jjb1970

To me the success, or otherwise, of the railways depends on establishing an arms length relationship with government and ending DfT interference. After that the big issue is money. The UK has high debt, has been deficit spending and economic growth hasn't been impressive, all of which is significant for spending plans. And it's not like the UK is a low tax economy. We need to retain the willingness of markets to lend money, and at reasonable rates of interest. The answer might be to grow our way to funding investment but good luck with that. There are much bigger macro and geopolitical shifts in play too, I feel we are passing an inflexion point and politicians arguing about who owns railways is probably akin to the old adage about two bald men arguing over a comb.

Sadly, few maritime regulators other than the USCG seem to know it these days and use collision for ships hitting both moving and stationary objects. Another one is riparian, in Europe many maritime regulators no longer know the difference between riparian and littoral.

The problem isn't so much privatization as the way governments have managed railways and allowed DfT to micromanage. As with any idea, it can be done well or done badly, Japan privatized JR before BR was privatized and made a much better job of it than we did (which in fairness isn't unique to railways, Japan did did and does a lot of things better than the UK).

Usually one of the first things taught in statistics 101, and then universally ignored by politicians, the media, commentariat etc.

I guess the question might be what size of ship could allide with the bridge without resulting in a catastrophic structural failure? The Dali is a big ship, but a smaller feeder ship is still a big object. The 2500TEU boats of the early 70's had a deadweight of around 50,000T, I'm not sure that would have made much difference to the consequences of allision with the bridge compared to the much bigger boats of today.

The ability to absorb a missile strike without total loss is subject to multiple variables, but as with almost any engineered system the risk controls for warship design aren't based on worst possible scenario (which tends to be impracticable) but either worst credible scenario or a scenarios defined by regulation or user. Documents like the naval ship code/ANEP77 basically call out the concept of operations to define the degree of damage and functionality but most damage incidents aren't missile strikes but regular accidents such as allision and collision.

A belated happy birthday to Dave Hunt! I'm back off to Singapore today, it's been nice to visit Brussels and enjoy Belgian food (I love filet americain, the local version of steak tatare) and some cool fresh weather but equally I'll be happy to head back East.

Singapore AL are much more competitive for overseas users, it seems to be quite common that airlines work a lot harder to entice overseas. My son once managed to go on their UK site using a VPN and found fares half what they were offering on their local website but they have very good VPN detection and he was kicked off and redirected to the Singapore site within about a minute. The European airlines often offer cheaper fares to users in other European countries than local customers. Ditto to destinations other than local ones. For example, it's often much cheaper to fly Luftahsa Singapore - UK than Singapore - Germany, ditto with KLM, AF, BA et al for destinations other than their local points of arival. The RoC airlines (China AL, Eva Air and Starlux) are superb, among the best. You won't go wrong with business class on any of them. China AL have one of my favourite liveries.

I mentioned yesterday I quite enjoy dropping into one of the many stations to see the trains and take a few snaps here in Brussels and people were horrified and reacted like I was going for a walk in the Gaza strip. Gare du Midi has always been a bit problematic once you leave the station (it's a dodgy area) but they were telling me it's now really dodgy inside and not just Gare du Midi, a lot of violent crime, theft etc. However I still enjoy watching trains and so took the risk. Something which is disappointing is the graffiti, which is pervasive. Maybe it's the Singapore effect (you don't see graffiti in Singapore, any budding 'street artists' might do it once) but it just seems everywhere and it isn't even artistic. I'll admit even as something that detests graffiti some of it does display genuine talent but the graffiti everywhere here is just awful.

I used to have a 'travel counsellor' in my last job, it sounds very pretentious and just an inflated title for a travel agent but it was a great service. When things went well it was irrelevant but if things went wrong I had a contact and she'd arrange alternative flights, hotels, transfer taxis and everything, she could even wire money if my cards were refused. However, she wasn't cheap. That said, she was very good and any service and capability have a value so why shouldn't she be well rewarded if she offers something of value, I never begrudged her and miss her. My current role is all self managed travel, which removes that safety net (though there's a safety net in so far as there are arrangements to bail us out if we get properly stuck, but nothing like as simple) but I have to say I quite enjoy finding flights and if you don't mind doing a transfer business class isn't necessarily that much, especially if you're willing to use airlines less travelled in the western world. I was disappointed recently, Vietnam Airlines re-timed their LHR flight to depart Ho Chi Minh at breakfast time, it used to depart just after midnight so I could take the 8pm flight to Ho Chi Minh, have a relaxed transfer and head off, now it's too early to take the first flight of the day to Ho Chi Minh and staying overnight kind of defeats the point. However their in-flight service and seating in business class was excellent and S$3600 (£2000-ish) was excellent value. Something they could teach European airlines is that the two hour connection to Ho Chi Minh was 2+2 seats in business with a full meal service and linen. My other regular is Air China, that's a long routing as I go 5-6 hours in the wrong direction to Beijing or Shanghai but oddly the flight time isn't that much longer as they claw some of the time back by the shorter routing to Europe over Russia. As with Vietnam AL I get funny looks when I suggest Air China and see a lot of hatchet job reviews but I've never had a bad experience and find their business class service excellent. Being such a big airline their fleet varies, the A330's have older 2+2+2 seating but space is vast and in lie flat bed configuration it's great as there is no taper, it's a full rectangle and at 6' I have room to spare. They have two A350 configurations, older examples with herringbone individual podded seats and a newer version with fore-aft podded seats. Both are excellent but the newer ones really are superb and lose nothing to any airline. I see a lot of whinges about FA attitude but all the flights I've done they've been excellent. I've done Air India a few times and that one raises eye brows yet again I had no complaints and the flight attendants have all been genuinely friendly and enthusiastic. One of my favourites is Asiana, I use them to go to Japan but they seem uninterested in serving the Singapore Europe market. Their food offering is superb, I don't know about the required international option but their Korean dishes are superbly done. If you like Korean food (as I do) Asiana do it very well. Turkish have a huge route network are very good and usually pretty competitive. However that does take me to one consideration, Istanbul airport is enormous which means there can be a lot of walking between flights. One of the reasons I like Vietnam AL is the ease of transfer, Ho Chi Minh airport is basic and won't win many plaudits from those who want airports to be glass palaces of expensive retail but it's small, has everything you need and works. I use Singapore Airlines to fly around Asia but their flights to Europe and the US are insanely expensive for Singapore based passengers. They know the locals want to fly SQ and added to the normal premium to fly direct prices are just mad. Last week I booked a flight to Copenhagen with Thai (another good option) for S$4400, Singapore wanted S$11000. OK, it avoids a transfer in Bangkok but is avoiding a transfer really worth almost S$7000? And Thai really don't lose anything to Singapore onboard. My wife's closest friend in Singapore is pretty senior with SQ and even she questions why people pay $$$$$$$$$s to fly with them (she admits after she exhausts her privilege entitlement she flies with alternatives) and that despite the hype there are plenty of alternatives just as good for service. However, I do like Star Alliance airlines as I have an SQ gold card which does come with privileges worth having.

What happens when political expediency needs something to blame. How do they know the crew were incompetent? That's a serious allegation as the navigators and engineers will all hold STCW certificates of competency issued by government maritime regulatory agencies so it's actually an allegation against probably multiple governments. The ship was Singapore flag, the Singapore MPA takes seafarer certification very seriously and their exam and assessment process is as good as any.

I honestly can't understand why anyone buys such tat. Stick to high quality, tastefully designed timepieces such as the Elvis Presley Tukhanamun Dambusters clock.

What is common sense? Most of the time it is used as a crutch to support a point of view but in a regulatory context it is meaningless. Regulations already consider different risk profiles and differentiate controls according to risk. Regulations also tend to be drafted and/or reviewed by people with a reasonable level of professional expertise which outweighs what might be called common sense of lay persons.

I am feeling a sense of deja vu, I am in Brussels for the first time since the pandemic and it's like I was never away. I used to be over here every couple of weeks for day or overnight trips and got a bit fed up of it but it's nice to be back. The flight from Singapore to Istanbul was one of the newer Turkish Airlines A350's and was superb, the seat was excellent and Turkish do in-flight food and in-flight entertainment better than most. The flight from Istanbul to Brussels got a thumbs up as despite being an Euro short haul A321 it had a business class cabin, 2+2 seats with in-flight entertainment and a full (very good) meal service, unlike most European airlines which just move the divider curtain and don't sell the middle seat for business class. Airlines which many European airlines probably look down their noses at like Vietnam Airlines and Garuda Indonesia have propoer business class cabins and in-flight service in their short haul fleets yet Lufthansa, BA, AF, KLM etc just sell economy class seats at a huge mark up and leave the middle seat empty.

On satellite navigation, there are now quite a few systems, as well as GPS the Russian GLONASS, Chinese BDS and European Galileo all offer global coverage and there are some more narrow systems. All the ships I was on had both GPS and GLONASS systems in case one or the other went down. They were all developed by state actors primarily for non-civilian/commercial reasons but have hugely benefitted society despite that.