Shopping In IKEA Without A Car
I don’t drive, but when it comes to shopping in IKEA, I can get to the three London stores at Croydon, Edmonton and Neasden by public transport.
Edmonton, to where I get a 341 bus, is probably the easiest and if say I bought something that was too big to carry, the store will put me in a mini-cab.
Croydon is actually the farthest, but I use it at times, as it is so easy to get to using the tram from West Croydon. So if I’m going South of the river for some reason, and I need to check something, I’ll pop in to that store.
As my house and the built-in garage front the street and there is usually plenty of parking outside, I usually shop at IKEA by going to a store and ascertaining what I need and then ordering on-line. It doesn’t always work out as it should.
Due to finger trouble I ordered the wrong freezer for my kitchen. And as I only discovered too late to send it back, if you want an IKEA DJUPFRYSA, I’ll be putting one on eBay soon!
I need to check on a few things at the moment.
On my trip to Huddersfield on Monday, I wondered, if there was an IKEA in Sheffield that I could have visited to answer my queries. But there isn’t.
So it got me thinking, as to how many IKEA stores in the UK, are as easy to get to by public transport, as the three in London.
Only four seem to be easy to get to from the local station or tram stop.
Here’s Manchester, shown on a Google Earth image.
IKEA Manchester
This store would have been ideal, as there is a direct train service from Ashton-Under-Lyne station, which is near the store to Huddersfield. Except that there were no trains to Manchester on Monday and anyway I’d already bought my ticket via Sheffield.
As to the other stores on the UK mainland, they are Cardiff, Coventry and Southampton, all of which are in easy walking distance of a train station. But they wouldn’t have been much use on Monday!
So I’m off to Croydon today!
Structures At Whitechapel Station
I believe that Whitechapel station, will be Crossrail’s Jewel In The East and over the Easter weekend the East London Line was closed to allow Crossrail work. These pictures show the station after the weekend.
It does seem that more big structures are going up.
This Google Earth image shows the station.
Whitechapel Station
The image was taken some time ago, but it does show the layout of the station.
Note the orange line determining how the East London Line passes through and how the Metropolitan and District Lines go either side of the works. When the station is completed, there will be one large platform between these lines, from which escalators will descend to the Crossrail platforms about thirty metres beneath.
Why Would A Well-Off Person Vote For This Labour Party?
I am 67, single and reasonably comfortably off, but with the exception of my house, pension pot and funds in Zopa, I have no substantial taxable assets. Quite frankly, purchases like expensive cars and art, a second house in the country, buy-to-let investments and vanity purchases like football clubs, just don’t interest me.
My house is probably just below any proposed Mansion Tax limit, but for how long, given the rate of the rise in property values in this area?
Over the years, I’ve acquired a few friends, who are now as financially secure as I am, for the rest of their lives.
What puzzles me, are some of these friends have been serious supporters of the Labour Party in the past. I wonder how many of them, are now less sure in their support, as every day, Miliband and Balls bring in more and more bash-the-rich policies?
The latest policy of abolishing the ‘non-dom’ status as reported on the BBC, may not worry me, but I suspect some of the people I know will be livid. I can think of someone, who is a Project Management professional, who works all the time outside of the UK, which probably gives them an interesting tax problem and being ‘non-dom’ may come into their affairs.
In fact, there are so many high-paid jobs of this type, which because of the Internet and air travel can be done from any reasonable base, so how many of these people would leave if a Labour government took power? In the past C and myself, thought about leaving, if the General Elections of the 1980s and early 1990s had gone the wrong way.
So what is going to be the next crazy bash-the-rich policy floated by this impractical Labour Party?
On the other hand there will be Newtonian reactions.
I think this lurch to the left, will hurt the Labour Party severely in the pocket, as so many of those who supported them in the past, won’t contribute this time.
They will become even more dependent on the Trade Unions for funds.
But I also feel, that anyone, who has a desire to be rich, will think twice about the way they are going to vote!
Luckily for me, what I consider my biggest asset, that has got me out of financial trouble several times in the past; my brain, is untaxable! Unless of course, a government brings in a higher rate of Income Tax for those with a University degree!
Know Your Ticketing
My trip yesterday illustrated one thing, in that you can save pounds and pence by being smart with ticketing. This picture shows my six tickets from yesterday.
Tickets To Huddersfield
I travelled virtually along to Sheffield on the 07:24 for £17.15 and back on the crowded 20:49 for £19.15. Both tickets were for use with a Railcard in First Class and bought on-line from East Midlands Trains.
If I wanted to do that journey today, the cheapest ticket I can find on the web is £48.85
My Return from Sheffield to Huddersfield was bought from the ticket machine in Dalston Junction for £6.20, which was incidentally ten pence cheaper than one of my tavelling companion’s ticket bought on-line some days earlier.
Why the North Needs Electrification And Pacer Eradication
Huddersfield is one of these classic Northern towns and cities that do not have a direct train to London.
In the past, when Ipswich have played there, I’ve either taken a fast train to Manchester or Leeds and then taken a train across in a twenty minute ride or so ride.
A typical trip via Leeds takes about ten minutes under three hours, with one via Manchester Piccadilly taking perhaps ten minutes longer.
On my trip north to Huddersfield, because I wanted to do take some photos in Sheffield and because the West Coast Main Line was closed, I decided to go via the old steel city from St. Pancras. With just one change at Sheffield this journey takes ten minutes short of four hours.
So imagine, you were perhaps a businessman needing to go to Huddersfield to check something out or a fan going from London to see your team play Huddersfield Town, would you bother?
I probably wouldn’t except for the fact that I got First Class tickets to Sheffield £36.30. That was Advance tickets with a Senior Railcard and I did buy them several weeks ago, but both journeys were in two hours, so it was probably good value.
I then took a local train from Sheffield to Huddersfield on the Penistone Line, with the journey taking over an hour in a dreadful Class 142 Pacer, as it meandered through the Yorkshire countryside, stopping at stations with interesting names like Wombwell, Denby Dale and Silkstone Common.
At least I wasn’t alone, as I shared the journey with an Ipswich-supporting student and another guy, who like me had been to Loverpool University. So at least it was an entertaining journey.
When you arrive in Huddersfield, you aren’t greeted by some dreadful pile of bricks, which has suffered the excesses and poor imagination of British Rail’s in-house architects, but a regional station that is second to none and is up there with Kings Cross for grandeur and setting.
Huddersfield station deserves a lot better than it is currently getting. The Wikipedia entry, says this about the views of those who knew about architecture, trains and stations.
The station frontage was described by John Betjeman as the most splendid in England and by Sir Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘one of the best early railway stations in England’.
The only blot on the station, is that in front is a statue of one of Huddersfield’s most famous sons; Harold Wilson. When he was Prime Minsister, he could surely have done more to put an electrified railway across the Pennines from Liverpool and Manchester to Sheffield and Leeds via his home town. Wilson also has the dubious claim to fame in that despite the recommendations of Beeching, he was Prime Minister, when the only electrified line across the Pennines, the Woodhead Line was closed to passengers in 1970.
But things could be getting better.The number of Trans Pennine trains has been increased in the last couple of years and the Huddersfield Line from Manchester to Leeds has been funded for electrification by 2018.
Six fast electric trains every hour between Leeds and Manchester via Huddersfield will be a big improvement in terms of speed and capacity, even if for a few years, they are just refurbished Class 319 trains. For example, journey times between Manchester and Leeds via Huddersfield will be down to forty minutes.
I find it rather ironic, that an electric train based on a design started under Wilson’s Prime Ministership, which was designed for the mountains of the South East, has such an important role in the exorcising of his sins as regards to railway electrification across the Pennines. It probably shows that engineers know a lot more about providing good infrastructure than politicians. But although Class 319 trains may be ugly buggers, underneath and behind that extremely tough steel bodywork, lies all the suspension and power systems to create a comfortable, fast and reliable train, that rides with all the smoothness and finesse of a top of the range car. The one I rode on in Liverpool recently had certainly scrubbed up well.
But this 100 mph electrified railway across the Pennines will be ruined for many, if there is no improvement in feeder services on other routes, which are generally worked by the dreaded Pacers.
To be fair to Northern Rail, yesterday’s example did have new seats and had been smartened up, but that doesn’t alter the fact that they should be sent to the Army for use as targets in gunnery practice.
Take the Penistone Line on which I travelled to Huddersfield. It has four major stations at Sheffield, Meadowhall, Barnsley and Huddersfield, with a host of what look like to be well-maintained stations in smaller and often rural communities. A Pacer trundling along the line once an hour is not exactly a passenger-magnet.
Northern Rail probably don’t have enough trains to provide a more frequent service, but surely in an ideal world, there should be at least two trains an hour along the line. Hopefully, with electrification in the north and transfer of trains from other parts of the country, in a few years time, we’ll see a better service on the line, provided by something like Class 172 trains.
Around the end of this decade, Sheffield will be electrified to London and fast electric trains will do the journey in well under two hours. As Huddersfield will also be electrified, the electrification and modernisation of the Penistone Line and the related Hallam Line between Sheffield and Leeds , could be a logical step to take. In fact the recent report on Electrification in the North has recommended this.
This would open up all possibilities for services, such as providing direct electric services from Leeds, Barnsley and Huddersfield to London via Sheffield and the HS2 interchange at Meadowhall, in addition to very much improved local services.
I look forward to the day when voters in London and the South East start moaning about all their money being spent on electric railways in the North. Hopefully by then, London’s Mayor will have a lot more freedom on how to fund railways in the capital.
The End Of The Don Valley Stadium
Sheffield’s Don Valley stadium was built for the World Student Games in 1991. It was never a real success and is now being demolished.
If there is a lesson from this story, it is to get the planning of what you do after the Games right. Manchester after the 2002 Commonweath Games rebuilt the stadium for Manchester City and the London 2012 Olympic stadium is going to be used by West Ham. Glasgow’s excellent 2014 Commonealth Games imaginatively built an Athletics Track inside Hampden Park. The Don Valley stadium didn’t seem to interest either or both of the city’s football clubs as a venue after the Games, so became a white elephant.
I do think a factor was that the stadium was designed in-house by Sheffield Council’s own architects. This policy was used extensively by British Rail and created some real monstrosities in the 1960s and 1970s.
By contrast the award-winning John Smith’s stadium in Huddersfield, which I visited in the afternoon and was built a few years later, was designed by specialist architects, as have most sports stadia around the world in recent years.
I do think too, that Sheffield missed a chance here of creating a prefabicated set of stands, in steel naturally, that would have fitted the standard athletics track. After the Games most could have been taken down leaving just enough for less-grand events. As the stadium is in a bowl, surely this could have been used to create an uncovered natural amphitheatre, where most people just sat on the grass. This has been used successfully at many horse racing venues in the UK and further afield, like Ascot, Goodwood and Epsom, where these areas have a totally different atmosphere.
In some ways it’s all rather sad and it has been probably a big waste of money, that could have been better spent. Athletics hasn’t drawn large crowds in the UK outside of the big set piece games and championships. The Alexander Stadium in Birmingham seems to be more than sufficient with a capacity of 12,700 for most other events, so the Don Valley stadium was probably a stadium too many for athletics. The nearest stadia at Gateshead, Manchester and the smaller track in Leeds, seem to have successfully negotiated multi-sport partnerships and appear to be on a much sounder footing, than the Don Valley Stadium ever was.
If they’d got the planning, re-use and design right, it might have been a very different story!
Quiet Flows The Don
The tram-trains between Sheffield and Rotherham will join up to the Sheffield Supertram in the area of the Meadowhall South/Tinsley tram stop.
This Google Earth image shows the area.
Tinsley Area
Note the tram line marked by the blue symbol which shows the Meadowhall South/Tinsley stop, running down the map, with the single-track Tinsley/Masborough South Junction-Rotherham freight railway, splitting off to the right. Note the footbridge that rises from the tram stop and crosses the freight line, which you can see in the pictures. You can also see Meadowhall at the left and the M1 at the right and the various roads leading to and from Sheffield.
I took these pictures of the area.
Believe it or not, in the midst of all this chaos is a quiet area by the River Don.
For the eagerly awaited tram-train, a connection will need to be made between the tram line and the single-track freight line. There is little detail at present about how the connection will be made, but the freight line will have to be provided with some form of overhead electrification at either 750 V DC or 25kV AC. However, the Class 399 tram-trains will be able to use any handy voltage.
I’ve just found this page on the Network Rail web site, which is their home page for the creation of the Tinsley Chord which will connect the tram line to the freight line. I was able to create this map of the chord from one of their published documents, from the impressive and comprehensive site.
The Tinsley Chord
The new chord is shown in red and curves between the tram line at the left and the freight line, which goes off to the right.
Note that the Meadowhall South/Tinsley tram stop is the Sheffield side of the chord, so passengers going between Rotherham and Meadowhall could enter the Meadowhall Centre via Debenhams, as I did after my walk by the River Don.
Incidentally, Network Rail and their contractors will like working on this one, as sixty percent of the work is virtually indoors, as it is underneath the massive Tinsley Viaduct that carries the M1 over the area.
If you want to know how this chord underneath the M1 will effect the local bats, hedgehogs and newts it’s all laid out in this document.
Perhaps the best news of the project is contained in this recent report from the Sheffield Star, which is entitled Construction work planned for long-awaited £60m Sheffield to Rotherham tram-train scheme.
The article hopes that tram-trains will be running in 2017.
Liverpool Street To De Beauvoir Town
I regularly do this journey both ways to get to and from the main line station, which I regularly use to get a train to and from Ipswich.
Getting to the station has now got a lot better as the 21 and 141 buses that are the simple way now stop in Eldon Street by the station.
But coming back is getting to be an increasingly variable and difficult journey.
Take last night!
As I was watching Murray’s progress on my phone and the train from Walthamstow Central to Hackney Downs didn’t have any working announcements, I missed by stop in the dark and ended up in Liverpool Street at about nine o’clock. My normal route from the station these days is the reliable one taking the Metropolitan Line to Whitechapel and then getting the Overground to Dalston Junction, from where I get any of a number of buses to my house.
But last night the Overground wasn’t working due to Crossrail works and the last time on a Sunday night, I had walked to Moorgate to get a bus, I’d ended up walking all the way to Old Street to get one and then I’d waited for perhaps twenty minutes.
So I took the Central Line to Bank and luckily a 21 arrived in a few minutes to get me home.
Crossrail and the lengthening of platforms on the Overground, has made the last two or three years difficult, as you never know what you’ll find when you make the journey. Hence my going via Whitechapel, as on most days that is the most reliable.
It would help if Transport for London provided one stop that was never closed, especially as the only one that seems to be there all the time is the one by Bank, which requires a long walk or a one-stop Tube trip.
After Crossrail opens it will get better, as not only will Whitechapel-Liverpool Street be a fast one stop, but surely the 21 and 141 buses will be an easy and perhaps underground and covered walk from Liverpool Street.
Look at this Google Earth map between Liverpool Street and Shoreditch High Street stations.
Liverpool Street And Shoreditch Stations
Liverpool Street station is in the bottom left, where all the indicated Underground lines join and Shoreditch High Street is in the top right on the orange Overground line.
Surely something could be done to create a better walking route between the two stations.
Is There A Klug Effect?
Bryan Klug was the manager of Ipswich’s youth academy for some years and in 2002 and 2009 he was appointed caretaker manager.
The academy didn’t produce that many good players under his tenure, but he probably helped the likes of Darren Bent, Darren Ambrose, Luke Hyam and Jordan Rhodes amongst others. Since he left the club, when Roy Keane arrived, with the exception of Connor Wickham few home-grown players have been produced.
Klug went to Tottenham, who for the last few years, have had a dismal record of creating their own stars to be Assistant Academy Manager and Head of Player Development. And then a whole host of youngsters have come through including Andros Townsend, Ryan Mason and Harry Kane. At one time against Italy last week, England had four young Tottenham players on the pitch.
In June 2012, Klug came back to Ipswich and already Teddy Bishop and Matt Clarke are full members of the First Team Squad.
The World-Changing Invention Of The Decade
I heard about Stablepharma on the BBC 5 Live Science program.
The delivery of vaccines to isolated places all over the world is very worthwhile and extremely expensive because it needs a lot of refrigeration for the journey.
But read about the technology being developed by Stablepharma.
If this can be made to work, healthcare will never be the same again!
The Anonymous Widower 