One of the more surprising things about yesterday’s trip to London was the cost of the train ticket to do the journey.
Now I wrote about it last year when National Express East Anglia decided to almost-double the cost of the trainfare overnight from £40 to £74, and ended up with a letter from NEEA telling me that oh yes, it’d been an error, and the prices would drop back down at the next revision.
Looks like that was a lie, too. Indeed, the price has now gone up, so a return ticket with travelcard cost me £80.80 That really takes the piss. I could’ve driven down, parked all day, and driven back for less than half that amount – the only reason I didn’t was that I wasn’t in the mood for navigating London and the M25.
On the (very minor) plus side, the trains are now a lot less busy than they were when I was using them on a daily basis a couple of years back. Of course, that just means that (in theory at least) NEEA will then try and gouge their remaining customers even more in order to maintain the same levels of income.
Every so often a story in the news just makes me say “What. The. Fuck?” – this one is one of those stories.
Children at a school near Selby have had a play break cancelled and hard ball games banned after neighbours complained to the council about noise.
Barlby Community Primary School has also put up a soundproof fence because it fears a noise abatement order.
So people who live near a school – and one assumes, have either a) lived there for a while, or b) moved in thinking it would be nice and quiet (because they’re shit-for-brains morons) – complain that the school is noisy at play time.
You really have to wonder sometimes. In the town where I grew up, a housing estate was built that backed on to the local sewage farm. People who moved into those houses complained about the smell, and tried to get the (pre-existing) sewage farm shut down. When I was in Manchester people who moved in to one part of the city centre complained about the noise from the bars, and tried to get them shut down.
If you’re that fucking stupid that you move near a school, or a bar, or a sewage farm, and only then complain that there’s a problem, then you don’t deserve to be allowed to complain. Live with it, and shut the fuck up. You moron.
Currently, our largest local(ish) Sainsbury’s store is undergoing a major refurbishment – a project which looks like it’s going to roughly double the size of the store.
Not that you’d know it from the Sainsbury’s information page about the Longwater store.
You’d think that information like “we’re refitting this store” would be useful – and positively easy to add to a webpage, wouldn’t you? But no, no mention of it.
As it is, the improvements mean that the main carpark has been reduced to (at most) half its previous size, along with being completely replanned. But that’s OK, because there’s a big simple overflow carpark over the other side of the access road.
Except – um – there’s not. Because in a fit of total planning genius, they’ve also ripped that up to re-plan it and generally fuck about with it.
So of that 694 spaces listed on the information page ( 647 normal spaces, 22 disabled and 22 ‘parent-and-child’) there’s about 250 left. Of course, all the disabled and ‘parent-and-child’ ones are kept available, it’s just the other ones that’ve been epically reduced.
So fuck you, Sainsburys.
Following on from the post earlier this week about certain idiocy with roadworks near us, I actually got a response from Norfolk Council about it. In less than a week!
As Surfacing Engineer for Norfolk County Council Environment, Transport
& Development Dept. I was responsible for the construction phase of the
resurfacing operations at Church Steet, Hingham and your complaint has
been passed to me for action.
Firstly I would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused by the
surfacing works in Hingham carried out over the last two weekends.
During our initial consultations with the businesses and parishes in the
Hingham area the Vintage Working weekend was not identified as a
potential issue.
The official diversion route for this scheme was extensive and required
traffic to be diverted along the B1077 from Carbrooke to Attleborough,
along the A11 to Wymondham and then back to Hingham via Wicklewood &
Hackford. Special advance warning signs were planned for various
locations along this route to intercept cross country traffic such as Gt
Ellingham crossroads.
Unfortunately the Traffic Management contractor did not identfy any
signage at either Bush Green Lane or Lt Ellingham Road junctions and I
apologise for this oversight. This has raised a potential issue with
publicity of local events and the need for NCC to consult in future with
all parish councils etc on the diversion route to check for any possible
conflicts.
If you have any further queries relating to these works please give me a
call
In fairness, that’s not a bad response, all things considered…
Over the weekend, one of the significant crossroads near us was completely closed for re-surfacing. The problem was that at least one route to get to that crossroads didn’t have any mention of said road closure.
Which means I get to send sarcastic emails to Norfolk County Council. (Again)
To whom it may concern,
I’d just like to congratulate the person(s) involved in sorting out signage for the road closure in Hingham this weekend.
If (as many people did) you took the road from Little Ellingham towards Hingham using Hingham Road->Little Ellingham Road -> Attleborough Road to the crossroads in Hingham, there was not *ONE* sign saying that the road ahead was closed. The signage was in fact before this junction (at roughly the spot of the red circle in this map)
This meant that anyone coming through on the route from Little Ellingham came round the corner to find the entire road closed off, and then had to turn round and go back. This also had the effect of stuffing a significant amount of the newly resurfaced road before the junction.
Of course, the road from Little Ellingham isn’t that heavily used. Except when Little Ellingham has its Vintage Working Weekend event- yes, the weekend just passed.
I look forward to any response Norfolk Council deigns to give in explanation of why there was no thought given to this route, or signage on it.
Sincerely
Lyle
I know it’ll do bugger-all good, but I felt better having written it. And that’s what matters.
Another Saturday in Tesco, another tossbag who can’t park their car
This time it wasn’t even over the blank spaces for clear view lines, it was just slap-bang over two parking spaces…
Twat
KC51WTE, you park like a cunt.
I love all the garbage being spouted about the ‘leak’ of 100million Facebook users publically-available details.
Radio One’s headline on this was “Facebook users details are available online” – which elicited a “Well, duh!” response from me. They’ve always been available online – at Facebook. All of the information held in this file was already available at Facebook – it’s just it would’ve taken a bit more effort to get it all.
Every one of the people listed in the file hadn’t set their privacy settings properly. That’s more of an indictment about either
- how complex Facebook made their privacy settings
- how stupid / lazy people are when it comes to those settings
- how people really don’t think about their privacy and security at all
And that’s it.
If you can’t be bothered to check your privacy settings, you deserve to have your details published. After all, if one person can do it, so can others.
