Richard Smith

Starmer — a prosecutor with a huge majority, coming in after years of sleaze and mendacity — could have weaponised the corruption of his opponents to incredible advantage. Instead he will be ruined by the living avatar of corruption in his own party. To not see that coming is a serious skill issue.

I think I might take one of these "under 20 minutes" AI skills courses the UK Govt. seems very keen on everyone doing and live-post it here... Maybe we can all learn something together! The press release sends me to aiskillshub.org.uk/aiskillsboost/ - let's go and see!

This mendacious drivel should be a resigning issue, for both the author and anyone who thought it was right to publish it

That's a great improvement! I was stunned by their absence before, it meant every bus route was just a bunch of unknown place names.

Did you find they had any bus maps? I found it a real headache when I visited to get my head around where the buses actually *went* on Orkney, online or locally.

I don't usually want to blame staff working in a bad system, but the training and attitude of the security scan staff, and the organisation of the lines, beggars belief.

It's like they've never even been to another security line before.

And, of course, everything is always the customer's fault.

Speeding discourse is one of the quickest ways to see that many, many folks on the left also have a bit of a libertarian in them

There is no coherent argument against aggressive and heavily enforced vehicular safety regulations that doesn’t boil down to “nuh-uh, you can’t tell me what to do”

Congratulations! (Is a very tiny turtle to be knitted (and then kept well away for a year or two)?)

The one thing I think we can learn from Cass is we need to make this controversial AF before it is published, because once it is published and they give the author a peerage, it will be considered unbelievably rude to criticise him or the report.

So this British review into whether too many people are getting ADHD and autism diagnoses will be led by a psychoanalyst who thinks everything is about attachment and trauma, and his deputy will be a guy who thinks ME/CFS is primarily a mental health problem.

So much of our politics revolves around catering to the emotions of people who become furious when someone else isn't suffering as much as they think they should

and again - literally just the hobby horse of some random anonymous Twitter accounts, enraging how quickly they managed to turn their horrid posting into actual government policy and rhetoric

Honestly, just the one TGV to Lille seems insufficient! In the UK it would be 2tph or even 3tph.

"Drivers say" what kind of attribution is that?!!

The Andrew Formerly Known As Prince.

Andrew, or to give him his full title, Andrew.

Another thought on this brilliant story: police orthodoxy in this country is that, best use if straitened resources is to focus on “high impact” crime. Hard to square that with the fact that essentially every serious look into “petty” crime finds it is scarily organised!

Google Result from Alstom. "Avelia Horizon: The only double-deck high speed train in the world."

That's... certainly a claim. @jon.gruene.social.ap.brid.gy

108. Eurostar orders double-decker trains… but will we see them in the UK?

Interestingly, on Green Signals today (recorded before today's decision) Eurostar continues to say that these trains will be used first to replace Class 373s, though also have a bit of a twist in wording that all trains will be maintained in TMI (vs. only be maintained in).
pca.st/episode/7f2b...

The idea that the post-war order was created because they thought "everyone would want to be nice to each other" is not something you should be able to utter and still be taken seriously.

Though the original sin was BR not being able to go "lol, no, this is our operation first and foremost", but then with Thatcher and then Major in charge what did anyone expect?

Sunak had and blew such an opportunity to get a decent share back at a knock down rate.

It was a hope, not an expectation!

(In an ideal world, you'd have a diverse set of shareholders who would see the threat of competition and revolt at the current management's complacency. Alas.)

Good riddance, hire someone from a UK TOC to manage it, give them the power to shake up the product significantly.

So much for "when the time is right".

Given her bio, I'm not remotely shocked, considering her lack of experience outside SNCF and Finance. Explains so much about their direction.

Also, fine dining my ass, they've given up on Plus dessert lately in favour of a single square of chocolate.

Rail Clock A reproduction of the Great British Railways clock

I thought I'd take the opportunity to put together a website representation of these new Rail Clocks which launched yesterday.

railclock.davwheat.dev

Source code (MIT): github.com/davwheat/rai...

And, don't worry, it does have the special flourish every 12 hours!

The absolute bloody vandalism of austerity in one chart. Good analysis of the overall picture here.

New DLR train!
New DLR train!
New DLR train!
New DLR train!

"I'm half a mile away. I'm half a mile away!"

Seats on the new NextGen Acela look like alien robots giving a lower back rub and/or needy hug, I saw it and now you will too.

(Hitchhiker's vibes.)