How awful 😔

Happy Birthday!

Also THREE POUNDS for a journey of a few miles?!? Outrageous prices. I recall it being £1 singles, then £1.25, in the mid 2000s.

Even if you’re generous and say it was £1 as far back as 2003, the BOE inflation calculate reckons that would be £1.85 now.

Bus ticket price rise ~2.5 times inflation.

This isn’t occasional. It’s a regular occurrence, certainly at peak times. Traffic often causes delays, as do roadworks. But the total inability of the city/region to fix this for many, many years is damning. Instead useless posturing & timewasting on “autonomous metros”… cc @acarpen.bsky.social

Time for my regular rant about the piss-poor state of public transport in Cambridge.

Stagecoach 7 service south from Cambridge towards Sawston is officially every 20 mins. Bus should have left 17:00. “Real time” indicator stuck at 5 mins since 16:55. App useless: bus in town, but showing on time!?

This is pathetic from Goodwin.

He doesn’t answer the question posed (despite claiming he did); he implies Jon has lied; he uses his deflection from the question to launch into a specious argument about diversity of thought in UK academia and claims about funding of networks.

Terrible loser.

Very noble of you to put yourself through that experience on behalf of the rest of us, Jon… 😅

Well, at least the person feels able to ask their neighbours for help in such a direct manner, and doesn’t feel the need to be, uh, koi about it…

Damnit, scrolling down my timeline I see you made this joke 25 mins before I did!

This has “we had to destroy the village to save it” vibes… and makes about as much sense.

Thanks - appreciate the tips! I suspect I’d need to get someone in to do the actual “rip up floorboards and do insulation” but good to know about heatpunk.

"There is a staggering gap between Trump’s confidence in his extraordinary talents, so that a great power’s strategy can be safely left to his mood of the moment, and the harsh reality of his limited grasp of the meaning of the events unfolding around him"

I’ve not seen that Crossrail logo in a very long time!

Our ground floor in particular is very chilly in winter - suspended floor and I suspect zero insulation. Already thinking about that from a comfort POV.

Thanks, that’s really helpful. I recall Octopus offering this as part of an install; I guess I’d like to have an estimate of costs inc alternatives (eg how much extra for underfloor insulation and heating rather than simply larger radiators?)

Oh wow, didn’t know that Nesta service was a thing - thanks!

One of the challenges is that beyond a ~2.5 year timescale things are a bit uncertain for partner’s job etc. Single-brick w tiny back gardens definitely have additional challenges!

Do you know of any trustworthy firms/consultancies that could do some kind of survey/analysis? When I've looked online, most seem to either be aimed at large firms/commercial premises, or offer EPCs... which isn't really what I'm after. Which's rough guide is helpful but reinforces concern re costs

I'm v positive on moving away from fossil fuels, but as a new homeowner have been looking at feasibility of upgrades for our Edwardian terrace to improve comfort and thermal performance, go green, etc. and even with boiler scheme, cost of upgrades if you don't plan to stay 20 years is prohibitive.

Three weeks later and this is still causing me issues. Very frustrating!

I’ve subscribed to @manchestermill.bsky.social for the last year. The quality of journalism is streets ahead of the clickbait churned out by most local news sites in recent years. Problem is that people are conditioned to getting “news” (or click bait that passes for it) for free…

One for @andrewhoolachan.bsky.social

I think this is the result, as you suspect, of engineering works making the Ely route exceed a 'sensible' time for the routing engine *and* possibly connections via DON/LDS on a weekend being notably longer than weekdays. So its showing only via London options, with a greater cost

Hmm. So...

Sat 18th Apr: 11:34 ex MAN arrives Nuneaton 12:41, XC from there 12:51 arrives CBG 15:04. Cheapest off peak return offered is £141.90 as LNER's site showing only routes via KGX/EUS for return.

If I filter to avoid London Terminals, it finally reveals cheap option of £113.50

I think I’m misremembering - I think it is that the Super Voyagers no longer operate in tilt mode.

I may be totally misremembering this, but… do the Avanti pendolinos actually tilt anymore? I thought that had been disabled a while back. If so I don’t think there are any tilting trains operating with tilt in the U.K.. Happy to be corrected though, it’s entirely possible my memory is faulty!

You might well have hit the jackpot here.

I’ll need to go back and check later on the laptop before booking.

Sigh. UK ticketing is such a complex mess. I am more knowledgeable than an average person, and travel a lot, and sometimes it still defeats me to work out wtf is going on…

Good question! Might be something weird like that. Currently out and about so will be easier to check once home. I initially looked an hour or so later and it was def only offering the £141 price on a Nuneaton outbound (due to London routing on return). More work needed to ascertain I think!

That’s why I’m so puzzled. I can understand the routing algorithm removing preposterously inefficient/slow options in favour of “via London”. But it should show the £113.50 fair when coerced via Stevenage/Doncaster. It did last month!

Yep, see the follow up post with imaves - I forced the LNER planner to route via SVG, which offered changes at SVG and DON. That gave both out and return journeys as “not via London” but still showing only the more expensive £141 rather than £113 ticket…

As someone who has just read your post, a very small “thank you” for your close reading.

And a thought: is it possible that perhaps this statement was due to knowledge of an impending disclosure/scoop that the speaker felt compelled to pre-empt? A shoe that hasn’t yet dropped?