Visiting this today ...

... By mid-morning Cirencester became impressively clogged with private vehicles: and at mid-day its car parks gridlocked. While the origin point of most of the people in those cars will not have been Kemble, that itself is shaped to some extent by available transport - and Kemble's still the local gateway to the national rail system. ...

With the cards falling slightly differently, ....

Oh, and thinking again of that railbus & wondering if there's another location that would be very much a fit for exhibiting it... ah... yes, but possibly much goodwill needs to be in place and then of course a bit of paperwork to tackle.

Your bad what?

Don't fancy that ... and as far as I can see, they don't even bother to run a bus to Kemble to / from Cirencester on a Sunday.  And it's a bit far to walk.

May I also please add my own apologies for my non-attendance at the meeting?

What is driving the decision to learn in a manual or automatic car?



Caitlin Graham wanted to learn to drive in an automatic car as she hoped the test would be quicker to pass without having to get to grips with a gear box.

But the 22-year-old says she had little choice but to learn in a manual due to any available automatic instructors being more than 20 miles away.

Motorists have seen a quiet shift in how they drive in recent years - with one in three cars on UK roads now an automatic.

A quarter of driving tests in England, Scotland and Wales last year were taken in automatic cars.

The AA says the trend is being driven by the UK's ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars coming in 2030, as electric cars do not have manual gearboxes.

For new drivers, this presents a dilemma - whether to learn and take their test in an automatic or a manual car.

It is a decision that could affect the rest of their driving lives - pass your test in an automatic and you will forever be boxed into only driving automatics - or indeed electric vehicles. Pass in a manual, and you will have the freedom to pick and choose. But many young people say it is not a decision they are freely able to make. Some would-be automatic learners have complained about a lack of instructors and the higher cost of lessons.

Others feel the jeopardy of learning in a manual is just too high. With huge competition for driving test slots, and long waits to re-take for those who fail, some young drivers feel learning in an automatic is the only way out of the fail-rebook, fail-rebook doom loop.

When Caitlin moved back home to a "super rural" part of Cumbria after university she was eager to pass her driving test as quickly as possible. There is no public transport in her village and she wanted to get on with finding a job. But unable to get hold of an automatic instructor she went for manual and passed almost a year after her first lesson. She says it only took her sister, who learned to drive in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, five months to pass in an automatic.

But it is a common misconception that the automatic test is easier - the pass rate for the manual test is higher at 50.4% than automatic at 43.9%, according to Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) figures for the financial year ending 2025.

"People still need to make the right decisions at the right time - make the correct observations at the right time and drive at appropriate speeds," says Stewart Lochrie, chairman of the Approved Driving Instructors National Joint Council (ADIJC).


(BBC article continues)

More philosophically, there are few things more sad and obsolete than code written for a long-dead computer system. All that time and effort spent crafting clever ways of doing something with that limited hardware, and a few years later you could buy a box to do the same thing for a few pounds.

I guess that's a 4014, in the photo with its trousers down!

We had a 4010 - too small to be very useful, a couple of 4014s and a 4016 with it's massive 25 inch screen in EC&M at Rolls-Royce in the eighties. I can just about conjure up the special smell of the 4361 Hard Copy Device in action, if I try really hard. In their latter years, we had the terminals souped up to run at 9600 baud.

Kids today: they don't know they're born...

Response code number 502 ( Official description - " Bad Gateway " )

Thank you - I have just negotiated an extra day out (for Sunday) and will see if I can work out Sunday busses.

By mid-morning Cirencester became impressively clogged with private vehicles: and at mid-day its car parks gridlocked. While the origin point of most of the people in those cars will not have been Kemble, that itself is shaped to some extent by available transport - and Kemble's still the local gateway to the national rail system.

Looking at the return journey, which leaves Fort William at 9am, is quite an early start to have breakfast, check out of hotel and be at the station for a 9am departure.

08:45 showing "cancelled", 08:56 to Exeter (and we know that Exeter is beyond Taunton) showing "on time".

The 08:56 - a slower train via Weston eventually ran, I understand, as far as Highbridge and Burnham; should have been indicated as "probably terminating short" on the board but there's a whole new topic there.

I am writing far more than planned here - posting in a minute but going to ask you reading this to add Saturday 7th March 2026 to your calendar for the next TWSW meeting - worth attending even if only half as good as yesterday, but yet early planning is already suggesting it will be twice as good!

Over £1m spent on sending Scottish ferry staff to Turkey



More than £1m has been spent sending CalMac and CMAL staff to Turkey to oversee the construction of four new ferries, a freedom of information request has revealed.

The two companies, which operate and manage Scotland's nationalised ferry networks, have spent £1,016,162 on remuneration, subsistence, accommodation, flights and car hires on staff visiting the Turkish yard since 2022.

The Scottish Conservatives, who obtained the figures, said taxpayers were being "left to pick up the tab" for the SNP's "ferries fiasco which has left islanders without the vessels they need".

CalMac and CMAL said their staff's work in Turkey was "vital" and "essential".

A CalMac spokeswoman said most of the money related to staff costs, including wages, which would have been paid regardless of where the crew were. She said the extra amount - £23,000 - was for travel and subsistence costs which covered flights to and from Turkey, hotel accommodation, and general subsistence costs.

CMAL also said the same wages would have been paid to its staff regardless of travel costs.

The Cemre shipyard in Turkey was awarded the contracts to build four new vessels worth more than £200m.

These vessels are the MV Isle of Islay - which is due in November and will operate on the Kennacraig to Islay route - the MV Loch Indaal, MV Lochmor and MV Claymore at six-month intervals after the first vessel's delivery.

CalMac sent eight staff to Turkey, spending £845,981, while £170,181 was spent on five CMAL employees.

One Ferguson Marine employee was also sent to Turkey but the costs were covered by CMAL.

The first of the Turkish ferries, MV Isle of Islay, was launched a year ago by Morag McNeill, the chairwoman of CMAL, in a ceremony at the Cemre shipyard.

The nationalised Ferguson Marine is currently building two separate ferries - the Glen Sannox and the still under construction Glen Rosa.

The costs of the vessels has risen to more than four times their original £97m price tag, and were pushed back for completion several times.

Tory transport spokeswoman Sue Webber said taxpayers were being forced to foot yet another hefty bill. "After squandering half-a-billion pounds on the Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa, ministers have blown another £1m flying staff to Turkey to keep tabs on the ferries being built there. Some project oversight is understandable after the huge problems with the Ferguson-built ferries - but this level of spending seems excessive."

Webber said the SNP had "betrayed islanders and taxpayers at every turn" by leaving remote communities reliant on out-of-date vessels while "letting costs spiral out of control for hard-pressed Scots".

"SNP ministers, who are responsible for Ferguson Marine, must finally provide the support the yard needs to compete, so that ferries can be built here in Scotland, not abroad," she added.

The CalMac spokeswoman said: "New vessels are an essential addition to the CalMac fleet and we are very much looking forward to MV Isle of Islay joining us next month. Staff and crew have been spending valuable time at the yard in Turkey carrying out vital work to support CMAL with the build process and to ensure that the vessel is built as specified, and meets all legal and classification standards. This is the same as the process involved for MV Glen Sannox before she joined the fleet."

She added that staff working in Turkey included marine and technical specialists as well as the senior crew who will be responsible for the vessel's safe passage to Scotland. "Their role includes the implementation of the important processes and procedures required to gain the necessary safety management and other certification needed to operate the vessel in UK waters," she added. "Thirteen brand new vessels will be joining CalMac by 2029 and will be of huge benefit to service resilience and reliability, to the benefit of all customers, including island communities."

A spokesperson for CMAL said: "CMAL is required on site throughout the build of vessels to provide essential quality assurance and supervision. Remuneration is the same regardless of the build location, and travel and accommodation costs are standard. These form part of the overall project budget, which remains on target."

A Transport Scotland spokesperson said: "As people would expect, CMAL has been and is continuing to work closely with the shipyard to reduce the time between delivery of each of the new vessels where possible. We expect delivery of MV Isle of Islay later this year and MV Lochmor was successfully launched on 23 August 2025 marking another construction milestone."