Manchester In The Slow Lane
An article published in The Times today says that a survey has shown that Coventry is the speediest city in the UK.
It also says Manchester is the slowest!
Could it be that Manchester has a terrible bus system, with little information and single door buses, that take forever to load and unload passengers? So buses waiting at stops, slow everybody down. I commented on the public transport system in Manchester here.
A Day Not To Be Alone
I’m not moaning, but I don’t think today, is going to be a good day.
I quite like my own company, but on a day like this when it’s only 16°C, overcast and the sun is on strike, there isn’t much to do. You can only go round your favourite museums and galleries so many times and it’s not the day to explore parts of London, I don’t know well at all.
My son and his partner are both working and where my three grandchildren I never see are, I know not. Two I’ve never seen and I’ve not really seen the only granddaughter since the death of my son.
There isn’t even any decent football or cricket on the television. Although after cricket yesterday, I would probably give that a miss if it were on. I won’t be watching the Derby on the television, as it’s on Channel 4 and I don’t do adverts. I’ll probably go down the betting shop at the corner to watch the race, if I’m at home.
I’ve even done all my household chores, washed my smalls, tested my INR and had my weekly bath. The last is actually a lie, as I do bath more frequently than that!
We’ve also had a run of distinctly poor films over the last few weeks, so going to the cinema is probably not an option.
I’ve a choice of things to do for the rest of the day.
I can go and have lunch in Carluccio’s at the Angel and do a bit of food shopping for tomorrow. But I was there last night with a friend.
I will have to go and get a few things at the shops anyway. The most pressing is probably two boxes of man-sized tissues for my permanently running nose. At least, I’m probably down to a box a week now!
At least this evening, I can watch a program on BBC3 called England’s Worst Football Team. Now there’s a program for the lonely and miserable if ever there was one.
I could really put the cap on the weather, by giving up on one of my principles. I’ve never had a raincoat since I was about twenty or so. As I can afford it, I should perhaps go and buy one that I could wear over my favourite jacket. I can at least afford the best!
I think, it’s probably a good idea to do some cooking. I need to make a pie on the one to eat and one for the freezer basis. My only problem is to decide on the flavour to make. Should it be fish, fish, shepherd’s or sausage? Or perhaps a new variety!
Are Google Adverts Sometimes A Waste Of Time?
I buy a lot of things on-line.
Three companies I deal with this way are East Coast Trains, John Lewis and Southern Railway.
As when I want to go to any of these companies web site, I know where to look, surely displaying their embedded adverts in other web sites is a waste of time for me and that advert won’t get me to use their company, as I would anyway.
So they are just preaching to the converted!
Interestingly, I’ve only ever got train company adverts from companies that I use.
So how much of the money paid by companies to Google to promote companies and products is wasted?
Incidentally, I think, I’ve only ever bought one product because of an advert on a web page. I have though thought, that I won’t use that company or product because of their intrusive adverts.
But then i like to think I’m not susceptible to advertising. Or at least in the way that advertisers want me to be!
Belgians Give Up On Fyra
The Belgian government has pulled out of the Fyra project to run high speed trains between Brussels and Amsterdam. It’s reported here.
This sorry story has a lot of lessons for governments, who try to implement large projects.
Building railway lines and in particular high-speed lines is not difficult, except for the odd local political and environmental problems, as HS1 found in Kent and HS2 is now finding. But the actual line generally works well from an engineering perspective, with the possible exception of the Wenzhou crash in China, where signalling may have been at fault. None of the high speed train crashes in this country, were caused by engineering problems on new lines.
The main problems with Fyra are all about using new unproven trains. No sensible project manager would ever use unproven technology at the heart of a new project. You could argue, that Boeing used an unproven battery system on the Dreamliner. But look what happened there!
The other major problem with Fyra is that they discontinued the traditional services between towns like The Hague and Brussels, thus alienating a lot of their target market.
So when you do a large project, make sure that it fits the aspirations of your customers.
If we look at HS2 to Birmingham, the technology to be used to build the line will be very much proven, as hopefully will be the trains, which will probably be derived from something that is working well in the UK or Europe.
The line too, will be an addition to the current services between the two cities. This in itself removes a lot of risk from this line, as say there is a problem that cuts capacity on HS2, you don’t have only one basket for your eggs. I also believe the competition from such as Chiltern and Virgin trains and their successors, will make sure that HS2 is competitive and reliable. Those two services, will also act as valuable feeder services to HS2, as say you live in Banbury and want to go to Leeds, you’d hop to Moor Street station in Birmingham and then take HS2 to Leeds, when that section of the line is completed.
The Anonymous Widower 