The Cambrian Sleeper service?

A fun filled family holiday near Fort William has been had. On our trips to Morrisons which is next to the railway station you see the Caledonian Sleeper train parked for the day, getting washed and prepared.

It leaves Fort Bill at 7.50pm and get into London 12 hours later at 7.47am, just right for a days work in London. Lets assume you sleep for 9 hours of that time and sleep is never wasted time in my book.

The first Aberystwyth train leaves at 5.15am and gets to London at 10.15am which mean if you need into London for a full days work then you need to leave at 7.30pm the previous day and pay for overnight accommodation in London which in my experience is 2x or 3x the cost of the sleeper. 

So would it be possible for an effective sleeper service to be provided to Wales, even if the train sat in Shrewsbury for 6 hours before being split into 3, 1 north, 1 south and 1 to mid Wales. I fear not for the following reasons

1. There is no reason for the Welsh government members to fund a service they don't use. After all, who wants to travel to London, the world of business is centered on Cardiff.
2. Every so often Arriva would forget about the service and 2 days later someone would notice they had left a set of sleeper coaches in a siding full of people.
3. We are too tied to cars and hotels to seek other options.
4. The 1st time you use the service, you don't sleep much. Learning to sleep on a train takes a little perseverance.

So the Welsh Government will continue to support a service which has at best marginal utility to promote economic development and those north of the boarder will continue to have a very useful service.

Smacking your child for fun

Have a subset of Welsh Assembly Government (or are they just the Welsh Government now?) have had what the Shameless philosopher Frank Gallagher  calls a collective stroke? I read this on plans to ban child smacking in Wales only and the implications depressed me somewhat.

As a medium to discipline a child, we make a very conscious choice to not use any physical punishment. I have found myself smacking the small people for a laugh on numerous occasions, exclusively to make them laugh, much in the way they get tickled. Does it do them any harm, I guess we won't know for years, but if either them gets exposed in 2031 on a Channel 4 documentary of the underworld of S & M, I will conclude that recreational smacking does harm your child's long term development and admit my error. Granddad, who is in his 80's, has many times given them a comical spanking, since he lives in Scotland and I don't see evidence that the Scottish Parliament is in such an advanced state of confusion, he will probably be OK.

I believe that parents should have the choice on how they discipline their children. Crossing the line into abuse should be an obvious line, perhaps these representatives in Cardiff can't see that line or have so little respect for the judgement of the people they represent that they are sure they know best. Managerial-ism gone mad.

Have these 4 A.M.'s failed to notice that Wales as an entity is a economic basket case, there as serious social, educational and crime problems which should rest very heavily on the mind of each of our collective representatives and occupy their working lives.

I can see a situation if these clowns get their way where I will be giving my kids a good slapping, they will be laughing away and I will get reported for smacking my children, complete with video evidence. Without the context of them having a good laugh, you see the potential for out of line 3rd party interpretations. Worse I don't trust some of the organisations involved and the way they will interpret a new law.

Lets hope sense prevails by an other route.

So should I continue to smack my children ?

The Black Swan : Nassim Nicholas Teleb

The Black Swan is well worth a read, but if he had cut the number of pages by 1/3 it would have been a far better book. The journey is a bit random, there is too much fluff, but then the story is a complex one which is quite subtle in many respects.

So a very quick summary of the main points I got from reading it were

• Proposing the use of a Gaussian distribution for assessing risk for real world events is ballocks.
• The events that you need to worry about are the ones you don't worry about
• Don't forget the positive black swans
• Few experts have any better insight into what disaster/wonderful opportunity may arise next and when it might appear
• Those who get predicting the future right are lucky
• Don't worry, it won't help much

There is a lot of distance travelled in the book, many stories told which add insight, but could have benefited from being a shorter book.

New pension crisis ?

As a pension fund trustee, the regulator says I should continue to educate myself in the subject and I take this quite seriously. So last week I went to 2 events, the 1st on risk by AllanbridgeEpic advisors at the Stock Exchange (one seminar room is like the next, could have been anywhere) and the 2nd from Fund Manager Natixis at a hotel next Embankment. I have respect for both outfits in their different areas, they are run by humans (not true of all such events) and they will deal with you on a long term relationship development basis, rather than what can they sell to you today.

At both events I was the only male who was not warning a dark suit and was one of the very few who was under 50. I raise this issue with Karen, the C.E. of AllenbridgeEpic who for different reasons was not warning a dark suit and we agreed that moving forward 15 years there is a risk that the pensions industry will be very short of experienced trustee's. There will be no shortage of people to sell their services as professional trustees, but that is not the point. Trustees from the membership and the company are highly valuable, something missing from the trend of D.C. schemes moving to Group Pension Plans with insurance companies which are great for the company, but much worse for the member.

Can't predict the future, but I can see a serious lack of knowledge trustees and scheme managers in 15 years time to deal with what will be very taxing issues.

Mark Williams Last Term as an M.P. ?

I quite like Mark Williams, Ceredigion M.P. He is a very personable chap and voted against university tuition fees. I am not a Liberal Democrat, but I could be !

I understand there are 100,000 people in a constituency and he does have a reputation for dealing with real problem that constituents have, so fobbing off is valid workload control mechanism. However, come 2015 there will be 2 weak areas which will leave him personally exposed I believe.

I meet him to talk about Broadband about a year ago, shame nothing visible has happened or even threatened to, despite a couple of prodding's on my part. There may be stuff he is doing around Broadband that I have not seen and between Google Alerts and keeping my ear to the ground I should have picked up an non-clandestine activity in this area. It may also be he feels powerless and that responsibility for improved communications infrastructure is Cardiff. If that is the case he needs to make it clear.

I would not tell any elected representative how to vote. M.P.'s should have access to a bigger picture and better quality information we would hope. One would hope an M.P. gets better information than I get via The Economist and the web, but I do wonder sometimes. However, I do feel it is important to raise some matters so they get a view of how a constituent thinks and I am concerned that the Tory health service plans will damage the NHS beyond repair, they are ideologically driven and poorly thought out. I have yet to meet anyone in the Health Service who thinks they are a workable solution to the NHS's problems. Those I have spoken with see it as privatization by the back door. The NHS does need change, but the argument appears to comes down on the side that the required changes are not the ones making their way through at the moment.

I emailed Mark my thoughts. To his credit he always replies with an articulate response. This time though he wrote the head and tail of the email and inserted a fairly obvious party line response of around 1000 words, a fair enough workload control measure,  I would probably do the same [its an email between Mark and myself, so it would be wrong to reproduce it here] and a pdf of curious letter from an a Conservative MP who was also a QC with his view on a 38degree web site posting. If you were taking a legal view would take it from a QC who happens to be an M.P. for the party putting forward an bill?  maybe not.. I suspect Mark is getting the sharp side of the Lib. Dem. whip to tow the line over NHS reforms, but come 2015 he will wish he kept the backbone he had for tuition fees when judged by his constituents. Shame, I really like the chap.

A viable way to get from Aberystwyth to Reading mostly by train

Though I work mostly from home and customer sites, yesterday was a day when I had to go to the office in Reading yesterday. I have previously driven when required. It takes between 3.40 and 5 hours. Now the office is less than 2 miles along the Thames from Reading station I was keen to see if I could drive a bit less of the way.

The Arriva train from Aberystwyth is a non-starter unless you go down the night before. The 1st train leaving Aberystwyth at 5.14 would get you to Reading for 10.30am 2 changes later [Shrewsbury and Newport!], add the 30 minute walk to the office and half the day has gone. Adds to my assertion that Arriva is a service unsuitable for business at this time.

I had been looking for other viable options and last week found that the 1st Great Western service from Hereford leaves at about 5.40. Gets into Reading at about 8.30 with no changes and cost 36 quid return.
Now getting to Hereford from Aberystwyth for 5.40 is non-trivial and a little anti-social to say the least, more so if you want to read to your kids the night before.
However, I managed to sleep for an hour on the train down and read half of the Economist. Coming back I wrote a 30 minute ZFS Solaris 11 features presentation for next week and read the rest of the Economist, so quite productive, a lot better than driving the whole way.

I had been looking for something to replace the Wrexham and Shropshire service since it shut back in January. Arriva from Aberystwyth is well, Arriva from Aberystwyth is not viable for business travel.
The drive to Hereford takes about 1 hour 45 and parking is easy enough. The food on the train which not quite up to W & S standards, but was fine. The train only started to fill up around Oxford and was quite empty most of the journey.

No doubt something will happen to this service in the next few month, it will be withdrawn or the price will treble, but it does look quite a viable option at the moment. I think I have also found viable and cheap accommodation within striking difference of Hereford to avoid the very, very early start.

The best part of the day was the walk along the Thames which was very pleasant. So Reading now has 2 things going for it, the other being this.

At least it was not golf

2011 has been very busy

• Bob Graham Round
• Beautiful Day Festival
• Half Man Half Biscuit gig
• Myra away in Canada for 2 weeks holiday with sister
• Myra's 3 day north to south of Wales cycle (left the top and bottom bits for next time)
• That job thing!
• Summer child care rotation (probably the most fun bit)
• I wrote some stuff for Waleshome.org this year

Mid life crisis now completed after 3 years of training, I am thankful it was so straight forward and at least it was something you can recover from unlike a fast bike plus associated road kill or the worst of all possible mid life crisis, golf.

There has been no shortage of things to write about, just a serious shortage of time. Expect, no demand, more frequent updates here.

Remove excise duty from Guinness

[Other Stouts are available]

I watched the Panorama episode on drink(I watched it last night, not sure when it was 1st shown). It presented a strong case which points to the drinks industry having greater influence on policy than is in the best interests of the population and the cost to the NHS. If you had been keeping your eyes and ears open, this is nothing new. 4 or 5 years ago I had to take small girl into A & E on a Friday night after a Rugby International and it was an experience. Fortunately, we got pushed through quickly.

I was in what is now C.K. (used to be the CO-OP) in Aberystwyth afternoon and this isle caught my eye. 7.5% Cider (or chemicals mixed with Apple Juice maybe). So 2.79 for about 15 units (21 is weekly recommended for a male). It is clear pricing has a role to play in the problems Panorama described or are visible if you venture into any town on just about any evening.

I mentioned before only part as a joke that I have yet to see an individual causing much trouble after 6 pints of Guinness. I have only every seen Guinness slow the mind and body in every aspect other than frequency of visiting the Gents.

Our bottle of MEGA White has a similar number of units to 7 pints of Guinness ( and a lot less Iron). How about removing duty on Guinness, up the duty on these drinks to make it cost neutral and the NHS and those who really need treatment on a Saturday night might make a slight gain. Not ideal from a public health point of view, but I think far too pragmatic and to have any chance of being considered if it has even the smallest possible hint of merit.

I NEED YOUR TRUST IN THIS MONEY PLS:

From: wunt102@gmail.com

Subject: I NEED YOUR TRUST IN THIS MONEY PLS:

Date: 19 July 2011 17:44:50 BST

To: undisclosed recipients: ;

Reply-To: wunt102@gmail.com

Attension Dear Clive,

I am Mr Youssouf Kobanne, i am one of the aides to Mr Laurent Gbagbo, the president of Cote D'ivoire,

I am in charge of Finance & protocols in the government of Mr Laurent Gbagbo,the president of Cote D'ivoire,

Sir,you may be surprised of how i came across your name & contact, It is not far fetched, to be precise,I got your contact through plaxo.com,

My reason for contacting you is very simple, sincere, secret & profit oriented if you can maintain absolute confidentiality & secret into the whole arrangement,

You are aware of the recent and present crises going on in my country Cote D'ivoire right now because of the post election crisis between Mr Laurent Gbagbo and Mr Alassane Ouattarra,

THE UNITED NATIONS(UN), UNITED STATES OF AMERICA(USA), AFRICA UNION(AU)EUROPEAN UNION(EU) FRANCE OUR COLONIAL MASTERS AND ECONOMIC COMMUNITY OF WEST ARICAN STATES(ECOWAS) HAVE ALL PLACED SANCTIONS ON US(THE GOVERNMENT OF LAURENT GBAGBO, HIS FAMILY AND HIS LOYALISTS,),

Right now, we cannot travell outside Cote D'ivoire and our funds in various banks had been frozend,

To this end, i am contacting you so that i will direct you to where you will Get the considerable amount of USD$ been saved by me on bahalf of the government of Mr Laurent Gbagbo, i will not mention the accurate figure and the name of the banks where the funds are been kept until i get a positive response from you and your willingness to go this message for us,

The money runs into millions of Dollars, you will act as our eyes while going for this mission for us,

It is risk free business, the only impedement here is our inability to travel outside our country to collect the funds from(The banks) where it is been deposited/kept,

I used a different name to save the funds there, this is to ensure that people'e eyes are not on the funds, i did it that way in order not to raise eye brows, i did not use my name or any of the names of the serving personells in the government of Mr Laurent Gbagbo to save the money because of security reasons and coupled with our positions in government,

Declare your interest to this business to me by a return mail & let us follow this business because it is truth that i am telling you and you will see everything to be truth very soon, don't underate/commonise this business please, this is good business for us, so put good interest on it please,

Please sir, maintain adequate secrecy & confidentiality this business deserves, & ask question(s) where you deems necessary.

Don't let anybody know about this deal (This is top secret please) & you should maintain its secrecy & confidentiality it deserves.& ask me question where you are not clear,

I will mention where the funds is been kept in the bank and direct you to where and how you will collect it after hearing from you,

Contact me through my email address at (wunt102@gmail.com)

Mr Youssouf Kobanne

So this sounds like a good deal, but my grandfather always said you can't trust a man who confuses their semi-colons with their full stops (well he did not, he was a tool maker in the ship builders in Belfast and I only meet him once when I was 4, but you get the picture).

Typically Oracle's (previously Sun's) SPAM filters have been very effective in getting rid of these types of email. Even the browsers things its spam. I tried sending it to E-Crime Wales but their spam filters thought it was SPAM and bounced it, very good indeed.

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its

recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

e.crime@wales.gsi.gov.uk

(generated from info@ecrimewales.com)

SMTP error from remote mail server after end of data:

host cluster.gsi.messagelabs.com [85.158.143.19]:

553-Message filtered. Please see the FAQs section on spam

553-at http://www.messagelabs.com/support/ for more

553 information. (#5.7.1)

and this is a harder problem. How do you detect an email that is reporting SPAM[or similar], rather than actually being SPAM.

Why did I pick E-Crime Wales? In the metrics driver world that they exist as I understand it this can be counted as a crime and a contact with the wider world and used to justify their existence which is very worthwhile in my view. I have not doubt every SPAM filter in the world already knows about this lot (well not every).

Hywel Dda Health Board waste my money

As noted in my other blog on running, I have been having some mild stomach cramps. Tests so far indicate it is nothing serious and they are mild (2 on a scale of 1-10), but my doctor thought it worthwhile to get a look into my stomach (from the throat I am glad to hear) and set about arranging an appointment with a Gastroenterology Consultant. All good, these things don't happen overnight.

Today I get a Dear Patient letter from the outpatients appointments co-ordinator that they are going to write to me again with details of an appointment. I would guess the cost of a letter that told me nothing I did not know and did not impart any useful information was probably between 3 and 5 pounds to the NHS and then do the sums.

It does beg the question of how this is allowed to happen and is there no oversight of useless work at all. Since there is no useful information on the letter, I shall put it in the bin.