Jez Higgins

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The Forest Road Reader, No 107

The train yesterday was not running in reverse configuration. It's always that little bit more exciting if it is.

Freeing the Postcode Address File would be a massively helpful thing. The recent privatisation took it that little bit further away. This is another case of something being moved into the private sector and beyond the scope of FOI. I believe that FOI law needs to be revised to cover the case where public service is performed by private firms, but the chances of that happening under our current administration are worse than nil.

Travelling to London on the before-the-crack-of-dawn early train is always odd, no matter how many times you do it. This week I sprung the extra for first so wore my baggy cycling shorts as provocation. Got a roll of the eyes as soon as I stepped into the carriage. Who are you to judge me, my friend? You're wearing shirt that clashes with your suit, you don't have a tie on, and your shoes need polishing. Plus, and it may be wrong of me to mention it, you are using a BlackBerry. Not that I was judging.

Conservatives erase Internet history - The Conservative Party has attempted to erase a 10-year backlog of speeches from the internet, including pledges for a new kind of transparent politics the prime minister and chancellor made when they were campaigning for election. Prime minister David Cameron and chancellor George Osborne campaigned on a promise to democratise information held by those in power, so people could hold them to account. They wanted to use the internet transform politics. But the Conservative Party has removed the archive from its public facing website, erasing records of speeches and press releases going back to the year 2000 and up until it was elected in May 2010.

OK, I was judging season-ticket boy over there. I can't understand how making a two hour plus journey to work, leaving before 6 every day is any kind of OK way to live. If, as I suspect, all these people on this train because it's off-peak and therefore significantly cheaper than peak time, I assume they'll also be returning off-peak. That's what I do, but at least it's only once a week. The earliest off-peak service back is 19:03, which reaches Birmingham at half past 8. Tieless over there got on at Wolverhampton, so he's got an extra 30 minutes after that. That's four hours on the train before anything for home to station and station to office. Just to get to work. It's madness.

Wasn't me.

I took the Paradise Circus 'How Brummie are you? Quiz', but I'm too modest to say how I got on.

Mowed the lawn. Kind of made a decision. Sort of composed an email.


Tagged trains, cycling, and birmingham


Jez Higgins

Freelance software grandad
software created
extended or repaired

Follow me on Mastodon
Applications, Libraries, Code
Talks & Presentations

Hire me
Contact

Older posts are available in the archive or through tags.

Feed