Trains

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

TalkTalk shows us the internet is only three clicks from anarchy

I’m not a customer of TalkTalk, the phone company which revealed last week that a hacker had potentially compromised the personal data of four million users. But I feel I’m on the front line of the cyberwar nevertheless. In August, someone unknown to me tried to spend £1,200 at House of Fraser on my credit card account. The bank, to its credit, sniffed a fraud, rejected the transaction, cancelled the card and invited me to speak to a nice young man in India who talked me through the corrective procedure, including deleting a false email address inserted by the fraudster and setting up a new password to add extra security

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 3 September 2015

Peers’ peers Forty-five new peers were created. Are we alone in having an upper house of parliament made up of appointed cronies? FRANCE Senate has 348 members elected for six-year terms by 150,000 state officials known as ‘grandes electeurs’. GERMANY Bundesrat is made up of 69 members delegated by governments of individual states. ITALY Senate composed of 321 members, of whom 315 are elected for five-year terms by voters aged 25 and above, and 6 appointed as senators for life. JAPAN House of Councillors composed of 242 members elected for six-year terms under a system of proportional representation. UNITED STATES Senate has 100 members, two for each state excluding Washington DC, directly

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

Low life | 27 August 2015

I sprinted through Milan station, speed-read the departures monitor without stopping, and arrived gasping on platform 8 with two minutes to spare. The driver of the FrecciaBianca bullet train was waiting only for the guard’s signal to depart. The guard was standing on the platform beside the open door of the rearmost carriage, fingering her whistle. This short, plump, raven-haired woman was exuding geniality and relaxed informality through her far too big peaked cap and ill-fitting uniform as though it were fancy dress. I was about to fling myself up the short ladder, but had to step aside for lust’s young dream in satin hot pants descending the steps with

Thursday

Mary Killen

Your problems solved | 23 July 2015

Q. Travelling on a train recently I happened to notice two former acquaintances, sitting together and very nearly opposite me, neither of whom have I spoken to for several years. The two are unknown to one another. This unfortunate coincidence left me in a difficult situation, as one is a most agreeable and attractive young lady whom ordinarily I would gladly have engaged in conversation in the hope of renewing our acquaintance, while the other is a former barman who could easily have launched into an anecdote about my rumbustious behaviour in my student days. Fearing that such an intervention might result if I spoke, I remained silent throughout the journey.

Thursday

Ross Clark

Rail investment reflects how ministers like to travel

No matter how desperate the banana republic, the international airport is always a shimmering palace of perfume and croissants. It is only when you get out onto the dirt roads that you realise where you are. The government seems determined to take the same approach to our own transport system: all the money gets sucked into vanity projects while transport used by the rest of us remains creaking.  Yesterday transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin announced a sharp contraction of a programme which last year the government described as ‘the largest modernisation of the railways since Victorian times’. Election safely over, projects to be dropped from the promised £38.5 billion upgrade include

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

George Osborne’s cynical grab for northern votes (and why I’m for it)

When John Prescott used to wax garrulous about a ‘superhighway’ from Hull to Liverpool, everyone assumed it was a wheeze to spray southern taxpayers’ money across the region he saw as his power base. When George Osborne decided to ‘start a conversation’ this week about a super-city along the same route, an English equivalent of Germany’s Ruhr valley connected by yet another decades-away high-speed rail project, everyone assumed it was about recapturing votes in northern conurbations where Tory MPs and councillors are an endangered species. But on past form you’d still expect me — ardent northerner and rail buff that I am — to embrace this back-of-a-Downing-Street-envelope concept, however cynical

Thursday

William Cook & Stephen Bayley

Restoration drama

Yes   William Cook Rejoice! Rejoice! Fifty-four years after its destruction, Euston Arch has returned to Euston. Well, after a fashion. Four blocks from this lost portico, salvaged from a murky river bed in east London, have been deposited outside the station by Euston Arch Trust, a heroic pressure group that is campaigning to rebuild this much-lamented landmark. It’s only a tiny fragment of the original, but I can’t begin to tell you how much this small pile of rubble cheered me up. Wouldn’t it be terrific fun to reconstruct this splendid monument? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to bring old buildings such as Euston Arch back to life? Even by

Thursday

Robert Van Egghen

God bless Peter Hendy. We all know London’s commuter services are awful

Anyone who has spent some time travelling on Southeastern’s packed-to-bursting commuter lines – elbows in the back and heads tucked under armpits – will no doubt today be cheering on the Transport for London commissioner Sir Peter Hendy: London’s commuter services are, as he says, ‘shit, awful’ and like ‘the wild west’. Hendy singled out Southeastern as being the worst offender — and he’s right. I travel on it almost every day. Since the closure of much of London Bridge due to refurbishments, the trains at my home station of Orpington have become ever more crowded. People are forced to cram on to an ever dwindling number of services. The

Thursday

Ian Thomson

‘I will call the police!’: My close encounter with ‘revenue protection’

‘Make yourself a happy bunny this Easter with cheap tickets and egg-cellent deals!’ chirped the Abellio train company advert. I use Abellio’s Greater Anglia service regularly from London and was looking forward to a nice fluffy ride to Norwich. I was late for the 9 a.m. train but the Liverpool Street station Abellio assistant smilingly informed me I wouldn’t need to pay extra for the later train. I bought a cup of coffee and presented my ticket to the barrier staff at platform 11. A dignified-looking man of African origin with ritually scarred cheeks seemed to be unusually officious. Tapping my ticket with the sharp end of a pencil he

Thursday

The Spectator

The perils of planespotting

A dangerous hobby Three men from Greater Manchester were arrested and held in the UAE after being seen writing down the numbers of aircraft. — Plane-spotting can be risky. In 2001 14 Britons were arrested in Greece after allegedly taking photos at an air base in Kalamata. Eight were sentenced to three years; imprisonment for spying and the other six were given suspended sentences. (All were overturned on appeal.) — In 2010 two British men were arrested at Delhi airport after being seen taking photos of planes from a hotel room. — Trainspotters have had problems too. In 2008 a 15-year-old boy was held under terror legislation after taking photographs

Thursday

The Spectator

Five more MPs making Malcolm Rifkind’s day rate

Golden league Some MPs who earn Sir Malcolm Rifkind’s rate of £5,000 a day: — Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury): £3,333 for four hours work as deputy chairman of Woburn Energy. — Greg Barker (Bexhill and Battle): £20,000 for 30 hours providing advice to Ras Al Khaimah Development LLC. — Henry Bellingham (NW Norfolk): £7,500 for 12 hours’ work as non-executive director, Developing Markets Association. — Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham): £15–£20,000 for ‘about 20 hours a year’ as adviser to National Fostering Agency. — John Redwood (Wokingham): £27,941 for 40 hours’ work as chairman of Investment Committee of CS Pan Asset Capital Management Ltd. Source: Commons Register of Members’

James Walton

Critical on Sky1 reviewed: a new medical drama where everyone radiates an unusual degree of competence and concern

Sky1’s new hospital drama Critical (Tuesday) can’t be accused of making a timid start. Within seconds, an urgent request had come over the loudspeaker system for ‘the trauma corps’ to head to the emergency department, causing the main members of the cast to sprint down various corridors at impressive speed. Meanwhile, a patient was briskly wheeled to the same department from a helicopter on the roof, pausing only to cough up blood all over the lift. Moments after that, the trauma corps were already exchanging the kind of rapid-fire medical speak — ‘Dullness to percussion on the left side!’— that most viewers mightn’t entirely comprehend but that clearly translates as

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I lie about my age and still use my Senior Railcard?

Q. I was not brought up in England and don’t appear in Who’s Who. This means that there is no printed record of my date of birth. I’m not vain, but have good reason to believe the work I do would dry up if my age became known. (I look about 50.) The point of my writing is that I now have a Senior Railcard but hardly dare use it in case the collector comes while I am sitting with neighbours or potential clients. Twice I have pre-empted having to show the card while sitting next to such people by walking through the train on the pretext of asking the

Thursday

Rory Sutherland

Have the people who design trains and airports noticed that laptops exist?

It’s taken years to work this out, but there is a subtle art to designing an airport lounge. 1) Install power sockets and add useful tables and comfortable chairs… 2) make sure these three items are never located in the same place. You can sit comfortably, use a laptop or even charge it — but do not attempt more than one of these at the same time. In this way, almost all the gains made in information technology are being eroded by the uselessness of furniture designers and the mean-spiritedness of the people who design public spaces. When I first installed a computer at home, I had something called ISDN

Melissa Kite

How HS2 has blighted my parents’ lives

Waiting to appear before a Commons select committee, my father turned to me. ‘This was not on my bucket list,’ he said. My father should be enjoying his retirement. Instead, he and my mother are still working full time in their seventies because they cannot sell their home due to the blight of HS2. And here they were now, about to present themselves to Parliament to petition the High Speed Rail Bill. Theirs is one of more than 1,900 petitions brought by people whose lives have been so adversely affected by the planned rail link that they will need to be heard in person by MPs before the Bill can

Thursday

The Spectator

Rochester’s special qualities, and the price of Ebola.com

What’s special about Rochester What is special about Rochester and Strood? — Rochester has the second oldest cathedral and school in Britain, after Canterbury. — Medway, the unitary authority area in which the constituency is situated, has one of the highest rates of private home-ownership in Britain, with 92 per cent of homes in private hands. — Rochester has one of the few remaining airports in Britain with only grass runways – though it has filed a planning application to build a paved runway. — Morrisons in Strood was Gordon Brown’s first engagement after announcing the date of the 2010 general election. — Strood was once the largest producer of

Thursday

The Spectator

Spectator letters: Why Aids is still a threat, elephants are altruistic, and crime has gone online

Aids is still deadly Sir: Dr Pemberton (‘Life after Aids’, 19 April) subscribes to the now prevalent view that we have turned the corner on Aids. Well only up to a point, Lord Copper. There are now about 100,000 HIV carriers in the UK, and in London, where Dr Pemberton works, as in the rest of the UK, reports of new diagnoses of HIV infection are continuing at much the same rate as before. These diagnoses are too often of individuals who have been infected for years, and are liable to have passed HIV on to others. It is also estimated that as many as one fifth of all HIV-infected individuals

Thursday

Mary Killen

The question that Dear Mary refuses to answer

Q. One of my best friends, who knows I don’t have a great social life at university, has a brother in a band which is touring and will have five nights of gigs at my university town. He is offering me a free ticket for any night that week and to hang with the band backstage. But I cannot bear this artist’s music or voice, and couldn’t sit through a concert, let alone socialise with him. My friend knows very well I won’t have anything else on. Is there a tactful way to extricate myself? — Name and address withheld A. Yes, but it would do you no favours were

Melissa Kite

My friend Denise doesn’t know where London ends – just when it ends

The look on her face said it all. I can always tell my friend Denise is upset about something when she is sporting an especially wide grin. Denise is from Jamaica and is a devout Jehovah’s Witness. She takes most catastrophes by being alarmingly cheerful about them because they just go to prove that the end is nigh. Whenever I am with her and something goes wrong, she invariably laughs and exclaims: ‘No good, Mey-lissah!’ She then treats me to a lecture about how wicked the world is and how the day of judgment is coming any day now. I’m inclined to agree with her most of the time. And

Thursday

Jeremy Clarke

Riding back from Scotland with Ron Burgundy in the privy

When the ticket collector asked to see my ticket, I took the opportunity to ask what time my connection left Birmingham New Street. ‘Are you travelling onwards with the Vag?’ he said. ‘Excuse me?’ I said. ‘The Vag! Virgin!’ he said, irritated by my ignorance. I laughed at him. His expression remained official. He touched the screen on his portable machine and presented me with a card printed with the information. Then I went to the lavatory, one of those spacious ones with a curved door that slides back with a hiss at the touch of a button. As I lifted the seat, a voice said, ‘This is Ron Burgundy