All you chaps moaning about public transport - at least you've got public transport. In Calgary a city of 1m+ people there is no train station or train service of any description, the nearest passenger train station is a 3 hour drive north. There is a puny tram system that is overcrowded by the time it reaches the 2nd stop on the line, a feeble bus service with no provision for disabled passengers or mums with pushchairs, no tube service & even a serious lack of taxis. Over here the car is king & it's the only way to get around, specially when the temperature is -30 outside. It's not until you leave London & live in North America that you realise what a maginficent public transport service the City has.
[cite]Posted By: Oakster[/cite]All you chaps moaning about public transport - at least you've got public transport. In Calgary a city of 1m+ people there is no train station or train service of any description, the nearest passenger train station is a 3 hour drive north. There is a puny tram system that is overcrowded by the time it reaches the 2nd stop on the line, a feeble bus service with no provision for disabled passengers or mums with pushchairs, no tube service & even a serious lack of taxis. Over here the car is king & it's the only way to get around, specially when the temperature is -30 outside. It's not until you leave London & live in North America that you realise what a maginficent public transport service the City has.
[cite]Posted By: BlackForestReds[/cite]blackforest got it in for you charlie, poor response from him mind you, not his usual standard.
...................
Sure but it's not worth writing a longer and more articulate response, if I did it'd only fall on deaf ears.
.................
i got shouted at by a motorcyclist yesterday. My crime was to cross over in front of a stationery van, i got to the edge of the van and peered my head round the corner to see if any cyclists coming to be faced by a roaring machine who was actually on the fffing pavement so he could squeeze through... and he shouted at me!! the tosspot.
..................
Yep, a bit like navigating Bangkok, but what does that have to do with anything? Next time take his reg number and speak to the police rather than moan here.
i wasnt moaning i was just stating FACT... just calling him a tosspot like you called charlie a TWAT last week.
I was in Chicago recently and used the CTA - twenty-five year old rolling stock, sections with poor tracks so the train has to go slowly and the City were in the process of announcing that they were going to cut the sevice back and close some of the stations and branch lines because the City as a whole wasn't making enough money from tax revenues etc. The concept that mass transit is a social necessity appeared lost on the Yanks, as far as they were concerned it was a cost and that was it. Meanwhile as you travel in from O'Hare on I-95 you get caught in long slow moving traffic jams all the while there is an under-funded and under-used train service running parallel to the Interstate.
[cite]Posted By: BlackForestReds[/cite]I was in Chicago recently and used the CTA - twenty-five year old rolling stock, sections with poor tracks so the train has to go slowly and the City were in the process of announcing that they were going to cut the sevice back and close some of the stations and branch lines because the City as a whole wasn't making enough money from tax revenues etc. The concept that mass transit is a social necessity appeared lost on the Yanks, as far as they were concerned it was a cost and that was it. Meanwhile as you travel in from O'Hare on I-95 you get caught in long slow moving traffic jams all the while there is an under-funded and under-used train service running parallel to the Interstate.
Should send Ken out for another jolly up and see if he can help them
BFR: "So, if you want to blame someone, blame Thatcher, it was her short-term decision to sell off council housing and ban the councils from building more."
Was it a short term decision though? It certanly scuppered the strength of the trade unions who could strike at the drop of a hat. Once people had to pay a mortgage instead of the council covering their housing needs strikes became a lot less frequent. Thatcher certainly did a lot of short term fixes - flogging off our oil supplies dirt cheap was one, but this was quite clever. With regards to transport she was the one that took our fairly decent public transport system, undercut its funding and effeciency and pushed cars as the means to get around to the masses - her roadbuilding policy was testament to this.
It is still a sad state of affairs that we have the need to blame a Tory government that has not been in power for ten years (plus in MT's case). Where's Salad to remind me of what New Labour has ever done for us ;0)
I love and hate Ken in equal measure and it doesn't balance out to make me indifferent to him. A gripe of mine that doesn't seem to have been covered here is the free bus access to kids - great idea, but could they not have been given time limited oyster cards or an ID card of some kind? The amount of buses I have been on where the driver has to have an argument (or stop the engine) with an older looking kid over whether he gets free travel or not is getting tiresome. Given a lot of these kids attitudes the rows can be pretty aggressive and physical.
AFKA - Just read your comments about proper conduct on here and I am the gulity party of calling someone a twat on this thread.
However, I also feel that if people are going to talk politics on here then there should also be some acceptable codes of conduct for that, which there currently are not.
For a start, someone on here said they would "like to pull the trigger" on Ken Livingstone, that's outrageous and totally unacceptable and should not be tolerated.
Second, there have also been people on here accusing Livingstone of being an "IRA sympathiser" and "sympathetic to Islamic terrorism" both of which are highly inflammatory statements that are nonsense. People should think before they post.
If people want to talk politics can we at least keep it to the issues and not cheap slurs?
For instance, much as I hate GWB, if we were to talk about him on here I would try to be sensible about it and not just hurl cheap abuse at the bloke.
[cite]Posted By: Ormiston Addick[/cite]For instance, much as I hate GWB, if we were to talk about him on here I would try to be sensible about it and not just hurl cheap abuse at the bloke.
Agreed, but it'd take me several re-writes of a post and maybe some calming help from one of MCS' special cigarettes before I could write a constructive criticism of that man when a single noun screams itself as sufficient...
One comment is that London is not the city it used to be, can't agree with that at all. Sure in the 50/60/70/80's London's population was in decline and there was a low level incoming population. London's History is one of growth and of massive numbers in terms of incoming population go to the London Museum or Museum of the docklands.
Now and over the last 15 years the economy is booming really, and there is a very large influx in population what there are meant to be 250,000 plus of the French in London alone. The population is meant to top 10 million+ again over the next few years, I live in Greenwich it is a booming place, with lots of different cultures which make it an exciting place to live.
It does suffer though from not 20 years of under investment but from the whole period after 1945 a lack of investment. How long where Routemaster busses running, I would guess more because they could not afford to replace than any inherent ability of the bus.
I see Britain in the 1970's when I was bein brought up not as an ideal but a place where WW2 was still ongoing. Investment was rationed etc.
Only since black Wednesday and first Tory and then Labour Economic management has seen us out of the crap we were in.
[cite]Posted By: Sco[/cite]
It is still a sad state of affairs that we have the need to blame a Tory government that has not been in power for ten years (plus in MT's case). Where's Salad to remind me of what New Labour has ever done for us ;0)
Exactly. Worth remembering that in London, the mayor's powers are still pretty limited and there's all kinds of power struggles between him, the government, and local councils. (Ken thinks there should be as few as five boroughs, instead of the current 32, for example.)
And we're seeing now the consequences once again of what happens when national government (which never has London's best interests at heart) interferes in our affairs, now Metronet is crashing and burning. Whose great idea was that, Gordon Brown? London won't ever really flourish until the government learns to let go.
[cite]Posted By: InspectorSands[/cite]And we're seeing now the consequences once again of what happens when national government (which never has London's best interests at heart) interferes in our affairs, now Metronet is crashing and burning. Whose great idea was that, Gordon Brown? London won't ever really flourish until the government learns to let go.
It'd have to let go of a lot of money as well and that is unlikely to happen soon! Has London ever been autonomous though? Manchester has a few people keen on a mostly self-governed status as well.
[cite]Posted By: Sco[/cite]
It'd have to let go of a lot of money as well and that is unlikely to happen soon! Has London ever been autonomous though? Manchester has a few people keen on a mostly self-governed status as well.
No, although the GLC and its predecessors had a lot more power than the mayor does now. For somewhere with almost twice the population of Scotland, London gets a bad deal when it comes to controlling its own affairs.
I know he's not in the best of health now, but it'd be great to see the old Factory Records boss Tony Wilson to be in the job he'd kill for - mayor of Manchester!
bloody hell you lot are a boring bunch!.. bushell for mayor.. i'm mates with his son lol who went colfes... actually just found out another one of my mates dads is the millwank fans director someone was moaning about a few months back. small world eh!
[cite]Posted By: InspectorSands[/cite]I know he's not in the best of health now, but it'd be great to see the old Factory Records boss Tony Wilson to be in the job he'd kill for - mayor of Manchester!
He'd never shut up! The bigger the platform the louder the mouth with him! Wonder if he'd actually do anything in between sounding off...
[cite]Posted By: Ormiston Addick[/cite]
However, I also feel that if people are going to talk politics on here then there should also be some acceptable codes of conduct for that, which there currently are not.
Which is precisely why Ormy i try my hardest to try and steer threads on here away from such issues. Its not the place for it, and not what we want it to be. When you have got as many people in a discussion, and people don't know each other, its hard to discuss certain subjects without provoking volatile reactions in some. And when you get one volatile reaction, its sure to provoke an equal volatile reaction from another.
I find it great when you get serious subjects discussed adultly, and most of the time i learn from people with differing views to mine. But as has been proved by the vast majority of forums, its impossible to house so many people with differing views and for it to remain civil.
In that respect, its exactly why i personally would like people to remember what this is all about. Its a Charlton site, that if it goes off a tangent is done with humour and light-heartedness. And if it ever gets serious that people consider what they post, and above all else, have respect for other peoples views and beliefs.
And even if that seems a bit wishy-washy for some, i just hope that they respect that that's how we'd like it to be.
I think you handle it just right, Barts. It does make you an easy target for anyone who wants to have a dig at your authority being used to keep this a Charlton site. I enjoy it on here because it has limits, not despite it.
OK, fair enough AFKA. I think its probably a good idea to keep this site away from politics and more on Charlton/Life issues as it only ever leads to rows between opposing folks.
I do think though that people on here who post things like "I'd pull the trigger on Livingstone" should go to another site to post that sort of bile. Permanently.
Some people also can't seperate the difference between what we try and spell out how we would like this forum and site to function, and what my own views might be on certain subjects. Sometimes they're very different and i'm probably quite different in person to how i come across on here.
If the site and forum continue to grow, it has to be structured in some way. Just thinking about the awards post, and there has been some fantastic humour posts on here in the last year, the humour is so above what i see elsewhere and i desperately don't want that to change. They way everyone got together for the charity do was absolutely brilliant, and one of the proudest i've ever felt. That's what we want to achieve, not anal bickering about crappy politics and other real-life issues.
Anyway, a bit pissed and rambling so leave it at that !
[quote][cite]Posted By: Sco[/cite]BFR: "So, if you want to blame someone, blame Thatcher, it was her short-term decision to sell off council housing and ban the councils from building more."
Was it a short term decision though? It certanly scuppered the strength of the trade unions who could strike at the drop of a hat. Once people had to pay a mortgage instead of the council covering their housing needs strikes became a lot less frequent. Thatcher certainly did a lot of short term fixes - flogging off our oil supplies dirt cheap was one, but this was quite clever. With regards to transport she was the one that took our fairly decent public transport system, undercut its funding and effeciency and pushed cars as the means to get around to the masses - her roadbuilding policy was testament to this.
It is still a sad state of affairs that we have the need to blame a Tory government that has not been in power for ten years (plus in MT's case). Where's Salad to remind me of what New Labour has ever done for us ;0)[/quote]
Cause and effect Sco...
The point I'm trying to make is two fold, first that the old GLC had a fair amount of power to direct and co-ordinate transport, planning, education etc London wide and when that was abolished London was left with the individual London Boroughs all doing their own thing, disastrous when you consider the size of London, the number of people moving about and the importance of London to the national economy. Secondly, the forced sale of council housing was another party political decision, at the time the Thatcher government was trying to rein in council spending and she needed Local councils to stop tapping Central governments for ever increasing sums of money. So the order went out that council housing was to be sold off and the money raised would go for budget shortfalls in the councils and not on new housing. Given that any housing that the councils could build could be sold off after a few years of low rent that acted as a disincentive to build new housing. At a stroke she reduced the depedence of local councils on central government and saved a lot of money to help fund her tax cuts, but consequently housing is still a big issue in the inner city Boroughs and that in turn has forced up the price of housing as a whole as a source of cheap housing has been taken away from the councils. Perhaps if the Councils could build housing again then it would take a number of people off the housing market and in so doing reduce demand and bring prices down, at least in theory. KL has forced developers to build a fair amount of housing for "key workers" but this is only scratching at the problem.
Elsewhere in London things like transport has always been viewed as a cost not a service. If we want to persuade people to use buses/trains/tubes then the service has to be better, cheaper, be properly co-ordinated and just more reliable - no more Connex south east type organisations running a sub-standard service. I'm amazed that that given the size of London that there is no cross London rail service, that the tube system only covers part of south London and given that I can see why many people prefer to commute by car instead of public transport, if you have free car-parking at your office it would be cheaper to commute by car. So the congestion charge, which no one likes, is a necessity to force people on to the trains etc and provides the money to subsidise the service. The problem though with flat taxes is that by definition they disproportionately hit the poor harder.
In conclusion it was the political decisions made in the 1980s that have hit London, go to just about any major city in the western world and you'll see that they don't have these problems. This wasn't helped by the sell-off of British Rail in the 90s and the hiving off of those services to the highest tender who promptly put prices up and cut corners, another great short-term decision to get a cost away from central government. Every action has a reaction and there has been too much neglect of the average Londoner over the last two decades and now we've ended up with the GLA with a limited amount of power and influence to do anything.
Comments
Serves you right for living in the colonies ;-)
i wasnt moaning i was just stating FACT... just calling him a tosspot like you called charlie a TWAT last week.
Should send Ken out for another jolly up and see if he can help them
(Take that, Lucy Lou!)
Pssst - That was 106 fella
Was it a short term decision though? It certanly scuppered the strength of the trade unions who could strike at the drop of a hat. Once people had to pay a mortgage instead of the council covering their housing needs strikes became a lot less frequent. Thatcher certainly did a lot of short term fixes - flogging off our oil supplies dirt cheap was one, but this was quite clever. With regards to transport she was the one that took our fairly decent public transport system, undercut its funding and effeciency and pushed cars as the means to get around to the masses - her roadbuilding policy was testament to this.
It is still a sad state of affairs that we have the need to blame a Tory government that has not been in power for ten years (plus in MT's case). Where's Salad to remind me of what New Labour has ever done for us ;0)
However, I also feel that if people are going to talk politics on here then there should also be some acceptable codes of conduct for that, which there currently are not.
For a start, someone on here said they would "like to pull the trigger" on Ken Livingstone, that's outrageous and totally unacceptable and should not be tolerated.
Second, there have also been people on here accusing Livingstone of being an "IRA sympathiser" and "sympathetic to Islamic terrorism" both of which are highly inflammatory statements that are nonsense. People should think before they post.
If people want to talk politics can we at least keep it to the issues and not cheap slurs?
For instance, much as I hate GWB, if we were to talk about him on here I would try to be sensible about it and not just hurl cheap abuse at the bloke.
Agreed, but it'd take me several re-writes of a post and maybe some calming help from one of MCS' special cigarettes before I could write a constructive criticism of that man when a single noun screams itself as sufficient...
Now and over the last 15 years the economy is booming really, and there is a very large influx in population what there are meant to be 250,000 plus of the French in London alone. The population is meant to top 10 million+ again over the next few years, I live in Greenwich it is a booming place, with lots of different cultures which make it an exciting place to live.
It does suffer though from not 20 years of under investment but from the whole period after 1945 a lack of investment. How long where Routemaster busses running, I would guess more because they could not afford to replace than any inherent ability of the bus.
I see Britain in the 1970's when I was bein brought up not as an ideal but a place where WW2 was still ongoing. Investment was rationed etc.
Only since black Wednesday and first Tory and then Labour Economic management has seen us out of the crap we were in.
Exactly. Worth remembering that in London, the mayor's powers are still pretty limited and there's all kinds of power struggles between him, the government, and local councils. (Ken thinks there should be as few as five boroughs, instead of the current 32, for example.)
And we're seeing now the consequences once again of what happens when national government (which never has London's best interests at heart) interferes in our affairs, now Metronet is crashing and burning. Whose great idea was that, Gordon Brown? London won't ever really flourish until the government learns to let go.
It'd have to let go of a lot of money as well and that is unlikely to happen soon! Has London ever been autonomous though? Manchester has a few people keen on a mostly self-governed status as well.
No, although the GLC and its predecessors had a lot more power than the mayor does now. For somewhere with almost twice the population of Scotland, London gets a bad deal when it comes to controlling its own affairs.
I know he's not in the best of health now, but it'd be great to see the old Factory Records boss Tony Wilson to be in the job he'd kill for - mayor of Manchester!
He'd never shut up! The bigger the platform the louder the mouth with him! Wonder if he'd actually do anything in between sounding off...
Gee thanks...and no thanks...
Which is precisely why Ormy i try my hardest to try and steer threads on here away from such issues. Its not the place for it, and not what we want it to be. When you have got as many people in a discussion, and people don't know each other, its hard to discuss certain subjects without provoking volatile reactions in some. And when you get one volatile reaction, its sure to provoke an equal volatile reaction from another.
I find it great when you get serious subjects discussed adultly, and most of the time i learn from people with differing views to mine. But as has been proved by the vast majority of forums, its impossible to house so many people with differing views and for it to remain civil.
In that respect, its exactly why i personally would like people to remember what this is all about. Its a Charlton site, that if it goes off a tangent is done with humour and light-heartedness. And if it ever gets serious that people consider what they post, and above all else, have respect for other peoples views and beliefs.
And even if that seems a bit wishy-washy for some, i just hope that they respect that that's how we'd like it to be.
I do think though that people on here who post things like "I'd pull the trigger on Livingstone" should go to another site to post that sort of bile. Permanently.
Some people also can't seperate the difference between what we try and spell out how we would like this forum and site to function, and what my own views might be on certain subjects. Sometimes they're very different and i'm probably quite different in person to how i come across on here.
If the site and forum continue to grow, it has to be structured in some way. Just thinking about the awards post, and there has been some fantastic humour posts on here in the last year, the humour is so above what i see elsewhere and i desperately don't want that to change. They way everyone got together for the charity do was absolutely brilliant, and one of the proudest i've ever felt. That's what we want to achieve, not anal bickering about crappy politics and other real-life issues.
Anyway, a bit pissed and rambling so leave it at that !
Was it a short term decision though? It certanly scuppered the strength of the trade unions who could strike at the drop of a hat. Once people had to pay a mortgage instead of the council covering their housing needs strikes became a lot less frequent. Thatcher certainly did a lot of short term fixes - flogging off our oil supplies dirt cheap was one, but this was quite clever. With regards to transport she was the one that took our fairly decent public transport system, undercut its funding and effeciency and pushed cars as the means to get around to the masses - her roadbuilding policy was testament to this.
It is still a sad state of affairs that we have the need to blame a Tory government that has not been in power for ten years (plus in MT's case). Where's Salad to remind me of what New Labour has ever done for us ;0)[/quote]
Cause and effect Sco...
The point I'm trying to make is two fold, first that the old GLC had a fair amount of power to direct and co-ordinate transport, planning, education etc London wide and when that was abolished London was left with the individual London Boroughs all doing their own thing, disastrous when you consider the size of London, the number of people moving about and the importance of London to the national economy. Secondly, the forced sale of council housing was another party political decision, at the time the Thatcher government was trying to rein in council spending and she needed Local councils to stop tapping Central governments for ever increasing sums of money. So the order went out that council housing was to be sold off and the money raised would go for budget shortfalls in the councils and not on new housing. Given that any housing that the councils could build could be sold off after a few years of low rent that acted as a disincentive to build new housing. At a stroke she reduced the depedence of local councils on central government and saved a lot of money to help fund her tax cuts, but consequently housing is still a big issue in the inner city Boroughs and that in turn has forced up the price of housing as a whole as a source of cheap housing has been taken away from the councils. Perhaps if the Councils could build housing again then it would take a number of people off the housing market and in so doing reduce demand and bring prices down, at least in theory. KL has forced developers to build a fair amount of housing for "key workers" but this is only scratching at the problem.
Elsewhere in London things like transport has always been viewed as a cost not a service. If we want to persuade people to use buses/trains/tubes then the service has to be better, cheaper, be properly co-ordinated and just more reliable - no more Connex south east type organisations running a sub-standard service. I'm amazed that that given the size of London that there is no cross London rail service, that the tube system only covers part of south London and given that I can see why many people prefer to commute by car instead of public transport, if you have free car-parking at your office it would be cheaper to commute by car. So the congestion charge, which no one likes, is a necessity to force people on to the trains etc and provides the money to subsidise the service. The problem though with flat taxes is that by definition they disproportionately hit the poor harder.
In conclusion it was the political decisions made in the 1980s that have hit London, go to just about any major city in the western world and you'll see that they don't have these problems. This wasn't helped by the sell-off of British Rail in the 90s and the hiving off of those services to the highest tender who promptly put prices up and cut corners, another great short-term decision to get a cost away from central government. Every action has a reaction and there has been too much neglect of the average Londoner over the last two decades and now we've ended up with the GLA with a limited amount of power and influence to do anything.