Best Of

Prince George to attend Eton from September

I don't see why he can't go to Westminster City School like everyone else. If it's not good enough for him, then it's not good enough for the rest of us.

Slight problem, William and Catherine live in Windsor not Kensington Palace.

Ah - I heard he was boarding at Eton so assumed they were in London! If they live in Windsor then why board? Oh well the top brass are a mystery...

Probably because his parents spend an inordinate amount of time not at home or indeed in the same country.

Not a monarchist by any means or a fan of Eton, but i think this just might make practical sense to them as a family.

Peter.

Muslims make up around 1.5% of the Texas electorate.

We need to be clear about what is happening in this photo.

Rick Scarborough, former Southern Baptist pastor, got on stage at the Texas Republican Convention and told state DELEGATE Mohamed Hussein to convert to Christianity or leave the country. He was so upset that he cried. It was then and only then that Rick felt guilty, so he sat down and pretended to pray for him.

The only evil we need to expel from this state are the people who don’t believe in the CONSTITUTIONALLY PROTECTED RIGHT of freedom of religion.
https://x.com/SaraForTexLege/status/2066756697251623267

Your regular reminder that the Southern Baptist Church was founded to support slavery/oppose its abolition.

FPT...

@Richard_Tyndall a couple of days back you mentioned your book on British intervention in southern Russia at the end of WWI. This sounds like a book I want to read! Can you tell us more?

Its a long term project that I started a few years ago and have picked up again. It revolves around the British fears of Turkish Pan Turanianism expansion into central Asia following the Russian collapse in 1917. To try and prevent this the British organised a series if interventions in the Caucaus and Southern central Asia - Dunsterforce and the Malleson Mission amongst them. As a result the British/Empire troops ended up defending Baku against the Turks and also fighting the Red Russians on the South Central Asian railway in Turkmenistan.

Its real boys own stuff and includes a small group of about 20 Australian and British soldiers defending the retreat of the last of the Assyrians from Urmia down into Persia, holding off thousands of Turks and Kurds to get 80,000 refugees to safety.

My plan is to have the first draft finished middle of next year. I have acouple of military publishers interested.

Let us know when it's out!

(I did my History O'level project on the non-Slav nationalities in the Russian Civil War.)

All trains should be retrofitted with RF-passing “honeycomb” glass like they have on trains in Germany.

This would improve coverage on mainline trains for millions of people overnight.

Implausible. How many use the trains daily?

About 4.7 million people every day. (1.73 billion train journeys a year divided by 365 days)

That's the upper bound, assuming they take a single point to point journey per day. Most will return so you're probably looking at around 2.7-ish million as a more realistic figure.

So millions will benefit. Get on with it.

No they won't - remember it would make no difference to any journey I've made.

So that rules out the WCML, ECML, Lizzie Line (it even works in the tunnels) and Transpennine Express..

You really have a real obsession with mobile phones - heck you make some trainspotters I know look normal and unobsessive.

If they’re going to do it it would be better to do it as part of a periodic overhaul program rather than a standalone project.

It would also take years to do. You would need to keep trains in service at the same time as the project runs.

We’d also have to test and validate the new windows to ensure they can be used. Which can be a pain in the arse in the train world. I’ve still got the scars from District Line upgrade.

We aren’t exactly overburdened with companies capable of undertaking a major overhaul project either.

Yes on every train upgrade project, add new glass or repeaters. Do it iteratively. Fine.

But people here will argue against it even in principle. We see it day after day here.

I’ve proposed many times here things that can be done as other stuff is, e.g. a station gets upgraded, always add dedicated infrastructure.

But there is no joined up thinking. The BML project is brilliant but why only that line? Why not every line over time? It is a standardised thing with very few vendors.

The UK just does it so badly.

So is the glass approved for use on rolling stock in the U.K. ?

Has it been tested and validated to see how it behaves to our standards in a crash, for example ?

They won’t have even got that far because they’ll have decided it’s too expensive to do.

It’s been certified for use on German trains.

As I said, there can be other things. Build more masts. But that also was opposed here.

Being approved for German rolling stock is only relevant if our standards are aligned.

If it is too expensive to be it.

Class 745, 755, 756 (Greater Anglia), Class 555 (Tyne & Wear), Class 777 (Merseyrail), Glasgow Subway new stock, Class 231 (Wales) all built in Switzerland.

Class 398 (Wales), Class 399 (Sheffield Supertram) built in Spain.

Class 195, 331 (Northern), Class 397 (Trans-Pennine), mostly built in Spain.

Class 185 (Transpennine) built in Germany

Class 350 (LNWR) built in Austria, Czechia, Poland, and Germany

Class 360 (Luton Express) built in Austria and Germany

Class 380 (Scotrail) built in Germany

Class 444 (Southwest) built in Austria

Class 450 (Southwest) built in Austria and Germany

Class 700 (Thameslink, Grt Northern) and Class 717 (Grt Northern) built in Germany

Class 707 (Southeastern) Built in Germany

No Mark 3 carriages ? I used to work on them at Litchurch Lane.

@Richard_Tyndall a couple of days back you mentioned your book on British intervention in southern Russia at the end of WWI. This sounds like a book I want to read! Can you tell us more?

Its a long term project that I started a few years ago and have picked up again. It revolves around the British fears of Turkish Pan Turanianism expansion into central Asia following the Russian collapse in 1917. To try and prevent this the British organised a series of interventions in the Caucaus and Southern central Asia - Dunsterforce and the Malleson Mission amongst them. As a result the British/Empire troops ended up defending Baku against the Turks and also fighting the Red Russians on the South Central Asian railway in Turkmenistan.

Its real boys own stuff and includes a small group of about 20 Australian and British soldiers defending the retreat of the last of the Assyrians from Urmia down into Persia, holding off thousands of Turks and Kurds to get 80,000 refugees to safety.

My plan is to have the first draft finished middle of next year. I have a couple of military publishers interested.