Satellite

This weekend was Satellite 3 in the Grand Central in Glasgow. It was extreme fun in a slightly debilitating way. I’ve mentioned this before. Going to a convention is like having a planned illness. There is too much to drink, too much to eat, a non-congenial venue and late nights.

When I say a non-congenial venue, the Central has had a lovely face-lift. It looks fab, especially if you remember the tired and grubby visage it had towards the end of its former life. But the lighting is always conducive to SAD, the air is filled with the pollution inherent in refurbishment, it’s either too hot or it’s drafty, and there is never anywhere really comfortable to sit. 

The rest is very much self induced. Too much to drink? Just say no! Both Saturday and Sunday the first glass of beer was welcome and delicious. After that, well with nasty tea at £1.80, no tap water available and wine at £16 a bottle (red or white), I end up drinking beer that I don’t really want and don’t enjoy. 

I almost always walk away from conventions feeling mildly to extremely grotty so why keep turning up? It’s more than just turning up to the family dos that have the nearest similar pull. It’s that you see people you wouldn’t see all together anywhere else, that you have conversations and think about ideas that just aren’t sparked anywhere else and occasionally you spend some time preparing (sort of) for a panel item and are reminded of why you read that stuff in the first place.

I only got about half  way through ‘White Mars’ ready for the Literary Mars panel I was supposed to contribute to. It was dull. Mark Meenan says you have to have read Kim Stanley Robinson’s coloured Mars books and I never even finished Red Mars. I’m not convinced I will finish White Mars. I raced through CS Lewis’s ‘Out of the Silent Planet’ and though, as it did when I was fourteen, the religious stuff left me cold, the planet and the ‘people’ were as much fun as I remembered, especially the Hrossa; fishers, boaters, poets. Arthur C Clarke’s ‘The Sands of Mars’ was not poetic in any way, a bit of an old pot boiler to be honest, but still, readable and with a more realistic Mars. The book that I didn’t finish before the panel was Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Silver Locusts’, my copy of which seems to have been ‘borrowed’ from Lawnswood School in 1974 and never returned. Oops. Bradbury wrote believably monstrous people and beautiful crystal cities built on the shores of empty seas. This is the Mars I long to visit, respectfully, reverently. Alas.

Why has Mars been portrayed as it has? It’s conceivably reachable, it’s potentially terraformable  but mainly, I think, it’s a longing for a new frontier, a new beginning. If we found a planet populated by exquisite people with a wise and humane culture I suspect we would treat it as Bradbury’s characters did. I doubt people will walk on Mars anytime soon, but when we do we will use the fragile towers and crystal windows for target practice, metaphorically, as we try to turn our ancient neighbour into a meagre copy of the amazing world we are currently vandalising. 

And speaking of target practice. I know it is sad and niggardly of me to complain about a frothy science talk which was great fun, but there must be a different gas for Jon Davies to use to sound like Darth Vader or just drop it. I’m guessing a dense gas is what he needs. Sulphur hexafluoride has a few disadvantages though. It is 22,800 time worse as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and has been banned for all applications except high-voltage switchgear under the F-Gas Directive. The balloon full that he used today to sound like Darth Vader will have a long term effect on the atmosphere for something between the next 800 - 3200 years. The mild amusement is not worth the long term effect. Colour me not amused but appalled!

How rude!

I took a phone call on Thursday evening. It was to the house phone, which is unusual, but my sister calls me on that so I always answer. I’d just dished up dinner which was a melange of pasta, sprouts, broccoli and haloumi in fresh pesto. I mention this because it is a meal that is best eaten hot.

I answered the phone. ‘Is that Mrs Rose?’ she asked. 

Obviously not and an instant indicator that this was a sales call. 

‘Yes it is,’ I replied, because even though she did not know how to pronounce my name I am the person she wanted to speak to. 

‘Have you got a minute?’ she asked. 

‘No, actually, I’ve just put out dinner.’ 

‘I understand you still have wooden fascia boards.’ 

‘I don’t want to buy anything thank you.’ 

‘This isn’t a sales call.’ 

‘You know,’ I said, handing Sally her bowl, ‘I’ve just served out our dinner and I’d like to eat it while it’s hot. Goodbye.’ 

As I put the phone down I heard her complain, ‘That’s a bit rude isn’t it!’

This must be the fourth call I’ve had from these people. I am not going to buy their product.    I’ve told them that three times. I sympathise with anyone who has to make a living cold-calling people. It’s a thankless task, but I have always been of the opinion that if I want a service or a product I will research my options and call the people I choose, to ask for a quote. I don’t appreciate companies calling me and refusing to take a polite ‘no’. 

I signed up to the mailing preference service some time ago when I got tired of unsolicited junk mail. I vaguely thought I’d done the telephone version (TPS) at the same time but I haven’t been sure. I’ve just checked and my number has been registered. 

This is what it says on the TPS website;

‘The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) is a central opt out register whereby individuals can register their wish not to receive unsolicited sales and marketing telephone calls. It is a legal requirement that companies do not make such calls to numbers registered on the TPS.’

According to the regulator of this legislation, the Information Commissioner’s Office:

Telesales calls

If you have received a live telesales call, and you are registered on the TPS, you can complain directly to the TPS in the first instance.

If you continue to receive telesales calls despite complaining to the TPS you should complain to us.

We may be able to help if:

• you have received a marketing call;
• you can identify the caller;
• the caller is based in the UK; and

• you have registered with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) or Corporate Telephone Preference Service (CTPS); or

• you have a record showing you had previously informed the caller that you did not wish to receive its marketing calls. 

So the next time this company is rude enough to call me, despite me registering not to receive marketing calls, I will tell the that I will report them, and then I will report them. I’m almost looking forward to it.

Bah - humbug!

Christmas Eve – the wonder of a Father Ted evening and the horror of pre-Christmas advertising – too late to buy any of the things they advertise – beautiful fragrant people and far too many pre-sale ads. Now I remember why I don’t watch TV.  Even the joy of Father Ted isn’t worth the vile boredom and fatuous inanity of far too many adverts for worthless trash.  

I say farewell to my hopes and dreams

I cried today. I never thought I’d see this; a turning away from our outward urge. From Apollo 8 to this final flight of the Endeavour, I have followed our space exploration for years. In real terms Endeavour has not been the end. The end probably happened years ago when we decided that space exploration should give way to delivery runs to our global communications system. And exploration into space may well continue; reaching out to the future will pass to the developing world, to China and India. It has probably been a mistake to identify our access to space with NASA and the American push.

I sort of assumed I would spend my twenties and thirties in Luna City, moving out to the asteroid belt as my children, Jack and Selene, became independent and moved towards their own entrance into space. Seconds would have become true metric units as I thought in kiloseconds, megaseconds, gigaseconds, divorced from the constraints of planetary life.

Sigh.

When did my dream disappear? Did Star Wars do it?  Maybe. We seemed to become so embedded in our make believe that the reality of the careful, hugely expensive, preparations for each tiny step seemed silly and petty. In my mind’s eye I have journeyed out, swung around the astonishing rings of Saturn, plunged into the cold depths of interstellar space, walked on strange new worlds, gloried in communication with mysterious and beautiful aliens. Except we didn’t and haven’t and now we’re not even moving towards that vision. Why plod through the endless expensive tedium when cgi lets us believe we are the gods themselves?

Perhaps it’s for the best. Potentially we could squander all the wealth of our beautiful world on finally getting out to a cold and sterile place where we lament our loss; a world destroyed by our efforts to escape from it, a paradise where, if we had stayed, we might have flourished in serene joy. What we seem to have achieved is both less and more tragic than that. We have neither seeded the planets and stars nor relaxed into an eco-paradise. We’ve wasted our opportunities and our wealth on producing vast quantities of ugly trash in which we are slowly sinking. Damn! We are a pedestrian race who neither reach for the stars nor build something fine here on Earth. No wonder I weep.

Some more thoughts on banks

I mentioned my bank issues in Journey Planet really as a prelude to an appalling pun, however, it’s something that I want to return to after the Global Poverty project I’ve participated in recently.

To put it in context, although I grumble a lot I don’t usually move away from any provider. A mixture of inertia and loyalty. I have used two clearing banks in my life. My father worked for Midland Bank and so I banked with them until I got married, even when they heartlessly made him redundant. I only moved to my current bank because David, my husband, pointed out that if we ever needed to borrow money we would be better asking a bank with which we had a good credit record. I’d had a permanent overdraft with Midland. Until we married David had never been in debt with his bank. So, I closed my Midland account and we had a joint account with Barclays Bank.

I would never have chosen Barclays. The apartheid protests lingered in my awareness but David made a good point and at the time Barclays had divested themselves of the offending interests. So, we had a joint account and I settled into an apathetic relationship with Barclays.

Twenty three years later I am thinking again. I have always found the telephone ‘support’ from Barclays irritating. Some years ago I considered dumping the bank because of their Hard Sell but the branch staff in Kidderminster were really lovely and provided me with a direct dial so I didn’t have to go through the call centre. They told me at the time that they shouldn’t do this but many of their customers had the same problem and so, in order to keep some semblance of personal banking, they were ignoring the dictat.

My dissatisfaction has grown recently. About a year ago someone from Barclays phoned me up at work, ostensibly to check my payments, but actually to try to sell me cheaper house insurance. It wasted half an hour of my time that I then had to make up at the end of the day. Silly things started to irritate me. I now no longer visit a branch; all transactions are online, so there is never a personable teller to interact with, just an impersonal screen. In some ways I like this, but it means I have no loyalty, and the stupid tricks they play really annoy me. The ‘next’ button on each page is always below the visible window. The obvious button, which I occasionally click on inadvertently, is usually to a sales pitch – update your account to one that gives you useless ‘benefits’ and costs more, for example.

So, over recent years, some irritation. I suspect that this would be the case whichever bank I was with. As is regularly pointed out, they are businesses and they need to expand their business all the time (which is a rant for another time) but I am resistant to being sold to when I have no need and I resent having my time wasted, either online or by telephone sales calls.

What finally tipped the balance, some time on from the banking crisis, was Bob Diamond’s bonus, the pitiful amount of corporation tax paid and the news that Barclays is implicated in the further commoditisation of food via agricultural speculation using collateralised commodity obligations. For those living in extreme poverty, increasing food prices driven by financial speculation means starvation. Generally the people benefitting from food speculation have never been hungry in their lives, have never felt concern about their children suffering from malnutrition, have probably never thought of the consequences of one more financial bet. Barclays Capital are just the provider of this ‘service’ but the banks lobbied very hard for deregulation of the commodities markets to make this type of transaction possible and Barclays is the UK’s biggest player in the food commodities market, one of the big three in the world. I don’t want any part in supporting an organisation that is doing this. I am not under any illusion that taking my monthly pay packet away from them is going to make the least bit of difference to Barclays but I am moving my money to a mutual building society where I’m fairly sure my money will be supporting more benign projects.

Not jealous...

The Thief of Badgags (my own darling Ian) is currently wandering around America having fun without me. To highlight my meanness in not accompanying him he is Skypeing me regularly and tormenting me with his latest wine-tasting escapades, not to mention the wonderful meals he has eaten and the fine time he is having with our friends. Good! Fine! I'm glad! And other insincere expletives! This was too much though.  Taken on his iPhone. He tells me that the chocolate flavoured wine is not nearly as nice as you might imagine. He tested it fairly extensively to be quite sure. Today, apparently, he will be out tasting proper wine with Tom, Spike, Mike and Karen. Sigh. Principles are horrid things.

Synchronicity

Today has been lovely. I’m not sure why early October is often so nice. The day started chill and misty and slowly cleared to a wonderful brisk sunny day. I had a sales meeting near Shipley at midday so I got to sit in the window drinking tea and watching the day emerge from the fog whilst trying to sort out my diary for the next three months. Yesterday I was horribly surprised to find that I was training in Pontypridd the Monday after Novacon and it seemed sensible to sort travel arrangements out and avoid similar nasty shocks. I’m working away from home three or four times a week up to Christmas so I’m going to see a lot of public transport and be eating way too much uninspired hotel food. I remember scoffing when a friend said, many years ago, that it is difficult to live a healthy life when you are always on the road. I should probably track her down and apologise. Even if you are super-organised (and I’m so not) it is difficult to eat well and take any regular exercise, especially when you are up at 5 to get to the venue and not back until after 8. Actually it is difficult to keep up with the washing too.

So, organisation done I smeared on a bit of make-up and scurried down to the bus stop. I’ve given up on the no. 4 for going to the station; it’s just not convenient any more, so I sat on a crowded 83, popular because Stagecoach is 20p cheaper than First. It was packed with students.

Where I live in Sheffield we mark the milestones in the year by student presence or absence. The difference is quite startling. Over the last few years the kids in the shared houses on my street haven’t been much of a nuisance to me but there is a new lot in infused with the energy of youth. They were still partying outside at 5am during Fresher’s week. I’m hoping they will have calmed down a bit by the time the windows are reopened for next summer.

The boys who sat behind me on the bus enveloped me an a miasma of curry&hangover breath. One hadn’t gone to be d until 5, the other had arrived back from an allnighter in Leeds, done a bit of work on his dissertation and was heading back into town to sleep through his lectures. I vaguely remember being able to do that, back in the distant land of youth. I listened in, unashamed. If they were going to share their aroma the least I expected was to be distracted by their conversation. Apparently Sheffield is THE place for Drum and Bass. Something to do with Tuesday Club? No idea. Having recently read King Rat I was not averse to the idea that D&B is a sophisticated and important musical form, but I haven’t pursued it. I lapsed into a malodorous daydream as they displayed their music knowledge to each other. I emerged back into consciousness when one started extolling the virtues of Eric Bibb. Gosh. I saw him a few years ago at the Robin Hood (RIP) near Merry Hill. He was, as the boy stated authoratively, excellent. This segued into praising the Alabama Three (not 3, not from Alabama). Apparently they are also really good but not likely to last much longer due to their age and unhealthy lifestyles. I’d like to have chipped in but I knew it was unlikely that they would welcome a comment from a frumpy woman considerably older than their mothers. The knowledgeable one veered off to impress his friend with his choice of research subject; biomimetics. Brand new idea! All about incorporating natural living material structures and techniques developed in the harsh environment of evolution into engineering solutions. Fascinating! There was a good TED talk on the subject a couple of years ago. As we debussed I caught a glimpse of their fresh faces and marvelled at how connected the world has become. So much information is available so easily that I could understand much of what they were talking about. How the world has changed! Crafts and skills are being lost or downgraded into hobbies but information that in the past would have been too esoteric for the likes of me is now so casually available that I can appreciate it. Sensawunda!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Even more so when, over the weekend Ian forwarded a piece written by Douglas Coupland, via Boing!Boing! He thought it would reflect my pessimistic worldview. How right he was. These are the comments that prompted him to forward the piece:

1) It's going to get worse

No silver linings and no lemonade. The elevator only goes down. The bright note is that the elevator will, at some point, stop.

And:

6) The middle class is over. It's not coming back

Remember travel agents? Remember how they just kind of vanished one day?

That's where all the other jobs that once made us middle-class are going – to that same, magical, class-killing, job-sucking wormhole into which travel-agency jobs vanished, never to return. However, this won't stop people from self-identifying as middle-class, and as the years pass we'll be entering a replay of the antebellum South, when people defined themselves by the social status of their ancestors three generations back. Enjoy the new monoclass!

The ones that made a connection with me were these though:

10) In the same way you can never go backward to a slower computer, you can never go backward to a lessened state of connectedness

11) Old people won't be quite so clueless

No more “the Google,” because they'll be just that little bit younger.

32) Musical appreciation will shed all age barriers

33) People who shun new technologies will be viewed as passive-aggressive control freaks trying to rope people into their world, much like vegetarian teenage girls in the early 1980s

1980: “We can't go to that restaurant. Karen's vegetarian and it doesn't have anything for her.”

2010: “What restaurant are we going to? I don't know. Karen was supposed to tell me, but she doesn't have a cell, so I can't ask her. I'm sick of her crazy control-freak behaviour. Let's go someplace else and not tell her where.”

38)Knowing everything will become dull

It all started out so graciously: At a dinner for six, a question arises about, say, that Japanese movie you saw in 1997 (Tampopo), or whether or not Joey Bishop is still alive (no). And before long, you know the answer to everything.

What I find so fascinating is how I sort of expected all this technological stuff to be part of a utopia (ecotopia) where we all lived long and fulfilling lives. How come the sensawunda stuff is embedded so deep in dystopian shit. The one that really hit home was this:

5) You'll spend a lot of your time feeling like a dog leashed to a pole outside the grocery store – separation anxiety will become your permanent state

Yes! All the time that my loved ones are away I suffer separation anxiety. I thought this was just a symptom of getting older. I hoped it was.

Going home

There's more to come about Fringe stuff but I'm too tired & grumpy to write it at the moment. We had a quite pleasant trip back to Sheffield, most of the way. It was a glorious day, bright and sunny with just a hint of autumnal chill in the brisk breeze. Through the train windows the whole of the farming community was out harvesting the golden fields of wheat. What happens to all those combine harvesters for the rest of the year? Two to three weeks of flat out work a year and the rest in store? 


It was an idyllic view, if crowded on the train. It was a four coach train, Glasgow to Plymouth. There were people standing from Edinburgh and people sitting on bags but there was still room to turn round. At least one of the toilets was out of operation. The guard kept telling us we could get off our train and get on the Reading train behind if we wanted a seat. And then Leeds. There was a festival in Leeds. There always seems to be a festival there at August bank holiday. It's not really a surprise. At least this year the poor crushed together cattle were not slathered with mud. And the fact that the toilet was broken meant that some people could stand in there as well (you wouldn't want to sit on that slightly awash floor). We managed to get off at Sheffield by starting quarter of an our early so that we could squeeze past all the standees and completely demolish then rebuild the luggage storage because, of course, our bag was buried. Never mind. We, Sally and I, were home. Jack should be getting into Oxford any time now, having waited for a cheap train.


So my question is, on the day most people travel home from Edinburgh and the festival in Leeds breaks up would it not be possible to find an extra couple of carriages and make sure all the toilets work?

Reporting the environment

Ian recently sent me a link to an article on The Register. He often sends me links just to annoy me. I usually read them, feel a bit grumpy, then forget them. This one, though, just about hit my tolerance limit. It's a fabulous example of bad reporting, drawing conclusions that are unwarranted from the information.


The piece is titled, 'People have NO BLOODY IDEA about saving energy' and subtitled, 'Those keenest to be green are most ignorant - survey.' I guess they provide fair warning in their titling that this is not an objective report. It is, however, based on a fairly interesting piece of scientific research and the Register were good enough to provide  a link to the original paper. 


Having read both the Register's article and the original paper, 'Public perceptions of energy consumption and savings', I can agree what the Register reported was not incorrect but the spin they had imparted to a sober little paper was so strenuous it is probably still reeling. 


What the original article says is that people are not fully aware of the energy used by their various activities, appliances or embodied in the products they use. From the information presented this is true. 


I will even admit, sheepishly, that the contrasting embodied energy costs for glass and aluminium surprised me. I hadn't really thought about it but it seems fairly obvious that this would be the case once I had given it some thought. The melting point of aluminium is around 660C, for glass it is at least 1400C, depending on constituents. From this the Register concludes that 'as a true eco-person, you shouldn't be recycling glass, you ought not to be using it at all.' Well, yes. And no. Unfortunately, at present I am unable to find the sort of wine I want to drink in aluminium cans. Given that I am unlikely to stop drinking wine in the immediate future it is still better for me to send my glass bottles for recycling than not*. 


The article continues, 'Again, when asked what the single most effective thing they could do to save energy, the most popular response in the survey was to turn off lights. In fact lighting accounts for a relatively small proportion of the average person's energy use and almost all of us could save far more juice (and carbon) in other ways - for instance by turning the heating down as little as a single degree, something which many extremely keen lightswitch nazis** refuse to do.'


I have an issue with this paragraph. I am not disputing that turning the heating down will save more energy than turning off lights, but there is also no reason not to turn lights off in a room not being used. The Register seems very keen on either/or choices. It might surprise them but it is quite possible to turn the heating down by one degree and turn lights off in unused rooms. 


They go on to quote the original paper that states 'participants estimated that line drying saves more energy than changing the washer's settings (the reverse is true)'. My concern with this statement is twofold. One is that I always wonder when I hear such loose phrasing. 'Changing the washer's settings' could mean anything from reducing the temperature by 10 degrees to reducing it from 90C to 30C or more. Looking at the paper's Figure 1 it is quite possible that, depending on what that phrase means, line drying may be a better saver. Difficult to tell; the graph is small with a logarithmic scale. My other concern again is, what does it matter? Both of these are potentially high energy saving. Change the washer settings and line dry. 


Never mind though, the Register goes on from this paragraph to state, 'Perhaps the killer revelation from the survey is that it is, in fact, the very people who are keenest and most active about reducing their energy consumption who are the most ignorant.' Despite the exaggeration and emotive language this is, in fact, the conclusion of the paper. People are optimistic that what they are doing is having a positive effect. Their perceptions are not as accurate as they could be. This is a problem if for example, you comfort yourself that the impact of your flight to Australia will be offset by turning the lights out and recycling your wine bottles. It may also be a problem if, as a Register reader, you can only take one action at a time so rather than turn your thermostat down, line dry your clothes, boil only as much water as you need and cycle to work you unplug your phone charger. 


The lesson the Register takes from the information contained within the paper is, 'In other words, ignore that earnest friend of yours who recycles religiously, turns off the lights all the time, and unplugs the telly every night... They quite literally have no idea what they are talking about.' Well no, that's not what the paper said. The original paper suggested that better and more accurate information would help to reduce emissions and public information campaigns should focus on behaviours that could have a greater effect - forget the phone chargers and turn down the heating.  They conclude, 'It is therefore vital that public communications about climate change also address misconceptions about energy consumption and savings, so that people can make better decisions for their pocketbooks and the planet.'  The Register, on the other hand, concludes that we should 'ignore the many worth organisations - for instance the Energy Saving Trust here in the UK, which you pay for through your taxes - which have made us all so ignorant.' I took a quick look at the EST website. The top ten tips did indeed include the admonition, 'Don't leave appliances on stand-by and remember not to leave laptops and mobile phones on charge unnecessarily'. It also, however, suggested sorting out dripping hot water taps, fully loading our washing machines, boiling only as much water as needed, changing to low energy bulbs, turning lights off, closing curtains at dusk and draught proofing, turning your water thermostat down (also reduces the risk of scalding small children) and turning your central heating thermostat down. The information on the site would be improved if each tactic was rated on energy saving effectiveness but the tips given were all generally good and do not seem to me to be making us ignorant. The worst that could be said is that it is not as informative as it could be.


I wonder what the Register gains by subverting a worthy piece of research. It makes no sense to me. Unless the author of the piece is still living with his parents who keep turning the lights out on him.




*Ideally glass bottles should be reused. My milkman very kindly takes my glass milk bottles back for reuse. It doesn't need vastly more energy to take them back because he was coming to my house to deliver anyway. 


**As a rule of thumb, use of the word nazi in an article not talking about the german fascist movement of the mid 20th century is an indicator of a lack of objectivity.   

Trains

I said don't get me started on trains. It turns out to be unnecessary because David Mitchell has done it for me. I'm always impressed by Mitchell's rants; he is thoughtful, rational and wonderfully, grumpily liberal.
See here and here.

The 3, a sorry tale

I've received replies from South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive (SYPTE), First (the bus operator) and Ian Auckland, the Cabinet Member with responsibility for transport in Sheffield City Council. The answer is, 'sorry, nothing we can do'. It's a commercial decision. I guess that since the Arts College on Psalter Lane has closed the income from the route has fallen. I'm not sure why we continue to think of it as public transport.


When you get a group of older people together in Sheffield they often hark back to the golden age, an age where buses were cheap and deregultion (curse that buggering woman*) had not yet happened. A time when cars were few, congestion was low and herds of ham sandwich coloured buses trundled, belching clouds of particulates, through the narrow canyons of Sheffield's streets. A time when buses were so cheap that only posh and/or stupid people drove their cars into the town centre. A time when it was feasible for the ticket machine to be a mini photocopier. These days, with £1.30 fares to go less than a mile, the ticket could easily be 6 foot long (130 x penny width and a bit for spacing). Oh those happy days!

In these deregulated days there is a fight to run the lucrative routes nut no-one wants to run the necessary but sparsely populated routes. You would think that on the popular routes, with two companies competing, the service would be excellent. There are two reasons why this does not work. One is that the two operators seem to run at the same time, leapfrogging each other through the too narrow roads, causing traffic safety problems and leaving passengers waiting twice as long as necessary. The other reason, of course, is that the popularity of bus services has fallen due to high costs and lack of reliability, which means more cars on the road increasing congestion and reducing reliability still further; a positive feedback loop.

The problem with our current 'public transport' is that some routes pay well and others pay poorly but are necessary to the people living along those routes. In the days of regulated public transport the 'profits' from the lucrative routes subsidised the rest. These days the bus companies   can make their money on one route and let another languish on the grounds that running more regular buses would not be commercially viable.

From an environmental point of view, attracting people onto public transport would both reduce carbon emissions and congestion, resulting in improved journey times for everyone and better local air quality. This is not something that will happen due to market forces. For this to work public transport needs to be provided that is truly public. I'd vote to re-regulate our bus service.

And don't get me started about trains...     

*to quote my Grandad

What was I thinking?

I'm sat in Ian's house, listening to Ian and his friend, Alec, grumbling and bickering and punning, waiting for Julian to arrive, late and grumpy. Then we'll be ready for a week of Fringe fun. During all the time I've been coming up here I have never been the only woman on the team. This year Julia has abandoned me to go to Worldcon in Australia, leaving me with the three stooges. I may survive. They may survive. I'll let you know.


Later
OK! So Julian has arrived and things have livened up. We've chatted about Ponyo (the mother arguing by Aldis lamp is particularly nice) the Fermi Paradox and Old Jews Telling Jokes. It's mildly amusing.   


OMG They're whistling the theme to Zed Cars. It's related to a comment about Brian Blessed. No idea. I'm still not sure we can survive the week. 

Harumph!

Ian and his friend Alec are having fun in Ian's ephemerally tidy house, ploughing their way through a box of Chocolate Club indulgence with cruel glee and being generally horrid and I RESENT THIS!
I'll probably feel better once I can think of some suitable revenge. Other than drinking Ian's reserva pinot noir all on my own. 

The saga of the 3, introduction

I'm sort of thinking that this may be a series.


I live in Sheffield. It is a hilly place. A very hilly place. And I live at the top of a hill like the great north face of the Eiger. Well not really but it is steep enough for Ian to refuse to ever attempt to walk up it. Last winter in the ice it was more dangerous than the fastest skeleton bobsleigh run. Yes, I chose to live here. One of the reasons was the 3 and 4. Unlike the 80 family of buses that drop me at Hunter's Bar, the foot of the horrid hill, the 3 and 4 trundle gently along Psalter lane and  end up at the top of my road. When I had to get to work in the ice I slithered up my mildly sloping road and bused into town on the 3 then out to work on the 40. 


The service has never been very frequent. At best the buses were only every half hour, once an hour in the evenings and Sunday, but it has been reliable and, importantly, ends up at the Intersection, near to the rail station, and is therefore great for visitors and for me when I conscientiously travel by public transport for work. 


On Monday, without any obvious notification, the service changed. Sally and her friends waited for an hour in town at the usual bus stop. When the second bus didn't turn up they went to the Intersection to ask and found that the 3 had been cancelled and the 4 had been relocated to Arundel Gate (up a hill). 


My neighbour comments, 'I got caught out on Monday morning (which is apparently when the new service came into effect). I saw no signs on the buses or bus stops to warn us! I was very unimpressed when I nearly missed my 8.20am train on Monday
morning because I didn't know the bus times had changed and had to catch another bus and run at full speed across town to get to the train station. I caught the train by the skin of my teeth - not impressed with First Buses at all!'

I am signed up with Travel South Yorkshire to receive notification of changes to the timetables of the 3 and 4 but I can't find any record of a notification and I didn't see any signs at the bus stops either. 


Having discovered this unannounced* downgrading of our service I looked on the South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive website to find where to comment. Apparently their 'job is to encourage you to use public transport'. It's not clear on the website how they do this or how to comment but after trawling around for a good while I found their customer charter. I will be contacting this organisation today to see why my lifeline bus has been cancelled and why I didn't know about it.


*I'm sure it wasn't unannounced. See The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy to see how bad changes are usually communicated. Further investigation reveals that there is a link at the bottom of the Travel South Yorkshire page called 'July Bus Service Changes' but how would I know to go looking for it? Especially when I am signed up to be notified of changes to my service.