If when in Italy I meet someone from England, they often say they live in London. When I am in London and meet someone from Italy they are likely to come from almost anywhere on the peninsula. Of course the explanation lies in the meaning of the word London.
Hatfield once could never have been included in the answer London. People who wanted to have their families grow up in cleaner, greener surroundings accepted up to 20 miles as the reasonable commute (16 minutes Hatfield to King's Cross, non-stop) and settled in Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Surrey, Essex... all the pretty towns and villages within the 20 miles. There were trains till midnight and after that it was the mail and milk trains at 3 and 4 o'clock in the morning.
Now there are commuters covering up to 100 miles each way. Those hours travelling are devastating to every kind of social network both in central London and in the communities pressed into London service. Devastating too to the families deprived of those travelling hours, and via such dangerous and inadequate services that can no longer be avoided by taking to choked roads and closed inner London.
Why do Italians live from Aosta to Lecce, happy to answer to Florentine, Roman, Mantovan, Venetian, Sicilian... indeed proud to be so, when we are scrunched up in old trains, uprooted from early lives and communities, without family homes, and living not a cycle of family life and its transformations, but only in the here and now.
Was it Beeching and his ilk who tore up the detailed social transport systems, that produced such mass discomfort and dislocation?
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I am moving to Brighton and I discovered today that it is becoming known as Nappy Valley.
I find that I have replaced the old village and later city connections with new ones.Whats more I love being left in the train for an hour.
I am quite gregarious though..
Not just a UK phenomenon: with the advent of reliable hi-speed trains, increasing numbers of people who work in Madrid are commuting 100 miles or more to do so.
New infrastructure always has the potential to impact on social structures. (I could even tell you stories about the effect of the Croydon tram system, but this might be to try your patience)
'New infrastructure always has the potential to impact on social structures.'
So the removal of old infrastructure would be expected to do the same, might you think ND?
I still wonder if the all- out assault on public infrastructures was mistaken, understandable though the rage about keeping vast swathes of the economy and the country as if we were still in a war economy with a single objective, was.
And it all feels so fragile; Newmania will be fine reading poetry from Brighton to London and back, it's long-established practice, there are possibly poetry-reading ghost passengers sitting beside him. Even on horseback Mr Bennet inquired at Hatfield if Lydia was gone to Scotland.
But Nuneaton? The east coast? At Hitchen they expected to stay the night. At Longbourn it was a week.
It may be reasonable to do Cologne-Stuttgart and back every day, but it's not the same thing to do Ely-Liverpool street; or some other weird part of the UK into central, but not quite there, London.
N, you are expected to produce output from these train rides. Verse, commentary, at least a commonplace book.
Certainly, it must always be a possibility
I am trying to think of a really telling example beyond the banal / obvious, but am being dense, there must be loads
There is an evocative term that is frequently applicable in such circumstances from the commercial perspective - stranded assets
I am away from home without my economic advisor ND. What are 'stranded assets'?
'Stranded assets' are things (etc) that have value under a particular set of circumstances, but now lose that value under changed circumstances, without the asset itself having changed per se. (Chances are, the value they possessed was 'positional value', another evocative economic term.)
To give an infrastructure-type example: suppose a private investor has built a stretch of motorway - e.g. the M6 Toll Road - and derives asset-value from the toll revenues. Then suppose the government itself builds a new, parallel route that takes traffic away from the M6 Toll Road; or bans private motoring (with similar effect on M6 Toll revenues). The M6 Toll Road is then said to be a stranded asset.
I have a feeling this type of terminology will serve excellent analogue duty in various social situations.
Canals come to mind. Are they stranded assets? If so such things can take on new worth as situations change, (a la Beeching-cut rail links). When they are infrastructural, and have enormous construction costs (considering also resource allocation and legal arrangements, like for railways and canals) then to disturb the possibility of their restoration is more destructive of past investment than I had understood.
Have we done that because it was not thought about? Am I clear in what I am asking?
I get it Nick you mean
" Word is they`re puttin` a railroad through these parts "
"Why this here dust bowl will be Gold Billy Boy "
Even on horseback Mr Bennet inquired at Hatfield if Lydia was gone to Scotland
TS Elliot yesterday Jane Austen today Ciao bella ! I daresay i will write a diary. Why should I not
"After my work in the City, I like to be at home. What's the good of a home, if you are never in it? "Home, Sweet Home," that's my motto. I am always in of an evening. Our old friend Gowing may drop in without ceremony; so may Cummings, who lives opposite"
Except I already do that ..blog of anobody
Bella ciao, N, please recognize that I am not right of centre.
Hmm this could become lengthy. Lots of points and data-points.
> There is a genuine distinction between 'stranded' and 'obselete', although doubtless some reasonable blurring and overlap around the edges.
> It's a bit of a luxury when an asset that has become either stranded or obselete or both, can be retained just in case it may have another use at a later date (because many, many things need to be maintained actively to survive - which can't generally be afforded when its current value is gone). Things can't be held indefinitely in theme-park fashion against an unknown future.
> It's wonderful that canals have, in many cases, survived to find alternative employ. Also quite unusual. However, from my case-book of interesting factoids ...
> ... there's another wonderful case worth reading up: the London Hydraulic Power Company, whose defunct infrastructure of pipe-work (used for powering Edwardian lifts and theatre curtains around London) was used, decades after its abandonment, to route Mercury's fibre-optic telephony network around town !
> There are all manner of constructive uses to which disused railway lines (cf the Croydon Tram!!) and airfields have been put.
> and what about deconsecrated churches? (I don't mean the monastries, or Hadrian's wall, that were looted for their masonry)
I could go on
but it's 23:12
please recognize that I am not right of centre.
Una mattina mi son svegliato,
o bella, ciao! bella, ciao! bella, ciao, ciao, ciao!
Una mattina mi son svegliato
ed ho trovato l'invasor.
Phew its tough work keeping up with you HG.
Night, ND. I want to think about stranded assets.
The new Labour government requires us all to practise multiculturalism , N.
Walking to work is wonderful!
Ed, what you say just emphasises how much journey to work has changed in a single generation; it used to be common, now it's a privilege; yet with all this technology the journey to work ought to be shrinking, not becoming quite a big proportion of work time. You're really lucky - or well organised! Or maybe only choosing for an individual so it's rather easier?
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