|
London or Not (try to cross-post to uk.transport.kent ??)
On Fri, 14 Jan 2005 16:54:06 +0000, Steve Fitzgerald
] wrote: In message , Axlegrease writes My spouse and I both lived further out in Essex "proper" before we married. The need to find somewhere to live for us and our child, within reasonable commuting distance of our jobs which were then in the Square Mile, brought us more or less accidentally to this borough. Just because we stepped over an invisible line, it didn't mean we stopped being Essex people. So, by your theory, perhaps I should now declare the Lancashire People's Republic of Newham as I now live there? You 'chose' to live in a London Borough.... live with it. Oh, I'm now a Londoner (lives there, pays council tax etc. etc.) who just happens to originate from Lancashire. Well, we can't hold it against you for coming from the "wrong" side of the Pennines, Steve... Seriously though, as a Yorkshireman-by-birth now living on the Enfield/Harringey border for over three years, I have no problem with accepting the status of "naturalised Londoner." I live here, work here, and no doubt will continue to to enjoy doing so for many years to come. Strangely, it seems that those in this thread who have a "problem" with living in London have always been a lot closer to the city than we have - a strange sort of inverted snobbery, really! -- Nick Cooper [Carefully remove the detonators from my e-mail address to reply!] The London Underground at War: http://www.cwgcuser.org.uk/personal/...ra/lu/tuaw.htm 625-Online - classic British television: http://www.625.org.uk 'Things to Come' - An Incomplete Classic: http://www.thingstocome.org.uk |
London or Not (try to cross-post to uk.transport.kent ??)
In message , Nick Cooper
writes Strangely, it seems that those in this thread who have a "problem" with living in London have always been a lot closer to the city than we have - As someone is broadly similar position (although commuting down rather than living in London), I've noticed exactly the same thing. That said, people who come from outside to any place often seem to be the most vociferous in defending it. -- Ian Jelf, MITG Birmingham, UK Registered Blue Badge Tourist Guide for London and the Heart of England http://www.bluebadge.demon.co.uk |
London or Not (try to cross-post to uk.transport.kent ??)
--- Rich Mallard said... "Solar Penguin" wrote in message I only ask because when people are trapped in a losing argument (especially in Usenet) they normally start bluffing about non-existent rights. It's the stage before mentioning Nazis. So I do tend to get a bit cynical when people start mentioning strange rights that no-one's ever heard of before... It doesn't look like a losing argument to me. Well, Nick definitely isn't winning. He's clearly outnumbered at every turn. (And the fact that he reads and posts to uk.transport.london - not uk.transport.kent - in the first place shows that deep down even he doesn't really believe his claims! It's that hypocrisy more than anything else which annoys me!) So, if I decide to ban you from being called Solar Penguin and dictate that you must now be called Lunar Rat, is that reasonable? And what would give *you* the right to make that ban in the first place? You would have "every right" to choose your name and label, not because there is an specific act of parliament that says so, but because it would be commonly held as reasonable IMO. There are laws and acts of Parliament, etc. that relate to pseudonyms, aliases, etc. One of them almost certainly lists the ability to choose a pseudonym as my legal right. But if it didn't, and it turned out I was mistaken, I'd be prepared to accept that choosing an alias is a privilege, not a right, and I'd even stop using it *if* ordered by anyone with the right to do so. |
London or Not (try to cross-post to uk.transport.kent ??)
"Solar Penguin" wrote in message
... Well, Nick definitely isn't winning. He's clearly outnumbered at every turn. (And the fact that he reads and posts to uk.transport.london - not uk.transport.kent - in the first place shows that deep down even he doesn't really believe his claims! It's that hypocrisy more than anything else which annoys me!) You must be even more annoyed that there is a regular poster who lives in Australia! -- John Rowland - Spamtrapped Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001 http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood. That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line - It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes |
London or Not (try to cross-post to uk.transport.kent ??)
--- John Rowland said... "Solar Penguin" wrote in message (And the fact that he reads and posts to uk.transport.london - not uk.transport.kent - in the first place shows that deep down even he doesn't really believe his claims! It's that hypocrisy more than anything else which annoys me!) You must be even more annoyed that there is a regular poster who lives in Australia! But at least our overseas posters don't claim to actively hate London, or insist that they want as little to do with it as possible. And then *still* read and post here. :-) |
Red buses
Richard Rundle wrote:
"Aidan Stanger" wrote... 1. If you live in Bexley, how much of your council tax goes to Kent County Council? None now, but AIUI some did before the GLA was created, as KCC were responsible for some of the roads. 2. The Royal Mail dropped the requirement for county names in addresses many years ago. Type your postcode into their address finder. A significant proportion of mail is still hand sorted, and that is still done by county. Are you sure ? The last time I was in a medium-sized sorting office, all manual sorting was based on the PostTown and the first half of the Postcode only. That, plus the fact that counties are now not part of the recommended postal address, makes me doubt your statement. It was true when I worked for them (back when they were called Consignia) but I suppose they could've changed it since then (though somehow I doubt it). Your statement is partly correct - they were sorted by post town. However, there are too many post towns for single stage manual sorting, so letters were sorted in two stages. Primary sorting was done mainly by county (or in some cases, groups of counties). There were also boxes for London sectors (W,N,SE etc) and the busiest London postcodes (mainly in Central London) had their own boxes, as did several cities. Where the county boundary did not match the postcode boundary (e.g. the part of Bedfordshire with an MK postcode) they generally went with the county rather than the postcode. I can recall only one exception: anything with a CH postcode went in the Cheshire box, even the places that were actually in Wales! Anything ambiguous (such as letters addressed to Keston or Kingston without a postcode or county) went in the "Blind" box. |
Red buses
Nick wrote:
"Aidan Stanger" wrote... Nick wrote: "Ian Jelf" wrote... writes I know "Londoners" find this hard to believe, but many of us don't wanty to be part of your high-density overpopulated sprawling urban gloom. But people there are probably happy with their co-ordinated public transport and - when the time comes - Freedom Passes? Whenever I have this debate about Bexley part of Greater London or not, the biggest noise always seems to be made about the Freedom pass! Probably because the holders have got the most to lose, and will fiercely resist any attempt to take it away. Arguably, I think the freedom pass is overkill anyway; I would support free use of local buses to moderately distant locations, trains to central London, and maybe tube travel in Z1 off-peak. In Bexley, I would guess that 95% of Freedom pass owners use the train and tube extremely rarely, and probably less than 50% use the buses regularly. Do you know any Freedom pass owners? Your guess seems wildly low! Yes, I know lots of Freedom pass owners, many of whom drive and never use it; Then why do they bother claiming it? of the rest, most just use the local buses (local as in Bexley/Bromley/Dartford/Woolwich). The mobility of pensioners varies enormously - some journey all around London and beyond, while others only use one bus route, and rarely travel any further than the supermarket nearest the bus stop two stops away from where they live! Of the former group, not all drive. Of those who do, not many will be able to in the near future. What are the actual figures? My guess is low, but I suspect it might be of the right order. I don't have the figures, and AFAIK nobody else does. I don't believe pensioners are at all bothered that they can travel to Uxbridge for free. Maybe not Uxbridge, but certainly Kingston and Heathrow, despite the truncation of the 726 at Bromley. I don't think pensioners in Bexley have much interest or inclination to travel to either of those places ;-) Then you're wrong - some certainly do. How many Freedom pass users regularly travel to Dartford and Bluewater and contribute to "out-of-region" retail spend I wonder :-) Unlike normal bus passes, Freedom passes are not valid as far as Bluewater. However, they are valid to Dartford and Swanley on the train as well as on the bus. Hundreds use Freedom passes to get to Dartford and Swanley markets, but that's hardly "out of region". Ah, that's interesting and I didn't know that - not valid beyond Dartford for Bluewater by bus? I am quite surprised at that. I am sure pensioners around here would love to stay on the 96 to Bluewater and not be chucked off at Dartford. So pensioners in Bexley can travel to Uxbridge for free, but have to pay to go a few miles to Bluewater, hmm! In practice they're not chucked off, so many do travel to Bluewater for free even though they're not supposed to! They have to pay to get back, of course. I agree with you that's it hardly out of region, but I was (pehaps too) subltely hinting at how the daft the London/South East government regional division is. Retail spend in Dartford and Swanley harms the spend figures for "London" and boosts those for the "SouthEast" region. Maybe that's true of the figures, but does that translate to any disadvantage in reality? For similar reasons it appears, Bexley (the council) seem absolutely terrfied of promoting the proximity of Bluewater as a major benefit of living in Bexley, partly because it means diverting spend outside the borough (OK, and they want to promote their own shopping centres too, eg Bexleyheath, I agree with that as well). However, living a few minutes from the biggest shopping centre in Europe is a big benefit IMO. I thought Meadowhall claimed that title, and Bluewater only claimed to be the biggest in Britain :-) Some people find the size of Bluewater offputting, and many would prefer to shop in the more familliar Central London. And with freedom passes, they can! |
Red buses
Aidan Stanger wrote:
In practice they're not chucked off, so many do travel to Bluewater for free even though they're not supposed to! They have to pay to get back, of course. Is the reduction of validity of Freedom Passes, i.e. beyond the Greater London boundary, a new thing? Since you (I think it was you) raised it earlier in the thread, I have looked at the current bus maps and there is indeed a rather vague note to that effect, which I had not noticed before. I ask because, within the last two months, I have travelled from Dartford to Bluewater and back on route 96, using a Freedom Pass, presuming the journey to be "legal", and was not asked to pay a fare; indeed, nothing was said by the drivers. I have also travelled to Potters Bar on a 313 and back on an 84, again without challenge. The bus map suggests that pass holders check with the driver or phone LT Information, which in turn suggests that the rules are not straightforward. I wonder, for example, if someone travelling on a 107 from Barnet to Stanmore (both within the GLC boundary) would be liable for an excess fare because this route goes via Borehamwood and Elstree, both of which are outside the boundary? -- John Ray |
Red buses
On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 09:13:50 +0000, John Ray
wrote: Is the reduction of validity of Freedom Passes, i.e. beyond the Greater London boundary, a new thing? Since you (I think it was you) raised it earlier in the thread, I have looked at the current bus maps and there is indeed a rather vague note to that effect, which I had not noticed before. I ask because, within the last two months, I have travelled from Dartford to Bluewater and back on route 96, using a Freedom Pass, presuming the journey to be "legal", and was not asked to pay a fare; indeed, nothing was said by the drivers. I have also travelled to Potters Bar on a 313 and back on an 84, again without challenge. The bus map suggests that pass holders check with the driver or phone LT Information, which in turn suggests that the rules are not straightforward. I wonder, for example, if someone travelling on a 107 from Barnet to Stanmore (both within the GLC boundary) would be liable for an excess fare because this route goes via Borehamwood and Elstree, both of which are outside the boundary? This is the link to a document that answers your questions. http://www.transportforlondon.gov.uk...cs/Freedom.pdf -- Paul C Admits to working for London Underground! |
London or Not (try to cross-post to uk.transport.kent ??)
In article , Solar Penguin
[snip] But at least our overseas posters don't claim to actively hate London, or insist that they want as little to do with it as possible. And then *still* read and post here. :-) I must admit to some mixed thinking here. I am in favour of efficiency and doing things well, and transport in London (and elsewhere) being done as well as possible in the interests of the inhabitants. That's why I have posted on the benefits of belts (rather suitable for buiding as part of new developments such as the Barbican, as well as distributing passengers from the big south bank stations like Waterloo to the city centre) and linking between routes which cross without interchange, such as the North London Line and the Northern Line. But I am also aware of the political dimension of projects like Crossrail and Thameslink, which won't benefit Londoners very much, far less than the projects I discuss above. Crossrail and Thameslink can never be viable in terms of paying back their capital, and they can only be justified in cost-benefit terms if they attract vast number of NEW travellers into London. A decision to build them at government expense is a decision to abandon the rest of the country and concentrate all development in the South - East. As a Northerner, I am against that. And maybe you should be too. Remember what happened to capitals which get too far out of step with their countries, like Paris in 1871. The Paris municipality ("commune" in French = "municipality" in English: our failure to translate this word has led us to serious misunderstanding of this event) was crushed by the provinces. Think hard! Michael Bell -- |
Red buses
"John Ray" wrote in message ... Aidan Stanger wrote: In practice they're not chucked off, so many do travel to Bluewater for free even though they're not supposed to! They have to pay to get back, of course. Is the reduction of validity of Freedom Passes, i.e. beyond the Greater London boundary, a new thing? Since you (I think it was you) raised it earlier in the thread, I have looked at the current bus maps and there is indeed a rather vague note to that effect, which I had not noticed before. I ask because, within the last two months, I have travelled from Dartford to Bluewater and back on route 96, using a Freedom Pass, presuming the journey to be "legal", and was not asked to pay a fare; indeed, nothing was said by the drivers. I have also travelled to Potters Bar on a 313 and back on an 84, again without challenge. The bit beyond Dartford to Bluewater has never been legal with a freedom pass, Maybe the 96 drivers didn't know, notice, or couldn't be bothered. |
Red buses
Aidan Stanger wrote:
[snip] The mobility of pensioners varies enormously - some journey all around London and beyond, while others only use one bus route, and rarely travel any further than the supermarket nearest the bus stop two stops away from where they live! Of the former group, not all drive. Of those who do, not many will be able to in the near future. Care to explain what you mean by "near future"? Senility doesn't generally appear that quickly, and Freedom Passes are available to all over-60s. -- Richard J. (to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address) |
Red buses
Paul Corfield wrote:
This is the link to a document that answers your questions. http://www.transportforlondon.gov.uk...cs/Freedom.pdf Thank you, most helpful; it explains why I had no problems with routes 84 and 313, and answers my question about 107. The list does however seem a bit arbitrary, and it appears that each route was the subject of special negotiations. I would have thought that it would be much easier to administer, and for pass holders to understand, if the same validity rules as for regular travel cards/bus passes were applied, but no doubt there are reasons for Freedom Passes being treated differently. -- John Ray |
London or Not (try to cross-post to uk.transport.kent ??)
"Solar Penguin" wrote in message ... --- Rich Mallard said... "Solar Penguin" wrote in message I only ask because when people are trapped in a losing argument (especially in Usenet) they normally start bluffing about non-existent rights. It's the stage before mentioning Nazis. So I do tend to get a bit cynical when people start mentioning strange rights that no-one's ever heard of before... It doesn't look like a losing argument to me. Well, Nick definitely isn't winning. He's clearly outnumbered at every turn. Yawn. Have you actually got anything to say on the subject we're discussing, rather than making petty comments on the sidelines? (And the fact that he reads and posts to uk.transport.london - not uk.transport.kent - in the first place shows that deep down even he doesn't really believe his claims! It's that hypocrisy more than anything else which annoys me!) I take it you'd like all people banned from posting to this newsgroup unless they live in London and promise not to say anything bad about it? Get over it. snip other stuff Nick |
Red buses
Richard J. wrote:
Aidan Stanger wrote: [snip] The mobility of pensioners varies enormously - some journey all around London and beyond, while others only use one bus route, and rarely travel any further than the supermarket nearest the bus stop two stops away from where they live! Of the former group, not all drive. Of those who do, not many will be able to in the near future. Care to explain what you mean by "near future"? Senility doesn't generally appear that quickly, and Freedom Passes are available to all over-60s. Senility isn't the only medical condition common in the over 60s which prevents driving. However, you have a point. I should've said "Of those who do, many will not be able to drive in the near future". |
Red buses
John Ray wrote:
In practice they're not chucked off, so many do travel to Bluewater for free even though they're not supposed to! They have to pay to get back, of course. Is the reduction of validity of Freedom Passes, i.e. beyond the Greater London boundary, a new thing? Since you (I think it was you) raised it earlier in the thread, I have looked at the current bus maps and there is indeed a rather vague note to that effect, which I had not noticed before. I ask because, within the last two months, I have travelled from Dartford to Bluewater and back on route 96, using a Freedom Pass, presuming the journey to be "legal", and was not asked to pay a fare; indeed, nothing was said by the drivers. I have also travelled to Potters Bar on a 313 and back on an 84, again without challenge. No, and your experience suggests that my information could be obsolete. I have seen drivers on the 96 at Bluewater charging freedom pass holders (who expected it to be free) a fare at Bluewater, but that was over a year ago (probably nearer two). |
Red buses
"Aidan Stanger" wrote in message
... Senility isn't the only medical condition common in the over 60s which prevents driving. However, you have a point. I should've said "Of those who do, many will not be able to drive in the near future". Only people with DeLoreans can drive in the near future. -- John Rowland - Spamtrapped Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001 http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood. That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line - It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes |
Red buses
"Aidan Stanger" wrote in message
... Senility isn't the only medical condition common in the over 60s which prevents driving. However, you have a point. I should've said "Of those who do, many will not be able to drive in the near future". Of my contemporaries, heart conditions and strokes are the usual reasons for having to give up driving. I know one 92-year-old who still regularly drives to the south of France and back again, to his property down there. -- Terry Harper, Web Co-ordinator, The Omnibus Society Web Site: http://www.omnibussoc.org/75th.htm E-mail: URL: http://www.terry.harper.btinternet.co.uk/ |
Red buses
Aidan Stanger wrote:
John Ray wrote: Is the reduction of validity of Freedom Passes, i.e. beyond the Greater London boundary, a new thing? Since you (I think it was you) raised it earlier in the thread, I have looked at the current bus maps and there is indeed a rather vague note to that effect, which I had not noticed before. I ask because, within the last two months, I have travelled from Dartford to Bluewater and back on route 96, using a Freedom Pass, presuming the journey to be "legal", and was not asked to pay a fare; indeed, nothing was said by the drivers. I have also travelled to Potters Bar on a 313 and back on an 84, again without challenge. No, and your experience suggests that my information could be obsolete. I have seen drivers on the 96 at Bluewater charging freedom pass holders (who expected it to be free) a fare at Bluewater, but that was over a year ago (probably nearer two). Your information is, in fact, correct, and I was lucky not to be asked to pay. It's clear from the LT document to which Paul Corfield directed me that Freedom Passes are not valid for free travel between Dartford and Bluewater. However, my trips to and from Potters Bar were within the rules. It's clear that a Freedom Pass does not have quite the same validity as a Z1-6 bus pass; I will have to be more careful in future! -- John Ray, London UK. |
London or Not (try to cross-post to uk.transport.kent ??)
Michael Bell:
But I am also aware of the political dimension of projects like Crossrail and Thameslink, which won't benefit Londoners very much, far less than the projects I discuss above. Crossrail and Thameslink can never be viable in terms of paying back their capital, and they can only be justified in cost-benefit terms if they attract vast number of NEW travellers into London. A decision to build them at government expense is a decision to abandon the rest of the country and concentrate all development in the South - East. As a Northerner, I am against that. And maybe you should be too. Remember what happened to capitals which get too far out of step with their countries, like Paris in 1871. The Paris municipality ("commune" in French = "municipality" in English: our failure to translate this word has led us to serious misunderstanding of this event) was crushed by the provinces. Think hard! But London has received _enormous_ underinvestment for decades - that's why the transport system is so overcrowded. London puts far more into the British economy than it gets out. Now that's the way it should be - I'm not complaining, I realise that London is the engine of this country's economy and consequently should be expected to pay more than its fair share for investment elsewhere that couldn't be paid for otherwise. But major infrastructure projects like Thameslink and Crossrail are needed in London, and I'm not sure I like the implication that they should be abandoned because the rest of the country doesn't like to see money spent on the capital. London _needs_ it - and if London were to lose its position as a worldcity, it isn't just those inside the M25 that are going to be affected when the economy suffers. Jonn Elledge |
London or Not (try to cross-post to uk.transport.kent ??)
--- Nick said... Yawn. Have you actually got anything to say on the subject we're discussing rather than making petty comments on the sidelines? I don't think anyone's got anything interesting to say in the discussion. If you can call it a discussion. It's just variations of "It is in London!", "No, it's not!", "Yes, it is!", "No, it isn't!" etc. If you're yawning, it's this debate that's doping it to you. I'll stay in the sidelines where I can keep awake. I take it you'd like all people banned from posting to this newsgroup unless they live in London and promise not to say anything bad about it? Get over it. Oh, look. You're building the "censorship" straw man. How predictable. You're just half a step away from calling people Nazis! Let's see your score so far: -- * You post to a London newsgroup to say that London "is a polluted, grim urban toilet that festers with high levels of anti-social behaviour." * You keep adding to the argument, refusing to quietly agree to disagree, even (or especially) when it's clear that most of the group does disagree with you. * You resort to trickery like inventing imaginary rights and building straw men to aid you in the argument. Hmmm.... If it posts like a troll, and it argues like a troll, then it's probably a troll. Enjoy my kill file. **PLONK**! |
London or Not (try to cross-post to uk.transport.kent ??)
In article .com,
wrote: Michael Bell: But I am also aware of the political dimension of projects like Crossrail and Thameslink, which won't benefit Londoners very much, far less than the projects I discuss above. Crossrail and Thameslink can never be viable in terms of paying back their capital, and they can only be justified in cost-benefit terms if they attract vast number of NEW travellers into London. A decision to build them at government expense is a decision to abandon the rest of the country and concentrate all development in the South - East. As a Northerner, I am against that. And maybe you should be too. Remember what happened to capitals which get too far out of step with their countries, like Paris in 1871. The Paris municipality ("commune" in French = "municipality" in English: our failure to translate this word has led us to serious misunderstanding of this event) was crushed by the provinces. Think hard! But London has received _enormous_ underinvestment for decades - that's why the transport system is so overcrowded. London puts far more into the British economy than it gets out. Now that's the way it should be - I'm not complaining, I realise that London is the engine of this country's economy and consequently should be expected to pay more than its fair share for investment elsewhere that couldn't be paid for otherwise. But major infrastructure projects like Thameslink and Crossrail are needed in London, and I'm not sure I like the implication that they should be abandoned because the rest of the country doesn't like to see money spent on the capital. London _needs_ it - and if London were to lose its position as a worldcity, it isn't just those inside the M25 that are going to be affected when the economy suffers. Jonn Elledge I'm afraid we'll have to agree to differ. Michael Bell -- |
What determines what 'region' a locality is in?
Aidan Stanger wrote:
Stephen Osborn wrote: De facto a continuous built up area is a single _something_, the only question is what. The phrase Metropolitan Area is used because these somethings are relatively new and contain a number of things already called cities. The word you're looking for is conurbation. Or if it contains a number of things already called cities, it's a megalopolis. When I did my Human Geography back in the late 70's, a megalopolis was used to describe where two 'metropolises' merge together rather than just an aggregation of cities ISTR the classical examples quoted were Minneapolis-St Paul as an aggregation and the Boston-Washington corridor (or 'BosWash' - bleaugh!) as a megalopolis |
London or Not (try to cross-post to uk.transport.kent ??)
"Solar Penguin" wrote in message ... --- Nick said... Yawn. Have you actually got anything to say on the subject we're discussing rather than making petty comments on the sidelines? I don't think anyone's got anything interesting to say in the discussion. If you can call it a discussion. It's just variations of "It is in London!", "No, it's not!", "Yes, it is!", "No, it isn't!" etc. If you're yawning, it's this debate that's doping it to you. I'll stay in the sidelines where I can keep awake. If you want to stay on the sidelines then stop sticking your oars into the thread when you have nothing useful to say on the subject. I take it you'd like all people banned from posting to this newsgroup unless they live in London and promise not to say anything bad about it? Get over it. Oh, look. You're building the "censorship" straw man. How predictable. You're just half a step away from calling people Nazis! That's the second time you've accused me of being "steps away" from calling peolpe Nazis on absolutely no basis whatsoever. I'm sure others will draw their own conclusions. Let's see your score so far: -- What do you think you are, some kind of self-appointed umpire? * You post to a London newsgroup to say that London "is a polluted, grim urban toilet that festers with high levels of anti-social behaviour." Never let the actual wording get in the way of a misleading post eh? I didn't say all of London was a dump, but much of it is (I take it you think London is some kind of paradise, despite the fact that it has pockets of some of the most extreme deprivation in the country?). * You keep adding to the argument, refusing to quietly agree to disagree, even (or especially) when it's clear that most of the group does disagree with you. You are not in a position to assert or judge whether the group agrees with me or not. Most of the people reading this group don't even post, so you are in no position to know. Neither am I. * You resort to trickery like inventing imaginary rights and building straw men to aid you in the argument. Trickerly, lol, I love it. Hmmm.... If it posts like a troll, and it argues like a troll, then it's probably a troll. Enjoy my kill file. **PLONK**! Well, I won't be killfilling you; I'm interested in other people's points of view, even though I disagree with them. Shame you can't cope with reading any opinions other than your own. Nick |
London supremacy (was London or Not ....
In article , Michael Bell
wrote: In article .com, wrote: Michael Bell: But I am also aware of the political dimension of projects like Crossrail and Thameslink, which won't benefit Londoners very much, far less than the projects I discuss above. Crossrail and Thameslink can never be viable in terms of paying back their capital, and they can only be justified in cost-benefit terms if they attract vast number of NEW travellers into London. A decision to build them at government expense is a decision to abandon the rest of the country and concentrate all development in the South - East. As a Northerner, I am against that. And maybe you should be too. Remember what happened to capitals which get too far out of step with their countries, like Paris in 1871. The Paris municipality ("commune" in French = "municipality" in English: our failure to translate this word has led us to serious misunderstanding of this event) was crushed by the provinces. Think hard! But London has received _enormous_ underinvestment for decades - that's why the transport system is so overcrowded. London puts far more into the British economy than it gets out. Now that's the way it should be - I'm not complaining, I realise that London is the engine of this country's economy and consequently should be expected to pay more than its fair share for investment elsewhere that couldn't be paid for otherwise. But major infrastructure projects like Thameslink and Crossrail are needed in London, and I'm not sure I like the implication that they should be abandoned because the rest of the country doesn't like to see money spent on the capital. London _needs_ it - and if London were to lose its position as a worldcity, it isn't just those inside the M25 that are going to be affected when the economy suffers. Jonn Elledge I'm afraid we'll have to agree to differ. Michael Bell Yes, OK, you deserve better, but I felt weary last night. I find it hard to believe some statements, such as that London is carrying the rest of the country economically. I look at the work and activity in some places - is it really all nothing? Or does the statement "that London is carrying the rest of the country" simply reflect the fact that work may be done anywhere, but profits are reported by Head Office in London? There is so much spin, most of it not simply party-political, that it is hard to know the truth. There is a great deal of London being bound up in itself. For example you can read in the newspapers a plea to "save" a museum or suchlike (from total destruction?) by being moved out of London and this is addressed to a provincial readership who "of course" see it that way! I read once a statement that "the further you get away from London, the more irrational the spelling of place names become", Ah, yes the home counties, that hotbed of phonetic spelling, with Slough, Reading, Greenwich, Islington and of course London itself - rhymes with "cotton"! And the statement that the DTI overcomes the "local" (ie, non-London) opposition to "National Companies" who cannot get work outside London. The dreadful thing about this kind of thing is that it is not deliberate and thought through, it is unthinking because it is unchallenged because the papers and broadcasters and everybody they meet are London. One particularly vicious groups is "London First" whose policy is exactly that, London FIRST! If London can't have it, then nobody should have it, ie, its policy is to be a dog in the manger. I think that is simply unacceptable in a democracy. There is a great deal of favouratism for London and holding the North back. London has unitary control of its local transport. Provincial cities are not allowed to. In an act of great smallness Mrs Thatcher abolished the GLC just to unseat Ken Livingstone and to hide this underhand motive, all the other metropolitan counties of England too. After she was unseated, the GLC was effectively re-instated. There was a lot of newspaper support for that. But the other metropolitan counties were not re-instated. The garden in and around London dug better. Governments have held back the developement of Northern airports especially Manchester because they want to keep Heathrow as a very dominant airport, partly for its own sake and partly to have a big bargaining chip to use to preserve the position of the "national carriers" BA and Virgin. I could go on, but I won't bore you. You may like to think that London cares deeply its provinces. On the Tyne it is widely claimed that the Jarrow march has held back the North-East because it puts the North-East in a bad light as seen from London. And this is believed by the London loyalists. Whether this is the TRUTH is very difficult to test, but certainly it is widely BELIEVED. No matter what you think the mechanism of this is (the inner workings of London are hidden to folk so far away, they just have to look at the inputs and outputs and treat London as a "black box"), you must come to see London as a grudge-holder, a spiteful and vindicitive entity, though people don't like to face up to it. The FACTS may be hard to find, but let me do a little experiment to test YOUR ATTITUDES. Why is London so domininant? It is not a natural geographical advantage, eg being on an important estuary, otherwise why is Goole not more important? London's advantage is man-made. One thing that man has made is that it is so big and so many transport links focus on it. It is big because largely subsidised transport links have allowed its growth (Before the war, the LNER built up commuter services from the West Riding to the sea-side at Scarborough, about the same distance from Leeds as Brighton is from London, but after the war, the services were abandoned as "not worthwhile". No such questions about the London-Brighton service. Of Course not! How could you think such a thing?) And rail routes focus on London and outworn rolling stock was cascaded to "cross-country" routes - well, MPs travelled on them! Transport is certainly one factor, and the subject of this newsgroup, there may be other factors, such as political control, and the London media were pretty stongly against a North-East assembly. And whatever man has made, can be made again. John Prescott, before the labour victory of 1997, proposed a new North-South Shinkansen going London - Birmingham- Potteries - Manchester - Leeds - Newcastle - Edinburgh - Glasgow. Let us say this route is built and whatever other steps are necessary to enable this new megalopolis to function on the same level as London are taken - what would your reaction be? Would you applaud, and say it is great that this country now has two cities functioning at this level? If "yes", then you're a patriot! Or would deplore it and say "But that detracts from London" If "yes", then you're a London Firster. A dog in the manger. Michael Bell -- |
London supremacy (was London or Not ....
[sorry, this may quote twice - I still don't understand google groups]
I find it hard to believe some statements, such as that London is carrying the rest of the country economically. I look at the work and activity in some places - is it really all nothing? Or does the statement "that London is carrying the rest of the country" simply reflect the fact that work may be done anywhere, but profits are reported by Head Office in London? There is so much spin, most of it not simply party-political, that it is hard to know the truth. I may have phrased that badly. What I meant was, London is the only region in Britain that puts more into the treasury in taxes than it takes out in investment. This is simply a function of population density, as well as the extra economic activity (international finance, mainly) that goes on and is taxed in London. I don't mean that London is incredibly hard done by, just that it does more than pay its way. [snip] One particularly vicious groups is "London First" whose policy is exactly that, London FIRST! If London can't have it, then nobody should have it, ie, its policy is to be a dog in the manger. I think that is simply unacceptable in a democracy. No, I agree totally, but that's not what I was saying. I think London needs massive transport investment, and that if it doesn't get it it's not totally out of the real of possibility that it could start to lose its world city status - in which case, the whole country would suffer. It shouldn't automatically have priority, but nor should it be denied investment. [snip more - good points about the shoddy treatment of the metropolitan authorities] Governments have held back the developement of Northern airports especially Manchester because they want to keep Heathrow as a very dominant airport, partly for its own sake and partly to have a big bargaining chip to use to preserve the position of the "national carriers" BA and Virgin. I don't know that much about the subject, but I don't think Manchester could grow to the size of Heathrow - there just isn't the demand. People from all over the world come to London in a way they don't come to Manchester. I'm not saying that to run down Manchester, I'm just stating a fact: London is a major centre of international tourism and finance; Manchester isn't. It's history as much as policy. [snip] The FACTS may be hard to find, but let me do a little experiment to test YOUR ATTITUDES. Why is London so domininant? It is not a natural geographical advantage, eg being on an important estuary, otherwise why is Goole not more important? London's advantage is man-made. One thing that man has made is that it is so big and so many transport links focus on it. I'd say it's more because it happened to be the capital of Britain at the time it put together one of the largest empire's the world's ever seen actually. People came to London because it was an economic and political centre, not because it happened to be where the trains ran. It is big because largely subsidised transport links have allowed its growth (Before the war, the LNER built up commuter services from the West Riding to the sea-side at Scarborough, about the same distance from Leeds as Brighton is from London, but after the war, the services were abandoned as "not worthwhile". No such questions about the London-Brighton service. Of Course not! How could you think such a thing?) I don't happen to approve of closing the services you mention, but I'd guess they were less heavily used than the South Coast lines. You try closing that line to Brighton and see what happens. [snip] and the London media were pretty stongly against a North-East assembly. And whatever man has made, can be made again. Granted, but so were the people of the North East! I want to see full devolution for political reasons (I think we need full scale constitutional reform in this country); but when the people who the assembly would serve don't want it, what can you do? John Prescott, before the labour victory of 1997, proposed a new North-South Shinkansen going London - Birmingham- Potteries - Manchester - Leeds - Newcastle - Edinburgh - Glasgow. Let us say this route is built and whatever other steps are necessary to enable this new megalopolis to function on the same level as London are taken - what would your reaction be? What megalopolis? Would you applaud, and say it is great that this country now has two cities functioning at this level? If "yes", then you're a patriot! Or would deplore it and say "But that detracts from London" If "yes", then you're a London Firster. A dog in the manger. Neither, actually. I think it'd be great if this country had two cities on the scale and importance of London - I like the US model, with New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and Houston all being major international cities - but we don't. You can't just decide one day that Manchester or Newcastle should be a world city - at least, not using the level of investment you're talking about. (They're managing it in Dubai, but then that's a one man state). London is a world city because it's more than twice the size of any other city in Britain; it's a major financial and tourism centre; it's historically been one of the most important cities in the world over the last three hundred years; and it's the capital. Only the last of those points is something you can counteract with investment elsewhere in the UK. Bottom line: whether Londoners have an arrogant, London First attitude is debatable; but it is a straightforward fact that London stands among New York, Paris and Tokyo and Newcastle doesn't. The attitude of Londoners has nothing to do with it. Jonn |
London supremacy
|
London supremacy
In article .com,
wrote: wrote: [snip] I'm glad you agree that "It would be fine". But actually, all I am suggesting is that Birmingham - Manchester - Leeds be made EFFECTIVELY "one city" by high-speed links. It is quite crazy that the links between them are judged and prioritised "cross-country". That won't make them one city, and they still won't be as convenient to do business in as London, high speed links or not. But it's a nice idea. Who would pay? Though birmingham is a bit far from the others, a high speed S-Bahn linking Liverpool with Leeds, with a hub at Manchester might be a nice idea. It is CHEAPER to build NEW railways than to upgrade old ones. That is largely because of the interruption to work caused by the need to keep trains running. There is a down side of course: new railways are fine and dandy, but in time they become old railways and even though the gap between the tracks is wider to allow work on one track while still allowing traffic on the other, there still has to be some connection with the old railway system to allow for maintenance. The idea is that they are all strung together on the same track which can be done, without largely separate routes, eg London- Birmingham, London - Manchester, London - Anywhere, then you can shorten the mileage of track to be built considerably, and with so much traffic concentrated on one route, you justify spending a lot of money getting it good, and providing good connections BETWEEN them, which the current layout lamentably fails to do. Michael Bell -- |
London supremacy (was London or Not ....
wrote in message ups.com... (Before the war, the LNER built up commuter services from the West Riding to the sea-side at Scarborough, about the same distance from Leeds as Brighton is from London, but after the war, the services were abandoned as "not worthwhile". No such questions about the London-Brighton service. Of Course not! How could you think such a thing?) I don't happen to approve of closing the services you mention, but I'd guess they were less heavily used than the South Coast lines. You try closing that line to Brighton and see what happens. Precisely. It is worth noting that two of the rail operators on the London-Brighton route (Thameslink and Gatwick Express) actually have to pay a premium for the right to run their services. If the other major operator, Southern, *only* ran trains between London and Brighton I have no doubt that they would be paying as well. A major reason for the success of this route must be the lack of good road links along the same route in south London. David A Stocks |
London supremacy
Clive Coleman wrote:
writes Or would deplore it and say "But that detracts from London" If "yes", then you're a London Firster. A dog in the manger. And what would I be if I deplored it and said "but that costs many gigaquid that could be spent in a far more useful way" what would I be? What's wrong with developing Glasgow? Nothing, and I'm strongly in favour of linking Glasgow Central with Queen Street to enable through services - either with a tunnel or by converting some of the lines to light rail (or better still, both). |
London supremacy
Michael Bell wrote:
wrote: Michael Bell wrote: [snip] Capital cities are big because governments want them to be, think how Ankara grew from a small town to a metropolis when it was made the Turkish capital, how Moscow grew when it became capital after St Petersburg. But how much of that is because they want them to be? And how much because they're THERE???? Look at the attitudes, people say that Rome is a "failed capital" because it has not attracted the fashion industry (though it tried to pay it to come to Rome, and Italian scandal of some years ago) and pull in the financial centre from Turin. People are likely to regard any city that tries and fails to attract business as a failure, regardless of whether or not it's the capital. How could Combine that with tourism and - I know I keep banging on about this, but it's an important point - London's role as one of the world's great financial centres, and the result is the London not only has a GDP on par with any other part of the country with a similar work force; it probably actually has GDP exceeding it, because of all the international finance sloshing about there. That's a pretty important structural factor - you can't just one day decide those workers should all be dispersed around the country (take note Gordon Brown), because the world doesn't work like that. No other city in Britain - hell, no other city in Europe, really - can compete with London on an economic score, not because of prejudiced policies, but because of demographics and financial structures. I don't think that's showing prejudice - I actually think that's stating the bloody obvious, so am half expecting to be told I'm being patronizing any post now. Apart from cancer, the real world does not "run away". There are always feedbacks which control. Indeed there are, and they do have some controlling effects on the current situation. But negative feedback is not always desirable. A large city has economies of scale, but also diseconomies of scale, eg, it cannot pay for the transport needed to be *unitedly* so big - it would confer no benefits to live near others but never to travel to meet them. The extra costs are offset by transport subsidies and "London weighting". Think of the squeals if these were withdrawn and the real costs had to be paid! The reality is again rather different from your theory - transport is heavily subsidized in other cities and rural areas, often to a greater extent than in London. The UK (in the 80s and 90s) has had far more experience than most countries at cutting transport subsidies. London bus subsidies were cut until for one financial year the network broke even, but the quality of services suffered so much that afterwards it was generally accepted that the subsidies are a price worth paying. Train fares rose much faster than inflation, but that resulted in London house prices skyrocketting as long distance commuting became less attractive. As for London Weighting, that's just part of peoples' wages - it's paid for by the employers, yet the employers are quite happy to locate themselves in London, so obviously they think it's worth it. How exactly have they done that? Manchester airport has had another runway added, despite being far less busy. And while the government are currently keen on some misguided policies that would keep Heathrow dominant, they don't involve holding back the development of Northern airports. You are simply wrong there. How? And why do you think there will be the same demand for international travel to Manchester as there is to London? Heathrow cannot cope. That's what they want you to think, but the truth is that Heathrow can cope just fine. The locals don't want to overspill it to Stansted or Gatwick. Which is quite understandable considering the extra noise it would cause - and considering the number of disused and underused runways that could be developed into London airports... Manchester airport put adverts in the papers 2 or 3 years ago showing an eagle filling a parrot cage with a caption saying roughly "Let us fly. Let us have a second runway" And I won't be at all surprised if Stansted tries the same tactic. Hang on... 2 or 3 years ago??? Then it WAS Stansted! Manchester had already got its second runway by then!!! The difference between one runway and two runways is as great as the difference between single track and double track. Sorry, but that statement is absolutely ridiculous! Gatwick is one of the world's 20 busiest airports [by 2003 passenger numbers, as newer figures are not yet available AFAIK] but only has a single runway. Single track has less than half the capacity of double track because a train travelling in the other direction will completely occupy the section to the next passing loop. This doesn't apply to runway capacity as aircraft normally both take off and land into the wind. Furthermore, Manchester Airport's second runway is a staggered close parallel runway, so can't be used in independent mixed mode operation - it has to be takeoffs on one runway and landings on the other, so air traffic movements have to be further apart because of the turbulence that each aircraft creates. [snip] Relocating economic activity from London to elsewhere would cost a fortune. I'm not asking for that. I am simply asking for conditions to be created which allow the North to flourish. For the North not be held back. But what conditions do you think would allow the North to flourish? You keep trying to claim London's holding the North back, but you've yet to post any evidence of this. The Manchester airport affair is simply the best documented example of it. I've seen documents claiming that the economic benefits of Manchester's new runway were vastly overstated. The arguments seemed pretty convincing, but they were from one of the organizations that had (before the new runway was constructed) opposed it on environmental grounds. You seem to be implying that the opposition was a conspiracy from London to hold back The North, but in reality there were genuine environmental concerns. And yet it still got built! There must be plenty of others. Developing another city on the scale of London - if you could ever get past the nimby factor - would be fine with me; you're right, it would be a huge boon to the economy if successful (once again, I think of Dubai). I'm glad you agree that "It would be fine". But actually, all I am suggesting is that Birmingham - Manchester - Leeds be made EFFECTIVELY "one city" by high-speed links. It is quite crazy that the links between them are judged and prioritised "cross-country". You included London on its route, so Birmingham would be more likely to become "one city" with London! The "gravity model" of traffic is modelled on Newton's gravity equation and it suggests that traffic between 2 towns is proportional to the product of the two populations divided by the square of the distance. A very interesting theory, but a flawed one (and not only because it fails to include a cost variable). So, traffic on the M6 between Birmingham and Manchester, near and large towns is the heaviest in the country, and more than between Birmingham and London, a rather larger town, but much further away. ITYF that's got more to fact that the M6 is the ONLY high capacity road route from Birmingham to Manchester, Liverpool, Scotland etc., whereas Birmingham to London also has the M40. Similarly there are three rail routes from London to Birmingham. It would surely justify the most lavish of Shinkansens. ....to connect it to Humberside :-) |
London supremacy
Michael Bell wrote:
wrote: Michael Bell wrote: In article , Michael Bell wrote: snipping matters answered in other posts :- [snip] I find it hard to believe some statements, such as that London is carrying the rest of the country economically. I look at the work and activity in some places - is it really all nothing? Or does the statement "that London is carrying the rest of the country" simply reflect the fact that work may be done anywhere, but profits are reported by Head Office in London? There is so much spin, most of it not simply party-political, that it is hard to know the truth. Of course it's all or nothing, but I think it has a lot to do with more of the higher value work being done in London. What do you mean by "all or nothing"? And if you think that provincials do low value work, that shows your prejudices. Sorry, I really messed that up - I meant to write "of course it's NOT all or nothing". And because I made that mistake, I can see why you could mistake my comments about provincials doing low value work for prejudice. As I meant to say, it's not all or nothing, and a lot of high value work is performed in London - there's the financial sector, of course, and a lot of companies choose to locate their headquarters there. But have you noticed how little heavy industry remains? [snip] phonetic spelling, with Slough, Reading, Greenwich, Islington and of course London itself - rhymes with "cotton"! I doubt that rhyme would be acceptable even in doggeral! Wash your ears out! That wouldn't help now, as I'm too far away to hear it. But in all the time I was there I never once heard it pronounced like that! Are you sure you're not getting it confused with Luton? [snip] One particularly vicious groups is "London First" whose policy is exactly that, London FIRST! If London can't have it, then nobody should have it, ie, its policy is to be a dog in the manger. I think that is simply unacceptable in a democracy. First you claim their policy is EXACTLY London FIRST, then you claim it's London Only! Make your mind up! I can't see your point. A London FIRST policy would not prevent others from getting what London can't have - it would only prevent them from getting what London CAN have. A dog in the manger policy would be London ONLY! There is a great deal of favouratism for London and holding the North back. London has unitary control of its local transport. Provincial cities are not allowed to. ITYF they are, even though the PTEs don't work exactly the same way as TfL. I think the difference is significant. You are correct, but so is the similarity. In an act of great smallness Mrs Thatcher abolished the GLC just to unseat Ken Livingstone and to hide this underhand motive, all the other metropolitan counties of England too. After she was unseated, the GLC was effectively re-instated. There was a lot of newspaper support for that. But the other metropolitan counties were not re-instated. The garden in and around London dug better. Governments have held back the developement of Northern airports especially Manchester because they want to keep Heathrow as a very dominant airport, partly for its own sake and partly to have a big bargaining chip to use to preserve the position of the "national carriers" BA and Virgin. How exactly have they done that? Manchester airport has had another runway added, despite being far less busy. And while the government are currently keen on some misguided policies that would keep Heathrow dominant, they don't involve holding back the development of Northern airports. You are simply wrong there. Am I??? Then can you please explain how they would involve holding back the development of northern airports? [snip] Whether this is the TRUTH is very difficult to test, but certainly it is widely BELIEVED. No matter what you think the mechanism of this is (the inner workings of London are hidden to folk so far away, they just have to look at the inputs and outputs and treat London as a "black box"), you must come to see London as a grudge-holder, a spiteful and vindicitive entity, though people don't like to face up to it. I don't think there's actually a grudge - it's just a resentment that they're not getting properly funded when the other cities are. So you agree it exists, if it's not a "grudge", then what is it? I just told you! I can't think of a single word for it, and obviously you can't either, but I can tell you the difference. It is the desire to rectify what they perceive as a current and ongoing injustice. A grudge is usually taken to mean the refusal to forgive them for what are percieved as past injustices, and your accusation of spite and vindictiveness confirms that this is what you meant. London wants more and is annoyed that they're not getting it, but there is no malice. [snip] Or would deplore it and say "But that detracts from London" If "yes", then you're a London Firster. A dog in the manger. And what would I be if I deplored it and said "but that costs many gigaquid that could be spent in a far more useful way" what would I be? At least you would have made a calculation. But so far, you haven't. What would it be worth to the country to have another 10 million people doing the higher-value work that you claim (at top) Londoners are doing? How much would it cost to reach that state? You misunderstand the way it works. Not all the work done in London is high value, and there's an increasing amount of high value work being done in other parts of the country. Improving transport links would help to increase that amount, but it would be better to have a whole range of improvements that benefit the whole country rather than just using one megaproject with the ridiculous aim of making it all one city. BTW have you seen Channel 4's "Supercities UK"? First broadcast in 2003 it involved one man's vision of the future of three of England's cities: The M62 corridor, London to Birmingham, and the South Coast. A few interesting ideas, and some very silly ones! If you've seen it, I'll let you decide whether your postings' resemblance to it are a compliment. If you haven't, I'll let you wonder. |
London supremacy
Michael Bell wrote:
wrote: Michael Bell wrote: In article , Michael Bell wrote: wrote: Michael Bell: But I am also aware of the political dimension of projects like Crossrail and Thameslink, which won't benefit Londoners very much, far less than the projects I discuss above. Crossrail and Thameslink can never be viable in terms of paying back their capital, and they can only be justified in cost-benefit terms if they attract vast number of NEW travellers into London. Crossrail and Thameslink could benefit London orders of magnitude more than a few extra stations and travelators. I proposed a bit more than "a few escalators". Indeed you did: as I said, you proposed "a few extra stations and travelators". I proposed a progamme of creating interchanges at several dozen places, I only gave a few examples. So trains would be slowed down slightly for the sake of a few interchanging passengers, even though in many cases the journey could easily be made just by interchanging somewhere else. There may or may not be a net improvement, but there certainly won't be the enormous benefits of Crossrail. And what do you mean by "benefittting London"? Shortening journey times, providing a lot of extra capacity to relieve the overcrowded Tube, and providing an easier way to get across London. What more do you want? My plan would benefit the current residents much more, Your plan would benefit very few of the current residents much more, and of those who do benefit, most would only benefit slightly. If 5% of passengers saved 10 minutes and the rest took 1 minute longer, would you consider it worthwhile? and it wouldn't subject them more competition for space. Not directly (except maybe on the NLL), but indirectly it would because it would not provide the capacity to meet demand. Your scheme would Crossrail and Thameslink would bring more jobs and people to fill them to central London, and benefit "The City". And the West End. And Croydon (and quite a lot more of Greater London). And Sussex (and indeed many of the Home Counties). So, who has the votes? Or who has the political pull? The answer appears to be "nobody"! A decision to build them at government expense is a decision to abandon the rest of the country and concentrate all development in the South - East. As a Northerner, I am against that. [snip] There have been many attempts to encourage development in other parts of the country, not all of them successful. What does "Humberside" mean to you??? Humberside has failed, but it was conceived at a time when the population of this country was foreseen as 90 million by 2000. Now our problem is falling population - and London wants to grab as much of it as possible. (Birth rate dropped to 1.7children/woman in the early 70s, Yet they still built the Humber bridge! and something that has been so for 30 years is not going to change quickly. ITYF it already has changed. Serious population decline is the unspoken fear of government, that's why the Tories agreed to Labour's plans for childcare, not a very traditional Tory policy, but what choise is there. They want to go the way of Scandinavia, with it's slight population increase rather than Italy with 1.1children/woman.) And fortunately it is going the way of Scandanavia AIUI. Not that serious population decline's that much of a threat, considering the number of people who want to migrate to Britain. Think hard! But London has received _enormous_ underinvestment for decades It's been the same everywhere. London has done a little better than the rest of us. It's actually been very different everywhere. There was a deliberate attempt to boost the fortunes of regional areas, and it resulted in the London population declining until the policy was abolished (IIRC by the Thatcher government who considered it too expensive). And the growth of London has brought great benefits, but the infrastructure has not kept up. But major infrastructure projects like Thameslink and Crossrail are needed in London, and I'm not sure I like the implication that they should be abandoned because the rest of the country doesn't like to see money spent on the capital. London _needs_ it - and if London were to lose its position as a worldcity, it isn't just those inside the M25 that are going to be affected when the economy suffers. If a business is doing well, it ought to be able to finance its own expansion. So should a city be able to. But evidently for all London's wonderfulness, it can't. It has to ask for subsidy. Rather odd. Rather odd until you consider that the government hold the purse strings and other cities and rural areas also require subsidy. [snip] I read once a statement that "the further you get away from London, the more irrational the spelling of place names become", Ah, yes the home counties, that hotbed of phonetic spelling, with Slough, Reading, Greenwich, Islington and of course London itself - rhymes with "cotton"! I doubt that rhyme would be acceptable even in doggeral! I don't think you've got the point. The writer was over-familiar with the spelling of "London" and just couldn't see that it didn't fit even the flimsy "rules" for spelling in English. Is this like the thing where they try use the precedent of tough women's emotions to prove "ghoti" should be prounounced "fish", until it's pointed out to them that by that logic using other precendents the entire word should be silent? (snip) (Before the war, the LNER built up commuter services from the West Riding to the sea-side at Scarborough, Are you sure they were commuter services? As I understood it at the time, yes. You were there at the time??? |
London supremacy
In message , Aidan Stanger
writes As for London Weighting, that's just part of peoples' wages - it's paid for by the employers, yet the employers are quite happy to locate themselves in London, so obviously they think it's worth it. If London Weighting was stopped, or other places paid the same, I'm sure the house price differential would fall as less people would be able to compete for housing stock. Making other cities more attractive. -- Clive. |
London supremacy
On Fri, 21 Jan 2005, Aidan Stanger wrote:
Michael Bell wrote: wrote: Michael Bell wrote: Whether this is the TRUTH is very difficult to test, but certainly it is widely BELIEVED. No matter what you think the mechanism of this is (the inner workings of London are hidden to folk so far away, they just have to look at the inputs and outputs and treat London as a "black box"), you must come to see London as a grudge-holder, a spiteful and vindicitive entity, though people don't like to face up to it. I don't think there's actually a grudge - it's just a resentment that they're not getting properly funded when the other cities are. So you agree it exists, if it's not a "grudge", then what is it? I just told you! I can't think of a single word for it Indignation. Righteous indignation if you can stretch to two. tom -- Socialism - straight in the mainline! |
London supremacy
In message , Aidan Stanger
writes You included London on its route, so Birmingham would be more likely to become "one city" with London! Just as an aside here from someone with a lot of experience of the London - Birmingham "corridor"....... I think that one of the reasons that Birmingham has fared so well in the last two decades with things like the National Exhibition Centre, National Indoor Arena, International Convention Centre, Symphony Hall, etc. is that it's convenient for a large proportion of the country (Northern England, Wales) AND it isn't THAT far from London. The NEC in particular is so well served by fast trains from Euston direct to Birmingham International (in is it 85 minutes?) that it's not that much more hassle to reach than parts of outer London. There was even a view in the eighties that BHX could have effectively become London's third airport. -- Ian Jelf, MITG Birmingham, UK Registered Blue Badge Tourist Guide for London and the Heart of England http://www.bluebadge.demon.co.uk |
London supremacy (was London or Not ....
"Michael Bell" wrote in message
... In article , Michael Bell wrote: In article .com, wrote: Michael Bell: But I am also aware of the political dimension of projects like Crossrail and Thameslink, which won't benefit Londoners very much, far less than the projects I discuss above. Crossrail and Thameslink can never be viable in terms of paying back their capital, and they can only be justified in cost-benefit terms if they attract vast number of NEW travellers into London. A decision to build them at government expense is a decision to abandon the rest of the country and concentrate all development in the South - East. As a Northerner, I am against that. And maybe you should be too. Remember what happened to capitals which get too far out of step with their countries, like Paris in 1871. The Paris municipality ("commune" in French = "municipality" in English: our failure to translate this word has led us to serious misunderstanding of this event) was crushed by the provinces. Think hard! [snipped] John Prescott, before the labour victory of 1997, proposed a new North-South Shinkansen going London - Birmingham- Potteries - Manchester - Leeds - Newcastle - Edinburgh - Glasgow. Let us say this route is built and whatever other steps are necessary to enable this new megalopolis to function on the same level as London are taken - what would your reaction be? Totally agree with you, except it should be London-Birmingham-Potteries-Manchester-Leeds-Glasgow-Edinburgh-Newcastle.... .. Scotland's largest city, Glasgow, is more important than its 2nd city, Edinsmugsboresville, which (due to an accident of history) is now its 'capital'. |
London supremacy
Ian Jelf ) gurgled happily, sounding much like
they were saying : There was even a view in the eighties that BHX could have effectively become London's third airport. We had a local minicab back from Heathrow to Chorleywood a few weeks ago, and the driver was saying that more and more people are using Coventry. It is, apparently, the same distance from here as both Gatwick and Stansted, and tends to be cheaper fare, due to the traffic. |
London supremacy
In message , Adrian
writes Ian Jelf ) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying : There was even a view in the eighties that BHX could have effectively become London's third airport. We had a local minicab back from Heathrow to Chorleywood a few weeks ago, and the driver was saying that more and more people are using Coventry. It is, apparently, the same distance from here as both Gatwick and Stansted, and tends to be cheaper fare, due to the traffic. It is - however- a *very* basic airport from the passengers' point of view, in no way comparable as an "experience" to Heathrow, Gatwick or indeed Birmingham. Of course I accept that the cost rather than other factors can sway people but having recently had to meet and despatch a group from Coventry Airport, I can't say I'd be queuing up to use it myself! (Interesting r e-mail address, incidentally, Adrian!) -- Ian Jelf, MITG Birmingham, UK Registered Blue Badge Tourist Guide for London and the Heart of England http://www.bluebadge.demon.co.uk |
| All times are GMT. The time now is 05:40 AM. |
Powered by vBulletin®
Copyright ©2000 - 2025, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2006 LondonBanter.co.uk