Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

us shit munchers can't afford our Sky Sports subscriptions

Brilliant - I'm using that quote.

They will welcome this rebate and the market will see a slower rate of growth after broadcasters overpayed for rights in the recent years. The big leagues and their big money players will be just fine. Sadly it will be the mid to lower league teams that bare the brunt of the lost revenues.

Sure, you could fix this by completely revamping the current network - extending station platforms, replacing bridges and tunnels, lengthening trains, replacing signalling and other infrastructure. But it would take years and years and years of disruption to rail users, cost a fortune and - given the UK's track record for upgrade projects - possibly not even work properly at the end of it.

It could be done. The CFF/SBB upgraded the Simplon line to take double-decker trains to increase capacity. It was a massive job, including increasing the height of the 489m long tunnel at St Maurice, increasing the height of the Simplon tunnel by lowering the rail bed, and raising various bridges, including the one at Vevey. Took 10 years or so, but the disruption was minimal, and the works on the St Maurice tunnel came in 11% under budget and ahead of schedule. I do sometimes wonder whether, if the government is going to out-source the running of the UK's rail network, they wouldn't be better off just sub-contracting the entire thing to the SBB/CFF and letting them get on with it.

I did not know that. Thanks.

Surprised it isn't covered by a force majeure clause!

Time to start saving for your moonshot tests if you want to go mingle:
https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1308069545274376194

Wait, it’s a £100 billion public investment and the end product is pay to play?

There are other public investments that the user then pays for on a use basis (eg tolled river crossings).

Still shit though.

Oh, but it was.
At some of the first public meetings for HS2 in LB Hillingdon,
the only people wearing HS2 badges were economists standing next to display boards proclaiming that Birmingham and Manchester would be just XY minutes from Heathrow airport.
Ever since the French TGV outcompeted the airlink between Paris & Lyon, 'high speed' boosters have claimed that their vision of the future would free up landing slots at Heathrow.
Lord Adonis and his HS2 crew followed on from chancers in the 90s claiming they would restart the Grand Central Railway. This lot ran out of parliamentary time, showing Adonis what pitfalls to avoid.
HACAN showed that the number of internal flights fro manchester and Birmingham to Heathrow had been falling for years, [partly because BA had reduced its feeder flights,
and because few regional airlines could afford to maintain Heathrow landing slots].
The original plans for HS2 showed a spur at ground level roughly from Harefield running down through Uxbridge, (following a long defunct freight line), roughly following the River Colne.
It was as though an intern had been tasked with drawing up the route for HS2,
and they were scared to point out the only maps they could find dated from about the 1930s.

When it was pointed out to HS2 that a considerable amount of suburban housing and infrastructure had been built along the proposed route, the obvious suggestion was to build a tunnel ... through the gravel for which the Colne Valley is famous.
It's possible, just more expensive than tunneling through London Clay, which is all the new generation of tunnellers have experience of.
When HS2 again changed 'Boss', the Heathrow Spur was just dropped, negating it's original selling point.

I'm not sure how accurate this one is yet. It had ear and forehead.

The most accurate is the "up the backside" method, but that's less suitable for quick daily checks 😁😁

I'll try to calibrate it against that method.

Yes and @Stonehedge there's a lot of stuff going on with the rights at the moment. Rebates due to no fans in the grounds and the late finish to last season plus the Chinese broadcaster pulling out.

The Premier League still haven't committed to showing all of the games that people can't attend on TV as they're worried about the product getting diluted.

Plans originally were to get fans start going back in October but who knows what the current situation's impact will be.

Think I'll just be going to non-league football for the foreseeable future.

It could be done. The CFF/SBB upgraded the Simplon line to take double-decker trains to increase capacity. It was a massive job, including increasing the height of the 489m long tunnel at St Maurice, increasing the height of the Simplon tunnel by lowering the rail bed, and raising various bridges, including the one at Vevey. Took 10 years or so, but the disruption was minimal, and the works on the St Maurice tunnel came in 11% under budget and ahead of schedule. I do sometimes wonder whether, if the government is going to out-source the running of the UK's rail network, they wouldn't be better off just sub-contracting the entire thing to the SBB/CFF and letting them get on with it.

One of the articles I read said that £26Bn of the cost of HS2 was due to the lack of major UK rail infra projects - we'd lost the people who knew how to do things, and had to hire them and/or train them, that state capacity had simply disappeared as people retired and were not replaced.

Continental countries have, in the main, a huge institutional knowledge base to work with embodied in the people who work on these projects.

We are meant to be visiting my dad for lunch on Sunday. However my partner had to go to Scotland for a business trip today and returns on Thursday evening, including flying there and back. I am assuming we should be checking our temperature and for other symptoms before we go on Sunday.

Assuming we are asymptomatic much of a risk do we pose to my dad? Am concerned we could be unknowing vectors.

That's just about the only way I could see it happening. The track record (no pun intended) of the Swiss rail system is very different to the UK, although is it really as great as everyone says? Because the Swiss seem to constantly add FFS to SBB CFF which I can only presume is an expression of their frustration at the poor service.

Another massive dip into the public purse to give 'emergency' funding to their mates without scrutiny. And then the new technology surprisingly doesn't work but there's no money left.

Pubs/restaurants to close (each night) at 10pm from Thursday.

although is it really as great as everyone says?

Pretty much, yes. It's not perfect, but it's bloody good. Cycliste is thinking about finally buying a car in Switzerland, cos Covid. For the last 15 years she hasn't even considered it, the train system is so good. It's not amazeballs fast. But it's reliable, relatively cheap (particularly if you have a Carte Demi Tarif) and immensely comfortable and civilised. The wine and cheese selection in the restaurant cars is pretty good too.

the Swiss seem to constantly add FFS to SBB CFF

That's just the Italian speaking bit. It's a bit more, well, Italian. Lots of shouting and the occasional loud bang. As I experienced in Domodossola when they forgot to switch the voltage in the overhead cables. Much switch-flicking and power-recycling all the way to Montreaux. Boy, did they try turning it off and turning it on again. On pretty much every incline, as the train slowly ground to a halt.

Assuming we are asymptomatic much of a risk do we pose to my dad?

Indoors or outdoors, and if outdoors, how much physical separation? I'm visiting my father for his birthday lunch on Sunday. He'll be in the house, with the patio doors open, we'll be outside at least 3 metres away. I'm assured the risks involved in that are microscopically minimal.

Yeah but a toll road you don’t necessarily want everyone to use, in fact it’s probably considered optimal if they don’t. A mass testing regime is fucking useless if it excludes everyone who can’t afford it.

Was meant to be for lunch. Despite best intentions it’s hard to maintain distance, helping with cooking etc

In our case, my father will be cooking his own lunch, we'll be bring ours separately. No interaction within 3 metres, although I gather small grandchildren are now allowed to hold his lower legs in a hug. Nothing above the knee. It's fucking tragic, but such is life.

A mass testing regime is fucking useless if it excludes everyone who can’t afford it.

Doesn't matter if you don't care about a chunk of society and just want to keep yourself safe while expanding the size of the bubble you can move in.

Is the CEBM at Oxford a bit anti whatever the government says?

The wine and cheese selection in the restaurant cars is pretty good too.

OK you're just boasting now.

Because the Swiss seem to constantly add FFS to SBB CFF which I can only presume is an expression of their frustration at the poor service.

I follow a few Swiss train related tags on social media (mainly for finding out about avalanche closures in the winter) and have noticed that while there are lots of expressions of frustrations at service quality online, they are usually due to very minor reasons. Last time I saw a swiss person mouthing off about the rail service on Twitter was because the train information display wasn't working in their carriage. Before that it was because the rail replacement bus bypassing a rock slide was five minutes late leaving.