What's the story with our bins?  Not been emptied for a few days now, were 
due on Tuesday or Wednesday morning.

G.

G wrote:

> What's the story with our bins?  Not been emptied for a few days now, were 
> due on Tuesday or Wednesday morning.
> 


There's a strike on isn't there?  Not that you'd know unless you read the 
Evening News.

Stewart
-- 
You are about to enter... The Scary Door...

On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 10:49:02 +0100 someone who may be "G" 
wrote this:-


>What's the story with our bins?  Not been emptied for a few days now, were 
>due on Tuesday or Wednesday morning.


The council have cut the number of bin lorries, by ISTR five. They
say that with more recycling not so many are needed.

The staff claim it is not possible to do the work without these
lorries.

Some claim the staff are having a "go slow", some claim they are
"working to rule".

The City of Edinburgh Council have a web site at
http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/ which has a, "Latest News", section. At
the moment the third item there is entitled, "Update on Delay to
Edinburgh's Refuse Collection Service".


-- 
 David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
 I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
 prevents me by using the RIP Act 2000.

On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 11:17:42 +0100
Stewart Smith  wrote:


> G wrote:
> > What's the story with our bins?  Not been emptied for a few days now, were 
> > due on Tuesday or Wednesday morning.
> > 
> 
> There's a strike on isn't there?  Not that you'd know unless you read the 
> Evening News.


According to Wednesday's Evening News the council have cut five bin lorries and this has screwed up the collection schedule. Mine has just been emptied now, two days late.
-- 
TheMgt

David Hansen wrote:


> On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 10:49:02 +0100 someone who may be "G" 
> wrote this:-
> 
>>What's the story with our bins?  Not been emptied for a few days now, were
>>due on Tuesday or Wednesday morning.
> 
> The council have cut the number of bin lorries, by ISTR five. They
> say that with more recycling not so many are needed.
> 
> The staff claim it is not possible to do the work without these
> lorries.
> 
> Some claim the staff are having a "go slow", some claim they are
> "working to rule".
> 
> The City of Edinburgh Council have a web site at
> http://www.edinburgh.gov.uk/ which has a, "Latest News", section. At
> the moment the third item there is entitled, "Update on Delay to
> Edinburgh's Refuse Collection Service".


Have been re-born, DH?  This looks like spoonfeeding!

Hmmm, I wonder how those shits would react if we all had a go slow on our 
council tax payments.

They really need to get a grip, this city really needs new management.

G.

On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 11:12:05 GMT someone who may be Ronald Raygun
<no.spam@localhost.localdomain> wrote this:-


>Have been re-born, DH?  This looks like spoonfeeding!


You have got me:-) Sometimes I feel generous:-)


-- 
 David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
 I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
 prevents me by using the RIP Act 2000.

We had no collection for 3 days - the urban foxes had a field day raiding 
the
black bags and spreading the mess around.  Then the lorries were round
again today, so that's twice in 3 days.  Bizarre.

Liz





"G"  wrote in message 
news:d8uc28$p9b$1$8300dec7@news.demon.co.uk...

> Hmmm, I wonder how those shits would react if we all had a go slow on our 
> council tax payments.
>
> They really need to get a grip, this city really needs new management.
>
> G.
> 

All these seagulls and foxes tearing the rubbish bags apart!  You lot
should ask the council for big communal black bins.  They're great.  
No more animal rubbish pest problems.  I didn't know that any bits of
Edinburgh were still so backward as to use binbags on the street.
-- 
	-- Chris.

nospamplease@dcs.ed.ac.uk wrote:

> All these seagulls and foxes tearing the rubbish bags apart! 


Well, it's more likely to be cats tearing the bags as I recall - foxes 
and seagulls tend to come in and make the mess, but it's the puddytats 
that actually do most of the ripping. Better claws for it.

I also suspect pigeons, but that's because I suspect them of everything. 
My garden is regularly visited by the World's Fattest Pigeon, who 
manages to perch on a rather slender shepherd's-crook style bird food 
holder and eat peanuts while causing the crook to bend and whip about 
most alarmingly under its ever-increasing weight.

I watch it often, waiting for it to slide down the pole and hit the 
ground whereupon I will jump out and go "ha ha!" in the style of Nelson. 
 From the Simpsons. Not the historical one.

-- 
Angus G Rae                           Science & Engineering Support Team
                                                  University of Edinburgh
The above opinions are mine, and Edinburgh University can't have them

They were going to give us communal bins - they even marked
X on the spots on the pavement where they were going to site
the giant bins.  One was right outside my front door and bedroom
window - yuk!   However, we are just inside the World Heritage
site and conservation area, and it was pointed out that huge ugly
black bins at intervals along the street detract from the flowing
elegance of the Georgian/Victorian architecture.  So we were
reprieved at the 11th hour.

The plastic bin bags and fox/cat/seagull generated mess aren't
pretty, but at least they are only there briefly twice a week.  The
huge mega-bins are there 24/7.

Liz


 wrote in message 
news:e6sfyvh2eyc.fsf@cub.inf.ed.ac.uk...

> All these seagulls and foxes tearing the rubbish bags apart!  You lot
> should ask the council for big communal black bins.  They're great.
> No more animal rubbish pest problems.  I didn't know that any bits of
> Edinburgh were still so backward as to use binbags on the street.
> -- 
> -- Chris. 

"Liz \(I don't like Spam....\)"  writes:


> it was pointed out that huge ugly black bins at intervals 
> along the street detract from the flowing elegance of the 


....parked cars

Kaye

We can thank the Cockburn association for that one.

Apparently, stinking black bags and rats are less of a cultural imposition
than communal bins!

Auld reeky indeed!

 wrote in message
news:e6sfyvh2eyc.fsf@cub.inf.ed.ac.uk...

> All these seagulls and foxes tearing the rubbish bags apart!  You lot
> should ask the council for big communal black bins.  They're great.
> No more animal rubbish pest problems.  I didn't know that any bits of
> Edinburgh were still so backward as to use binbags on the street.
> -- 
> -- Chris.

Boz wrote:

> We can thank the Cockburn association for that one.
> 
> Apparently, stinking black bags and rats are less of a cultural imposition
> than communal bins!
> 
> Auld reeky indeed!
> 


Ah, it just makes it more like the old Old Town.  Gardyloo!

Stewart

-- 
You are about to enter... The Scary Door...

Liz (I don't like Spam....) wrote:

> They were going to give us communal bins - they even marked
> X on the spots on the pavement where they were going to site
> the giant bins.  One was right outside my front door and bedroom
> window - yuk!   However, we are just inside the World Heritage
> site and conservation area, and it was pointed out that huge ugly
> black bins at intervals along the street detract from the flowing
> elegance of the Georgian/Victorian architecture.  So we were
> reprieved at the 11th hour.


We've got the big communal bins here in Aberdeen. I find them 
excellent, the only drawback being that people can't be arsed walking 
to the next one (20 yards) when the one they're at is full, so they 
overfill them. This lets gulls etc. in, but it's only a minority of 
people who do this. Can't say I find them particularly distressing to 
look at, and I have one right in front of my living-room window. I 
suppose it depends how narrow your street is. I find people who stuff 
litter into hedges more annoying.

Cheers,

-- 
Phil
http://philip.fotoblog.me.uk
Mainly Old Photos with an Edinburgh Connection
(More added recently).

Man,

330 a month council tax, and im still waiting on those lay abouts to come 
lift my rubbish.  I am really pissed off, feel like doing a Brad Pitt and 
rubbing it all over the handles.  Then I will do my Nelson haha when the 
lazy get moves it.

G.

On Sat, 18 Jun 2005 00:39:19 +0100, "G"  wrote:



>330 a month council tax,


 Where do you live G?
-- 

View my aircraft pictures:
"http://www.jetphotos.net/showphotos.php?userid=1753"
www.edinburghairport.org.uk
Scotland's busiest, most profitable, runway.

G,
    Dont blame the workers, blame the council. The truth is that the
Environmental and Consumer Services Dept has put five vehicles off the road.
They expect the men to take up the excess work. Well it aint gonna happen.
The men had enough work for their shift before the motors were removed. The
men are working now as the council and the Health and Safety Executive want
them to work. No more crossing busy main roads with bins,dodging maniac
motorists, and no more putting 2 bins on at a time. 2 handles on a bin - 2
hands its as simple as that. No mor missing your (unpaid) break to get the
route finished. If you want to complain go to the councils website, find
your councillor and phone him/her up to moan. I say again dont blame the
men - blame the council management.

Gaz

G wrote:

> Man,
> 
> 330 a month council tax, and im still waiting on those lay abouts to come 
> lift my rubbish.  I am really pissed off, feel like doing a Brad Pitt and 
> rubbing it all over the handles.  Then I will do my Nelson haha when the 
> lazy get moves it.
> 
> G. 
> 
> 

Ours were late this week too, apparently. Its not nice having the street 
full of wheelies for one day, never mind two.

TTH

Gazza wrote:

> G,
>     Dont blame the workers, blame the council. The truth is that the
> Environmental and Consumer Services Dept has put five vehicles off the road.
> They expect the men to take up the excess work. Well it aint gonna happen.
> The men had enough work for their shift before the motors were removed. The
> men are working now as the council and the Health and Safety Executive want
> them to work. No more crossing busy main roads with bins,dodging maniac
> motorists, and no more putting 2 bins on at a time. 2 handles on a bin - 2
> hands its as simple as that. No mor missing your (unpaid) break to get the
> route finished. If you want to complain go to the councils website, find
> your councillor and phone him/her up to moan. I say again dont blame the
> men - blame the council management.


Absolutely.

Plus, your 330 a month *does* pay for more than just the rubbish 
collection. Education, social work, housing services, road maintenance, 
street lighting, libraries...

-- 
Iain Turnbull
Your home is at risk if you set fire to it.

In article <d91hae$1n9$1@nwrdmz03.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com>, 
iainturnbull@hotmail.com says...

> Plus, your £330 a month *does* pay for more than just the rubbish 
> collection. Education, social work, housing services, road maintenance, 
> street lighting, libraries...


But Council Tax only accounts for a small proportion (20-25%, is it?) 
of council income.
-- 
SAm.

In article ,
fox1   wrote:



>>330 a month council tax,

> Where do you live G?


And how many houses do you own?

-- Richard

Iain Turnbull wrote in message ...

>Plus, your 330 a month *does* pay for more than just the rubbish
>collection. Education, social work, housing services, road maintenance,
>street lighting, libraries...
>


So they'll be starting work on these soon, wiil they ?

Toom

>> Where do you live G?
>
> And how many houses do you own?



1 house, East Craigs.  It's because the time of year I moved was the 
beginning of a brand new council tax year, however I have to pay the entire 
year before January (apparently everyone does), and therefore, I have 12 
months forced into 7 or so, hence the higher than normal payments.

In January,  I will start paying over the usual 11 months (we all get a 1 
month break I believe).

Still fecking expensive, and I am STILL sitting with an overflowing bin on 
the street.  Just as well those numpties forget to take the smaller bin away 
when I ordered the 360 litre, I knew I would need it again.

G.

David Hansen  writes:


>Some claim the staff are having a "go slow", some claim they are
>"working to rule".


Some cynics would suggest that "working to rule" meant they should actually
be going faster than normal.

Graham

Kaye Brewster  wrote:

> "Liz \(I don't like Spam....\)"  writes:

>> it was pointed out that huge ugly black bins at intervals 
>> along the street detract from the flowing elegance of the 

> ...parked cars


I've never understood why they don't just make the bins in the shape of
a car so that they don't detract from the look of our streets.

FoFP

Iain Turnbull  wrote:


> Plus, your 330 a month *does* pay for more than just the rubbish 
> collection. Education, social work, housing services, road maintenance, 
> street lighting, libraries...


....aqueducts?

FoFP

M Holmes wrote:

> Kaye Brewster  wrote:
> 
>>"Liz \(I don't like Spam....\)"  writes:
> 
> 
>>>it was pointed out that huge ugly black bins at intervals 
>>>along the street detract from the flowing elegance of the 
> 
> 
>>...parked cars
> 
> 
> I've never understood why they don't just make the bins in the shape of
> a car so that they don't detract from the look of our streets.


Great idea! And we could use them to entrap stupid car crims.

TTH

In article <d96gho$70p$2@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>,
 M Holmes  writes:

> Kaye Brewster  wrote:
> > "Liz \(I don't like Spam....\)"  writes:
> >> it was pointed out that huge ugly black bins at intervals 
> >> along the street detract from the flowing elegance of the 
> 
> > ...parked cars
> 
> I've never understood why they don't just make the bins in the shape of
> a car so that they don't detract from the look of our streets.


Either that, or have us all drive cars that look like bins.
-- 
SAm.

No, working to rule is always a go slow because there are so many needless
rules.

An interesting point, though, is on a work to rule there are never any work
related injuries!


"G Bell"  wrote in message
news:d9628s$4pa$1@scotsman.ed.ac.uk...

> David Hansen  writes:
>
> >Some claim the staff are having a "go slow", some claim they are
> >"working to rule".
>
> Some cynics would suggest that "working to rule" meant they should
actually
> be going faster than normal.
>
> Graham

In article <d96j0s$vpr$2@dulnain.stir.ac.uk>, Sam Nelson 
 writes


>Either that, or have us all drive cars that look like bins.


  Hoi, I resemble that remark!
-- 
Email me via robert (at) nojay (dot) org  (new email address)
This address no longer accepts HTML posts.

Robert Sneddon

6 days now...
Simply unacceptable.

G.

>>>>> "Sam" == Sam Nelson  writes:


    Sam> In article <d96gho$70p$2@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>, M Holmes
    Sam>  writes:
    >> Kaye Brewster  wrote: > "Liz \(I don't
    >> like Spam....\)"  writes: >> it
    >> was pointed out that huge ugly black bins at intervals >> along
    >> the street detract from the flowing elegance of the
    >> 
    >> > ...parked cars
    >> 
    >> I've never understood why they don't just make the bins in the
    >> shape of a car so that they don't detract from the look of our
    >> streets.

    Sam> Either that, or have us all drive cars that look like bins.

I didn't think Multiplas were that ugly!  Or bins that strange :)

Kenny.

-- 
Desktop Services Team, EUCS.

University of Edinburgh, Scotland.

M Holmes  wrote in news:d96gho$70p$2
@scotsman.ed.ac.uk:


> I've never understood why they don't just make the bins in the shape of
> a car so that they don't detract from the look of our streets.


Just leave your sunroof open :)

Ditto.

Privatise 'em, might get a better service at a lower price.

Roland.


"G"  wrote in message
news:d97525$kur$1$8300dec7@news.demon.co.uk...

> 6 days now...
> Simply unacceptable.
>
> G.
>
>

In article <d99132$omo$1$8302bc10@news.demon.co.uk>,
 "Roland Watson"  writes:

> Privatise 'em, might get a better service at a lower price.


In what way is `might' good enough for such an upheaval?  If it turns out to
be worse, how would you propose to get back to where you were before?
-- 
SAm.

Sam Nelson wrote:

> In article <d99132$omo$1$8302bc10@news.demon.co.uk>,
>  "Roland Watson"  writes:
> > Privatise 'em, might get a better service at a lower price.
>
> In what way is `might' good enough for such an upheaval?  If it turns out to
> be worse, how would you propose to get back to where you were before?



We could always to what happens now: the government buys back the right
to provide the service. This is likely with the privately run prisoner
delivery service which is currently 20 million over budget and worse
than the public version.

TTH

"M Holmes"  wrote in message
news:d96glj$70p$3@scotsman.ed.ac.uk...

> Iain Turnbull  wrote:
>
> > Plus, your 330 a month *does* pay for more than just the rubbish
> > collection. Education, social work, housing services, road maintenance,
> > street lighting, libraries...
>
> ...aqueducts?
>


You been playing the original "Civilisation" again?  I always knew a city
was going to plan when the aqueduct was in place.  One of my favourite
things was to establish my vast worldwide empire and then take over a small
insignificant enemy city.  As I was so rich I could lavish all the
improvements on this "pet" city and suddenly it was transformed into a near
village with aqueducts, university, cathedral, manufacturing plant, SDI
defence, mass transit and all the rest (not to mention any unused Wonders
gathering dust from the Ancient world).. Ah those were the days.......

Tamzin

Tamzin wrote:

> You been playing the original "Civilisation" again?  I always knew a city
> was going to plan when the aqueduct was in place.  One of my favourite
> things was to establish my vast worldwide empire and then take over a small
> insignificant enemy city.  As I was so rich I could lavish all the
> improvements on this "pet" city and suddenly it was transformed into a near
> village with aqueducts, university, cathedral, manufacturing plant, SDI
> defence, mass transit and all the rest (not to mention any unused Wonders
> gathering dust from the Ancient world).. Ah those were the days.......


You might want to check out www.freeciv.org and relive your glory days...

In article , Kenneth MacDonald
 wrote:


> >>>>> "Sam" == Sam Nelson  writes:
> 
>     Sam> In article <d96gho$70p$2@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>, M Holmes
>     Sam>  writes:
>     >> Kaye Brewster  wrote: > "Liz \(I don't
>     >> like Spam....\)"  writes: >> it
>     >> was pointed out that huge ugly black bins at intervals >> along
>     >> the street detract from the flowing elegance of the
>     >> 
>     >> > ...parked cars
>     >> 
>     >> I've never understood why they don't just make the bins in the
>     >> shape of a car so that they don't detract from the look of our
>     >> streets.
> 
>     Sam> Either that, or have us all drive cars that look like bins.
> 
> I didn't think Multiplas were that ugly!  Or bins that strange :)


Umm... wrong Sam?

Sam "Multipla driver" **Wi**lson

In article <220620051050568006%Sam.Wilson@ed.ac.uk>,
 Sam Wilson  writes:

> In article , Kenneth MacDonald
>  wrote:
> > >>>>> "Sam" == Sam Nelson  writes:
> >     Sam> In article <d96gho$70p$2@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>, M Holmes
> >     Sam>  writes:
> >     >> Kaye Brewster  wrote: > "Liz \(I don't
> >     >> like Spam....\)"  writes: >> it
> >     >> was pointed out that huge ugly black bins at intervals >> along
> >     >> the street detract from the flowing elegance of the
> >     >> 
> >     >> > ...parked cars
> >     >> 
> >     >> I've never understood why they don't just make the bins in the
> >     >> shape of a car so that they don't detract from the look of our
> >     >> streets.
> > 
> >     Sam> Either that, or have us all drive cars that look like bins.
> > 
> > I didn't think Multiplas were that ugly!  Or bins that strange :)
> 
> Umm... wrong Sam?
> 
> Sam "Multipla driver" **Wi**lson


Ta-daa!  Ysee, it happens all the time.

Mind, I quite like Multiplas, and if it weren't for the fact that FIAT
make them, I might've seriously considered buying one.
-- 
SAm "Laguna driver" **Ne**lson.

In article <d9bdkg$fvf$1@dulnain.stir.ac.uk>, Sam Nelson
 wrote:


> Mind, I quite like Multiplas, and if it weren't for the fact that FIAT
> make them, I might've seriously considered buying one.


I grant you that being made by FIAT may be a drawback (lots of plastic
in inappropriate places) but apart from that it's been fantastic.

Sam

Sam Wilson  writes

>In article <d9bdkg$fvf$1@dulnain.stir.ac.uk>, Sam Nelson
> wrote:
>
>> Mind, I quite like Multiplas, and if it weren't for the fact that FIAT
>> make them, I might've seriously considered buying one.
>
>I grant you that being made by FIAT may be a drawback (lots of plastic
>in inappropriate places) but apart from that it's been fantastic.
>

Is it worth pointing out that my mate who fixes cars for Arnold Clarke
reckons that there's a lot more goes wrong with recent Renaults than
with FIATs? 

It really surprised me but he reckoned there were far more warranty
repairs done on the Renaults than the FIATs - mind you, he was bitching
because he hadn't done anything other than warranty work for weeks.
-- 
Bob Scott

Tamzin  wrote:


> "M Holmes"  wrote in message
> news:d96glj$70p$3@scotsman.ed.ac.uk...
>> Iain Turnbull  wrote:

>> > Plus, your 330 a month *does* pay for more than just the rubbish
>> > collection. Education, social work, housing services, road maintenance,
>> > street lighting, libraries...

>> ...aqueducts?

> You been playing the original "Civilisation" again?


I haven't.  I'd be safer taking up heroin abuse than risking playing Civ
again.  I remember the days when girlfriends would phone up at 8am,
interrupting my latest invasion of the perfidious French, with that
sarcastic tone in their voice asking "It seems we've missed the cinema. 
Do you think you could make it over for breakfast?"

No. It was just a bit of Monty Python heckling. See "Life of Brian" for
details.


> I always knew a city
> was going to plan when the aqueduct was in place.  One of my favourite
> things was to establish my vast worldwide empire and then take over a small
> insignificant enemy city.  As I was so rich I could lavish all the
> improvements on this "pet" city and suddenly it was transformed into a near
> village with aqueducts, university, cathedral, manufacturing plant, SDI
> defence, mass transit and all the rest (not to mention any unused Wonders
> gathering dust from the Ancient world).. Ah those were the days.......


Ah yes. I used to play a variation called "Libertarian Civ". In that,
you never get to attack anyone who hasn't attacked you first,though you
can give 'em hell if they do,until they sue for peace, when one must
accept. Also you don't get to raise taxes (or at the start, you have to
set them to the minimum possible). I therefore used to raise cash by building
Universities and Libraries and selling them.

It's Sad, I know, and it's why I must resist....

FoFP

Roland Watson wrote:

> Privatise 'em, might get a better service at a lower price.


And when has that *ever* worked?

In article ,
 Bob Scott  writes:

> Is it worth pointing out that my mate who fixes cars for Arnold Clarke
> reckons that there's a lot more goes wrong with recent Renaults than
> with FIATs? 


Speaking as one who gets his Renault fixed by Arnold Clark, I'm well aware
of the notion that Renaults have their problems.  But none of the _big_ bad
things that go wrong have gone wrong with mine yet, and to be frank I only
really give a toss about the maintenance costs of the cars I own.


> It really surprised me but he reckoned there were far more warranty
> repairs done on the Renaults than the FIATs


I had four radios (made by Blaupunkt!) in my Laguna in its first four months
of life (late 96 P-plate) and a squeaky alternator belt that took several
shots to fix during the first year, but 102700 miles later the only thing
that puts me off buying another Renault is the rapidly-declining state of
customer service at my local Arnold Clark Renault outfit.  But I guess they're
just annoyed at me for not having replaced the car four or five years ago.
-- 
SAm.

urchaidh  wrote:

> Roland Watson wrote:
>> Privatise 'em, might get a better service at a lower price.

> And when has that *ever* worked?


British Telecom.

FoFP

In article <d9bl7q$2l0$1@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>,
 M Holmes  writes:

> urchaidh  wrote:
> > Roland Watson wrote:
> >> Privatise 'em, might get a better service at a lower price.
> 
> > And when has that *ever* worked?
> 
> British Telecom.


As far as I know, there's no-one else I can get telephone wiring for my house
from other than BT, so I reckon we're still waiting for that one to finish.
-- 
SAm.

Sam Nelson wrote:

> In article <d9bl7q$2l0$1@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>,
>  M Holmes  writes:
> 
>>urchaidh  wrote:
>>
>>>Roland Watson wrote:
>>>
>>>>Privatise 'em, might get a better service at a lower price.
>>
>>>And when has that *ever* worked?
>>
>>British Telecom.
> 
> 
> As far as I know, there's no-one else I can get telephone wiring for my house
> from other than BT, so I reckon we're still waiting for that one to finish.


Most alternative phone companies just use BTs wiring to connect you to the 
exchange but when I got telewest fitted they put in a new line that ran up the 
side of the building with the broadband/TV coax cable.  At the other end this 
was connected to the local exchange box.  If they can do it then presumably 
other phone companies can, they just tend to use the existing BT line if it's 
there.  I could be wrong about this though.

Stewart
-- 
You are about to enter... The Scary Door...

In article <d9bm2b$30p$1@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>,
 Stewart Smith  writes:

> Sam Nelson wrote:
> > In article <d9bl7q$2l0$1@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>,
> >  M Holmes  writes:
> > 
> >>urchaidh  wrote:
> >>
> >>>Roland Watson wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>Privatise 'em, might get a better service at a lower price.
> >>
> >>>And when has that *ever* worked?
> >>
> >>British Telecom.
> > 
> > As far as I know, there's no-one else I can get telephone wiring for my
> > house from other than BT, so I reckon we're still waiting for that one
> > to finish.
> 
> Most alternative phone companies just use BTs wiring to connect you to the 
> exchange


Exactly.  Local-loop monopoly, hence might as well have stayed nationalised.
Plus, I don't believe there's anything happening in the phone business now
that Simply Could Not Have Happened if BT were still nationalised, and I can
think of several bad things that might well have been avoided, up to and
including the Crazy Frog.


> but when I got telewest fitted they put in a new line that ran up the 
> side of the building with the broadband/TV coax cable.


No cable where I am: no-one wants the business, clearly.  That's what happens
when you let the market decide.  There's five telegraph poles' worth of
wiring between my home and the exchange, and three of those poles and most
of the wiring provides service to my home alone and were installed in 2000.
Can you imagine how much that would have cost, if I'd had to go to the so-called
open market for a phone service and pay for the poles and wiring myself?
The Universal Service Obligation gets my vote every time.
-- 
SAm.

On Wed, 22 Jun 2005 12:23:22 +0000 (UTC) someone who may be M Holmes
 wrote this:-


>urchaidh  wrote:
>> Roland Watson wrote:
>>> Privatise 'em, might get a better service at a lower price.
>
>> And when has that *ever* worked?
>
>British Telecom.


I remember when directory enquiries was "free".

A lot of technical changes were going to happen anyway, it was just
the way engineering was going. I doubt if privatisation had much of
an effect on this.


-- 
 David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
 I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
 prevents me by using the RIP Act 2000.

In article <d9bl7q$2l0$1@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>,
M Holmes   wrote:

>British Telecom.


On Monday, some workmen cut through the phone line for all the houses
in our street.  Yesterday I tried to phone BT (using a borrowed mobile
phone) to find out when they would be fixing it.  Before it would
transfer me to a real person, I had to go through a 10-minute sequence
of mostly pointless automated questions such as "Press 1 if you
regularly take children to school between 8.30 and 9.00".  I was then
placed on hold for 20 minutes, after which I was cut off.

The workmen called BT to find out why they had not come to fix it.
BT told them no problem had been reported, even though they had been
informed immediately after the incident.  It eventually transpired
that BT had been searching for a fault in EH9 2xx, Glasgow.

This would not have happened with Post Office Telephones.

The only improvements I can see since privatisation of BT are due to
advances in technology which would have happened anyway.

-- Richard

David Hansen  wrote:

> On Wed, 22 Jun 2005 12:23:22 +0000 (UTC) someone who may be M Holmes
>  wrote this:-

>>urchaidh  wrote:
>>> Roland Watson wrote:
>>>> Privatise 'em, might get a better service at a lower price.
>>
>>> And when has that *ever* worked?
>>
>>British Telecom.

> I remember when directory enquiries was "free".


Yeah, you could get the number of where you wanted to call quite
quickly. You just had to wait three months after moving for the Post
Office to install the phone on which you wanted to dial Directory
Enquiries.

Not as bad as waiting for an ambulance exactly, since you probably
wouldn't die of not having a phone (unless you had to phone to put
yourself in the three day queue for an ambulance).


> A lot of technical changes were going to happen anyway, it was just
> the way engineering was going. I doubt if privatisation had much of
> an effect on this.


The fact that we could take our business elsewhere and tell the
government service precisely where to shove it is what changed their
minds about giving us any service at all.

FoFP

Richard Tobin  wrote:


> The workmen called BT to find out why they had not come to fix it.
> BT told them no problem had been reported, even though they had been
> informed immediately after the incident.  It eventually transpired
> that BT had been searching for a fault in EH9 2xx, Glasgow.

> This would not have happened with Post Office Telephones.


It certainly wouldn't. They'd have been on strike in sympathy with the
guys at British Leyland's rights to pee on the workbench.

FoFP

In article <d9c04q$4k9$1@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>,
 M Holmes  writes:

> David Hansen  wrote:
> > A lot of technical changes were going to happen anyway, it was just
> > the way engineering was going. I doubt if privatisation had much of
> > an effect on this.
> 
> The fact that we could take our business elsewhere and tell the
> government service precisely where to shove it is what changed their
> minds about giving us any service at all.


As already pointed out, there are plenty of people out there that _still_
have nowhere else to take their business.  From where I'm sitting, BT still
looks pretty nationalised.
-- 
SAm.

In article <d9c080$4k9$2@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>,
 M Holmes  writes:

> Richard Tobin  wrote:
> 
> > The workmen called BT to find out why they had not come to fix it.
> > BT told them no problem had been reported, even though they had been
> > informed immediately after the incident.  It eventually transpired
> > that BT had been searching for a fault in EH9 2xx, Glasgow.
> 
> > This would not have happened with Post Office Telephones.
> 
> It certainly wouldn't. They'd have been on strike in sympathy with the
> guys at British Leyland's rights to pee on the workbench.


Umm...  Non sequitur?
-- 
SAm.

In article <d9bsqq$2e7i$1@pc-news.cogsci.ed.ac.uk>, Richard Tobin 
 writes

> It eventually transpired
>that BT had been searching for a fault in EH9 2xx, Glasgow.
>
>This would not have happened with Post Office Telephones.


  That's because postcodes hadn't been invented then.

-- 
Email me via robert (at) nojay (dot) org  (new email address)
This address no longer accepts HTML posts.

Robert Sneddon

In article ,
Robert Sneddon   wrote:


>>This would not have happened with Post Office Telephones.
>
>  That's because postcodes hadn't been invented then.


False.

-- Richard

Sam Nelson  wrote:

> In article <d9c080$4k9$2@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>,
>  M Holmes  writes:
>> Richard Tobin  wrote:

>> > The workmen called BT to find out why they had not come to fix it.
>> > BT told them no problem had been reported, even though they had been
>> > informed immediately after the incident.  It eventually transpired
>> > that BT had been searching for a fault in EH9 2xx, Glasgow.

>> > This would not have happened with Post Office Telephones.

>> It certainly wouldn't. They'd have been on strike in sympathy with the
>> guys at British Leyland's rights to pee on the workbench.

> Umm...  Non sequitur?


Nope, a history lesson for you younguns. Though it may have been the
nearest wall rather than the actual workbench that they had a strike for
their right to pee on.

FoFP

In article <d9c1ol$2fr7$1@pc-news.cogsci.ed.ac.uk>, Richard Tobin 
 writes

>In article ,
>Robert Sneddon   wrote:
>
>>>This would not have happened with Post Office Telephones.
>>
>>  That's because postcodes hadn't been invented then.
>
>False.


  Our house got a phone from GPO Telephones long before we got a 
postcode. BT wasn't spun off until the late 60's I think -- that's when 
I recall seeing the Austin A40 vans repainted with the swoosh although 
if you looked closely you could still see the old GPO logo underneath 
the paint.
-- 
Email me via robert (at) nojay (dot) org  (new email address)
This address no longer accepts HTML posts.

Robert Sneddon

David Hansen wrote:


> I remember when directory enquiries was "free".


It still is.  Or I should say they still are.

After they introduced charges for DE calls from private phones,
they remained free from public call boxes.  I'm not sure whether
that's still the case, but you can get free DE on BT's website.

On Wed, 22 Jun 2005 17:52:14 +0100 someone who may be Robert Sneddon
 wrote this:-


>BT wasn't spun off until the late 60's I think


http://www.sigtel.com/tel_hist_btprivatisation.html says 1984.

Post codes were introduced by least the early 1970s.



-- 
 David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
 I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
 prevents me by using the RIP Act 2000.

David Hansen wrote:

> On Wed, 22 Jun 2005 17:52:14 +0100 someone who may be Robert Sneddon
>  wrote this:-
> 
> 
>>BT wasn't spun off until the late 60's I think
> 
> 
> http://www.sigtel.com/tel_hist_btprivatisation.html says 1984.
> 
> Post codes were introduced by least the early 1970s.
> 
> 
> 

Introduced between 1959 and 1974 according to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcode

[On 20-06 G wrote]

> 6 days now...
> Simply unacceptable.


[On 22-06]
I came online to find out what was going on.  We've all had our bins out in 
the Drum Brae Park area for eight days now, and they still remain 
uncollected.

I wasn't aware of the binning of 5 lorries, if you excuse the pun, until I 
read it here; I don't get the Evening News.  This sounds like one of the 
same 'bright ideas' as the reorganisation of traffic in town.  Madness!

The "Statement on Delay to Refuse Collection Service" on the council website 
says:

=== START QUOTE ===
Residents suffering delays are asked to remain patient. If refuse is not 
picked up on their normal day, residents are asked to take it off the street 
and resubmit it again on the next collection day.

It is planned to commence Wednesday collection schedules on the 22 June with 
the objective of completing all of the scheduled Wednesday collections. Any 
refuse left from Wednesday 15 June will be treated as a priority
=== END QUOTE ===

Well, our collection day is Wednesday.  We put our bin out last Wednesday, 
15 June at 07:00 and it's still there unemptied at 19:10 on Wednesday 22 
June.  Certainly don't feel as though we've been given priority status by 
the council.  It's just as well we recycle a lot of our waste.

Does the city council have a new motto?  If it ain't broke, break it!  How 
about a MakeRubbishHistory march in the city centre.  We could each bring 
along our wheelie bins and leave them outside the council buildings!  I'm 
sure they've get emptied pretty quickly then.  Has it occurred to the 
council that maybe they need more lorries?  Maybe five more would do the 
job.

Hmmph!

Gareth J M Saunders

"Gareth J M Saunders"  wrote in message 
news:d_hue.54647

> I came online to find out what was going on.  We've all had our bins out 
> in the Drum Brae Park area for eight days now, and they still remain 
> uncollected.


SNAP. We live down the road and our usual collection day is a Friday, 
however our last collection was Monday of last week.
As for the council removing 5 trucks, they reckon that is the amount of 
refuse that is not required to be collected as it is the amount that is 
finding it's way through the various recycling points or through the 
containerised collection method. The average tonnage of waste collected has 
went down that much that the council in their infinite wisdom have used this 
statistic to save a wee bit money, but more importantly, piss off an already 
tetchy workforce!

-- 

!Speedy Gonzales!

to reply, remove the 'OBVIOUS'

In article <d9c48t$56a$1@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>, fofp@holyrood.ed.ac.uk 
says...

> Sam Nelson  wrote:
> > In article <d9c080$4k9$2@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>,
> >  M Holmes  writes:
> >> Richard Tobin  wrote:
> >> > This would not have happened with Post Office Telephones.
> 
> >> It certainly wouldn't. They'd have been on strike in sympathy with the
> >> guys at British Leyland's rights to pee on the workbench.
> 
> > Umm...  Non sequitur?
> 
> Nope, a history lesson for you younguns. Though it may have been the
> nearest wall rather than the actual workbench that they had a strike for
> their right to pee on.


I think you're confusing the problems of nationalised industry with the 
problems of over-powerful unions.  I am old enough to remember the BL 
teaspoon strike, for example.
-- 
SAm.

Sam Nelson  wrote:


>> Nope, a history lesson for you younguns. Though it may have been the
>> nearest wall rather than the actual workbench that they had a strike for
>> their right to pee on.

> I think you're confusing the problems of nationalised industry with the 
> problems of over-powerful unions.  I am old enough to remember the BL 
> teaspoon strike, for example.


The problems were related. When Labour screwed up in the 70's and traded
IMF loans for orers on how to run the economy, they needed the public
service unions on board for a "Prices and Incomes" policy and invited
them to beer and chips at Downing Street. It all went to the heads of
the union reps and we ended up with Maggie Thatcher to get them back
under control again. The strike to pee where they wanted was just an
example of those symptoms.

In article <RgY27BI+cZuCFwSf@nojay.fsnet.co.uk>,
Robert Sneddon   wrote:


>  Our house got a phone from GPO Telephones long before we got a 
>postcode.


Quite likely, but postcodes were around long before British Telecom.


>BT wasn't spun off until the late 60's I think


Young people today... It was the first big Thatcher privatisation in
the early 1980s.

-- Richard

In article <d9ch46$2k6e$3@pc-news.cogsci.ed.ac.uk>, Richard Tobin 
 writes

>In article <RgY27BI+cZuCFwSf@nojay.fsnet.co.uk>,
>Robert Sneddon   wrote:
>
>>  Our house got a phone from GPO Telephones long before we got a
>>postcode.
>
>Young people today... It was the first big Thatcher privatisation in
>the early 1980s.


  It was *privatised* in the 80s like British Steel was but BT wasn't 
part of the GPO by then. That break occurred much earlier, I'm sure. The 
repainting of the vans and the disappearance of the PO insignia occurred 
when I was at school in the late 60s or very early 70s. I'm maybe 
misremembering the swoosh logo which might have been a pre-privatisation 
thing in the 80s but something replaced the GPO logo much earlier.
-- 
Email me via robert (at) nojay (dot) org  (new email address)
This address no longer accepts HTML posts.

Robert Sneddon

"Sam Wilson"  wrote in message
news:220620051050568006%Sam.Wilson@ed.ac.uk...

> In article , Kenneth MacDonald
>  wrote:
>
> >
> > I didn't think Multiplas were that ugly!  Or bins that strange :)
>
> Umm... wrong Sam?
>
> Sam "Multipla driver" **Wi**lson


My parents gave Multiplas a nickname when they first appeared on our
streets.  can you guess what it was?  OK - here goes.  They nicknamed them
"Uglies".  I have to agree although my parents cruelty has made me feel
sorry for the Multiplas of the world so I don't use the name myself.  Anyway
they are better than those cars with "bums" - you know those Meganes that
are supposed to always be shaking that ass".  I just think those ledges on
the back look ugly.

Tamzin

"Andrew MacCormack"  wrote in message
news:11bi4iacevna1e6@corp.supernews.com...

> Tamzin wrote:
> > You been playing the original "Civilisation" again?  I always knew a
city
> > was going to plan when the aqueduct was in place.  One of my favourite
> > things was to establish my vast worldwide empire and then take over a
small
> > insignificant enemy city.  As I was so rich I could lavish all the
> > improvements on this "pet" city and suddenly it was transformed into a
near
> > village with aqueducts, university, cathedral, manufacturing plant, SDI
> > defence, mass transit and all the rest (not to mention any unused
Wonders
> > gathering dust from the Ancient world).. Ah those were the days.......
>
> You might want to check out www.freeciv.org and relive your glory days...


Good site - I'll have to spend a few hours on that one methinks :o)  I've
still got a PC version of the old game installed on my PC and I still run
through a Civ or two once in a while.  I always liked to be the Romans.  Did
anyone else have a preference like that?

Tamzin

"M Holmes"  wrote in message
news:d9bi7r$1ug$6@scotsman.ed.ac.uk...

> Tamzin  wrote:
>
> > "M Holmes"  wrote in message
> >
> > You been playing the original "Civilisation" again?
>
> I haven't.  I'd be safer taking up heroin abuse than risking playing Civ
> again.  I remember the days when girlfriends would phone up at 8am,
> interrupting my latest invasion of the perfidious French, with that
> sarcastic tone in their voice asking "It seems we've missed the cinema.
> Do you think you could make it over for breakfast?"
>
> No. It was just a bit of Monty Python heckling. See "Life of Brian" for
> details.


I once spent an entire night playing Civ from about 7.30pm to 6.00am the
next morning before going in to work.  felt terrible all day but then went
home to play Civ until all hours again that evening :o)  Twas terribly
addictive indeed..........


Tamzin

In article ,
Robert Sneddon   wrote:


>  It was *privatised* in the 80s like British Steel was but BT wasn't 
>part of the GPO by then.


It was renamed British Telecom in 1980 but was still part of the Post
Office until 1981, and privatisation was announced in 1982.


>The 
>repainting of the vans and the disappearance of the PO insignia occurred 
>when I was at school in the late 60s or very early 70s.


Perhaps you are remembering some change resulting from the Post
Office's change from being a government department to a public
corporation in 1969?

See http://www.btplc.com/Thegroup/BTsHistory/History.htm.

-- Richard

In article <d9c0b4$b81$1@dulnain.stir.ac.uk>,
 sam@ssrl.org.uk (Sam Nelson) writes:

> In article <d9c04q$4k9$1@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>,
>  M Holmes  writes:
> > David Hansen  wrote:
> > > A lot of technical changes were going to happen anyway, it was just
> > > the way engineering was going. I doubt if privatisation had much of
> > > an effect on this.
> > 
> > The fact that we could take our business elsewhere and tell the
> > government service precisely where to shove it is what changed their
> > minds about giving us any service at all.
> 
> As already pointed out, there are plenty of people out there that _still_
> have nowhere else to take their business.  From where I'm sitting, BT still
> looks pretty nationalised.


Though (apologies for the self-followup) things may just be about to change:

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4122060.stm

It's only taken a couple of decades.
-- 
SAm.

Sam Nelson wrote in message ...

>In article <d9c0b4$b81$1@dulnain.stir.ac.uk>,
> sam@ssrl.org.uk (Sam Nelson) writes:
>> In article <d9c04q$4k9$1@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>,
>>  M Holmes  writes:
>> > David Hansen  wrote:
>> > > A lot of technical changes were going to happen anyway, it was just
>> > > the way engineering was going. I doubt if privatisation had much of
>> > > an effect on this.
>> >
>> > The fact that we could take our business elsewhere and tell the
>> > government service precisely where to shove it is what changed their
>> > minds about giving us any service at all.
>>
>> As already pointed out, there are plenty of people out there that _still_
>> have nowhere else to take their business.  From where I'm sitting, BT
still
>> looks pretty nationalised.
>
>Though (apologies for the self-followup) things may just be about to
change:
>
>  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4122060.stm
>
>It's only taken a couple of decades.



It may to some look like a monopoly in some areas, but that's different to
looking nationalised. If you look at any of BT, British Airways, etc. there
were massive economies in staff costs after nationalisation. Now there may
have been socialist benefits in using nationalised industries to provide
employment, but, from the customers point of view, even allowing for
shareholder dividends, the service provided by BT is better than, and the
call charges a fraction of, what they would have been had it remained a
nationwide nationalised monopoly.

Toom

In article <d9e0vd$u0i$1@news6.svr.pol.co.uk>,
 "Toom Tabard"  writes:

> 
> Sam Nelson wrote in message ...
> >In article <d9c0b4$b81$1@dulnain.stir.ac.uk>,
> > sam@ssrl.org.uk (Sam Nelson) writes:
> >> As already pointed out, there are plenty of people out there that _still_
> >> have nowhere else to take their business.  From where I'm sitting, BT
> >> still looks pretty nationalised.
> >
> >Though (apologies for the self-followup) things may just be about to
> change:
> >
> >  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4122060.stm
> >
> >It's only taken a couple of decades.
> 
> It may to some look like a monopoly in some areas, but that's different to
> looking nationalised. If you look at any of BT, British Airways, etc. there
> were massive economies in staff costs after nationalisation. Now there may
> have been socialist benefits in using nationalised industries to provide
> employment, but, from the customers point of view, even allowing for
> shareholder dividends, the service provided by BT is better than, and the
> call charges a fraction of, what they would have been had it remained a
> nationwide nationalised monopoly.


One of Thatcher's children here, evidently.  After all, privatised railways
and gas and power services are just _fantastic_ now: all that competition
is dead efficient and makes them work really hard for every penny.  Duh.
-- 
SAm.

Sam Nelson wrote:

> In article <d9e0vd$u0i$1@news6.svr.pol.co.uk>,


> One of Thatcher's children here, evidently.  After all, privatised railways
> and gas and power services are just _fantastic_ now: all that competition
> is dead efficient and makes them work really hard for every penny.  Duh.


So some privatisation worked better than others.

TTH

David Hansen wrote:

> On Wed, 22 Jun 2005 12:23:22 +0000 (UTC) someone who may be M Holmes
>  wrote this:-
>
> >urchaidh  wrote:
> >> Roland Watson wrote:
> >>> Privatise 'em, might get a better service at a lower price.
> >
> >> And when has that *ever* worked?
> >
> >British Telecom.
>
> I remember when directory enquiries was "free".
>
> A lot of technical changes were going to happen anyway, it was just
> the way engineering was going. I doubt if privatisation had much of
> an effect on this.


And it did cost money to employ someone to sit there and give out info.
Especially to young children out to tease the operators.

OTOH, I remember when it used to call a fortune to make a long distance
call. Now I can make as many as I like evenings and weekends for s
single fixed fee.

TTH

In article ,
 "the_tattie_howker"  writes:

> Sam Nelson wrote:
> > One of Thatcher's children here, evidently.  After all, privatised railways
> > and gas and power services are just _fantastic_ now: all that competition
> > is dead efficient and makes them work really hard for every penny.  Duh.
> 
> So some privatisation worked better than others.


Absolutely.  My contention is that BT wasn't one of them.
-- 
SAm.

M Holmes wrote:

> Tamzin  wrote:
>

> Ah yes. I used to play a variation called "Libertarian Civ". In that,
> you never get to attack anyone who hasn't attacked you first,though you
> can give 'em hell if they do,until they sue for peace, when one must
> accept. Also you don't get to raise taxes (or at the start, you have to
> set them to the minimum possible). I therefore used to raise cash by building
> Universities and Libraries and selling them.


Did you ever try playing libertarian with others allowed to do as they
please?


> It's Sad, I know, and it's why I must resist....


For me its Warcraft or Starcraft.

TTH

In article <d9e25f$1lq$8@dulnain.stir.ac.uk>, Sam Nelson 
 writes

>
>One of Thatcher's children here, evidently.  After all, privatised railways
>and gas and power services are just _fantastic_ now: all that competition
>is dead efficient and makes them work really hard for every penny.  Duh.


  The railway system today carries more people more miles every year than 
British Rail ever did, and provides a better service in terms of new 
rolling stock, comfort, safety, promptness, number of strikes etc. It's 
only through rose-coloured glasses that people regard the British Rail 
of the 1970s as somehow better than today; perhaps it is the porters who 
would carry your trunks for a few pennies that you miss?
-- 
Email me via robert (at) nojay (dot) org  (new email address)
This address no longer accepts HTML posts.

Robert Sneddon

Sam Nelson  wrote:


> One of Thatcher's children here, evidently.  After all, privatised railways


The reason private railways don't work i that these days people travel
by car, and rail is efficient only for a very few services, hence the
subsidies (which are of course anything but "free market").

Road charging might change this to some extent of course, but
privatising railways was always a non-runner unless there was political
will to let the rail service drop to the small fraction that is still
wanted (in the economics sense of the word) rather than continue to run
a glorified National Train Set.


> and gas and power services are just _fantastic_ now: all that competition
> is dead efficient and makes them work really hard for every penny.  Duh.


Apart from hassles when changing flats, I'm certainly happier with the
private services availale now than I was in the old days.

FoFP

Sam Nelson  wrote:

> In article ,

>> So some privatisation worked better than others.

> Absolutely.  My contention is that BT wasn't one of them.


My contention is that you aren't old enough to remember how badly it all
worked before privatisation.

FoFP

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 11:38:59 UTC, M Holmes  
wrote:


> My contention is that you aren't old enough to remember how badly it all
> worked before privatisation.


20% of all dialled calls were connected to the wrong number in the 
last year of the nationalised service. More than 20% of payphones were
out of order at any time. Calls cost substantially more than they do 
now, even if you ignore inflation. The waiting list for a new line was
typically months. Only a few types of phone were permitted.

I got Mercury almost as soon as it came out - it cut my phone bill by 
65%.

Ian

--

In article ,
 Robert Sneddon  writes:

>   The railway system today carries more people more miles every year than 
> British Rail ever did, and provides a better service in terms of new 
> rolling stock, comfort, safety, promptness, number of strikes etc.


Dunno about comfort.  Lack of legroom on trains last time I used one
bordered on the unavoidable sexual assault of the person opposite me.
Precisely one return train journey in the past ten years has successfully
competed with the equivalent journey by car.  Presumably your response to
that is that driving should have been rendered less amenable?

As for promptness, isn't that everyone's problem with railways now?

Have you counted the number of different places you have to ask about
lost property recently?

Are railways _really_ safer now than they were in, say, the mid-1980s?


> It's 
> only through rose-coloured glasses that people regard the British Rail 
> of the 1970s as somehow better than today; perhaps it is the porters who 
> would carry your trunks for a few pennies that you miss?


A radical overhaul of the fare structure, which for the moment makes choosing
a flight look a) more straightforward and b) preferable, would be good.
They should start from looking at what they're competing with, rather than
pulling figures out of the air and hoping people will pay them.

I used rail services for almost every trip I made between about 1975 and
1990.  Rail services were straightforward, reasonably priced, and
worked.  These days, I hardly see a journey that isn't better done by car.
Is that my fault?
-- 
SAm.

In article <dzZo7CxomoOm-pn2-2edmRqiYCSlo@localhost>,
Ian Johnston  wrote:


>20% of all dialled calls were connected to the wrong number in the 
>last year of the nationalised service.


Can you provide some evidence for that?  It certainly doesn't correspond
to my recollection.

As I said elsewhere, all the improvements I've noticed in the phone
service are due to new technology, and I don't have any reason to
suppose that wouldn't have happened if it had remained nationalised.
As far as service is concerned, my experience is that it is much
worse now, as illustrated by the call I described.

-- Richard

In article <d9e6v8$fj1$1@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>,
 M Holmes  writes:

> Sam Nelson  wrote:
> > and gas and power services are just _fantastic_ now: all that competition
> > is dead efficient and makes them work really hard for every penny.  Duh.
> 
> Apart from hassles when changing flats, I'm certainly happier with the
> private services availale now than I was in the old days.


That's it, though, isn't it?  The services go with the property, not the
customer.  And how does it make sense to have hundreds if not thousands of
people employed solely to try to persuade you to buy exactly the same stuff
from them rather than from the other guys?
-- 
SAm.

In article <d9e70j$fj1$2@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>,
 M Holmes  writes:

> Sam Nelson  wrote:
> > In article ,
> 
> >> So some privatisation worked better than others.
> 
> > Absolutely.  My contention is that BT wasn't one of them.
> 
> My contention is that you aren't old enough to remember how badly it all
> worked before privatisation.


Hard argument to win.  I'm reliably informed that railways weren't exactly in
a golden age in the years leading up to nationalisation.  From first principles
though, there are things the whole country needs, and it's hard to see how
you don't win, if you organise things correctly, from doing them on a national
scale.  I'd be happy to exclude the production of cars and steel from the
list of those things, though.  I'm old enough to remember what a complete
mess those were, as nationalised industries.
-- 
SAm.

In article <dzZo7CxomoOm-pn2-2edmRqiYCSlo@localhost>,
 "Ian Johnston"  writes:

> On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 11:38:59 UTC, M Holmes  
> wrote:
> > My contention is that you aren't old enough to remember how badly it all
> > worked before privatisation.
> 
> 20% of all dialled calls were connected to the wrong number in the 
> last year of the nationalised service. More than 20% of payphones were
> out of order at any time. Calls cost substantially more than they do 
> now, even if you ignore inflation. The waiting list for a new line was
> typically months. Only a few types of phone were permitted.


None of these are intrinsic features of how a nationalised industry _could_
run---they're just data on how it _was_ run.  But, hey, feel free to get out
there and buy your Crazy Frog ringtone---it's what the market won for you.
-- 
SAm.

Yeah, bring back British Leyland!


"urchaidh"  wrote in message
news:1119442323.755554.51570@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

> Roland Watson wrote:
> > Privatise 'em, might get a better service at a lower price.
>
> And when has that *ever* worked?
>

"David Hansen"  wrote in message
news:qcrib11jm5ns6pls0mp4u2d1t6ga30b9jt@4ax.com...

> On Wed, 22 Jun 2005 12:23:22 +0000 (UTC) someone who may be M Holmes
>  wrote this:-
>
> >urchaidh  wrote:
> >> Roland Watson wrote:
> >>> Privatise 'em, might get a better service at a lower price.
> >
> >> And when has that *ever* worked?
> >
> >British Telecom.
>
> I remember when directory enquiries was "free".


I assume by the quotes that you acknowledge it wasn't actually free from the
taxpayer's POV, just better hidden costs.


>
> A lot of technical changes were going to happen anyway, it was just
> the way engineering was going. I doubt if privatisation had much of
> an effect on this.


I obviously disagree, but we'll never know in practise and we're not going
back to those days in a hurry.

Roland.


>
>
> -- 
>  David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
>  I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
>  prevents me by using the RIP Act 2000.

You must have been born after 1980. There used to be waiting lists just to
get a replacement handset and of course they all looked the same. I wonder
what the tax rate would be after all these companies were renationalised?
Nobody would vote for it unless they hated having any money.


"Sam Nelson"  wrote in message
news:d9e25f$1lq$8@dulnain.stir.ac.uk...

> In article <d9e0vd$u0i$1@news6.svr.pol.co.uk>,
>  "Toom Tabard"  writes:
> >
> > Sam Nelson wrote in message ...
> > >In article <d9c0b4$b81$1@dulnain.stir.ac.uk>,
> > > sam@ssrl.org.uk (Sam Nelson) writes:
> > >> As already pointed out, there are plenty of people out there that
_still_
> > >> have nowhere else to take their business.  From where I'm sitting, BT
> > >> still looks pretty nationalised.
> > >
> > >Though (apologies for the self-followup) things may just be about to
> > change:
> > >
> > >  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4122060.stm
> > >
> > >It's only taken a couple of decades.
> >
> > It may to some look like a monopoly in some areas, but that's different
to
> > looking nationalised. If you look at any of BT, British Airways, etc.
there
> > were massive economies in staff costs after nationalisation. Now there
may
> > have been socialist benefits in using nationalised industries to provide
> > employment, but, from the customers point of view, even allowing for
> > shareholder dividends, the service provided by BT is better than, and
the
> > call charges a fraction of, what they would have been had it remained a
> > nationwide nationalised monopoly.
>
> One of Thatcher's children here, evidently.  After all, privatised
railways
> and gas and power services are just _fantastic_ now: all that competition
> is dead efficient and makes them work really hard for every penny.  Duh.
> -- 
> SAm.

Sam Nelson  wrote:


> None of these are intrinsic features of how a nationalised industry _could_
> run---they're just data on how it _was_ run.


Yet they're consistent with the story of Soviet Russia which eventually
was run so inefficiently that it'd have got poorer more slowly had
nobody gone to work.

It's not hard to see that the public, if asked who should get more
money, the nurses or the phone network, are going to answer "the nurses"
even if they'd rather have to wait for an operation when they need one
than a phone when they moved flat. The politicians run with it and hey
presto, a waiting list for phones that's months long.


> But, hey, feel free to get out there and buy your Crazy Frog
> ringtone---it's what the market won for you. 


I refer you to Mister Ratner on that one. The free market gives people
what they want at a price that they're willing to pay. It can't be held
responsible if by and large what people want is 90% crap.

FoFP

Sam Nelson  wrote:


>> My contention is that you aren't old enough to remember how badly it all
>> worked before privatisation.

> Hard argument to win.  I'm reliably informed that railways weren't
> exactly in a golden age in the years leading up to nationalisation. 
> From first principles though, there are things the whole country
> needs, and it's hard to see how you don't win, if you organise things
> correctly, from doing them on a national scale. 


It's not always the scale that's the problem (though a national scale
won't be the most efficient scale for everything). It's more that
politicians have to steal to get money, and the people they steal it
from then demand some say in how the money is spent. The Nationalised
Widget Company isn't usually a priority compared to nurses, and so gets
starved for cash.

FoFP

Sam Nelson  wrote:


> I used rail services for almost every trip I made between about 1975 and
> 1990.  Rail services were straightforward, reasonably priced, and
> worked.  These days, I hardly see a journey that isn't better done by car.
> Is that my fault?


Nope, but if we nationalised car travel, I'm sure rail would look pretty
competitive pretty quickly ;-)

FoFP

Sam Nelson  wrote:


> And how does it make sense to have hundreds if not thousands of
> people employed solely to try to persuade you to buy exactly the same
> stuff from them rather than from the other guys? -- SAm. 


They save the people who don't read "Which Widget?" the time they would
have spent doing so to compare products.

FoFP

On 23 Jun 2005 03:40:45 -0700, the_tattie_howker  wrote:

>
>
>David Hansen wrote:
>> On Wed, 22 Jun 2005 12:23:22 +0000 (UTC) someone who may be M Holmes
>>  wrote this:-
>>
>> >urchaidh  wrote:
>> >> Roland Watson wrote:
>> >>> Privatise 'em, might get a better service at a lower price.
>> >
>> >> And when has that *ever* worked?
>> >
>> >British Telecom.
>>
>> I remember when directory enquiries was "free".
>>
>> A lot of technical changes were going to happen anyway, it was just
>> the way engineering was going. I doubt if privatisation had much of
>> an effect on this.
>
>And it did cost money to employ someone to sit there and give out info.
>Especially to young children out to tease the operators.
>
>OTOH, I remember when it used to call a fortune to make a long distance
>call. Now I can make as many as I like evenings and weekends for s
>single fixed fee.


And once everyone has voip, you'll be able to make as many as you 
like worldwide for the cost of your broadband connection.

-- 
Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk

In article <d9eceh$9li$1$830fa17d@news.demon.co.uk>,
 "Roland Watson"  writes:

> You must have been born after 1980.


1962, actually.


> There used to be waiting lists just to
> get a replacement handset and of course they all looked the same. I wonder
> what the tax rate would be after all these companies were renationalised?
> Nobody would vote for it unless they hated having any money.


Smokescreen.
-- 
SAm.

> And once everyone has voip, you'll be able to make as many as you
> like worldwide for the cost of your broadband connection.


Guffaw chortle.

When was the last time you didn't get a dial tone on your BT landline?

(several years ago, but that was on the farm which doesn't really count).

When was the last time your broadband went tits up?

(last week)

How are you going to make an emergency call when your PC can't get power?

S.

-- 
Steven Hill

This is not the signature that you are looking for

Sam Nelson wrote in message ...

>In article <d9e0vd$u0i$1@news6.svr.pol.co.uk>,
> "Toom Tabard"  writes:
>>
>> Sam Nelson wrote in message ...
>> >In article <d9c0b4$b81$1@dulnain.stir.ac.uk>,
>> > sam@ssrl.org.uk (Sam Nelson) writes:
>> >> As already pointed out, there are plenty of people out there that
_still_
>> >> have nowhere else to take their business.  From where I'm sitting, BT
>> >> still looks pretty nationalised.
>> >
>> >Though (apologies for the self-followup) things may just be about to
>> change:
>> >
>> >  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4122060.stm
>> >
>> >It's only taken a couple of decades.
>>
>> It may to some look like a monopoly in some areas, but that's different
to
>> looking nationalised. If you look at any of BT, British Airways, etc.
there
>> were massive economies in staff costs after nationalisation. Now there
may
>> have been socialist benefits in using nationalised industries to provide
>> employment, but, from the customers point of view, even allowing for
>> shareholder dividends, the service provided by BT is better than, and the
>> call charges a fraction of, what they would have been had it remained a
>> nationwide nationalised monopoly.
>
>One of Thatcher's children here, evidently.


You couldn't be more wrong, I'm one of the first beneficiaries of post-war
socialism actually; that's why I mentioned the extra employment provided by
the nationalised industries. I made an observation, not a value judgement.

  After all, privatised railways

>and gas and power services are just _fantastic_ now: all that competition
>is dead efficient and makes them work really hard for every penny.  Duh.
>--


Gas, electricity, and telecoms would have been much more expensive had these
industires not been nationalised, and BA (or BEA and BOAC as it was before)
were massively overstaffed.

Toom

Richard Tobin wrote in message ...

>In article <dzZo7CxomoOm-pn2-2edmRqiYCSlo@localhost>,
>Ian Johnston  wrote:
>
>>20% of all dialled calls were connected to the wrong number in the
>>last year of the nationalised service.
>
>Can you provide some evidence for that?  It certainly doesn't correspond
>to my recollection.
>
>As I said elsewhere, all the improvements I've noticed in the phone
>service are due to new technology, and I don't have any reason to
>suppose that wouldn't have happened if it had remained nationalised.



There would have been no incentive to move from valves and mechanical
switches. We'd have one phone per village and be marginally behind 1960s
Albania. Were you around before these organisations were nationalised ?

Toom

Sam Nelson wrote in message ...

>In article <d9e6v8$fj1$1@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>,
> M Holmes  writes:
>> Sam Nelson  wrote:
>> > and gas and power services are just _fantastic_ now: all that
competition
>> > is dead efficient and makes them work really hard for every penny.
Duh.
>>
>> Apart from hassles when changing flats, I'm certainly happier with the
>> private services availale now than I was in the old days.
>
>That's it, though, isn't it?  The services go with the property, not the
>customer.  And how does it make sense to have hundreds if not thousands of
>people employed solely to try to persuade you to buy exactly the same stuff
>from them rather than from the other guys?


Because competition reduces the price and forces efficiency in running the
operation; otherwise, when they were nationalised they employed not
hundreds, not thousands, but tens of thousands more people to provide an
inferior service.

Toom

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 12:49:29 UTC, sam@ssrl.org.uk (Sam Nelson) wrote:


> In article <dzZo7CxomoOm-pn2-2edmRqiYCSlo@localhost>,
>  "Ian Johnston"  writes:

> > 20% of all dialled calls were connected to the wrong number in the 
> > last year of the nationalised service. More than 20% of payphones were
> > out of order at any time. Calls cost substantially more than they do 
> > now, even if you ignore inflation. The waiting list for a new line was
> > typically months. Only a few types of phone were permitted.
> 
> None of these are intrinsic features of how a nationalised industry _could_
> run---they're just data on how it _was_ run.


They're just data on how they were all run. It's what happens when the
company exists to benefit its workforce and doesn't give a flying fuck
for those who pay for the service. British Rail was crap at running 
trains. British Leyland was crap at building cars. The Post Office was
crap at running a phone system. We have only two major nationalised 
industries left: the NHS is well and truly the worst system of 
healthcare in Europe (particularly in Scotland where market reforms 
have been excluded) and the Post Office is a loss-making, 
strike-ridden inefficient behemoth of an organisation whose only 
expertise is in mail theft.

So sorry, but to say "that's not how it has to be" is just the same as
those who say "people would vote for true socialism, given the chance"
or "people would vote for true conservatism, given the chance".


> But, hey, feel free to get out
> there and buy your Crazy Frog ringtone---it's what the market won for you.


Do you think the mobile phone system in the UK would be better if it 
was a GPO monopoly?

Ian

--

Steven Hill wrote:

>>And once everyone has voip, you'll be able to make as many as you
>>like worldwide for the cost of your broadband connection.
> 
> 
> Guffaw chortle.
> 
> When was the last time you didn't get a dial tone on your BT landline?
> 
> (several years ago, but that was on the farm which doesn't really count).
> 
> When was the last time your broadband went tits up?
> 
> (last week)
> 
> How are you going to make an emergency call when your PC can't get power?
> 
> S.
> 

what commitment has your voip company made to provding routing to
emergency services (there was a case about this in the states recently).

Toom Tabard wrote in message ...

>
>Gas, electricity, and telecoms would have been much more expensive had
these
>industires not been nationalised, and BA (or BEA and BOAC as it was before)
>were massively overstaffed.
>


 That should of course read 'had these industries not been privatised'

Toom

> > How are you going to make an emergency call when your PC can't get power?
> >
> what commitment has your voip company made to provding routing to
> emergency services (there was a case about this in the states recently).


That's exactly what I has in mind when I posed that question.

Governments are trying to regulate the Internet as if it were the PSTN. It
isn't. Stop it. Bad government, oh look, you've shit on the rug. Again.

I don't use voip, since I dont' really see the point yet. That said, I
might start dicking around with asterisk, just to see how it has come on.

S.

-- 
Steven Hill

Your child may be an honor student, but you're still an idiot.

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 13:18:44 UTC, M Holmes  
wrote:


> The Nationalised
> Widget Company isn't usually a priority compared to nurses, and so gets
> starved for cash.


Not necessarily. Ravenscraig, for example, absorbed squillions of 
pounds for  years or decades after it was perfectly clear it was 
unviable. No private company would have squandered resources on it the
way the governments of the day did.

Was British Leyland's problem a shortage of cash? Far from it, I would
contend. If they had faced up to market realities earlier, and 
operated as a car maker rather than a West Midlands vote purchasing 
organisation, they might still be around.

The problem is, I think, that the level of spending depends on 
political priorities which may cause variations either way from what 
would be sensible.

Ian
--

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 12:34:14 UTC, sam@ssrl.org.uk (Sam Nelson) wrote:


> As for promptness, isn't that everyone's problem with railways now?


About 80 - 85% of trains arrive within ten minutes of the booked time.


> Have you counted the number of different places you have to ask about
> lost property recently?


It's great, isn't it? Nowadays, for the whole of Scotland you only 
have to ask in one place: Glasgow Queen Street. In BR days you might 
easily have had to check Queen Street, Waverley, Stirling, Inverness, 
Dundee and Aberdeen for a single item.


> Are railways _really_ safer now than they were in, say, the mid-1980s?


Not much difference. They are so safe that the statistical 
fluctuations drown the signal. They kill a lot fewer of their own 
maintenance staff than BR did, though. 


> I used rail services for almost every trip I made between about 1975 and
> 1990.  Rail services were straightforward, reasonably priced, and
> worked.  These days, I hardly see a journey that isn't better done by car.
> Is that my fault?


I recently found a Glasgow - Oxford return ticket from 1982. It cost 
around 20% more in real terms than the equivalent ticket today!

Ian

In article <dzZo7CxomoOm-pn2-UL4dHQ1xqdod@localhost>,
 "Ian Johnston"  writes:

> On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 12:34:14 UTC, sam@ssrl.org.uk (Sam Nelson) wrote:
> > As for promptness, isn't that everyone's problem with railways now?
> 
> About 80 - 85% of trains arrive within ten minutes of the booked time.


That's utter crap compared with the way trains used to work when I used to
use them.


> > Have you counted the number of different places you have to ask about
> > lost property recently?
> 
> It's great, isn't it? Nowadays, for the whole of Scotland you only 
> have to ask in one place: Glasgow Queen Street. In BR days you might 
> easily have had to check Queen Street, Waverley, Stirling, Inverness, 
> Dundee and Aberdeen for a single item.


Changed since I last lost something, then.  If you weren't sure whose train
you lost it on or exactly where on the station (Waverley, in this case) I
had six places to ask.  Pre-privatisation, you went to Waverley lost property.


> I recently found a Glasgow - Oxford return ticket from 1982. It cost 
> around 20% more in real terms than the equivalent ticket today!


Depends exactly when you travel, how far ahead you book, who you ask, etc.
Buying train tickets is a lottery, almost literally, people and newspapers
tell me---one of the reasons I don't bother much.
-- 
SAm.

Sam Nelson  writes

>In article <dzZo7CxomoOm-pn2-UL4dHQ1xqdod@localhost>,
> "Ian Johnston"  writes:
>> On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 12:34:14 UTC, sam@ssrl.org.uk (Sam Nelson) wrote:
>> > As for promptness, isn't that everyone's problem with railways now?
>> 
>> About 80 - 85% of trains arrive within ten minutes of the booked time.
>
>That's utter crap compared with the way trains used to work when I used to
>use them.
>

Your experience of pre-privatisation train travel was an awful lot
better than mine then. I commuted from Larbert to Clydebank by train in
the late 80's and the service was appalling. Knackered rolling stock,
dreadful timekeeping[1], lousy customer service...

I'm aware that some places the train service has got worse since
privatisation but the commuting service round here has improved
markedly. Unfortunately it seems first Scotrail are trying to undo the
good work :-(

Bob

[1] I can remember weeks where every train I caught was late. Not to
mention the time the train failed to stop at Larbert & I had to
backtrack from Stirling.
-- 
Bob Scott

In article <d9ef2f$d2p$2@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk>, Toom Tabard
 wrote:


> Richard Tobin wrote in message ...
> 
> >As I said elsewhere, all the improvements I've noticed in the phone
> >service are due to new technology, and I don't have any reason to
> >suppose that wouldn't have happened if it had remained nationalised.
> 
> 
> There would have been no incentive to move from valves and mechanical
> switches. We'd have one phone per village and be marginally behind 1960s
> Albania. Were you around before these organisations were nationalised ?


From <http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/BT-Group-plc>

   In 1969 the GPO, a government department, became The Post Office, a 
   nationalised industry separate from government. Post Office 
   Telecommunications was one of the divisions. ...

   On 1st July, 1981 Post Office Telecommunications was renamed British 
   Telecom and became a state-owned corporation independent of the Post 
   Office. In 1982 BT's monopoly on telecommunications was broken, with 
   the grant of a licence to Mercury Communications. ...

   The privatisation took place in 1984, with the sale of 51% of the 
   shares in the company (incorporated in 1984 as British 
   Telecommunications plc) to the public in November.

From
<http://www.connected-earth.com/Galleries/Frombuttonstobytes/Digitaltele
phony/Digitalswitching/>

   The System X family of digital exchanges marked a leap forward into 
   the era of microprocessors. 

   System X was conceived by the Advisory Group on System Definitions, 
   an alliance involving Post Office and industry groups set up in 1968 
   to define the shape of the future telephone network and how to get 
   there. ...

   The first System X digital exchange was brought into service on July 
   1, 1980, at London's Baynard House and formally inaugurated in 
   September of that year.

Sam (not SAm)

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 16:14:18 UTC, Sam Wilson  
wrote:


> The first System X digital exchange was brought into service on July 
>    1, 1980, at London's Baynard House and formally inaugurated in 
>    September of that year.


Were they the ones bought secondhand from an American phone company: 
good old Post Office, taking a bold step forward with equipment which 
was already obsolete and replaced elsewhere...

ian

--

On 23 Jun 2005 12:32:14 GMT someone who may be
richard@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin) wrote this:-


>As I said elsewhere, all the improvements I've noticed in the phone
>service are due to new technology, and I don't have any reason to
>suppose that wouldn't have happened if it had remained nationalised.


Especially as the GPO had a long history of investing in advanced
engineering. STD and electronic exchanges are two examples. I
believe both were GPO firsts in the world.



-- 
 David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
 I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
 prevents me by using the RIP Act 2000.

On 23 Jun 2005 16:21:59 GMT someone who may be "Ian Johnston"
 wrote this:-


>> The first System X digital exchange was brought into service on July 
>>    1, 1980, at London's Baynard House and formally inaugurated in 
>>    September of that year.
>
>Were they the ones bought secondhand from an American phone company: 


No.


-- 
 David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
 I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
 prevents me by using the RIP Act 2000.

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 14:52:23 +0100, Steven Hill  wrote:

>> And once everyone has voip, you'll be able to make as many as you
>> like worldwide for the cost of your broadband connection.
>
>Guffaw chortle.
>
>When was the last time you didn't get a dial tone on your BT landline?


Don't remember -- a long time ago.


>(several years ago, but that was on the farm which doesn't really count).
>
>When was the last time your broadband went tits up?


IIRC, the connection has been fine since i got it 2.5 years ago. 
(I've had problems on occasion, but that was due to me 
misconfiguring it, not due to the adsl connection being faulty).


>How are you going to make an emergency call when your PC can't get power?


Use my mobile, of course.

-- 
Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 15:03:44 +0100, Iain Rae  wrote:

> 
>what commitment has your voip company made to provding routing to
>emergency services (there was a case about this in the states recently).


Why would people want to pay a VoIP provider? If you have an 
internet connection and therefore can send and recieve arbitrary IP 
packets, you should be able to just install software on both the 
sending and recieving boxes and go.

-- 
Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk

In article <dzZo7CxomoOm-pn2-bNo4VHuHQoJX@localhost>, Ian Johnston
 wrote:


> On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 16:14:18 UTC, Sam Wilson  
> wrote:
> 
> > The first System X digital exchange was brought into service on July 
> >    1, 1980, at London's Baynard House and formally inaugurated in 
> >    September of that year.
> 
> Were they the ones bought secondhand from an American phone company: 
> good old Post Office, taking a bold step forward with equipment which 
> was already obsolete and replaced elsewhere...


If they were that's a wrinkle to the story I didn't know.  I thought
System X was a horrendously overspecified and thoroughly British
endeavour, swiftly supplemented by the Swedish System Y (aka Ericsson
AXE10) - half the size and knobbled to bring its capabilities down to
the same level as System X.

The quality of the work wasn't my point, though.

Sam

In article <d9eceh$9li$1$830fa17d@news.demon.co.uk>,
Roland Watson  wrote:

>There used to be waiting lists just to
>get a replacement handset


On the other hand, the GPO were the ones who had to replace it so it
tended not to stop working when you dropped them from 6 inches.  Whereas
now every faulty telephone is another sale!


>and of course they all looked the same.


And you couldn't get frog ringtones.  Isn't capitalism wonderful?

-- Richard

In article <d9ea86$il2$1@dulnain.stir.ac.uk>, Sam Nelson 
 writes

>In article ,
> Robert Sneddon  writes:
>>   The railway system today carries more people more miles every year than
>> British Rail ever did, and provides a better service in terms of new
>> rolling stock, comfort, safety, promptness, number of strikes etc.
>
>Dunno about comfort.  Lack of legroom on trains last time I used one
>bordered on the unavoidable sexual assault of the person opposite me.


  Ever made an 8-hour journey in a train with no corridors (and hence no 
access to a toilet?) I have. It was supposed to be a four-hour journey 
but this was 1960s British Rail with rolling stock from the 1930s. At 
least modern trains have toilets and a method of getting to them.


>Precisely one return train journey in the past ten years has successfully
>competed with the equivalent journey by car.  Presumably your response to
>that is that driving should have been rendered less amenable?


  Driving has definitely got easier with the motorway system, but people 
just travel longer distances today. People commute to London from 
Birmingham, from Glasgow to Edinburgh and think little of the trip. When 
I were a lad in the 60s the fifteen mile journey from home to Glasgow to 
go round the shops was a special event that occurred only three or four 
times a year. Train journeys were something rich people took.

>
>As for promptness, isn't that everyone's problem with railways now?


  People complain more nowadays. They put up with bad service in the 
past. They don't now.

>
>Have you counted the number of different places you have to ask about
>lost property recently?


  Haven't lost any property on the railways recently so I couldn't say.

>
>Are railways _really_ safer now than they were in, say, the mid-1980s?


  Given the number of passenger-miles and the speeds the trains travel 
at, yes. There's some overcrowding in places like London but that city 
has reached its carrying capacity and any improvements to its public 
transport system are now counter-productive.


>A radical overhaul of the fare structure, which for the moment makes choosing
>a flight look a) more straightforward and b) preferable, would be good.
>They should start from looking at what they're competing with, rather than
>pulling figures out of the air and hoping people will pay them.


  Can't argue with that, but putting up prices to match the real world 
costs of running the railways is not going to happen.


>I used rail services for almost every trip I made between about 1975 and
>1990.  Rail services were straightforward, reasonably priced, and
>worked.


  I seem to recall a few strikes during that period. Did you get a 
special exemption on those occasions or did you drive the train 
yourself?


>  These days, I hardly see a journey that isn't better done by car.
>Is that my fault?


  Possibly you've got a better car than you had thirty years ago. I know 
I have. First time I drove from Cardiff to Glasgow in 1980 it took me 
well over twelve hours on a mixture of motorways and trunk roads in a 
van that couldn't go over 55mph. Last time I made the same-length trip 
to London (all motorways) in a modern Transit I managed it in less than 
eight hours. By train between four and six hours for the same trip 
city-centre to city-centre is typical nowadays.
-- 
Email me via robert (at) nojay (dot) org  (new email address)
This address no longer accepts HTML posts.

Robert Sneddon

In article ,
Steven Hill   wrote:


>When was the last time you didn't get a dial tone on your BT landline?


Yesterday.


>When was the last time your broadband went tits up?


Yesterday.

I've only had a few faults with ADSL, and most of them have been
faults with BT's network.

-- Richard

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 14:02:40 +0100 someone who may be "Roland
Watson"  wrote this:-


>> I remember when directory enquiries was "free".
>
>I assume by the quotes that you acknowledge it wasn't actually free from the
>taxpayer's POV, just better hidden costs.


It was "free" in that it was included in the line rental, paid by
the customer.


-- 
 David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
 I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
 prevents me by using the RIP Act 2000.

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 14:52:23 +0100 someone who may be Steven Hill
 wrote this:-


>When was the last time you didn't get a dial tone on your BT landline?


A few weeks ago on one of them.


>When was the last time your broadband went tits up?


The more expensive version in the office, a year or two ago.


>How are you going to make an emergency call when your PC can't get power?


VOIP handsets are available and could be powered by battery.
However, this is a question people are still discussing. As long as
most broadband connections involve a British Telecom copper wire it
is not that great a worry.


-- 
 David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
 I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
 prevents me by using the RIP Act 2000.

In article <d9eceh$9li$1$830fa17d@news.demon.co.uk>, Roland Watson
 wrote:


> ... There used to be waiting lists just to
> get a replacement handset and of course they all looked the same. ...


Oi - there was a choice of, black, cream, blue, green, red and ...
well, that's it, probably, but the coloured ones were two-tone.  And
there was the Trimphone (blipple blipple).

Sam

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 17:39:23 +0100 someone who may be Robert Sneddon
 wrote this:-


>  Ever made an 8-hour journey in a train with no corridors (and hence no 
>access to a toilet?) I have. It was supposed to be a four-hour journey 
>but this was 1960s British Rail with rolling stock from the 1930s.


This would have been the early 1960s and very unusual by then.
Please give us some details of the journey.

Of course rolling stock from the 1930s was built by and for private
companies.


>At least modern trains have toilets and a method of getting to them.


Almost all the trains British Rail introduced had toilets and a
method of getting to them. The exceptions were used on local
services.


-- 
 David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
 I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
 prevents me by using the RIP Act 2000.

Sam Nelson wrote:

> In article ,
>  "the_tattie_howker"  writes:
> 
>>Sam Nelson wrote:
>>
>>>One of Thatcher's children here, evidently.  After all, privatised railways
>>>and gas and power services are just _fantastic_ now: all that competition
>>>is dead efficient and makes them work really hard for every penny.  Duh.
>>
>>So some privatisation worked better than others.
> 
> 
> Absolutely.  My contention is that BT wasn't one of them.


What is the degree of monopoly at the moment (given that most people can 
get a mobile connection now).

But can you imagine a nationalised mobile provider - still might reduce 
the availability of them.

So what else is worse (or as bad) about BT these days compared to 
pre-privatisation?

TTH

In article <kBDue.55273$G8.33714@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk>, 
the_tattie_howker@tiscali.co.uk says...

> What is the degree of monopoly at the moment (given that most people can 
> get a mobile connection now).


That was a question, was it.  What about broadband?


> But can you imagine a nationalised mobile provider - still might reduce 
> the availability of them.


Almost anything _might_happen.  This whole deal started because someone 
said `privatise the bin collections - it might be better'.


> So what else is worse (or as bad) about BT these days compared to 
> pre-privatisation?


I dunno.  It might as well not have happened.
-- 
SAm.

Sam Nelson wrote:


> In article <kBDue.55273$G8.33714@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk>, 
> the_tattie_howker@tiscali.co.uk says...
> 
>>What is the degree of monopoly at the moment (given that most people can 
>>get a mobile connection now).
> 
> 
> That was a question, was it.  What about broadband?


Neither BT nor the GPO provided broadband so we can't compare that.

I mean, its not good that not everywhere has broadband but its hardly an 
essential item.


>>But can you imagine a nationalised mobile provider - still might reduce 
>>the availability of them.

> Almost anything _might_happen.  This whole deal started because someone 
> said `privatise the bin collections - it might be better'.


Well I can't based on the way that nationalised industries worked in the 
past. I am sure we'd still be carrying Dom Jolly sized phones.


>>So what else is worse (or as bad) about BT these days compared to 
>>pre-privatisation?
> 
> 
> I dunno.  It might as well not have happened.


If you don't know that why are you making the statement?

TTH

David Hansen wrote:


> On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 14:02:40 +0100 someone who may be "Roland
> Watson"  wrote this:-
> 
> 
>>>I remember when directory enquiries was "free".
>>
>>I assume by the quotes that you acknowledge it wasn't actually free from the
>>taxpayer's POV, just better hidden costs.
> 
> 
> It was "free" in that it was included in the line rental, paid by
> the customer.


Yeah, so if you used it a lot you got it cheaper than if you never used it.

Most people have a phone book, many people have an internet connection. 
Some people even keep a note of important numbers.

My main contention with charging is that it is a bit expensive and with 
so many options you have no way of knowing how much. They should tell 
you in advance.

TTH

In article <u7Eue.55302$G8.33794@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk>, 
the_tattie_howker@tiscali.co.uk says...

> Sam Nelson wrote:
> > In article <kBDue.55273$G8.33714@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk>, 
> > the_tattie_howker@tiscali.co.uk says...
> > 
> >>What is the degree of monopoly at the moment (given that most people can 
> >>get a mobile connection now).
> > 
> > That was a question, was it.  What about broadband?
> 
> Neither BT nor the GPO provided broadband so we can't compare that.


Exactly.  People keep telling us we can't have nationalised industry 
because it didn't work in the 1970s.  Actually, the eras aren't 
comparable.


> > I dunno.  It might as well not have happened.
> 
> If you don't know that why are you making the statement?


I'm saying there wasn't much point in privatising BT because actually 
it hasn't made much difference.  So, given that current circumstances 
aren't comparable with those when BT was nationalised, and BT might as 
well still be nationalised because it's made hardly any difference, 
why, I wonder, do people think things might be radically better through 
the privatisation of anything at all?
-- 
SAm.

Bob Scott  writes:


> Your experience of pre-privatisation train travel was an awful lot
> better than mine then. I commuted from Larbert to Clydebank by train in
> the late 80's and the service was appalling. Knackered rolling stock,
> dreadful timekeeping[1], lousy customer service...


This was after some years of BR being deliberately starved of funds,
to create demand for privatisation.  As soon as the railways were
privatised the public subsidies shot through the roof.  If your train
service has improved since privatisation, the huge extra public
subsidies will have had a lot to do with it.  BR could have spent that
extra money a hell of a lot more productively.
-- 
	-- Chris.

"Sam Nelson"  wrote in message
news:d9eel6$il2$5@dulnain.stir.ac.uk...

> In article <d9eceh$9li$1$830fa17d@news.demon.co.uk>,
>  "Roland Watson"  writes:
> > You must have been born after 1980.
>
> 1962, actually.
>
> > There used to be waiting lists just to
> > get a replacement handset and of course they all looked the same. I
wonder
> > what the tax rate would be after all these companies were

renationalised?

> > Nobody would vote for it unless they hated having any money.
>
> Smokescreen.


Hardly, and we're not going back anyway.



> -- 
> SAm.

In article , nospamplease@dcs.ed.ac.uk 
writes

>This was after some years of BR being deliberately starved of funds,
>to create demand for privatisation.


  He's talking, as I was, about the socialist 1960s and 1970s before 
privatisation was mooted, when BR was a hole into which money was thrown 
never to be seen again.


>  As soon as the railways were
>privatised the public subsidies shot through the roof.  If your train
>service has improved since privatisation, the huge extra public
>subsidies will have had a lot to do with it.  BR could have spent that
>extra money a hell of a lot more productively.


  Of course they could, of course they could. Their track record (no pun 
intended) showed that when showered with subsidy after subsidy in the 
60s and 70s they used the money wisely and frugally to benefit their 
customers, improving punctuality, replacing worn-out stock, reducing the 
number of strikes. On your planet, perhaps. On my planet the sky is 
blue, what's the colour on yours?

-- 
Email me via robert (at) nojay (dot) org  (new email address)
This address no longer accepts HTML posts.

Robert Sneddon

Sam Wilson wrote:


> In article <d9eceh$9li$1$830fa17d@news.demon.co.uk>, Roland Watson
>  wrote:
> 
> 
>>... There used to be waiting lists just to
>>get a replacement handset and of course they all looked the same. ...
> 
> 
> Oi - there was a choice of, black, cream, blue, green, red and ...
> well, that's it, probably, but the coloured ones were two-tone.  And
> there was the Trimphone (blipple blipple).
> 
> Sam


Ah, the Trimphone! What a crap design that was. It only weighed about a 
quarter of an ounce, so you had to hold it down while dialling (younger 
posters - ask your parents what dialling means...). And when you picked 
it up to answer it the whiplash recoil of the handset cable caused the 
base unit to fly off the table and land upside down on the call 
disconnect button...

-- 
Halmyre

"Richard Tobin"  wrote in message
news:d9eouv$9nm$1@pc-news.cogsci.ed.ac.uk...

> In article <d9eceh$9li$1$830fa17d@news.demon.co.uk>,
> Roland Watson  wrote:
> >There used to be waiting lists just to
> >get a replacement handset
>
> On the other hand, the GPO were the ones who had to replace it so it
> tended not to stop working when you dropped them from 6 inches.  Whereas
> now every faulty telephone is another sale!


Only if the customer is dumb enough to go back to the same dodgy
manufacturer.


>
> >and of course they all looked the same.
>
> And you couldn't get frog ringtones.  Isn't capitalism wonderful?


Well, you could always go to North Korea if you're not happy with
capitalism. Better take plenty of food though.


>
> -- Richard

Sorry , I underestimated the government's ability to give people a choice in
how they spend their money. :)


"Sam Wilson"  wrote in message
news:230620051801095631%Sam.Wilson@ed.ac.uk...

> In article <d9eceh$9li$1$830fa17d@news.demon.co.uk>, Roland Watson
>  wrote:
>
> > ... There used to be waiting lists just to
> > get a replacement handset and of course they all looked the same. ...
>
> Oi - there was a choice of, black, cream, blue, green, red and ...
> well, that's it, probably, but the coloured ones were two-tone.  And
> there was the Trimphone (blipple blipple).
>
> Sam

In article <fnQue.2036$rz1.874@newsfe5-gui.ntli.net>,
 Halmyre <nospam@this.address> writes:

> Ah, the Trimphone! What a crap design that was. It only weighed about a 
> quarter of an ounce, so you had to hold it down while dialling (younger 
> posters - ask your parents what dialling means...). And when you picked 
> it up to answer it the whiplash recoil of the handset cable caused the 
> base unit to fly off the table and land upside down on the call 
> disconnect button...


I really liked the Trimphone.  I always tend to Blu-Tack the phone to the
desk/shelf anyway, regardless of its make/model.  Got cordless now, of course.
-- 
SAm.

Sam Nelson wrote:

> In article <u7Eue.55302$G8.33794@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk>,
> the_tattie_howker@tiscali.co.uk says...
> > Sam Nelson wrote:
> > > In article <kBDue.55273$G8.33714@text.news.blueyonder.co.uk>,
> > > the_tattie_howker@tiscali.co.uk says...
> > >
> > >>What is the degree of monopoly at the moment (given that most people can
> > >>get a mobile connection now).
> > >
> > > That was a question, was it.  What about broadband?
> >
> > Neither BT nor the GPO provided broadband so we can't compare that.
>
> Exactly.  People keep telling us we can't have nationalised industry
> because it didn't work in the 1970s.  Actually, the eras aren't
> comparable.


Then its all just speculation then. I asked you if you could imagine a
nationalised mobile phone company and you poo pooed the question based
on the fact that it was an hypothetical question. The success of
renationalisation, or whether continued nationalisation would have been
better by now, is just as hypothetical. All we can do is compare what
happened in the period after we settled down. Services did get better
and became cheaper and more flexible. Now theoretically, we could have
run the service better (and I've been caught in the trap of that
argument before) but the fact is that at the time we didn't.
Theoretically, we could run the railways better privately as well. But
we didn't or couldn't under the prescribed model. That's all we can
measure things  on unfortunately. The rest is speculation. Mike D's
fingers will be twitching at the thought of it.


> > > I dunno.  It might as well not have happened.
> >
> > If you don't know that why are you making the statement?
>
> I'm saying there wasn't much point in privatising BT because actually
> it hasn't made much difference.


Lots of people seem to disagree and consider that things got a lot
better. You may have been unlucky of course.


> So, given that current circumstances
> aren't comparable with those when BT was nationalised, and BT might as
> well still be nationalised because it's made hardly any difference,
> why, I wonder, do people think things might be radically better through
> the privatisation of anything at all?


Theoretically, things can always be better be better. My argument in
favour of nationalisation stems from a desire to ensure that most
people have access to a particular product or service that cannot be
provided if left to the markets. If there isn't such a desire then
general capitalist free markets are sufficient to provide the product
that the market requires.

Is it your contention that everyone should have access to a phone in
their house at a reasonable cost (and you need to define that) or do
you simply think that the service can be run most efficiently by
nationalisation? I don't think you've demonstrated that that is the
case.

A health service and education are things that people should have
access IMO, which I don't think can be provided according to market
demand. 

TTH

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 18:01:09 +0100 someone who may be Sam Wilson
 wrote this:-


>> ... There used to be waiting lists just to
>> get a replacement handset and of course they all looked the same. ...
>
>Oi - there was a choice of, black, cream,


I have seen those colours.


>blue, green, red and ...


While green was ISTR available to the public, I don't think blue and
red were.


>well, that's it, probably, but the coloured ones were two-tone.


Two-tone? I don't recall seeing any two-tone ones, but may well not
remember if there were.

However, a telephone is simply an instrument to use for telephoning.
What it looks like and the colour are an irrelevance to many,
probably most.


-- 
 David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
 I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
 prevents me by using the RIP Act 2000.

In article , David Hansen
 wrote:


> On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 18:01:09 +0100 someone who may be Sam Wilson
>  wrote this:-
> 
> >> ... There used to be waiting lists just to
> >> get a replacement handset and of course they all looked the same. ...
> >
> >Oi - there was a choice of, black, cream,
> 
> I have seen those colours.
> 
> >blue, green, red and ...
> 
> While green was ISTR available to the public, I don't think blue and
> red were.


I think they were.  We got our first phone in about 1963 and it was
two-tone green.  ISTR huge discussion in the family about what the
choice was.


> >well, that's it, probably, but the coloured ones were two-tone.
> 
> Two-tone? I don't recall seeing any two-tone ones, but may well not
> remember if there were.


It looks as though there have been many other colours available over
the years, but it seems I may have been misremembering the blue and red
being two-tone.
<http://www.robertopiecollection.com/Application/Products/Teleph/tel4GB.
asp>


> However, a telephone is simply an instrument to use for telephoning.
> What it looks like and the colour are an irrelevance to many,
> probably most.


BOOORRRIIIINNNGGG!!!  :-)

Sam

In article , David Hansen 
 writes


>While green was ISTR available to the public, I don't think blue and
>red were.


  Our handset was red. Regular household, not a police station or Secret 
Underground bunker. It was rented, not sold; there was an item on the 
phone bill each month covering its cost.

-- 
Email me via robert (at) nojay (dot) org  (new email address)
This address no longer accepts HTML posts.

Robert Sneddon

Sam Wilson wrote:

> In article <d9eceh$9li$1$830fa17d@news.demon.co.uk>, Roland Watson
>  wrote:
> 
> 
>>... There used to be waiting lists just to
>>get a replacement handset and of course they all looked the same. ...
> 
> 
> Oi - there was a choice of, black, cream, blue, green, red and ...
> well, that's it, probably, but the coloured ones were two-tone.  And
> there was the Trimphone (blipple blipple).
> 
> Sam


I think there was also a sort of grey or brown-beige variant.

-- 
Halmyre

David Hansen  writes:

> However, a telephone is simply an instrument to use for telephoning.
> What it looks like and the colour are an irrelevance to many,
> probably most.


Uhuh, so that'd explain all the "skins", clip on fascias, ... for
mobile phones? That'd explain how a lot of phones are sold on
looks rather than features.

On 24 Jun 2005 14:09:22 +0100 someone who may be Lee Kindness
 wrote this:-


>David Hansen  writes:
>> However, a telephone is simply an instrument to use for telephoning.
>> What it looks like and the colour are an irrelevance to many,
>> probably most.
>
>Uhuh, so that'd explain all the "skins", clip on fascias, ... for
>mobile phones?


The question is whether such things are sold to many or most people.
I suspect not, but this is only a suspicion.


-- 
 David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
 I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
 prevents me by using the RIP Act 2000.

In article ,
 Lee Kindness  writes:

> David Hansen  writes:
> > However, a telephone is simply an instrument to use for telephoning.
> > What it looks like and the colour are an irrelevance to many,
> > probably most.
> 
> Uhuh, so that'd explain all the "skins", clip on fascias, ... for
> mobile phones? That'd explain how a lot of phones are sold on
> looks rather than features.


Usability and ergonomics are valid issues, of course, but other than that
it's just the sale of form-over-content to the unutterably stupid.  No
surprise there, then.
-- 
SAm.

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 08:34:01 UTC, nospamplease@dcs.ed.ac.uk wrote:


> This was after some years of BR being deliberately starved of funds,
> to create demand for privatisation.  As soon as the railways were
> privatised the public subsidies shot through the roof.  If your train
> service has improved since privatisation, the huge extra public
> subsidies will have had a lot to do with it.  BR could have spent that
> extra money a hell of a lot more productively.


BR was deliberately starved of cash in the last few years before 
privatisation to make it an attractive (yes, seems funny now, don't 
it?) prospect to investors. Much of the increased subsidy since then 
has gone on making up for the problems that caused: a huge maintenance
backlog, shoddy electrification of the east coast main line, antique 
and unreliable long distance trains and so on.

Ian


--

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 11:22:16 UTC, "the_tattie_howker" 
 wrote:


> A health service and education are things that people should have
> access IMO, which I don't think can be provided according to market
> demand. 


It depends what you mean by market demand. It may not be possible for 
individuals to get the service they want that way, but when the state 
is buying it may get a better deal if it uses market forces.

Since nobody has actually be compelled to work in education or the 
NHS, market forces get the staff and do the work anyway, and always 
have.

Ian

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 09:47:42 UTC, sam@ssrl.org.uk (Sam Nelson) wrote:


> I really liked the Trimphone.  I always tend to Blu-Tack the phone to the
> desk/shelf anyway, regardless of its make/model.  Got cordless now, of course.


I have three landline phones at the moment - all of them BT 800 series
with a dial and a bell. It's great - as soon as you hear the "Please 
press one for ..." you dial a random number and get a human.

Ian

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 12:10:36 UTC, David Hansen 
 wrote:


> While green was ISTR available to the public, I don't think blue and
> red were.


I have a red one. I bought it second hand, but if the number in the 
dial is correct it was originally supplied to a private address in 
Gorgie.

Ian

--

David Hansen  wrote:

> On 24 Jun 2005 14:09:22 +0100 someone who may be Lee Kindness
>  wrote this:-

>>David Hansen  writes:

>>> However, a telephone is simply an instrument to use for telephoning.
>>> What it looks like and the colour are an irrelevance to many,
>>> probably most.

>>Uhuh, so that'd explain all the "skins", clip on fascias, ... for
>>mobile phones?

> The question is whether such things are sold to many or most people.
> I suspect not, but this is only a suspicion.


Y'know, a car is just a way to get from A to B, but you'd be amazed to
hear that people will pay a lot more just to avoid having an orange
Lada.

My suspicion is that the bells and whistles are important to people:
they'll pay more to have 'em, and that's why the market supplies them.

FoFP

In article <d9h97g$1ti$1@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>,
 M Holmes  writes:

> Y'know, a car is just a way to get from A to B, but you'd be amazed to
> hear that people will pay a lot more just to avoid having an orange
> Lada.


So, a new fascia, theme, bell, or whistle, added to a phone changes its
build quality?  How does that work, then?
-- 
SAm.

Sam Nelson  wrote:

> In article <d9h97g$1ti$1@scotsman.ed.ac.uk>,
>  M Holmes  writes:

>> Y'know, a car is just a way to get from A to B, but you'd be amazed to
>> hear that people will pay a lot more just to avoid having an orange
>> Lada.

> So, a new fascia, theme, bell, or whistle, added to a phone changes its
> build quality?


No, it changes how much someone likes their phone.


>  How does that work, then?


They change it to how they like it, then they like it more than they
did.

When you get to Earth, have one of the humans explain it to you.

FoFP

"David Hansen"  wrote in message
news:sstnb11m19hvnemgpj65cbgialr9m4fbts@4ax.com...

> On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 18:01:09 +0100 someone who may be Sam Wilson
>  wrote this:-
>
> >> ... There used to be waiting lists just to
> >> get a replacement handset and of course they all looked the same. ...
> >
> >Oi - there was a choice of, black, cream,
>
> I have seen those colours.
>
> >blue, green, red and ...
>
> While green was ISTR available to the public, I don't think blue and
> red were.


When I was a little girl in the mid 70's our family had a red phone, rented
from whatever the people who ran the phone service then were called.  Our
number was 26620.  I always thought it was great that our phone was red and
was very disappointed in the beige version which awited us in our new home
when we moved house in 1980.  So I don't know how they did it but my parents
had a red "dial phone" so they definitely existed.

Tamzin

NB I really rather liked the noise the dial made as it was pulled forward,
released and then sprang back to its original position.

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 15:21:45 UTC, sam@ssrl.org.uk (Sam Nelson) wrote:


> Usability and ergonomics are valid issues, of course, but other than that
> it's just the sale of form-over-content to the unutterably stupid. 


I have just discovered www.cruisewirral.com

Ian

--

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 20:15:29 +0100 someone who may be "Tamzin"
 wrote this:-


>When I was a little girl in the mid 70's our family had a red phone,


I am heavily out-voted on red:-(

However, nobody has yet stood up for blue:-)


>Our number was 26620.


My British grandparents were Rhiwderin 240, my parents Rhiwderin
4770. International telephone calls in the 1970s were slightly
amusing as one spelt out the name of the exchange. I remember when
it became possible to dial international calls directly, at first
only a few countries.

Rhiwderin is about half-way along the difficulty scale. Near the top
is Ynys Ddu. I always remember the conversation on Mull in the mid
1970s, as a friend spelt out Ynys Ddu to the operator in an attempt
to make contact with his home. It was in a telephone box with Button
A and Button B, which we thought was extinct by then.


>NB I really rather liked the noise the dial made as it was pulled forward,
>released and then sprang back to its original position.


I don't think http://www.tones.plus.com/sounds/menagerie/sounds.htm
has one, but it has many other old telephone sounds.

When I gave a VOIP demonstration to an international bank there was
only one ring to use and it quite amused the potential customers
http://www.tones.plus.com/sounds/bells/ringt706.wav




-- 
 David Hansen, Edinburgh | PGP email preferred-key number F566DA0E
 I will always explain revoked keys, unless the UK government
 prevents me by using the RIP Act 2000.

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 20:12:28 UTC, David Hansen 
 wrote:


> However, nobody has yet stood up for blue:-)


There was a Silver Jubilee phone in blue. A bit different from the 
standard ones - it had a separate box for the bell.

Ian


--

On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 17:39:23 +0100, Robert Sneddon  wrote:

>  Ever made an 8-hour journey in a train with no corridors (and hence no 
>access to a toilet?) I have. It was supposed to be a four-hour journey 
>but this was 1960s British Rail with rolling stock from the 1930s. At 
>least modern trains have toilets and a method of getting to them.


I suppose you could always piss out of the window.


>>
>>Are railways _really_ safer now than they were in, say, the mid-1980s?
>
>  Given the number of passenger-miles and the speeds the trains travel 
>at, yes. There's some overcrowding in places like London but that city 
>has reached its carrying capacity and any improvements to its public 
>transport system are now counter-productive.


Improving the signalling on the tube would enable trains to be run 
at shorter intervals, which would increasse rush-hour carrying 
capacity.

The real trick, of course, would be to abolish the rush hour and 
spread journeys more evenly throughout the day.

-- 
Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk

On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 15:35:12 +0000 (UTC), M Holmes  wrote:

>
>Y'know, a car is just a way to get from A to B, but you'd be amazed to
>hear that people will pay a lot more just to avoid having an orange
>Lada.


Orange is actually the safest colour of car to have.

-- 
Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk

In article <slrndbp6uc.2s3.zen19725@cabalamat.somewhere>, phil hunt 
 writes

>On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 17:39:23 +0100, Robert Sneddon 
> wrote:

>> There's some overcrowding in places like London but that city
>>has reached its carrying capacity and any improvements to its public
>>transport system are now counter-productive.
>
>Improving the signalling on the tube would enable trains to be run
>at shorter intervals, which would increasse rush-hour carrying
>capacity.


  At which point more people move to London or start commuting to work 
there because of the good public transport and the high wages and the 
chance to live in the Big City with all its good shops and nightlife and 
then you need to run more trains to keep up with the demand so you need 
to spend more money to improve the signalling...

  There's a legal term for this, "attractive nuisance". The London 
authorities should run an advertising campaign along the lines of "WE'RE 
FULL! GO AWAY!" On the other hand Birmingham, for example, could really 
use a Tube system. The city centre there is horrid for commuters. 
Spending a few billion quid of the money that goes into the Black Hole 
of London Transport would improve Brum's public transport infrastructure 
big-time and also attract away some of the job-hunters heading to the 
Big Smoke every year. Win-win. Isn't going to happen, of course.

  The last big rail accident at Paddington was caused by overcrowded 
lines during rush hour; a freight was being routed through a gaggle of 
commuter DMUs and one of them didn't dodge fast enough. There really 
isn't a lot you can do to prevent this except reduce the number of 
trains per hour, not increase them.

>
>The real trick, of course, would be to abolish the rush hour and
>spread journeys more evenly throughout the day.


  Problem is that a lot of jobs and especially city centre jobs depend on 
contact with other people often in other companies being at their 
offices and such at the same time you are. If you arrive at work at 11 
and go home at 7 then you've got much less overlap with the guy who 
deals with your account at the bank who is there from 8 till 4.
-- 
Email me via robert (at) nojay (dot) org  (new email address)
This address no longer accepts HTML posts.

Robert Sneddon

> Orange is actually the safest colour of car to have.


Probably because none of the three of them in existance have ever been
involved in an accident, skewing the stats in favour of an ugly car
colour.

-- 
Steven Hill

"1999 called. They want your smug assholish Linux-elitist attitude returned
to them." - Anonymous Coward on /. on Sunday April 27

David Hansen wrote:

> On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 20:15:29 +0100 someone who may be "Tamzin"
>  wrote this:-
> 
> 
>>When I was a little girl in the mid 70's our family had a red phone,
> 
> 
> I am heavily out-voted on red:-(
> 
> However, nobody has yet stood up for blue:-)


I missed the start of this particular thread but if its confirmation 
that they existed, we had a blue one in the 70's.

TTH

"phil hunt"  wrote in message
news:slrndbp7g3.2s3.zen19725@cabalamat.somewhere...

> On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 15:35:12 +0000 (UTC), M Holmes
 wrote:
> >
> >Y'know, a car is just a way to get from A to B, but you'd be amazed to
> >hear that people will pay a lot more just to avoid having an orange
> >Lada.
>
> Orange is actually the safest colour of car to have.
>


What about blue?  Which is the least safe?

Yours intriguedly

Tamzin

"David Hansen"  wrote in message
news:91pob1let8vrqun1dse2tbiq2350fiba2n@4ax.com...

> On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 20:15:29 +0100 someone who may be "Tamzin"
>  wrote this:-
>
>
> >NB I really rather liked the noise the dial made as it was pulled
forward,
> >released and then sprang back to its original position.
>
> I don't think http://www.tones.plus.com/sounds/menagerie/sounds.htm
> has one, but it has many other old telephone sounds.


What a cool site - I really enjoyed faffing around listening to all those
noise.  I guess that makes me officially sad :o)

Tamzin

On Sat, 25 Jun 2005 16:55:33 UTC, "Tamzin" 
 wrote:


> 
> "phil hunt"  wrote in message
> news:slrndbp7g3.2s3.zen19725@cabalamat.somewhere...
> > On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 15:35:12 +0000 (UTC), M Holmes
>  wrote:
> > >
> > >Y'know, a car is just a way to get from A to B, but you'd be amazed to
> > >hear that people will pay a lot more just to avoid having an orange
> > >Lada.
> >
> > Orange is actually the safest colour of car to have.


Can I nominate this thread for the First Annual Richard Caley Memorial
Thread for Bizarre Topic Drift?

Ian

On Sat, 25 Jun 2005 10:58:31 +0100, Robert Sneddon  wrote:

>>
>>Improving the signalling on the tube would enable trains to be run
>>at shorter intervals, which would increasse rush-hour carrying
>>capacity.
>
>  At which point more people move to London or start commuting to work 
>there because of the good public transport and the high wages and the 
>chance to live in the Big City with all its good shops and nightlife and 
>then you need to run more trains to keep up with the demand so you need 
>to spend more money to improve the signalling...
>
>  There's a legal term for this, "attractive nuisance". The London 
>authorities should run an advertising campaign along the lines of "WE'RE 
>FULL! GO AWAY!"


If London has more people, and more are using the tube, it'll have
more revenue and more to pay to improve the transport
infrastructure. They'll also be more taxpayers, so more taxes so
more public money that could be spent on it, if need be. (Not that
there's a shortage of money now in London -- it's one of the biggest
and richest cities in the world). The extra money improves the
infrastructure, bringing in more people and more revenue for london;
a process that can continue essentially without end.

For example, as well as the Tube, london has several hundred 
national rail stations in it. These typically tave trains at longer 
intervals than the Tube -- decrease the inverval, increase the speed 
of tains, increase the capacity. And of course, new stations and 
tracks can be built. The green belt could be concreted over if 
needed (doing so could conceivably increase Britain's GDP by 5-10%).


> On the other hand Birmingham, for example, could really 
>use a Tube system. The city centre there is horrid for commuters. 


Then let Brummies spend their own money building one. (it goes 
without saying that city councils should have the necessary powers 
to make infrastructure imporvements -- otherwise there is little 
point in having them).


>>The real trick, of course, would be to abolish the rush hour and
>>spread journeys more evenly throughout the day.
>
>  Problem is that a lot of jobs and especially city centre jobs depend on 
>contact with other people often in other companies being at their 
>offices and such at the same time you are. If you arrive at work at 11 
>and go home at 7 then you've got much less overlap with the guy who 
>deals with your account at the bank who is there from 8 till 4.


Sure, but I'm sure that there are some jobs that could be spread 
over the day that currently aren't being. 

The govmt could take the initiative by employing flexible hours in 
the public sector where it is practical; it's likely that many 
private sector employers would copy the idea, because at the end of 
the day no-one wants to spend hours every day in a traffic jam on 
their way to and from work.

-- 
Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk

On Sat, 25 Jun 2005 17:55:33 +0100, Tamzin  wrote:

>
>"phil hunt"  wrote in message
>news:slrndbp7g3.2s3.zen19725@cabalamat.somewhere...
>> On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 15:35:12 +0000 (UTC), M Holmes
> wrote:
>> >
>> >Y'know, a car is just a way to get from A to B, but you'd be amazed to
>> >hear that people will pay a lot more just to avoid having an orange
>> >Lada.
>>
>> Orange is actually the safest colour of car to have.
>>
>
>What about blue?  Which is the least safe?


According to
http://www.ltsa.govt.nz/fascinating-facts/safe-vehicle-colours.html
in Sweden, black is the least safe colour.


-- 
Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk

In article <d9k1uq$hrf$1@newsg3.svr.pol.co.uk> tamzincebula@DEFYMEtheponies.freeserve.co.uk wrote...


> > Orange is actually the safest colour of car to have.
>
> What about blue?  Which is the least safe?


Yellow. Only a woman would drive a yellow car, wich makes them
inherently unsafe. For everyone.

Mike Dickson, Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <slrndbriif.263.zen19725@cabalamat.somewhere>, phil hunt 
 writes

>
>If London has more people, and more are using the tube, it'll have
>more revenue and more to pay to improve the transport
>infrastructure.


  Right now what they take in with ticket sales just about pays for the 
operational running of the system, more or less. Any infrastructure 
improvements tend to come from central government funds, in other words 
the taxpayers. Now London residents and employees do indeed contribute a 
large part of that tax revenue but London gets more of the national cake 
even so. Part of this is due to the fact the movers and shakers in 
politics and government tend to live in or around the capital and they 
are personally inconvenienced when the Tube gets crowded in the morning 
or trains are delayed and they make sure something gets done about it 
with Other People's Money.


> The extra money improves the
>infrastructure, bringing in more people and more revenue for london;
>a process that can continue essentially without end.


  Low hanging fruit. All the cheap options to improve transport have been 
done a long time ago. The east-west rail line across London was due to 
cost about ten billion quid, about what the Channel Tunnel actually 
cost, so you could realistically double that ten billion figure for the 
final true value. It would have required demolishing over five hundred 
private houses and compulsory purchase of a lot of private land because 
there just isn't any publicly-owned land anywhere near where the line 
would run. Each ticketed journey was going to require a hundred quid in 
investment for the first twenty years of operation; at that price it 
would have been less hassle and less expensive to simply provide anyone 
buying a ticket with a limousine ride from Hammersmith to Liverpool 
Street instead.

  As for digging new Tube lines there isn't anywhere to put them in the 
city centre where it is busiest. Any new tunnels would have to go 200 
feet deep or more to avoid all the other Tube lines that criss-cross the 
city centre.

>
>For example, as well as the Tube, london has several hundred
>national rail stations in it. These typically tave trains at longer
>intervals than the Tube -- decrease the inverval, increase the speed
>of tains, increase the capacity.


  Increase the number of accidents. Increase the effect of a stoppage or 
derailment.


> And of course, new stations and
>tracks can be built.


  Not in the city centre which is where the heaviest commuter load 
occurs.


> The green belt could be concreted over if
>needed (doing so could conceivably increase Britain's GDP by 5-10%).
>
>> On the other hand Birmingham, for example, could really
>>use a Tube system. The city centre there is horrid for commuters.
>
>Then let Brummies spend their own money building one.


  It would take billions to build a Brum city centre Tube; no chance of 
doing cut-and-shut, it would all have to be tunnelled under existing 
buildings. That takes national money, not local taxes. My solution was a 
Millenium Fund operation -- move Parliament to a modern new building in 
Birmingham city centre. That would get Brum's congestion problems fixed 
real quick.


>Sure, but I'm sure that there are some jobs that could be spread
>over the day that currently aren't being.


  Not that many. Really, most people working in offices need to be able 
to get in touch with other people during the day to sort out problems. 
In reality they don't need to be in central London to do this but it 
hasn't percolated though yet, and the first company that pulls out of 
central London might be making a mistake...


>The govmt could take the initiative by employing flexible hours in
>the public sector where it is practical;


  A lot of public sector jobs have been deliberately moved out of London 
(virtually at gunpoint since the employees are settled in the suburbs) 
but most of the Government Ministries have to be there because their 
Ministers are also MPs and have to attend Parliament which is in 
Westminster. They're not the big employers though; it's the City and the 
supporting organisations around the financials that produce the human 
tide washing in and out of London every day.


> it's likely that many
>private sector employers would copy the idea, because at the end of
>the day no-one wants to spend hours every day in a traffic jam on
>their way to and from work.


  But they do spend that time because London is where the head offices 
are based, where the promotion-hungry have to work to climb the greasy 
pole, where the newpapers and TV offices are based, where the top 
government operators are based, where everything hums. Attractive 
nuisance; ninety percent of anything prefixed with "British" or 
"National" is in London. You want to visit the British Museum, the 
National Theatre, the National Gallery or whatever, you have to go to 
London.
-- 
Email me via robert (at) nojay (dot) org  (new email address)
This address no longer accepts HTML posts.

Robert Sneddon

On Sun, 26 Jun 2005 01:21:58 +0100, Robert Sneddon  wrote:

>In article <slrndbriif.263.zen19725@cabalamat.somewhere>, phil hunt 
> writes
>>
>>If London has more people, and more are using the tube, it'll have
>>more revenue and more to pay to improve the transport
>>infrastructure.
>
>  Right now what they take in with ticket sales just about pays for the 
>operational running of the system, more or less. Any infrastructure 
>improvements tend to come from central government funds, in other words 
>the taxpayers. Now London residents and employees do indeed contribute a 
>large part of that tax revenue but London gets more of the national cake 
>even so.


I was under the impression that London was a net contributor, to the 
tune of 10 billion quid a year.


> Part of this is due to the fact the movers and shakers in 
>politics and government tend to live in or around the capital and they 
>are personally inconvenienced when the Tube gets crowded in the morning 
>or trains are delayed and they make sure something gets done about it 
>with Other People's Money.

Sure.

>> The extra money improves the
>>infrastructure, bringing in more people and more revenue for london;
>>a process that can continue essentially without end.
>
>  Low hanging fruit. All the cheap options to improve transport have been 
>done a long time ago. 


I disagree: making better use of the existing track and station 
seems an obvious thing to do and shouldn't cost a fortune.


>The east-west rail line across London was due to 
>cost about ten billion quid, about what the Channel Tunnel actually 
>cost, so you could realistically double that ten billion figure for the 
>final true value.


London already has over 600 railway stations. These were all built 
whren London and Britain were poorer than they are today. If hey 
could be afforded then, they can be now. 20 billion quid is £3000
per londoner. Spread over 10 years that's 300/year or 6/week. Most 
londoners spend more than that on booze (I did, anyway).


>  As for digging new Tube lines there isn't anywhere to put them in the 
>city centre where it is busiest. Any new tunnels would have to go 200 
>feet deep or more to avoid all the other Tube lines that criss-cross the 
>city centre.


Why would new lines have to go in the city center? Build the right 
infrastructure on the outskirts, and they'll become new centers.


>>For example, as well as the Tube, london has several hundred
>>national rail stations in it. These typically tave trains at longer
>>intervals than the Tube -- decrease the inverval, increase the speed
>>of tains, increase the capacity.
>
>  Increase the number of accidents. 


Even if it did, trains would still be safer than other forms of 
transport.


>> And of course, new stations and
>>tracks can be built.
>
>  Not in the city centre which is where the heaviest commuter load 
>occurs.


Then move some of the load out of the city center.


>>Then let Brummies spend their own money building one.
>
>  It would take billions to build a Brum city centre Tube; no chance of 
>doing cut-and-shut, it would all have to be tunnelled under existing 
>buildings. That takes national money, not local taxes. 


The only people benenfiting would be brummies; if they don't want to 
pay for it themselves then the cost outweighs the benefits and it 
is a bad investment.


>My solution was a 
>Millenium Fund operation -- move Parliament to a modern new building in 
>Birmingham city centre. 


ha ha ha. I can't see that happening!


-- 
Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk

In article <slrndbtc68.t0.zen19725@cabalamat.somewhere>, phil hunt 
 writes

>On Sun, 26 Jun 2005 01:21:58 +0100, Robert Sneddon 
> wrote:

>> Now London residents and employees do indeed contribute a
>>large part of that tax revenue but London gets more of the national cake
>>even so.
>
>I was under the impression that London was a net contributor, to the
>tune of 10 billion quid a year.


  Indeed. What London gets is a disproportionate slice of the transport 
infrastructure budget because, well, they're *special*. They've been 
getting this extra money for decades and the result is not a perfect 
transport system but a very crowded city with lots more people using the 
system. There's no evidence that spending more cash will in fact improve 
things again.


>>  Low hanging fruit. All the cheap options to improve transport have been
>>done a long time ago.
>
>I disagree: making better use of the existing track and station
>seems an obvious thing to do and shouldn't cost a fortune.


  Accidents are happening because the trains are running too often as it 
is. It's not the lines outside the city centre that are the problem, 
it's where ten or twenty line coalesce at, say, Paddington or Liverpool 
Street. A train every two minutes per line means ten trains a minute 
arriving or leaving through a mass of switching points. Increase the 
running interval to one train a minute and you double the juggle. Oops.

>
>>The east-west rail line across London was due to
>>cost about ten billion quid, about what the Channel Tunnel actually
>>cost, so you could realistically double that ten billion figure for the
>>final true value.
>
>London already has over 600 railway stations. These were all built
>whren London and Britain were poorer than they are today. If hey
>could be afforded then, they can be now. 20 billion quid is £3000
>per londoner. Spread over 10 years that's 300/year or 6/week. Most
>londoners spend more than that on booze (I did, anyway).


  This line was going to carry East Enders to work in West London and 
Surrey Wodneys to work in the Docklands and the new financial and media 
operations in Wapping and such, avoiding them going on the Tube or 
driving the long way around on the M25. It was going to carry about 
100-120,000 people a day, return. That's about 35 million return 
journeys a year. The loans to build this line would require interest 
payments of about 700 million quid a year, never mind retiring the 
capital or paying for maintenance and upkeep of rolling stock and track, 
staff salaries, fuel/energy bills etc. That's where the real ticket 
value of 100 quid a trip came from. Of course that calculation was based 
on the project coming in on budget at only ten billion quid. Three 
chances of that happening -- slim, fat and no.


>Why would new lines have to go in the city center? Build the right
>infrastructure on the outskirts, and they'll become new centers.


  It's been tried but the outskirts are not convenient to the big 
financial centres of the City or the Government Ministries in Whitehall.


>>  Not in the city centre which is where the heaviest commuter load
>>occurs.
>
>Then move some of the load out of the city center.


  But the city centre is where people want to be. If they didn't there 
wouldn't be a problem. Human nature is a bitch, ne?
-- 
Email me via robert (at) nojay (dot) org  (new email address)
This address no longer accepts HTML posts.

Robert Sneddon

"Ian Johnston"  wrote in message
news:dzZo7CxomoOm-pn2-fLJepCUyq6rr@localhost...

> On Sat, 25 Jun 2005 16:55:33 UTC, "Tamzin"
>  wrote:
>
> >
> > "phil hunt"  wrote in message
> > news:slrndbp7g3.2s3.zen19725@cabalamat.somewhere...
> > > On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 15:35:12 +0000 (UTC), M Holmes
> >  wrote:
> > > >
> > > >Y'know, a car is just a way to get from A to B, but you'd be amazed
to
> > > >hear that people will pay a lot more just to avoid having an orange
> > > >Lada.
> > >
> > > Orange is actually the safest colour of car to have.
>
> Can I nominate this thread for the First Annual Richard Caley Memorial
> Thread for Bizarre Topic Drift?


Very funny but I didn't actually post either of the statements upon which
you comment :op

Tamzin

On Sun, 26 Jun 2005 16:42:40 +0100, Robert Sneddon  wrote:

>
>  Indeed. What London gets is a disproportionate slice of the transport 
>infrastructure budget because, well, they're *special*. 


Well, they are.


>They've been 
>getting this extra money for decades and the result is not a perfect 
>transport system but a very crowded city with lots more people using the 
>system. There's no evidence that spending more cash will in fact improve 
>things again.


I think that depends on how well it is spent.


>>>  Low hanging fruit. All the cheap options to improve transport have been
>>>done a long time ago.
>>
>>I disagree: making better use of the existing track and station
>>seems an obvious thing to do and shouldn't cost a fortune.
>
>  Accidents are happening because the trains are running too often as it 
>is. It's not the lines outside the city centre that are the problem, 
>it's where ten or twenty line coalesce at, say, Paddington or Liverpool 
>Street. A train every two minutes per line means ten trains a minute 
>arriving or leaving through a mass of switching points. Increase the 
>running interval to one train a minute and you double the juggle. Oops.


This isn't a problem on most of the tube since you typically have 
one line and trains are therefore not being switched onto the same 
line. In any case, a well-designed signalling system should be able 
to prevent accidents from happening.

-- 
Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk

On Sun, 26 Jun 2005 16:42:40 +0100, Robert Sneddon  wrote:

>
>>Why would new lines have to go in the city center? Build the right
>>infrastructure on the outskirts, and they'll become new centers.
>
>  It's been tried but the outskirts are not convenient to the big 
>financial centres of the City or the Government Ministries in Whitehall.
>
>>>  Not in the city centre which is where the heaviest commuter load
>>>occurs.
>>
>>Then move some of the load out of the city center.
>
>  But the city centre is where people want to be. If they didn't there 
>wouldn't be a problem. Human nature is a bitch, ne?


There are 7 million people in london. That means about 3.5 million 
workers. The vast majority of them don't work in government 
ministries or the finance industry.

-- 
Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk

In article <slrndbtlh4.1em.zen19725@cabalamat.somewhere>, phil hunt 
 writes

>There are 7 million people in london.


  About 8 million people within the Greater London area, as I recall.


> That means about 3.5 million
>workers.


  Maybe two million workers. Lots of pensioners and kids, some adults are 
unemployed and some homes are single-working-parent with a stay-at-home 
Mum.


> The vast majority of them don't work in government
>ministries or the finance industry.


  Most of them don't work in central London either and it's central 
London that's getting choked by commuters, visitors and tourists nearly 
all relying on public transport. Not many workers live in central 
London, after all.
-- 
Email me via robert (at) nojay (dot) org  (new email address)
This address no longer accepts HTML posts.

Robert Sneddon

On Sun, 26 Jun 2005 16:21:28 UTC, "Tamzin" 
 wrote:


> 
> "Ian Johnston"  wrote in message
> news:dzZo7CxomoOm-pn2-fLJepCUyq6rr@localhost...
> > On Sat, 25 Jun 2005 16:55:33 UTC, "Tamzin"
> >  wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > "phil hunt"  wrote in message
> > > news:slrndbp7g3.2s3.zen19725@cabalamat.somewhere...
> > > > On Fri, 24 Jun 2005 15:35:12 +0000 (UTC), M Holmes
> > >  wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > >Y'know, a car is just a way to get from A to B, but you'd be amazed
> to
> > > > >hear that people will pay a lot more just to avoid having an orange
> > > > >Lada.
> > > >
> > > > Orange is actually the safest colour of car to have.
> >
> > Can I nominate this thread for the First Annual Richard Caley Memorial
> > Thread for Bizarre Topic Drift?
> 
> Very funny but I didn't actually post either of the statements upon which
> you comment :op


An irrelevant and pedantic gripe - yup, you're certainly getting into 
the spirit of the award!

Ian

PS Sorry!

On Sun, 26 Jun 2005 19:28:31 +0100, Robert Sneddon  wrote:

>In article <slrndbtlh4.1em.zen19725@cabalamat.somewhere>, phil hunt 
> writes
>>There are 7 million people in london.
>
>  About 8 million people within the Greater London area, as I recall.
>
>> That means about 3.5 million
>>workers.
>
>  Maybe two million workers. Lots of pensioners and kids, some adults are 
>unemployed and some homes are single-working-parent with a stay-at-home 
>Mum.


In the UK there are 60 million people and 27 million workers (from 
memory).

I'm suggesting the proportion of workers in Lomndon might be 
slightly higher, due to the large numbers of foregin migrant 
workers ansd the lower proportion of retired people.

-- 
Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk

In article <slrndbu1mb.254.zen19725@cabalamat.somewhere>, phil hunt 
 writes

>On Sun, 26 Jun 2005 19:28:31 +0100, Robert Sneddon 
> wrote:
>>In article <slrndbtlh4.1em.zen19725@cabalamat.somewhere>, phil hunt
>> writes

>In the UK there are 60 million people and 27 million workers (from
>memory).


  58 million plus, but not quite 60 million at the last census I believe. 
There might be 27 million people of working age (16-65) but a number of 
them will be students, unemployed or non-working stay-at-home types. 
Remember also that people commute from as far away as Birmingham to work 
in London as well as from Essex. I really don't know the true numbers of 
workers within the Greater London area, but there's a lot of them in 
front of me at the ticket machines at King's Cross, that I'm sure of.

>
>I'm suggesting the proportion of workers in Lomndon might be
>slightly higher, due to the large numbers of foregin migrant
>workers ansd the lower proportion of retired people.


  Why a lower proportion of retired people? A place like Uxbridge, in my 
experience, is hoaching with old folks.
-- 
Email me via robert (at) nojay (dot) org  (new email address)
This address no longer accepts HTML posts.

Robert Sneddon

On Sun, 26 Jun 2005 22:30:04 +0100, Robert Sneddon  wrote:

>>
>>I'm suggesting the proportion of workers in Lomndon might be
>>slightly higher, due to the large numbers of foregin migrant
>>workers ansd the lower proportion of retired people.
>
>  Why a lower proportion of retired people?


Because they all go to Bournemouth when they retire :-)

-- 
Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk

"Ian Johnston"  wrote in message
news:dzZo7CxomoOm-pn2-3k14zTOCP2fF@localhost...

> On Sun, 26 Jun 2005 16:21:28 UTC, "Tamzin"
>  wrote:

>>>Ian Johnston" (as above) wrote:
> > >
> > > Can I nominate this thread for the First Annual Richard Caley Memorial
> > > Thread for Bizarre Topic Drift?
> >
> > Very funny but I didn't actually post either of the statements upon
which
> > you comment :op
>
> An irrelevant and pedantic gripe - yup, you're certainly getting into
> the spirit of the award!
>
> Ian
>
> PS Sorry!


You will be.........

Tamzin

On Tue, 28 Jun 2005 20:29:08 UTC, "Tamzin" 
 wrote:
 

> "Ian Johnston"  wrote in message
> news:dzZo7CxomoOm-pn2-3k14zTOCP2fF@localhost...
> > PS Sorry!
> 
> You will be.........


Eek.

<FX: Bongo noise a la Scooby Doo>

<FX: Footsteps running rapidly into the distance>

Ian

Tamzin wrote in ed.general 
 about: Re: Bins... 


> You been playing the original "Civilisation" again?  I always knew a city
> was going to plan when the aqueduct was in place.  One of my favourite
> things was to establish my vast worldwide empire and then take over a small
> insignificant enemy city.  As I was so rich I could lavish all the
> improvements on this "pet" city and suddenly it was transformed into a near
> village with aqueducts, university, cathedral, manufacturing plant, SDI
> defence, mass transit and all the rest (not to mention any unused Wonders
> gathering dust from the Ancient world).. Ah those were the days.......



I always liked how in Sim City you could solve traffic problems at a 
stroke by digging up the roads if they got too busy and replacing them 
with railway lines ;-)


-- 
David M. -- Edinburgh, Scotland.--[en, fr, (de)]--[reply-to valid <365d]
 Please feel free to help me by correcting my foreign language errors 
 Don't look lazy & stupid: Please trim & interleave quotes in replies 
*Research climate change on your computer: http://climateprediction.net*

M Holmes wrote in ed.general 
 about: Re: Bins... 


> Richard Tobin  wrote:
>
>> The workmen called BT to find out why they had not come to fix it.
>> BT told them no problem had been reported, even though they had been
>> informed immediately after the incident.  It eventually transpired
>> that BT had been searching for a fault in EH9 2xx, Glasgow.
>
>> This would not have happened with Post Office Telephones.
>
> It certainly wouldn't. They'd have been on strike in sympathy with the
> guys at British Leyland's rights to pee on the workbench.



I have a horrible feeling you're not actually making this scenario up..
Care to explain?



-- 
David M. -- Edinburgh, Scotland.--[en, fr, (de)]--[reply-to valid <365d]
 Please feel free to help me by correcting my foreign language errors 
 Don't look lazy & stupid: Please trim & interleave quotes in replies 
*Research climate change on your computer: http://climateprediction.net*

Tamzin wrote in ed.general 
 about: Re: Bins... 


> My parents gave Multiplas a nickname when they first appeared on our
> streets.  can you guess what it was?  OK - here goes.  They nicknamed them
> "Uglies".  I have to agree although my parents cruelty has made me feel
> sorry for the Multiplas of the world so I don't use the name myself.  


I think somebody's advertising campaign must have failed, I'd never
heard of (nor knowingly seen) a "Multipla" before this thread emerged..



> Anyway
> they are better than those cars with "bums" - you know those Meganes that
> are supposed to always be shaking that ass".  I just think those ledges on
> the back look ugly.


On the other hand, you get adverts that are "too-clever": I could have
told you that was a Renault advert (thanks to the logo stamped on-screen
at the end), but I couldn't actually have told you which car it was
for..


-- 
David M. -- Edinburgh, Scotland.--[en, fr, (de)]--[reply-to valid <365d]
 Please feel free to help me by correcting my foreign language errors 
 Don't look lazy & stupid: Please trim & interleave quotes in replies 
*Research climate change on your computer: http://climateprediction.net*

David M  wrote:


>>> This would not have happened with Post Office Telephones.

>> It certainly wouldn't. They'd have been on strike in sympathy with the
>> guys at British Leyland's rights to pee on the workbench.

> I have a horrible feeling you're not actually making this scenario up..
> Care to explain?


I think I did, as you'll find out when you reach last month's posts...

FoFP

"David M"  wrote in message
news:slrndc8edf.gbl.david@pepper.local.lan...

> Tamzin wrote in ed.general
>  about: Re: Bins...
>
> > My parents gave Multiplas a nickname when they first appeared on our
> > streets.  can you guess what it was?  OK - here goes.  They nicknamed
them
> > "Uglies".  I have to agree although my parents cruelty has made me feel
> > sorry for the Multiplas of the world so I don't use the name myself.
>
> I think somebody's advertising campaign must have failed, I'd never
> heard of (nor knowingly seen) a "Multipla" before this thread emerged..



 You've probably seen them without realising.  They are ugly - faces like
insectoids!


> > Anyway
> > they are better than those cars with "bums" - you know those Meganes
that
> > are supposed to always be shaking that ass".  I just think those ledges
on
> > the back look ugly.
>
> On the other hand, you get adverts that are "too-clever": I could have
> told you that was a Renault advert (thanks to the logo stamped on-screen
> at the end), but I couldn't actually have told you which car it was
> for..


There is one that always parks so that is almost obstructing the entrance to
our car park but not quite.  that's how I know what it's called :o)

Tamzin

In article <da4a8b$dgf$1@news6.svr.pol.co.uk>,
Tamzin  wrote:

> You've probably seen them without realising.  They are ugly - faces like
>insectoids!


Are we talking about cars here?  They have faces?

-- Richard

In article <slrndbtc68.t0.zen19725@cabalamat.somewhere>,
   phil hunt  wrote:


> London already has over 600 railway stations. These were all built 
> whren London and Britain were poorer than they are today.


It's probably more relevant that the average labourers wage was much
less (in real terms) than now.  And the gap between the poor and the
richest individuals/companies was very large.  Also, space existed for
suburban stations, and presumably lines/stations were built as suburbia
expanded.  And since this would all have happened before the days when
nearly everyone owned, or could own, a car, the stations would have
been a much more important infrastructure project than they are now.

-- 
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.

On Sun, 10 Jul 2005 18:59:42 +0100, Jeremy C B Nicoll  wrote:

>In article <slrndbtc68.t0.zen19725@cabalamat.somewhere>,
>   phil hunt  wrote:
>
>> London already has over 600 railway stations. These were all built 
>> whren London and Britain were poorer than they are today.
>
>It's probably more relevant that the average labourers wage was much
>less (in real terms) than now.


Of course it was. Because the amount of value that could be produced 
with one man-hour of work was less then than now. E.g. a man in a 
JCB can dig a trench a lot quicker than one with a shovel.


> And the gap between the poor and the
>richest individuals/companies was very large.  Also, space existed for
>suburban stations, and presumably lines/stations were built as suburbia
>expanded.  And since this would all have happened before the days when
>nearly everyone owned, or could own, a car, the stations would have
>been a much more important infrastructure project than they are now.


A valid point.

-- 
Email: zen19725 at zen dot co dot uk

In article <slrndd3eav.2iq.zen19725@cabalamat.somewhere>,
   phil hunt  wrote:

> On Sun, 10 Jul 2005 18:59:42 +0100, Jeremy C B Nicoll  wrote:

> >It's probably more relevant that the average labourers wage was much
> >less (in real terms) than now.

> Of course it was. Because the amount of value that could be produced
> with one man-hour of work was less then than now. E.g. a man in a
> JCB can dig a trench a lot quicker than one with a shovel.


On the other hand, a man with a shovel these days might well dig less
than a man in those days (less used to hard physical work, more likely
to complain, shorter hours per week).  But I can't imagine that today's
worker would accept the pay/conditions of yesteryear.

-- 
Jeremy C B Nicoll - my opinions are my own.