DenysW

1 hour ago, Willie Whizz said:

Er ... since when did Derby move to "The North", of all places?

I believe I've seen a sign to "Inverness & The SOUTH", but that could have been in Parts that (sometimes) want to be Foreign.

That would put Derby in the Deep South, where, according to stereotypes we're trying to put behind us, they walk down the street eating watermelon and spitting out the seeds.

It's also the furthest South that Bonnie Prince Charlie got in his attempt to become Charles III in 1745. Sometimes things take a long time to happen.

15 hours ago, SM42 said:

The fascinating bit  is how on earth did we get on before the great works of sanitation were built. 

Most of the Victorian sanitation spend was on pipes to move the sh1t out-of-town, and pipes to bring in uncontaminated supplies. That fixed the worst outbreaks of disease caused by using village pumps and wells that were rarely going deeper than 6m. This treatment business to protect the environment mostly started happening (much) later. 1930s to 1970s mostly. Disinfection (in the UK) was driven only by EU Directives (Shellfish, Bathing Beaches) so is almost exclusively coastal, and started this century.

16 hours ago, rockershovel said:

So... these storage costs are added to the cost of generating power at the wrong time, at an excessive cost?

No, no. Poor naif boy. No visible costs of storage because there isn't any/enough.

Thus: because there isn't the required storage capacity for energy but the government needed/wanted to get renewable generation installed, the economics were made to work by paying for the renewable electricity even at times when it wasn't needed and couldn't be stored. I don't know who pays for renewable generation that can't be connected to the grid because the existing connections are insufficient. I have a bad feeling it will be the same.

Changing from an electricity system with relatively few 4GW power stations burning 10GW of coal and dumping 6GW of heat into the atmosphere into one that has very large numbers to 10-1000 kW renewables is a very big, very expensive change, with very little of it apparently started.

12 hours ago, SM42 said:

The usual way is to pump water uphill, but creating hydrogen sounds a good alternative. 

There's also a technology to liquify air, store it cold (77K or thereabouts, potentially for months) then release it through electricity-generating turbines. It's asserted to have about the same efficiency (about 70%) as batteries. A large-scale proof-of-concept site has just been announced.

However, all storage costs big money and, shades of the NHS, we-the-country have not funded it at a rate that matches generation.

52 minutes ago, SM42 said:

Is the payment in addition to  tax

Accepting the £160 Bn price tag of the NHS (I thought it was a touch lower, but not enough to argue about) spread over the 30 million in work, then just the NHS needs a bit under £3,000/year/income-tax payer. And it's still cheap!

4 hours ago, rockershovel said:

The NHS is seriously good value for money. Per Capita costs really aren't bad by any standards.

I often disagree with @rockershovel. Not this time. Nail on head comes to mind.

It's not what you spend on health (as a country, in absolute terms or £M/min), it's does it work, and are we comparing low-cost-UK (in %-of-GDP) with high-cost AN-Other to push an agenda to spend more/less.

1 hour ago, Dave Hunt said:

Hawker Siddley Dynamics at Hatfield

Was that really DeHavilland? I lived in Hatfield in the 1950s and the aviation was not Hawker Siddley, at least by name. And the Hatfield->St Albans (Abbey) line still had single track down.

3 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

Smart motorways are supposed to be a cheap way of generating extra capacity and guess what. There's no such thing as a free lunch. 

Agreed.

1 minute ago, SM42 said:

run the NHS* for a lot less if the government ( taxpayer)  weren't funding it. 

Healthcare costs in the USA for the in-work are generally funded by the employer (as insurance) and the user (via an excess system). The insurance will only pay out what is 'reasonable and customary' and can restrict you to the local low-cost provider of healthcare. And it still ain't cheap. And it has to pay for practitioner malpractice insurance and the cost of administering and checking all of the payments. It ain't cheap in the non-NHS world either.

1 hour ago, rockershovel said:

building "smart motorways" which are now being quietly dismantled as the numerous critics of this quite insane scheme are being shown to have been right all along.. 

But data is never quoted to show/fail-to-show accident rates that compare the choices. If "smart" motorways are so lethal, why isn't there an equally noisy campaign against no-hard-shoulder dual-carriageway A roads? It looks like an identical design to me!

I've actually an open mind on this, I just like the discussions to be about facts not opinions. I also remember the M42 before, during, and after it was "smartened" and there didn't seem to be a change in disastrous hold-ups due to crashes (fairly rare anyway), but the congestion did get less dire.

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

I wouldn’t be able to tell you from Adam

He's running for MP in Leicester East as an independant. (One or two) big posters up with his likeness on. I assume this has not received widespread publicity in Switzerland?

2 hours ago, Ron Ron Ron said:

Slowly, but surely, dozens of bridges and viaducts all along Phase 1, are nearing completion......

There will be chuffers on them soon!!! Does an ex-military gentleman from the BoT still have to inspect the track, stations, facilities, etc.?

3 hours ago, AndyID said:

I was privileged to work in Nu Yoik City for a while when I lived in Nu Joisey.

I see from your spelling that you can understand Bugs Bunny (by origin a denizen of Poith Amboy)

39 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

Anyone see the bit on housing on telly the other day where a fake "brick" chimney was being craned onto the roof timbers of a new-build ? ...... looked very odd !

Yes, and Yes.

No. 2 daughter's house (new about 5 years ago) has this "architectural feature", which the builder (a chain) liked and put on about 1 on 4 of the properties in the development. We checked and it was solely ornamental and not in the slightest functional.

15 minutes ago, 1165Valour said:

To clarify, I'm assuming that the MS&L possessing a line to Leeds would not lead to too much difference. The MS&L still builds the London extension, and becomes the Great Central.

Thank you for the clarification, and I agree with that long-term summary.

It's my (personal) opinion, however, that 1846-1852 that the MSL was flirting with insolvency, due to a combination of over-optimistic payment for over-expansion (typical of the times, see also LNWR, GWR, and the Midland) and poor operating margins (not typical). It therefore could not have taken on the Huddersfield & Manchester, especially because of the operating margins factor. The MSL was £10k-£25k/reporting period away from going bust, at a time (pre-1863) when there was no difference between Preference and Guaranteed shares.

If you'd simply postulated that post-Grouping the Grouped companies swapped assets around at par to rationalise their geographical coverage, I'd not be bickering with you. They didn't, and stupidities like some of the (largely redundant) Joint lines were perpetuated because they were still Joint.

At the risk of being boringly factual, the MSL/GCR had an East-West Mainline, including a flat crossing of the ECML at Retford. Having a Manchester-Huddersfield-Leeds "Mainline" makes you savagely compete with the L&YR, not into a major player.

I think Watkin was delusional in terms of cost/benefit, but the only way you go from regional-(North) to Great in pre-Grouping days was either a route to London that competed on time and/or regional markets with the established players (LNWR, GNR/NER, Midland from the 1860s), or a regional monopoly with valuable mineral/goods traffic (NER). Two routes across the Pennines from Lancashire to Yorkshire (one to Leeds, one to Sheffield) does not hack it.

Sorry (but not very, TBH).

1 minute ago, Winslow Boy said:

I think that's what the Orange one tried and look where he's ended up.

The Orange one appears to have run his companies as if they were hobbies and so not have them pay him a salary or dividends, just hand over the profits. And have expensive (and technically, probably) honest accountants adjust the books so that he almost never paid tax. And rely on the complexity of the whole lot meaning the Feds wouldn't have the time & effort budgeted to unravel it and ask for the money.

26 minutes ago, Happy Hippo said:

Over a certain value, you are required to pay  stamp duty,

It's your second or subsequent house. You pay stamp duty if you tell the truth. Been there, done that.

The US system (30 years ago when I was there) was a variant on @Happy Hippo's summary. If your total income was enough to pay tax, you estimated the taxable amount, and your employer would deduct this. At the end of the year you filed your accurate(ish) return and paid/claimed the difference. The skill was in making the Feds (and the State of New Jersey in my case) owe you a little not the other way round. There was the possibility of savings being taken pre-tax (in a 401(k) scheme) and taxed when you took the lump sump, thus, hopefully paying less tax because you were now retired. As an incentive to save.

6 hours ago, BR60103 said:

 If you do not do your own assessment, is it a matter of King John's men coming around and saying, at spearpoint, "This is what you owe." ?

In summary, Yes, and the legal burden of proof is on you to disprove their numbers, which can stretch back over several years.

However, as @skipepsi has pointed out, the majority receiving income (including pensions) from UK sources have tax deducted at source.

So it's if you have income from property, investments, dividends, foreign pensions,  etc. that aren't taxed at source legally you have to self-assess.

It's also a risk assessment: what's the risk of being caught (about the same as speeding), what's the consequence of being caught (severe if the income is noticeable), what's the cost & effort of being legal. Make a decision.

52 minutes ago, Worsdell forever said:

when all along the passengers preferred an open wagon to travel in

They do seem to have been loaded on the same principle as the sheep: pack 'em tight and they can't fall over.

1 minute ago, phil-b259 said:

I repeat HS2 is not a supermarket branch or an Amazon Warehouse (the decision to build obviously have very little to do with politicians)

I think it's more similar than you make it out to be. The supermarket or Big-River warehouse decisions come from "How can we make more profit in location X or region Y?". With (essentially) government-funded railway extension schemes the question is "How can we boost the economy in location A or region B?". Both then go "And what will it cost and does the profit/benefit justify the spend?".

The supermarkets don't always get it right. Nor do governments.

45 minutes ago, Dave Hunt said:

For the first time in decades I now have to do a self assessed tax return.

I find the electronic version just a slog. They've already got all your PAYE ('coded') information and put it where you can find it (relatively) easily. You just have to add it up for them (sigh). Then it's just telling them what types of other income you have (property, foreign income, book royalties, whatever). This brings up forms for each non-coded type.

They then re-do your tax-code (wrong if you have foreign income not taxed at source).

There's also a place where you can predict your non-coded income for the current tax year (2024/5), which will also trigger a re-work of your tax-code (also wrong if you have foreign income not taxed at source).

If the wrong tax-code thing happens to you, prepare for 45 minutes listening to plastic music interspersed with information you already know and that didn't help when you tried it, then a conversation with a real person who may understand your problem or may put you through to some-one else (a maximum of twice so far), who will finally issue you with a correct-ish tax-code. Mine starts with a K to tell my main PAYE pension folks to deduct far more tax than they'd expect  -to compensate for the other income that isn't taxed at source.

So: 30-60 minutes once a year, part of which is remembering where the hoops you jump through are hidden. Then wait 3 weeks for the wrong tax code, then 2 hours on the phone. A slog, but not challenging enough to pay some-one else extortionate hourly rates to do it for me.

From the "Railway Magazine" Vol  VIII, p93 in 1901:

6 hours ago, kevinlms said:

2nd class of course came back, but merely a renaming of 3rd class.

That was certainly the Midland policy from 1875. Presumably the concept of 3rd class fares as the ones limited to a maximum of 1d/mile on most railways was enshrined in legislation as the jargon so couldn't be changed. That said, the same travel in the 1850 Bradshaw seems to have been called 4th class in places - including the Midland's Leicester-Peterborough service, but not its Nottingham-Lincoln service. At that time the Midland seems to have been almost entirely conventional: most services 1st and second only, with two each day (except Sundays) in each direction government and including 3rd/4th class.

The Great Northern was referring to the Midland's 1.5 d/mile first class in 1888 in reply to requests to boost second class by cutting its price.

20 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

retained it [Second] because it was popular with the public and just about paid

I can't find the exact wording, but on yet another challenge to the wisdom of operating second  in addition to first and third in the 1890s, the GNR chairman said they'd go on operating  second whilst more than a million a year used it, and that he would happily provide a better quality of travel if people were prepared to pay for it.

1 minute ago, Tom Burnham said:

much higher proportion of working class passengers and many of those would have been in their working clothes

I have also seen references to down-market coaches provided for those wearing work-clothes and paying workmens fares, but nothing really systematic.

2 hours ago, br2975 said:

Today was the "Beating of The Bounds" at Llantrisant.

According to my daughter that's known by the locals as "the Hole with a Mint". But as a resident of Pontyprydd she could be biased.