SimonBlog

It is well known that, on ending UK school year 11 (15-16), players in UK football academies (run by professional teams) face the biggest selection of their life - whether the academy will keep them post-16. And most academies are run so that most do not make it. There is ostensibly one saving grace - the "exit trials" (officially "assessment trials).  https://www.lfe.org.uk/assessment-trials/ Unfortunately, the thing that makes me angry  is the dates - in 2022, 24, 25 and 26 of May. This is precisely in the period when these 15-16 year olds should be preparing for (or taking) their GCSEs in case they need to face a career without football.  At least at that stage they should be able to get into a sixth form college to do A-levels for an alternate career. If rejected two years later, as does happen often (as football clubs love to whittle down), they might have few options (at 16-18 they have to provide some sort of alternative qualification, but AFAICT it tends to be so...

A possibly interesting video on non-radioactive steel? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XsVuFBp0BQ Though is there really that much need other than for warships, submarines and a few sensitive scientific facilities/experiments? It does remind me of how radiocarbon dating was massively affected by the nuclear bombs and tests from 1945 onwards. Bomb pulse

OK how is this acceptable to anyone? Shippers or even freight rail companies? 22 hours to go the last six miles is surely a massive inconvenience to the railroad, never mind to the shipper. https://twitter.com/Jeff_CCTuba/status/1519374652203802625 What happened to "there's no benefits to be had by late running trains"? At the very least don't "park" trains on the main line (and absolutely never on level crossings please!) - this just causes massive inconvenience to everyone involved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jnmC5IOYg0

I have heard a lot about about the Disney Starcruiser, a lot negative. https://www.disneyworld.co.uk/destinations/star-wars-galactic-starcruiser/ I really think that it would be a much better experience if: it were half the price if it were three or four nights, not two it was much less intensive activities (such as sabacc) ran for most of the day, not just for narrow windows Basically, it seems just too regimented and compressed an experience to be something I'd be willing to partake in.

OK the case of Lister v Romford Ice and Cold Storage makes me angry. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lister_v_Romford_Ice_and_Cold_Storage_Co_Ltd It makes employees liable to employers for carelessness. Many would expect the employer to take that risk, and particularly in cases such as this (a vehicle accident) the employer's insurer .  This is important - when driving for work, you are uninsured . Your employer is insured. Their insurer can (and has, as in the Lister case) come back at you. While in other situations employers have something called "vicarious liability", meaning normally the employer has deeper pockets and would be the one sued, and outside actual malice few employers would sue their staff (in the Lister case the employer was theoretically suing but in reality it was their insurer), always bear in mind the risk of say a liquidator, administrator, bankruptcy trustee or official receiver putting the risk on you when they cancel the insurance. This has also ha...

Ok, with respect, WTF? It is common for civil servants, particularly in operational roles not needing regular physical presence, to work from home part or even all the time. So why the insistence on going back to the office when this is not necessary to get the work done? https://twitter.com/dinosofos/status/1517561184072962048?s=21&t=xCtYdsRLcrZnCO1v3y7cww

There's a story (actually old, from 1988, but I just saw a link) about a developer sending their building materials to remote Alaska by post because postage is much cheaper than freight rates: Contractor Mailing Concrete Blocks 700 Miles Via Postal Loophole This reminds me of the bank sent by parcel post to Utah in 1916: How a Banker Constructed His Bank Through the Mail I guess one can admire the loophole hunting, but surprised it was still allowed!

OK, sorry, WTF? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwOAgASmeG4 I might not get a receipt at all at Spar, and at Londis I definitely get nothing more than a card receipt. Even at supermarkets, I only get a simple receipt. A few have a separate voucher printer. So why does CVS put the vouchers on the receipt itself, where they will still end up in the bin? When others don't bother?

Carmont is a massive ☹️ and it is fortunate that there were few passengers on board or else it would have been far worse. And basically a massive failure on the part of both contractors and Network Rail which  Ben  would probably be very angry about, or very proud if he found it. There is little I can say that isn't either in the RAIB report or in Gareth Dennis's #RailNatter episodes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sPnMGVJhA4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71TZWlY-mLw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrrRCrQHCyk https://www.gov.uk/government/news/report-022022-derailment-of-a-passenger-train-at-carmont

Why do Avanti West Coast advertise all their trains as "reservation compulsory"? We know this is not enforced. The staff don't enforce. If going between Wigan, Warrington and Crewe there is no alternative and demanding a reservation would be absurd.  Though in my experience Wigan and Warrington have much lower levels of boarding/alighting than Preston, even Crewe and Wolverhampton don't have that much. Preston and Birmingham do. (I have no experience of the Edinburgh/Blackpool to Euston train beyond Birmingham, as if I am going from Preston to Euston I will get the express which calls at Wigan and Warrington then is non-stop to London.) Side note - why doesn't the express call at Crewe? This could be a convenience to me as I could use this to connect to/from the South Wales to Manchester service. (Though these days I go to Birmingham anyway to use the M&S and Wasabi at New Street.) For a brief period during the pandemic it did . I guess Preston  (or further no...

A statement inspired by Ben . Ben thinks that it is essential that the public service and particularly the civil service gets things right. He, probably rightly, is not happy with the prevailing attitude within the IP industry that it is fine to grant a weak patent in the knowledge that the IP industry will identify it as weak. Industry such as Ben, or individual members of the public, are not likely to be able to take such a view.

Hello! This is SimonBlog. Can’t promise to be anything like as informative, clever, eloquent or professional as  BenBlog  but I will hopefully not be useless.