Reorte

There's a little bit of freight on the West Highland too, the aluminium trains to Fort William. Don't think there's any log traffic any more though (would love to be proved wrong).

Is this actually Parcel Force? I had a package last weekend which had been sent by them with IIRC Tracked 24. So I could see the van right at the top of the track to my house on that. Shortly followed by an email saying "your package has been taken to the Post Office" (without even saying which one, although it gave the post code so I could find out).

It's true that people do commonly refer to VED as road tax, so it makes sense for gov.uk to say that. It's not claiming it's accurate but it does mean that people who are reading it know which payment they've got to make it's talking about.

Including those parts of the road network that don't pay for themselves and never could... On the railways Beeching's been mentioned, but I don't think it's all that controversial a view that, even if you put aside the erroneous assumptions made (e.g. not accounting for the feeder traffic from branch lines and assuming people wouldn't just stay in the car rather than driving further to a station) more lines should've stayed open than did, even if the economic case wasn't quite there. But it's also not a particularly controversial view that there were plenty of lines that couldn't and shouldn't, as unfortunate as that was. The right balance should've been, again (IMO) economic factors certainly having a big part to play, but not being the only one.

It'll all depend on just exactly how the forces were distributed and transmitted through the structure.

And of course you can get cars where although there is a rate it's zero (mine is, and frankly I find that a bit absurd, although of course there's still all the tax paid on the petrol).

edit: replying to two posts ago (another reply appeared whilst I was typing) And that's all well and good. I'm more than happy to pay taxes to contribute towards things I believe make the country a better place to live in even if they can't stand on their own two feet otherwise (which isn't solely just ones I personally benefit from). Obviously there have to be some limits there - the whole point about the economic considerations being limiting factors and a means to an end - but as a general concept, great. At the extreme it probably would make more economic sense just to let some people starve but who wants to live in a world where that would be seen as right and proper? And just because that's an extreme doesn't mean the same principle can't apply to less extreme scenarios. Now I'm not trying to argue that the particular proposal in this thread should therefore go ahead, just that the "it doesn't make economic sense" isn't an argument against it in its own right (although "it makes little economic sense to a very excessive degree" would).

A bit one extreme or the other there don't you think? I.e. exactly what I was getting at. Do we only pay for schools because ultimately there's an economic return? Libraries? Parks? It should've also been very clear that I wasn't saying "economic considerations don't matter at all," since I pretty much spelled that out.

There are more kinds of sense than economic sense. Indeed, just looking at the economics isn't sense at all IMO; economic factors and considerations are enabling and limiting factors, they're something you need to have a good grasp of when determining whether or not something's even viable, but they're a means to an end and shouldn't ever be the end itself. Sometimes we get a better world when economic considerations play second fiddle.

I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if it was common with horses and carts.

What? I'd not heard that, about sequels and DLC. That's very disappointing (and very odd considering what a success it's been).

Pretty sure they can't force you to take a smart meter even if yours needs replacing. They'll have to replace it with a non-"smart" one (or one with the supposedly "smart" functions disabled, although by all accounts they're good enough at doing that themselves) if you ask.

Sounds like the ship got a mayday out and traffic was stopped as a result, so a quick response there probably saved lives.

I've wondered about that. The kinetic energy in even a slow-moving container ship will be immense, is it actually possible to protect against something like this? I suppose you could go to really big extremes by building every pier on an artificial island but that could well be beyond practical.

I'm guessing that there are fairly strict laws like that, which is why we rarely see anything go beyond "This is 2% better than other leading brands." If they tiptoe around like that it suggests attacking competitors lands you in trouble.

Well the download decided to restart half way through. So that's another day and a half (unless it does eventually come to realise half the stuff's already there - the files definitely are).

PC port of Horizon Forbidden West out now, and it sounds like a solid port of the console version for once. I'll find out eventually (day and a half to download it, and that's if I don't interrupt the download so I can use the connection for something else). I've managed to completely avoid spoilers so far...

Hence specific international services like the World Service. What we're talking about here though is very much a domestic news story (not even a national one).

Yes, the right reply usually should be predictable. Calling it "nonsense" I'm afraid just looks like a lack of any sensible reply to it, sneering at answers you don't like. Do you expect reports in countries that use metric units to give conversions of them all to imperial? Remember it's not just the UK that uses them, the USA is a pretty significant country that uses mph.

Making pointless conversions is sadder IMO. Like I said it's read outside but the BBC's job is to provide for the UK, the ones who pay for it, not an international audience. Anyway when I look at sites and stories and so on from another country I find it preferable if they stick to whatever's used locally and leave me to figure out any differences for myself. Makes the world a bit more of an interesting place if people don't all do things the same way, and I may learn something.

Harry Potter is no doubt a very useful tool for bringing in business, they don't need to risk treading on any legal toes to make use of that perception of it (although you could certainly argue that their headbutting with the ORR shows that they're happy enough to do that even when they're on a hiding to nothing). Probably helps that the train's been running since before Harry Potter made it more popular.

Considerably less characterless than what's followed. Travelling over 25 mph in them doesn't bother me in the slightest, although that assumes they're in decent condition and not rotting apart by now. In any case what's the line speed on the Mallaig extension? We're not exactly talking ECML. Obviously there's a limit on how much I'd be prepared to pay but other than that there's nothing offputting.

They'll be full of things people elsewhere won't have heard of. The BBC's output, other than the World Service, is for domestic consumption. It's good that others can see it but that's not who it should be written for.

The bit that bothers me there is someone at the BBC has felt that they need to write 20 mph (33 km/h).

In order to race you need to go to the country the race is in. Immigration's under no obligation to let him in to the country.