Cardelia

I hope he appealed. He would have won because you're allowed to block your own driveway, although the wardens wouldn't necessarily have known that this was what he was doing which is why he was issued a ticket.

P.O.U.S.theWonderCat Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > @Cardelia, except that that means that I have to > wait around for another 30 minutes only to be told > that they next train has been delayed or > cancelled, when otherwise I can just go and find > some other way home and get home in 1 hour rather > than 2. > > Besides, the TOCs don't pay the comp, so I'm not > convinced they care. I'm not sure I follow. If your normal train is cancelled and you can get home within 30 minutes of your scheduled arrival time by using another train, then you've been inconvenienced but not severely delayed. Rightly or wrongly, 30 minutes is the defined cutoff point for compensation so I'm not sure why you feel it's a con? Anyway, I'm pretty sure it is the TOCs who pay compensation.

Growlybear Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > As Jeremy said, parking across a dropped kerb has > always been an offence. I know many people who > have been issued with tickets for parking across > dropped kerbs, in various areas, and it's very > clear in the Highway Code that local authorities > can enforce this type of contravention. Strictly speaking this is not true. Parking across a dropped kerb is not automatically an offence. However, there are many technicalities and regulations surrounding the whole issue, and it's generally difficult to tell which ones are in operation and which ones aren't, so drivers are generally told not to do it. To give you an example of the confusing regulations, it is illegal to block someone's lawful access to the public highway. So, if a car is in a driveway with a dropped kerb and someone blocks them in, that's illegal. Interestingly, the converse is not automatically true: if a resident comes home to find someone blocking access to their driveway then they may not have any recourse to force the driver to move their car. However, if a local authority has applied for a Special Enforcement Area then they have a lot more power to ticket drivers. Assuming Southwark have done this then they are within their rights to ticket anyone who parks in front of a dropped kerb, provided the following is true (S86 of the 2004 Traffic Management Act, for anyone interested): Part (iii) is the relevant bit and it's not obvious whether this is still applicable if the dropped kerb no longer serves its intended purpose. For example, I get to my flat through a rear garden which once upon a time was designed for vehicle access, complete with dropped kerb. The access point has long since been gated up with metal bars so only pedestrians can get in, but the dropped kerb remains. My car is currently parked across that dropped kerb (not blocking any other driveways or access points) and so far nobody has ticketed it. For the scenario in the OP, it is really difficult to tell whether part (iii) still applies. It's possible, though unlikely after 14 years of inaction, that the landowner wants to clear all the junk from behind the gates and needs access to the driveway. Although common sense would suggest that the first thing to do is put up some signs warning people about this. It's definitely worth an appeal if you were ticketed. Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, merely someone who has previously won an appeal against a ticket for this (hence the knowledge).

Would it be possible to move the destination boards to somewhere outside of the station entrance so that they can be seen from the road? One (admittedly small) contribution to congestion in the mornings is where the scrum to get through the ticket barriers completely stops moving because one passenger stops to see the status of their train.

P.O.U.S.theWonderCat Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The 30 minutes point is a bit of a con IMO. If > your train is cancelled, your train is cancelled. > The fact that an entirely different train might be > leaving on time within 30 minutes should be > neither here nor there - particularly given 9 out > of 10 times the later trains are being delayed or > cancelled too. > Unfortunately, the delay repay scheme does not exist to provide compensation for cancelled trains. It's there to compensate passengers who arrive at their destination severely late. That's why they won't pay out compensation if there is another train which can get you to your destination within 30 minutes of the scheduled arrival time. Of course, if that later train is delayed then you may well be eligible for compensation because of the earlier cancellation, but just because a particular train is cancelled there's no automatic entitlement to compensation. Please don't give up claiming the money. It's the only thing which the TOCs care about.

rendelharris Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Well let's hope not and that the poor people > living round the airport are saved some of the > increase. However, the rich and powerful are not > renowned for their unwillingness to pay silly > money if something increases their sense of > self-importance - look at the number who would pay > five times the cost of an ordinary flight to save > three hours by flying Concorde. If it was sold as > a luxury service (with only eighty passengers per > plane they could certainly make it spacious) > saving two or three hours compared to Heathrow I > could imagine enough mugs paying for it. It's certainly a possibility, but the competition via Heathrow and Gatwick use enormous planes such as the A380. This allows the likes of Emirates to install truly luxurious first class suites which are aimed squarely at really rich passengers: the tiny (in comparison!) Bombardier planes simply can't compete with that. Likewise, Heathrow has several first class departure lounges whereas City has nothing. The main advantage of City is that it is a small airport and passengers can turn up 30 minutes before takeoff, something you just can't do at Heathrow. For people whose time is so precious that they can't afford to spend hours traipsing across London and waiting in departure lounges, this is great and is probably the primary reason they use City. I'm just not so sure that there are enough of these people who would fly regularly to Dubai to make such a service work out of City. Toffee: I've lived under the Heathrow flight path for almost my entire life and the noise doesn't bother me. I have no objection to the expansion of City, or even Heathrow come to think of it.

Whoops, yes, those are miles not nautical miles. The only way Bombardier can increase the range of the plane to get it to Dubai is to restrict the capacity to 80 passengers. With a restricted capacity each passenger will be paying a higher fare in order to make the service viable, so most leisure passengers will be excluded because they tend to look primarily at price when booking flights. This leaves the business market. Are there are sufficient people in the financial services sector who need to travel to Dubai and who are willing to pay a premium to travel from City rather than Heathrow or Gatwick? I'm not so sure that the demand is there; certainly if BA are struggling to fill their City-New York services, I don't see how Dubai could possibly work.

City to Santorini is 1,627 nautical miles. City to Moscow (Domodedovo, the main airport) is slightly closer at 1,565 nm. Aside from the physical limitations of City, the other argument against longer routes is economic. Are there enough people willing to pay business fares for long-haul flights out of City to make it worthwhile operating the routes? BA struggle to get the JFK service to turn a profit and that's with the financial sector who need to shuttle people between London and New York. They're willing to pay for the convenience of having an airport right on their doorstep. There isn't the same demand for Boston, Toronto or any of the Gulf states, especially when you consider that Gatwick and Heathrow are direct competitors with multiple flights a day.

The biggest problem at City is capacity. Large(ish) planes already use City, it's just that there are not many stands which are capable of servicing them. The new Bombardiers are the same size as the A318 which BA has been using for its JFK services since 2009. The extended apron and new stands will allow more of the larger planes to use City, but they won't be any bigger than the planes already in use. This is because of the physical constraints at City i.e. runway length and approach vector. The runway at City isn't long enough for a fully fuelled A318 to take off and reach JFK hence it has to stop in Shannon on the way out to refuel. My understanding is that even though the Bombardiers have a similar theoretical range to the A318, the physical constraints of City mean that this cannot be effectively utilised. Hence we're unlikely to see any new destinations which are further away than Santorini, which is the longest non-stop destination currently served from City.

The runway isn't being extended at City so the planes are not going to be any bigger than the ones currently in use.

Green Goose, If you read the article on Jancis Robinson's site, you'd have noted that it wasn't actually written by Jancis. Instead, it was a guest contribution by a guy called Simon Reilly. He happens to run the wineloon.com site and if you look at the front page of that you'll note the following: (my emphasis) Even if he did have a "wine qualification" I'm pretty sure that the WSET syllabus doesn't cover the economic implications of Brexit or the finer details of WTO import/export tariffs so I don't know why you'd cite a "wine expert" when it comes to economic and political matters. Especially when, as Dave R points out, he is wrong. Secondly, Jonathan Hesford is a winemaker from the Roussillon region of France, so he actually does knows a little bit about import/export tariffs because it's part of his job. He is NOT saying that the EU imposes a 32% tariff on wines imported from outside the EU. Instead, he's saying that that 32% is the default WTO tariff for wine imports if no alternative trade agreement is reached. Which is what Loz has been saying all along...

miga Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > OK - I get there's a history of TL problems, and > am not arguing its origins, but within a few weeks > of Southern services going south there was > parliamentary discussion, front pages on the > Standard, Sadiq chipping in etc. Thameslink > continues quietly appalling - current performance > levels are marginally better than Southern at its > ebb (say 50% on time vs. 40% on time and 80% vs. > 60-70% on the within 5 minutes measure) - but > they've been that bad for a long time. I would > argue that TL is also *really* bad, but much less > noisily so. Daily performance figures for yesterday: http://www.thameslinkrailway.com/about-us/performance/daily I know it's a snapshot and not a trend (also not helped by the Forest Hill sinkhole), but it's obvious that whilst Thameslink is really bad, Southern is still worse. Much worse. That's why it's getting all the scrutiny.

miga Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > As I've said before, I know things are > particularly bad on Southern, but it baffles me > why Govia's equally bad Thameslink never managed > to get people's ire to this extent. Back in 2010, when Thameslink was *really* bad, it was run by FirstGroup as First Capital Connect. They're the ones who continually failed to train/employ sufficient drivers to cover the rota, a problem which was inherited by GTR when it took over the Thameslink franchise two years ago. And there are lots of other historical FirstGroup-related problems which GTR inherited and have contributed to the current farce. But to say that Thameslink never got people's ire to this extent isn't correct, it's just that FCC only ran a few services through this area of London when things were really bad so most ED-based commuters wouldn't have been affected by the problems.

bobbsy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I agree with the need for more control on > polluting vehicles in theory, and think a line > needs to be drawn somewhere regarding age of > vehicles (pre 2005 seems about right to me), but > pre 2015 seems far far too new to me (only 4 years > old in 2019 - I've never ever been able to afford > a 4 year old car!), and I disagree with the > extension of the zone so quickly. I COMPLETELY > DISAGREE on exempting taxi's and Ubers. The age thing is a guide, not a line in the sand. All petrol vehicles in the ULEZ will need to be compliant with Euro 4 emissions standards otherwise they get charged. Euro 4 was introduced in 2005 (hence the cutoff date for older vehicles) but my understanding is that any Euro 4-compliant vehicles registered before 2005 should not be charged. Likewise, if there are any vehicles registered after 2005 which are not Euro 4 compliant, they should be charged. In general diesel-powered vehicles are more polluting than petrols, especially in city centres, hence diesels are being held to newer pollution standards (Euro 6, which was introduced in 2015). If you want to buy an older car, just make sure it's not a diesel. Which is good advice anyway when choosing any car for city centre driving. Under current plans, residents in the ULEZ will have a three year grace period to change their car once it's introduced. This effectively means that anyone in ED will have until 2023 before they start paying charges for the extended ULEZ. Anyone outside the south circular will have to start paying to drive to ED from 2020. That seems like a fair trade-off to me (although I completely disagree that taxis and Ubers should be exempt) and I'm in favour of the proposed changes even though I'll have to change my car.

d.b Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Surely the government has to make an example out > of Southern. Despite woeful service, labour > relations, and customer satisfaction, they are > guaranteed profits each year. Not only that, but > they have gone up year after year, despite > requiring large government subsidies to run. > > http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article > -3452793/Go-Ahead-profits-soar-17-amid-deluge-cust > omer-complaints.html About 6 or 7 years ago, when First Capital Connect ran the Thameslink service, it was an absolute shambles. Commuters suffered cancellations, severe delays, short-formed trains, missing out intermediate stops, severe overcrowding etc. on a daily basis. Punctuality dropped to 60% overall and I was averaging more than 2 delay repay vouchers per week, which is some going considering the minimum delay to get one is 30 minutes. A petition was started to ask the government to strip FirstGroup of the franchise but the closest we ever got to a result was Lord Adonis warning FCC that their service was "substandard". Which wasn't much consolation. If there's anything I learnt from the FCC fiasco, it's to make sure you claim a refund for every single eligible delay. The only language the TOCs understand is money, so if enough people start impacting on their profits through claiming back compensation for delays they might - just might - take a tiny bit of notice. I wish you well with southern but I don't hold out much hope that you'll get anywhere with your complaints, in every sense of the word!