Date published: 2007/03/26
Heathrow airport is one of the worst airports in Europe. The Piccadilly line to Terminal 4 has an in-train electronic notification system which (sometimes? always?) tells passengers to get off at the stop before, Hatton Cross, since the current tube train allegedly only stops at Terminal 3. Well needless to say anybody who is paying attention and does not know any better gets off. There are no signs at Hatton Cross indicating which trains might stop at Terminal 4 and which might not. There is no official presence at Hatton Cross and nobody answers the intercom request for information. The next tube train pulls in and says Terminal 3 at the front but does not say if it stops at Terminal 4 and nobody risks getting on it. Finally a worker shows up and says that TfL (Transport for London) did not pay enough money for software and the original message was just plain wrong, all the trains stop at Terminal 4. Blaming software seems a bit lame but there is definitely incorrect information being given and nobody seems to be doing anything about it.
BA (British Airways) has a poor reputation and does not disappoint. All flights seem to be late allegedly because of some "systems failure". Recently BA has not even managed to deliver checked-in baggage to the correct location at the correct time, but at least that does not seem to be always the case. Coming back into Heathrow from the States, BA manages to spend more than 45 minutes between touchdown and getting everyone into the terminal building. And people complain about Ryanair. And the Tube takes 20% longer than claimed to get into London, even outside of rush hour. And somehow the bureaucrats have managed to make the King's Cross tube and "main line" interchange work worse now than it used to (perhaps when the St Pancras mess is finished things might get better again). Of course TfL is only any good at screwing car drivers and paying themselves whacking great salaries. They are not very good at transport.
The woeful British transport system is a good introduction to the US, which has some of the worst transport systems in the western world, in particular some of the worst airports. And the US used to have some of the best airlines in the world and now European airlines (e.g. Ryanair and Easyjet) are easily much better (and cheaper). And of course the US train network is relatively thin, except on the eastern seaboard. Amazingly, although the New York City subway and commuter rail network is not that great, it seems to be no worse than what you find in London. And they don't have perpetual non-working of the network on Sunday due to "engineering work" (perhaps because they never do any work on the network). The New York - Washington Amtrak service seems to be the best of class in the US, although the line is so poorly maintained it's amazing that trains don't regularly derail.
The US airports do not seem to be imposing the "one person one carry-on bag" rule that has now swept Europe (as part of the fallout from one of the recent bogus terrorist alerts). But flights between the UK and US seem to be getting special attention from the security services on both sides of the Atlantic, with extra manual checks of carry-on luggage (which must be expensive to carry out). One might view all this hassle as an attempt by the ruling elite to "save the world" by encouraging people not to fly, but more likely it is just an attempt by the ruling elite to scare the people and justify the disasterous "war on terrorism".
Some day perhaps Americans will learn to serve normal portions of food (e.g. in restaurants). Meanwhile Americans will continue to be fat.
American television is overwhelmingly mediocre. There are zillions of channels but the only thing worth watching is sport, especially if the volume is turned down so that you don't have to listen to the inane commentary. Something must be wrong when C-Span and C-Span2 provide the best non-sport viewing. UK television channels have long since succumbed to the irritating habit of advertising future programs over the trailers of the current program, but American television channels have gone one step further by running very noticeable trailers repeatedly during the current program. And of course in the US there has long been a seemless transition between the program and the adverts (and the latter are the highlight, as is often the case in the UK).
Bush is toast in America. Even many die-hard Republicans now accept that he has been an unmitigated disaster. And Fox News (a.k.a. the Republican News Network) and the other army of Republican apologists cannot do anything about it except to repeat the usual tired old propaganda.
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