One problem I've encountered in Munich is they essentially have a single trunk that runs through the centre. In the case of problems on one line you can often find multiple other lines are also affected. London always seems to have a redundancy in the case of a line being unusable.
I suppose this is more a problem of sharing track than through running, but I just found it funny to see Munich public transport described so positively.
> I just found it funny to see Munich public transport described so positively
Been living in Munich for the past 9 years, with the exception of the S-Bahn, it's still very good. I've never felt the need to own a car (only the occasional rental for moving or trips to more remote areas). Anecdotally, I know colleagues and friends who also make do without one, even those with kids.
Only city I've experienced better is Singapore (where I lived for ~7 years), though people complain all the same :D
In an airport, people complained that luggage delivery was so slow after landings. Airport measured the time, agreed with passengers and increased workforce to reduce waiting times substantially, but the complaints didn't reduce.
Instead, they routed passengers through a longer path, so their luggage was waiting for them when they arrived, and nobody complained about the longer walk.
I've never formally complained about luggage arrival delays, but I have definitely noticed long walks. Some ridiculously so. I suppose I should complain, but to whom?
Your airline, to bug them to land to a gate closer to luggage hall (which might cost them more), and to the airport operator, to don't make especially convoluted paths to mask other operational delays (if there are).
OTOH, you can't make things easier if the airport is really big. e.g.: Rome, New York, Amsterdam (to an extent) and Istanbul.
I fly mostly out of DFW, which is just a complete shitshow. Atlanta is much better for luggage delivery for international arrivals but you still have long-ass walks to get to the immigration hall.
> London always seems to have a redundancy in the case of a line being unusable.
The London underground is indeed a redundant spiderweb. But the article focuses more on mainline trains, which are much more constrained.
The only way right through central London for these trains was north-to-south, the Snow Hill tunnel: Kings Cross -> Farringdon -> City Thameslink -> Blackfriars -> South of the river. This can only be a bottleneck.
But now there is the Elizabeth line east-to-west as well.
>What does Elizabeth (presumably the 2nd) dying have to do with anything?
Lets just say her replacements brother is Andrew, and his best mate was Jimmey Saville. Should tell you all you need to know about her replacement with less chance of me ending up like David Kelly.
Heads of state do matter, regardless of how much propaganda they push that they only matter in other countries. These laws are not something the labour voters asked for.
I don’t understand this. The monarchy hasn’t had influence over parliament and the government for over 300 years. You may be able to point to attempts at doing so (eg the Black Spider letter), however, parliament is fully sovereign.
Kier Starmer is (pretty much) to the UK what JD Vance is to the US.
Appointed by the head of state. Meets the head of state regularly to be told what to do (wednesdays iirc).
Think about what it has taken for you to say what you just said despite those facts.
We are also talking about what is still the richest, most most powerful family on the planet. You think Elon musk is rich for owning Tesla and Twitter, these guys still own for example, England, Wales, Canada and Australia.
First of all, the King isn’t Prince Andrew. That guy simply isn’t the head of state and nor will he ever be.
Secondly, the British monarchy have absolutely nothing to do with politics and have remained impartial for nearly 100 years.
The UK government has always been right wing compared to most of the rest of western Europe. It sucks, but it is what it is. But the way you’re talking is as if the UK has suddenly gone to hell when the reality is just that this is just more of the same.
If anything, the biggest footgun the UK has done was leaving the EU, and that was something the dumb British public voted for. We did it to ourselves.
I've just switched from DigitalOcean to Hetzner purely for cost. I'm getting more resources for less money. Features seem pretty comparable to me but I don't need anything more than a standard VPS. The only thing I've found weird is SELinux being set to permissive by default.
I'm not sure why anyone would be patriotic about a private company.
This is less than half of my rent in London. That's not including gas and electric bills, as well as council tax! I do enjoy having a kitchen though.
"technically has no fixed abode" I think here probably actually means he's registered at his parents house. This would likely be a lot more difficult if you were truly homeless.
And no facilities most of us take for granted: a shower when you want; a washing machine; a kitchen with exactly what you want in it; private space; an actual bed....
Even then I don't really get it - he's clearly not tied to a specific location.
I'd be willing to bet that even a regular home (unit/flat/apartment/small house/whatever) can likely be rented for 1/5th of London rental rates, if you look in the right places: i.e., not in major cities.
Cities are expensive; Being able to work from "anywhere" makes it quite easy to make your money go a lot further, particularly in terms of housing, without resorting to being a glorified homeless drifter.
Apart from being incredibly optimisic about clouds and light pollution, this is really cool. Showing where the satellite should pass from a streetview perspective is a really nice addition I've not seen before.
I have several times. Generally I can just say "you can write anything before the @ and it still comes to me" and people understand it though. It doesn't need to become a big discussion about how email works and they've probably forgotten by the end of the interaction.
Maybe once or twice I've given my address to a new friend as newfriend@domain.com and it's lead to at least a small discussion about it.
In the Netherlands it's not terribly uncommon. It used to be more the other direction in the UK but it has become more common to be card only here as well.
I'm not really sure where class comes into accepted forms of payment? But I'm also not sure what class you're talking about.
It looks like the flat she referred to still exists, Addison Park Mansions in Hammersmith. So we can make quite good comparison presuming one is rented out still. Though I wouldn't be suprised if they've been parted out into smaller flats, or rented as shared.
Funnily enough I'm sat in my flat about 10 minutes walk away. My building appears to have been built sometime in the late 1800s, and is somewhat falling apart. So the value for money might be even less now.
>“What’s the moral of the story?” he asked. “You can make up your own, but for me, this is public service in its finest form – unseen, largely unknown and rarely heralded – but done with selfless dedication year after year simply because of what would happen to the rest of us if it wasn’t.”
This is my big takeaway, I know a lot of people are against government projects. But in this case especially, where is the profit motive to fix this problem? I can't see any other solution than long term investment in the long term interest of the country. What other entity could ensure long term commitment to such an unprofitable project?
The owners of these two properties, many of the home owners around the country, many commercial and other building owners, as well as the building and insurance industries all have possible profit motives.
I'm not going to argue whether government is better or worse here, but it's actually not uncommon in the agricultural industry for similar kind of action being taken against invasive pests that is led by producers' associations which are private organizations. Including very long term action for example there are cases of land being bought up so as to cease farming activity on it indefinitely to prevent pest spread (e.g., with Panama disease in some places).
Arguably it also should not have depended on generosity or public service to deal with the problem, the land owners should have been fairly compensated.
Granted, but who is going to spearhead such an effort? Organize people, resources, money etc. I mean, at some point, such an endeavor, private or public, is so close to quacking like government, you might as well just call it government.
It’s called self-government, which is not merely electing some mooks to send to some distant capital to professionally practice legislation (which is all they will ever do in their time there, and so will always be seeking to innovate in this space for good or for ill). It’s also taking an interest in you and yours and cooperating with your neighbors to resolve common issues, and where and when you have conflicting interests, resolving those disputes, privately, or in a court of Law if that is not possible, only taking to legislatures as a last resort.
I have to be pedantic about this distinction because otherwise I feel like my point will be lost.
Not local government, self-government. Local government is still politicians and bureaucrats. Self-government is the exercise of your own political power, private property rights and capabilities and rights as a citizen. These are not limited to ticking some names on a ballot once or twice a year.
I don't understand how what you wrote addresses my comment. I listed some groups who might be motivated to do it, and gave an example of somewhat similar private groups organizing to take action that collectively benefit their member groups with industry associations that are not a government.
> Granted, but who is going to spearhead such an effort?
I suppose this is a rhetorical question, which does not help me understand your point of view. Can you just explain why for example a home insurance industry group (or any of the other interested groups) would not organize to deal with this problem in the absence of government action?
1) Pay for a super expensive termite remediation on someone’s property in hopes that it will guarantee that other customers’ properties won’t get termites
2) Raise premiums to account for termite infestation risk
3) Deny termite damage claims
There’s only one thing on that list I can’t imagine them doing
I'm not going to get too far into hypotheticals about who exactly would end up losing out, I gave some examples of groups (which included not only insurance industry but others) who would plausibly have a profit motive to address this problem, and an example of another case where similar did happen. You don't think the home insurance industry would be made to pay for these costs, okay without knowing what UK insurance policies and laws look like maybe that is the case, but it's sort of avoiding what I'm asking because then then we know the building industry or home or other property owner groups will be out of pocket so why would they not organize and take action?
I never said I had a crystal ball and could tell you that would happen, or claim that private is better than government (which I assume is what is upsetting people who are reading that into it). Read the post I originally replied to and look at the context.
If you did want to get into government vs private, there are plenty of examples of government failure to deal with introduced and other invasive pest species, not to mention countless examples of large scale collective organization or lack thereof which have been spectacular failures of government incompetence and corruption to the detriment of the public good everywhere you look. Not just in invasive species control failures, but from wars to healthcare to drug policy to homelessness to climate change. So anecdotes won't be enough to demonstrate the case one way or the other, unfortunately.
I suppose this is more a problem of sharing track than through running, but I just found it funny to see Munich public transport described so positively.