Eiffel Over

Tag: trains

  • When government bans protest against our projects, engineers must put down their tools

    When government bans protest against our projects, engineers must put down their tools

    The cornerstone of our democracy is the right to protest. At the moment the government is pushing through amendments to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill that would make it illegal to protest at a range of infrastructure sites.

    The Government is intending to use the latest amendment to

    introduce a new offence of interfering with the operation of key infrastructure, such as the strategic road network, railways, sea ports, airports, oil refineries and printing presses, carrying a maximum penalty of 12 months’ imprisonment, an unlimited fine, or both

    George Monbiot citing in the guardian a private letter to members of the House of Lords

    This is on top of the existing authoritarian measures in the bill. For instance, named individuals can be banned from protesting. If I write a post encouraging readers to attend a protest, I can be individually banned from protesting. If I turn up anyway, under these new measures, I can be sent to prison for 51 weeks.

    Why is the government doing this?

    Well, I suspect it is because they know that protest works, as demonstrated by the success of the protests to stop fracking in the UK. A sustained campaign of protest by a small dedicated group halted one of the most illogical of engineering projects: fracking for more fossil fuels while committing to reducing our carbon footprint.

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  • Analogue Challenge 001: look for the time

    Analogue Challenge 001: look for the time

    On other people’s wrists, on clock towers, outside the jewellers, inside shops, at the station, on the scrolling news, from the position of the sun. Ask someone or make do not knowing, leaving plenty of time not to worry.

    Here’s the challenge. Spend a day getting by without checking the time on any device of your own. Of course the more analogue way is to use a watch, but the aim of the challenge here is to sharpen a range of other analogue skills that will make you more comfortable with be more self-sufficient and less reliant on devices to get you through the day.

    What are analogue skills?
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  • Ticket to ride winning strategies – weekend engineering works

    This week’s Weekend Engineering Works post is about Ticket to Ride winning strategies. The game involves racing against other players to build a network of railway lines across different counties and continents. What I find exciting about the game is the recreation of an age of bold and adventurous engineering: the railway era. I particular enjoy building routes that I have travelled down in real life. But what I enjoy most is dreaming up winning strategies, and then testing them out.

    In this post I describe my few of my more successful Ticket to Ride wining strategies. Alongside, as you might expect from this blog, I’ve also provided some wider musings on their philosophical implications.

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