Safe Speed Forums

Major misunderstanding of what the "warming" is in global warming.

A hotter atmosphere will be more violent and energetic, very unlikely to produce a situation where every day is like a nice summer's day which I imagine is what you're wishing for.



Well, not really, I'm sure if they tried 1,000 people could consume more resource and generate more CO2 that 10,000 people who were a little more circumspect, with no noticable difference in quality if life.

I agree totally. Unfortunately, to make rail transport a viable alternative to road transport would require Billions of pounds of investment in new infrastructure and rolling stock. Whilst we already have a road infrastructure that's adequate, the government simply won't make this level of investment.

Weepej. I suggest you come and live here for a couple of weeks if you've never met a Pole who doesn't speak english...


The problem with the 'open border' EU is that whilst there are differentials in living conditions, heathcare, quality of life etc, there will always be a net flow in one direction. Poland is actually falling on its knees because it is now critically short on skilled workers. Why? Because they're all here!!! An interesting fact though. The employment market in Poland is such that you practically need a degree to sweep the floors. The cost of living is also (surprisingly) significantly higher than here. For example, a degree qualified electrical engineer would be lucky to get a job soldering circuit boards in Poland, whereas here he could be emoployed as a vehicle electrician, working with some of the most complicated vehicle electronics you'd ever wish to come across. (I'm not just talking about wiring in a couple of headlight relays here, I'm talking about getting onboard computers to interface with ancillery equipment, rev-control, handbrake interlocks, the lot)

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

I like that idea of working from home as it will save me having to exit the pit a 3 or 4 am to go to work and disturbing my beloved petal (I have varying start times from 4 to 7 am) as a HGV Class 1 driver, but what about my poor neighbours who are going to be disturbed at say 4am with me having to get them all up to move cars etc,. from my little cul-de-sac to let me trundle out of my road with a 44tonnes / 60ft long wagon

Me thinks that will go down like the proverbial brick in a swimming pool or could it be that I would very likely be on the receiving end of said brick

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"There But For The Grace of God Go I"

"He Who Ain,t Made Mistakes Ain,t Made Anything"

Spannernut

Well said "sixy -the-red" as we all know that technology has moved on in leaps and bounds over the years and as a Time served Diesel Fitter when I was serving my apprenticeship (to many moons ago to remember or think about) we didn,t have the gizmos they have nowadays, our "Computer" in them dark days was a screwdriver in ye left lughole and listen for the fault coming up the shaft

"Air con" in them days consisted of (as the boss said) open both bloody windows that will give you air conditioning and sit in a gale for the day as it was very hard to wind up the left window at 60 mph (unless you had arms the length of a python).

Oh for the good old days as they say that is why I decided to drive em for a living as opposed to fixing em and I took the view that hard work never killed anyone but is sure as hell made some funny shapes

I still for a hobby restore old buses and lorries at a local Transport Museum at least that way I can say no to the jobs I don,t like doing as I am a volounteer worker

Seriously though I have heard this statement before about putting more freight on trains but for those that aren,t aware it was Dr. Beeching in the 50,s who decimated the railways by shutting all the branch lines and a hell of a lot of others that weren,t financially viable and some that were as well then we had the debacle of the railways selling off all the closed lines for building / development etc. (just look how many ind. estates are built on old goods yards / sidings etc.).

Unfortunately we are now in the position of no financial ability to build railways to carry the freight that these people are so determined to put on rail as at present the railways (or what is left of them) cannot cope with the passenger and freight traffic which is now using it so how can we put more freight on the rails when there is not enough capacity in place now.

Where I live a new Freightliner Terminal has been proposed at the old Parkside (demolished) Colliery and this will bring 10,000 permanent jobs to a deprived area, aside from the construction jobs as well but we have the "Nimby,s" vehemently opposing it even when the plans state that the terminal will have a separate access road from the M6 to the terminal and all surrounding roads will be restricted (by weight limit) to HGV,s which will drastically reduce ALL traffic on the A49 and surrounding roads /areas
This project would if finished bring in 12 /13 trains per day to Parkside each carrying something like 100 containers and multiply that by 13 on a 24 hr basis and look at the lorry journeys that would be saved on the roads

This project alone will take something like 60 or 70,000 HGV journeys off the overcrowded roads per year but you will still need the trucks to deliver from the railhead to their ultimate destination or we could take the route that one buffoon came up (not on this or any other website BTW) and his answer to the problem was to go back to "The Mechanical Horse" and to our younger readers this is the "3 Wheel Scammell Scarab" that BR used to have years ago delivering parcels etc. imagine that turning up at you local Sainsbugs with your load you would need about 10 of them to do the same work a 44 tonne truck does but think of the employment prospects there would be no unemployment because they would all be driving these "Tonka Toys" everywhere

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"There But For The Grace of God Go I"

"He Who Ain,t Made Mistakes Ain,t Made Anything"

Spannernut

We seem to manage to find £10B for the Olympics and £25B for Northern Rock. More a case of not wanting to I think???

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Wake me up when the revolution starts
STOP the Toll Tax http://www.traveltax.org.uk

Yes, I was just thinking of Northern Rock, myself. The government can also find money for funding our own potential 'Vietnam disasters', yet can't provide proper public transport systems or proper road safety.

How many miles of railways could have been reinstated how many canals and rivers made navigable again for £25B, I wonder?

And don't forget, it was a Gordon Brown balls-up that meant the Northern Rock debacle was allowed to happen in the first place...

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www.thatsnews.org.uk / www.thatsnews.blogspot.com / http://thatsmotoring.blogspot.com/

Actually I'd argue that the media had a big part in that too by causing panic, meaning customers unnecessarity withdrew all their money, making matters worse.

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Science won over religion when they started installing lightning rods on churches.

It was a northern rock management balls-up that initiated the problem. Borrow-cheap-sell-expensive was ok as long as borrowing was cheap. When the BCSE policy went tits-up, there was nothing left to operate under.

I agree it was down to NRK management & the media, but then again we're supposed to believe that Brown is "THE great economist" of our times & the only one that's capable of spending money properly - so why didn't he see it coming & stop it? After all he sticks his nose in everything else.

Anyway why waste an opportunity to blame w***ker Bean for something - the more the better!!!!

But of course the whole point is that they were able to find 25B when they wanted to...

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Wake me up when the revolution starts
STOP the Toll Tax http://www.traveltax.org.uk

Further to my post above, the following appears on Grumpy Old Sod which summarises my point quite well:

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

Because the problem was initiated by the banking system. Mainly European. They bought the debt from the US lenders. They had been lending money on poor collateral. They sold the dept, with poor collateral and poor chance of redemption, and our bank chiefs bought it. A case of the "biter" being bitten.
Northern Rock, whose business plan had been to borrow cheap and lend a lot more expensively, got caught when the cheap cash disappeared as a consequence of the other banks being left seriously exposed when their "bought dept" turned out to be worthless.
But then, the phrase "snake oil salesman" came from the US....

GOS

Unfortunately to drive to my chippy requires turning right at a busy junction, and by waiting to turn right, is preventing others from turning. So it does create bit of congestion espcially at at 5.30pm, and parking is a bit of nightmare too. Personanally sticking my trainers on and walking through the ginnel seems more sensible, but each to their own Chips aren't cold after 2 minutes, and for me, it's quicker on foot anyway.



I like to do it after work at 6pm(after getting up at 4.45am for continuous duty at work with no meal breaks) because not only is it quicker, cheaper etc, but that it also frees up a full day at the weekend.

As I always say, I never want to see "restrictions" (however they maybe imposed?) on driving to the chippy that is 2 minutes away or making seperate trips to the supermarket which could be done en-route, but that if that's what people want to do, then I am unsupportive to the pleas about the "rising cost of motoring".

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In a former life I was Capri2.8

Certainly not, but I suspect you are!

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Save a cow - eat a vegetarian

Well it's more like 9:30 PM by the time a chippy run starts to be discussed, so the only congestion issue is more to do with the fact that I have to join and then leave a road which is on the main chav "krooze" route. Though it could be argued that this is another good reason to go in a car.
You're right they chips dont go cold after 2 minutes. But it'd take me more like 10 minutes to get back up the hill to my house. I hate driving up it because I have to force my car into 3rd to stop it constantly changing gear, walking up it is even worse, especially with the wonderful "torrential drizzle" we get around here which saps the heat from everything it touches.
There is a chippy at the end of my road and some would argue that I should use that one instead, unfortunately the chips are crap.



When you're not getting home until around 9PM you may think differently, of course neither of us start as early as you, but by that time of day you just want to stop and do nothing. Besides on the few times we've tried it the shelves are completely empty anyway, better to shop at 2AM if you're going down that route.



We don't do the chippy run that often really, it only happens when we're at a point when we're too knackered to cook something, but not quite so knackered that ordering pizza or curry for delivery is chosen instead

And besides, the cost incurred by these trips is negligible compared to the cost of the miles I have to put in to do my job (about 40,000 a year). It's road tax, insurance[1] and fuel duty that are the killers. Doubling the cost of an MOT to 50 quid was a nice kick in the teeth as well.

[1] Since every time a criminal or uninsured driver has an "interaction" with your car, that's your insurance put up and the risk level of your area put up and your no claims reduced and so on and so forth.

For those of you who haven't read the GOS article, this is meant to be an ironic comment on school pupil selection methods and not a reflection of the the GOS's opinion.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

I suspect we are getting bogged down in the minutia of going to the chippy, and as exciting as though that is, we both know that was only an example....

What I'm getting at is that I would be suprised if there is nothing you can change in your life that will reduce car use whilst making no difference to the quality of your life. I've never once said that PT or walking can replace the car for every journey, but just a little thought can save you money and keep you fit at the same time. If we all did this congestion would reduce, and would benefit us all when we want to make the journies that can't realistically be made any other way.

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In a former life I was Capri2.8

What I meant was that it was Gordon Brown who changed the remit of the Bank of England so that it no longer had any meaningful control and oversight of the banking industry.

All the Bank of England could do was make polite coughing noises whilst the see nowt, do nowt, regulators did bugger-all to stop the situation before it developed into the full-blown bank run that it became.

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www.thatsnews.org.uk / www.thatsnews.blogspot.com / http://thatsmotoring.blogspot.com/

Which begs the question that reducing car use is per se a desirable objective.

And if I analyse my own pattern of car use, a large majority of it comprises commuting and a weekly trip to visit my parents, neither of which could realistically be accomplished by any other means.

Also I make no apology for both enjoying driving and being interested in roads, so I make some journeys that are not by a narrow definition "necessary" but in my view represent the pursuit of a legitimate leisure activity - and are virtually never undertaken at congested times.


I would suggest that by definition people don't want to sit in congestion so they wouldn't be there if there was a convenient alternative.

Cutting out the occasional trip to the newsagents and the chippy is not really going to make any difference to overall congestion levels.

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"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Well, my job varies from developer to telephone support to on-site work. I work from home when there is no on-site work going on, but for the on-site work the best I can manage is to travel at off peak hours, which usually means travelling down the night before. I'm not reducing the distance (if anything it increases slightly due to the need to go to a hotel) but the time and fuel consumption are drastically reduced due to removing myself from the busy periods of the day which has to be good for everyone, apart from the works accountant who pays the hotel bills

I tried doing my job using public transport once, now I'm sure that when you know your local route PT is a lot more pleasant than my experience but due to the nature of my work I will regularly be taking trips to areas that I am unfamiliar with, and no-one has invented a working PT satnav yet.

So the job comes in, and I phone Arriva Trains Wales and inform that I'd like to travel from my local station to Edinburgh Haymarket, getting there some time between 8PM and 10PM. I am advised that I need to travel from a certain station that's a 15 minute drive from where I live with no bus service to it, and get there for around 2:15, from there I need to travel to Cardiff which will take an hour, from Cardiff to Birmingham New Street and from there to Edinburgh, cool. I book a hotel that's close to the train station. Oh and I can collect my tickets from the station in question. I am billed £137 of my own money for the return journey.

I am a little unhappy at leaving my car in an unsecured car park for 2 nights, but fortunately my GF was working locally at the time, she agrees to pick me up in her lunch break and take me to the station.

I get there and the ticket office is closed. WTF I need my tickets. I ring Arriva Trains Wales, am on hold for 30 minutes during which my train comes and goes so we decide that driving to Cardiff would be a good idea. Eventually they explain that the ticket office at that station shuts at 12PM and I should have arrived early. I ask if it would be ok to drive to Cardiff and get my tickets there, but I cannot, I can only pick them up at the original station and I'm too late anyway because the last train to Birmingham just left.

Pissed off we grab some quick lunch and I am taken to home. I have to explain this cock up to my boss who insists that I fly up, so I book a flight, pay £50 for a taxi to Cardiff airport and £70 for the flight, my customer is kind enough to pick me up from the airport and at the end of the day I'm put on a bus to my hotel.

At some point during the day a problem had arisen with my health which NHS Direct decided needed hospital attention, so that's another 17 quid in taxi fares because I didn't have a car available and had no idea if you could get a bus to the hospital in Edinburgh at that time of night. I also had to get hold of the train company and sort out my ride home. There was no way to get the tickets for the return leg of the journey I had to buy brand new ones which cost me £110.

The return journey was relatively uneventful, apart from the fact that despite getting the first train of the morning the carriage already contained a guy in rugby gear passed out on the floor surrounded by beer cans and mumbling incoherently in a Merseyside accent. He was completely harmless and had apparently meant to change trains at Crewe last night .

Eventually I get home and am picked up by my GF in her lunch break again. I send an SMS to by boss telling him that I'm having the rest of the afternoon off and go to bed.

Total cost of trip: £384 plus hotels and food and whatnot.

Next time I'm taking the car or flying.