Traffic News
Lying in my comfortable hotel bed on Friday morning watching the BBC Breakfast program for London, I suddenly realised that I no longer need traffic news, as effectively I can’t drive, so it’s somebody else’s problem!
Will I ever drive again? Perhaps I will and perhaps I won’t!
An Unusual and Good Hotel
It wouldn’t suit everybody, but for someone, who needs an affordable place to put their head down in Islington, I can recommend the place where I spent, Thursday and Friday night, The Raj Hotel in the Essex Road. I paid £60 for the total of the two nights and I had a cosy room with a very modern and clean shower/bathroom, a choice of two comfortable beds, where I slept well, a Freeview TV and a light breakfast. The staff incidentally, were everything you could expect in a small hotel. Something that is often lacking in other hotels!
Judging by the people at breakfast on the Friday, a couple of single women were staying, which is always a test of value and quality.
On the Friday night, I also sampled the food, which was excellent and proper Bangladeshi food with lots of flavour. I paid just under £10 for a chicken tikka, trimmings and a Coke.
Tommy Miah, who owns this hotel and also one in Edinburgh, may be starting a revolution here. Will we be seeing affordable and clean Indian-themed hotels, possibly attached to good restaurants, springing up all over the UK? I surely hope so, as there is a vast gap in the marketplace.
I shall certainly be staying again. If I ever get to buy a house nearby the hotel, I will probably use the restaurant again.
Cambridge to Get Two New Platrforms
According to the Cambridge Evening News, Cambridge is set to get two new platforms.
About time too! And let’s hope they use the extra capacity to improve the Cambridge to Ipswich service I use so much!
Areas Worst Placed to Survive the Recession
The BBC has made a list of how areas of the UK can survive the recession.
It would appear that Middlesbrough is at the bottom of the list. And no wonder!
I went there to see Ipswich play their first match of the season and although I enjoyed the visit, I got the impression, that the town was doing little to pull itself up by its bootstraps. I was an occassional tourist and I think that they don’t believe they have anything to offer visitors and that Government must do more to help. As an example, the Tall Ships Race was on at Hartlepool across the river and if I’d known then I’d have stayed another day. But it wasn’t mentioned on either the town or the football club’s website, so I didn’t go! There were no posters either! I suspect that certain football clubs would have got in on the act if it had been local to them, by perhaps introducing some of the foreign sailors before the match. If nothing, it would have been good publicity.
Either they learn to live without subsidy from the rest of the UK, or it will get a lot worse! But how do you wean areas like Middlesbrough off their addiction to subsidy?
If they don’t manage it, then towns like Middlesbrough will suffer the same fate as large parts of the former East Germany. There anybody with skills have moved on and it has got to such a state, that the birth-rate has declined to almost zero, as young women just can’t see any point in bringing up children in such an environment.
Middlesbrough has a lot to offer, but it is doing a very bad job in selling itself to the rest of the UK, except by handing out a begging bowl for more subsidy!
Remember, one man’s subsidy is somebody else’s tax! Certain politician’s will always argue that you can tax the rich, but then many in the higher wealth levels can easily move to other countries to live or work!
A Photo of an Airship
Last night I was going through some old photos of my mother-in-law’s and found a couple of pictures of an airship.
Here’s the best one.
The Airship Photo
On reading the call-sign on the side as G-FAAW, it became obvious with a bit of searching the Internet, that the airship, was the ill-fated R101, which crashed on its first flight in France.
The R101 is one of those projects, that suffered from bad design and management. It should also be said that there appears to have been a lot of political interference. After all the R101 was the government’s project to rival the capitalist R100, so I don’t think they wanted it to fail.
But was this pressure worth the lives of the 48 people, who died with the R101?
The picture looks like it was taken in the area of Cardington, but it might be elsewhere.
My mother-in-law and in fact others in North London, including my own mother, were somewhat fascinated by airships. A lot of this was probably due to the shooting down of the German airship by Captain Leefe Robinson in September 1916 at Cuffley, the fire of which could be seen a hundred miles away. I think both would have been about four at the time and it was something that must have made an impression on both their lives. Somewhere, I’ve seen a tin box of the remains of the downed airship, that had been scavanged by perhaps a child at the time.
That Terrible Word From
Go to the Premier Inn web site and you’ll see a smiling Lenny Henry telling you thewy have rooms available from £27 a night.
But search for a real room, that you need and you’ll find prices are a lot higher per night. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a room I might need at less than a hundred a night!
I have better things to do, but there comes a point, where this is misleading advertising!
Other sites seem no better. I’d like to stay in London on the 9th and 10th of September, so that I can look for a house in the city and also be better placed for the trip to Portsmouth on the 11th. I can’t find anything affordable at all.
A Farce at Whittlesford
When I picked up my ticket at Whittlesford Parkway station on Wednesday to go to Lingfield, the machine was a struggle for my limited eyesight, as it is placed in the sun. I also found the touch screen very unresponsive, unlike other machines I have used on East Coast and Virgin Trains.
As I eventually got the tickets successfully and I had a few minutes before my train, I popped into the booking office and explained what had just happened and on a Saturday a coiple of weeks ago. He said that the machine was badly placed and that it took a lot of pushing to get it to work. I also asked if the offce would be manned today, as I was going to London. He said it would be fully staffed as it should be!
But today it wasn’t ,manned and despite twenty minutes of trying, I could not purchase the ticket I required. I did get to the payment stage, but it rejected every credit card I had as unreadable.
I was not alone and of the dozen or so of you fought with the machine only one got a ticket.
After perhaps fifteen minutes a train for Cambridge pulled up and the driver or collector, told us all to travel and sort it out at the destination.
So this is what I did!
At Tottenham Hale, I bought my required Travelcard from a friendly ticket inspector called Youssef. And it was also with one of the unreadable cards rejected by the machine at Whittlesford.
Nothing annoys me more than technology that should be to everyone’s benefit, installed and implimented so t just makes people angry and causes extra work for others.
The sooner this machine isreplaced by something that works in a better place, the better!
Doubts About Guided Busways
Over the last few months, I have been watching the progress, or should that be non-progress, of the Cambridge Busway with interest. Now one of the transport experts from Salford University, Richard Knowles, has been very forthright about the project and another busway proposed for Greater Manchester. His views are in this report on the BBC.
This is an extract.
“The idea is a good one,” he added, “but guided busways have always been promoted on the basis that they’re a lot quicker and cheaper to build than light rail systems.
“However, in Cambridgeshire, it’s 10 years since the multi-modal study recommended it and the budget at that time was half what it looks like it’s going to cost, and it’s well out of time.
“The contract was let in 2006. It’s now 2010 and it’s still not open.”
Prof. Knowles said the Cambridgeshire guided bus scheme was “a guinea pig”.
“It’s the national trial project, if you like, for guided busways.
“This is why the government put a huge amount of money into it, because it is the pilot project for guided busways in Britain.
“So other guided busway schemes clearly want to see what happens in Cambridgeshire and learn the lessons.”
It’s a pity for Cambridge, that the guinea pig wasn’t some other council.
In fact, I needed the busway today, as I had to get from the city centre to Addenbrookes. So I had to get a normal bus, which incidentally was very convenient and reliable.
The FA’s Bad Timing
When England played their qualifiers for the 2010 World Cup, I saw two; Belarus away and Kazakhstan at home.
I shall not be going to the Bulgaria match tonight despite tickets still being available and the fact that I would have liked to. The match kicks off at 8:00, which means it will be very difficult for me to get home, unless I left the match early! I would not be able to get to Liverpool Street in time for a train , that would allow me to get a taxi.
Tickets are still available! so I wonder how many others fans are not going, as they will have transport problems after the game, either through distance, health like me, or perhaps bcause they have would like to take their kids.
And then to cap it all, the match is on that awful medium for football; ITV. I might have the pictures on, but I will be listening to the excellent commentary on BBC Radio 5.
This football fan is seriously pissed off!
According to the BBC this morning, the late start is a UEFA idea to appease the big clubs. But then I suspect that the old farts running that so-called organisation, aren’t real fans and don’t have the transport problems or other responsibilities, that many of us have!
The Taxi Problem
For some reason in this country outside of big cities, like London, Edinburgh, Liverpool and others, taxis don’t seem to work very well.
Take where I am now and there are no local taxis, so you have to get one from either Cambridge, Newmarket or Bury St. Edmunds, which makes transport for people like me difficult. I can’t always book and this results in the sort of situation last Saturday in Bury St. Edmunds, where I couldn’t find one and had a very long walk in cold weather, which is probably not to be advised.
last night, I had to get back from Whittlesford and because I wasn’t sure about what would be happening, I hadn’t firmed it up with my usual driver at Sawston Taxis. He did know that I might be coming and I knew that he had a trip to London City Airport in the early evening. So after a couple of texts, he told me that he’d be at the station, but not before 7:30. So I took a train to arrive there about that time and texted him to say I wouldn’t mind waiting a bit. In the end, he was waiting for me as I arrived and it all worked out without pain. In fact, another of his regular clients had also contacted the taxi driver by text and he did a double trip.
The taxi driver used to be an AA repairman and they had a system, that automatically located the nearest guy and sent him to the breakdown.
So the technology is there with GPS, text messaging and computers to organise what we have now a lot better.
Perhaps, what is needed is a UK-wide number for taxis, which gets the nearest professional one to where you want to go. Surely, in this day and age something better can be done rather than what we have now. Unless, you pre-plan it and use someone you trust, you now have to take pot-luck and perhaps end up with a rather tatty one from the rank at the station or phone and say there is no taxi available.
A good system would also allow shared taxis. So say if four people were coming off a particular train, then they would be allocated to a sensible number of cabs in a monetarily and environmentally efficient way.
I’d be interesting to know whether other countries organise things better, so that you have a good value service. A good system, should lower the cost for passengers, but also get a lot more business for the drivers.
The Anonymous Widower 