jjb1970

You'd only do that once in this place🫣😲 In all seriousness, if you spend a long time somewhere without graffiti then go back to Europe, the US etc you realise just how prevalent it is. I tuned a lot of it out as background noise previously but now when I visit it seems to be everywhere. I like Belgian trains (it's one of the few railways I think we could learn from) but they have a dreadful graffiti problem.

I have found poor and imprecise language one of the main reason for disputes between western companies and Chinese suppliers. This may go against conventional wisdom but I have found the Chinese companies I have worked with to be punctilious in delivering whatever has been agreed in the contract. Which, oddly, is the problem. It was a regular part of my job in class to get involved in disputes between the owner of a ship under construction and the shipyards, with owners spluttering about nefarious asiatics not delivering what was ordered. In the overwhelming majority of cases the actual problem was that the yard was delivering exactly what was written in the contract. If that wasn't what the owner wanted or thought they'd agreed to then the problem wasn't really with the yard.

One thing I learned very quickly when I got involved in policy work is never trust secondary sources (reports of meetings, opinions of agreements, interpretations of regulatory texts etc) as it is alarming just how detached a lot of it is from primary sources.

I view the news a bit like Wikipedia - good for non controversial and non political stuff but not reliable for anything which may be controversial or political. One of the nice things about the Internet is it's now pretty easy to go online and read the texts of international conventions and agreements, diplomatic read outs of meetings and calls, read speeches in full etc if it's a subject of interest. I tend to find that in most cases where the news report someone saying something outrageous or stupid that it is the news quoting selectively and out of context. I try and avoid the news as much as possible. If it's all as bad as they report and we're all going to die what will worrying and getting stressed out do about it? Can we change it?

I saw this nifty bit of kit out the other day, how they keep the fancy paint in tip top condition. The Genting Dream always looks smart despite the high maintenance paint job, some cruise ships calling here look very shabby, particularly RCCL, Carnival and Princess.

I don't think any of us are the target audience for the OP, unless any of are young and live in the catchment area for the club in question. I tend to agree with Ron Ron Ron that if it's about securing the future of the club for a few more years then young adults and returning modellers is a better target. Especially now that most young people go into higher education you can expect a significant percentage of young members to move on at 18 or so as they leave home to go college or university. Many of whom won't come back. Younger adults and more mature people returning to the hobby are probably more settled and may be more interested in a club. That said, Bristol_Rich raises the real issue - what do prospective members want and why should they join a club? Any member organisation needs to give people a reason to join, which means trying to understand what they want rather than projecting what we want.

On language, one of my pet hates is the term 'loophole' and the way the media and politicians play the popular opinion card. Something is either allowed in law or it isn't. Laws and regulatory texts don't appear out of the ether, they're carefully (.......) drafted and scrutinised before being enacted. Legal provisions are there by design, and if a company or individual exploits those provisions they're doing nothing wrong. Rather than attacking those acting within the law and taking advantage of it the media should really be asking governments why they enacted the laws in question (or refuse to amend them). I wouldn't mind if politicians and bureaucrats were honest and admitted they allowed certain provisions for just the reason company X or Mr B is exploiting them but they always seem to play the ignorance card and pretend shifty n'er do wells are doing something devious and shady. Maybe they are, but it's because someone decided it should be allowed. I have sat through multiple sessions where governments reach agreement and make informed decisions then go home and pretend they never supported what they've just happily signed onto and then down the line pretend they didn't know the probable consequences despite those consequences having been discussed and deemed acceptable or desirable. Or maybe I am just becoming a cynic.

In some ways tracking which countries are in fashion for resort hotels is a bit like the Big Mac index as a dirty but pretty effective economic indicator. Just as you can see who is up and down by the number of businesses pitching themselves to English, German, Dutch etc speakers in the Medi resorts so in Asia you see Japanese has lost a lot of ground to Chinese as Chinese visitors are now seen as the big spenders to milk.

On travel, unfortunately there is a section of society in most countries that doesn't travel well. I think in Britain we associate it with Mediterranean resort areas which cater to people from Northern European countries, in Asia there are lots of resort hotels and shops set up to minimise the exposure of Japanese, Korean and (increasingly) Chinese tourists to local culture. We often have a day out in Johor Bahru, the Malaysian city on the other side of the strait, and that's the same, so many of the shops and restaurants are set up to serve Singaporean visitors by being just like Singapore. Batam in Indonesia is the same, that's about an hour away by ferry and a popular weekend break. Despite being Indonesia it feels like Singapore with lower prices and more space. I don't mind it really, we all have our own preferences and if people want things to be just like home and locals make $$$$$$$$s serving that segment then who am I to object. What does annoy me is when people show a wilful refusal to respect local customs on what is acceptable behaviour in public and show an obvious disdain for everything around them. One of my favourites was on a Vietnam Airlines to Ho Chi Minh City and hearing a loud hockney voice 'I can't eat any of this, everything's got rice or noodles!'. Well, you're going to the wrong part of the world if you don't like rice or noodles. As an aside, business class with Vietnam Airlines is very good and very competitive. Unlike European airlines even the short haul A321 connection Singapore to Ho Chi Minh has a proper business class cabin and serves a hot meal with table linen despite only being a two hour flight.

One of my biggest regrets (if that is the right word......) is that I went to school in an era when it was thought that grammar didn't matter, all that mattered was being able to express ourselves. The result is that my grammar and use of English is atrocious. At work I have to put a lot of effort into writing documents then trying to make them presentable. If possible I like to leave them for a few days after review and editing as returning to them after a few days always results in further major editing. I really learned about the importance of linguistic precision (not that you'd see that from my posts here......) when I worked for Lloyds Register. Not just applying rules but rules development and acting for flag states as a Recognised Organisation to verify statutory compliance. That's where I was educated that words like 'may' and 'should' are meaningless in a regulatory context (if you write a rule saying party x may do something, then the natural corollary is that party x may not do something, so why write it?). I also say first hand (and still see at IMO) two competing philosophies to developing rules and regulations. One is to keep it succinct and simple, less is more, so it is very clear what is required. The other is lots of words and qualifications so that there is lots of wriggle room.

On fancy kettles, I wish I had a pound for every time someone claims that China made a gas turbine version of the famous QJ locomotive. No, they built an experimental version with a tender equipped with a gas producer combustion system. The locomotive fwd of the tender was pretty much a regular QJ, with no turbine. I blamed Bachmann, they were good enough to make an HO model of the one off experimental version and either as a mistranslation or because they didn't understand what it was described it as a gas turbine. Now there are enthusiasts everywhere who look at the machine with pistons and valve gear and claim it is a gas turbine loco.

If you're welding model trains together just be careful where you put your oxy-acetylene bottles and tell the wife to be careful with matches around them.

A lap top is a computer, I run Windows 11 and the same MS Office suite etc, same web browsers etc as a desk top.

Indeed, but likely to take the thread down an undesirable route and risk getting locked.

I notice this on my phone, but my lap top shows prices with VAT.