Think of the London metropolitan area as the new Royal Court. A royal toilet cleaner isn't privileged relative to the nobility, but he is privileged relative to toilet cleaners elsewhere.
You're a fucking idiot.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-e...
Either you're one of those super-privileged people who live close to the center of London and Paris
You have no idea about London.
When I was a student I lived 15 minutes walk from St Pancras International Station. Immediately north of the station used to be really bad, but since its redevelopment (The Guardian / Google offices etc) you need to walk a little further -- about 10 minutes is plenty.
Council (social) housing on all sides on Copenhagen Street, 0.7 miles from trains to Paris.
The main local issue for the area is the expansion of one of the stations, which is criticised because an area of council houses behind the station would be demolished.
(Incidentally, I live relatively close to LHR, it's about the same time by public transport to either that airport or St Pancras. I'd still prefer the train if I'm going to Paris.)
You might be correct in 10 years or so, if the new government's desired changes to the way social security is paid are fully implemented. (Poor people will no longer be allowed to live in inner London, and the state-owned housing will be sold off.)
Trains are obviously a terrorist target worldwide, but the only one I know of in Europe with a security checkpoint is between London and Paris/Brussels (where there is a passport check anyway). If someone wants to crash a train, it's *far* easier to drive a road vehicle onto the tracks, and probably more deadly and disruptive to target a busy commuter train (example).
Trains should be something like every 30-60 minutes, if the service is to be useful. Compare http://traintimes.org.uk/londo... or (so I'm not picking such major cities) http://traintimes.org.uk/brist...
Seats have airline-style fold-down tables (but larger), except the facing ones that have real tables. It's generally possible to pre-book the type you prefer — 4 seats around a table is nice for a family, but on a peak-time train will be used by business travellers. There will be power sockets, WiFi, a drinks trolley.
750 people can sit on the 387 metres of a London to Paris/Brussels train. They're particularly long, since they were built for a system with a serious limitation (a very-much-in-demand undersea tunnel) and the expectation of high demand.
French TGV trains carry 350-500 people. British national long distance express trains a bit more, up to 600.
There are 16 London-Paris trains per day (plus London-Brussels, and some others), from 05:40 to 20:31, slightly more than one per hour.
A train is just a much better experience. You can show up 2 minutes before departure, get on without a strip search, get a nice big seat, have a dining car, can get up and walk around at will, and just grab your luggage on the way out.
Sounds like what this guy said about living in London and commuting to his job in Paris at 25:10 in this video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The Eurostar is one of the few services in Europe where there *is* a security check and a requirement to arrive 10-30 minutes beforehand (it's 10 with the expensive ticket, 30 otherwise, and they're actually very accommodating if you're late). California shouldn't need this, as there's no international / undersea borders.
For other trains, 2 minutes is a bit short. For a long-distance journey, I aim to be waiting at the correct platform 5 minutes before the scheduled departure time, or a bit more if it's an infrequent (>20m) service.
I'm not too bothered by the distance from LGW and STN -- the platforms are below the terminal buildings, so it's little more bother than in many European airports. Train ticket price is perhaps a shock for many visitors, especially as the cheaper non-express almost-as-fast trains aren't advertised very well. Gatwick has good connections with Thameslink. It's not reasonable to compare London to smaller cities, and the travel time is similar to other metropoli.
I agree the old LHR terminals are terrible, one of the worst airports I've used. T5 is great though, for an airport its size. I've never queued more than a couple of minutes when leaving, maybe 5 when arriving though UK Customs. (I use it every two-three months.) I haven't used T2 yet, work favours BA.
Connecting between terminals is probably confusing and awful.
There were plans to extend the Heathrow Express, at least to Liverpool Street, and possibly to Kings Cross, but they seem to have been lost somewhere.
I'd never heard of that (too young), but I found an article from 1999 discussing an argument between London Underground and Railtrack.
Probably it was shelved in favour of Crossrail, which calls at Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Liverpool Street and others. Service starts in December 2018.
I've never flown to New York, but...
Have you tried the subway route from JFK? It's a (miserable) hour or more subway ride to Manhattan.
Building a better railway to JFK seems a good idea regardless of what happens to Newark.
My nearest airport is London Heathrow, which has the cheap option of an hour-long metro ride (using that word, since most of it is above ground), but there's also the "premium" Heathrow Express train, which takes about 15 minutes, a cheaper (and slightly slower) train, and the new Crossrail line will open from 2019 or something providing an excellent new route.
For completeness, London City is the closest to the centre of the city, and popular with business travellers. It has direct "light" rail to both financial centres, taking about 20 minutes and with an excellent view. The three other London airports (LGW, STN, LTN) are relatively far away from the centre, LGW has the best rail connections, STN is in between, and LTN is a little annoying (there's a 5 minute free shuttle bus from the airport to the near-ish station).
The hardware cost is irrelevant. It's the cost and time to thoroughly test / migrate / rewrite lots of bespoke software, made to the lowest quality by some company like Accenture on a contract, for which the source code probably wasn't supplied and all the original developers have left. And if the system fails the Daily Mail will write about it. And the tories slashed the budget, so all that's left can just about cover the new thing the new regulation requires.
My point was to show there are many options between "everything" and "nothing" provided by the state. I don't really care to discuss it further.
(PS "counselling" is correct English.)
Dental health is a service provided by people who spend money to outfit dental clinics. Same as medical professionals. As such, the market dictates the availability and costs.
Fire fighting service is [etc, etc].
It's amazing to me the number of people who think the government, who can't seem to run anything well,
That's a very American viewpoint. In other countries, government functions well. In others, it does well with some things, and badly at others.
Why should I have pay for someone to have a pretty smile??
Because they'll pay for you to have something you'd argue isn't essential, like fire protection, food safety, fertility treatments, counselling, etc.
Cataract surgery isn't covered until it affects ones ability to drive, not because someone just wants to see better.
My grandma is booked for cataract surgery in May. She's still OK to drive, the medical benefit is currently justified for her mental health (she's lost confidence with worsening sight). It's free on the NHS.
Brands available in Britain (see here etc) list "maltodextrin". That's a polymer of 3-20 glucoses, and I'd guess at the higher end since only some of the mass is included in the "of which sugars" on the nutrition information.
Is that really much different than starch?
(The purpose is simply to dilute the über-sweet Stevia powder so you can use reasonable amounts.)
For comparison, Tesco give the RDA of carbohydrate and sugar: http://www.tesco.com/groceries...
330ml of Coca Cola contains:
* Carbohydrate 35g, 13% RDA
* of which sugars 35g, 39% RDA
Surprisingly, the can itself only shows the "sugars" value and RDA. (In Britain, the supermarkets are much better at promoting these values, since their store-branded products are usually better -- probably because they have more flexibility to change the recipe.)
Possibly because in the US there are so many more prisoners held on minor offences (drug possession, etc), who wouldn't even come close to considering suicide?
Per million population, the numbers become 1.43 in E&W and 1.63 in the US.
(NB, just England and Wales. Justice is controlled by the Scottish Parliament in Scotland, under a different legal system, so the figures are separate: 13 suicides (~0.16%!), 4.19 per M population. Small country bias, or is Scotland a particularly grim place to be imprisoned?
Northern Ireland: no suicides since 2010 [5 in the last decade], prison population 1465, country population 1.8M).
Last year 82 prisoners in UK prisons killed themselves, more than twice the 35 people who were executed in the US (with a vastly larger prison population).
Suicides: for England and Wales it's 82 (0.10%), for the USA it's 520, about 0.02%.
and 0 vs 35 executions.
Quantity is no substitute for quality, but its the only one we've got.
