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Paul Bigland

~ Blogging on transport, travel & whatever takes my fancy.

Paul Bigland

Monthly Archives: October 2017

Another day, another dollar…

27 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by Paul Bigland in I love my job, Railways, Travel, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

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I love my job, Railways, Travel

Days at home are all too rare right now, although I shouldn’t really complain. Monday – Tuesday saw me commuting to London for various jobs, Wednesday had me working out of the ACoRP office in Huddersfield, Thursday was a chance to catch up on some paperwork and picture editing at home. Today I’m back on the rails again, heading to York for another job for RAIL magazine. This afternoon I return to London as Dawn and I are spending a couple of nights in the capital to celebrate my birthday, then have a day with friends to celebrate our forthcoming wedding. I’ve eschewed the traditional stag night. Instead I’ve opened the day up to both sexes and invited friends to meet the pair of us on Saturday as we visit one or two of London’s finest hostelries!
As much as I love travelling, I’m looking forward to having more time at home. The Pennines are beautiful this time of year. Autumn brings crisp mornings, gorgeous light and a fantastic array of colours as the trees shed their leaves. I’m looking forward to being able to enjoy these sights on some weekend walks – if we can fit them in before the wedding!

Glasgow bound…

20 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by Paul Bigland in Railway Benefit Fund (RBF), Travel

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We’ve survived days of gales and torrential rain here in the Pennines, now it’s time for something different. Dawn and I are heading for Glasgow to attend the Railway Benefit Fund annual dinner which is being held at the Grand Central Hotel this evening. It’s a great night and an opportunity to help out a very worthy cause. Oh, and also have some fun – even though I will be working.

Expect a few pictures to appear later…

A blustery day…

16 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by Paul Bigland in Hurricane Ophelia, Weather

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Hurricane Ophelia, Weather

Well, we may not be directly in the path of Hurricane Ophelia up here in the Pennines but it’s been an interesting day nevertheless. This morning the Calder valley was coated in a colourful semi-opaque red haze that made the place look like something out of the ‘Martian Chronicles’! It really was the most surreal feeling to see the atmosphere charged in such a way. A few hours later it’d cleared and we were back to a glorious summers day, with sunshine, scudding clouds and balmy temperatures hitting 19 degrees C. There was only one problem. The seasonal average for this time of year is 12 degrees C! Soon afterwards, the winds arrived. I’d nipped over to Huddersfield to visit the hotel where Dawn and I are getting married when we got hit by one enormous gust of wind that really rattled the place. Trees outside writhed like they were caught in a maelstrom. The drive back home was entertaining as leaves & twigs scudded across the roads like battalions of scalded cats.

We decided to stop off for a quick one in our local pub before heading home. When we arrived the pub sign hanging outside was doing its best to break off its hinges. Every few minutes you could hear the roar of the wind outside over the conversations & laughter inside. A few minutes after we left the lights went out. A power cut took out streetlights, traffic lights and every house within a mile of where we were. We drove to our local Sainsbury’s about a mile away to pick up some shopping but everything was in blackout. Eventually, the power came back on but the staff couldn’t serve anyone as all the tills were still down. It took them ages to reboot, leaving staff having to add up shopping lists on scraps paper. Believe it or not, Sainsbury’s are still using Windows XP on their tills – despite Microsoft stopping supporting it way back in April 2014! Rebooting XP after a sudden shutdown takes a lifetime.

If this was our experience on the edge of the hurricane, I hate to think what’s happening to people closer in…

StopHs2. Hoist by their own petard!

14 Saturday Oct 2017

Posted by Paul Bigland in Anti Hs2 mob, Railways, StopHs2

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Anti Hs2 mob, Hs2, Rail Investment, Railways, StopHs2

You have to laugh! The anti Hs2 campaign’s in the doldrums after a terrible political party conference season, coupled with the fact that, well, they’re pretty much irrelevant nowadays. So, to try and fill space on their website and pretend that something’s happening that isn’t a disaster, Joe Rukin penned this…

Here’s a screengrab.rukin, stockport

Question Time vets its audience and invites them from a wide area. This is hardly representative of Stockport, but let’s just play along with Joe’s spin for a while. ‘Stockport agrees Hs2 is a monumental waste of money’. Really?

Let’s ignore the fact that there’s not a single StopHs2 (in)action group in the whole of Greater Manchester. The nearest one is the ineffectual Mid-Cheshire group, who’ve had to pretend to be from Manchester in the past (here they are in 2014). So, what’s the hard  evidence for such a claim? Well, why don’t we have a look at the new national petition that StopHs2 started last month? Surely, Stockport will register in that as an absolute hotbed of anti Hs2 feeling – as Rukin’s claimed. Oh, wait…

Here’s a screenshot of the petition results from Stockport, taken earlier today.

stockport

A grand total of 9 constituency residents, 0.01%…

As usual, Rukin’s bullshit and bombast falls just as soon as you start looking at the truth.

 

 

 

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