Raising Motorway Speed Limits
There is a lot of talk and argument about raising the motorway speed limits to 80 mph. Read about it here in the Independent, where they say that the limit will rise, but with lots more 20 mph zones in towns.
No-one is raising the fact, that more and more container traffic is being taken off the roads and put on the rails. This will decrease the congestion and increase the speed of the traffic. But they do need to selectively spend some money on rail junctions and road/rail terminals.
The Elusive Genius Gluten-Free Fruit Bread
I found some at Waitrose in Eastfield last week, but despite labels on shop shelves in other Waitroses, I’ve not found any more.
Either there isn’t much of it or what there is sells well! I suspect the latter.
Remember many coeliacs are in their fifties and sixties and in many cases, fruit bread was a treat at Sunday tea. It ceertainly was for me.
Let’s hope Waitrose open up their computer system, so we can see where the bread is available. But then we’d do a raid on the shop.
Getting To Newcastle Urgently on the Cheap
In my trip around the country, I will have a lot of problems, because I often won’t know, which train, I can catch.
I was in Kings Cross this morning and looked up how much it would cost me to go today, if I bought a ticket. A Super Off Peak Single with a Senior Railcard would have cost me £72.40. But suppose I want to go tomorrow, how much will that self-same ticket cost on the web? I’ve just looked and if I want to travel tomorrow, it’ll cost me £36.20. Or half price.
So just by booking the day before, you get half price on the web. And I can travel on any train after 9:30.
Incidentally, there are no cheaper tickets.
So when I have to return after a busy day, I’ll have one in my wallet, as I can use it on most late trains home.
The Scandal of Adoption
Or should it be the scandal of non-adoption. According to this article and many others, only 60 babies were adopted in England last year.
C who was adopted and handled many such cases in her legal career, would be spitting blood at the news today. As she’s not here, I’ll do the spitting for her.
I have met many people, who were adopted. Not all are white too! But none regret what happened to them. C didn’t.
Zopa and a Transaction Tax
One of the great things about Zopa is that the only tax you pay is income tax on any money you earn.
I hope that the EU’s proposed new transaction tax, doesn’t sneak in there somewhere. After all, politicians would love to find a way to tax us more, so how about 0.01% of every transaction going through the banking system? It would be a total loser, as even at a very low amount, the man on the Dalston Omnibus would object strongly to paying a tax on every time he received or paid-out money.
I suspect it won’t happen, but the Euro was badly set up and although it is a very good idea, you can’t really expect all countries to adopt a legal approach, when they see a clever loophole.
But Zopa does mean that you avoid stamp duty on an investment, which like the Stock Market, has a degree of risk.
Rail Ticket Machines
The on-line rail ticket system is good, in that you can pick up your tickets from any machine you want, anywhere in the UK. They do ask you to nominate a specfic one, but I generally use the ones in Kings Cross, as they are convenient for me and are often not very busy, as there are lots of them. They are also slightly more private than some I could name.
The biggest problem is that you need to type in a randomly generated transaction number. I usually text it to my mobile phone, so that when I look at the Inbox, all I see is the numbers of tickets I need to collect, so I can hold the phone in my left hand, whilst I type with my right.
The system could be improved, by allowing you to type in a collection code, when you buy your ticket on-line. So for East Coast, you might use EC and the last four digits of your phone number. As to get the tickets, you’d need to put in the right credit card, that would probably be as secure as the current system. In fact it could be more so, as I’ve seen people take little bits of paper out of their wallet and then read the code, whilst they type it. Some machines have a Qwerty keyboard, which can be difficult for those who don’t type too well.
It would of course mean that collecting multiple tickets, as I’m doing all the time at the moment would be very easy, as I’d use the same code.
So I would end up with a pile of little orange cards, that I’d have to check before I left the station. But that happems now. It’s just that I have to type in several numbers instead of one.
I would also like to see the fact that the ticket had been collected acknowledged to me in an e-mail. That way mistakes and fraud would be spotted earlier.
And why not have a few chairs by the machines so that some like me could sit down and sort everything out.
The Anonymous Widower 