On Jul 10, 9:44*am, John B wrote:

On Jul 10, 12:57*am, Tony Polson wrote:

You have made some very good points regarding the (un)acceptability of
using colossal sums of taxpayers' money - vastly greater sums than the
already huge amounts spent on rail - to subsidise professional people's
long distance daily commute. *I agree that this makes no sense at all,
and that long distance commuting should be discouraged.

...although there's an entirely plausible argument that the large
amounts of money earned by, and hence taxed from, professional people
working in London on long commutes easily offset the subsidy that
their commute is given (compared to a scenario where they live in
countrysideyness and take the kind of lower-paying job that's
generally available outside global financial centres).

That's a fair point, at least for some such commuters. In which case
one could argue that they should simply directly pay more for their
journeys instead of having their commute subsidised (and one could
argue that London might benefit from their presence... one could also
argue it might not as well - higher house prices etc!). Though the
notion that these folk should pay more of the full cost of their
commute might conflict to a certain extent with the notion that
subsidising shorter distance commutes is a legitimate thing to do,
because it means people have access to more reasonably priced property
- or the flip-side of the coin, employers in the centre have access to
a larger pool of potential employees.

I do comprehend it's a rather complex overall picture to say the
least, with a great number of arguments that can be made in favour of
taking all manner of various stances.

Mizter T wrote:

That said, I am in favour (I think!) of the massively expensive
Crossrail project... for a long time I didn't really have any properly
considered thoughts on it because I thought it was unlikely to ever
happen, but it seems it is now happening (as ever there's some
uncertainty of course). Though Crossrail won't facilitate long-
distance commuting per-se directly, but inevitably that will be a side-
effect.


An article I read a few years ago suggested that Crossrail would enable
the affluent professionals who are living to the west of London to get
to their highly paid jobs in the City with ease, and the poorer people
from the East End to get to their (not much more than) minimum wage jobs
in the West End in less time than now. :-(


I should just add that I'm not anti-professional people (whatever that
means!), nor anti-commuting as such. I certainly appreciate the
complex and multi-layered reasoning at play behind the decision of
people to do more lengthy commutes. Though I (obviously) do take some
issue with long-distance daily commuting (FSVO "long-distance", which
is of course debatable!).


Yes, I suppose I opened up a can of worms. ;-)


And sometimes I think I might implode under the mass of my own
internal contradictions... and then just propose that everyone should
go off and live off the land, being crofters and woodsmen, where the
big journey is into the next town but one! But the genie of travel is
of course out of the bottle.


We cannot hope to address climate change without taking a good hard look
at transport.

But I am pleased to report that sales of videoconferencing systems are
holding up well in spite of the recession. Companies are at last
beginning to see it as a genuine alternative to expensive and time
consuming travelling to meetings.

I have no doubt academia will lag years behind commerce, with the usual
underworked scientists insisting (to the few who listen) that the
scientific value of face to face networking far exceeds the economic and
environmental cost of their time and travel to and from the meetings. Of
course these are the same guys who will be lecturing us on changing our
travel habits, indeed our whole way of life, in the papers they present
at their far-flung and highly repetitive conferences. ;-)

I used to be lectured by a scientific colleague who strongly criticised
my use of a car for leisure trips because of the CO2 it emitted. The
same guy was a regular visitor to the Galapagos Islands, often more than
once in a year, and drove over 30,000 business miles a year in a car
with a 2.7 litre V6 that drank petrol like it was going out of fashion.
If he had used a more economical car, such as mine, he would have saved
far more CO2 than all my annual car use emitted, leisure *and* business.

Aren't scientists wonderful.

"Willms" wrote in message

Am Thu, 9 Jul 2009 23:57:05 UTC, schrieb Tony Polson
auf uk.railway :

You have made some very good points regarding the (un)acceptability
of using colossal sums of taxpayers' money - vastly greater sums
than the already huge amounts spent on rail - to subsidise
professional people's long distance daily commute.

You think that only unprofessional people should commute to work?

In the UK, "professional" implies reasonably or very well-off people,
such as lawyers and accountants.

On Jul 12, 11:51*am, "Recliner" wrote:

"Willms" wrote:

Am Thu, 9 Jul 2009 23:57:05 UTC, *schrieb Tony Polson
*auf uk.railway :

You have made some very good points regarding the (un)acceptability
of using colossal sums of taxpayers' money - vastly greater sums
than the already huge amounts spent on rail - to subsidise
professional people's long distance daily commute.

*You think that only unprofessional people should commute to work?

In the UK, "professional" implies reasonably or very well-off people,
such as lawyers and accountants.

Which is pretty stupid usage, as my plumber is genuinely a
professional (unlike many!). It's perhaps something of a foil for
talking about class, which we're still to obsessed by.

On Jul 12, 1:07*pm, Mizter T wrote:

On Jul 12, 11:51*am, "Recliner" wrote:

"Willms" wrote:

Am Thu, 9 Jul 2009 23:57:05 UTC, *schrieb Tony Polson
*auf uk.railway :

You have made some very good points regarding the (un)acceptability
of using colossal sums of taxpayers' money - vastly greater sums
than the already huge amounts spent on rail - to subsidise
professional people's long distance daily commute.

*You think that only unprofessional people should commute to work?

In the UK, "professional" implies reasonably or very well-off people,
such as lawyers and accountants.

Which is pretty stupid usage, as my plumber is genuinely a
professional (unlike many!). It's perhaps something of a foil for
talking about class, which we're still to obsessed by.

And I managed to write that sentence without thinking about how Luko
might pick up on it!

(For those not in the know, I think it's broadly fair to say that Luko
is a committed socialist, albeit a subscriber to a particular brand of
socialism that others might take issue with. Oh dear, what kind of can
of worms am I opening here...!)

On Jul 12, 1:18*pm, "Willms" wrote:

Am Sun, 12 Jul 2009 10:51:04 UTC, *schrieb "Recliner"
*auf uk.railway :

In the UK, "professional" implies reasonably or very well-off people,
such as lawyers and accountants.

* I am sure that many carpenters, engineers, and other not so well
paid workers perform their work in a much more professional way than
those named above. *

* I was confronted with this socially motivated perversion of language
for the first time in the US-american computer company which at one of
the frequent re-organisations decided to split the service department
into to: the "professional service" and the other service. What an
insulting disgrace!

I tend to agree with you on that broad point.

In message
, at
14:18:39 on Sun, 12 Jul 2009, Willms remarked:
In the UK, "professional" implies reasonably or very well-off people,
such as lawyers and accountants.

I am sure that many carpenters, engineers, and other not so well
paid workers perform their work in a much more professional way than
those named above.

Both descriptions above are a little off the mark.

"Professional" implies that the person has passed an academic
qualification, and is a member of some "body/association" where the
public can go to check up upon their qualification if necessary.

To that extent, whatever a CORGI engineer is called this week may well
qualify.
--
Roland Perry

In uk.railway Mizter T twisted the electrons to say:
Which is pretty stupid usage, as my plumber is genuinely a
professional (unlike many!). It's perhaps something of a foil for
talking about class, which we're still to obsessed by.

nods Another way to look at it, which doesn't suffer from this problem
is when professional means "gets paid to to do it". Thus you can have
professional $X and amateur $X, without implying that one is of higher
quality than the other ...
--
These opinions might not even be mine ...
Let alone connected with my employer ...

On Jul 12, 3:10*pm, Alistair Gunn wrote:
In uk.railway Mizter T twisted the electrons to say:

Which is pretty stupid usage, as my plumber is genuinely a
professional (unlike many!). It's perhaps something of a foil for
talking about class, which we're still to obsessed by.

nods *Another way to look at it, which doesn't suffer from this problem
is when professional means "gets paid to to do it". *Thus you can have
professional $X and amateur $X, without implying that one is of higher
quality than the other ...

This is professional in the 'old' sense of the word, being someone who
can counter-sign your passport application. Helpfully the Government
has a list of professional people here

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/TravelAn...ort/Passports/
Applicationinformation/DG_174151 which is a wonderful mix of
professions!! So the landlord at your local can countersign, but not
your plumber (unless he is a director of his self-employed PLC!)

On Jul 12, 3:10*pm, Alistair Gunn wrote:

In uk.railway Mizter T twisted the electrons to say:

Which is pretty stupid usage, as my plumber is genuinely a
professional (unlike many!). It's perhaps something of a foil for
talking about class, which we're still to obsessed by.

nods *Another way to look at it, which doesn't suffer from this problem
is when professional means "gets paid to to do it". *Thus you can have
professional $X and amateur $X, without implying that one is of higher
quality than the other ...

I'm not sure how much I spoiled by argument with the typo "to" instead
of "too" - the grammar snobs will have me! (Actually, I am keen on
good grammar, despite copious evidence to the contrary in past posts -
plus, it was a typo, I do know the difference... really, I do!)