Is it just an impression or is UK indeed the most enthusiastic of all Western countries when it comes to performing mass surveillance on its citizens?
Seems like it runs way deeper and broader than in US
Seems like it runs way deeper and broader than in US
Specifically, I found the "distrustful of everyone to the point of paranoia"-part is really pervasive. I'm not trying to upset anyone here, but it's one of those things that's hard to notice unless you have a different perspective (e.g. you're a foreigners, have lived abroad, etc.)
A lot of the British seem pretty okay with it shrug
With that said, I'm Scottish and living near London and find this distasteful. But it's easier to configure a VPN then whine about it, so maybe we're just lazy?
I actually commend them for announcing it. Most businesses just hire an 'analytics' company and end up getting all the same data from their customers without asking.
Have you ever gotten a bus ticket or taxi in derby? No day tickets. A return from a suburb to Center is around £8.
Compared to say, Kentish Town west to Kew for £2.50. The TFL caps are great.
Also compare to similarly sized cities. Transportation has a massive scaling benefit. If there are 1000 people on a tube train, charging £2.50 each, that's £2500. The drivers salary for the half hour journey could be perhaps £15. The train and track are going to have their costs spread out over 60 years or more. The land was in most cases given to them for free. The electricity for a 5 mile journey for a train costs £0.50.
How else are they spending the remaining £2484.50?
Answer:. Staff salaries are insanely high because of unions. Productivity is insanely low because of government work ethic and red tape. Tech is all contracted out an great expense, and all tech is both ancient and custom, stopping them buying in cheap systems from other countries. In some cases, trains are still controlled by men with big mechanical levers which raise flags!
- TfL isn't just the Tube. Tube profits are used, among other things, to cross subsidize the buses and ferries and whatnot, which carry less passengers per driver. There's also the stuff like bike infrastructure which has most of its cost frontloaded.
- Track is not a sunk cost, there's also ongoing maintenance and renewal. They've spent billions and are spending billions of pounds on upgrading the signals, and are also spending billions of pounds on upgrading the fleet and make it bigger. Not to mention capital works like building out the Northern Line Extension, the upgrade of Camden Town and eventual separation of the Northern Line, the continuous drive to build accessible access to stations, the assorted array of Crossrail-related upgrades, etc.
- National funding. TfL has seen its operating grant from the Department of Transport shrink to zero since 2017/2018, and has to make up for it from other sources.
The expense comes from the ancient methods they wanted to use. In the same way a handwritten book is much more expensive than using a printing press.
If a satisfactorily reliable solution for such a problem could be engineered on the cheap, a private company offering it for much less would make a fortune off of all the railways chomping at the bit to save billions of dollars. The fact that no such solution exists anywhere leads me to believe that it isn't trivial.
I do (Norway, Sweden and Denmark). Still not expensive.
https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/capital-projects-and-inf...
It is falling to have to pay five quid to stand on a platform looking on as several train loads of sardines poke their heads through open doors, before you can squeeze on.
I wouldn't be entirely surprised if you had to do this to get into a restaurant somewhere slightly sensitive, such as at the top of a skyscraper. And i have been asked for ID - and patted down! - going to the bowling lanes in a slightly gangy part of town.
But nobody's going to give you the third degree to get into a Nando's.
Most older Brits don't carry any sort of ID at all. Young people often need ID to buy booze, but when you're old enough that nobody could mistake you for under 25 they never bother you. Source: I've never carried ID, in my 40s this ceased ever causing any hassle because now nobody ever even asks.
In fact, such a policy would probably be catastrophic, because there was a big fight over whether we would all be required to carry compulsory ID cards here a few years ago, and for once the civil liberties side won after a big campaign.
It would be very unusual for a restaurant to do so, but I'm wondering if it might have been a restaurant with a nightclub attached (if we're talking central London here maybe Tiger Tiger?). That's quite plausible.
But I do see your point.
That said, at least years ago, the ID scanners would operate on data stored on the card and not make any network connection to a database. So then more expensive fake IDs began to exist that could scan fine. Then, I think some bars started getting more expensive ID scanners which actually do talk to some database.
I can perhaps imagine this happening in some [crappy centre-town, tourist-trap] nightclubs, but literally not in a ‘Denny's type’ cafe restaurant.
I can't even begin to imagine why, short of some scam or bored locals teasing tourists.