General Chat

ignorance is bliss

Kin I come 'n watch?

sitting here wondering what it must be like to know absolutely everything about everything on the planet :-S :-S

"Whilst some solicitors can, of course earn well over £100k, published sources give their average salary at around £50k. "

They'll have a tough time financing student loan repayments, a mortgage and train fares on that!

The swinging cuts in legal aid seem to have brutalised what was once a bastion of the Tory party. Then of course the rise of web sites flogging houses using poorly trained para legals will have bitten off a financial leg. Maybe train driving is a better career choice than some dusty musty fusty legal chambers. No loan to repay either. Just a union card and a wedding ring.

Most of the solicitors I know work in the City and earn more in a month then my pittance for a year. Sob.

Possibly the vast demand for lawyers which brexit will stoke up is a patch of blue sky for what IGP says is the now improverished legal profession ?

Mansfield station closed in 1963 but re-opened in 1995. Week days there is currently a half hourly service with Nottingham and an hourly one with Worksop.

Whilst some solicitors can, of course earn well over £100k, published sources give their average salary at around £50k.

I am an engineer and get paid a lot better then any train driver even Undergound drivers. A solicitor making under £ 100K pa is either a beginner or useless. SFAIK train drivers make around £ 50 - 60 K which sounds about right.

One of my grandfather's cousins was a train driver for the LNER who family lore says drove A3/A4 Pacifics. He never married and so I inherited his large collection of railway memorabilia which he had liberated. Still have a depot clock. Not the easiest thing to wind up.

I don't really see why the government should subsidise railways at all. What is wrong with the idea of the cost of the railways being paid for from fares ? Some quite large places - Mansfield, Ringwood, Maldon - have no trains at all yet the local taxpayers are not let off the railway tariff. Even if you allow the commuter subsidy on the basis of practicality and ecological efficiency there are such white elephants as the HS2. At vast cost and despoilation this mad project will take people from Old Oak Common in north London to an urban regeneration zone in Aston slightly quicker than the existing train. Large numbers will have substantially slower journeys.

Most of the day it takes between an hour and two hours to drive 11 miles from Bath to Bristol.The bus is a rarely seen legend. Many people are killed and injured on the country track which connects the two cities. Instead of doing something about this zillions of pounds are being spent on electrifying the railway from London to Cardiff. The work is so far behind that the new electric trains have had to be redesigned to run on diesel or electric. Any spare cash will be used to bring the Portishead tramway back into operation. It is not only Brighton where getting around is slower than a century ago.

The Victorians had a word for it. "Railway Mania"

my son is a train driver and he loathes the rail unions

Absolutely Ann. The media also seems to overlook the fact that rail workers are now one of the highest paid sectors in the country, with drivers earning more on average than engineers and solicitors and the unions still aren't happy.

blame ASLEF and RTM

Commuters affected by the Train Drivers dispute on Southern Rail are right royally peed off.
Inflation 1.9% - average fair rises 2.3%. Thats average mind - in some areas the %age increase is higher.

Apparently its because the Government is reducing its subsidy which now has to be borne by the operators = passengers.

Unaffected leaves on the line or wrong type of snow. No technical faults or signalling problems......The annual price rise arrived right on time.


Andy