Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Zanza]

I spent almost ten full days (about 235h) in airplanes for the company in 2014 and have to concur with Marty's comment that flying gets annoying really fast...

Our travel policy is ten hours total travel time (your house to hotel at destination) means business class flight. In effect it means that Europe is economy, overseas is business.

[garbon]

That's basically what we do in pharma.

[alfred russel]

It is quite possible to save company money by giving employees perks like 1st class travel rather than simply upping their pay. Also they can work if they are travelling 1st class, much harder to do that in economy class.

Yup. And to be honest if you need to be traveling often at long distances for your work, then even if you do so in the business class, your quality of life is pretty shitty, so you often need to give people perks just to keep them doing it.

My firm, for example, has a pretty reasonable travel policy, in that, we travel economy if the journey is below 4 hours and business if it is above 4 hours - this applies to everybody, both partners and associates.

We have the same policy. When taking multiple flights in a week, I actually think it would be impossible to be productive without taking business class or missing work.

[The Brain]

I spent almost ten full days (about 235h) in airplanes for the company in 2014 and have to concur with Marty's comment that flying gets annoying really fast...

Our travel policy is ten hours total travel time (your house to hotel at destination) means business class flight. In effect it means that Europe is economy, overseas is business.

Does your employer track your radiation dose from flying?

[Admiral Yi]

While not strictly grammatical, it's using the past participle as an adjective, which is acceptable.

"We were slept?"  "We were eaten?"  That makes no sense.

[Sheilbh]

While not strictly grammatical, it's using the past participle as an adjective, which is acceptable.

"We were slept?"  "We were eaten?"  That makes no sense.

We were done. We were bored. We were tired.

[Admiral Yi]

We were done. We were bored. We were tired.

Not all past participles work as adjectives.  And in the case of sit a separate adjectival form exists: seated.

[Sheilbh]

Interesting. Seated sounds archaic to me. It's the sort of thing a vicar says after the first hymn 'please be seated'.

[Admiral Yi]

Perhaps at some point in the past you Poms used to say "we were sitting" like civilized people, but then you changed it because you didn't want to sound too much like Wogs.

[Sheilbh]

Looked this up. It seems limited to 'stand' and 'sit' (we were stood at the bar, we were sat in the restaurant). Apparently it's relatively new and most common in Britain, Australia and New Zealand English but present somewhat in America.

It's still considered non-standard English but is starting to appear in usage guides where it's normally described as 'quasi-passive'

Edit: Which makes sense as I don't know how but I'd definitely say 'we were stood at the bar' carries a different meaning to 'we were standing at the bar'. The former seems more like scene setting perhaps.

[Agelastus]

I could only dream of living on a line that was a distant 3rd in terms of priorities.
My town had its passenger service cut in the 50s and then the government salted the earth so to speak, after destroying the local economy in the 80s they then pulled up the railway lines to make sure it could never be reinstated.
Luckily the local government kept the trackbed intact, so who knows down the line.

I don't see what your town's crappy service has to do with nationalisation. Plenty of places today have terrible service and routes that the franchises run are mandated.

I live in a town on the line; I never said I had a station in my town.

Ours was ripped up following Beeching as well; the old station house is a private residence, and the platform area and adjacent land is now a Co-operative store. Admittedly, given the limitations of the Midland Main Line between Kettering and Market Harborough this was probably one of Beeching's more reasonable decisions.

And I could also mention the Corby Branch Line, near me, that suffered a prolonged twilight and closure under British Rail that's only been properly reversed in the last few years (including the building of a new station .)

[Barrister]

Since we're talking British trains...

On our trip we stayed at this charming little cottage in the highlands, but to get to the cottage you had to cross a private rail crossing.  There was a phone, you'd say the name of your crossing, and then wait to be told whether it was safe or not.

Well one time they did say a train would be by soon, so I decided to wait and see it.  It turned out to be this absolutely miniscule 2-car train.

Looking it up now the train served the nearby village of Ardgay (running essentially as a commuter line into Inverness), which according to Wiki has an annual train usage of 8,000 people.  That seems absurdly inefficient to keep such a tiny train service running.

[Valmy]

Since we're talking British trains...

[Sheilbh]

Since we're talking British trains...

On our trip we stayed at this charming little cottage in the highlands, but to get to the cottage you had to cross a private rail crossing.  There was a phone, you'd say the name of your crossing, and then wait to be told whether it was safe or not.

Well one time they did say a train would be by soon, so I decided to wait and see it.  It turned out to be this absolutely miniscule 2-car train.

Looking it up now the train served the nearby village of Ardgay (running essentially as a commuter line into Inverness), which according to Wiki has an annual train usage of 8,000 people.  That seems absurdly inefficient to keep such a tiny train service running.

Some lines were required to be kept open and are required to run a minimum service as a public service - like the ferries in the Western Isles during winter.

I believe the Ardgay station is on the Far North Line from Inverness to Wick and Thurso which was meant to be closed following Beeching. I don't know when that was implemented but I know Bob MacLellan our old MP was elected in the 66 election (taking the seat from the Liberals - the only constituency to have been represented by 7 parties since the war, though most of the time the constituency followed the MP rather than elected an opponent ) and I wonder if Wilson realised that was a winnable seat, saw the opposition and quietly killed that cut.

Edit: Just watched Corbyn's controversial speech from 2014 about NATO and, I think, Syria or possibly Ukraine or something.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4zaNJnpLOQ&feature=youtu.be

Needless to say there is enough material here for a million Tory adverts. It's mental

No idea how the Labour Party - the Party that did more than anyone else to found NATO - can survive

[Tonitrus]

Also, a hybrid solution of civil servants handing out regional monopolies seems like an excellent venue for massive corruption.

Yeah which is why I don't entirely like using contractors to 'privatize' public services that still remain the responsibility of the government. Generally it does not save the public much money and doesn't increase service quality. The workers get paid shitier though.

Sometimes it is necessary but it is not a particularly good form of privatization.

I think it is still better.

If for nothing else, than trade unions. With a private company, the trade union has the incentive to have reasonable demands on account of the employer not having a limitless purse. With a state run company operating an absolutely critical service, there is no limit to the coercion power of a strong union.

And that is why you ban public sector unions.