Dartford Crossing

We've just spent an enjoyable weekend with friends in the south of London. This involves using the Dartford Crossing - the magnificent cable-stayed Queen Elizabth II bridge on the way out, and the adjacent twin-bore tunnels on the return.

Last time we did the journey, towards the end of last year, we paid tolls in each direction. Yesterday we crossed the bridge to find the road bypassing the toll booths as the old toll system has now been replaced with electronic payment.

This peeved me for the following reasons:
*) In what is obviously a cost-cutting move (they do not need the staff), the tolls have increased from £2.00 to £2.50

*) The prices were not displayed on the motorway on the run-up to the bridge - it would be good for people to know how much it cost, so that they could make a choice about whether to use it or not (even if most would not have a choice).

*) Although you can pre-pay, they give you up until midnight the day after to pay - not particularly good if you are away on a long trip. And the penalties are £70 if you miss that midnight-the-next-day deadline (halved if you pay within fourteen days).

*) Under the original PFI scheme, the tolls should have been removed in 2003, twelve years after the QEII bridge opened. Instead, they were converted to a 'charge', for which the company would widen parts of the M25 (using the cheap and not-so-cheerful active hard shoulder scheme) and renovate the Hatfield tunnel.

*) Even though I managed to get Internet access within the time period, this might not always be the case, and I really don't want to give my card details out on the Internet too much.

*) The signs state something like 'Go online to pay' without giving the URL. If I was an Internet scammer then I would copy the official site and give it a similar URL with SEO to get people in.

This seems a really poor and user-unfriendly move to me, with little advantage to the end-user over the old scheme. Or do you disagree?

It's out there, somewhere... and it's going to get us

As any devote of science fiction knows (or anyone who has seen the ludicrous films Deep Impact or Armageddon), life as we know it stands at risk from impact from celestial bodies such as asteroids or meteors.

Some people say that we should be taking this risk more seriously: whilst a major event may be very unlikely on a year-by-year basis, the results would be utterly catastrophic and should be guarded against.

Fortunately some people listened, and there is a global search for objects that could hit our tiny, insignificant (yet utterly wonderful) planet. Most of us would have heard of Halley's Comet, which deigns to visit us every 76 years, but there is so much more out there.

And we are finding more all the time.

The wonderful uber-geek-gamer-astronomer Scott Manley has produced a video showing all the asteroids discovered between 1980 and 2014. And there are a lot. A heck of a lot:

The three white objects rotating around the centre at speed are the innermost planets, Mercury, Venus and Earth. Mars is further out, and beyond that, at the edge of the video, can be seen Jupiter. The arcs of white dots are newly-discovered asteroids; green dots are already-discovered asteroids, whilst the red ones are the ones that are closest to, and most threatening to, Earth.

One day, one of these objects will be nudged from its orbit by collision, gravitational effects or even by forces with unpronounceable names. Fortunately Jupiter acts as a massive gravitational hooker that will attract many of these flirtatious objects, but some will make it into the inner solar system. Space is big and most will miss us, but one will occasionally get through.

The work to find and map these objects is relatively cheap (less, allegedly, than the production cost of either of the two aforementioned films), and knowing that they are there and their orbits are significant parts of the battle. Although the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor evaded detection until it hit, scientists are getting better all the time at detecting them.

All we need now is training of Bruce Willis-types to go up to nuke the blighters if they get too close.

Or perhaps not...

Politics and cowardice

There has been much talk recently about the forthcoming general election debates. David Cameron said he wanted the Green Party to take part in the debates, his thinking being that their presence would harm Labour in the same way that UKIP's presence harms his party.

In response, some people have accused Cameron of cowardice. I find this rather strange.

Firstly, I would not necessarily accuse any politician of cowardice. They have been willing to put themselves in the line of the media's fire, to be subjected to the most intrusive, unfair (and sometimes hideous) attention from the media. The moment you become a PPC, yet alone an MP or PM, you have a big, bright target painted on your back. It is not something I would ever do, and neither have most of the people throwing the cowardice accusations about.

Secondly, there are many different forms of cowardice. Yesterday I was talking to a woman whose newborn baby started coughing up blood in his cot at night (*). Her husband, a usually reliable man, fainted whilst she prepared the car to take the baby to hospital. Some people cope admirably with some events, yet fail with others.

Thirdly, strategic manoeuvring should not be confused with cowardice. Are people in the army who retreat to a more favourable position cowards? Cameron appears to have won this particular battle, with the broadcasters inviting several other parties that will probably split the debatre's left-wing representation. He probably thinks that is worth a few blunt hits from his opponents.

When it comes to politics, Cameron is not a coward. Neither is Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg or Nigel Farage. They've all knowingly put themselves in a position that I would find intolerable, knowing what they and their families would face.

They may not run into burning buildings to rescue people, or go fully-armed into a hopeless battle. But they're not being asked to. They are dealing with a massive amount of pressure, much of it unfair. They did this knowingly, and it is something that I could never do.

In that way I am a big custardly coward.

(*) The baby was fine; the blood came from a rather bad case of mastitis.  Ouch.

Another coastal walker

Last year was perhaps a record for coastal walkers, with several people walking the coast in one go or in sections.

However the last couple of months have been fairly quiet. David Higgins finished his walk in July, meaning Peter Hill was left attempting the coast in one go.

Luckily last week I received an email about another coastal walker, Alexander Ellis-Roswell. He started walking the coast on the third of August, and is raising money for the RNLI. He is camping out as much as possible, and is currently in Bognor Regis.

He can be followed on Facebook, twitter, and he has a fundraising page.

He is expecting to take around two years to walk 6,500 miles.

The best of luck to him.

Arrrghhh!

I love the North Norfolk Coast Path. I have walked it, or parts of it, on countless occasions. I even like its less-regarded partner, the Roman Road-following Peddar's Way, which heads arrow-like to the coast from near Thetford.

Thanks to Griffmonster's blog, I've now learnt that the trail has been extended for 21 miles southeast as far as Sea Palling. Even better, the section between Sheringham and Cromer has been rerouted to follow the coast rather then heading through the hills inland. Having said that, I hope the old route remains an official loop as it was an enjoyable stroll to Norfolk's highest point.

I have had some complaints in the past about Natural England's over-engineered, expensive and wasteful English Coastal Path scheme, but increased access along this section is to be welcomed.

Additionally, a long-standing access argument near the western end of the trail has been resolved, and walkers can now legally walk past Snettisham. This now only leaves a few section of coast in Norfolk (King's Lynn to Snettisham and Sea Pallling south towards Great Yarmouth) without official coastal access.

All in all, it is good news. So why the 'Arrrghhh!' ?

You see, I really want to walk (and in some cases re-walk) these new sections of path. But the arrival of my wonderful new son has somewhat put the dampener on any further walking plans.

Although perhaps I could take him with me...

Dawlish diversions

In February, part of the railway line at Dawlish was destroyed by the sea. Some heroic work by Network Rail and its contractors saw the line reopen in April at a cost (to the railway) of £40 to 45 million. However that work left longer-term questions about the viability of the coastal route, especially if sea levels rise as expected.

Campaigners favoured various options:

• Reopening the Teign Valley branch. This was a heavily-graded, single-track line, most of which was closed in the 1960s after fluvial flooding.
• Reopening Tavistock to Okehampton. This LSWR line skirted around the north of Dartmoor. A large branch was until recently open to Okehampton to serve a quarry at Meldon. Reopening this line would open up large areas of North Devon to rail services, but would not be ideal operationally due to time-consuming reversals at Exeter and Plymouth.
• Tunnel under Dawlish and Teignmouth to avoid the sea wall. I have previously written about the GWR's pre-war proposals to tunnel under the hills inland, avoiding the tidal and estuarine sections. There are several options for the route.

Network Rail have now released an initial study into these alternatives, and it does not make pleasant reading for people supporting any of these proposals. The government compare planned infrastructure improvements by something called the Benefit-Cost Ratio (BCR). This is a calculation of the return on every pound invested over a period - in this case, sixty years. A BCR of two or above is seen as very good, and represents two pounds back for every pound invested.

It should be said that calculating BCR is an imprecise art: working out the benefits of a scheme and allocating monetary values to them is difficult at best. But as long as the BCR is calculated in the same way, then it provides a reasonable means of comparing projects.

The Network Rail study shows that the BCR for the alternatives range from 0.08 to 0.29. Unless flaws can be found in the BCR calculations, these schemes are absolute non-starters. These flaws might be factors such as wider social and economic benefits, which are not currently included in the calculations. If the BCR figures are unchanged, then investment in such schemes would have to be made on an emotional, rather than financial, footing.

Therefore it looks likely that the existing route will be hardened against the sea. This too is costly, but is very much a known quantity and has the best BCR. Personally I view this as a shame as I favoured the tunnelling option, but if it is not economic, fair enough.

If the government and Network Rail are sensible, they may throw some extra money at improving the rest of the rail routes into Devon and Cornwall. For instance, a significant cause of loss of time is not at the place the line got breached, but on the South Devon banks, which include the third, fourth and seventh steepest inclines on Britain's main line railways. Whilst the gradients can not be improved, there are many things that can be done to improve journey times.

Cornwall is amongst the poorest regions in the UK, and perhaps improving the rail line into the southwest would be a step towards changing that.

Welcome to Robert İlke Tuncer Cotton

Born on the 29th of June, at 7 pounds 5 ounces.

Both mother and baby are doing well.