jjb1970

I'm back in Singapore, the journey was uneventful and enjoyable apart from the taxi to Brussels airport, which was awful. The driver was accelerating hard and braking hard, veering between lanes, pushing into lanes and got quite stroppy when I asked him not to use his mobile phone. I'd have happily used the train but the young lady from our office travelling with me felt a bit uncomfortable around stations. Though in all honesty the risk of being robbed or assaulted at the station was probably lower than an RTA given the driver we ended up with. Turkish Airlines was excellent, their new A350's are superb and the food offering was equally superb. Excellent in-flight entertainment too. The transfer in Istanbul was scheduled for 70 minutes which is quite tight but arrival was on time and they have short transfer security routes so the time actually felt more than ample and my bags arrived in Singapore with me. Outbound the transfer was longer, something which made me laugh is there is a Salt Bae restaurant in Istanbul airport with a huge picture of Salt Bae (a very expensive celebrity cook/restaurant), after seeing Uncle Roger extract the urine out of him I just couldn't help laughing. Back to the warmth and humidity, been a typical mercurial day here, it was rather lovely when I arrived at Changi this morning and my taxi home took the scenic route across the island along East Coast Park and through Marine Bay which was nice, then rain, now looking quite pleasant.

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.

I always understood the sensitivities of survivors or families of those who lost loved ones and usually make allowances when I see them in the media on various issues. It's easy to criticise someone acting very unreasonably after a tragedy but it's easy to say that if we weren't affected. It's why even as an avowed japanophile (or whatever the correct term is) I never criticised the old boys in Cumbria or extended family in Indonesia who had/have a visceral hatred of Japan as while I do not agree I also recognise the reasons for it and it's not for me to tell camp survivors or those who lost loved ones in the most brutal ways to get over it. Unfortunately when the media get involved rational thought and analysis goes out of the window, and these things attract a cadre of the professionally angry and aggrieved who had nothing to do with the incident or any involved but who see it as their duty to make it personal. That's not aimed at those who want to improve things and who are passionate about safety, but having seen a few of these people it's clearly more than an interest in safety to some. Most of those involved in investigations are painfully aware of the human side of the incidents they're investigating and feel a powerful obligation to do what's right for those lost and left bereaved.

Kader are unusual in the British hobby in being an actual manufacturer, so presumably their business model is fundamentally different from companies outsourcing tool making and production.

Years ago I had a Roco kettle with a shaft drive from the tender to the locomotive wheels, a bit like the system Dapol used in N but more discrete as the shaft was under the footplate. At one time, up to the late 90's British OO was woeful compared to European HO but these days I don't see that British models lose anything to overseas models. I was a keen enthusiast of German, Swiss and Italian outline for many years at a time when they really did make British models look awful but I drifted back to British as standards improved, through retained an interest in North American and in recent years have been primarily interested in Japanese and Chinese models.

I like the A350, I think the 787 is a nicer looking aircraft but maybe because the A350 is a relatively young type I find they're fitted out to a consistently good standard inside. This is probably one of the most boring liveries in the sky, which is a shame as in general I like Chinese airline liveries and whenever I've flown China Eastern I have found them pretty good. White liveries do tend to get criticised by enthusiasts but an attractive tail fin and or a nice font/style for the company name can do quite a bit. With this livery I just find everything about it painfully dull. Taken from a Turkish A350 next in line for take off, it's quite unusual for this runway to be used for take off, it's usually used for landing

Indeed a model may be accurate or inaccurate, basic or beautifully detailed but it should work out of the box.

On the Black 5, the old Hornby model is still a good model. Personally I am not interested in things like working lamps, smoke and sound and much prefer a well done vanilla model so the older version is probably much more up my street. On duplication, the UK RTR market is no different to North America and the rest of Europe in that duplication is not only inevitable given the major types have been done, not only done but more than once and done well in many cases. In the 00's I was happy to replace models that still worked perfectly well because there was a paradigm shift in mechanisms and fidelity to prototype. Now however I see new tooling of models already made and really don't see much reason to upgrade. The new Bachmann 47 and Bachmann & Accurascale 37's are superb but the older Bachmann versions are still excellent. And in some cases it's debatable whether the newer model has moved anything on. The Heljan 45 was excellent in parts but overall I really don't think it any better than the older Bachmann model (if anything Bachmann got the body profile better). This Black 5 is in that category, I am really struggling to see a reason why this is better than the old model and a couple of reasons to see it as a step backwards. Years ago I used to laugh at how European HO enthusiasts would inflate minor differences between models of the same types to epic proportions and hype trains around new tooling of types already extremely well done (several times in many cases) but British OO is in the same place. A good side is these things often result in a lot of perfectly good models appearing on the s/h market as some rush out to buy the latest thing and dump yesterday's thing.

I like Sam's trains and like metal models, but even as someone who enjoys his videos I find his conception of what constitutes value for money and his readiness to use the term rip off annoying and unnecessary. Ditto quality, he seems to use weight as a proxy for quality, which is silly as it's easy to make something heavy but takes good design and manufacture to deliver durability and reliability which are much better indicators of quality than weight. That said, car manufacturers clocked that making doors heavy is seen as a sign of quality by many.

At one time GPS introduced deliberate inaccuracies for commercial users. Marine charts showed satellite derived positions as they weren't that accurate. After a few years they switched that feature off and gave everyone access to accurate positions.

This happened to me for a few months, then it started working again. No idea why. I used to look at the new activity tab as threads would open that way.