Ah stop your moaning, you’ll be stone dead in a moment.

Harry The Roadman

3. Wait for egg laying.

4. Profit!

Seize the German Tesla factory and hand it over to VW.

Show musk that the bite of his orange lapdog has consequences.

Vice believes making a serious article about a nonsensical “movement” will generate enough outrage clicks to save their ailing business.

Hey guys, please don’t pay any attention to the history of the modern Olympics (early 20th century) being started as sports day for the wealthiest of society because us toffs got scared about the formation of proper sports federation events allowing the peasants to compete in our leisure activities because they offered cash prizes making them a viable career so we made a set of games where the only prize is prestige hence why you get a lot of working-class background olympians selling their medals on eBay…

Don’t mind anything of that because for the first-time (and probably the last for about 20 years) we got a woman for the first time in charge! Woo! We’re so progressive! Please keep watching so we can rake in insane sponsorship money and bankrupt cities that host our overhyped egg-and-spoon races.

UK National Rail and the Franchise system: those are rookie numbers!

I thank you for the sentiment, but save your words and don’t spare the ammunition.

If they ever finish the fucking thing properly.

They made two classic British engineering mistakes:

Mistake A: Bundling the whole thing as one humongous engineering project and creating a single entity to deliver it.

Mistake B: Starting construction in London.

WARNING: ENGINEERING RANT AHEAD!

On Mistake A:

A single entity created for this huge megaproject makes for good political hay when raising interest and funds but that’s where the usefulness stops. What it devolves into, particularly with the UK’s rainforest-worth of planning laws and frameworks, is massively over budget and horrendously delayed.

What it should have been was a broad vision with dozens of smaller projects funded and implemented separately with constraints in place so all the individual sections line up once the whole thing is finished.

This fixes two things:

Fix 1: Breaks the scope of the project down into more manageable chunks with separate design authorities, construction contractors, and project management. So when they inevitably run into planning issues, they can be resolved much quicker through the courts and the committees because they’re dealing with 1/10 of the fucking reading material! It also keeps cost ballooning down as large projects work-hours scale logarithmically not linearly.

Fix 2: Allows them to bundle in small related upgrades that will have a more immediate effect once the smaller projects are completed.

For example, a new station section needs to be constructed for the high-speed lines. Well since you have to partially demolish the station to create new walkways, utility connections, toilets etc. why not also upgrade the passenger common areas like the departure boards, the outside areas, the retail space, the existing low-speed tracks and points that haven’t had any fucking upgrades done since steam was rolling on them!

Dozens of these smaller changes gets more local stakeholders (i.e. residents and commuters) on-side and more willing to put up with disruptions because, see Fix 1, the project won’t be as heavily delayed.

On Mistake B:

Starting in London might look to make sense at first glance since it is the largest city by both population and GDP per capita. But it means that the later stages of the project, when it inevitably gets delayed and spirals in cost, are the ones that are much more easily axed. This goes against the whole point of the project which was to shorten the commute to London from Northern Cities like Manchester, Leeds, and eventually Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Cardiff.

What we will have now is a very slightly faster journey time between Birmingham and London. If you’ve ever had the misfortune to regularly travel between Leeds/Manchester and London you’ll be aware that all of the delays and cancellations happen immediately north of Birmingham.

Birmingham to London is already well serviced whereas an upgraded route between Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham would have a measurably better impact on passenger numbers and reliability. This is because Westminster has NEVER cared about infrastructure beyond Cheltenham and only goes to Birmingham out of convenience as the next largest population centre.

In and around London, by far, is also the MOST expensive place to build anything, blowing most of the initial budget within the boundary of the M25.

By applying Fix 1 and Fix 2 you can start implementation by using Fix 3: Start at multiple locations.

Starting the station and track construction from the other population centres of Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham with these smaller projects means that you can then source funding from combined local authorities, implement the projects faster because of the lower density and cost to build than London, AND insulates the overall vision from being scrapped when the political climate changes.

Eh it’s the best I’ve had and honestly, it’s about average for a mid-level Electronics Engineer without becoming Senior Designer / Team Lead or Manager.

Thing is that there’s not much of an industry here in the UK compared with the States. Also it’s not a direct one-to-one as if I were to move to the states they’d probably pay me about $80k because they’d want some value (saving on wage) for going through the extra effort of a H1B visa. On top of that there’s also whatever I’d be expected to pay for health insurance.

Electronics Engineer, UK (in the North), £39,000 after 5 and a half years of experience.

My field pays about the middling amount for the engineering profession. If I were to move overseas I could expect a 50% to 100% increase in pay.

Though my current company is great because they treat me very well. Hybrid work on offer with a minimum of 2 days in the office but since my job requires being in the office I don’t use that except for Fridays or when I’m not feeling great but still able to work, flexible working hours as long as I’m available during core hours of 10am to 4pm and Fridays are usually a half-day unless I’m very busy. There’s a pay-adjusted profit share bonus (the lower your salary is, the more you get from the bonus) and they try to match inflation with automatic pay rises.

Much better than my previous place which gave me suicidal depression, anxiety, and workplace-stress-induced PTSD where raised voices and slamming doors trigger an anxiety attack.

Genuine question: why is this comment licensed under creative commons?

Christ, I wish Americans would get over their embarrassment that half their population has a vagina.

Do it you pussy! Come on! DO IT!

I’d rather listen to the other lettuce that didn’t wilt.

And thus the unicode consortium has brought us full circle.

You know what’s even more convenient?

Scammers from poorer countries just targeting the elderly and retired in richer countries. You know, like they currently do.

What’s with the fear mongering about a system that’s been shown to reduce corruption? Do you like corruption? Do you like people cheating the benefits system?

I see some of you have never played Battleshits before.

Rules are as follows:

• Two people enter a toilet cubicle each and proceed to try and shit.

• The first one to shit wins.

• If both players have shitted then the size of the shits is judged and the largest shit wins.

It is a puerile and crass game of speed, deception and defiantly not for the weak-stomached as I found out to my own detriment as a spectator.

This has been your daily reminder that we are all just slightly more evolved apes with access to the power of gods.