Coronavirus #5: It takes as long as it takes

5 days into what is currently a three-week "lockdown" and it feels like longer already. We've had over 28,000 deaths from this worldwide so far and that number is likely to increase yet further. As testing becomes more widely available, the number of confirmed cases will skyrocket, but that figure is going to become increasingly meaningless as time goes on.

Going out for daily exercise and shopping, there's still a reasonable number of people around, but they're of course keeping a distance and it's not like there is that many shops available. Most foodstuffs can now be acquired, but you have to be a bit less choosy than normal.

As to how long this lasts, your guess is as good as mine. We cannot operate on artificial timetables - any decisions have to be data-driven.

We're just going to have to be patient. At some point, this will be over and we can file it as a bad memory. For most of us at any rate.

Coronavirus #4: We need a lockdown - and it probably still won't be enough

Judging by the number of people I saw out and about during a walk today where I got some food items as well, it's clear that the social distancing calls from the government are not getting through to many people. Especially in Havering.

To slow the spread of this disease and release the pressure on the NHS, we need to close more non-essential shops (estate agents, furniture stores, hardware stores), as well as forcibly break up mass outdoor gatherings.

Even then, that might not do it. We don't have the police capacity - we arguably never had - to enforce a nationwide lockdown. Many will happily run the risk of a fine and a jail sentence because "it's just the flu".

It's probably a matter of time before we get scenes like in Lombardy in London.

Coronavirus #3

It's now very likely that we're going to have disruption from this for weeks, if not months. With bans on big events likely for at least March and probably April, it's probably not a very good time to be planning anything major because it will likely be closed or called off.

The question is ultimately how quickly we can develop an effective treatment that isn't reliant on the body fighting this off - not always possible, especially if you've got other conditions - or a vaccine. 'Herd immunity' through the bulk of the population getting the regular version of the disease is going to result in a lot of deaths and take a long time indeed.

I think we're going to be dealing with this for a good year or two and will to adjust our behaviour to adapt.

Coronavirus #2: Northern Italy on lockdown

With the announcement of movement restrictions for large parts of Northern Italy and other prohibitions that will heavily restrict social life in the country for nearly a month, the impact of Covid-19 is having some real effects on this people. It appears that the quarantines imposed in Wuhan worked in slowing down the disease; which is buying us time to develop treatments and ultimately vaccines.

However, it's likely to be a pretty unpleasant next few months in any event; a lot of people are going to get this disease and a noticeable percentage of them will die of it. There are about 3,500 new cases a day and around a hundred deaths. We've not yet reached the peak and it might not be done this month.

Also, I suspect that No Time To Die will not be the only film put back because of all of this - however, with Black Widow not out until May, Marvel will likely hold off on a decision until April.

Coronavirus

With over 20 cases of Covid-19 in the UK and over 85,000 known cases worldwide with nearly 3,000 known deaths, we're dealing with a particularly nasty new disease. However, not one to panic about.

Sensible precautions seem to be the way to go; for example, washing your hands, being careful how you sneeze and knowing when you're badly unwell. For many people who don't get sick pay, going into work with a minor cold is something we have no choice but to do - but if things get more major, it's probably best to stay at home. Face masks are needed for health workers - don't buy one unless you genuinely need it. A lot of people will likely get very mild Covid-19 and recover without even knowing they have it.

The impact from this is far likely to be economic for those not directly affected due to global supply chain disruption and major event cancellations; remember that a lot of small businesses around a football stadium will lose out if a game is called off.

Hopefully this will be contained and run its course within the next couple of months.

Deactivation of Twitter account

I have today decided to deactivate my account on Twitter. It is too toxic and the time I am spending on there is time I can use on other things.

Bern Notice - or the US Democratic nomination process

It's looking increasingly likely that Bernie Sanders will be the Democratic candidate for President against Donald Trump in November and this contest will be interesting to put it mildly.

While Sanders will be the furthest left Democratic candidate since at least George McGovern, he will be going up against a scandal-tarred Trump whose approval rating, unlike Nixon's (whose slump came in his second term) is in negative territory. He's also polling well.

Sanders isn't Jeremy Corbyn - he doesn't have some of Corbyn's toxic associations for one thing. Also, with the US political system as it is, he will be likely heavily constrained by Congress in any domestic policy - in the way Trump kind of is. So businesses won't necessarily be as scared of him as a PM Corbyn.

I think there is a very good chance we end up with a Jewish President next year, although it ultimately depends on the economy. With Covid-19 in particular, there's a chance we could be in a recession come November.

Armchair Time Traveller #4 LNER Continental Timetable October 1935 to May 1936

Playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order, I'm now jumping back almost 30 years to a vintage timetable that I picked up for Christmas in 2018.

Going back to the Grouping Era, it's time for this bad boy:

OK, it's not a man or a woman, but there's plenty of Bad in it... as in towns called 'Bad something'.

With a momentary pause in the bad puns, let's go...

The context

1935 was a year when the international situation very much began its slide down the slope to the depths of the Second World War. The Luftwaffe was formed and conscription was introduced in Nazi Germany as Hitler openly went against the Treaty of Versailles; the Nuremberg Laws were introduced that stripped citizenship from non-Aryans. Mussolini invaded what is now Ethiopia in a quest for imperial glory that was a brutal campaign from the outset.

On the other side of the coin, canned beer was invented.

The popular conception of railways before the war is of a world full of steam locomotives. Certainly steam engines were the norm in most places. Electrification was the norm on tram networks and it was starting to spread to railway ones as well, who wanted to compete with them and increasing numbers of coaches as roads improved. Steam locomotives aren't the cleanest of things and they're not the fastest either. The 'sparks effect' of electrification increased passenger numbers and helped develop suburbs as people moved to cleaner areas away from city centres, commuting into work on electric trains.

The timetable itself notes that an Italian line is being electrified, while Germany, the Netherlands and Italy were starting to wire up main lines.

In the UK, the Southern Railway had pretty much done its suburban network in 1930, with mainline services next, using the third rail system. Brighton, Worthing, Eastbourne and Hastings were already connected, with Portsmouth being worked on.

The LNER itself had taken over electric suburban services in Tyneside and would start on wiring the line from Liverpool Street to Shenfield, although this was suspended with the outbreak of the war - British Railways would finish it off.

Europe had different political boundaries in 1935 - especially in the east of Europe, where the USSR was much smaller than it would become after the war and Poland was over to the east, including big parts of what is today Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania. Lithuania in 1935 used standard gauge for its network, a result of the German occupation in the First World War so it had a direct connection to the network of most of Europe; there also appears to have been a standard gauge line to Riga, Latvia.

The contents

There is a lot packaged into this 185-page affair, certainly far more than you'd get in any modern timetable. To give you some of the highlights:

• Plenty of terms and conditions stuff, including a statement that LNER will not be liable for any loss or damage at Sea (their capitalisation) due to, for example (and I actually quote):
• The King's enemies
• Accidents from machinery, boilers and steam
• Accidents of the seas, rivers and navigation of whatever nature or kind soever
• An eight-page index of continental stations
• No less than 45 pages of fare listings, including fares from London via Harwich to many European cities, fares from 'provincial stations' of the Big Four to Harwich and fares from Harwich to European cities. All of these are in £.s.d. so you might have a fair bit of complex adding up to do.
• Rates for a wide variety of luggage including:
• Motorcycles
• Cars
• Typewriters
• Sewing machines
• Nautical Instruments (15 shillings to the Continental ports)
• How to send telegrams from ships
• Information on sending goods and parcels via train and ship (a train ferry service for freight was also around) 
• A long list of agencies through which LNER sold tickets in both Europe and the US

The actual timetables themselves take up a minority of the book and employ the standard format for the international timetables I have in my collection; you read the times down on the left hand side for services going away from London and up on the right hand side for coming back - this means you only have the station names one i.e. in the middle. The details of the through carriages available and any variations are at the bottom. One thing that is obvious is that the icons are a good deal more detailed than you would find in a modern publication. An example of the timetables can be seen below. I couldn't scan from this book without risking damaging it:

There are also three fold out maps at the rear of the book, one of Belgium, one of the Netherlands and the one below:

These schematic style, not quite geographically accurate maps for the LNER and LMS were created by George Dow and in fact were the inspiration for Harry Beck's world-famous London Underground Map. More information and history of these can be found here. 

The fares 

International travel was not exactly cheap at this time. £1 in 1935 was equivalent to £70 now. If you wanted to go to Amsterdam to partake of the red light district (it existed, but was a lot less in your face than today), you were looking at £4 17s 10d each for a Third Class Return via "Flushing" (Vlissingen, which no longer has any ferry services to the UK since the Sheerness service was terminated in 1994). That's over £300 each before luggage, hotels and meals were included. You were able to get special weekend tickets that allowed you to travel without a passport, but the precise information on these is not provided in this timetable. 

(Yes, bachelor parties were around back then). 

If your stag do inclinations stretched further afield to the Estonian capital of Tallinn, you were looking at £12 1s 9d for a Second Class Single; a visa was also required from the Estonian Embassy at 167 Queen's Gate, SW7 - open only between 10am and 1pm. This said, at least you could get a through ticket all the way there - you can only get a through ticket to Warsaw from the UK now, with the need to buy further tickets in Vilnius and Riga. Interrail is a thing for the whole Baltics now, but the cross-border connections are limited as you get further east and you might be better to get a coach.

The travel times

London to Tallinn was possible with four trains and a ferry. Departing at 0930 GMT on Day 1, you'd be at Berlin Schlesischer Bahnhof, in English "Berlin Silesian Station" at 0733 the following morning, a journey time of 19 hours and 13 minutes, via the Harwich-Flushing ferry. This is now, after two rebuilds by East Germany, Berlin Ostbahnhof and remains a major starting point for international services, like the EuroNight Talgo sleeper to Moscow-Belorusskaya. 

Departing there 19 minutes later, you'd be in Riga at 0648 Eastern European Time on Day 3, with a two hour wait for a 2nd and 3rd Class only service to Tallinn, arriving at 1856. That's a 55 hour and 26 minutes journey.

In 2020, there is no overland route shorter than three nights... Driving takes 28 hours straight; something impractical with the need to refuel, go to the toilet and sleep.

London to Berlin was a 20 to 21 hour journey with a sleep either on the ferry or the train; although the former involved having to pay a supplement on the express train in Germany. Avoiding that would add another five hours to your journey as you had to wait for a later slower train,.

Other fun stuff

As mentioned earlier, this timetable has a large array of information on those wishing to ship goods via rail; as the railways were a 'common carrier', they were required to take nearly anything that was offered to them, no matter how profitable the market was. The exceptions were manure and stuff like lime that could damage their stock. So you could get ship propellers put on a flatbed.

Full details of the rates available required you to contact one of the Goods Managers or a freight forwarding agent; since this would entail me doing a seance, I can't provide them to you. There were special inclusive rates for express goods at 805 Belgian francs per metric tonne to Antwerp, which was just under £6 - although this did not apply to perishables. These had to be delivered to Bishopsgate Goods Station before 3pm on any weekday.

The most common freight wagons at this were 20-foot boxcars and those could be shipped to the continent without the need to tranship via the Harwich-Zeebrugge train ferry that ran from 1924 until 1987; these wagons could be sent as far as Poland and 'Roumania' (the spelling in English didn't standardise until 1975). LNER also advertised a through shipment company called All Rapid Transport Service, who said they could ship goods to Palestine (the British Mandate) in 9 days, China in 27 days "&c &c".

Rather relevant in today's day and age were Customs regulations. At time where the European Union was over twenty years from creation, every frontier required some form of customs examination and the items that were subject to duty, restriction or outright prohibition ranged from the normal to the downright bizarre, like:

• Tobacco
• Hats
• Field and Opera Glasses (there is a difference between field glasses and binoculars; the former lack internal prisms that can jolted out of alignment via rough handling)
• Gramophones and Gramophone Records
• Plumage
• Handkerchiefs

Also, don't try to bribe a Customs Officer or you could be fined £200. Also, you won't be allowed to pass Go.

Conclusion

The inter-war years are considered a golden age for the railways and to an extent that's true, with the sheer array of international services, along with some very snazzy rolling stock. However, it wasn't exactly the fastest of services and international travel could be quite bureaucratic, especially if you wanted to bring home some hats.

I'd go for a visit, but I wouldn't like to live there.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2020

Tomorrow marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Red Army.

Among the events being held to mark this is a reading at the former Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands of the names of the 102,000 Dutch Jews, Sinti and Roma murdered by the Nazis.

My Dutch is very limited, but hearing how young many of these people were when they were gassed - if they managed to survive the horrendous journey - brings it home in a new way. The footage we have is of the teenagers and younger adults who survived - not the children and older people who were murdered on arrival at places like Auschwitz.

The more one reads about the Holocaust, the more horrific it becomes. 

The Wannsee Conference wasn't where the decision was taken to try to kill all 11 million Jews then living in Europe. It was a high-level planning meeting to determine how to put into effect a decision already made.

People came up with plans for all this, printed forms, typed reports, designed structures. This was the calculated and considered destruction of an entire ethnic group.

Yet it was just part of a wider plan that would also have, if completed, reduced Slavs into a semi-literate slave people and created a vast Nazi empire across Europe through puppet rulers or direct annexation.

The Nazi regime were the biggest criminals this world has ever known. Anyone who claims otherwise is at best wrong and at worst a bigot.

Blog plans for 2020

1. Finish the current timetable article I'm working on. This might take a while due to other things getting in the way.
2. Probably do another one - I'm thinking BR Southern Region's summer 1970 timetable.
3. Possibly post some photos.

Christmas 2019

In what has been a turbulent and frankly unpleasant year in many regards, where dodgy political leadership dominates in many countries and the opposition to it is often nearly as bad, it can become rather easy to lose hope of things ever improved.

This is where my faith in Jesus helps. The Bible foretells of a time when tears will end, suffering will cease and justice will be given for all. Those who have caused so many of the problems that we face today will have to face judgement. I'm looking at you, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

The good - and getting that status is easy than you might think - will get their just reward in paradise.

That is one thought that keeps me getting up in the morning. Another is that while I can't solve all the world's problems, I can help where I reasonably can.

So, help where you can. It will be appreciated one way or another.

Merry Christmas and I wish you a lovely New Year.

The next five years

Boris Johnson, after his emphatic win eight days ago, is secure in power for the next five years bar anything major happening in the Jennifer Acuri department or something that we can't yet see coming.

Johnson's coalition is reliant on a range of groups, including ex-Labour working class voters in the North; they switched en masse in the election and could just as easily switch back for a good Labour leader.

Unfortunately, I am not sure that Labour is going to end with a good leader; they may well try 'Corbynism without Corbyn' and without him for the media to pounce on, the policies might be subjected to more scrutiny instead. Many of them are popular, but a large feast of goodies was seemingly not.

The big question is Brexit. The Withdrawal Agreement will get through mostly intact - there will likely be some minor amendments during the course of passage; the Lords might want to add some bits that Johnson will accept to get the bill through by 31 January.

We will leave in an orderly manner then. The trade deal will the next more difficult stage. The EU holds most of the cards here; a No Deal would be far worse for us than for the remaining 27 members of the EU.

I personally expect a lot of noisy in public negotiations over the course of 2020, resulting in something that Johnson will call a deal, but will in reality be a very much interim agreement with more difficult issues punted until later on.

Free movement will end, of course, and the UK will move to the ETIAS visa waiver programme. I will almost certainly get a ETIAS waiver on a standing basis as soon as I can. I strongly suspect there will be real difficulty filling jobs in some sectors with British workers; our culture of handing off 'dirty jobs' to other people that frankly goes back to the British Empire is coming back to bite us in the proverbial backside.

Rejoining? Not before 2040 at the earliest and certainly not as a UK.

Scotland will likely be refused a second referendum in this parliament, but come 2024, the SNP will make it a condition of any support for a Labour minority government... if there is indeed a hung parliament.

History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes: Analysis of the 2019 General Election

The biggest Conservative win since 1987 has secured Boris Johnson his place in history. He will, for whatever happens after, be the person who takes Britain out of the European Union at the end of January. For all the incompetence, venality, lies and outright dodgy behaviour was not enough to stop him from romping home.

There are a number of reasons why this happened and a lot of them ultimately boil down to Jeremy Corbyn, along with his top team. In no particular order:

1. The utter gridlock and paralysis of the House of Commons in the last Parliament provided a powerful enemy for Johnson to use on the campaign trial.
2. 'Get Brexit Done' is a powerful and basic slogan that is easily understood. 'For The Many, Not The Few' needs explanation as to who is who... and tends to put off the self-defined few.
3. The media were hostile against Corbyn, yes. However, Corbyn made no serious attempt to persuade them to his way of thinking, instead railing against them, which doesn't tend to make someone like you. Hostility against the Labour Party by the British press is a fact of life and a better leader could have dealt with it.
4. Labour made gaffe after gaffe over the last few years that could have been easily avoided, Diane Abbott being a case in point. This handed the media ammunition to use against Labour.
5. The vile behaviour of Corbyn's 'outriders' towards anyone who did not bow down and worship the Dear Leader was more ammo for the media. It put a lot of moderates off voting Labour and of course led to a slew of defections. Insulting potential voters never works.
6. Antisemitism: this not only hit Labour with the Jewish vote, but gave major ammo to the media and trickled through to others who found the whole thing deeply repulsive, myself included. Also Jews are seen as far more integrated into British society than Muslims and Islamophobia more acceptable, alas.
7. All the defectors lost their seats. Change UK failed to define itself quickly enough, didn't have any clear policies and then split before it could do anything useful. It was an utter failure, which is a pity.
8. The Lib Dems had a leader tainted by her involvement in the coalition, lack of decent headline policies and as they were seen as unlikely to win in many seats, Remain voters went for tactical voting instead.
9. Labour's Brexit policy was too slow in developing and even then wasn't clear. Corbyn's failure to take a clear stance managed to annoy both Leavers and Remainers.
10. There was no serious attempt by Labour to form any Remain Alliance; it was 'my way or the highway'. Now we have crossed the bridge of Brexit.
11. Labour's policies failed to acknowledge the real aspirations of many to become wealthy. They were also a whole litany of shopping items that couldn't be boiled down into a single poster.
12. Corbyn had a metric tonne of baggage that could be used against him relating to the IRA and Islamic terrorism. It was highly prone to misinterpretation at best.

Where we go from here is the subject of further posts; I will do those at a later point.

General Election 2019 - Results

I'm going to do a fuller post in this when I'm less sleep deprived, but my reaction to the exit poll was "Woah!".

My thought this morning is that a lot of people need to get out of their echo chambers more, because in retrospect, this was pretty obvious.

General Election 2019 predictions

My 2017 prediction makes for interesting reading now

This prediction is made therefore with little actual confidence.

The question that this election ultimately rests on is whether Conservative gains from Labour in Leave-supporting areas in the North will exceed Conservative losses to the SNP in Scotland and the Lib Dems in Remain-supporting areas in the South of England.

Corbyn is toxic among many voters. Whether the 'smears' are true or false, they have worked and Labour's abysmal handling of antisemitism has not helped in the slightest.

Johnson isn't exactly popular among the wider electorate; I doubt you will get any huge fans of him anywhere. However, his 'Get Brexit Done' message has a certain powerful resonance that Labour's fudge doesn't.

The economy isn't great, but nor has it tipped into recession. "It's the economy, stupid" remains true and while we are likely to have another recession sooner rather than later, Johnson is lucky to have called the election when he did.

So my prediction:

• Conservative overall majority of under 25, quite possibly under 15.
• Labour end up going backwards significantly and end up under 250 seats. Corbyn resigns and his replacement will be someone who carries forth a lot of the policies with less of the baggage.
• The Lib Dems will significant vote share gains, but barely any seat gains. 
• The Brexit Party will lose a bucket load of deposits.
• All the defectors and independents will lose their seats.
• The Alliance will gain a couple of seats off the DUP in Northern Ireland.
• We leave the EU on 31 January 2020 and enter the transition period; however, there will not be a 'No Deal' at the end of 2020 - there will be something that Johnson, who may be a coward but isn't that much of an idiot, will call a 'deal'. Trying for 'No Deal' would be politically suicidal and likely stopped by a Commons where 'Leave' means a lot of different things. Free movement will end after 2020, however.
• 'Austerity' will be officially dead and the Tories will try to repudiate it. What changes they make won't be enough to deal with some pretty major deprivation issues.
• The Fixed Term Parliament Act will be repealed and replaced with something that eliminates the 2/3 requirement for an early election.

56 Years of Doctor Who

Well, the Series 12 Trailer is out. It's rather staggering to think this is the twelfth run of a revival in a world where many shows don't even get twelve episodes total.

Got to say that I'm rather impressed with the trailer. It looks like it is going to be a lot of fun and hopefully some of the writing has improved; Chibnall's scripting was a major complaint among even those who like Jodie Whittaker's daughter.

No air date yet, mind and I think we're going to have get used to a season every 18 months or so from now on... well, 15 or 16 in this case.

But I'll frankly take what I can get.

Remembrance 2019

The First World War has nearly passed out of living memory - the oldest person alive, aged 116, was 15 when it ended and lived in Japan. All those who served in any combatant capacity on the various fronts have passed on.

It's very difficult to see a bunch of people in a black & white photograph as 'us', but they were. Peter Jackson's superb They Shall Not Grow Old, with colour images and reconstructed sound, helped really bring home the reality of that conflict. The slang may have been different, the fashion definitely so and the weapons far less advanced than those that appear on today's, still bloody, battlefield, but the emotions these people felt would have been just the same. Fear, disgust, friendship, relief, sadness, pain.

Let's not do this again and let's work to end the scourge of war worldwide.

We will remember them.

General Election 2019

There may be something of a resolution depending on the result of the general election. A Conservative majority would see the Withdrawal Agreement ratified and we'd move over to negotiating a trade deal during the transition period, which may get extended.

A Labour minority government (a majority is very unlikely) would give us another referendum, probably ending up with us remaining in the EU.

If we get a continuation of the status quo... who knows?

While I find the current Conservative government highly distasteful, I can't bring myself to vote Labour with the current leadership. Since I live in a safe Conservative seat, I will likely vote Lib Dem to help boost their national numbers and make a clear case for Remain.

Where next for Brexit?

After yet another government defeat yesterday, Boris Johnson sent a photocopy of a letter to the EU Council asking for another extension along with two further letters calling for them to reject the extension because he thinks he can get the deal ratified this week.

I'm not so sure; definitely not in its current form that's for sure. A lot of the amendments tried in the May era narrowly failed - but some of the people who helped vote them down were in ministerial positions and obliged under collective responsibility to vote against. These have now been purged from the front benches and some cases right out of the party.

Quite a few of these amendments will turn up again... and may well pass.

We're also very likely to get another extension from the EU27 and this whole process goes on and on...

Turkey, Kurds and Trump

The primary responsibility for the Turkish invasion of Kurdish-controlled areas of Syria is that of Turkey itself.

However, Trump's decision to withdraw US forces and betray the Kurds who had done the bulk of the fighting and dying fighting Daesh gives him a very high level of secondary responsibility. Especially due to the sudden nature of the withdrawal. 

Also, Trump seems to be of the "let the [offensive term for Muslims] kill each other" infant school of thought that is oversubscribed in Western society today. I've never liked that view.