Commuting in a metropolitan society

Why is it that many people seem not to want answers to reasonable questions?

About ten years ago, I was reading the editorial column of a magazine, which boasted of its new premises in central London.  I think it was the very next month that the editorial column complained about the problems of commuting into London, and invited readers to contact them with solutions.

I emailed a solution, which was not acknowledged.  So far as I am aware, it was not published in the magazine.  Presumably therefore my proposed solution did not appeal to them.

Quite simply, my solution was that people should live and work in the same place, thereby eliminating the need to commute to work.  If you locate your business in central London, then you should aim to recruit people who already live in London.  If you want to employ people who live in Essex, then maybe you should locate your business in Colchester.

We seem to be living in a society which is increasingly metropolitan, by which I mean that it appears to be increasingly the case that jobs are concentrated in cities and large towns.  Consider some facts.

There has been a decline in rural employment in the past fifty years or so, resulting in part from increased mechanisation of farm work.  The number of people employed at deep coal mines has fallen from roughly  500,000 sixty years ago to precisely zero today, and most of the deep coal mines were located in villages, although a few were located close to towns.

There has also been a substantial decline in high street banking.  The result is that jobs are lost in small towns, and there has been a roughly corresponding rise in the use of call centres, which tend to be located in either cities or the larger towns.

In other words, it appears that if you want a job then you benefit from living in a city or a larger town.  One consequence of this is overcrowding in cities, and another is that people who live outside of the cities find it hard to avoid commuting to work – sometimes very long distances.  For example it was reported many years ago that Doncaster had become a popular commuter town for people working in London.

Next time you find yourself stuck in gridlocked traffic on the way to work, reflect that maybe it would make sense for the government to look for ways whereby more jobs can be located in villages and small towns.

Related previous posts include:
Railways need better management

The demise of the minicab driver

It appears that self-driving cars could be on our streets in just a few years from now, and it is reported also that Google is developing plans for a driverless minicab service.  The implications appear considerable.

I can think of four reasons why driverless minicabs might be preferable to traditional ones.

With no need to pay a driver’s wages, a driverless minicab would presumably be less expensive.

There have been numerous instances over the years of women travelling alone being raped by minicab drivers.  A driverless cab would therefore appear as the safer option to many women.

A driverless minicab could be available at any time of the day or night, and on any day of the year.  Have you ever tried booking a minicab on Christmas day?

There is no obvious reason why a driverless minicab would be more expensive to hire on public holidays than on any other day of the year.

In short, there is good reason to believe that the days of the minicab driver are numbered.  A simple search on the internet indicates that there are in the region of 298,000 cab drivers in the whole of the United Kingdom, and so we are potentially looking at 298,000 people losing their livelihoods – or at least having to change their occupation.

If the price of your minicab journey decreases, then you are left with more money to spend on something else.  It is how you choose to spend that money which will determine what happens to the people currently working as minicab drivers.

Update: since writing this, I have become aware that driverless buses are being trialled in various cities, such as Paris.  Buses are not like minicabs, however.

Driverless buses would need either to operate free of charge or else have some mechanism to ensure that every passenger either pays a fare or else is exempt from paying a fare (for example a small child).  Also, many passengers might not feel as safe on a driverless bus as they would on a bus with a driver.

Related previous posts include:

Uber lose tribunal claim

The insanity of a war without frontiers

I rarely condone war, and the ongoing international war against ISIS must rank among the most stupid wars in history.

As I write, the consensus in the press appears to be that the Russian Metrojet aeroplane which crashed in the Eyptian desert killing all 224 people on board was destroyed by a bomb.  The British government, in the person of Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, has responded by arguing for Britain to launch bombing raids against ISIS.

I have previously made some positive remarks on this blog about Russian president Vladimir Putin.  This was not because I regard him as in any way a hero, but because he is a renegade among world leaders who plays his own game while refusing to bow to pressure from other countries.

The Russian armed forces has recently been unleashing one devastating attack after another against ISIS fighters in Syria, and I expect Putin has enjoyed being able to play the tough guy.  Nevertheless I was not remotely surprised when I read that a Russian aeroplane had crashed in a country with a majority Muslim population.

Quite simply, the war against ISIS is a war without frontiers.  There is no reason to think that there are not ISIS fighters in every major country in the world.  Amost any ISIS supporter anywhere in the world can perpetrate an act of murder, possibly on a large scale, and we must expect aeroplanes to be the prime target.

An ISIS supporter in the UK, for example, could explode a bomb in the centre of London.  Such a bomb might kill a hundred people or kill nobody.  By contrast, a bomb on an aeroplane can reasonably be expected to leave not one survivor.

I was not at all surprised to read that a Thomson flight from Stansted narrowly avoided being destroyed by a missile on 23 August.  David Cameron is well known for his support of war in Syria, as a result of which no British aircraft is safe.

If Britain steps up its illegal war against ISIS, then the main impact will be to increase the danger to the British people, not reduce it.  A war against ISIS cannot be won through armed aggression.  If every ISIS fighter in the world were to be killed tomorrow, then the organisation could be resurrected by the end of next week.  This war is ideological, and needs an ideological solution.

Related previous posts include:
A war against ISIS would be savage and pointless
Emma and Chris are veritaphobic
A triple murder in Syria

Two more teenage deaths ...

Sacha Wheeler was fourteen years old when she was killed on a pedestrian railway crossing in Whitstable.  Other people had previously been killed on this crossing, but some of these are believed to have been suicides.  Some news reports have quoted Network Rail as saying that they want to close this crossing, but that closing a crossing is not an easy process.

Milena Gagic was sixteen years old when she was killed on a pedestrian crossing in the village of Hipperholme.  She and a friend sat down on the crossing late one evening because they believed that the last train had already passed.  The friend managed to leap out of harm's way as a train approached, but Milena paid for their mistake with her life.

Surely it would make sense for the government to take a lead on this matter and require Network Rail to close every pedestrian railway crossing in the country.  It could also make funds available to replace pedestrian crossings with bridges or with underpasses, but instead the government sees fit to squander money on illegal wars and similar follies.

Followers of my blog may recall my having written on this subject before.  Sadly I expect that many more teenagers may have to die on our railway lines before the British people stop voting for evil politicians.

Update: It has since been reported that:

Network Rail level crossing manager Robert Lamoon admitted the sight line to the crossing for trains heading London bound from Whitstable was 'close to the minimum limit'.

He said it had last been rated high risk in August 2014 but admitted there had been no improvements.

Asked why, he said: 'It's a very long, drawn out process.'

Related previous post:
Who killed Katie Littlewood?

The story of a private toll road

There has been a lot of coverage in the national press this year about a private toll road at Kelston in Somerset.

The story began in February of this year, when a section of the A431 had to be closed owing to damage caused by a landslip.  The necessary repair work was not initially scheduled to be completed before Christmas, which prompted a local businessman to rent a nearby field from a farmer, and build his own road to bypass the closed section of the A431.

The Kelston Toll Road took ten days to build, and was soon open to anyone wanting to pay £2 for the privilege of not having to take a lengthy detour.  It looked likely that the road would eventually make a profit, but it is now reported that the council has found the money to complete the repairs five weeks earlier than planned, and the toll road is expected to close before it can show any profit.  It is however expected to break even.

While the businessman behind the toll road has received a lot of praise, he has also attracted a lot of negative comment from people who accuse him of trying to profit from a bad situation for motorists.

My first comment is that many people in Britain vote in elections for politicians who would rather spend money on such things as illegal wars and EU membership than on road maintenance.  If Britain were run by decent politicians, then maybe the A431 could have been repaired within days of the cracks first appearing.

Second, I wonder whether or not the local council ever thought about renting a field and creating a road to bypass the closed section of road.  Had they done so, then the entire bill could have been met from tax revenues, without any need to impose a toll on anyone.

Third, while I admire Mike Watts for building the toll road, it is fair to point out that many business ventures are motivated as much by a sense of community spirit as by a  desire to make a profit.  Likewise, many business ventures end up making a loss, whereas Mr Watts currently expects to break even and thereby make no loss at all.

Update: it has since been reported that Mr Watts did in fact make a loss.

Railways need better management

Someone called Oliver Wright has recently written in a national newspaper about the state of Britain's railways.  I do not know who this Oliver Wright is, although there is a television producer by that name.

Some readers may be wondering if it matters who he is, but it does sometimes help when reading a political essay to have some idea where the author is coming from.

Mr Wright slams one rail operator for its atrocious customer service, which may surprise those of us who come from a business background.  After all, businesses tend to thrive on the basis of good customer service.

You could argue that rail operators enjoy a certain immunity from customer service issues, given that they operate in a near monopoly market.  Suppose you live in Guildford and commute into central London on weekdays.  So far as I am aware, your zero option is South West Trains.  Therefore South West Trains might seem in a strong position to continue enjoying your custom.

Then again, maybe South West Trains is not your zero option.  Maybe you can afford to drive into London, or maybe you can afford to move house and live in a town served by a different rail operator.  Depending on your personal circumstances, you might even take early retirement, and give up on commuting altogether.

I have heard of employers in London being unwilling to recruit people who live in areas served by railway lines with a reputation for slow running trains.  Nevertheless, far too many of our rail operators seem to have an unsatisfactory attitude.

I have never approved of rail franchises.  They encourage a short-term mindset, and are not based on the critical factor of vertical integration.  This means that the companies which operate the franchises do not own the tracks or the signalling upon which their trains inevitably rely.

Ideally the railway tracks should be owned by whichever company runs the fastest trains on those tracks.  This is because the faster the speed at which a train travels, the greater the danger if it derails.

Many people see a return to national ownership as the solution, but British Rail was far from perfect.  In the 1950s (when it was known by the more cumbersome name of British Railways) it was still building steam locomotives, as if the future did not matter.  It used High Speed Trains on inappropriate routes.  Its record on track maintenance was hit and miss.  Most shamefully, it allowed people to die from falling out of moving trains, because it refused to admit that its external doors were not safe.

Nevertheless British Rail did enjoy the benefits of vertical integration.

Oliver Wright criticises the state-owned east coast rail service, noting that it cost him over a hundred pounds to buy an off-peak single ticket to Wakefield, travelling on a near-empty train.  Mr Wright does not specify where he was travelling from, but I have just found a weekday single railway ticket from London Kings Cross to Wakefield for £39.50, or £57 for first-class.

There are cheap tickets available.  You just have to know how to buy them.

Mr Wright suggests the John Lewis style of management for Britain's railways, whereby rail company employees are also shareholders.  One of the more highly rated comments reads:

I worked for John Lewis and I can assure you that no one on the shop floor has any say. JL is just the same as any other company, there are the workers and the top management, all this talk of the workers having a share is just a publicity stunt. As for a share in the profits - JL shop assistants are paid just above the minimum wage, the so-called bonus barely tops it up to the living wage.

The only sensible answer with the railways is that no system is guaranteed to be effective.  The government should insist on vertical integration, but otherwise should not assume that either private or state ownership will necessarily deliver a good service.

A northern transport renaissance

The government has claimed that it wants to build a high speed rail link in the north of England.  Apparently this would connect Newcastle Upon Tyne with Manchester, and would take in Sheffield.   The estimated cost would be £15billion, although the true cost would almost certainly be higher.  Even if the estimated cost is correct, then it still represents £234 for every man, woman, and child in the country.

The north of England is bisected by a range of hills called the Pennines, and this range of hills has always formed a serious impediment to east-west transport.  Between the valley of the River Tyne in the north and the valley of the River Trent in the south is a distance of nearly two hundred miles of almost continuous uplands, with the only significant break being the Aire Gap.  As this runs from south east to north west, it is of limited use to transport planners.

An example of how this affects rail travel is the journey time from York to Liverpool.  Liverpool is roughly eighty-seven miles from York, whereas the distance from central London to Bournemouth is slightly greater at around ninety-three miles. Yet in spite of this the train journey from York to Liverpool Lime Street takes roughly twenty minutes longer than the train journey from London Waterloo to Bournemouth.

In short it appears likely that a new railway line which tunnels under the Pennines could provide a considerable economic benefit to the north of England. Then again, where would that benefit originate?  Here are some possibilities.

Businesses in the south relocate to the north.  While this benefits the north, it is at the expense of the south.  As far as the national economy is concerned, no new prosperity has been created.  Existing prosperity has merely been shuffled from A to B.

Businesses outside the UK relocate to northern England.  This too is merely the shuffling of existing prosperity, but at least in a way which benefits the whole of this country to some extent.

New businesses will arise.  In other words, shaving twenty minutes off the railway timetable will unleash a new entrepreneurial spirit in the north of England.  It might happen I suppose.

It is unsurprising that this policy should be announced with less than a year to go before the next general election.  Of course the government could have announced this policy a long time ago, but they were too busy increasing the aid budget.  The expected cost of this project is roughly similar to Britain's expenditure on overseas aid during the first two years that David Cameron was prime minister.

The government has long since committed itself to the lunacy of HS2, as well as the more reasonable Crossrail project, which it now plans to extend.  While the government does seem to be getting some things right, I can't help but wonder where the Conservative Party would be in the opinion polls if David Cameron had cut the overseas aid as soon as he took office, and if he had never committed to HS2.

Related previous posts include:
Shapps and the northern renaissance
The lunacy of HS2
HS2 Fat Cats

MH17: who is to blame?

I had planned to write about something else, but I feel compelled to write about the shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines aeroplane, but first some background.

On September 1 1983, the Soviet Union shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007.  All 269 people on board were killed.  The aeroplane had entered Soviet air space without permission, and the Soviet authorities apparently decided that is was a spy aeroplane.  The President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, called it an act of barbarism, which I won't argue with.

On July 3 1988, a ship of the United States navy - USS Vincennes - shot down Iran Air Flight 655.  All 290 people on board were killed.  The President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, did not call it an act of barbarism, and the captain of the Vincennes was never prosecuted as a war criminal. 

Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, presumably either by Ukrainian forces, or by Russian separatists in the Crimea, or else by the Russians. Let us consider the options.


This quote is from The Daily Mail:

Hours before the Malaysia Airlines plane came down, Ukrainian authorities said one of their fighter jets was shot down by an air-to-air missile from a Russian plane.

Ukrainian troops have also been fired upon by missiles from a village just across the border inside Russia.

On Monday a military transport plane was also shot down by a missile fired from Russian territory.

In other words, the Russians might be to blame, but if they did shoot down Flight MH17 then presumably they mistook it for a Ukrainian aeroplane.  I am not commenting on how likely that might be, but the Russians do not appear to have had any motive to shoot down this aeroplane except in a case of mistaken identity.

Russian separatists might also be to blame, but they too had no motive for shooting down a Korean aeroplane, and so if Russian separatists are to blame then presumably it would likewise have been a case of mistaken identity.

The Ukrainian authorities alone among the three suspects have a clear motive for shooting down Flight MH17, that being to pin the blame on the Russians.

I know what I believe.

Update: a newspaper report indicates that a rebel leader called Igor Strelkov claimed responsibility for shooting down MH17 in a Twitter post, and has posted video footage online in which he boasts about the destruction of the aeroplane.

While these reports may be genuine, they may also be a carefully orchestrated hoax.  For example, the Twitter account may not be genuine, and the video footage may relate to the previous shooting down of a Ukrainian aircraft.

I will believe that Igor Strelkov is to blame if the Russian government says so ... but will they?  Time will tell.

Another update: there is a lot of hostility towards Russia in the national press today.  I wonder how much hostility there would be towards the USA if the press believed that the USA was to blame for shooting down MH17.

Related previous posts include:
Why only three hours Mr Putin?
Vlad, get a life
Pompous claptrap from Tory veterans

Jet2 at the High Court

A frustrated traveller has taken Jet2 to court for failing to pay compensation for a delayed flight.  The ruling in his favour is now being contested at the High Court.

First of all, he appears to have the law on his side.  The law requires that compensation be paid for cancelled flights or for flights which are delayed by more than three hours.  There is a get-out clause for exceptional circumstances, which Jet2 believes covers the technical fault which delayed the flight in question.  The claimant however argues that exceptional circumstances refer to events outside the control of the airline, such as severe weather conditions.

Second, the outcome of the case will set a binding legal precedent.  Unless it is overturned at a higher court, then all lower courts will be required to determine similar cases in the light of the ruling in this case.

Third, this lawsuit is based upon European Union law, and so the ruling in this case could be disregarded in future if Britain were to leave the European Union - which is not to say that it necessarily would be.

Fourth, the comments on the Mail Online website are mixed.  Some are praising the lawsuit, while others complain that the ruling, if upheld, will force airlines to increase their prices to cover the cost of paying compensation.  This is probably true, and the ruling could prove to be a particular burden to smaller airlines.

No amount of debate is likely to influence the eventual ruling of the High Court, however.  It is possible that it will be easier in future for airline passengers to claim compensation for cancelled flights, and it is also possible that fares will increase.  It is also possible, but less likely, that we will continue to pay relatively low prices for air travel, but risk being delayed without compensation.

My final point is that litigation can be expensive, and the claimant could end up having to pay a huge legal bill.  I was once told by a law lecturer that the first rule of the law is to keep away from it.

Related previous posts
Angry customers of HSBC
School uniforms: think before complaining

HS2 fat cats

I have already made clear my views on both HS2 and fat cats:

A woman scorned

The banksters are not Jonathan and Charlotte

A small victory in Barnet

It is now reported that HS2 is squarely in the hands of fat cats.  Its chief executive Alison Munro is earning ten thousand pounds per month of your money, while its newly appointed chairman is going to be paid nearly SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND POUNDS each year - and once again it's your money (or at least it was).

Alison Munro has claimed that HS2 does not need a blank cheque, but I for one do not believe her.  Are we to assume that the overpaid Munro and the obscenely overpaid Higgins will inevitably work together to ensure that HS2 does not exceed its budget?

If you believe that, as the Duke of Wellington once said, you'll believe anything.

Higgins has urged cross-party support for HS2, but any political party with any sense will pledge to scrap it.

The lunacy of HS2

HS2 is the planned high speed rail link which will run initially between London and Birmingham.  It is currently expected to cost more than £40billion, and no trains will run before 2026 - more than twelve years hence.

The Labour Party say they are behind it, but apparently want a £50billion cap.  Does that mean they would stop building the line if the cost rose that high?  Would all the billions of pounds already spent have been in vain?

I doubt it.  I think it far more likely that Labour are lying, and that they would back HS2 regardless of the cost.  If I am wrong, let them say that a Labour government would definitely abandon HS2 if the costs rose to £50billion.  I'm waiting ...

Surely the most sensible option would be to abandon HS2 now, before work has even begun, but I do not expect that to happen.  The British people seem for the most part to have a curious obsession with electing politicians who treat them with utter contempt.  There is a moral here.  Do I have to spell it out?

Is your bus route safe?

MPs are worried about the effects of government cuts on bus services.  The government has replied with predictable waffle.

If you value a good bus service, then do yourself a favour and NEVER vote Labour or Tory or LibDem as long as you live.  The LibLabCon monster is happy to waste billions of pounds on illegal wars, but cares little for bus routes.

Reality alert: expect people to keep on voting LibLabCon, and do not be surprised if bus services in your locality are cut back.

Railway misery

So a national newspaper has run an essay about a nightmare on the railways.

First, there is no requirement on Britain's railways to have a seat booked.  Therefore overcrowding is possible.  Second, on a bank holiday weekend we should expect a greater likelihood of overcrowding. Third, trains do break down from time to time.

Fourth, people who argue for renationalisation of the railways should reflect that the railways were far from perfect before privatisation.  We had crowded trains in those days. We had trains that crashed and trains that broke down.  I once travelled on an express train which had no buffet car, although I did take my own food.  Other passengers had to starve.

And worst of all, people were killed falling from trains because British Rail refused to admit that locks on train doors were faulty, and the government were stupid enough to believe them.

Just what is a NIMBY?

NIMBY is an acronym which stands for not in my back yard.  A NIMBY is someone who - for example - objects to a wind turbine being built near their house, but who does not object in principle to wind turbines.

You are not a NIMBY if you object to HS2 provided that you oppose the entire project, and not merely the fact that the route runs a tad close to your own home.

NIMBY is a term of abuse much favoured by developers and their friends in the government, but sadly it is also in many cases an entirely appropriate term of abuse.

Who killed Katie Littlewood?

15yo Katie Littlewood was killed by a train while crossing a railway line near to her home in Hertfordshire.  She may have been wearing an iPod, and may have been texting.

People really do take their lives in their hands when they walk down the street listening to music or texting.  Nevertheless it is fair to point out that Katie would not have been hit by a train if the level crossing had been replaced by a bridge.

Of course a bridge would cost money to build, but Britain squanders billions of pounds every year on illegal foreign wars, aid to African tyrants, and so on.  If you vote in elections for politicians who prefer to waste money than spend it on useful things like bridges over railway lines, then you can reasonably claim to be an accessory to the death of Katie Littlewood.