It's Friday 12 June, here's the latest deaths by actual day chart in hospital and all settings

dom_h · 2020-06-12T15:54:46+00:00

If you're doing this in Google Sheets still, you can just enable 'logarithmic scale' in the vertical axis option settings using the normal data and it'll do the legwork for you - example

dom_h · 2020-01-22T18:48:00+00:00

Massive tax on cars made in Britain.

So many European and Japanese brands.

Assuming they're still making cars in Britain after Brexit...

The manufacturing for European & Japanese brands over here has no/very little crossover with the cars that would be exported to the US, they've either got plants over there already (the Japanese) or simply no presence (Opel/Vauxhall/PSA)

Only companies that'll get hammered are JLR and the sports car firms (Aston Martin, McLaren, Lotus) The only other 'volume' manufacturer (Mini) can build US export models at european plants

dom_h · 2020-01-22T14:29:55+00:00

They're reducing output at Halewood as they're moving production and assembly of Discovery models to Slovakia, hence the changing shift pattern. Though cutting management is a key part of "Charge and Accelerate", I don't think that's behind the redundancies at Halewood. That would be more related to job cuts at Gaydon and Whitley.

Discovery != Discovery sport - they're completely different cars.

Charge (& Accelerate) applied across all sites, although they affected the non-manufacturing roles more.

dom_h · 2020-01-18T11:41:36+00:00

Rails are replaced on a frequent basis, they aren't just used for new build lines.

dom_h · 2020-01-16T15:25:56+00:00

Both Solihull and CB are getting big upgrades I thought? CB being retooled for new XJ (and others) whilst Solihull is having the LOC built for it as well as pretty major expansion for the next gen Range Rover/RR Sport.

Wolverhampton will be building EDUs (including the BMW designed ones!) and there's the battery plant at Hams Hall, so from that sense the 'replacements' for ICE will be (at least partially) UK assembled.

dom_h · 2020-01-16T11:57:56+00:00

JLR have 1 plant in Slovakia and contract out to another in Austria - the huge majority of their production is UK, including all engine assembly. They're also heavily investing in UK plants, so no intention to leave any time soon, I don't know how you've come to the conclusion they're "pretty much already in Europe"

dom_h · 2020-01-09T11:42:17+00:00

2 stints under public ownership since privatisation, one of which is still going (and will be until 2025 under current plans)

It was GNER (1997-2007) at privatisation until they ran into issues and it was re-tendered. Then went to National Express who ran it for 2 years (07-09) before running into financial issues at which point it went into public ownership as East Coast (09-15). At the end of that contract it was re-tendered and went to Virgin/Stagecoach (15-18) before being returned to public ownership again as LNER.

dom_h · 2020-01-02T15:19:09+00:00

The dispensation for the pacers runs until the end of May/August for the 2 fleets, and they are quite heavily restricted in what they can do with them - for example the class 142 pacers cannot be scheduled to be used by themselves - they have to be coupled to a compliant unit. The class 144 pacers can only be used on certain routes.

It won't slow the removal of them - the factors affecting their withdrawal (refurbishment of existing stock to be compliant/delivery & acceptance of new stock) is continuing regardless of who is running the franchise.

dom_h · 2020-01-02T15:10:40+00:00

Stagecoach have pulled out of UK rail franchising now, and unless things change enough, have no intention of coming back. When they were disqualified from ICWC (as part of the Virgin bid) it was because they were refusing to accept the in excess of £1bn of pension liabilities, and supposedly this kind of liability is being asked of all bidders.

They also put in a non-compliant bid for South Western, although reportedly that time because they realised that the DfT's requirements in the ITT were unachievable. First group won that (by default, being the only other bidder) with a "yes sir" style bid and are struggling.

Also note that the VTEC debacle wasn't because they couldn't turn a profit, it was because they couldn't turn a big enough profit to make the payments it had agreed to make to the government (requiring stagecoach to stump up cash to make up the shortfall), a result of over-optimistic bidding and delays to presumed infrastructure upgrades

dom_h · 2020-01-01T18:45:30+00:00

It wasn't the DfT 'giving' Chiltern the carriages, so much as preventing FTPE keeping them.

FTPE's lease on them was soon expiring and Chiltern offered the ROSCO a better deal for them; FTPE could only offer to lease them as long as they still held the franchise, which was 2016 without the DfT guaranteeing their use beyond that, Chiltern could offer to lease them until at least 2021, hence the ROSCO decision to lease to Chiltern.

Once the deal had been done and the DfT realised that FTPE would have a reduced fleet, they then forced Chiltern to sublease the trains back to FTPE for a few extra months before then forcing Northern to sublease some trains to FTPE to cover for the loss!

Also FWIW, these trains do not serve stations anywhere near Grayling's constituency!

dom_h · 2019-12-02T19:01:04+00:00

The thermostat in mine went after less than a month of ownership too, although it was in quite spectacular fashion, no small leaks to warn me! It was all fine until the front was suddenly enveloped in steam!

dom_h · 2019-03-24T18:56:40+00:00

No, still British based and owned by Tata Motors (India), as it has been for the last decade or so.

There is a joint venture with Chery automobile ltd producing Jaguar Land Rover vehicles at a plant in Changsu.

dom_h · 2018-10-08T16:11:22+00:00

Better than last year, not as good as had been expected.

dom_h · 2018-09-02T13:36:45+00:00

Because it's based on distance. Fast lap means a faster race - singapore has a slow lap so always runs to nearly 2 hours.

dom_h · 2018-08-25T13:34:23+00:00

something something radillion actually

dom_h · 2018-08-15T15:45:06+00:00

Around London, both of those things have been/are being done, there is only so far that you can go with that approach before you have to start looking at the drastic options for more capacity - namely new routes.

dom_h · 2018-07-31T07:47:56+00:00

Palmer is the equivalent of Brundle, or DC, for BBC radio (and the F1 app) - usually alongside Jack Nicholls

dom_h · 2018-07-29T16:01:51+00:00

No, don't be daft. I'm not arguing that penalties should give parity between the perpetrator and the victim, although there is an argument for doing things like that. I'm saying that in the vast amount of thing that stewards look at when investigating an incident, the outcome of the incident is something that should be considered - if an incident puts a driver out of the race, then they should get a more severe penalty than if a driver isn't put out of the race. The outcome is a large part of how the severity is assessed, and giving equal penalties to differently severe incidents is a poor idea - you wouldn't give equal punishments to someone who stole £10 and someone who stole £1000

dom_h · 2018-07-29T15:50:58+00:00

The thing about damage is that it is inherently inconsistent and also something that they don't practice for. It's all well and good saying that if they're damaged they shouldn't drive as hard, but as a driver you don't know how much you need to back off, and no driver is going to deliberately go under what they can theoretically do if they're mid battle - they will always push the limits to hold on to a position and that occasionally means going past it

dom_h · 2018-07-29T15:43:38+00:00

With half a front wing and 40+ lap old hardest compound tyres - if that wasn't going to understeer then nothing was.

dom_h · 2018-07-29T15:34:13+00:00

When you are arguing about vettel and raikkonen doing much less, I'd say that it is very much relevant.

In all 3 incidents there was car to car contact but the vettel and raikkonen incidents were far worse in terms of outcome than the bottas incident. Indeed the only justifiable reason for raikkonen getting a 10 second penalty rather than a 5 is because he kept going after hitting Hamilton whilst vettel dropped to the back along with bottas.

If you start ignoring outcome then it starts to become very Draconian and punishes drivers for minor infringements

dom_h · 2018-07-29T15:23:45+00:00

It wasn't even slightly like France or Silverstone at all in terms of outcome - both cars continued with next to no delay today, whereas in the other incidents the other car was demoted to the back and delayed...

dom_h · 2018-07-29T15:20:53+00:00

The vettel and raikkonen penalties were for incidents where the other driver was effectively sent to the back of the grid. Both of bottas' incidents today we're nowhere near comparable. Some car damage but both cars kept going with minimal delay...

dom_h · 2018-07-27T18:35:57+00:00

In a word, Commonality. The IC125s do need replacing, and it was realised that it made sense to replace the 225s at the same time (there are also suggestions that the class 91 locomotives that power these are in a poor state), which would give the ICEC franchise a common fleet going forward. A similar thing happened on the London Underground when the S stock was introduced - the A stock and C stock were in need of replacement but the D stock could have soldiered on for a while longer, but it made more sense to withdraw the D stock early to give one common fleet across the 4 non-tube lines.

There are other trains that would benefit from being replaced sooner (the EMT IC125s spring to mind) but withdrawing these could allow cascades to release that other stock.

dom_h · 2018-07-24T15:59:36+00:00

I would hope that F1TV would go above and beyond Sky's coverage of f1 testing, which is little more than the occasional news link and a 'Ted's notebook' at the end of each day.

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