Monthly Archive: January 2012

Train Woes

IAmAWhinyBitch / Rants / Sarcasm
Friday, 27 January 2012
0

Okay so once again the train is delayed and this means I will miss a connection, I get really dis-chuffed when that occurs. Then I will blame privatisation. But this isn’t a random blame.

Privatisation was supposed to bring us:

Lower Fares. It didn’t.
More trains. It didn’t.
Better service. Debateable, more customer service bollocks that’s for sure.
Increased efficiency – well let’s look at that.

How do we measure efficiency. Ask the operators and they may say number of people to destnation – in shortest time – on time. Ask the travellers and they would add a qualifier, they would put comfort while traveling as part of that.

Let’s face it, 150 mph in a boxcar with us jammed in like sardines would be efficient.

So comfort is a part of efficiency to the customer. Not just speed and on time, but do I get a seat, is there enough baggage space, etc.

Baggage Space, well that’s a joke, most trains have inadequate space and they now have no baggage car so there is luggage everywhere, especially airport trains which should have a baggage car, but that means an extra car, an extra person to manage it, loss of profit from fuel and personnel and time and oh gods that affects efficiency, so that’s a no go.

Seats. Even on regular routes with no issues there is often overcrowding and distressed persons, and this is compounded when there are delays that push extra people onto the trains. The solution is extra cars even if the figures do not justify it, but again this increases costs and yada yada yada.

So comfort is pandered to with a smiling smartly dressed staff member, who has no real power to alter anything, can only point at alternate routes, offer a form to make a complaint or request compensation or say sorry. There is no real method for change.

But this situation -could- be the same even if they weren’t private, I hear you cry…

Preston Station, so depressing not even a brightly coloured filter cheers it up.

Not the point, if they are making a profit at the massive expense of their customers there is an issue, and since we have no alternative that effectively is a monopoly, so I will complain and state that privatisation of the train industry was a joke that has led to nothing but a failure of promises.

There is an issue when we measure efficiency as a means test for quality, it isn’t. Efficiency is a test of just that. It never means quality of service, this thinking is applied to health, education and other large systems with the same failure. We want quality, we achieve that by measuring satisfaction of service, not by quantifiable metrics.

What a difference having power and a seat on a train makes to the mood of the weary traveller…so my argument about quality of service and amenities starts to gain more credence as my rage is ameliorated by the comfort i have found. I do however pity my fellow passengers who got on at Chorley and Bolton and are doomed to stand for the remainder of their journey, I doubt the delays and inconvenience are changing their moods at this present time.

Some of the trains are nicer though, so glad that we helped to pay for them with public funds!

Taxi(ng) to communicate

Rants
Saturday, 14 January 2012
0

In the beginning…

I had a strange, well odd, well interesting, well probably something… experience in the taxi to the station. Let me set the scene for you and hopefully try to work this through as I do.

I was getting ready to fly to Orlando, part of this is that I was up earlier than usual (by about ninety minutes) but I hadn’t gone to bed any earlier, in fact due to a compression of things to do I went to bed later so I was already a little out of sorts and I had started on caffeine.

I called the taxi and set a time, the taxi was 20 minutes early and they didn’t call the phone as usual but knocked on the door which surprised me and I had a last minute panic rush to get ready – meanwhile the taxi driver had the clock running eventhough he was early. I can see his point as he was given the job by despatch, but that wasn’t my problem and I object to being charged for something that was out of my control, had they been a few minutes early I would have been ready, but 20 minutes is a bit too early. I only think about this now and I don’t believe it affected me at the time as I only figured out the increased cost when we got to the end of the journey.

The taxi driver himself was fairly chatty, he was either up early or more likely on the night shift so had been quiet for him until then. He was however a little critical of things, he had a strong Liverpool accent which was familiar to me and reminded me of when I used to live in Warrington.

A difference of perception/behaviour

We chatted about where I was going and he tried to up-sell me a taxi ride to the airport which felt a bit odd, he discovered I was going to a conference and then claimed I could just charge it to the company (not knowing I run the company). I mentioned that the company had already paid for the flight and hotel so cost frugality was to be respected. His words were that I should lie (to myself) and claim that there were no trains. Even if I were working for someone else that is not a wise behaviour especially as it is an easy thing to verify. One can also grab historical train delays if that is your lie of choice, so it is unwise even if your specific mores let it be ethical to engage in such behaviour. Especially if it is to yourself.

He asked about my line of work, I did my usual enquiry into his level of knowledge about computers and the computer industry, I didn’t wish to bore, patronise or confuse which is so easy to do. He reassured me it was good so I said we worked on “infrastructure” software as it was close to giving some idea. He wanted to know if it was like Apple, so I mumbled no and gave a simple explanation of Perl and OSS and left it at that.

Feeling odd and weird…

I felt odd during the conversation though, a little detached and not fully engaged. I usually pride myself on being able to talk to people and so it could have been the tiredness that was making me feel disconnected.

But I have had other occasions where I feel the same way, where I cannot connect as well as I have in the past. It is as if some of my register specific phatic communion skills are rusty. I find it hard to engage in small talk and need to be warmed to it, or rather I find it hard to engage in a specific type of small talk.

This could be the particular levels of socio-cultural groups and people I am engaging with and their standard forms of communication. Added to this is my increased use of text as a form of communication in online life such as irc, text message, email etcetera. This is perhaps dictating a particular social interactive model and providing the impetus for my interactive passivity and failure.

Finding reasons…going forward…

In all honesty the introduction of a child into my life has probably added to this in many regards, further dictating modes of thinking and interaction. It is very easy to fall into the trap of all ‘parent talk’ about things that affect your child social age group and future. To discussing their development and the particular habits you engage with them. There are fascinations based upon these and I think a good number of parents follow them. I wonder however if we can generalise and say all parents are like this?

Back to my social skills however and it will be interesting to see if I can practice and regain some of the inter-social dexterity I once felt I had. This will of course mean that I will once again have to try and talk to people more which fights against my natural shyness.

Yes I am shy. I hide it well by being an extrovert and consciously pushing communication, it is part of why I am loud, boisterous and gregarious, some of what makes me want and crave attention is to hide my brains immediate pull back and hide a little then they wont see you for what you really are…

Okay, too close to psychological triggers of behaviour there…

But I am shy, and I often feel I am being awkward and don’t know what to say or how to ask and continue talking, I can rant on and on about the minutiae of things that interest me, but have trouble getting people to want to continue talking to me…

More thinking required and examination needed…

Thanks for the time.

(I had no idea how to end this…)

…

Sorry for all the elisions…

PMQs

Sarcasm
Friday, 13 January 2012
0

I follow the UKMinisters Twitter feed that follows all of the ministers who tweet. There is a pattern that happens every Wednesday.

Prime Minister’s Questions occurs and all those on the PM’s side will state how magnificent he is and how he destroyed poor Red Ed. Whereas on the opposition it seems that Ed annihilates and embarrasses the PM on a regular basis.

Both of these cannot be right.

I have even watched this and tried to compare what I am seeing with what they are tweeting, and although sometimes I can kind of get what they mean, mostly they don’t match what is happening that I can see.

I could just be unable to follow the subtle interplay, but I consider myself fairly well educated and savvy enough about language, if I struggle I would gamble that many do also. Maybe this is why the tweeters cannot agree or even vaguely represent what has occurred.

There is only one solution.

We need a cage fight, that will give us a real winner. If this is too extreme they could always lean across the boxes for a game of ‘slaps’ or maybe a quick round or two of wink murder.

Rude?

Rants
Friday, 13 January 2012
0

So while flying to the US I encountered what I thought was a rude bloke, it could be me who is just too sensitive, or maybe with my attitude I am rude, here are my thoughts as I travelled.

–START RANT–

A bloke sat to the right of me on the flight has a loud cough, obviously it is irritating him, I just wish he’d cover his mouth more with his hand or with a handkerchief when he is hacking up a lung, or maybe just get it over with and die already.

So that was written three hours ago, since then he has munched on M&Ms with his mouth open and constantly coughed spraying germs liberally into the air, there is the occasional half-hearted effort to cover the mouth, but most of his loud and violent explosions are done unmasked. I have headphones on and listening to loud music and I still don’t drown him out, time to just kill him with the foldaway table I think.

Okay, 40 minutes later and he has a spare chair as the bloke who was sat next to him has moved, maybe to jump off the plane rather than be next to him, and so he has placed his feet up on the seat, that’s not a crime, leaving the shoes on however is just plain awful. I am not being prissy but there is something deeply wrong with shoes on furniture, I dislike it, take your fracking shoes off. Especially if they are boots, this just compounds a social sin.

I wonder if this piece will be used against me in court…

And as we land he takes off his belt while we taxi and turns on his phone to check his messages, please slam on the brakes so he flies face first into the seat back…

–END RANT–

Music to fly to – 1st Movement

Music Appreciation / Uncategorized
Friday, 13 January 2012
0

Flying to the United States I decided to do some writing and since I wanted to drown out an odious nearby person and the drone of the planes engines (which I normally tune out from but the odious man was too irritating – ranty post to come). I therefore went to the music channel and was delighted to find some albums that intrigued me as they were by artists I wasn’t familiar with playing compositions I didn’t know that well (aside from the Liszt).

This is what I heard…

Works for Cello and Piano

Mendelsson – Watkins Brothers

This was a new experience for me, I have not heard many of Mendelsson’ s works done before and have never encountered the very talented Watkins Brothers. Very delightful to listen to while writing on the flight over the Atlantic.

The experience was only ruined by the imposed-by-software pause between tracks which meant that several of the multiple-movement pieces had nasty breaks in their reproduction making it jar quite horridly several times. The worst being a piece split into about five sections by track number with each piece being only a minute or so in length. Ugly cutting and easily avoidable with a fully digital reproduction and playback system, that should be a software switch.

Liszt: My Piano Hero

Lang Lang

Also heard some interesting interpretations of Liszt by the clearly talented Lang Lang, not come across this young Chinese man either though the pieces by Liszt were all familiar to me. For the most part I loved the way he had interpreted them, in fact it is an album I may have to pick up. Wonderful orchestral accompaniment, especially on Piano Concerto No. 1, by Valery Gergiev and the Vienna Philharmonic.

Interesting that the first exposure this young man had to the works of Liszt was via a Tom & Jerry cartoon. Cartoons are probably where I heard the majority of my first classical pieces. In fact T&J did a wonderful pair of ‘toons where they used Gershwin and Jazz symphonic to great effect.

Debussy and Ravel: Music for two Pianos

Vladimir and Vovka Ashkenazy

And the introductions continue as I then heard Father and Son play a magnificent series of pieces on two pianos. The synopsis states that Vladimir “the flamboyant pianist turned conductor returns to the piano alongside his son” and this is “powerful, fiery and spellbinding”. Not being familiar with either the musical pieces in question or the performers all I can say is it was breathtaking.

En Blanc et Noir (3 movements) is a brilliant introduction to these two men and is a great build into the stunning Jeux, and the rest of the album is filled with similar brilliance. A well thought out collection masterfully played. I was very delighted as neither Debussy or Ravel have been on my listening list much, I had a thing of not liking Ravel because of Torvil and Dean, so this was wonderfully new.

I Get That

Rants
Wednesday, 4 January 2012
0

<rant>

“Of course I know that there will be many people watching this who are worried about what else the year might bring. There are fears about jobs and paying the bills. The search for work has become difficult, particularly for young people. And rising prices have hit household budgets. I get that. ”

So said cameron as part of his new year address, and my response to this is bollocks.

He gets what it is like to come from a broken home with a mother who divorced twice.

He gets what it is like to come home to the house you were born in, that you were raised in, to see all that remains of your possessions strewn on the street because the baliffs have repossessed your house and most of what you own.

He gets what it is like to spend 30 months on the unemployment lines because you are inexperienced, too young and without a career or even a direction in life.

He gets what it is like to live on a ‘sink’ estate where the evening activites are alchohol, drugs, misplaced violence, arson and burgalry.

He gets what it is like to be hit in the face with an iron bar so that you are mugged having 12 pence in your pocket.

He gets what it is like to make the choice between having a low skilled job or placing yourself in debt for 17 years because you put yourself through full time education.

I experienced all of those during the reign of Margaret “Iron Lady (trickle-down neo-Liberalist POS)” Thatcher, and now I have to witness the same retarded policies, the same excuses, the same sick, twisted logic applied 30 years later.

He gets that. Because he has personally heard about things like that. Of course neither he, the arsonist also known as Clegg and the wealthy little suck-puppy Osbourne have never experienced any of these. They have in fact been spooned a rather indulgent life when compared to many of us, so the idea that the “get” anything about the personal experience of many people brought up during the previous Tory social destruction (80s), and that they know how hard it is for anyone in the UK currently suffering under their mismanagement of the country is ludicrous.

We are all in this together which is why top earners had a wage increase of 49% on average last year and the rest of us got thoroughly shafted by the coalition.

So, Mr Cameron, please stop saying you “get that”, you don’t fucking get it, you are unlikely to fucking get it and you sound like a complete twat when you attempt to emote with something that is alien to you. I will believe you, Clegg or Osbourne, if you all give up your lifestyles and live on a council estate on the minimum wage/benefits for 12 months. Do that and I think you might have some chance of getting it. Until then stop with the hypocritical bollocks.

</end rant>

Monthly Archive: January 2012

Train Woes