Prospects For Scottish Banks
I have a trawl for the Royal Bank of Scotland in Goggle and two stories this morning make interesting reading.
Scotland Will Never Be Free as Long as It Has RBS is from Bloomberg and Analysis: Scottish banks plan quietly as independence debate gets louder is from the Chicago Tribune.
They should be read.
I don’t care which way Scotland votes, as it is their affair, but I won’t be following David Cameron’s advice to phone my Scottish friends and implore them to stay, Mainly because all of them seem to be in the Better Together camp.
One feeling I do have, is that the Scottish independence debate is the tail, that is wagging the donkey of the Royal Bank of Scotland. No bank is too big to fail, but because of the referendum in September, no English politician dare put the Royal Bank of Scotland and its employees out of its misery.
I can’t believe that if Barclays had got into the sort of trouble RBS did, then it wouldn’t have been liquidated.
Does Glasgow Need Its Own Rail Hub?
I’ve just been talking to a friend north of the border and he had not heard of the Northern Hub, which finally is getting the treatment and publicity it deserves.
He was unaware of a scheme in Glasgow called Crossrail Glasgow to link the two main stations and make journeys across the city a lot easier.
Reading about it here on Wikipedia, I can’t understand, why it wasn’t implemented before the Commonwealth Games this year.
Crossrail Glasgow and the Northern Hub, are just two of a whole series of projects to improve transport in our major provincial cities, like the Greater Bristol Metro, the extensions to both the Birmingham and Nottingham trams and the reopening of several important commuter railways.
Could it be that the decision on this rail project would have been taken in Edinburgh?
Sense On The Northern Hub
The Northern Hub being developed in Manchester is one of the biggest rail projects North of Watford, but it seems to have been ignored by the media until today. The Times had a very sound article and there was this one on the BBC. Wikipedia has a long article, which is summed up by the first paragraph.
Northern Hub is a series of proposed works across Northern England to stimulate economic growth by increasing train services, reducing journey times and electrifying lines between the major cities of Northern England.[1] It is a partnership between Network Rail, First TransPennine Express, DB Schenker, Freightliner, Department for Transport, Transport for Greater Manchester and Northern Rail.[2] The proposal was first announced in 2009 as the Manchester Hub which entailed a series of upgrades which would cut journey times between cities in Northern England by alleviating the rail bottleneck through Manchester.
I think the area, must be pleased about all the publicity, as it is a very positive story, which must attract jobs and inward investment. It will certainly make some the journeys I’ve done recently a lot easier and much less crowded.
Why Does Software Go Backwards?
My ten-year-old Hewlett-Packard laptop is at death’s door, so I’ve had to switch to a much newer Sony. I bought the Sony, because i found the keyboard easy with my gammy left hand, which means I have difficulty with the shift key. Most capital letters are done by spanning my right hand.
Why is the version of Windows and Office 2010 so inferior to Windows Vista and Office 2007?
I would love to go out and buy a new laptop pre-loaded with Vista and Office 2007! And if it cost me more than it was worth, I wouldn’t mind.
Let’s face it, the hardware and software are the canvas on which a writer of software or all sorts of documents weave their fantasies.
So why should computer companies tell me what I can buy? If I wanted a part for most ten-year-old cars, it’s usually an easy purchase.
And then when you buy a new standalone product, like my Samsung mobile phone, it’s got more bugs than the insect house at the London Zoo. They may be clever and get a lot of sales, but the designers don’t think like users, which is the key to writing good software.
A Bad Painter From Linz
This was how David Aaronovitch described a well-hated dictator in an excellent piece in The Times yesterday. He was discussing, whether the private lives and thoughts of famous people, should affect how we view them and their works. Quite a few of those named make Jimmy Saville look to be a saint.
The article certainly made me think!
Did The Tube Strike Show The Value Of Cashless Buses?
We won’t know yet, as Transport for London, won’t have done the analysis, but as the buses took the strain during the Tube strike of the last two days, it will be interesting to see how much extra cash they took.
If it was very little, then most of the extra passengers were using Oyster or contactless bank cards.
But I did see a group at a bus stop, examining cards to see who’d got ones that worked on the buses.
I suppose, if that is correct, that Bob Crow, has shown Londoners how good cashless travel can be!
Returning From Liverpool Street Station
I can walk from Liverpool Street Station at a push, but as the weather was bad with heavy rain and I had no coat or umbrella, I decided it would be better to brave public transport despite the strike, as usually you don’t get wet on the Tube or in a bus.
The best dry route home for me is to go to Barbican station on the Circle line and then get a 56 bus up to my house, but that station was closed because of the strike. So I thought, I’d take the other easy route, which is to go the other way and change to the strike-free Overground at Whitechapel.
As a train was at the station, I got it and it dropped me at Aldgate, as that was as far as it was going. But never mind, I could get a 67 bus from there to the other end of my road. But for some reason, there were no bus maps at the station and I didn’t fancy the heavy rain, whilst looking for one.
So I got back on the Circle line and went back to Liverpool Street.
At Liverpool Street, I did the sensible thing I should have done in the first place and that was take a train to Hackney Downs and get a 56 bus back the other way to my house.
Luckily the rain was kept off by the railway bridge and after waiting for two minutes I got a bus home.
I must get myself a new coat today!
The Bridge Over The Gipping
I took this picture of the bridge that has been built to take the Bacon Factory Curve over the River Gipping.
The Bridge Over The Gipping
The works seem to be getting on well and there were gangs of men laying the concrete sleepers for the two tracks, as I passed.
What Is It With Zips And Me?
Last year, I bought an expensive waterproof jacket in red and the zip broke after about six months.
It also broke in my North Face padded jacket, which I got my laundry to replace. They replaced it with a single action zip, but as a man I prefer one with a double action.
Today, I went to Bury St. Edmunds to have lunch with a friend and the zip on my Regatta jacket got stuck and broke this morning.
I think it must be my gammy hand, which because it doesn’t pull straight, tends to get the seam stuck in the zip.
At least I haven’t broken a zip in my trousers.
But three in a year, seems rather a lot. Especially as none of these jackets had a pocket layout that I truly liked.
So I went to Bury St. Edmunds in my favourite Gieves and Hawkes jacket, which is twenty years old. But it’s still immaculate!
Where can I get a waterproof jacket of that quality? If I want a double zip and large pockets, I doubt there is anywhere! I don’t need it to be warm, as it’s only for going out in the rain and I can always put a fleece underneath.
The Anonymous Widower 