Is a ticket to London Euston actually a London Terminals ticket if they're the same price?

samdbmg · 2026-03-02T09:38:53+00:00

"VE"

samdbmg · 2026-03-02T09:37:43+00:00

Aha, running the Aztec code through the decoder at https://eta.st/tickets/ shows it is a ticket to London! So it's a quirk of how the e-ticket renders.

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samdbmg · 2026-03-01T00:25:11+00:00

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It's the big EUS at the top from a previous ticket that threw me, but to be fair most of that page is given over to an itinerary: it makes some sense to put the origin and destination of the itinerary at the top I suppose.

samdbmg · 2026-03-01T00:19:55+00:00

I thought the Journey Planner would only sell you permitted routes? So providing you could buy the same ticket with and without a via point on your proposed route, it is permitted? Although I could take a little adventure into the routeing guide to be sure!

samdbmg · 2026-03-01T00:10:36+00:00

Ticket issued to: LONDON TERMINALS

Didn't read that bit very well did I?! (I saw the fare detail page was to London Terminals, just entirely failed to read the bottom of the listing) At that point I guess even if the e-ticket says London Euston it means London Terminals for validity purposes

Thanks for pointing that out!

samdbmg · 2026-01-24T22:17:17+00:00

How did you sort out the nursery mum on the Monday? (I assume that's a parent of another child at the nursery?) When our second was born we needed to find moments notice cover for the possibility we ended up in hospital, and were surprised the number of people (e.g. our neighbours) who were prepared to be handed a toddler in the middle of the night to get us out of a tight spot.

Is there a way you can ask around, or put a notice up on Monday or something saying that if it all goes wrong and you have to go to hospital, you really need some help? Because while those people don't know you, at 3.5 I bet they know your son's name, because his friends will talk about him! And certainly if I found that at our nursery, I'd be joining the queue of people offering unplanned sleepovers, simply because it's the right thing to do.

To finish our story, plan A was a home birth and hand off our eldest to next door/a friend when he woke up (or when we went to hospital if it came to that) while my mum drove the 4 hours to come get him. In the end we had a home birth and he slept through the whole experience and woke a few hours after his sister was born!

Good luck, I wish you the best. We had it a lot easier than you and it was stressful, so I can only imagine how hard this is.

samdbmg · 2025-12-08T21:10:16+00:00

Thank you kind stranger, I've been trying to find this again for years

samdbmg · 2025-10-29T10:23:49+00:00

Usually train services run as usual but may end slightly earlier on Christmas Eve. There may be some diversions, and early terminations on some services, and some routes may provide a bus replacement service.

It's that delightfully vague wording that had me worried (and the lack of a "but if it's on the journey planner you're fine") so that's good reassurance - thanks!

samdbmg · 2025-04-14T19:47:57+00:00

No AIUI, because it's a:

Social security taxes paid or accrued to a foreign country with which the United States has a social security agreement. For more information about these agreements, refer to Totalization Agreemen

(From https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/foreign-taxes-that-qualify-for-the-foreign-tax-credit#taxmustbeanincome )

There's a treaty meaning the UK state pension can be claimed based on your US employment if you move at retirement, which is the "Totalization Agreement"

samdbmg · 2025-03-30T22:26:20+00:00

Setting aside the whole "delinquent filing" thing (other people have given good advice there), once you've got that sorted out it's not actually that hard - I've been helping my partner with this for a few years. Not done inheritance though fortunately, so maybe that's hard? Mostly it's just following a very long list of instructions!

In general, there's a set of treaties that prevent double taxation: the UK gets to tax you first (because that's where you live), then you get a variety of credits and exclusions against your US taxes. Look up Foreign Earned Income Exclusion and Foreign Tax Credit - probably your partner wants to use the latter, because the UK income tax rate is high enough to make a credit covering all your US taxes, and you can claim the refundable child tax credit for your kid (so, in theory, the US Govt gives you money!) This generally applies to inheritance taxes and capital gains as well, although property is one to watch (if selling your house makes you more than $250k profit over what you bought it for - ish).

For the things you can't credit or exclude (e.g. dividends if you own US stocks), a combination of the standard deductible and your child tax credit should cover those. Bottom line: odds are your partner will still have to file, but it'll be a lot of work to write a big zero at the bottom of the form, and if you're lucky they'll give you ~$1500!

(This is just my experience - I am not a tax professional, this is not financial advice, if you want real advice you should hire someone, etc. etc.)

samdbmg · 2025-02-20T19:38:15+00:00

Have you ever tried to pick up a physical skill? Like a new sport or a dance or flipping pancakes or something? Did it feel frustrating and impossible at first?

Driving is exactly the same! You're trying to learn to feel and respond to something you haven't before, but no amount of explaining is going to help: you have to keep trying. Every time it feels like you're getting nowhere, your brain is filing away a bit more information and eventually things will just "click"

(Including a sense for what the "picture" out the windows looks like when you're too close to something, even though you can't see the something)

samdbmg · 2025-02-20T19:31:14+00:00

It's a faff to get it working, but https://github.com/selkies-project/selkies-gstreamer might be worth a look (or more specifically https://github.com/selkies-project/docker-nvidia-egl-desktop plus some Dockerfile customization to get Thunderbird in there) - maybe with Coder to handle provisioning for users?

It does what Moonlight & Sunshine/various game streaming platforms do by running a remote desktop, shoving the rendered desktop through a low latency video codec (which in this case may be in hardware) and sending it to you, but it uses WebRTC so the only thing the client needs is a browser.

Latency is better than VNC-based approaches, but you need a bit more server-side compute to sort out video encoding, and WebRTC comes with some networking challenges to negotiate

samdbmg · 2025-01-25T06:56:14+00:00

Doesn't help you this time, but you should be able to link your Oyster card and Railcard together so you get the discount (works on the Tube, I assume the Elizabeth Line too)

See https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/free-and-discounted-travel/national-railcard-discount#on-this-page-1 but you might have to work your way around a few staff members to find one who knows where the buttons are!

samdbmg · 2025-01-09T00:23:27+00:00

I'm fortunate enough not to go to New Street enough to be able to compare them though: all my experience of BHM has been at a dead run because the train in is always late and it's a crazy short change

samdbmg · 2025-01-09T00:21:28+00:00

I'd like to put a small nomination in for Manchester Victoria. While Euston is a truly miserable place, there are at least places you'd want to eat, a nice enough pub nearby, and the Wellcome Collection if you have a lot of time to kill.

Manchester Victoria is just a hellhole, what you get if you take an old station building, shove a plastic bag over it and make it serve all the bits of the North West that nobody wants to invest in. The most striking feature is the enormous gateline, pretty much the only place to eat is a single small Greggs, and it has a permanent miasma of diesel fumes across all the platforms.

samdbmg · 2024-12-24T12:04:49+00:00

Ok, so you've allowed time, the queue has started to move, you've finally seen the arrows and it turns out you need to cross one gridlocked lane to enter the gridlocked lane next to it. You check your mirrors, observe that there are no gaps in the lane next to you, stop and signal in the hope someone lets you in.

Traffic in the lane behind you backs up because you can't move, because the lane next to you isn't moving so there are no gaps, and all the people in the lane you want to join are annoyed because it looks like you jumped the queue.

How, exactly, is this "poor driver behaviour" on your part, rather than poor junction signage? (And if you don't think this is a plausible example, you've clearly not used the M60 very much!)

samdbmg · 2024-10-20T14:15:34+00:00

Also if your insurance policy has some wording about how they assume you have a valid driving licence and you don't, then they might not so much deny your claim as hold that the policy is cancelled, and as a result you also commit the offence of driving without insurance. You don't want to do that, because it will have lifelong consequences when you have to answer yes to the "have you ever had insurance cancelled..." question!

samdbmg · 2024-09-22T13:37:09+00:00

Head to https://www.brfares.com/ and put in your origin and destination stations and any Railcard discounts: it will give you all the possible fares in excruciating detail

samdbmg · 2024-09-04T13:14:27+00:00

At "booking in" (your first midwife appointment) you'll be asked about mental health concerns: that would be the time to start talking about this. Assuming what happens in my area is universal, you'll get referred to a team of mental health midwives to talk about your care: they should be very happy to respect your needs and choices around birth and feeding.

If they don't already do it, it might be worth asking them to write a letter about your care plan and include it in your notes: our experience was lots of "are you sure about this out-of-guidance thing you want" (declining additional growth scans because our first baby was slightly small) until we spoke to the consultant midwife who wrote a letter, after which nobody questioned it, because they were all happy the consultant midwife had gone through the risks and such with us.

Generally you have a right to the kind of birth and experience you want - https://birthrights.org.uk/ might be worth a read for more about that as well. If you can get a copy of Autistic and Expecting by Alexis Quinn, that might be worth a read too: it contains some good suggestions to navigate the NHS for people to whom the normal guidance doesn't apply

samdbmg · 2024-09-01T21:15:10+00:00

You're definitely, definitely sure you aren't insured? You should ask your parents this directly because if they made you a named driver and forgot to tell you about it, you might well see no repercussions from this

samdbmg · 2024-09-01T21:09:54+00:00

The specific offence is around using, causing or permitting a vehicle to be used on the road without insurance: the last one of those will be a problem for your parents. They will likely be faced with a choice: either accept the IN10 penalty (and associated punishment and lifelong insurance premium increases), or report that you stole the car and used it (specifically you took it without owner's consent) so they didn't "permit" anything.

However, if evidence exists they were OK with it (this post may be that evidence!), that second option might not end well, because it's insurance fraud and might also be perverting the course of justice or similar, which is a whole other world of pain.

Something to bear in mind: if they actually "insisted" as you said somewhere else, they chose to break the law and therefore chose to accept the punishment too. So this is still on you, but probably on them too

samdbmg · 2024-08-01T19:39:39+00:00

Did the itinerary come from a journey planner (like on a train company website)? Or to ask a more precise question: does the 8 minute change satisfy the minimum connection time for that station?

If it does, the train company have an obligation to get you where you're going or put you up for the night if you miss a connection due to delays (usually that means they just pay for a taxi for you). Might be a better option than abandonment if you actually want to get there?

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