What happened at your workbench today?
- Thread starter Henri
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Just to be clear, I'm not sure it's 90% of the benefit receivers that are the problem, ots more of dumping hundreds of people in areas that can't support hundreds of people, with those areas reliant on the fickle seasonable income to keep themselves solvent. A total lack of decent accommodation or access to enough decent jobs all adds to the mixIt was not a popular policy as eBay Mike will tell you - exporting all the benefit receivers to the unpopulated areas on the south and east coast didn't go down well, and although Scotland is a little further out of the way, I doubt that the Wee Burnie would go quietly on that one
Trying to hold the steam in and bite my tongue, we have sufficient s'ouveners here. If you have too many bodies in the s'ouf spread them around the s'ouf coast, that area to the north east of London has plenty of spare land.There's the solution, then: Send half the population of London to northwest Scotland and the other half to Ellesmere Island. Declare the area a sanctuary for ferrel pigeons.
I'll leave now before I say something not politically acceptable.
David
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The Nederlands is about the size of East Anglia and has a population of over 17 M.They may not have more space in total sq miles, but they only have a quarter of the population to rattle around in that space.
Part of the problem on our tiny island is a population of almost 70 million souls - and by the way, Scotland has a smaller population that London
If the Dutch can do it, why can't our blinkered politicians do the same.
Instead of forcing through (mis)guided busways in Cambridge.
They should see what Edinburgh and Nottingham have done. The initial cost is high yes but Edinburgh Trams have made profits and it is now extending towards Leith and Newhaven....
Meanwhile, back in G scale territory, I have received a second battery holder from Gaugemaster for Mizzys 25 Tonner Track Clean Machine, which is 'currently' on charge with 6 Uniross AAA cells fitted.
Next job will be to install a MyLocoSound card and speaker somewhere up in the cab roof....
Next job will be to install a MyLocoSound card and speaker somewhere up in the cab roof....
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Indeed that misguided busway but at least it is there even if the journeys are ill thought out I.E. Huntingdon Station in a bus from Peterborough trundling around a housing estate in Huntingdon instead if doing a quick journey to Cambridge. But things move on and the former Mayors vanity project Cam has been binned by the new Mayor with no Plan B except more sustainable chat, oh and more roads? Trams would work nicely in Cambridge, after all they did once!
I have a book about East Anglian trams - they didn't survive very long. Once again, infrastructure costs versus buses. Some of the systems only ran for 30 years or so.
Many of the tram systems that have been installed in the UK have made us of disused railway track beds, or incorporated some minor suburban railway lines into the system.
Edinburgh is one of the few that was totally new, but it was mired in controversy and humungus cost overruns. I'm not sure that it yet runs to the extent that was planned - at one stage it was cut short because of the cost overruns.
Reminds me of the story about a retained fireman. Before the days of pagers etc, when the alarm went, the fire engine would leave as soon as it had the required number of personnel on board. Retained fireman got extra pay per 'shout', provided they were on the fire engine.But they get in the way of cars
Said fireman was peddling his trusty steed to the station on hearing the alarm, but was gutted to see the fire engine tearing down the street towards him. He got off the bike and threw it in the road, forcing the fire engine to stop. Thus he was able to get on the fire engine and claim his pay!
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Edinburgh has restarted build to get more of the original proposals in place. Cambridge indeed was a bit of a small Horse drawn system. Had U.K. followed continental ideas and made systems continue with upgrades we may have more than now, but too many Councillors saw them as getting in the way of Road traffic, sad really just when now they would have been a great speed head towards a loc carbon transport system. Indeed many an old railway has been utilised by the new systems, Cambridge could have benefited from that also got chose a transport system that also overran massively with costs and I think litigation is still ongoing. Plus it will forever be a drain on the ratepayers of the area as busses are not charged to use it. Though I suspect if there were fees the buses would not use it! Nottingham is one of the success stories, partially funded by a working place car parking levy, extended and loved pretty much by all that use it with more extensions under planning. Plus no cost overruns worth talking about unlike Edinburgh that must have had rubbish management during the build. Trams beat jams.
The problem with the original modern Edinburgh system can I think be summed up by one statement made by an Edinburgh Councillor "we didn't fully appreciate we would need experience rail transport people to put tenders together and manage the works", personally I would have said that was rather obvious.
Edinburgh has learnt a lot of lessons and works are progressing well down to and through Leith, the way things are progressing and the way trams have been welcomed in Edinburgh just goes to prove trams really are the sensible way forward.
I vaguely remember visiting the Netherlands as a wean and still have fond memories of being impressed by the trams, now when folk talk about trams I always say go and look at Prague, they may not have the most up to date fleet but they do have an excellent system.
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Nottingham was not all plain sailing. The working place car park levy forced a number of businesses to close their city centre offices and relocate, as they started to charge it well in advance of the trams opening and the only other options were buses and park and ride schemes, which just added to people's commutes.
The Boots site straddled the City Council boundary, so they flipped their main employee car park which was within the levy area with a trailer park which wasn't! That equated to over 700 spaces that the council lost the income on.
The routing of the trams also proved controversial. They were touted as virtually silent, but the rumbling wrecked the Royal Concert Hall as a recording venue, as the tracks run directly behind the stage. It also makes loading in extremely difficult, as only 1 truck can now be accommodated on the loading bay at any one time instead of 3 and there's basically no artist parking any more. Similar noise issues have led to tracks being relaid in Beeston and up around the Forest recreation ground due to numerous complaints about noise and vibration damaging houses.
The track leading into the Market Square took about 3 attempts to get right, as the tricky gradient and sharp curves led to some derailment during testing.
For all of that, the scheme is now a success, but it is now almost impossible to drive into certain parts of the city centre due to restrictions caused by the tram lines.
Working place parking levy is a greatvtool to get money for Tram systems, by it’s nature it does need to be implemented to get the money prior to start up. Re impossibility to drive in certain parts of Nottingham, that is surely the point of trams to get people out of cars?
The problem with trams is that if something goes wrong on a line, it's quite difficult to bypass it with a diversion. Anyway the the real problem with any public transport is that people prefer their cars. Similar to trying to stop people smoking, charge whatever you like, put horrible pictures on boxes etc, people will still smoke.
Ah yes that old chestnut of things going wrong, ever been held up on a Road where there has been an accident and it has been closed with no option to divert? As for getting out of cars, the Towns that have Trams have had good change in modes to Trams, but I accept that they are not for everyone or every Town, but we do need more and they are a good way for forward Zero Carbon travel in Towns plus if properly designed reduce congestion by getting many out of their cars.
The problem was that the charge was brought in to reduce city centre car use, but without any mitigating measures - like more buses or park and ride sites. IBM, Boots and a couple of other big employers just evacuated their city centre offices for other locations and a business park built with about 30 parking spaces for over 400 staff lay virtually unused until the trams started running, as there was not even a bus service to access it. It now has a large private car park adjoining, as the trams have not totally solved the commuting problem. Of course, in this post covid world it's all academic in any case, as everyone is still working from home!
Just doing deliveries into the centre of Nottingham was / probably still is a nightmare. I had to drop some equipment off at the Council house for an afternoon event. I could only access the building by van outside of their normal opening hours, as there was a timed traffic restriction on the access road. They therefore expected any visiting business to unload the equipment early in the morning and pile it up next to all the rest of their deliveries on the street until they opened up. We had to send someone just to keep an eye on the kit for a couple of hours, as it was reasonably high value. Total bureaucratic nonsense!
