Interesting Links for 11-07-2024

[andrewducker]

1. Can someone explain why train companies use overtime so much, rather than employing enough drivers?

(tags:trains scotland )

2. How would the election have gone if Reform hadn't stood?

(tags:UK elections politics )

3. What Labour's strategy was in the election, and how it depended not just on how many votes it got, but what kind

(tags:voting UK Labour Conservatives politics )

4. China's Batteries Are Now Cheap Enough to Power Huge Shifts

(tags:batteries china )

5. These rats could be the future of search and rescue

(tags:rats disaster )

Comments

Railway overtime

[guybles.livejournal.com]

Not by any means an expert on this, but I can see the extensive use of overtime suits all parties for a number of reasons:

1) Helps Train Operating Companies (TOCs) manage the driver recruitment and training bottleneck
2) Allows TOCs to maintain a relatively lean workforce and the costs that go with that
3) Stops TOCs from having to hire more trains from the Rolling Stock Companies (RoSCos), because there’s a finite pool of drivers able to drive a subset of limited trains
4) Allows RoSCos to realise the best return on the trains they do actually hire out, since you’re maximising use of the ones that are in use
5) Helps individual drivers earn an elevated salary for overtime
6) Gives drivers and unions a helpful tool to use in disputes
7) Potentially helps unions maintain a semi-closed shop, supporting 5) and 6) above

All in all, I suggest that it best suits every party involved in the rail industry…except us actual passengers, especially when the delicate web I propose above collapses.

I’m not suggesting that any of this is right or wrong, or that the parties involved are better or worse for it, but I can see a cosy arrangement having emerged through the middle of all of these things.

Also partly inspired by very recently rereading about the Wapping Dispute, about 40 years ago.

[pseudomonas]

The assumption that if Reform hadn't stood their votes would have gone 100% to the Tories is not really credible - protest votes don't work like that. Sure, some would, but I suspect that a lot of the voters would have stayed at home, some would have voted for Labour, and some would have voted for other fringe parties. Probably not a lot would have voted for LD/Green/SNP but who even knows.

[andrewducker]

It doesn't assume they would. The vote is split by the way they said they'd vote if there was no Reform candidate: https://x.com/lunaperla/status/1810978018539528299

[pseudomonas]

Ah. I assume it said that in a thread which I can't read because I deleted my X account after one or other of Musk's bigoted outbursts.

[andrewducker]

Yup.

Very annoying that it doesn't show threads now.

(Normally I use Threadreader to share them, but it was only really the map I wanted to share here, the discussion beneath wasn't really that interesting, other than this bit in the comments)

[pseudomonas]

The threadreaderapp link https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1810883861275914737.html doesn't show the methodology in the thread either.

IMO Twitter should now be considered like IRC; it's a medium for conversation but not a medium of record.

[andrewducker]

That's because, as I said, no interesting discussion in the thread, and this was in the comments.

And I agree. But unless people post their stuff elsewhere, there's not much that can be done about it.

[pseudomonas]

I do wonder what response you'd get if you replied to comments saying "would you mind posting a copy of this somewhere else so I can link to it for people off Xitter?" (not saying you should go to the trouble, just wondering if people would in general be amenable or not)

[andrewducker]

Some people care, some people don't. The ones that don't want it generally block ThreadReader after a while.

But ThreadReader also isn't going to be around forever.

And *I'm* not about to start creating posts manually on my own site for everything on X I want to share.

[calimac]

Well, now I'd like to figure out how the election would have come out if the Reform vote had gone 100% to the Tories.

[andrewducker]

Me too! If I bump in to that I'll let you know.

[calimac]

I could easily enough figure it out for myself, but that would require tabbing through hundreds of constituency results and I just don't want to take the time and effort.

[calimac]

3) Since this is obviously not a blog you read regularly, this being the first substantive post in it, I'm curious as to how you found out about this very useful and interesting article.

[andrewducker]

That one was being passed around Twitter as worth reading.

(Which is why I still check in there, people are still using it to share things. Some day somewhere else will take over, hopefully. And I hang out on a couple of those too)

[symbioid]

on 3:
"The major political talent of Keir Starmer is his almost unique ability to not inspire an emotional reaction in anyone halfway normal."

Damn that is a sick burn. Probably one of the best and most accurate I've ever read.

[calimac]

That puts Starmer, though for totally different reasons, in a category with Ted Cruz as a politician whose wife I would like to see interviewed and asked the question, "What attracted you to him?"