JP's Corner of The Blogosphere

I have been asked quite a bit recently about what I think of the plans for a new high-speed railway line between London and Birmingham, and so I thought that I would blog about it.  I appreciate that this may not be of interest to everyone, but then when is that ever the case with my contributions to the Blogosphere? As a Transport Researcher, I should probably know more about some of the hard facts than I do, so I apologise in advance if you think that you’ve got a more educated opinion than me.  However, on the basis of what I do currently know, I am not hugely in favour of the scheme.  My reasoning can be broken down as follows: Capacity The biggest argument for building High Speed 2 is capacity.  It is argued that the current transport links (chiefly the West Coast Mainline and the M6) are overcrowded and are not going to cope with predicted future travel demand.  This is probably very true, but is all of the predicted future demand necessary?  In an...

Here is the episode I know some of you have been waiting patiently for. The one with the sledding. Sadly, my initial run – on an inflatable tube – was not caught on camera. I was too keen to launch myself down the hill to be faffing around with taking a video, which is a bit of a shame.  It was a blur of noise, of nearly running in to a group of kids and of ending up in the car park at the bottom to a shout of “You OK?!” Thankfully I was completely unharmed. We do, however, have some video highlights from the afternoon.  Let’s start with one of my first runs on the plastic sled… As you can see, I was possibly taking the “live slow” part a little too seriously at this point.  Nonetheless, I persevered. I was particularly keen to hit the jump after Chris had managed to (accidentally) clear it backwards… Finally, I hit it! It may not look that dramatic from this angle, but I was quite surprised by how much I did actually leave the ground.  I was even more surpri...

Every video diary needs its fair share of in-jokes.  But whether a video diary needs an in-joke which is unrelated to the trip in question is another matter.  Especially when the people in question probably won’t even watch this anyway.  But as there is more to life than simply having what you need, I shall ignore any wisdom on the matter. 

I can hear some of you panicking that you’ve been subjected to a lot of random video footage already, and I am only now announcing the end of the first day (“and it was good”). However, it’s just that no travel diary/documentary/wildlife series would be complete without a tired sounding reflection on the day which has past.  So here’s our attempt.  What a shame that Chris didn’t bring his pipe and slippers… It’s time for dinner now, so we’ll have to leave you on that happy note.  More adventures from the next couple of days will follow at some point.

Some of you may be thinking that Chris only had one desire; to charm the girls with his English accent.  But no – the boy from Portsmouth (Hampshire) wanted to visit Portsmouth (New Hampshire).  So we did, without meeting any girls.  We didn’t see anything other than a stone plaque we had to clear some snow from, but it was a special moment.  Even though Chris didn’t actually wear the Pompey shirt. I particularly like Patrick’s enthusiasm for the “beautiful” state of Maine…

In case you were wondering who Patrick was…though I’m guessing if you didn’t know him before you still don’t care.  Sorry about that, it was only 9 seconds if your life wasted.

“Stateside adventures” may have been a bit misleading – because at this point in our (still unedited) video diary, we’re not Stateside yet.  In fact, all we’ve done is been on a bus.  Even for the transport geek buried deep inside me, it was not the most exciting thing. As you will see, if you bothered to watch this 21 second masterpiece, I dropped a glove when boarding the bus.  But I found it again when I got off, and disaster was averted.

So, I know I’ve not blogged in a while, and I’m not going to bore you with excuses.  Neither am I going to do my usual and make some political comments or talk about trains.  Instead, I am going to take a dip in to the world of the online travel diary.  Two of us have crossed the Atlantic to visit a good friend from Canada Maine, and we thought that it would be fun to keep a diary of our trip.  Stateside adventures are bound to provide some interesting material…aren’t they? Anyway, without further ado – or any attention to video editing – let us begin… Bus Station.

I hope you’re sitting down for this.  Perhaps you’d even like to prepare yourself by taking a few deep breaths.  I’d like to recommend that you read this article from The Guardian .  There.  I’ve said it. Although my feelings about said newspaper are generally well documented, I have to say that George Monbiot has written a particularly good article about the environmental impact of rail travel.  As you may know, this will be my area of research once I’ve got some exams out of the way, and it looks like there could be a few surprises and some tough decisions to be made.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I very much enjoyed going to church in Shanghai .   Predictably, I didn’t allow enough time to cross the city and was a bit late.  When I got there I was initially turned away because the room was packed out.  I explained that I was unable to attend either of the afternoon services and managed to wangle my way in – where I had to squeeze up against the back wall because the room was so full.  Almost every bit of floor space and wall space was occupied.  The service I went to, at the hotel in Hong Qiao, has only been running for a few months and yet is already so popular that plans are afoot to start a second morning service to cater for demand.  This growth – despite some of the restrictions which seem to be in place – is certainly something to be thankful for.

I found an English speaking church in Shanghai, and I very much enjoyed it (more on that later).    However, I’m not sure that the local regulations, which dictate that the  “international English Service is open to foreign passport holders only” reflect the idea of religious freedom that the Chinese authorities might claim exists.

Before I went to Shanghai, I was quite intrigued to know what life would be like behind the Great fireWall of China.  Were there really restrictions on Freedom of Speech?  Would I be able to blog? Would I be able to get the BBC News Page?  The limited amount of research I did suggested that although things had at one time been quite restrictive things were now opening up.    At first glance, my experience tied in with this idea.  I can’t compare it with life before the Beijing Olympics, but it is said that things have improved since then.  One of the restrictions I read about was about not being able to comment on blogs, but as I surfed from Shanghai I encountered no such limitations.  I could blog and comment.  I could get my fix of the BBC News Page.  Steve Zodiac could get his fix of Facebook (before he got his comeuppance, of course).   Interestingly, however, www.biblegateway.com was apparently suffering problems and I...