No will for carbon friendly transportation strategy

While binge flying relentlessly puts pressure to expand airports thanks to the fact aviation fuel is not taxed, the government has just released details of its rail strategy: Rail fares to soar as government slashes funding - Times Online

Or rather the lack of:
"Ministers intend to shift the burden of paying for the railway much more heavily to passengers, who paid 50 per cent of the cost this year but will pay 75 per cent by 2014. "

This is appalling and hypocritical.

On one hand, the government is encouraging motorists stealth tax pretexting carbon emission and on the other it simply does not invest enough in non-polluting public transport. Trains are over-crowded and little improvement is to come. It took over 10 years to get the Eurostar connected with a proper high-speed line to London -with a great result: over 60% market share against airlines on the London-Paris route. This represents many many planes not buzzing in Richmond skies....

Commuters are often criticised for preferring their cars. This is in fact a perfectly rational choice. For instance, a Richmond resident working in Thames Valley Park in Reading, like many thousands of other employees, can travel by car of train. From North Sheen it takes about one hour and half although TVP is right between the Reading line and the Thames. This is because the station that was planned when TVP was developped has never been completed and one has to take a shuttle from Reading station.
So it's adding 30 mn each way, which is £8 if you have to pay childcare, plus £11 in rail faires, versus less than £10 by car and one hour.

Why can't we have continental-grade infrastructures? Why indeed...

PS: read also Mike Rutherford's column on Autoexpress: More rail inefficiency and more rate increases – and more investment from the Government

Tags: richmondtransits.blog, transportation, automobile, environment, UK, politics

If ever you can find eels....

The Richmond and Twickenham times relates the story of a rare local British dish, the Richmond Eel Pie.
Interesting tale, dating back to King Henry VIII: apparently Eel Pie Island is named after that dish. The ait was also famous for music in the sixities -I wish I was there!

Coming back to the Eel pie, it's apparently not that difficult to cook, the main issue is to find eels (and also to skin and bone them). Here's the recipe on The Great British Kitchen.

Tags: richmondtransit.blog, foodings, recipe, fish, Richmond

Free marketing advice for Dualit

I was looking to buy a Dualit toaster earlier this week. Seems simple enough, once you have made up your mind on the number of slots, right?

On their website (which is not well referenced by Google: advice #1, spend some time on Google Sitemaps) they list the four slots at £152.95 in colours and £177.13 in polished steel. As this is a tad steep, I checked on eBay and found a good range of of new specimens under £130 and used under £50. Unfortunately they have only the hideous glacier blue and none of the eBay shops carries the metallic blue.

Not being selfish, I remembered by better half wanted a new kettle. So I wrote to Dualit to know whether they also did kettles in either Lavender or Metallic hues. Nope. So, you'll find advice #2 below: why on Earth don't they make it easy to buy two of their products in matching colours?

And you'll see advice #3: team up with other iconic brands, because frankly Marmite isn't going to cut it...

Finally, here's advice #4: the Dualit web site doesn't work well with Firefox: that's advice #2, ensure wide browser compatibility. Maybe hire specialist consultants or use open source software.


Hi,

Take this as a suggestion for improvement then: it's always nice to be able to match coloured items in one's kitchen.

Another suggestion: why don't you team up with Kitchen Aid to sell a set in metallic blue of your products and their famous mixer? You could announce it on July the 4th?

Or do the toaster in the same coulours as the Francis Francis X1 -it is equally iconic and a yellow dualit would look really nice besides mine.
http://www.coffeegeek.com/proreviews/firstlook/francisfrancisx1

Seems to me a better commercial idea than corkscrews....

Regards,


Ludovic.

Dualit Enquiry Response wrote:

Dear Ludovic,

Thank you for your email enquiry. Unfortunately, we do not manufacture a Kettle is Metallic or Lavender Blue. However, we do have the Jug Kettle available in Glacier Blue.

Best Regards

Dualit Limited
County Oak Way
Crawley
West Sussex
RH11 7ST
info@dualit.com
Tel: +(44) (0) 1293 652500
Fax: +(44) (0) 1293 652555
This email and any attachments are confidential. They may contain privileged information and are intended for the named addressee(s) only. They must not be distributed without our consent. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify us immediately and do not disclose, distribute, or retain this email or any part of it. Unless expressly stated, opinions in this email are those of the individual sender and not of Dualit Ltd. We believe but do not warrant that this e-mail and any attachments are virus free. You must therefore take full responsibility for virus checking. Dualit Ltd reserve the right to monitor all email communications through their networks.

---

From: Ludovic
Sent: 12 June 2007 13:37
To: Dualit Enquiry Response
Subject: Matching kettle for blue toaster

Hi,

Do you make kettles in metallic blue or lavender blue to match your toasters?

Regards,

Ludovic

Tags: marketing, richmondtransits.blog, foodings

And the winner is...

The winnner of the UGLIEST LOGO of the year is the Olympic quango, that same one we have to pay taxes for since they deliberately under estimated the cost of the games:

2012 Olympics logo debuts to whalesong | The Register

PubsCafs -Good or bad?

A pub chain has announced a tiee-up with a coffee-chain:
BBC NEWS | Business | Coffee Republic expands into pubs

This little island is changing fast: less than 10 years ago few could spell basalmic or name another grape varietal than chardonnay. Like it or loathe it, we can now get some proper coffee in pubs!

The times where caffè translated into English meant Nescafe are long gone -and for a foodie it's a good thing. Unfortunately it also seems to go along with the decline in popularity of real ales, even though we now see talented local brewers, some like Meantime even sold by Sainsbury's as their own label. Richmond has some local supply of its own thanks to Twickenham Fine Ales (but I am not sure if you can get it in a pub near you?). Tony ought to know this...


Tags: richmondtransits.blog, foodings, pubs

YouCreativity!

Absolutely great stop-motion clip unearthed on YouTube! (link from BoingBoing):



Tags: humour, richmondtransit.blog

How to send large files through the internet?

Internet is great. You can exchange with folks elsewhere in Europe... or in Guatemala.

The only snag is that receiving mp3 or joke mails quickly fills in your inbox.

I came across this very useful web site today: SendThisFile.com allows to send files without size limit!

Tags: richmondtransit.blog, internet, trick

Transported logic

The government is talking about expanding Heathrow -if the airport meets its pollution targets. To achieve this, they've started leaking the idea of creating a congestion charge around the airport... to remove some ground transportation CO2 (powered by taxed petrol/diesel).

The alternative of taxing aviation fuel (kerosene) and invest in new high-speed rail has not been investigated by the Edington report: the ex-BA boss who was asked to work on the "future of transportation", which he did by totally ignoring indirect costs such as environment, health, etc...

For instance, it is claimed that delaying the airport expansion could cost £5bn. The flight path to Heathrow alone is impacting over 1 million Londoners. Who has factored in those costs in the equation?

Tags: transportation airlines Heathrow politics richmondtransits.blog

mBlogging

I am "mblogging" (blogging on the move) in the Eurostar back from Paris today. And I can't help that thinking that it's a very civilised way of travelling, yet light on "indirect costs".

• The journey is 2h55 or something like this, my outbound train was on time and the return is predicted to arrive 15 mn late. If I was to fly they would not even apologise for 15 mn -actually, given the terrible weather today and yesterday (check those tornado images), I would expect flights to be rather 1h late.
• Door to door, Richmond to Colombes, I guesstimated that taking the train makes my journey about 30 mn longer. That's if planes are on time. But I can work, sleep, eat or read for about 3 hours -uninterrupted. So it's much more productive than having to check-in, queue for security, having your deodorant taken away (they don't seem to make 100ml sprays), walk, lounge, lurk, walk, wait, second secutiry check, wait, walk, fly, walk, wait, show your passport, get your luggage back and then travel from CDG to Paris...
• Costwise, it's probably similar if you book you air ticket in advance but for an extra TEN POUNDS you can travel Eurostar Business Premier. Which means you're comfortably installed in wide reclinable seats and today the menus was as follows: selection of French wines (inc. some Champagne), selection of a cold morteau sausage with potato salad or some hake and prawn pie, with a tartlet to finish. It's almost a shame my French colleagues kindly bought me lunch :-) Plus you have power for your laptop... BTW, the difference in price was easily recouped by not having to buy breakfast on the outbound and saving on taxi fares to/from the airport as you "land" in the middle of the town. Oh, and free magasines and airline-style departure lounges.

So, it's not a coincidence that the Eurostar took over 70% share on journeys between London and Paris. And I guess that's quite a few planes that won't be buzzing over Richmond and sending CO2, CO, NO2, etc, into the Ozone Layer. Shame those yellow trains are moving away from Waterloo.

Which brings me to my favourite topic: all that was possible thanks to public investment in transport infrastructure. From the French governement and as long as 25 years ago when they initiated the TGV. Oh, and that tunnel. Rod Eddington's report is thus very disappointing: why do we still have to fly to Edinburgh or even Manchester then?

This week's Economist lead was on gridlock campaing and the article was supporting road charging. Excuse me but pricing poor people out of the roads is not the solution. We should think about using transport real-estate more effectively (I am one in favour of bus lanes, non-share cycling paths) and easing journeys with "intermodal hubs" (like the Hammersmith bus-tube station, but much better designed please).

Tags: travel richmondtransits.blog transportation eurostar trains

Excessive excuse!

Today, we learn that the WATERLOO & CITY LINE is "Suspended due to excessive dust on platforms". Must be the daftest excuse we've heard for a long time...

The Drain has just been shut for 6 months for a complete refurbishment but broke down the next day after service had resummed...

Excessive incompetence?

Tags: tube richmondtransits.blog transportation TfL London

Free WiFi in Leicester square

Apparently there's now free Wifi in Leicester Square. I maybe paranoid but it looks like a good way to get your laptop nicked while moblogging? I'll stick with Starbucks...



Tags: starbucks London Wifi richmondtransits.blog Leiceseter square

Borough Tony

Check Artist Tony's blog for daily pictures of Richmond -he's got a great eye (and maybe a better camera than mine?). Let's just hope he continues posting....

In this post he brings nice pics of Borough market -which apparently is under threat (see link for the campaign)

Tags: Richmond richmondtransits.blog BoroughMarket London

Perfect timing: 40% off wines?

According to this blog (thanks for the pointer James), Thresher is running a promotion on wines between the 30/11 and the 10/12: they're discounting their whole range by 40%.

Read it here: word-of-mouth story in the making... [Gapingvoid]

We have yet to see if it works but if it does the timing is perfect... and I'll come back on this with my recommendations (Threshers has a fairly middle-of-the road assortment, Waitrose if often cheaper and has almost always a beeter selection).


Tags: wine UK marketing richmondtransits.blog

Why is air travel competitive against rail on short distances?

The quick answer is: because UK politicians have not invested in high-speed railways and keep subsidising air travel. For once, there's a lesson to be learnt from the French.

Read my comment here: Zut alors! Airport group demands end to Paris flights [Richmond and Twickenham Times]


Tags: train transportation richmondtransits.blog travel politics airlines heathrow

New Richmond blog

One blog to add to my links bar: The Richmond Blog, by Andrew Pilkinton -a sociology writer.

He has strange views on junk food having no links to obesity though...

Ads misunderstandings...

I finally found the artwork for the famous "Nothing suck like Electrolux" ad here.

Another one is there, probably also on a Swedish blog.

This perfect example of mistranslation is detailed on Snark Hunting (reading highly recommended) and more translation funnies can be found there and everywhere.

Sometimes it's just not funny: I don't envy the guys who got the brief for Hitachi and came up with this. Sometimes translating is just culturally impossible...

Stagecoack to replace SWT, introduce Oyster

This article details changes to come for the Richmond (mass) transit system:
World’s your Oyster, rail users are promised - Richmond and Twickenham Times

More on news.bbc.co.uk.

In a nutshell, South West Trains are to be replaced by Stagecoach who won the franchise. They also promised to improve the service and introduce Oyster ticketing. Better late than never, but that also means that North Sheen users won't be able to use the valid excuse of the unmanned ticket desk and changeless ticket machine to get a free ride :-)

Finally, our condolances to Susan Kramer who has lost her husband.

Trains fare robbery is not promoting sustability

Train fares are raising, much faster than inflation:
Commuters hit hard by Ken's latest fare hikes (Richmond and Twickenham Times)

Hardly a way to encourage commuting in crowded public transports, Ken?

I took the Waterloo and City line yesterday, after it's been shut for repairs for FIVE months. While I was contemplating a poster presenting the benefits of the refurbishment... while waiting for late trains (alledgedly due to hardware issues)...

Finally, I am reading this morning about Virgin Trains' attempt to break the Glasgow-London speed record by going at more than 100 mph (160 km/h). This record have been in place for 25 years. Cooincidentally, it's also the 25th birthday of the French TGV, which is now trialled for commercial speed at 360 km/h (the speed record is over 500 km/h!).

Speed alone is not what matters: high-speed trains has remapped France, relieving some of the pressure on the dense Paris area and stealing market share to air travel. This matters enormously: by gaining a 68% share on the London-Paris route, rail is proving a viable and sustainable alternative to polluting airliners.

Tags: train, transportation, richmondtransits.blog, tube, waterloocity, London

What to do with diet coke and menthos?

A geyser of course:
Coke and Mentos Fountain at EepyBird.com

Much healthier than drinking and eating them!



Tags: humor

PhotoFeed du jour

I've added this feed in my RSS reader:
[daily dose of imagery]

(RSS feed)

Tags: photo