Transport for London’s Visitor Centre At Liverpool Street
One of the things that Transport for London said it would do, when it closed Ticket Offices, was to open Visitor Centres at major stations.
This one at Liverpool Street station has been rebranded. It is one of several at main line stations and airports.
I know it was early on a Saturday, but I was the only person looking at what was on offer.
Looking at the London Pass, I think it could be something that a serious visitor would buy.
I can’t help feeling though, that as time progresses, the Visitor Centres in Central London will see fewer and fewer visitors, as London’s contactless ticketing system, will make travel advice something that can be handled easily by the station staff.
I may be wrong, but I think only Liverpool and Edinburgh have proper Visitor Centres. The one in Liverpool is placed on the platform where Virgins arrive from London and the one in Edinburgh is on Princes Street at the top of the escalators from the station.
Every large destination should have a comprehensive Visitor Centre, especially if they are a major interchange to other trains, trams and buses. The oferinmgs in some places is certainly not good enough.
Is This How To Fight ISIS?
I first read about ISIS-Chan in The Times and I’m surprised that this Japanese character hasn’t spread into more of the media.
I did find this article about the anime in this article on CNN-Money.
The idea is to so fill Google and the other search engines with the harmless stories, that the real hardcore ISIS filth becomes impossible to find.
Let’s hope that the UK and other governments are creating masses of similar material in their fight against the evil madmen of ISIS and other terrorist groups.
Those that choose to spread their perverted material by the Internet should be strangled by the Internet.
Pure Gold In The Fight Against Unwanted Calls
This morning on my mat was a card put through my door by one of umpteen mini-cab companies that are a real swarm here.
But the card is pure gold, as it listed both a landline and a mobile number.
So any caller on either my landline or mobile gets a polite message asking him, (Is it ever a her?), to ring my mobile or landline.
Those that throw rubbish on my doormat, will find these nuisance call merchants will give them a few minutes of idiotic chat.
Walking From Three Bridges To Hanwell
I walked from Three Bridges via the Grand Union Canal and Hanwell Locks to Hanwell station.
From the canal it was a walk through houses and I didn’t take any pictures.
The Kelpies
The Kelpies are best described by these pictures.
I liked them and their setting in the sun was excellent. This Google Map shows their location to the West of the M9 Motorway and South of the River Carron.
The Kelpies And The Helix
The area to the South has been converted into a park called The Helix. I came on a bus called The Loop from Falkirk Grahamstown station.
A Lady In The Wrong Job
I know she was elected, but this report on the BBC, surely says that she shouldn’t have stood for the post if things she would have to do were against her religious beliefs.
There must be other jobs, where religious or other beliefs mean you should not be appointed.
Suppose a doctor believed that homoeopathy had the cure for everything, they would not make the World’s best GP, unless all the patients, they saw were fellow believers.
The Minimum Payment On Contactless Payment
On Saturday, I went out without my real handkerchief, so just before I got my train, I popped into Boots at Liverpool Street station and bought a pack of tissues for the princely sum of forty-five pence.
As I always do in Boots, I used a self-service till, but this time I used my contactless American Express card for the purchase, by just tapping it on the reader.
In some ways that seemed a bit cheeky to me and it certainly raised a smile in myself.
So now, my on-line American Express statement has an entry for 0.45p against Boots.
It got me thinking and yesterday I was taken short in Nottingham station.
Using The Toilet In Nottingham Station
How long before public toilets like these in stations gocredit contactless?
A Perfect Storm In Ilford
This article from the Ilford Recorder is entitled Redbridge Council leader says Ilford town centre has ‘the perfect storm’ for regeneration.
It talks about a billion pound of investment in the next six years.
So it does look like one of the more dreary parts of East London is going to be improved.
In my view, it shows how Crossrail is going to regenerate large swathes of London.
Although, in the article, I do think that that the design for homes on the Sainsburys site on Roden Street, is very much out of the design manual of Soviet Russia, that I saw in Nova Huta.
Does Jeremy Corbyn Really Support Coal?
I am very surprised by this report in the Daily Mirror, which talks about Jeremy Corbyn and coal. Here’s the first paragraph.
Jeremy Corbyn could bring back coal mines despite vowing to ‘keep fossil fuels in the ground’.
The article goes on to talk about carbon capture technology to burn coal without producing any carbon dioxide.
I have been to learned lectures on this technology and there’s about as much chance of making it work economically, as landing an astronaut on the Sun.
I may be wrong about carbon capture technology, but we would be better spending the investment on insulating our woefully energy-inefficient buildings, so everybody had a lower energy bill.
We obviously need more electricity and there are better ways of generating it without the carbon problem.
My preferred methods would be.
- Importing electricity generated by geothermal and hydroelectric power stations in Iceland using an undersea cable. The so-called IceLink is described on this page on the National Grid web site.
- Tidal power in the Severn and other western estuaries. The Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon is a project that has started.
- Offshore wind and wave.
- Solar panels on buildings. Technology is improving and costs are falling.
- Local energy generation using small-scale systems like the Bunhill Energy Centre in Islington.
I also believe that if we funded research in our best Universities, we could fundamentally change our energy use, generation and conservation.
We might even be able to do without using more of the following types of power generation in the future.
- Coal, with all its problems of pollution and the carbon dioxide it generates.
- Nuclear, with all its problems of high cost and unacceptability by certain sections of the population.
- On-shore wind, with all its visual intrusion.
I think the future is going to be scientifically green.
I suspect that in twenty or thirty years time, our main uses of fossil fuels, like oil and gas, will be in the production of needed chemicals, heat energy for industrial processes and powering transport.
Memorials On The Liverpool Pier Head
Liverpool is proud of its maritime heritage and the Pier Head on the Mersey is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site called the Liverpool Maritime Mercantile City.
When Celia and I met in Liverpool in the 1960s, it was a simpler place, where we would walk to take the ferry across the Mersey.
These pictures show the Pier Head today.
I’d never realised that the road across the Pier Head, had been named Canada Boulevard in honour of Canadians, who lost their lives in the Battle of the Atlantic or the war against German U-boats.
Shown in the pictures is the memorial to Captain Johnnie Walker, one of the leading British commanders in the battle.
The scale of the battle is shown by the fact that according to Wikipedia the Allies lost over 70,000 sailors, 3,500 merchant ships and 175 warships, whereas the Germans lost 30,000 sailors and 783 submarines.
One thing that wasn’t there in the 1960s is the canal that links the Leeds and Liverpool Canal to the Stanley Dock, so narrow-boats can visit the city centre.
The Anonymous Widower 