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To confirm what some people have mentioned ITT I got my covid boost last week and my medical record says it was original/omicron BA4-5 so yeah that’s the older bivariant they gave me not the most recent one.
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Sep 25, 2023 07:58
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Endjinneer posted:The UK was never a Schengen state so plugging HS2 into HS1 and the continental network would have meant adding border controls at every station in the UK you brought an international service to. It's not unusual either for a capital city to have several stations linked by metro. Granted, Old Oak Common is an embarrassing terminus for a new line, but St Pancras to Euston is no worse than than Gare du Nord to Gare de Lyon. I don't think that border checks along the HS2 line would have been an insurmountable problem either - HS2 was (only supposed to) stop at a small number of large metropolitan interchanges, it wouldn't have been an enormous amount of infrastructure to add a border at half a dozen locations. As to the project's basic purpose itself I don't disagree that there's a need to build a whole new line but there was simply no need for it to be a high-speed line - it was paying over the odds for completely redundant technology. The speed boost that HS2 provides has always been trivial, even when they were selling the project the best they could say was it'd shave half an hour on a trip to London, and with MPs now clamouring for each of their constituencies to get its own station along the route combined with the Old Oak Common terminus that speed boost will vanish altogether. Trains never needed to compete with domestic air, which only takes a minute number of the passenger numbers compared to trains even currently (domestic air travel in the UK is a fraction of the 'Other' category). We could have achieved all the capacity improvements, more space for freight etc. by building a standard line for much less disruption. HS2 is like buying a Ferrari, never putting it above second gear, and only taking it down back-streets where it scrapes its chassis every time it goes over a speed bump. Charoclere fucked around with this message at 09:48 on Sep 25, 2023 |
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Sep 25, 2023 09:26
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Someone made an effort post here explaining the main benefit wasn't the high speed side of it but freeing up the regular lines for slower trains. The 'x to x' quicker was just the headline selling point Anyone remember it?
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Sep 25, 2023 09:29
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"Increased capacity" was only adopted later, it became the post-hoc justification after everyone rubbished the headline of increased speed, but regardless of which page in the prospectus the increased capacity claim was made it just sends us back to my original point - high-speed rail is excessive and impractical in Britain. Standard rail would also have greatly improved capacity, and while it might not have run as many trains as the high-speed line (theoretically) would do, maybe an 80% improvement rather than a 100% improvement, that marginal difference would have been more than made up for by how it'd be easier to plan, cheaper to commission and quicker to build - it might have even already be running now while leaving tens of billions in the kitty to spend on other infrastructure improvements elsewhere.
Charoclere fucked around with this message at 09:47 on Sep 25, 2023 |
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Sep 25, 2023 09:38
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High Speed trains rule, we should build more, not less. The only real problem with HS2 was the dismally British lack of ambition, it should stretch from my front door to the centre of London. Northern Scotland is hundreds of miles from the centre of power and the railway lines are by & large bad, single track, unelectrified and often avoiding the direct route because the routes were chosen 150 years ago. Trains from Inverness to Thurso on the North Coast take 3 hours 45 compared to driving that route taking 2 hours 15. Highland Council area is the size of Belgium but with population density comparable to Russia (they have 21/mile², we have 24/mile²). Make it easier and more affordable for people to come to western Europe's last wilderness. And more importantly make it easier & quicker for me to travel to Glasgow and onwards. Right now the train to London is twice the price and more than twice the time of flying, and that includes the Gatwick Express into London proper. Sure, I'd settle for a train line that was slightly more modern than the reign of Queen Victoria but it's not like that's got anymore of a chance of happening than high speed rail. This country builds nothing except identikit overpriced houses. That probably fall down in 30 years because a contractor cheaped out on the concrete or similar.
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Sep 25, 2023 09:52
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Why dont we just make normal speed rail if its so much cheaper and easier, but put high speed trains on them? seems pretty simple to me.
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Sep 25, 2023 09:55
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World superpower Great Britain struggles to connect 3 cities with a train line, while tiny Faroe Islands manages to link up all of their islands with cool undersea tunnels
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Sep 25, 2023 10:00
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forkboy84 posted:Northern Scotland is hundreds of miles from the centre of power and the railway lines are by & large bad, single track, unelectrified and often avoiding the direct route because the routes were chosen 150 years ago. Trains from Inverness to Thurso on the North Coast take 3 hours 45 compared to driving that route taking 2 hours 15. High speed rail doesn't solve any of those problems. It would probably reach Glasgow by about what, 2065? And then you'd still be wheezing into station from a northern line on an hours-late diesel locomotive anyway. Double the Highland track, electrify the lines, build a new local rail, it could have been done with the pocket change that HS2 has lost down the back of its couch.
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Sep 25, 2023 10:02
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Charoclere posted:High speed rail doesn't solve any of those problems. It would probably reach Glasgow by about what, 2065? And then you'd still be wheezing into station from a northern line on an hours-late diesel locomotive anyway. Double the Highland track, electrify the lines, build a new local rail, it could have been done with the pocket change that HS2 has lost down the back of its couch. Yes OP, I already explained the problem with HS2 is the lack of ambition And whether we build high speed rail or not will have absolutely zero impact on how the Highlands will see infrastructure spending. Which is also zero. I want high speed rail to sink the arguments for dualling the A9, and for that matter the A96. But none of this is happening under neoliberalism, because neoliberalism has been defined by an abject failure to enact infrastructure spending outside of disastrous PFI/PPP schemes forkboy84 fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Sep 25, 2023 |
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Sep 25, 2023 10:02
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Getting the itch to play transport tycoon deluxe again
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Sep 25, 2023 10:20
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can we trick the idiots that cars are woke? I mean a highway does go both ways
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Sep 25, 2023 10:35
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People who've been around for a while may remember when Bozza used to regularly post in here (he's still around but prefers the GBS UK thread these days) and was also the mainstay of a dedicated Trainchat thread while there was energy for it; at the time he was a signalling engineer who worked on, among other things, the Northern Hub and HS2. He was clear from the beginning that HS2 should be built in full and the primary benefit was to free up paths on the existing main lines for local services and freight; he was the first person I saw complaining about how the PR push should have been to call it the WCML Bypass and ignore the marginal high-speed journey time benefits, which was never the object of the exercise.
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Sep 25, 2023 10:37
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Just heard Suella Braverman turned in her gun. What's the world coming to
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Sep 25, 2023 10:40
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Tijuana Bibliophile posted:Just heard Suella Braverman turned in her gun. What's the world coming to Got excited after think I'd just read she'd turned her gun on herself. But alas
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Sep 25, 2023 10:43
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Lol at Sunak calling for "clarity" about when the Met are and aren't allowed to shoot people.
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Sep 25, 2023 10:43
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Does anyone know how much hs2 track has been built yet? Insane that we've spunked billions of pounds with nothing to show for it
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Sep 25, 2023 10:48
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Pistol_Pete posted:Lol at Sunak calling for "clarity" about when the Met are and aren't allowed to shoot people. Look its complicated 
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Sep 25, 2023 10:49
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keep punching joe posted:World superpower Great Britain struggles to connect 3 cities with a train line, while tiny Faroe Islands manages to link up all of their islands with cool undersea tunnels That's sick, I didn't know the Faroese had it like that
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Sep 25, 2023 10:51
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Failed Imagineer posted:That's sick, I didn't know the Faroese had it like that Look at this poo poo 
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Sep 25, 2023 10:54
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NotJustANumber99 posted:seems pretty simple to me.
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Sep 25, 2023 11:01
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njan99 is not a good poster but that was clearly a joke
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Sep 25, 2023 11:03
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keep punching joe posted:Look at this poo poo Hot drat, no wonder they've been considering seceding and becoming part of Denmark.
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Sep 25, 2023 11:03
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Tesseraction posted:Hot drat, no wonder they've been considering seceding and becoming part of Denmark. The Faroes are already part of Denmark? Shame about the whale massacres
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Sep 25, 2023 11:12
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jesus christ https://twitter.com/ucu/status/1705535010051158123
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Sep 25, 2023 11:16
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Sep 25, 2023 11:19
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How do you accidentally send a capitulation email?
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Sep 25, 2023 11:26
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forkboy84 posted:And whether we build high speed rail or not will have absolutely zero impact on how the Highlands will see infrastructure spending. Which is also zero. It's amusing that, little as there is, it's easy to grouse that most of it is spent in Inverness (e.g. second road bridge across the canal/rivet that is kinda not working?) while roads crumble in the rural parts.
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Sep 25, 2023 11:47
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domhal posted:It's amusing that, little as there is, it's easy to grouse that most of it is spent in Inverness (e.g. second road bridge across the canal/rivet that is kinda not working?) while roads crumble in the rural parts. Oh totally, there's a reason I mentioned the Far North line in particular. Part of the reason it takes so much longer than driving is these big loops through no where it takes, because the Duke of Sutherland was a train guy and wanted not just a station by Dunrobin Castle buy also one inland where his shooting grounds would be. Nevermind that Ardgay has about 7,000 passengers a year, and that's not even in the bottom half of busiest stops. The main road from the south of Skye to Broadford where you'd be able to go either east to the bridge or north to Portree, the biggest settlement on the island only stopped being single track within the last 15 years or so. This century anyway. The Highlands are kind of Britain in microcosm, Inverness and its commuter belt makes up between ⅓ & ½ of the population of the entire region, which as mentioned before, Belgium sized area with a population on a par with Plymouth or Sunderland or Wolverhampton. Inverness is ignored by Westminster & Holyrood, Caithness or Mallaig are forgotten by law that & Highland Council too. It's a beautiful part of the world in a quite stark and slightly sad way (it wasn't quite so empty before the clearances) which you basically need a car to get around in because public transport is your usual dire rural service. And the roads are shite to boot. There's no easy answers. There's a reason it's sparsely populated, a lot of land isn't exactly suitable to plop Milton Keynes or East Kilbride on to, between the slopes, the lochs and the peat bogs. Just give me them fast trains
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Sep 25, 2023 12:34
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Fast trains will be great until everyone realises they’re going to just keep whacking up the cost of tickets so you still can’t afford them anyway. National express from Bristol to London and back can be had for a tenner including the return journey. Same return journey on a train from near enough the same start and end is ~£70 minimum.
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Sep 25, 2023 12:44
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forkboy84 posted:How do you accidentally send a capitulation email? quote:We regret to inform our members that a rousing cry of "never surrender!" was misheard by distracted comms officer Trevor Willis, who really shouldn't have been on his phone, as "Trevor, surrender." You can probably guess the rest.
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Sep 25, 2023 12:54
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having done a coach from london to glasgow i think i will happily pay the exorbitant cost for a train next time instead
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Sep 25, 2023 12:55
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forkboy84 posted:The main road from the south of Skye to Broadford where you'd be able to go either east to the bridge or north to Portree, the biggest settlement on the island only stopped being single track within the last 15 years or so. This century anyway. A851 was upgraded from single track about 15 years ago. The main road A87 had been double track for a long time but is narrow by today's standards, getting a bit ropey, and rammed with tourists in the summer. They should double track and electrify the trains from Kyle to Aberdeen and from Mallaig to Glasgow IMO. quote:Just give me them fast trains
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Sep 25, 2023 13:10
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forkboy84 posted:The Faroes are already part of Denmark? Maybe I mean Shetlands look our dead empire squats so many wet rocks I forget which ones we don't squat
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Sep 25, 2023 13:12
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Having an area of wilderness it’s a pain to get around is probably useful at stopping us running in and stomping on all the endangered small creatures, as is our wont.
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Sep 25, 2023 13:15
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"We surrender No more strikes" Oh no they've got this thing all wrong "We surrender? No, more strikes!"
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Sep 25, 2023 13:31
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UCU are a bit of a mess at the moment. The MAB was pretty powerful but they hosed it at least at my institute by allowing staff to report when their MAB period started and ended according to when eg: they would normally have work to mark. This immediately fragmented the action since some folks had little/no marking, or started much later than others, so there's folks here who have had their paycheques cut by like five grand, and others with no penalty. They would have done much better to build solidarity and momentum by announcing everyone is on MAB for a fixed starting date until the end of the dispute, and then escalated to all out strike when the penalties were announced. The head office sometimes sound like they know more than they're telling their members and that the things they're proposing are based on that, but I'm beginning to think they're either working to their own agenda which is much less correlated to what their members want, or are just very, very bad at running a union. It's a pity because a lot of staff at unis are hurting, we've seen a real-terms paycut of about 20-25% since 2010, while our workloads have gone up enormously, and other unions are landing 10%+ pay agreements right now.
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Sep 25, 2023 14:19
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Real Cool Catfish posted:Having an area of wilderness it’s a pain to get around is probably useful at stopping us running in and stomping on all the endangered small creatures, as is our wont. Grouse and Stag shooting industry already do the stomping out of endangered species, helped along with the golf course industry.
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Sep 25, 2023 14:48
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The municipal golf courses for larger cities were usually affordable and planned as dual use emergency floodplains too, so they weren't a complete waste of space. Private golf courses do none of those though, and would rather flood the village than mess up their bunkers.
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Sep 25, 2023 14:57
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the Met armed police throwing their toys out of the pram because someone was held to account for shooting an unarmed man is darkly hilarious
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Sep 25, 2023 15:02
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Well if it's darkly hilarious it's a good thing they handed in their guns or they'd have shot this too.
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Sep 25, 2023 15:24
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