rockershovel

Just reading some fairly crazy stuff about forecast conditions for Buffalo v Miami

Surely someone must know when Browns last won a playoff game? *turns out it was 2020, and they have a consistent record of playoff wins, although not of doing enough to go to Super Bowl. OK. All root for Lions, then.

Browns and Lions are also the only two teams from the pre-amalgamation days never to have been to Super Bowl

Just watched Miami v Buffalo, good game.

Surely that's the whole point of using a specialist supplier; that they know something you don't?

Cab forwards? What for? The Woodhead Tunnel, single-headed? Don't forget that you STILL have the water tank in front of the cab..

It ought to be. The Germans are making far more from it than we ever will.

Scandinavia can be like that; Norway is similar. Germany, France or the Netherlands, on the other hand.... Italy is similar to UK in that it is a peninsula and exposure to foreign language media, comparable. The easy polyglot capacity of the Northern Europeans is driven by their small size, contiguous borders and constant exposure to media in various languages

I've never really learnt any other language fluently in many years or working abroad... except French, which I have learnt at school anyway. In many companies (BP, for example) the door to language training is firmly closed in the faces of native English speakers. In most European countries of my experience there is no language training for English speakers, and (when we were members) English was not accepted as a "European" language The biggest barrier is mass media. The British aren't exposed to foreign language mass media on any large scale. Try learning two languages from primary school level, then living in a country where you hear those languages on the radio or TV most days.

Of course not.

Since you mention nurses, that's just another part of the perfect storm which has destroyed so much of our infrastructure. A nurse typically works 5-15 years, leaves for family reasons and returns in her 50s, if at all. It makes no sense whatsoever to incur tens of thousands of pounds of debt for that. It's the same for junior doctors. Look at the language surrounding doctor appointments and funding; the phrasing is typically something like " x number of full time equivalents". Doctors MUST have ongoing structured professional development, otherwise you are deliberately driving them away. The academisation of training is a classic example. The academic sector has every incentive to drive this ever onwards. Industry doesn't want to know (one of the more disgusting aspects of covid was the cry on all sides "we have no responsibility for these people"). You might regard this as stupid. Personally, I greatly doubt that people with exoensive private education and good degrees from exclusive Universities are, in the main, stupid , the cause lies elsewhere

That's pretty much the case. I travelled around a fair bit by train in 2011-12, and again in 2018-20. I found there was a three-tier system as follows 1) a "Hommes 40, chevaux 8" level service found in areas like the links from ECML to the coast itself. No one uses this apart from the unemployed, chavs on a night out, and OAPs. 2) a desperately ovetcrowded commuter network focused on London, with local outgrowth in places like Cardiff and the Liverpool/Manchester Nexus 3) a long-distance service at premium rates (ECML et al) used by OAPs and some tourists. Business users drive or fly.

The British construction industry has gone through a multiple impact - it wanted a completely casual workforce, with no employment rights or training costs. That was its price for supporting Mrs Thatcher's leadership bid. To a great extent, they got it. - the collapse of training and employment security was driven in part by the vast expansion of more-or-less bogus self-employment, in which costs of this sort are pushed onto the employee and (partially) reconciled against their personal taxation. - the same applies to costs related to attracting and retaining a mobile workforce (its important to understand that the more you move about, the higher your accomodation costs). - these taxation concessions are now being progressively withdrawn (the infamous IR35 process) which increases cost to the individual. The recent furlough scheme was a major kick in the teeth for anyone employed in that fashion, too. - add in the general innumeracy of large sectors of the British population, and the outcome is a workforce which doesn't understand its own earnings structure, particularly the relationship ship between gross and nett earnings, and remains attached to the highest gross rate. This resulted in general wage erosion, which is still ongoing. - construction used to depend on a workforce living in either poor quality, cash-in-hand accomodation or caravans on a multitude of small, independent sites, pub car parks, farmyard corners or just odd corners of the site itself. A perfect storm of mass immigration, mass increase of students, increased focus on taxation, planning and HSE constraints and a simple disregard by the industry itself has largely destroyed that accomodation supply - the plain fact is that there no will at government level, to make it happen. 1200 "apprentices" in the short courses now going by that name, doesn't begin to address the problem. I'm currently working on a major water infrastructure project which uses large numbers of migrant staff and labour, because the project structure makes that inevitable. I've seen schemes to reconstruct or maintain skills supplies, and if there is no will to focus on the origins and nationality of your intake, there is no functional scheme. It can't be put any simpler than that.

Quite so. LNER and its predecessors were the exception to prove the rule; now they've followed the pack. Why anyone would argue that HS2 would be anything other than a maximum premium service, escapes me entirely.

My main basis for that view is that rail fares on any sort of main-line service these days are far from cheap, especially if you are booking at relatively short notice - say, less than 6 weeks. When I worked in London, commuting from Peterborough in the late 80s/early 90s my monthly season cost 2/3 days' earnings a month and a weekly season, about 1 days' earnings. Now it's about twice that, last time I looked. On a more specific note, consider the ECML where the old principle of "any available service" is stone dead. You can expect to pay considerably more for a faster journey, in plain English LNER has repositioned itself as a premium service. Why would you doubt that HS2 envisages a similar structure? Your reference to "existing stopping and semi-fast services" appears to answer your own question.

Re various aforegoing; - if anyone can point to a precedent indicating that HS2 fares will be cheap, go ahead. - for those who insist on claiming HS2 isn't primarily an EU project, google TEN-T. This is why successive governments are so committed to it; both main parties are locked in conflict over how to take us back in, contrary to expressed electoral wishes. - why don't we have a primarily freight-based design? Projected freight usage seems very low.

That's a handsome period loco and I must say, LBSCR modellers seem well provided for!

The "speed" thing is an interesting point. The general public UNDOUBTEDLY regard "improved trains" and "faster trains" as synonymous - whether it is the Race To The North, the Twentieth Century Ltd, HST125, French TGV or Japanese "bullet trains". The OTHER thing the general public are interested in, is cheap travel - from the "Parliamentaries" and the "twopenny tube" onwards, and I think we can all be quietly confident that whatever else travel on HS2 will be, it WON'T be cheap. Another thing we can all be sure of, is that HS2 will bring ZERO benefits to anyone living East of the Pennines, South of the Thames or West of Shooters Hill. How, then to sell this vastly expensive vanity project to the electorate? I've always regarded the Dutch model as preferable. Dutch trains are not particularly modern or comfortable; they are quite Spartan in many respects; they tend to require inconvenient changes at frequent intervals (I suspect that direct train routes are forbidden by Dutch law). They certainly aren't fast, either. BUT, as a means of travelling round this fairly small and densely populated country, they are pretty good and they aren't expensive.

The crucial point seems to be that a very basic aspect of that specific design, has come to be regarded as unacceptable. Surely the railway knows how long it expects to dwell at stations?

I freely confirm that like a lot of field engineers, geography isn't my strong suit - at least in that sense. I've been there three times but it remains a point on Google Maps. I could give the WGS84 Coordinates of the Fish Return Line headwall if that helps...

Yes; but the Lickey Bank was cutting-edge technology at the time. It served a railway using converted horse drawn carriages pulled by 4-2-0 locomotives. The design issues involving placement of carriage doors are rather better understood these days.

.... which brings us back to the key problem with HS2, that it is a relic of the EU, which never worked for us on that level. Germany is, above all a creature of the railways, which enabled the development of the Federal Empire of minor states with contiguous borders and a common culture. Italy was unified the same way; Napoleon's structure for France predated the railways but made effective use of them. European countries also made great use of large-scale river transport. European countries are also accustomed to minor states like Belgium (and not-so-minor ones like Germany) whose borders are elastic over time. The creation of a unified state bound together by effective communications between REGIONAL capitals is an organic development of European geopolitics over a long period of time. It works for them, because it provides a workable structure in which resources transcend boundaries. Britain doesn't work that way. It is also bisected by the Pennines over much of its length. Journeys of much over 100 miles are rare. The European model of regional technocrats operating with little regard for central government was killed off by the 2004 Regional Devolution referenda. After 2004, government settled on a policy of exporting jobs and importing cheap labour, and we can see where THAT has led. Right now, we are building a water infrastructure to support a 25% population increase in an area bounded by the A1, Humber and Orwell. Hinkley Point is lumbering along, to provide grossly overpriced electricity from Devon. There are further water infrastructure works in the North. We face great challenges as a nation; but travelling from Birmingham to London, 20 minutes quicker at costs few can afford, isn't one of them or ever was

I've got a 1970s double album "best of The Byrds" with a summary of lineups which looks like a map of the Underground

That would be one description, yes... how is it right that she starts by boarding an unattended boat and stealing a dog? It also seems to include Pa Larkins' truck

I was quite happily dodging the column, watching "White Christmas" when my my decided she'd done enough. Within moments she had found an achingly BBC version of "The Famous Five"... oh, merciful Heavens. I'd rather have the bloody Cliff Richards music. Merry Xmas, all.