Poor Ticket Inspectors (by sarah)

Last nights train was the last one I could get and the ticket inspector realising we were going to be late into Swindon where I needed to change to get to Stroud said he'd be phoning though to hold the train for us. We were as always stuck behind a fret train and going at ssssssssnnnnnnnnnnaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllllllllllllssssssssssssss pace.

He even told me which plateform I would need to go to which was very helpful as I didn't have a clue and was actually very worried about missing the connecting train.

However, though we left the fret train behind us we got stuck at Didcot Parkway for quiet along time. The reason? The guy behind me had his ticket stolen by another passanger, fortunatly the ticket inspector saw him plus the theif had been trying to steal other things off of other passangers for the entire journey. The victum who had gourgously pink hair stayed remarkably carm but the theif did not. He insisted it was his ticket, refused to get off the train, locked himself in the toliet and shouted lots!

He then attacked the poor trian staff. So obviously police where involved. No one appeared seriously injuried fortunatly but I was a bit worried and shaken and also fretful about the train I thought I was missing. A phone call to Al whilst the guy opposite went to see if things actually where ok, had me relax in the knowledge that the company had to get me to Stroud. I was however worried about the poor train staff. From the reactions of other passengers I take it this happens quiet alot? I mean I've seen stuff like it whilst waiting on Barking Stations plateforms but that like East London and I sort of expect it there and there are always high levels of staff.

I also wondered what would have happened if the ticket inspector had not seen the theift take place would the pink hair victum been believed. This is only something I am wondering due to the response of some of my Scouts perants on hearing I was dying my hair pink for Charity (more on this later) they were worried that I was going to do it perminant as people would think I'm one of those weird people. This made me sad becuase they were trying to protect me but it shows that the world is still judging books by covers and not even with the correct assossiations to the covers.

Other people seem to be more concerned about this insident and me travelling late than I was leading me to wonder if I should be more concerned. Hopefully we will soon have our lives sorted so that I only have to make one such late journey a week. Also I wonder what the actual crime stats are - am I more at risk traveling at night?

Living in Groups (by alaric)

Until relatively recently in human history, people tended to live in small but relatively intimate groups, sharing a lot of domestic arrangements; a party would go out hunting, another went out gathering, others looked after the children, others cooked the food, and so on.

This was, quite simply, more efficient. Economies of scale meant that a small team could cook for a large group in less total person-hours than each person cooking for themselves - especially when you compare the time consumed making and maintaining cooking equipment and the like.

These days, the same economies of scale have had the opposite effect - food is now produced in factories, and easy-to-cook ingredients and ready meals are cheaply available; this, combined with all sorts of other socio-economic factors, has lead to it now being quite practical to live entirely alone, spending your days working then coming home to a small meal you cook for yourself in minutes, cleaning your dishes and clothes in a machine, cleaning your floors with a machine, and so on.

And, thus, I suspect the loneliness of bachelor living is probably a modern phenomenon. Without ready meals and domestic appliances, moving away from home would be an unattractive prospect until you had a partner to team up with in order to form a breadwinning/homemaking duo (and the fact that sexist role models enforced a certain split of duties is, I think, entirely orthogonal to this issue) - and when you team up with a partner is precisely when you really start to want to be away from your parents...

Some of the best living arrangements I've had have been as a student, when the also-interesting economics of the cost of a place to live in London would force us to share houses (and sometimes rooms). Although we rarely actually cooked for each other, living in the same house as several other people was psychologically comforting for me. I really don't function well at all when living on my own; I've never officially done it, but in situations where all my housemates happen to be away for a few days, I've definitely started to slide into depression.

I currently live with my wife and daughter, so I'm basically OK, but even then, we still wish there were other similar couples we could share some resources with; if our house was larger we'd have lodgers. Personally I think my ideal would be having my own bedroom, office, bathroom, and kitchen (although I'd often cook for others), but sharing a big living room and garden, and being in the same physical building. There's increased security in a house that's rarely totally empty, and efficiencies in sharing resources (such a house would take up much less space than several individual ones, and consume much less energy), and increased convenience (you'd be quite likely to be able to find somebody to help you with something). And you'd have good times together.

This was a nice thing about what I did last weekend, which was to go on camp with my cub scouts; you might think that, with my legendarily complicated and busy life, the last thing I need is to donate my time to a voluntary organisation. But I work solving complex mental tasks (mainly on my own), face the difficult challenges of supporting my family under trying circumstances (shared with my wife, but we still feel quite 'alone' as a small family without much support from our extended family); after weeks of that, a weekend of hard work solving relatively simple problems (how to wash the puddle of sick away from outside the tent full of sleeping children, when it's raining heavily and the sick is slowly being washed downhill towards the tent? Answer: get digging equipment, dig a trench in the little gap between the tent and the puddle, scrape it all in there with the spade then wash it in with water, then close the trench) as part of a team is a delightfully refreshing change. Much more refreshing than a holiday spent just doing nothing; I'd be fretting too much about all the jobs I should be doing at home. Volunteering means I'm doing something somebody needs me to do, but working with others so it's a fun team activity rather than an ordeal.

But I wonder how many people would be happier living in 'communes'. A friend of mine is a Hare Krishna; I'm indifferent to the religion, but their culture is excellent - and part of it seems to be a high acceptance of living in groups sharing resources, which I think is very healthy.

Perhaps there's an opening for a property developer to set up some buildings with little apartments that then share living areas. Obviously they couldn't just be sold as independent units; perhaps they'd need to be owned by a limited company of some kind and the mortgage repayments, rent, or other expenses paid by all the residents paying a share, since the residents would need to be able to vet and veto potential new housemates, as rifts occurring in such a community would be fatal.

In the meantime, I wish our house had room for lodgers 😉

Tolerance (by alaric)

Recently, there was a bit of a hoo-haa about a blog the Guardian's travel section was planning on running:

(Max, 19, hits the road)[http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/travelog/2008/02/skins_blog.html]

A lot of people responded with reactions varying from amusement to irritation at the Guardian for this project: it was alleged that a naive, over privileged, kid with delusions of coolness was going off on a textbook finding-oneself journey to the East in their gap year, and that he'd landed a job writing it up for the Guardian purely through "daddy's connections". Playing into stereotypes of the rich trust-funded naive types with an over-inflated sense of their own worth, fuelled by parental influence and money giving them the illusion of success. Who later develop into Nathan Barley.

So, Max's blog brought about reactions of anger, both aimed at him and (more so) at the Guardian for apparently allowing nepotism (Max's father is a writer who had done assorted bits of work for the Guardian, so presumably the job was landed through his connections).

But this in turn brought about a second wave of opinion, that people were being cruel in attacking Max, since it wasn't his fault he was young and naive; and his family claimed that he was not going abroad on his parent's money, but that'd he'd saved up his own earnings to do so. The Guardian claimed that Max was playing up to the stereotype with tongue in cheek. In other words, the identification of him with the stereotype was challenged.

Which leads to an interesting point.

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