Travel and Stuff

April 12th, 2023.

Now that life is settling down Post Covid my work schedule is returning to normality. Unfortunately, the rest of the country seems to be suffering from a massive hangover and communal apathy.

I had to travel from Cornwall to Norwich for a meeting and normally it would be straightforward.

BUT, even though it was midweek they were doing repairs and maintenance on the mainline, so there was a bus replacement service to the station two stops away where all London services were now starting and terminating.

So far so good, I settled down for the 4-hour trip, except that within a few minutes, the train intercom announced massive delays due to a lineside fire at Maidenhead 15 minutes from London.

After arriving late into Paddington I got a cab across to Liverpool Street station and we drove along Oxford Street. It is a long time since I was there and what a disappointment it was. There were fewer shoppers sauntering their way along the street and there were building redevelopments and holes in the frontages awaiting new buildings (office/residential combos?). There was a preponderance of American sweet shops (see various articles about this being money laundering and VAT fraud) and even tattier than usual souvenir shops. The further east we went the worse it got. It just oozed depression.

I caught a later train than booked from Liverpool street to Norwich and arrived 119 minutes late. This entitles me to a 50% refund on the ticket price. If it had arrived 120 minutes late I would have been able to claim the full price as a refund. This is just symptomatic of the whole transport system in the UK.

I stayed in what used to be the Lord Nelson hotel in Norwich, which used to be upmarket, but is now part of a budget chain. The one saving grace was the lovely view of the architecturally pleasant Railway station across the river Wensum.

The meeting went well and I had an uneventful trip home the next day. Norwich itself is a fine city and well worth a tourist visit.

Back to the mundane and the changing social fabric of the UK. Gambling is almost out of control and becoming the national disease. There is pressure on the amount of advertising by gambling companies and at last count 8 of the Premier league football clubs had front of shirt sponsorship from the gambling sector.

Other clubs have varying forms of involvement with gambling.

2022 season  partnerships.

Source The Punter’s Page 10^th April 2023.

There has been a huge increase in problems caused by gambling and the ease with which it can be done online.

This industry was set free by Tony Blair’s gambling reforms in 2005. Why can so many of the UK’s problems be traced back to the Blair years?

The gambling industry has exploded over the past decade and now takes £14.4bn from UK punters every year – equal to more than £200 from every man, woman and child in the UK – with the online sector growing particularly fast.

The sector’s major firms have been transformed into some of the most recognisable brands in the country and gambling is a vast business, despite mounting concern among politicians and campaigners, which has shown it is willing to fight hard to preserve its revenues.

The gambling boom was kicked off when Tony Blair’s Labour government passed the Gambling Act 2005, dramatically liberalising the laws governing betting. The late Tessa Jowell, who pioneered the legislation, later described this as one of her biggest regrets.

Source the Guardian 16^th January 2020.

What is of concern is the number of problem gamblers is 340,000 and rising, but of more concern is problem gamblers who are classed as children are 50,000 and growing even faster.

Just time for a quick chuckle at the Scottish National Party’s expense. Since Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation, the police raided her family home, armed with a forensic tent and shovels. They have also visited the home of her husband’s mother and taken away a nearly new camper van (value £110,000).

It was announced last week that the SNP’s accountants had resigned and it was later announced that they had actually resigned six months earlier. The SNP have not yet managed to replace them and their annual statutory accounts are due in July. This gets more and more fun as the revelations keep on trickling out.

Finally, I see that Marama Davidson has had problems with stale white males. Could it be that she suffers from CIStitis?

And lastly, wise words of the month, 73.6% of statistics are made up and all generalisations are wrong.