London Buses To Go Cashless
It’s been announced that from this summer, London buses will go cashless.
Since Transport for London announced their consultation in August last year, there has been little discussion anywhere on the proposal in the media. Which makes me think, that most users of London buses are not bothered at all.
I’m very much in favour, as often my bus is delayed as groups of young people are using cash. Strangely, I’ve never seen anyone my side of forty, buying a ticket recently. They all seem to use either Oyster or a Freedom Pass. Could it be that most younger people only use buses as a last resort and many actually haven’t, as they always use their cars or have been driven around by their family?
The Closed Kingsland Fire Station
I walked past the closed Kingsland Fire Station a couple of days ago.
The Closed Kingsland Fire Station
I’m not going to enter into the rights and wrongs of the closure, but I once had a dinner with a senior fire officer in Suffolk. Many of the things he suggested to cut fire deaths from many years of experience, have still not been generally implemented.
One example of something he wanted was battery-less smoke alarms in all buildings. Twenty years later that still isn’t the norm.
As the fire station and several others have now been closed for a few days, I’m surprised we haven’t seen a few stories about how wrong the decision was.
Has The Rain Stopped For A Bit?
I took this picture from the Emirates Air-Line this morning.
Has The Rain Stopped For A Bit?
Let’s hope we’re getting a break from this awful rain!
Not Pure Genius
I needed a snack this afternoon and thought some Genius toast with some strawberry jam would do nicely!
Not Pure Genius
These were the first two slices I got from the packet! So they were discarded.
On the subject of holes, I’m always reminded of a story about a former MP, who died some months ago.
A friend of a close friend of my late wife’s was at a party when she was chatted up by the MP. He thought he had struck lucky and escorted the lady up to a bedroom.
Everything went fine, until he took off his shirt to reveal a grey vest with large holes in it.
Should We Jump On The Peer-to-Peer Bandwagon?
I wouldn’t tell anybody one way or other, but I would advise them to research the reputable peer-to-peer lenders, if they need to borrow money or save for the future.
This article from Julian Knight was published yesterday in the Independent.In the opening paragraph he speculates that you might be able to fund peer-to-peer lending from an ISA.
As he says, it might only be kite flying, but if it is, it is a kite armed with some serious ordnance destined for the banks.
You may dismiss peer-to-peer lending as something for nerds, accountants or gamblers, but even if you do, read the article.
If you decide to act on it, make sure you think before you leap.
Catkucios
This unusual spelling was used by my son, when he was suggesting where we might go for supper.
Is it a restaurant that serves moggies?
Madness At Hackney Wick
This story is beyond belief. Here’s the first bit.
A young woman was in a serious condition in hospital today after leaping on to a freight train in London and being burnt by live overhead cables.
The 22-year-old sparked an explosion by touching the 25,000-volt wires and was thrown 20ft on to the platform where her friends had stood watching, the London Evening Standard reported.
The only good news is that she wasn’t killed. It probably shows that if say the 25,000 volt cables are dragged down in an accident, you might just about get away with being hit. But I certainly wouldn’t recommend any experiments.
The Invisible Busway
I used to see the odd local news story about the Luton Dunstable Busway, when I lived in Suffolk, but it does seem to be rather invisible on the web. It does have a rather poor website, which doesn’t seem to be updated regularly, but information in Wikipedia is very limited. It’s just a section in Transport in Luton, under Current Developments. It does say that it opened in September 2013.
The only news story I can find is this one about low usage on the BBC.
Passenger numbers for the first month of the Luton and Dunstable guided busway were just 43% of those predicted for the £91m scheme.
Perhaps the busway hasn’t been given a high enough profile? The successful Cambridge busway, had a lot of publicity, although much of it proved the old adage, that no publicity is bad publicity.
Perhaps I should go for a look, but there is very little to draw me to Luton or Dunstable.
All Systems Go On The Cambridge Busway
I was sceptical about the Cambridge Busway before it opened and felt that it would probably be better to have reinstated the railway. A group called CASTIRON was formed to promote the railway, but the busway still was built and opened.
Now I read this article, which states that Stagecoach is going to increase srvices on the route. Here’s the first paragraph.
Operator Stagecoach yesterday said it would increase the frequency of departures to every five minutes during peak times, in the hope this will relieve overcrowding and stop passengers being left waiting by buses which are too full to stop.
As the busway is going to link up with the new station at Chesterton and new housing along the route at Northstowe, it doesn’t seem to appear it is going to be a white concrete elephant.
It Happens Again Travelling To And From Ipswich
This afternoon, I went to football at Ipswich and like last week, when I encountered the troubles detailed in this post, I had more trouble.
I decided to get the 13:00 rather than the 13:30, in case the latter was a bit late. I was advised by staff at Liverpool Street station, not to take the 13:00, as it was only going to Colchester. Instead I was told to get the 13:02 slow train to Ipswich. After a few stops and hiccups, I eventually got to Ipswich, a few minutes later than the 13:30 normally would, which meant I missed about two minutes of the match.
Then at half-time, a couple of people turned up who had caught the 13:30, which had arrived forty-five minutes late.
Returning to London, I normally catch the 17:09 and I did today, but it had lost thirty minutes from its schedule by Manningtree.
By Colchester, we were going better and eventually got into Liverpool Street only losing a few more minutes.
The ticket collector told us all that it appeared that there had been an attempted cable theft, although that is not mentioned in this article in the Eastern Daily Press.
The Anonymous Widower 