pmyteh

Most electric trains only have a small service-and-emergency battery and don't have significant energy storage. For AC electric locomotives it's now standard to return electricity to the grid when using regenerative braking; that's harder with DC electric traction but is done in some circumstances (in others, the generated electricity is dumped into heat via a resistor bank).

The main barrier to electrification is the high upfront capital cost of the electrification works, set against the longer-term per-train return in lower fuel and locomotive/multiple unit costs. Lines which are not intensively used are difficult to justify electrifying on a financial-returns basis, and that probably includes most of the world's long-distance freight lines.

An undergraduate degree, a masters, and a PhD is completely normal for an academic. The latter two are often picked up while on a studentship with a stipend. Although it is possible to self-fund graduate school it's normally not a great idea.

The second masters could have been a false-start at an academic career (change discipline/university part way through study and exit with an MA), a holdover from a pre-academic career, or just done for interest.

I've got a BA in politics, a PGDip (2/3 of an MA) in local government management, an MSc in Internet social sciences and a DPhil. I currently work as an academic. I paid only for the BA and the MSc, and under slightly different circumstances wouldn't have needed to pay for the latter. It's not uncommon.

It's certainly stopped in the case of the Caledonian Sleeper; the new Mark 5 carriages have retention toilets like all other recent stock. I think the Mark 3A sleepers on the Night Riviera to Cornwall also came fitted with retention toilets from new in the 80s, but I wouldn't swear to it. Mark 3 day carriages definitely flushed onto the tracks, though those that are left are being retrofitted with tanks.

I always found the visible turds and toilet paper worse than the smell, but I haven't spent much time at Liverpool Street specifically.

The Conversation[0] tries this. It aims more for 'accurate news stories written by/with academics' than 'simplified research papers' but definitely is trying to be credible yet accessible.

Sadly I've never written for them, as they've not got a huge audience and the career incentives in academia aren't really set up for this kind of accessible popularisation.

[0]: https://www.theconversation.com

There are wide variations in price: some advance purchase sleeper only fares are cheap; at the outside a full-price Anytime ticket plus a room supplement to use the sleeper could cost a fortune. And pricing is not straightforward once you start digging in: have a look at http://brfares.com/!expert?orig=EUS&dest=FTW for example...

District councils (so the second 'lowest' of the possible tiers) but yes. In practice, they've all deferred to the judgement of the British Board of Film Classification (née ...Film Censorship) for nearly every film since it was set up.

[Be aware that your comments appear to be default-dead. I've vouched for this one, but you may want to contact dang to ask for your account to be unflagged: I can't see anything objectionable in your post history so it's probably a false-positive].

Yes - he's drawn based on a specific kind of tank engine from the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (E2 class). There's not a huge similarity with the engine in the photo except that they're both small and painted in a similar shade of blue.

Thomas's prototype causes problems for preserved railway lines in the UK, incidentally. 'Day Out With Thomas' events (where an engine 'dresses' as Thomas to run trains) are very popular, but there are actually zero preserved E2s, so they all look a bit wrong. If Rev Awdry had picked something more common (like a Jinty[0], say) to base Thomas on, there would be loads of nearly exact copies to go around...

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LMS_Fowler_Class_3F

That NHS data collection recommendation says nothing about "wrong body", though. They're trying to elicit accurate information about something potentially medically relevant (assigned biological sex). Their concern is that if you ask a trans person simply "male or female" you'll get an answer that either reflects the gender someone is living in, or the sex on their birth certificate. The former is useless if you're trying to assess the risk of chromosomal disorders, the latter if you're trying to work out how to politely address them.

I've had a look to see what's in the Bodleian and the British Library from there, but it doesn't look like 1978 is online. Post-1998 is on LexisNexis, and the BL's (paid) online service has up to 1950, but there's a gap in the middle. You could almost certainly go and read it in the BL reading room in London, though: their print/microfilm coverage of British newspapers is very good.

These panel surveys are reasonably good. The better pollsters (like Ipsos MORI) spend a decent amount of effort recruiting a broad sample of people for their panels, and results are statistically adjusted for non-response bias etc. That said, the usual problem with political polling (that you can only poll people willing to answer pollsters' questions) applies extra here, as all respondents have agreed to be part of a panel and be repeatedly surveyed. As most panels are done through the Internet, it's at least possible that the participants are more terminally online than the average American.

That said, I don't think the results are crazy, on their face (though I don't myself expect a civil war). There are a number of groups openly proposing political violence, increased partisan polarisation, and a breakdown in the normal political processes (Congress has been essentially non-functional for a while, the Supreme Court have taken a decidedly activist turn, state legislatures are actively discussing subverting the next Presidential election, and trust in politicians of all parties is at historical lows). It's not clear how these will be resolved, and a further increase in political violence is certainly a possibility. Will that amount to civil war? Not close, in my view, but we live in unusual political times.

Yeah, that's true. Expect that will change with the next set of new trains, as with the newish S Stock on the subsurface lines. Not all mainline trains have AC either, though I think it's been nearly universal on new trains from the 90s onwards.

Space in the deep tube tunnels is really tight[0] (making it tricky to fit on-train air con radiators) and there's insufficient air circulation in the to clear the extra heat emissions in any case. They're working on both, but (unlike the shallower cut-and-cover lines and the NY Subway, both of which have saner tunnel sizes) it's decidedly non-trivial.

[0]: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Why_London_Undergr...

Sadly they've reedited Timmy Time to have commentary by a child narrator. Which seriously undercuts the programme's charm in my view.

...and the 'Elite' disc seems to be in the drive by default!

You're both right. The Home Secretary's statement that no action will be taken can form the basis of a 'legitimate expectation' which is enforceable by judicial review if a future government changes its mind.

Would I risk that, given current government threats against both refugees and the continued availability of effective judicial review? I'm not sure. Probably not.

This is especially true of PhD/DPhil programmes at places like Oxford: their intake is massively international, unlike their undergraduate provision which hews to (a small slice of) England.

They're not resigning because they've suddenly realised he's a wrong 'un, they're leaving because he's become an electoral liability. But I suspect you know that - it's how politics works essentially everywhere, including the United States, for parties of all ideological persuasions.

If not, you might want to start with this short article in the Spectator[0] (one of the Conservative house journals, which Johnson used to edit) by Toby Young (a Tory) fifteen years ago (after his rise to prominence, but before his rise to power). The man's a scoundrel and his party have always known it. And even generally honest politicians aren't going to write "We gave you a go because we hoped you'd win the election, but we underestimated just how unpopular you'd get - please go now" in a resignation letter.

[0]: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/having-your-cake-eating-...

Policy disagreements, sure. And you can certainly read those as questions of honour/morality. Robin Cook over the Iraq war, perhaps, or Michael Heseltine over the Westland affair.

As for 'resignations' on the grounds of ministerial misbehaviour, I'm afraid they almost always come down to one of two things. Either the PM isn't personally prepared to put up with it (in which case a resignation is requested) or the political fallout has become so severe that either the minister doesn't want to face the music any more (in which case they will resign more or less in disgrace) or the PM can't afford the political cost of extending cover any further (in which case they will be asked to resign more or less in disgrace).

I am quite sure there are honourable people in politics. Estelle Morris famously resigned as Secretary of State for Education on the basis that she didn't feel up to it. There are probably a handful of others. But resigning without being forced on the grounds of a self-identified moral lapse is astonishingly rare.

Again, you occasionally get people resigning on the basis they think their PM is dishonourable, but even then it's mainly just politics. (Everyone currently leaving Johnson's cabinet knew of his objectionable character before signing on, for example).

The modern Conservative party mostly has a reputation for corruption (which we politely call 'sleaze') rather than honour and probity. That dates back to at least the early 90s and has been recently reinforced. Labour's reputation is in the gutter too, though possibly not to quite the same extent.

(I teach political communication in a British university and have previously interned in Parliament, FWIW. The strong tension between our 'good chaps' theory of government (with its actors behaving honourably at all times) and the nakedly political behaviour of ministers and parliamentarians in actual practice has been part of what we teach politics students for decades).

I mean, Thomas Dugdale is famous for resigning when he thought an honourable norm had been violated (he took responsibility for the maladministration of his officials, which is the essentially theoretical responsibility of a minister) but that was in 1954. And even in that case it turned out in retrospect that he was responsible for some of the maladministration himself.

Knifing ineffective leaders, yes - that is a reputation they still have. But I wouldn't see any of the recent resignations as anything other than opportunistic: they knew perfectly well that Johnson was an untrustworthy scoundrel well before they joined his government.

Resigns as leader of the Conservative Party, not (yet) as Prime Minister. He's hoping to extend his term to the autumn, while the internal party election to replace him goes on. It's not clear he has the support to do so.

In the meantime, he keeps control of the Parliamentary agenda, control of nuclear weapons, his salary etc.

In Britain we 'queue', or 'join a queue'. So wherever 'stand on line' started, it wasn't us!

That makes sense!

If the QR codes or whatever are on the faces and only encode information already printed there (suit+rank for standard cards, the title and text for board games) I can't imagine there would be any cheating/unauthorised information problems.

My perspective is perhaps coloured by being a political scientist: we have always (unlike the law professors) seen the supreme court in particular as a deeply political institution.

The present incumbents have made clear that they're open to reopening settled questions, and to a results-focused jurisprudence. Given that New York State Rifle and Pistol Association has just undercut state power in favour of constitutional interpretation while Dobbs goes entirely the other way, my presumption is that there are no major strictly federalist principles at play and results will be case-by-case. And, as with Bush v. Gore, they can always publish an opinion saying "this decision is confined to its own facts" if they want to signal that they're not intending to displace post-Lochner understandings of the commerce clause.

Duplicate bridge cards are often printed with barcodes on the card faces, to facilitate automated dealing machines with computerised hand records. I've never seen a system which reads the barcodes for a blind player, but I'm sure it's possible. (The traditional approach is with a human 'card turner' assisting, which sucks for all kinds of reasons). Or even just reading the standard face images: it's a much easier problem than reading codes on the edges, and has the advantage of not making it easier to cheat!

They don't have the votes to break a filibuster in the Senate (on nearly anything; Republican party discipline is really strong) or to break the filibuster itself (a handful of Democrats refuse). So almost all votes are just messaging at this point.

I also wouldn't assume a federal Act guaranteeing abortion access would survive the supreme court. There's a colourable claim that both healthcare and homicide regulation are the purview of the states, and I'd expect five votes for that with the current Court on this issue regardless of its legal merits.

FWIW the trend in the vulnerable 'red wall' seats has been towards the Conservatives for decades. This is partly as a result of partisan and class dealignment, and partly because the Labour-leaning forces of the organised working class have been in retreat there since the 70s. A former mining area like Bolsover, for example, has moved to vote more like similarly situated semi-rural, increasingly elderly, and low-wage areas since the pits closed.

Brexit also a factor in '19, of course, but those seats are red in history and not any more in demographics.

It does, and did: Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty[0]. It says that "Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements" and sets out a procedure for negotiating an exit agreement, with a backstop provision for an exit without an agreement if one can't be agreed.

The actual procedure hasn't been perfect (six months turns out to be too short a period to negotiate a future relationship from scratch, and there are some awkward game theory problems with extensions to that period needing unanimous approval) but the principle that a state can leave is both clearly written down and entirely uncontested. Disagreements have been about the scope of the future relationship, not the principle that the UK can leave and have the treaties cease to apply.

[0]: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eut/teu/article/50

They can (and often do, at least for deportations from the UK) demand to see evidence that the deportee is, in fact, one of their citizens. Which can be difficult to prove without a passport. We have people who have been in immigration detention for years because they won't cooperate in getting an emergency travel document, or their 'home' country doesn't accept that they have a right of admission there.

The shares give you a claim on the profits. The rules are a combination of the corporate bylaws and the law. The latter does not let owners set all the rules: it imposes health and safety restrictions, taxes, and (yes!) unionisation rules.

The people who make the laws get to set all the rules. The shares are valuable anyway, because an economic interest in a profit making entity is valuable whether you have perfect control or not.