Category: Uncategorized

A Monday Mixture

INTRODUCTION

Not really a proper post this time, just a few unrelated things to get down and a handful of pictures.

WHICH? LAUNCH SUPER-COMPLAINT AGAINST RAILWAY COMPANIES

Which? have launched a super-complaint against the railway companies demanding that they make it easier for customers to claim refunds (good timing, as we are firmly in the season for delays). I have three links for you to follow up:

  1. The post I have just put up on my London transport themed website
  2. Which?’s own press release
  3. Which?’s petition, which I urge to sign and share.

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD!!

 

STRICTLY – A RETROSPECTIVE

Strictly Come Dancing is over for another year. On Saturday night we were privileged to witness a spectacular grand-final in which tremendous stories attached to all four of the pros who had guided their celebrities that far. For Giovanni, it was his first series on the show. At the opposie end of the experience spectrum, Anton has been involved as a pro on Strictly since it started but had never previously made a grand final – 13th time lucky for him! Kevin made history by guiding a third successive celebrity partner to a grand final appearance (and for my money should have won the series). Aliona, the sole female pro to guide a partner to this year’s grand final also made Strictly history by becoming the first pro to guide two partners to a series victory (also Harry Judd in 2009).

The grand final was so superb that even the Judge Jeffries of the dance floor (aka Craig Revel-Horwood) managed to locate his 10 paddle.

SOME PICTURES TO FINISH

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Christmas tree without using the flash – does better justice to the lights.
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Christmas tree with flash – does better justice to the tree.

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A 125th Anniversary Special

Flagging up my website (www.londontu.be) post about the Northern line, released on the 125th anniversary of that line opening

INTRODUCTION

This is both another shout out about my website, www.londontu.be and a flag up of what is probably my longest ever post.

AN EPOCHAL DATE

On December 18th, 1890, the City & South London Railway opened, covering a modest six stops, from Stockwell to King William Street. This little line marked the breaking of a new frontier in public transport – making use of the blue clay on which London is built it was in deep level tube tunnels, a technique made possible by the development of electric locomotion as an alternative to steam. This City & South London is now part of the line that in my website post I dubbed London Underground’s Worst Bodge Job – The Northern line.

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I hope that you will share this, and also read my website post and spread the word both about the post itself and the website.

http://www.londontu.be/london-undergrounds-worst-bodge-job/

 

An Updated Version of “South Kensington”

A flag-up of the latest addition to my website, http://www.londontu.be

INTRODUCTION

Keen followers of this blog may remember a piece I did a while back under the title “Special Post – South Kensington”. You should also know that since I produced that post which was the first piece of London Underground themed writing that I shared publicly I have created a London transport themed website, www.londontu.be…

UPDATING AN ORIGINAL

I have just put up a post on that site covering South Kensington, as I thought that there should be a post on the site that mentions where it all started. I urge you all to read and share the new version of the South Kensington post.

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Compensation for Public Transport Problems

An account of how I gained deserved compensation from Stagecoach for unacceptable delays to their X8 service between King’s Lynn and Fakenham

INTRODUCTION

This post is mainly taklen up with an email exchange between myself and various people at Stagecoach, who since they took over Norfolk Green have run bus services ion my local area. Last week, after five successive journeys that were late, sometimes by very large margins I decided it was time to contact Stagecoach about the X8 route between King’s Lynn and Fakenham, which I use to get to and from work, at a cost of an hour’s wages per working day.

THE EMAIL EXCHANGE

This starts with my opening email, sent on Friday morning, 24 hours after the last of the five delayed journeys in question…

THOMAS’ OPENING GAMBIT

This is the text of my initial email, with the subject being “poor servcice on X8 between King’s Lynn and Fakenham”:

To whom it may concern

I use this service to travel to and from work, and it has been plagued by punctuality problems for some time. This week the situation has finally become so 
unacceptable that I have decided I have to write to you. My working days this week were Tuesday, Wednesday and yesterday, and in chronological order the 
experiences I had were:

Tuesday AM: bus was over 20 minutes late at King’s Lynn (it is supposed to leave at 8:45, and both 8:55 to Spalding and 9:05 to March which were running to time 
came and went before it).

Tuesday PM: bus was over half an hour late.

Wednesday AM: bus was 15 minutes late at King’s Lynn.

Wednesday PM: bus was over 10 minutes late

Thursday AM: bus was just under 10 minutes late at King’s Lynn (The 8:55 to Spalding was already standing in bay C, so this bus used bay B).

Thursday pm: Mirabile dictu this bus was actually on time.

Five buses out of six being not just late but significantly late cannot be considered acceptable by anyone. I also point out that as someone who is very conscientious 
about arriving in good time (especially given that this service runs hourly) I spent considerably more time waiting for this buses than documented above (5+ minutes for 
each journey). As a final point, this bus service is expensive enough that each journey swallows an hours wages. I would like to suggest that what has happened this 
week is sufficiently unacceptable to warrant financial compensation. My suggestion is that given an expenditure on my part of £20.70 compensation of £15 would be 
appropriate. If you agree, you could send a cheque to:

Thomas Sutcliffe
117E High Street
King’s Lynn
Norfolk
PE30 1DD

As a final point, I have various press contacts with whom I could share this story, a well supported blog and an even better supported twitter account. Just how hostile 
to you my final write up of this story is depends on the speed and nature of your response to this communication.

Yours sincerely

Thomas Sutcliffe

THE FIRST RESPONSE

That afternoon I received this initial response:

Message Received: Dec 11 2015, 03:14 PM
From: “Amy Fields” 
To: “Thomas Sutcliffe” 
Cc: 
Subject: Re: Poor service on X8 between King;s Lynn and Fakenham

Good Afternoon Mr Sutcliffe 

I am sorry to hear the circumstances that have brought you to contact us. 
We will be looking further into the matter and I will be passing this over 
to the Assistant Operations Manager her attention who will be in contact 
in due course regarding this matter,

Would you be able to advise me if in the morning it is always the 8.45am 
bus you catch in the morning and would you be able to let me know what 
time you catch the bus home so that we can look at the correct journey.

Please accept my sincerest apologies for the delays you have been 
experiencing.

Kind Regards
Amy
Stagecoach in Norfolk
Hamlin Way
King’s Lynn
Norfolk
PE30 4NG

Tel: 01553 776980
Email: amy.fields@stagecoachbus.com

Registered Office : Stagecoach (East) Ltd, Daw Bank, Stockport, Cheshire, 
SK3 ODU. Registered in England & Wales No. 1673542

http://www.stagecoachbus.com/codeofpractice.aspx
http://www.stagecoachbus.com/conditionsofcarriage.aspx

I duly fired back this response of my own:

Dear Amy

Yes – the 8:45Am is my regular morning bus, and the one that applies to all the journeys mentioned in the initial email. My regular bus home, and again the one that applies to all the journeys mentioned in my first email is the 17:38. I look forward to learning the final results of your investigations. 

Thomas Sutcliffe

RESPONSE AND RESOLUTION

Finally, this afternoon (given that I sent my initial email on a Friday morning I considered Monday afternoon to be not unduly tardy), I received this message…

Message Received: Dec 14 2015, 04:06 PM
From: “Lisa Addison” 

To: thomas@thomassutcliffe.freeserve.co.uk
Cc: 
Subject: X8 Service

Dear Thomas,
I am writing in response to your email dated 11th December 2015 regarding 
service x8
Thank you for bringing this to my attention and I apologise for any 
inconvenience caused
I have investigated your comments regarding the Kings Lynn and Fakenham 
departures due to depart at 08:55 and 1738 hours respectively. On 
investigation and after tracking the services via our Greenroad system, 
which is GPS based, I can confirm that unfortunately the journeys stated 
were indeed operating excessively later than scheduled. One of the reasons 
for this is due to traffic related issues in both arriving into Kings Lynn 
in the mornings but also the service departing from Norwich in the 
afternoon. The second is that the vehicle that operates both the AM and PM 
journeys operates a school service prior to the X8. This more than not 
incurs lateness primarily down to departing the school grounds and then in 
turn operating light to the relevant starting points thereafter i.e Kings 
Lynn and Norwich respectively.
I appreciate that the above is not acceptable therefore and as a matter of 
course I have copied our commercial manager into this response in order 
that this ongoing reliability issue can be addressed. 
As a token of goodwill and part compensation I will post, via a postal 
order, the sum of £15 for inconvenience caused.
May I take this opportunity to apologise for the inconvenience caused and 
you can be assured that further investigations will be forthcoming into 
the reliability of the X8 service.
Yours sincerely
Lisa
Lisa Addison
Assistant Operations Manager
Stagecoach In Norfolk
The Bus Station
Vancouver Centre
Kings Lynn
PE30 1DS
—————————————————————–
Tel :- +44(0)1553776980
Email :- lisa.addison@stagecoachbus.com
Web :- www.stagecoachbus.com

I concluded the exchange by sending this brief acknowledgement…

Dear Lisa

Many thanks for getting in contact with me regarding the problems I have highlighted and for agreeing to compensate me as per my request. 

Thomas Sutcliffe

CONCLUSION

An acceptable resolution has been arrived at. I woulkd point that although I expressed myslef quite forcefully in the opening email there was no bad language on either side, and I cast no aspersions on the ability of anyone at Stagecoach to do their jobs. I do hope you have all enjoyed this post even though it includes no pictures.

 

AN ANTI-CUTS MEETING IN NORWICH

Brief coverage of an important meeting that took place in Norwich this Friday.

INTRODUCTION

This meeting took place at Blackfriars Hall in Norwich on Friday. It featured an excellent panel of speakers plus contributions from local activists.

GETTING THERE AND BACK

With the meeting starting at 7:00PM I had either to arrange to stay overnight in Norwich or get back to my flat at about 1AM. Fortunately I was able to find somewhere to stay overnight in Norwich, which made the event more manageable.

THE MEETING

The meeting was well worth all the travelling to get to and from it. There were many excellent contributions, both from the platform speakers and from local activists. As for one piece of future activity, there was a leaflet awaiting us on the seats…

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For the rest of this post, I have two sets of pictures, first those showing aspects of the meeting…

My second set of pictures focus on the hall itself, which is in a building called The Halls, which adjoins another historic hall, St Andrews Hall.

Although I stress once again that I enjoyed and appreciated every contribution, I have also to say that I was drawn to this meeting by the presence of two particular individuals, Jo Rust (who showed considerable enthusiasm about my presence when we met just outside the hall as I was heading to take my seat) and Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK who was as impressive in person as he is in the pages of his blog.

Please share this and help spread the word, especially about January 16th.

 

Australian placental cats

An excellent and informative piece from a splendid blog site.

whyevolutionistrue's avatarWhy Evolution Is True

by Greg Mayer

Australia is a zoogeographer’s dream world—it’s the most spectacularly distinctive place on Earth, and we know why. Around 250 million years ago, most of the world’s continental plates amalgamated into a single super-continent—Pangaea. During the Mesozoic (the “Age of Reptiles”), Pangaea began breaking up, with many of today’s southern continents (South America, Africa, Antarctica, Australia, and India) pulling away to form the somewhat smaller super-continent of Gondwanaland.

The continental breakup continued, with the various parts of Gondwana separating from one another (hence the traditional rallying cry of irredentist geologists, “Reunite Gondwanaland!”). Africa, India, and, most recently, South America eventually bumped into the northern continental masses, making for interesting geology, and—of the greatest importance for zoogeography—allowing large land animals to move between the major land masses. Such animals are not, in general, susceptible to “occasional means of transport”, as Darwin called them, that allow birds, bats, and smaller animals…

View original post 1,259 more words

Tory MP should ‘resign’ after faking death threat email from constituent | EvolvePolitics.com

Since I tweeted this half an hour ago it has been retweeted 18 times – clearly it is proving very popular…

Lucy Allan, Conservative MP for Telford, has been caught out after adding a ‘death threat’ to the end of an email she received from a constituent. Adam Waitling, 27, who was writing using the pseudonym ‘Rusty Shackleford’, emailed Mrs Allan regarding the vote to bomb Syria. Mrs Allan posted an excerpt of the email to

Source: Tory MP should ‘resign’ after faking death threat email from constituent | EvolvePolitics.com

NAS West Norfolk

An account of a couple recent events run by NAS West Norfolk, with some photographs.

INTRODUCTION

This post covers two recent events run by the National Autistic Society West Norfolk branch. Read, enjoy and please share!

A FAYRE IN THE FENS

On Sunday a Christmas Fayre took place at Walton Highway Village Club  (a few miles outside the town of Wisbech) raising funds for NAS West Norfolk. Judging from the hour or so during which I was present it was an extraordinarily successful event – the place was heaving, and lots of stuff was sold at the various stalls, including two bespoke calendars, each of which raised £5 for NAS West Norfolk.

THE NAS WEST NORFOLK COMMITTEE CHRISTMAS LUNCH

This took place today at 12:00 (I had booked a day’s leave for the occasion) at the Lynn Restaurant. Although this is situated practically underneath my flat I did not, as people who live closest to venues often seem to, arrive last.

As part of the festivity we were doing a ‘secret Santa’ whereby we each bought someone whose name we had been given a gift, and had to ensure that they did not know who it was from. This went splendidly. I have put up a post about the gift I received on www.londontu.be and suggest that you visit this post for more information. The gift that I had purchased as part of this was probably the second most popular behind the one I received!

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The picture I took of the other diners in our group.
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The photo that includes me.
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Secret Santa struck gold with this gift!

Incidentally, the picture above was my second shot at the Tea Towel, the first had been spoilt by the fact that the lens was steamed up. I cleaned it up and tried again (using nothing more sophisticated than a Glasses Wipe – £1.49 for a box of 54 wipes from King’s Lynn LIDL).

I opted for garlic bread to start, followed by spaghetti Bolognese. Both were excellent.

 

 

Electronics Watch

The post below is reproduced from my website, www.londontu.be:

CALL ON TRANSPORT FOR LONDON

TO SIGN UP TO ELECTRONICS WATCH

It makes absolute sense to petition an organisation that spends £750 million a year on electronics and therefore has folk falling over themselves to gain custom to sign up to an organisation with the aims set out below:

Enter Electronics Watch. TfL is about to vote whether to join other public bodies in an initiative called Electronics Watch that uses clauses in public contracts to require better standards from suppliers, and funds essential monitoring to make sure promises are really kept. The decision is next week, meaning we have only hours left to make our voices heard and spread the word:

Can you ask TfL to join the Electronics Watch initiative to use its buying power for good?

For more and to sign and share the petition please click here

Source: http://action.sumofus.org

 

CUSTOMISED CHRISTMAS GIFTS

INTRODUCTION

This post was inspired by Anna of Anna’s Art who put up this post about painting rocks to turn them into Christmas presents.

THE CALENDARS

While I would be very unlikely to produce anything worthwhile by painting rocks as I have no talent for that sort of things many people have noted that I possess a talent for photography, and at mother’s suggestion I used this to design calendars for use as Christmas presents. Here are some photos of the completed calendars, made to my specifications by Vistaprint:

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Save for the front cover which does feature a composite image all the photos used were single pictures, and with no exceptions all were of things seen within walking distance of my flat in central King’s Lynn. Those of you who follow me on twitter will recognize the August photo, because that forms the basis of my current thank you message.

Maybe you have a talent that you can use to produce presents that only you could provide.