Best way to travel 5 miles to a train station?

I would say, certainly where the middle-classes are concerned, it has always
been a matter of choice.

Middle-class workers and especially middle-class workers with families have
been opting to live away from the city-centres, where the businesses are,
for quite some time now.

Even today, when a lot of city-centres are considered quite trendy places to
live, the families prefer to locate in the suburbs, away from the noise,
traffic and, typically, terrace housing.

This desire to live in the suburbs pushes up the price of housing there,
which pushes the suburbs further out as developers look for land to build on
to meet the demand for the housing.

I admit that, obviously, city-centre housing in a lot of cities is still
very expensive, but it's the young singles and young couples who are largely
buying it, because they want to be near the action and in the centre of
things.


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AndrewR, D.Bot (Celeritas)
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The speccy Geordie twat.

 

No - you're missing the point.

There is no free wage market; there is no free market. What we know and
work to is a distortion.

There is no choice; or at least if there is a choice it is limited and
predefined.

 

Hmmmm. I went to the York Rally last year, and one of my abiding
memories was of large numbers of thin people eating very /very/ large
breakfasts...

Me, I'm a few lb over what I'd like to be. 6'1", 13st, body fat
between 15% and 16%. I eat pizza, drink beer and do no exercise at
all other than cycling to and from work.

Here are some pics form last weekend's Cyclefest. Not a lot of lard
on view here, either, except for the non-cyclist in pic. 1.
<url:http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk/web/public.nsf/Documents/Cyclefest>

Guy

 

Maybe, maybe not. Fact is, most people commuting into London are
professionals doing the nine-to-five. A fair few people live and work
in London, including health workers and so on. And there are some
(few by comparison with the overall figure) people who work unsocial
hours in service businesses in central London. Of these, some live in
low-rent acommodation near to where they work, some live somewhat
further out and commute short distances, and an unknown small number
live, by their own choice, further out.

Thsi is not a new problem. Miners in Wales used to walk prodigious
distances to the mines (try the Minffordd over Snowdon to Cadair Idris
some time). I think workers in London probably have more options than
those Welsh miners, though.

Guy

 

Yes, if you pass Whitestone Pond.

 

"Necessity" and "choice" are not the same

I have lived in Wales; more pertinently Dolgellau; Llwyngwril; Barmouth
and Fairbourne; I've have walked to work between those locations. Wales
is many things, flat is not one of them.

You've missed the original point - they are precisely the same.

 

They look very Renault (compare with older R4, R10 etc). As far as I can
see only Jaguar, Volvo and Renault have design cues that Mr Joe Bloggs
can point at and say that car's a /whatever/. A few years ago I'd ave
included Saab.

I think we'll see more of this deliberate design statement stuff but at
the moment they're the ones with edge. I don't mean things like the
Triumph habit of the rear roof line (compare 60's Herald with 70's Mk II
2500) or Fords current headlamps.

 

Then this year was *very*different.
I was astounded at the acreage of lycra stretched over frontages in the
breakfast tent and elsewhere.
The combined weight of three of our neighbours in the tent field must
also have been well over a third of a ton.

John B

 

I suspect that I am.

What isn't free about the wage market? Companies are free to offer as
little as they are legally allowed and people are free not to work for that
amount if they find it demeaning and/or would rather starve to death in a
gutter somewhere.

That sounds perfectly free to me, apart from the "legally allowed" bit.

Ain't it always the way, eh?


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The speccy Geordie twat.

 

And rightly so too.
Our cul de sac is fully utilised by the neighbours for parking their cars
day and night and its not a freebie public car park.

Not surprisingly we get really pissed off when morons from
office blocks over half a mile away take what would be a briefly
available car park space when a mum does the school run.
If you take a job away from home area without checking whether
there is car parking provided by your employer or whether proper car
parking facilities exist nearby then that makes you seem a complete
moron.

I'm too old to work but you workers have the power to force councils
and developers to provide car park facilities in the basement of
all new structures, whether office blocks, colleges or industrial units.
Just work together and make it happen instead of punishing drivers
like me who need to park somewhere relatively close to home.

 

You mean "Jumping red lights in a motor vehicle when they've just changed",
the subject under discussion?

Of course the fact that cars don't have room to overtake other cars
waiting might be relevent here.

 

I see drivers going though on red because only a couple of other
cars have gone through on red so far after the guy who went through
on amber. I don't think they are safer than the cyclist who stops to
check it really is clear before going through on red.

(There are some lights where a cyclist going straight through
in a cycle lane doesn't interact with motor traffic coming in from
the side at all. I don't like them doing it because it triggers
rants in motorists who then have even less respect than normal
for cyclists, but it isn't dangerous.)

 

I assume you kicked the shit out of him then and made sure he was fit
for A+E?

 

Exactly. With 1 in two stopping, around half the time the first car to
reach the red stops. 1/4 of the time, the second one does. 1/8 of the
time the third one does.
This is only approximate, and it only goes on as long as the drivers
don't think there is anything coming the other way yet, but it fits what
I see a damn sight better than 1 in 20.

 

Good lord, you own the road as well as your houses. That's nice.

 

Actually, I'd already been to that page because I'm a sucker for pictures.
Very svelte, the lot of you.

 

<parody>
If you buy a home without checking whether you have off-road parking
then that makes you seem a complete moron
</parody>

Tony

 

says...

As long as my car has a current tax disc, MOT and insurance I'll park it
wherever the hell I like, as long as I don't contravene parking
restrictions. There's no such thing as 'resident only parking' unless
the local council has specifically designated a particular street as
such.

When I was younger a neighbour complained because my old Datsun 120Y
Coupe was exceedingly scruffy and brought the tone of the street down.
at one point he called the polivce because it wasn't taxed, so they came
down and told me to get tax or face a prosecution, fair enough so I did.

After that, just to piss the old **** off, I started parking it directly
outside his house. After a couple of weeks and a few visits from him
where he very loudly and forcibly demanded I move it[1], he made a
complaint to the Police who came and took a look. They knocked on my
door and asked to see my documents, which I gladly showed them. It then
gave me great pleasure to see them walk over the road and tell the bloke
not to waste their time again. He didn't even dare call them when I
parked it outside his house with no tax showing in the window again,
even though it was taxed.

[1] Naturally I gave the bloke the usual spiel of "it's taxed, MOTd and
insured so **** off" and slammed the door on him.

 

taywood wrote:

so how much do the neighbours pay to use it then?

James

 

I had a /solicitors/ letter requesting I moved one my old heaps (A
Daimler as it happens) for the very same reasons.