A victory for disability rights (brought to you by Welfare Weekly and DWP Examination by way of the Guardian)…
Bus drivers must now pressure passengers to make room in ruling described by Doug Paulley as ‘significant cultural change’. This article titled “Disability groups hail court’s support for wheelchai…
My first post created using my new computer. It covers my work for James and Sons this week and includes solutions to the puzzle contained in my previous blog post.
Welcome to this post, the first to be composed using my brand new Acer Chromebook 15, of which more later. As well as covering the events of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, with a few pictures, and of course explaining the computer situation I will be providing an answer the puzzle that I included in my last post.
My old computer (and by computer standards it was a veritable Methusalah) had been struggling for some while when it finally decided to give up the ghost completely. My mother by way of an early Christmas present transferred the funds necessary to buy a replacement to my account, and I made the purchase today. All I am now waiting for is the arrival of the hard drive caddy that I ordered online which will enable me to connect the hard drive that I extracted from my old computer to this one and all will again be as it should be.
James and Sons had its last auction of this year on Wednesday (our next auction is taking place on January 18, 19 and 20 at our shop in Fakenham), and on either side of that I was getting as many images ready for January as I could. The auction we have just had took place in Norwich, and a shortage of people available to help combined with the fact that one of my colleagues was experiencing knee trouble meant that most of the heavy lifting had to be done by yours truly.
Most of the work of loading the van had been accomplished on the Friday, but some still remained to be done. Additionally there were last minute queries to be resolved, work to be done for our next auction and a few other things. I made enough of a fuss about the extra expense of catching the very early bus to Norwich (a First Eastern Counties X1, which leaves at 5:30AM and on which a return costs £11 as opposed to the £5.50 it would have cost me if I could have caught the Stagecoach X29 which leaves at 6:28AM) that I was authorised to extract the bus fare from the till.
I managed to catch the 5:30AM bus, and was the first James and Sons employee at the venue. Once the van arrived it was time to unload everything and get the place set up for the auction. After a few hitches, including requiring an emergency replacement for the computer which we had been using to run the auctioneer’s view screen we got underway on time at 10AM, and the sale proceeded fairly smoothly. The coins fared especially well, and much to my relief some of the larger boxes of stamps sold in the room, meaning that they did not have to go back on the van. The militaria also did well.
Once the van was loaded I was able to take my leave, and being in Norwich took the opportunity to visit Norwich Millennium Library before getting the bus home. In the end I arrived back at my flat a little under 14 hours after I had left it in the morning.
After unloading the sold goods from the van it was back to work on the January auction. The catalogue cover was ready by the end of the day, and the images were about 70% done, a near miracle in the circumstances. Here are some of the new images from yesterday…
I asked you to take any three digit number, multiply by 7, then multiply the new answer by 11 and finally multiply that answer by 13. I then asked how your final answer compared to your original number. That final answer consists of two copies of your original number. The reason for this is that 7 x 11 x 13 = 1,001 – and that post beinbg my 1,001st on aspiblog was why I set that puzzle in it. As a bonus I asked what multipliers you would need to produce a similar effect with four digit numbers, and the answer to that is 73 and 137, because 73 x 137 = 10,001.
A link to an excellent and important petition, and also a mathematical teaser.
There will be no photographs in this post, but I wanted to put something up today because I several new people are following this blog – my thanks to you all.
This puzzle comes from one my books at home (cannot remember which) and has a particular relevance which I will reveal in my next post: take any three digit number, and multiply by 7, then multiply the new number 11 and finally multiply that number by 13. What do you notice about this latest answer as compared to your original number? For a bonus what two numbers would you need to use as multipliers to achieve an equivalent effect with a four digit starting number?
My latest twitter follower, Laura Warwick by name, has created a petition on the British government’s official petitions site (which means it is open only to UK citizens to sign) calling on the government to not allow train companies to increase their fares until they have improved their services. Click the screenshot below to sign and share the perition:
A post created from my experiences at the Marxism and Nature day school which took place at Student Central, Malet Street, London on Saturday.
This post is based on a day school organised by the International Socialism Journal titled Marxism and Nature which took place on Saturday. To set the scene, here is the timetable for the day:
The travel should have been straightforward, since Malet Street is walkable from King’s Cross, but engineering works intervened. The first effect of the engineering works was that I had to get the 6:54AM rather than 7:54AM train from Lynn. After getting the replacement bus service from Ely to Cambridge the next train to London turned out to be a stopper, so reckoning on saving a bit of time overall, I alighted at Finsbury Park and took the Piccadilly line line to Russell Square. Having a little time to spare, I avoided the most crowded route, opting for a slightly circuitous walk which had the bonus of taking in this splendid commemorative plate:
This post will be followed by several on http://www.londontu.be focussing specifically on the public transport elements of the day.
Here before getting to the real meat of the post are some photos taken at the event. The event took place at Student Central, formerly known as the University of London Union (ULU). The opening and closing plenaries were in the Upper Hall, which when I first visited the building was known as the Badminton Court (although these are both beaten in the changeability stakes by The Venue, which was Manning Hall when i first visited, and then became Room 101).
The pictures produced below come from all across the day…
I have included some of Ian Rappel’s slides above, so this section will focus mainly on the other speaker at the workshop, Sarah Ensor, who is researching the history of class struggle in Iceland and whose blog can be found here.
The closing plenary featured Ian Angus, many of whose slides I have already shown, and Camilla Royle, deputy editor of International Socialism Journal, who had played a key role in organising the event. The event ended with a show of solidarity with antu-fracking campaigner Tina Rothery.
Knowing that a non-stop train to Cambridge would be leaving Kings Cross at 17:44 I headed that way in no great hurry, and was comfortably aboard the train. Here are some final photographs…
More trouble for #SouthernFail. They should lose their franchise forthwith, either being run direct by the government or being put under the umbrella of TFL…
Plans by an under-fire rail company to change the way it staffs its trains will lead to “unacceptable” and repeated breaches of the Equality Act by denying disabled passengers the support they need to travel, it has been claimed. Southern – which operates train services across parts of south London and southern England – is planning to replace conductors with “on board supervisors” (OBSs), whose job will not include stepping onto the platform at stations. Campaigners fear that introducing these supervisors will mean that disabled passengers who need assistance on platforms at unstaffed stations could be left stranded and unable to board their train. Southern is also planning to allow OBS trains to operate with only a driver in “exceptional circumstances” – which is likely to make travel even harder for disabled people – and has also admitted that two-fifths of its trains are already driver only operated (DOO). Southern is embroiled in a long-running industrial action over its plans to
Some jottings on public transport.
This post arises from several issues: changes to the bus services in my region, and the way in which the company in question has handled those changes; a campaign that has recently come to my attention to restore rail links to Wisbech, and finally the fact that I have recently been in Sweden and thus privileged to see at first hand how a properly run public transport system works.
The more I see of public transport (and as a 41 year old non-driver I see plenty) the more convinced I become that private companies should play no role in running it. Whether you consider the blatant failures such as the current situation involving Southern Rail, the high and increasing prices of tickets across the board or the frequency with public transport in Britain is affected by delays or suspensions of services, it is plain for all to see that private companies cannot do the job.
I regularly see people in Fakenham, where I work, who have missed a connection due to a late running bus. A missed connection means a loss of at least one hour, possibly more due to the infrequency of services.
Those of you who are familiar with my London Transport themed website will have noticed that I am strong believer in integration of services, which is manifested on that site mainly by my suggestions for improvements to existing lines. Ideally all routes would be interconnected.
My first case study concerns…
There have been two major changes on this route recently. Firstly, the service between Fakenham and Norwich has been halved (it is now hourly rather than half hourly), albeit with a couple of gaps in the service between Fakenham and King’s Lynn closed to make that a proper hourly service. The effect of the axing of half of the services between Fakenham and Norwich has been that for the first time standing passengers are a regular feature of that route. A week ago today the X8 designation vanished, the whole route now being referred to as X29. While there is a certain logic to taking this step, especially if it means that all Norwich-Fakenham buses go through to Lynn, the way in which it was handled earns Stagecoach a major black mark. Apart from messages on the screens at King’s Lynn bus station (the way I learned about it), this change was given no advance publicity, with the result that those passengers who do not use King’s Lynn bus station were caught on the hop, and even on Friday evening the sight on X29 to King’s Lynn was still capable of causing confusion with certain passengers.
The train service between London and King’s Lynn is hourly, and after a non-stop run to Cambridge it splits into two, with four coaches continuing north to King’s Lynn and four returning to King’s Cross. The necessity to be in the front four coaches if going beyond Cambridge can mean standing all the way to that station or even beyond (I have stood from London to Waterbeach at least once). I am aware that the restriction to four coaches beyond Cambridge is due to the shortness the platforms at some the intermediate stations, but there are least two possible solutions, and variations thereon:
You will note that I have not even touched on the possibility of lengthening the platforms at Waterbeach, Littleport and Watlington so that eight carriage trains could call at those stations – I have merely mentioned the possibilities that do not require work on the existing infratsructure.
I found out about the campaign to bring the railways back to Wisbech via twitter. They have a website which gives considerable detail about their proposals. I conclude this post by aking use of one of more recent bargain basement acquisitions, this what Wisbech’s rail connections looked like in 1947…
This post ties together my series about my recent holidayy in Sweden, displaying lots of maps and functioning as an illustrated index.
Welcome to this post which ties together my series of posts about my recent (July 29 to August 13) holiday in Sweden and functions as a sort of illustrated index to the series. Please note that barring the two Lulea maps which are public display maps as I did obtain a map of that town every map you see photographed here is available free of charge (great news for a cartophile such as myself).
Maintaining chronological order for these maps we start with…
This map relates to the start of the holiday, the period of July 29th to 31st, which is covered in this post:
On Monday August 1st I set off on the second part of my trip, where I was travelling solo, my first stop being…
This small town was significant for me as being the southern terminal of Inlandsbanan. It sits close a famous lake (bodies of water are never far distant wherever you are in Sweden) and is an attractive place in its own right.
Kristinehamn features in two posts in this series:
Preparing for Inlandsbanan – Stockholm to Kristinehamn and
Before continuing our local maps we come to…
I spent two days soaking up this fabulous railway experience, coverage of which ran to eight posts in the course of this series, which led to me to create a page for easy access to the whole sub=series. I have three pictures of this large double-sided map:
Those who followed this series will recall that my first day of travel along Inlandsbanan took me to…
I covered the section of the journey from Mora to Ostersund in two posts, using the meal stop at Asarna as a natural break point:
Inlandsbanan 2: Mora to Asarna and
Inlandsbanan 3: Asarna to Ostersund
The Ostersund map, shown below, was provided to Inlandsbanan passengers by our host for that part of the journey, Emma, who had been equipped with a block of such maps from which she peeled off individual copies:
The next place I was able too obtain a map was…
This town is fairly close to the arctic cirle. The post in which Arvidsjaur features was the seventh in my Inlandsbanan subseries, meaning that by the time I got to this location all the following had happened:
Inlandsbanan 4: Ostersund to Ulriksfors
Inlandsbanan 5: Ulriksfors to Vilhelmina
Inlandsbanan 6: The Meal at Vilhelmina Norra
Inlandsbanan 7: Vilhelmina Norra to the Edge of the Arctic Circle
Not very long after this came the end of the Inlandsbanan journey at…
As with the Osttersund map this one was provided for passengers by our train host, in this case Andreas, although unlike the Ostersund map it was large enough to warrant being folded, and hence could not be transported in the way that one was…
The post to which the above pictures relate was the last in my Inlandsbanan subseries:
Inlandsbanan 8: Tis Better to Travel Hopefully Than to Arrive
My next port of call was…
An attractive town that sits at the northern end of the Gulf of Bothnia, Lulea was the only place I visited for any length of time that I did not get a take home map of, but I have two good pictures of public display maps:
My stay in Lulea accounted for four blog posts:
Exploring Lulea: Icebreakers and Mythology
Exploring Lulea: The Other Side of the Tracks
From Lulea I caught on overnight train to…
The map of Uppsala tthat ii was equipped with at the tourist information office had details of various attractions printed on the back…
Uppsala provided me with six blog posts worth of material – anyone who is up for a little challenge is invited to work out how many of the attractions listed above get mentioned in the course of the series of posts:
Uppsala – A Bit More Exploring Before Checking In
Sunday in Uppsala – The Botanic Gardens and Carolina Rediviva
As the title of the last post listed above suggests, my next port of call was…
The map of Malmo, provided by the STF Hostel in which I stayed for two nights, was A3 sized (twice as big as the Uppsala map), but had only advertising on the reverse, hence me not bothering to photograph that side…
Malmo featured in three posts in this series:
As with the Uppsala series, the title of the final post featuring Malmo gives a clue as to my next port of call…
The Gothenburg map, provided by the tourist information office, has useful information on both sides…
I stayed only the one night in Gothenburg, en route back to Stockholm for the last two nights of my stay in Sweden, which explains why this very impressive city only features in two posts:
Having started in the Stockholm Archipelago we have come almost full circle, as we head to…
The map of Stockholm, which I obtained at Stockholm Central station, is a large folding map, with much of value on both sides.
The city of Stockholm features in three posts in this series:
In spite of the title of the last post shown above this post is not quite done yet, because being the keen student of public transport systems that I am I could not ignore one of the most remarkable I have yet encountered…
The heading above contains the colours of the three lines that make up Tunnelbana, with the blue line given an extra letter over the others because of its cave-like appearance. Here is a diagram of the Tunnelbana system:
Tunnelbana has a whole long post to itself, and also provided my response to one of Maria Jansson’s photographic challenges:
I hope that you enjoyed this ‘maps special’ and that some of you will find it useful as a means of accessing my series of posts about Sweden. For those who have enjoyed the maps, i draw your attention to a blog that is dedicated to maps.
The latest in my series of posts about my holiday in Sweden. This post covers Tunnelbana in detail, thereby providing a framework for my remaining posts about Stockholm.
Welcome to the latest installment in my series of posts about my holiday in Sweden. To set the scene for the rest of this post here is picture:
Although I made some use of the Tunnelbana at the beginning of my holiday, it was during my last full day in Stockholm at the end that I really got to know they system, having decided that in addition to exploring the city I would do some serious travelling on the system. I had seen enough even early on to realise that it was going to warrant a post.
Although I had spent little time travelling on Tunnelbana in my first spell in and around Stockholm I did get some pictures…
If you consult the system map included below the introduction you will note that there are three lines, coloured red, green and blue on the map. The red and green lines are older, and their tunnel sections, which make up a small minority of their length, are standard tunnels. The blue line is newer, and bar one station on the Akalla branch is in tunnel the whole way. It is the blue line that features the cave like station sections.
The only place where all three lines meet as at T-Centralen, and the interchanges between the blue line and the others are very long at that station. With only three lines meeting plus an interchange to mainline railways the arrangements here are not as labyrinthine as at the Bank-Monument complex in London which is probably the world record holder for user-unfriendly interchanges. Thus, when out on my own on that last full day I decided that I would avoid T-Centralen, making use of the interchange I had noted at Fridhelmsplan between the blue and green lines and the cross-platform interchanges available between the green and red lines at Gamla Stan and Slussen. The Fridhelmsplan interchange involves going up a travalator (it is not an escalator as it is smooth rather than stepped) but is very straightforward, unlike the multiple escalators and horizontal travalator of the T-Centralen interchange.
Having changed at Fridhelmsplan I took a green line train to Gamla Stan, where I went for a long waterside walk which will feature in another post in this series. It was after this walk the my serious explorations began.
My first target was Ropsten on the red line…
My next move once I reached a suitable interchange point was to switch to the Green line and head to one of its terminus stations. The train I boarded was headed for…
This journey was almost all open to the air, with parts of it being quite scenic.
At Farsta Strand I went for a bit of a walk to get a feel for the area.
From Farsta Strand I travelled to Fridhelmsplan where I changed to the blue line, having seen enough of the other two and having decided that I wished to see the whole of the blue line.
Back on the blue line I decided that my first move would to be explore Kungstragarden. I will be putting up a whole post about Kungstragarden, because there is so much to see at the surface there. The station is practically a destination in its own right, as the following pictures will indicate…
Having explored Kungstragarden (and had lunch there), my next move was to get a train to…
The journey to Akalla and then back as far as Vastra Skogen to change to the Hjulsta branch featured the only above ground section of the blue line, and plentiful art works some of which I was able to capture with my camera. Of course at Akalla and also at the change point of Vastra Skogen I had the advantage of not being on the train the whole time.
My last travelling of the day was from Vastra Skogen to Hjulsta, and then back from Hjulsta to Huvudsta where I was being accommodated. I only got a few pictures from this last section of the journey.
Tunnelbana is a superbly efficient system, and the artwork which can be found everywhere on it, and especially the cave like station platform and passageway segments on the blue line boost it from the merely utilitarian (itself a level considerably above that usually attained by London Underground these days!) and make it a genuine attraction. Unless you are going to be catching a train from Stockholm Central I would recommend that you follow the approach I took on my day of exploration and avoid using T-Centralen as an interchange. I also recommend that you obtain a free Stockholm map (it includes the system diagram that appears at the top of this post). I have seen three underground systems that in different ways can claim uniqueness – London is the original, St Petersburg is further below the surface than any other, and Stockholm for reasons outlined above and (I hope) demonstrated throughout this post. I conclude by saying that I hope you have enjoyed this virtual tour of the Tunnelbana as much as I enjoyed both the real thing and creating this post.
An account of yesterday’s auction, complete with photos, a link to a book review and a (well-merited) swipe at Stagecoach.
This is my account
of the latest auction held by my employers, James and Sons, which took place yesterday at the Maid’s Head Hotel in Norwich.
Stagecoach, who have subsumed Norfolk Green, have very recently and without anything approaching proper communication cut a large number of services. One casualty of this piece of axe wielding is the 6:10 AM from King’s Lynn to Fakenham, which used to become the 6:55 from Fakenham to Norwich, and would see me arrive at the venue around about 8am, as needed. Fortunately, having been alerted to the mayhem while at work on Tuesday I had the foresight to check the timetables posted at King’s Lynn Bus Station and was able to come up with a back-up plan – I bought a single ticket on the X1 to Dereham and Norwich which is run by First Eastern Counties, departing at 5:55am and was in Norwich at the appointed time. This single fare and the single fare back from Fakenham (having travelled from Norwich to Fakenham as a passenger in the company van) amounted to £10 between them (£6 and £4 respectively) instead of £5.50 for a Dayrider Plus, to say nothing of the uncertainty created by the ham-fisted way in which these cuts were made. Surely if significant cuts to services are to be made (and I consider cutting what was the first bus of the morning on a particular route to be significant on its own – and I also know that half of the services that used to run between Fakenham and Norwich have been axed) the announcement should be made long in advance of the cuts happening, and every bus travelling on an affected route should be well stocked with new timetables that accurately reflect the planned reduction in services. Also, especially given the parlous state of public transport services in Norfolk, I consider any cuts to be unacceptable in any case.
With people arriving to view stuff not long after we had got there, there was not a lot of scope laying stuff out artistically, especially given how much of it there was, but a couple of areas were reasonably well done nevertheless…
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I am glad to be able to report that there were no IT issues at any stage of the sale. While the coins & tokens, some of the militaria and some of the ephemera sold well, the stamps did not go well, and the vinyls did less well than we would have liked.
Once the auction finished we picked out all the stuff that had sold to bidders not in the room, loaded the van up for the return journey and were able to head back. I was able to catch the 17:38 rather than have the dicey prospect of relying on the 18:35 not having been cut (if they can cut the first bus of the day, why not the last?). However, I was not yet at liberty to relax – there was still the matter of watering a few plants at Hampton Court, Nelson Street. Thus, it was almost exactly 14 hours after I had left my flat that my time was my own again.
There are two members of James and Sons staff who can manage the IT during the auction, so we swap duties during the day (auction days are the only time I regularly do front-line customer service). My colleague did an IT session between lots 200 and 300, at which point we had a scheduled break. I then did the first 75 lots after the break, before swapping for 100 lots or so, for a period when a few things I was interested in were coming up, before I then went back to IT duties until the end of the sale.
The first items that I was interested in were five sets of railway postcards, lots 391-5:
These as expected went beyond my possible price range. Next to command attention was lot 403, a book of views of Cambridge:
Again, to no great surprise this rapidly went beyond my price range.
The next items of interest were some antique maps, which I was fully aware I would not be able to afford but enjoyed seeing go under the hammer. This set the stage for the last lot to command my interest, and unlike any of the foregoing it was one that I was determined to get if at all possible. Lot 450, “The Bus We Loved: London’s Affair With the Routemaster”, was not an item that I as someone who runs a London transport themed website could happily countenance going elsewhere. There was a mini bidding war as someone else was also interested, but when I went to £10 that secured the item. For more about the book please visit my review of it that is on my website.
Yesterday was a very demanding day, both physically and mentally. However, everything went fairly smoothly. Given the Stagecoach schemozzle referred to earlier, the travel element of the day was as good as I could have hoped for.
Some of the highlights from the early lots in the July auction, and a few good links.
Although the links I shall be sharing have nothing in common with the main part of this post, which is about the start of imaging for James and Sons July auction, there are not enough of them to justify a post all to themselves, so I am tacking them on.
On Thursday the imaging I was doing was all of coin lots…
Yesterday’s imaging was more varied, featuring a few more coin lots, toys and some militaria…
First of all, a link to an excellent in=depth piece about the murder of Jo Cox, written by kittysjones.
Then a link to two excellent letters in the Guardian about the Baker Small scandal – the first has among its signatories Mark Lever, chief executive of the National Autistic Society.
My two remaining links are both from weownit, one being to a petition against a plan by the government to ban councils from setting up bus companies to run their own services, and the other to some more detailed information as to why publicly owned buses would be an improvement.
aspiblog 