pete_mcfarlane
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Labour's plans for the railways
pete_mcfarlane replied to Andy Kirkham's topic in UK Prototype Discussions (not questions!)
Of course there's nothing to stop that happening under the current system. I don't quite see the point of the Labour proposal. Eliminating the profit margins (which IIRC is something like 1 to 1.5%) won;'t make a massive difference to ticket prices. The only way to bring them down is to increase the subsidies to the operator(s) which they aren't going to be doing (and could do under the current system anyway). The whole proposal feels like a headline with nothing behind it. Exactly. I remember taking ages (nearly half an hour) to buy a S-Bahn ticket at Munich airport, as there were only 2 or 3 tickets machines (poorly located on the platforms) with a big queue. In a UK airport you could have bought your ticket in the airport building before you even got to the station with its dozen or so ticket machines. UK railways are actually really good at a lot of things. -
Which is why I said 'mostly' to cover that earlier criticism. The real trashing of his reputation (with the wider public) came later on as part of the reappraisal of WW1 in the sixties ('The Donkeys' and so on). Otherwise he'd not have made the list of Britannia names ten years previously. The irony with Fuller is that the Germans did read his book and listen to his ideas, as they'd never had to work with him. Proof that being right isn't enough to get your ideas adopted- you need to be right, and not have fallen out with everyone you need to convince.
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I'd say the the most interesting Britannia naming is 70044 Earl Haig. This was the 1950s when he was still (mostly) seen as a national hero, before his reputation was comprehensibility (and not entirely rightly) trashed by historians in the sixties. Nowadays most people just see him as Geoffrey Palmer with a dustpan and brush in Blackadder.
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But Culloden and the '45 wasn't really England v Scotland. It was the exiled Stuart dynasty plus the few Clans who supported them verses the rest of the country. Most of Scotland supported the Government, much as they'd supported the revolution of 1688 that got rid of the Stuarts in the first place. Anyway, I'm not sure what relevance somebody who thinks they have a divine right to stick to their old ways losing to Government forces has to the current WCRC situation. Oh wait....
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Some of the eBay seller's feedback is from people who got hit by VAT, presumably not having realised that this would happen (or noticed that the item was in China). So not everyone is that clued up. There is some good railway and railway modelling stuff on Facebook. Random examples that are in my most recent views: https://www.facebook.com/groups/287574851395841 https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063285277206 https://www.facebook.com/groups/178540989016069 But yeah, there is a lot of weirdness on there. The recent fun with Jacobite central door locking seems to have brought out a lot of badly spelled rants. I think it depends on how well moderated the pages are - some of them are a lot better than others.
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Not to people on Facebook it isn't. If you look at the post on Dapol's page it's full of people demanding to be told exactly what to 'avoid'... (And in fairness, there are some people talking sense on there as well).
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BuT wHy WoNt Dapol pOsT tHe LiNk To ThE cHeAp FaKeS sO i CaN aVoId ThEm?
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Colorblindness runs in my family. Only an hour ago I was googling the numbers on Humbrol paint tins to work out what colour they were. These days there's a mobile phone app called 'Colorgrab' which tells you what colour things are - really useful.