In the news

Have to say my experience of French trains was entirely positive when I last went and that included an overnight sleeper from Paris to Latour de Carol. There are still a fair few Intercites de Nuits and they are apparently bringing more back.

I'm going back next year and taking some more popular routes with a bike, so I may well revise that opinion. :D

The original chart you linked to just talks about "real average" so it's hard to know whether that's mean or median.

The link on productivity is odd, really it should compare median productivity to median wages. Is there "inequality of productivity" as well as "inequality of earnings", or are lower earners just getting paid a lower and lower share of what they produce?

Last time I got a French/Italian sleeper it had a cute little holder next to the bed with two glasses, but also a space for a bottle of wine, which could be bought from a little stall on the platform. Is this still the case?

I do hope they bring them back but my experience of TGV over the last few years has been pretty bad. Could just be the Eastern route into Paris I suppose.

Sadly that seems to have been replaced with a free bottle of water, ear plugs, a sleep mask, a couple of wet wipes and some hankies. Not bad, but I'd prefer the wine infrastructure, tbh.

It's going back a few years now (2010), but I took my bike in a bag on the TGV from Lille to Valence TGV to do the Marmotte and I found it hassle-free and sparsely populated. I was hoping to do a fair bit of French rail travel next year including going from Paris to Lyon and back, so I guess I'll find out more. Can't fault the time of just over two hours and cheaper than a single from London to Brighton, though.

For me to get to Lyon my choices are:

1, Car - 5 1/2 hours
2, Train - 6 1/2 hours
3, Flight - Comedy flight options include Luxembourg to Porto to Lyon, but still only 3 1/5 hours (plus getting into the airport, out of it, and into Lyon obviously)

I guess it's just the east being complicated in terms of connections (slow trains or via paris). The fact that it's complicated to take an assembled bike on a long trip by train isn't great either. But... for most people, it's good enough if they can improve the service a bit.

Yeah, I've noticed you pretty much have to go via Paris to get where you want to go over any long distance. Not an issue for me as it's generally on the way, but it's a pain if you want to go from, say, Caen to Tours.

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Just took a look at the gov.uk data. Top 10% means people earning more than £58k. Top 3% is over £100k. Top 1% is £180k+

That’s to me, is far more depressing.

Probably worth reminding ourselves at this point that money doesn't buy you happiness.

Other platitudes developed by the ultra rich elite to oppress the poor are available.

On the train chat, you should try an ICE in Germany. We are in proper wtf territory it's so unreliable after years of neglect.

Not much experience of TGVs, but we did Berlin-Marseille and back this summer.
Was great travelling, but yes, one of the trains was proper scruffy.

Probably worth reminding ourselves at this point that money doesn't buy you happiness.

Not having to worry about a lack of money sure would make most people happier though.

It's odd how worries don't all disappear when you have money though. Like you're always going to be worrying. Probably a small percentage of the top 10% who don't have worries.

Worrying about availability of snow tires for your SUV is different from worrying about feeding your younglings.

It's odd how worries don't all disappear when you have money though

If course they don't, but not having to choose between food or warmth, or whether you're going to have a place to live at all from one week to the next would free up a lot of valuable head space to worry about other things and be happier doing it.

I know. I have experience of those things. I probably worried less when I was homeless than any time in my life. Actually compared to some of the experiences I've had, it was a pretty good time.

I don't want to take away from the importance of those problems.

Just looked at the Strathclyde Pension Fund. If you ended your career on a salary of £60k and were a member of the scheme for 40 yrs, your pension pot would be worth £800k.
60,000*(1/60)*40*20 = 800k

Edited

Nothing much to lose, nothing much to worry about? I know that's not really the case but the whole "money doesn't buy happiness" thing is bullshit, obviously you can't directly buy happiness unless you know a guy with some MDMA, but it's not so much about wanting enough money to buy anything making you happy, but having enough so that you're not constantly on the brink of destitution will certainly make most people who are struggling much happier.

You did read my second comment right? Of course it's a platitude designed to oppress the poor.

Ha, I did, but for some reason I didn't attribute both comments to you.

It's odd how worries don't all disappear when you have money though.

People with proper money call those worries “high class problems”. I’d be delighted to have some of those.

Yeah, but you know we could try and argue about it.

No, you can argue about it.