely, which is a pleasant, if remote, place to swap trains. It was my most regular UK airport going to/from Milan. I did go via London as well at times, so it wasn't perfect, but looking at the timetables the links don't seem as good as I remember them.
  • welshowlwelshowl Posts: 4,460

    welshowl said:

    @welshowl - Gatwick actually has direct rail connections as far north as Bedford.

    I take your point, but that's still 75% of the populace fiddling about changing trains or buses if they don't want to drive.

    It has all the feel of that great episode of Yes Minister where the Sir Humphries of the Dept of Transport had come from Oxford for years so there were two good roads to Oxford before one had been built to Cambridge.

    Adonis' message this morning (this is nothing to do with his EU views - it's about his apparent Londoncentric mindset) betray so much of the problem. It's straight of the guacamole/mushy peas school of thought.

    Adonis has been pushing very strongly for both a new railway (East West Rail) and a new motorway (the Expressway) between Oxford and Cambridge. So he is both London centric and Oxbridge centric.
    Not exactly Bristol or Birmigham or Nottigham, let alone Pontypool, Stoke, or Bradford centric is it, though in fairness such connections would help getting goods from Bristol to Felixstowe, say, avoiding the M25.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
  • rottenboroughrottenborough Posts: 58,044
    Sandpit said:
    It was only a matter of time.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. Sandpit, maybe. We'll see if the BBC bother to run it.
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,786
    welshowl said:

    welshowl said:

    @welshowl - Gatwick actually has direct rail connections as far north as Bedford.

    I take your point, but that's still 75% of the populace fiddling about changing trains or buses if they don't want to drive.

    It has all the feel of that great episode of Yes Minister where the Sir Humphries of the Dept of Transport had come from Oxford for years so there were two good roads to Oxford before one had been built to Cambridge.

    Adonis' message this morning (this is nothing to do with his EU views - it's about his apparent Londoncentric mindset) betray so much of the problem. It's straight of the guacamole/mushy peas school of thought.

    Adonis has been pushing very strongly for both a new railway (East West Rail) and a new motorway (the Expressway) between Oxford and Cambridge. So he is both London centric and Oxbridge centric.
    Not exactly Bristol or Birmigham or Nottigham, let alone Pontypool, Stoke, or Bradford centric is it, though in fairness such connections would help getting goods from Bristol to Felixstowe, say, avoiding the M25.
    Perhaps Transport for the North are missing a trick. Propose Crossrail 3, a high speed link from Buckinghamshire to Kent via Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield. Only a slight logical extension of my greenfield proposal for a London Birmingham Airport along HS2 and might just release the money ;)
  • Scott_P said:

    .com/SkyNewsPolitics/status/1029675509343547393

    Big shrug, eye roll, blame on both sides.....
  • welshowl said:

    welshowl said:

    @welshowl - Gatwick actually has direct rail connections as far north as Bedford.

    I take your point, but that's still 75% of the populace fiddling about changing trains or buses if they don't want to drive.

    It has all the feel of that great episode of Yes Minister where the Sir Humphries of the Dept of Transport had come from Oxford for years so there were two good roads to Oxford before one had been built to Cambridge.

    Adonis' message this morning (this is nothing to do with his EU views - it's about his apparent Londoncentric mindset) betray so much of the problem. It's straight of the guacamole/mushy peas school of thought.

    Adonis has been pushing very strongly for both a new railway (East West Rail) and a new motorway (the Expressway) between Oxford and Cambridge. So he is both London centric and Oxbridge centric.
    Not exactly Bristol or Birmigham or Nottigham, let alone Pontypool, Stoke, or Bradford centric is it, though in fairness such connections would help getting goods from Bristol to Felixstowe, say, avoiding the M25.
    The issue with the proposed Expressway between Oxford and Cambridge is that (like HS2) no one is clear about the problem to which it is the solution.
  • Scott_P said:

    This is the killer app.

    Emotion trumps other arguments in the Momentum movement.
  • notmenotme Posts: 3,293
    welshowl said:

    There was of course a scheme called AirTrack which was going to improve rail links to Heathrow from the south, but it was killed off by then-Transport Secretary Philip Hammond whose constituency the line happened to pass through despite the significant benefits to a large swathe of the country.

    A new scheme is currently being considered but even if it goes ahead is unlikely to open before the 2030s.

    There’s also a scheme called WRATH (Western Rail Access to Heathrow) which will allow passengers from the west to get to Heathrow without going via Paddington, but again don’t expect anything to be open any time soon.

    Bonkers isn't it.

    The Londoncentric nature of transport to places like Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted drives me nuts.

    I would love to get the bus from my house to Cardiff Central and get on the train and get off at Heathrow on a line which in a sane world would then go to Paddington, via a rail spur (of what 6 or seven miles of new track?). I'm sure lots of folk in the S West and S Wales and the Midlands agree with me. Instead of which I'm getting off a train at Reading and getting on a coach to finish the last 15 miles to Heathrow. So I drive.

    Gatwick is as much use as a chocolate fireguard to anyone living north of the Thames or west of about Basingstoke, and Stansted may as well be an Amsterdam terminal as far as public transport is concerned to anyone having to go through London.

    To add to the lunacy Cardiff has a runway big enough to take an A380 to go anywhere on the planet but whose rail "link" takes you to the opposite end of the airport to the terminal you need to be for the want of 1500 yards (yes yards) of track. So you have to get on a minibus. And they wonder why the airport struggles to attract business. It's never going to be Heathrow 2 for obvious reasons but 1500 yards of track for a proper rail link?

    Nobody ever talks on here about the Ambleside Rambler not getting to the Lake District Airport (which isnt in the lake district) on time.
  • AlastairMeeksAlastairMeeks Posts: 30,340
    Public transport is actually used in London. It seems reasonable enough for those who use it to have strong views about it.

    As @Cyclefree noted earlier, Jeremy Corbyn was right to raise the question of bus services outside London at Prime Minister's Questions. For most non-Londoners these are far more important than most train services.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408
    edited August 2018
    Sandpit said:
    It was always real, since it was an issue that kept coming up. The issue is whether anything can make it significant for him. To date, nothing has. Which does not mean nothing will of course, but skepticism is not unwarranted on that score even with that clip.
  • CarlottaVanceCarlottaVance Posts: 59,540
    The 'global laughing stock' with its 'reputation in the gutter'....Ladies & Gentlemen, the "2018 Global Soft Power" Number 1 Country is....Britain....

    https://softpower30.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/The-Soft-Power-30-Report-2018.pdf
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408

    The 'global laughing stock' with its 'reputation in the gutter'....Ladies & Gentlemen, the "2018 Global Soft Power" Number 1 Country is....Britain....

    https://softpower30.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/The-Soft-Power-30-Report-2018.pdf

    That's nice, although is it significant who is saying so? (I have no idea)
  • The 'global laughing stock' with its 'reputation in the gutter'....Ladies & Gentlemen, the "2018 Global Soft Power" Number 1 Country is....Britain....

    https://softpower30.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/The-Soft-Power-30-Report-2018.pdf

    1. Uk

    2. France

    3. Germany

    4. USA

    5. Japan


    27. China

    28. Russia
  • Public transport is actually used in London. It seems reasonable enough for those who use it to have strong views about it.

    As @Cyclefree noted earlier, Jeremy Corbyn was right to raise the question of bus services outside London at Prime Minister's Questions. For most non-Londoners these are far more important than most train services.

    But car travel and roads are overwhelmingly important outside London. Over 90% of all travel in the UK is by car.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. kle4, I saw a table a few days ago about power beliefs. The UK was the only country, I think, not to rank the UK in the top 5, of those featured.

    As I'm procrastinating, took a few minutes to hunt it down:

    https://twitter.com/simongerman600/status/1002626409125367809
  • AlistairAlistair Posts: 23,670
    TOPPING said:

    Alistair said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Alistair said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Alistair said:

    Off-topic: if bitcoin falls much further, they'll be giving them away free in cornflakes packs.

    Very strong psychological floor at 6000 it seems.

    Given Bitcoin price is all psychology if it breaches 5000 then it is on a one way trip to zero. Orrrr, all liquidity dries up as miners refuse to sell new coins beneath production price.
    Bitcoin has utility. It is a pseudononymous system for purchasing goods and services.

    However, it could probably still fulfil that role with a price of $500/BTC. This is not zero, however.
    I hope you heeded by advice and stayed well away from Tether.
    I stayed well away from Tether, thank you.

    In fact, I sold 99.99% of my crypto between November and January.

    I am intrigued by Lightning. If it reduces the cost of BTC transactions (and Ether) to $0.001, then it potentially makes it useful as a payment mechanism again.
    As you can probably tell I'm a cryptocurrency bear to an enormous degree and have got to the stage of not even bothering to read up on the next ludicrous technical specification that is being pushed as the next big thing.

    But, on my brief perusal, LightningNetwork is just another stab becoming the middleman. The initial Bitcoin surge, years ago now, was based on the techno-neckbeards thinking that the future of Bitcoin was lots of dumb clients and a few "full" nodes and they'd be the ones running the full-fat nodes and creaming off the transaction fees.

    Then they discovered that the Chinese with massively cheaper electricity would hugely out-mine them and actually capture the surplus value. Lightning Networks are, on the face of it, a ludicrously fiddly, complicated, non-intuitive mechanism of setting up a parallel node network to then own the processing nodes "off chain" and start capturing that surplus value again away from the Chinese.

    The cant about Bitcoin is about eliminating the middleman in financial transactions but the entirety of technical development around Bitcoin is about carving out the territory to become that middleman.
    Please tell me that despite your enormous bearish attitude you bought some BTC at a few cents just for amusement value several years ago.
    Alas no.
  • Pro_Rata said:

    welshowl said:

    welshowl said:

    @welshowl - Gatwick actually has direct rail connections as far north as Bedford.

    I take your point, but that's still 75% of the populace fiddling about changing trains or buses if they don't want to drive.

    It has all the feel of that great episode of Yes Minister where the Sir Humphries of the Dept of Transport had come from Oxford for years so there were two good roads to Oxford before one had been built to Cambridge.

    Adonis' message this morning (this is nothing to do with his EU views - it's about his apparent Londoncentric mindset) betray so much of the problem. It's straight of the guacamole/mushy peas school of thought.

    Adonis has been pushing very strongly for both a new railway (East West Rail) and a new motorway (the Expressway) between Oxford and Cambridge. So he is both London centric and Oxbridge centric.
    Not exactly Bristol or Birmigham or Nottigham, let alone Pontypool, Stoke, or Bradford centric is it, though in fairness such connections would help getting goods from Bristol to Felixstowe, say, avoiding the M25.
    Perhaps Transport for the North are missing a trick. Propose Crossrail 3, a high speed link from Buckinghamshire to Kent via Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield. Only a slight logical extension of my greenfield proposal for a London Birmingham Airport along HS2 and might just release the money ;)

    All transport means will be outdated once we get autonomous personal drones door to door.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. Evershed, people not moving around reminds me of the summary (still not read it) of human 'civilisation' in The Machine Stops.
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614

    The 'global laughing stock' with its 'reputation in the gutter'....Ladies & Gentlemen, the "2018 Global Soft Power" Number 1 Country is....Britain....

    https://softpower30.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/The-Soft-Power-30-Report-2018.pdf

    Yup. It’s quite amazing how other countries perceive the U.K. :+1:
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. Sandpit, maybe. Perhaps it's more amazing how some here perceive their own country.
  • edmundintokyoedmundintokyo Posts: 17,136
    rcs1000 said:


    I stayed well away from Tether, thank you.

    In fact, I sold 99.99% of my crypto between November and January.

    I am intrigued by Lightning. If it reduces the cost of BTC transactions (and Ether) to $0.001, then it potentially makes it useful as a payment mechanism again.

    So I also figured it was time to divest from all this over-inflated crypto madness and sold my bit-coins off last year and put the money into a portfolio of domestic (Japanese) stocks selected by my cat. He's doing quite well - about 5% above the Nikkei index - so I looked at where his gains were coming from, and it turns it's all from one of his companies that just announced it's... building an Ethereum wallet...
  • MattWMattW Posts: 18,100
    edited August 2018
    Sandpit said:

    The 'global laughing stock' with its 'reputation in the gutter'....Ladies & Gentlemen, the "2018 Global Soft Power" Number 1 Country is....Britain....

    https://softpower30.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/The-Soft-Power-30-Report-2018.pdf

    Yup. It’s quite amazing how other countries perceive the U.K. :+1:
    Is there anybody who has read this report, so I do not have to?

    Obviously it's fake news about the UK, as the Brexit racist lunatics have already flushed us down the loo, and we are already a third world country.

    (Slightly) more seriously, perhaps what we need to succeed is for government to be completely distracted.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408

    Mr. Sandpit, maybe. Perhaps it's more amazing how some here perceive their own country.

    One of my brothers once told me he could think of literally nothing about the UK to take pride in. He's a big USA fan though.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,789

    Mr. kle4, I saw a table a few days ago about power beliefs. The UK was the only country, I think, not to rank the UK in the top 5, of those featured.

    As I'm procrastinating, took a few minutes to hunt it down:

    https://twitter.com/simongerman600/status/1002626409125367809

    The US ranks Russia above themselves???
  • daodaodaodao Posts: 821
    "Hidden" history?! Corbyn has never hidden his views, and it didn't harm him at GE2017, nor is it likely to do so in future with the general UK public.
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. Glenn, so it seems.

    Mr. kle4, that's a little bit sad.

    Don't get me wrong, I would never condemn someone for being into masochism, I just don't see the appeal of it in terms of national psychology.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408
    daodao said:

    "Hidden" history?! Corbyn has never hidden his views, and it didn't harm him at GE2017, nor is it likely to do so in future with the general UK public.
    That's true, although he does dissemble about his history, hence the very careful wording he sometimes engages in with these matters, and he misdirects about it by making equivalence with other things. It works, but while his associations are not hidden, as such, nor is he always completely transparent.
  • AlastairMeeksAlastairMeeks Posts: 30,340

    Public transport is actually used in London. It seems reasonable enough for those who use it to have strong views about it.

    As @Cyclefree noted earlier, Jeremy Corbyn was right to raise the question of bus services outside London at Prime Minister's Questions. For most non-Londoners these are far more important than most train services.

    But car travel and roads are overwhelmingly important outside London. Over 90% of all travel in the UK is by car.
    Which is why all the provincials complaining that Lord Adonis has a view on the tube network need to get back in their box. Lord knows I've sat through enough conversations about the merits of the B450 over the A4243 when travelling between St Mary Mead and Borchester. Non-Londoners can endure the same every once in a while too.
  • kle4kle4 Posts: 91,408

    Mr. kle4, I saw a table a few days ago about power beliefs. The UK was the only country, I think, not to rank the UK in the top 5, of those featured.

    As I'm procrastinating, took a few minutes to hunt it down:

    https://twitter.com/simongerman600/status/1002626409125367809

    The US ranks Russia above themselves???
    No wonder (among other reasons) they have such a ridicuous defence budget.
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,781

    Mr. kle4, I saw a table a few days ago about power beliefs. The UK was the only country, I think, not to rank the UK in the top 5, of those featured.

    As I'm procrastinating, took a few minutes to hunt it down:

    https://twitter.com/simongerman600/status/1002626409125367809

    It's amazing how highly people rate Russia (which has the same quantity of exports as Belgium).
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    rcs1000 said:

    Mr. kle4, I saw a table a few days ago about power beliefs. The UK was the only country, I think, not to rank the UK in the top 5, of those featured.

    As I'm procrastinating, took a few minutes to hunt it down:

    https://twitter.com/simongerman600/status/1002626409125367809

    It's amazing how highly people rate Russia (which has the same quantity of exports as Belgium).
    It's physically very large, and has nuclear weapons. Belgium has mayo on chips :)
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. 1000, the economy of Russia isn't great, but it's very willing to project power overseas, both military and via cybershenanigans.

    And that's before we get to chemical weaponry.

    In some ways, it punches far above its weight.
  • StereotomyStereotomy Posts: 4,092

    Mr. kle4, I saw a table a few days ago about power beliefs. The UK was the only country, I think, not to rank the UK in the top 5, of those featured.

    As I'm procrastinating, took a few minutes to hunt it down:

    https://twitter.com/simongerman600/status/1002626409125367809

    The US ranks Russia above themselves???
    Probably all the #MAGA people chose China and all the #Resistance people chose Russia
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,789
    Foreign Office minister running an online survey to canvass support for a second referendum.

    https://www.alistair-burt.co.uk/campaigns/brexit
  • Morris_DancerMorris_Dancer Posts: 60,933
    Mr. Owls, you've persuaded me. I'll never vote for Thatcher or Corbyn. Will you?
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,781
    edited August 2018

    rcs1000 said:


    I stayed well away from Tether, thank you.

    In fact, I sold 99.99% of my crypto between November and January.

    I am intrigued by Lightning. If it reduces the cost of BTC transactions (and Ether) to $0.001, then it potentially makes it useful as a payment mechanism again.

    So I also figured it was time to divest from all this over-inflated crypto madness and sold my bit-coins off last year and put the money into a portfolio of domestic (Japanese) stocks selected by my cat. He's doing quite well - about 5% above the Nikkei index - so I looked at where his gains were coming from, and it turns it's all from one of his companies that just announced it's... building an Ethereum wallet...
    I was at a party on Saturday with a guy who's the crpyto lawyer in the US. And for years he'd asked to be pain in BTC/ETH/etc.

    The income tax he owes is based on the price at which he recieved the currency. The consequence is that his tax bill is now larger than the value of his holdings. Ouch,
  • bigjohnowlsbigjohnowls Posts: 21,725
    The current Israeli PM attended an event in 2006 to celebrate the terrorists of the attack.

    Surely nobody would be photoed with BN!!!
  • SandpitSandpit Posts: 49,614
    rcs1000 said:

    Mr. kle4, I saw a table a few days ago about power beliefs. The UK was the only country, I think, not to rank the UK in the top 5, of those featured.

    As I'm procrastinating, took a few minutes to hunt it down:

    https://twitter.com/simongerman600/status/1002626409125367809

    It's amazing how highly people rate Russia (which has the same quantity of exports as Belgium).
    #LetsGetBritainFracking
  • rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 53,781

    Mr. 1000, the economy of Russia isn't great, but it's very willing to project power overseas, both military and via cybershenanigans.

    And that's before we get to chemical weaponry.

    In some ways, it punches far above its weight.

    It does, but it's also a sclerotic corpse of a country, with oil and gas exports paying for a military and very little else. The poverty, once you live the lights of St Petersburg and Moscow, is terrible.

    The only good news for Russia is that it's tight oil reserves may well be 10-times the size of the US.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,745
    Afternoon all :)

    From the front line of the growing crisis in local Government finance, today's gems:

    Northamptonshire wanted to close 21 libraries as part of its radical savings plan. That has been declared illegal under the Public Libraries & Museums Act of 1964:

    https://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2018/08/high-court-rules-northamptonshire-library-closures-unlawful

    Somerset CC wants its employees to take two days compulsory unpaid leave:

    https://www.publicfinance.co.uk/news/2018/08/council-proposes-staff-take-two-days-unpaid-leave-save-ps1m

    It's only going to save £1 million which is chicken feed.

    On a wider issue, the cost of rolling out the kind of voter registration schemes we saw in Bromley and Woking this year has been estimated at £20 million. An absurd waste of money for what is an insignificant problem in almost all areas. There's an argument for targeting resources at known areas of electoral fraud but I don't believe either Bromley or Woking qualify on that score.
  • williamglennwilliamglenn Posts: 47,789
    rcs1000 said:

    Mr. 1000, the economy of Russia isn't great, but it's very willing to project power overseas, both military and via cybershenanigans.

    And that's before we get to chemical weaponry.

    In some ways, it punches far above its weight.

    It does, but it's also a sclerotic corpse of a country, with oil and gas exports paying for a military and very little else. The poverty, once you live the lights of St Petersburg and Moscow, is terrible.

    The only good news for Russia is that it's tight oil reserves may well be 10-times the size of the US.
    Russian village life:
    https://youtu.be/0ED87O6Ya-s
  • RecidivistRecidivist Posts: 4,679
    Pulpstar said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mr. kle4, I saw a table a few days ago about power beliefs. The UK was the only country, I think, not to rank the UK in the top 5, of those featured.

    As I'm procrastinating, took a few minutes to hunt it down:

    https://twitter.com/simongerman600/status/1002626409125367809

    It's amazing how highly people rate Russia (which has the same quantity of exports as Belgium).
    It's physically very large, and has nuclear weapons. Belgium has mayo on chips :)
    Which one would you rather live in? (For the purposes of this rhetorical question you are not obliged to actually eat any contaminated chips.)
  • brendan16brendan16 Posts: 2,315
    Sandpit said:

    The 'global laughing stock' with its 'reputation in the gutter'....Ladies & Gentlemen, the "2018 Global Soft Power" Number 1 Country is....Britain....

    https://softpower30.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/The-Soft-Power-30-Report-2018.pdf

    Yup. It’s quite amazing how other countries perceive the U.K. :+1:
    The Queen and Mrs May are doing a great job!
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    welshowl said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    You can use the Thameslink to get to Gatwick without going through central London at all. That's what I do from West Hampstead. Ditto going to Luton. And I can easily drive north from where I am, which I shall be doing in about an hour.

    The road over the fells down into the Duddon estuary is one of the most beautiful in England: bleak but with such a view of the sky and then down to the sea and across to Black Combe. I can see my village in the distance. It lifts my heart every time, even in deepest winter.

    Obviously miles away from all known civilisation. Lord Adonis probably thinks there be dragons in these parts. But simply glorious. If my beloved ever pulls his finger out, we will have our beach hut repaired and I can simply disappear there with walls of books, stare at the sea and never have to bother with tube trains again.......

    Thameslink is (or was) fabulous. It made getting to Gatwick from North London painless.
    AHHHHH! Listen to you all!

    It might be fabulous to use Thameslink from West bleedin' Hampstead or Highgate or Camden or wherever, but I want to go from a large provincial city to an airport in London (because there are bugger all flights long haul from my neck of the woods) and I can't do it without faffing about and dragging bags about as I am forced to change on second class transport systems, because we are short of a few thousand yards of rail track here and there.

    But that's fine, because the decision makers live in London, and if the poor darlings have to wait seven minutes on the tube, there's another direct system to take them where they want to go.
    Oh do calm down. I raised rural bus issues and the difficulties of getting around in Cumbria. There are, frankly, bugger all flights - and often no trains or buses - anywhere in this neck of the woods either. Instead of polishing chips it might be better to work out what to do about the problem.

  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,591

    The 'global laughing stock' with its 'reputation in the gutter'....Ladies & Gentlemen, the "2018 Global Soft Power" Number 1 Country is....Britain....

    https://softpower30.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/The-Soft-Power-30-Report-2018.pdf

    1. Uk

    ....
    But we can't really have a royal wedding every year.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,745
    Pulpstar said:


    It's physically very large, and has nuclear weapons. Belgium has mayo on chips :)

    In 1984, I was Inter-Railing round Europe and got to Liege where I had to wait an hour for a connection through to Ostend and I was starving and that night I discovered the unfathomable delight of chips with mayonnaise.

    I've never looked back - one of the formative experiences of my life.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,591
    rcs1000 said:

    Mr. 1000, the economy of Russia isn't great, but it's very willing to project power overseas, both military and via cybershenanigans.

    And that's before we get to chemical weaponry.

    In some ways, it punches far above its weight.

    It does, but it's also a sclerotic corpse of a country, with oil and gas exports paying for a military and very little else. The poverty, once you live the lights of St Petersburg and Moscow, is terrible....
    So the results are an objective demonstration of just how good it is at propaganda and disinformation.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,591
    edited August 2018
    stodge said:

    Pulpstar said:


    It's physically very large, and has nuclear weapons. Belgium has mayo on chips :)

    In 1984, I was Inter-Railing round Europe and got to Liege where I had to wait an hour for a connection through to Ostend and I was starving and that night I discovered the unfathomable delight of chips with mayonnaise.

    I've never looked back - one of the formative experiences of my life.
    Which explains your pseudonym ?

    (edit - tbf, I am also a mayo with chips enthusiast.)
  • CyclefreeCyclefree Posts: 25,074
    edited August 2018
    Yeah - and? By the time this photo was taken he had decided to go down the peaceful democratic route, just like, ooh I don't know, Sean McBride, a former Chief of Staff of the IRA, who became peaceful and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. For real - unlike your delusional Corbyn-loving friends who think their hero got it.

    Oh, look: who else won the Nobel Peace Prize? Menachem Begin. Along with Anwar Sadat, then murdered by Islamists. What a surprise.

    Perhaps some of the violence-obsessed racists and anti-semites Corbyn supports and praises might learn that if they want to be taken seriously by serious people a move away from violence and hatred - rather than spewing it out at conferences in front of morally challenged politicians - might help. Just a thought.

    And another tip: if you're going to try and make silly comparisons with historical figures from the recent past, do a bit of research on them first, to stop yourself looking stupid.
  • edmundintokyoedmundintokyo Posts: 17,136
    rcs1000 said:

    rcs1000 said:


    I stayed well away from Tether, thank you.

    In fact, I sold 99.99% of my crypto between November and January.

    I am intrigued by Lightning. If it reduces the cost of BTC transactions (and Ether) to $0.001, then it potentially makes it useful as a payment mechanism again.

    So I also figured it was time to divest from all this over-inflated crypto madness and sold my bit-coins off last year and put the money into a portfolio of domestic (Japanese) stocks selected by my cat. He's doing quite well - about 5% above the Nikkei index - so I looked at where his gains were coming from, and it turns it's all from one of his companies that just announced it's... building an Ethereum wallet...
    I was at a party on Saturday with a guy who's the crpyto lawyer in the US. And for years he'd asked to be pain in BTC/ETH/etc.

    The income tax he owes is based on the price at which he recieved the currency. The consequence is that his tax bill is now larger than the value of his holdings. Ouch,
    Definitely lots of people in a similar situation. In particular I reckon the prices of thing that went up last year have been dropping ahead of Japanese tax deadlines; Japan went crypto-mad last year, and over here they tax crypto gains as regular income, which is nearly 60% in the top bracket when you include local taxes, and they've been clear (albeit in advice issued in December) that you realize a gain when you sell one crypto for another crypto. So people who had BTC during the bubble at the end of last year and sold it for some other crypto, which then lost 75% to 90% of its value, now potentially have a tax bill several times as big than the value of what they've got left...
  • Richard_NabaviRichard_Nabavi Posts: 30,820
    Cyclefree said:

    Yeah - and? By the time this photo was taken he had decided to go down the peaceful democratic route, just like, ooh I don't know, Sean McBride, a former Chief of Staff of the IRA, who became peaceful and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. For real - unlike your delusional Corbyn-loving friends

    Oh, look: who else won the Nobel Peace Prize? Menachem Begin. Along with Anwar Sadat, then murdered by Islamists. What a surprise.

    Perhaps some of the violence-obsessed racists and anti-semites Corbyn supports and praises might learn that if they want to be taken seriously by serious people a move away from violence and hatred - rather than spewing it out at conferences in front of morally challenged politicians - might help. Just a thought.

    And another tip: if you're going to try and make silly comparisons with historical figures from the recent past, do a bit of research on them first, to stop yourself looking stupid.
    It's OK, BJO is giving us a wonderful illustration of the sequence of excuses which someone posted yesterday. I see he's now on the penultimate one: "Maybe it did happen, and maybe it is bad, but THE TORIES ARE WORSE!"
  • felixfelix Posts: 15,124
    Nigelb said:

    The 'global laughing stock' with its 'reputation in the gutter'....Ladies & Gentlemen, the "2018 Global Soft Power" Number 1 Country is....Britain....

    https://softpower30.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/The-Soft-Power-30-Report-2018.pdf

    1. Uk

    ....
    But we can't really have a royal wedding every year.
    However, we can on rotation do wedding/baby/baby/wedding/divorce/baby almost ad infinitum!
  • His party, Herut, was compared to the Nazi party by Albert Einstein.
  • NigelbNigelb Posts: 61,591
    felix said:

    Nigelb said:

    The 'global laughing stock' with its 'reputation in the gutter'....Ladies & Gentlemen, the "2018 Global Soft Power" Number 1 Country is....Britain....

    https://softpower30.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/The-Soft-Power-30-Report-2018.pdf

    1. Uk

    ....
    But we can't really have a royal wedding every year.
    However, we can on rotation do wedding/baby/baby/wedding/divorce/baby almost ad infinitum!
    Unless it's televised live, I doubt the royal birth will get 2bn tuning in...
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842
    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    Pulpstar said:


    It's physically very large, and has nuclear weapons. Belgium has mayo on chips :)

    In 1984, I was Inter-Railing round Europe and got to Liege where I had to wait an hour for a connection through to Ostend and I was starving and that night I discovered the unfathomable delight of chips with mayonnaise.

    I've never looked back - one of the formative experiences of my life.
    Which explains your pseudonym ?

    (edit - tbf, I am also a mayo with chips enthusiast.)
    Needed to name my character whilst playing Quake 3 in BUNCS https://www.thesubath.com/events/6706/4145/ back in ~ 2001, just stuck with it ever since. No real meaning to it
  • PulpstarPulpstar Posts: 75,842

    Pulpstar said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Mr. kle4, I saw a table a few days ago about power beliefs. The UK was the only country, I think, not to rank the UK in the top 5, of those featured.

    As I'm procrastinating, took a few minutes to hunt it down:

    https://twitter.com/simongerman600/status/1002626409125367809

    It's amazing how highly people rate Russia (which has the same quantity of exports as Belgium).
    It's physically very large, and has nuclear weapons. Belgium has mayo on chips :)
    Which one would you rather live in? (For the purposes of this rhetorical question you are not obliged to actually eat any contaminated chips.)
    Belgium.
  • DavidLDavidL Posts: 50,780
    rcs1000 said:

    Mr. 1000, the economy of Russia isn't great, but it's very willing to project power overseas, both military and via cybershenanigans.

    And that's before we get to chemical weaponry.

    In some ways, it punches far above its weight.

    It does, but it's also a sclerotic corpse of a country, with oil and gas exports paying for a military and very little else. The poverty, once you live the lights of St Petersburg and Moscow, is terrible.

    The only good news for Russia is that it's tight oil reserves may well be 10-times the size of the US.
    Hmm...I think that those that travelled around Russia for the WC got a rather different impression. I must say that I was also somewhat surprised. It largely looked like a fairly normal western country which is not what the statistics would seem to indicate.
  • Pro_RataPro_Rata Posts: 4,786
    New thread
  • mattmatt Posts: 3,789
    Fuck me, people still think traveling regularly makes them a sophisticate.
  • mattmatt Posts: 3,789
    edited August 2018
    welshowl said:

    rcs1000 said:

    Cyclefree said:

    You can use the Thameslink to get to Gatwick without going through central London at all. That's what I do from West Hampstead. Ditto going to Luton. And I can easily drive north from where I am, which I shall be doing in about an hour.

    The road over the fells down into the Duddon estuary is one of the most beautiful in England: bleak but with such a view of the sky and then down to the sea and across to Black Combe. I can see my village in the distance. It lifts my heart every time, even in deepest winter.

    Obviously miles away from all known civilisation. Lord Adonis probably thinks there be dragons in these parts. But simply glorious. If my beloved ever pulls his finger out, we will have our beach hut repaired and I can simply disappear there with walls of books, stare at the sea and never have to bother with tube trains again.......

    Thameslink is (or was) fabulous. It made getting to Gatwick from North London painless.
    AHHHHH! Listen to you all!

    It might be fabulous to use Thameslink from West bleedin' Hampstead or Highgate or Camden or wherever, but I want to go from a large provincial city to an airport in London (because there are bugger all flights long haul from my neck of the woods) and I can't do it without faffing about and dragging bags about as I am forced to change on second class transport systems, because we are short of a few thousand yards of rail track here and there.

    But that's fine, because the decision makers live in London, and if the poor darlings have to wait seven minutes on the tube, there's another direct system to take them where they want to go.
    Qatar. Revenue is disappointing though which may indicate why there is a lack of long haul from Barry Island.
  • stodgestodge Posts: 12,745
    Nigelb said:

    stodge said:

    Pulpstar said:


    It's physically very large, and has nuclear weapons. Belgium has mayo on chips :)

    In 1984, I was Inter-Railing round Europe and got to Liege where I had to wait an hour for a connection through to Ostend and I was starving and that night I discovered the unfathomable delight of chips with mayonnaise.

    I've never looked back - one of the formative experiences of my life.
    Which explains your pseudonym ?

    (edit - tbf, I am also a mayo with chips enthusiast.)
    At the time I had ambitions of becoming Britain's first Sumo wrestler. The idea of making a living eating a lot of food slapping your thighs and pushing people around had its attractions when there were 3 million unemployed.

    I had the name "Stodgeozuma" which was going to be my moniker on the doyo.

    Life has told me however other careers offered the possibility of considerable food consumption and pushing people around without having to go to Japan and wearing what looks like a large nappy so my career direction moved elsewhere.
  • welshowlwelshowl Posts: 4,460



    @ Matt

    Yes indeed. It doesn't help that as I read it a few weeks ago in their timetable the connection to Australia meant landing in Qatar at about 2.00 am and finding something to do for eighteen hours till the connection.

    Cardiff airport is in the wrong place really. It should share an airport with Bristol somewhere near the Severn Bridge so it could serve the S West, S Wales and points north up to Birmingham very well. It's not, it's down a small A road just past Barry, and I suppose it all goes back to where RAF stations were in the war, long before anyone had really thought about two bridges crossing the Severn and creating a "region". Bristol airport is also in the arse end of nowhere on the wrong side of town and only has a short runway, but they have been far better at getting short haul airlines in and gaining critical mass. They even have a new little mini by pass to help take some of Bristol out of the equation when driving from the north.

    However things like the lack of a few hundred yards of track to the line to Cardiff, or the couple of miles to link Heathrow to the rest of the country without going into London or having a faff in Reading, do not help. This is where Govt can do good easily. It has chosen not to. Labour, Tory, UK or Welsh flavours have all failed on this.
  • sarissasarissa Posts: 1,755
    welshowl said:

    There was of course a scheme called AirTrack which was going to improve rail links to Heathrow from the south, but it was killed off by then-Transport Secretary Philip Hammond whose constituency the line happened to pass through despite the significant benefits to a large swathe of the country.

    A new scheme is currently being considered but even if it goes ahead is unlikely to open before the 2030s.

    There’s also a scheme called WRATH (Western Rail Access to Heathrow) which will allow passengers from the west to get to Heathrow without going via Paddington, but again don’t expect anything to be open any time soon.

    Bonkers isn't it.

    The Londoncentric nature of transport to places like Heathrow, Gatwick or Stansted drives me nuts.

    I would love to get the bus from my house to Cardiff Central and get on the train and get off at Heathrow on a line which in a sane world would then go to Paddington, via a rail spur (of what 6 or seven miles of new track?). I'm sure lots of folk in the S West and S Wales and the Midlands agree with me. Instead of which I'm getting off a train at Reading and getting on a coach to finish the last 15 miles to Heathrow. So I drive.

    Gatwick is as much use as a chocolate fireguard to anyone living north of the Thames or west of about Basingstoke, and Stansted may as well be an Amsterdam terminal as far as public transport is concerned to anyone having to go through London.

    To add to the lunacy Cardiff has a runway big enough to take an A380 to go anywhere on the planet but whose rail "link" takes you to the opposite end of the airport to the terminal you need to be for the want of 1500 yards (yes yards) of track. So you have to get on a minibus. And they wonder why the airport struggles to attract business. It's never going to be Heathrow 2 for obvious reasons but 1500 yards of track for a proper rail link?

    I was once on a flight which had 3 aborted approaches to Cardiff in foggy conditions - scarier even than Madeira in a crosswind.
  • sarissasarissa Posts: 1,755

    The 'global laughing stock' with its 'reputation in the gutter'....Ladies & Gentlemen, the "2018 Global Soft Power" Number 1 Country is....Britain....

    https://softpower30.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/The-Soft-Power-30-Report-2018.pdf

    1. Uk

    2. France

    3. Germany

    4. USA

    5. Japan


    27. China

    28. Russia
    Who needs soft power when you carry a big stick?
  • notmenotme Posts: 3,293
    Nigelb said:

    The 'global laughing stock' with its 'reputation in the gutter'....Ladies & Gentlemen, the "2018 Global Soft Power" Number 1 Country is....Britain....

    https://softpower30.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/The-Soft-Power-30-Report-2018.pdf

    1. Uk

    ....
    But we can't really have a royal wedding every year.
    They said that about new Star Wars movies.
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