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I'll bite - EU is not an expansionist organisation -in fact it places considerable barriers on countries that wish to join, it doesnt go out of its way to entice countries in. If Ukraine wants to apply to join the EU that is matter for it, not for Russia. Russia invaded Ukraine solely for the...

Middle Eastern metros tend to have both a first/gold class carriage and a women's only carriage and then the rest for everyone else!

A 10p increase in fuel duty will increase the cost of goods transport by around 3% which in turn would lead to around 0.15% increase in the final price if costs are passed though to the end user. Hence the impact is not material. Now is a good time to reinforce the need to decarbonise our...

Where does this 1m passengers using Settle-Carlise come from?

Suggests fare evasion rate of only 1%

If you are running a consultancy business with just 35% of paid time billable you are in deep trouble - many operate at 80%+ with most junior staff at 90-95% or around 1,700 billable hours a year.

Eurodisney in Paris is presumably a good comparator with 4 RER trains an hour from central Paris plus other longer distance services

Most of the big consultancies on this framework are PLCs not partnerships and many operate on surprisingly thin profit margins. Aecom, for example, had a turnover of £771m in year ending October 2025 and made a profit of £36m before tax. As a consultant, I agree that a lot of spending on...

Blackpool to Manchester is one of the few services which is slower now despite electrification than it was in the 60s.

Interesting article on the bus replacement rail service presently serving Berrylands arguing that the blanket policy of providing them should go - https://timleunig.substack.com/p/reducing-wasteful-spending-on-our The key quote is

Presumably, some will be cancelled on appeal

A good example of poor customer information. No information given on possible alternative services that are available to passengers and no explanation as to why tickets are not valid on Avanti services.

Having been one of the consultants, who actually saved HS2 money, the problem was in many cases it was consultants telling other consultants what to deliver.

Calling people moronic for voting Reform is why people vote for them. Reform is not a right wing party. It has two lots of supporters, wealthy business types who want small government and lots of disallusioned older voters who are culturally conservative but are often dependent on the welfare...

I have never understood why everything is still done by hand, machine counters and optical scanners have been around for decades. Multi-candidate seats where people are voting for different parties are a nightmare to count and generate a not inconsiderable number of errors as anyone who has...

Labour vote seems to have held up more than expected in London so far, or at least the opposition is so fractured that they are retaining seats, eg held Merton which was a key Lib Dem target and while loosing Wandsworth that has gone to no overall control rather than to the Tories. While the...

Depends on what you want it to do and what you ask it. If you want it to summarise a document or undertake detailed analysis of a large dataset I would say it is pretty reliable. If you then want it to explain the implications of that analysis it is pretty dodgy and you can see the biases in...

I suppose I was expecting it to be more like York Railway Museum

Depends what you are interested in but Rothenburg ob de Tauber is a very picturesque town an hour or so out of the city by train which is worth a stroll around in the evening

Must admit I was rather underwhelmed by the DB museum. But I thought the at seat catering in first class was pretty good.