The conservative party of 2010 was very different to that of today
Back then it had hardliners like John Redwood and Bill Cash, but also pragmatic moderates such as William Hague, Ken Clarke and Rory Stewart.
Brexit destroyed the party from within. Over time as it became more and more difficult to defend in any non-ideological way and the party leadership became more and more autocratic in ever more desperate attempts to force it to a conclusion, they all either left politics, switched allegiance or were expelled from the party. What was left were the hardliners, the truly crazy and those willing to say anything at all in return for power.
So you travelled 11 hours to Berlin in order to spend 9 hours there, then 12 hours to Vienna in order spend 14 hours there, then 11 hours to Venice? You would have been exhausted whatever mode of transport used.
For some reason Americans have a strong tendency to come up with these kinds of itineraries in the name of having a relaxing vacation, even though to any European it appears completely bonkers.
For a full long distance train pausing between two multi-hour trips it's reasonable.
5 Minutes for disembarking, 10 minutes cleaning, 10 minutes for boarding and you have 25 minutes platform occupancy. But on top of that the tracks will be blocked by the train going in and out for a few extra minutes, you need to find a slot on the line itself, and you need to allow for disruption.
It's all very inefficient in terms of occupying scarce and inelastic inner-city track capacity, so modern practice is to build through stations if at all possible and send trains off to sidings to be cleaned, but that wasn't practical 100 years ago.
His "speaking out" achieved nothing getting him on TV.
He's no whistleblower with inside information. His engineering role is to design track geometry and nothing to do with stations or passengers so he has no professional authority to speak on the subject beyond that of an ordinary rail passenger.
The problems at Euston are well known and obvious to anyone who uses the station.
> The problems at Euston are well known and obvious to anyone who uses the station
Then you should be ashamed to even try to impune his credentials and say he had no "" professional authority"" to comment on the safety issue. What the fuck!
If you're trying to compare Britain unfavourably to the US with this comment then that doesn't really hold up.
People are sacked all the time in the US for bringing their employer into disrepute, and it doesn't even matter whether they actually did or not, since the employer doesn't have to give a reason anyway.
What? That's a clause with almost every UK contract I've ever signed. The US constitution doesn't touch on employment rights.
Id also point out that the UK is generally an extremely poor country, living standards for the majority are low, income is extremely low after taxes, especially compared to the states.
Britain compares itself unfavourably to the US on almost every metric that matters.
> he’s only been in the job a month or so, so replacing wouldn’t be a huge deal
He's way, way than more than just some guy who has been rail minister for a month, he's one of the most respected, perhaps the most respected transport executive in Britain(at least until yesterday). He's not an elected politician, he has worked professionally in rail transportation since 1975.
For 10 years he was Chief Executive of Transport for London which runs all public transport in London.
Following that, for the past 10 years he was and still is Chairman of Network Rail, the organisation which is responsible for the entire British Railway Network. It's in this capacity that he sent the letter, not as a minister.
Unless this turns into some huge scandal, which seems unlikely, he'll be fine.
For non-UK residents, this is a perfectly normal thing that happens regularly[1]. For example the last government did it to David Cameron, who was not an elected MP at the time he was made foreign secretary.
To become a minister, that person needs to be an official politician. Part of the House of Commons or the House of Lords. So if a sitting UK government wants an expert in their cabinet who is not an MP, they ennoble them. They make the person a Lord to get them to be able to operate officially as a minister in the government.
> the idea of all wagon individually powered is ancient, very ancient, like monorails. Both ideas never get spread simply because they are too expensive instead of cheap, in practice.
> it sound extra added complexity for little to no return
What on earth are you going on about?
The vast majority of all current and new passenger trains in the EU are multiple units with no power car, because they are pretty much better in every possible way. They are cheaper to build and cheaper to operate(mainly due to being lighter overall) and can be shorter without reducing passenger capacity. Only a couple of the wagons are powered, more is not needed.
> hyper-fast accelerations are not much welcomed by passengers
Passengers want to get where they are going quickly. No train accelerates at a speed which causes discomfort to passengers.
Maybe it's a translation issue: I simply say most trains in the world are not self-propelled wagons but one ore two with motors and the others pulled/pushed by them. And no, in the EU most trains have a single or two locomotive, only metros have SOME all powered trains.
> Passengers want to get where they are going quickly. No train accelerates at a speed which causes discomfort to passengers.
Maybe you haven't used Milan's red lines where accelerations are enough to catapult anyone standing distracted at every start or stop. Remember that sometimes trains are crowded and nowadays it normal to have toilets always open because trains collect anything instead of freely discharging in nature, since more than two decades, so it's normal to have people standing while in start/stop phases.
That's just not true. The most exported high speed train is the Siemens Velaro which has motors along the whole train. And multiple units are very common in regional and suburban trains, S Bahn style services.
25kV is the standard for all new mainline railroads these days. Modern electrical technology means there's no reason not to use high voltage AC unless there are issues with clearance(streetcars).
You are mixing up SOCs and devboards. RP2040 is a chip, there has never been version with onboard communication.
Raspberry Pi Foundation released a RP2040 based dev board(Pico W) with an additional external wireless chip, as have others(including boards with an additional ESP32 just do comms).
Back then it had hardliners like John Redwood and Bill Cash, but also pragmatic moderates such as William Hague, Ken Clarke and Rory Stewart.
Brexit destroyed the party from within. Over time as it became more and more difficult to defend in any non-ideological way and the party leadership became more and more autocratic in ever more desperate attempts to force it to a conclusion, they all either left politics, switched allegiance or were expelled from the party. What was left were the hardliners, the truly crazy and those willing to say anything at all in return for power.
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