Matthew Somerville
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dracos.co.uk
Matthew Somerville
@dracos.co.uk
I help people report broken street lights, find out their bin day, plan train travel, manage an orchestra, locate the nearest postbox, research old theatre productions, keep time in a choir, and occasionally play board games | https://dracos.co.uk
Always nice to see Gorton Monastery in the eastern distance rising above the houses as the train approaches Manchester
November 11, 2025 at 9:43 AM
Doubt it; I bet they’re still operating on Fujitsu mainframes they don’t know how to update beyond bolting on more adjustments, so can’t do any meaningful reform. Plus they’d have to adjust long distance down, which would require subsidy no-one wants to provide, even if it would help a lot
November 11, 2025 at 7:33 AM
Yeah, and they kept cutting to them not answering, which was clearly not after the question being asked. It made it all a bit weird to me
November 10, 2025 at 6:18 PM
And what did they show before Countryfile, back in 2017? The news, and... a repeat of the previous week’s Blue Planet :)

The BBC keep an archive of listings back to 1922: genome.ch.bbc.co.uk
Home - BBC Programme Index
genome.ch.bbc.co.uk
November 9, 2025 at 9:21 PM
www.thedetail.tv/articles/hmr... has some more details, but not that; www.gov.uk/government/n... was the post pilot press release about it being such a success. The latter can’t possibly have been written by someone knowing that failure rate, if they did it’s just blatantly lying.
November 9, 2025 at 2:07 PM
The Diamond and other buses are still appearing on the maps, so my guess is something has broken somewhere in the NX Bus feed
November 9, 2025 at 1:55 PM
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-engl...

More success at the same style plans in Birmingham has been a cost ever since
The history behind Birmingham's St Chad's and Queensway tunnels
How did Birmingham's inner ring road and tunnels come to dominate the city's landscape?
www.bbc.co.uk
November 9, 2025 at 9:47 AM
Not disagreeing with your point, but they moved it here: openai.com/index/optimi... (guess their AI isn’t good enough to teach them about redirects)
What we’re optimizing ChatGPT for
We design ChatGPT to help you make progress, learn something new, and solve problems.
openai.com
November 8, 2025 at 11:20 PM
Could have done with a bass drum, but what couldn’t. Lovely soprano soloists.
Then went to town to avoid the Christmas market, buy “The Everlasting” by Alix E Harrow and “When There Are Wolves Again” by E J Swift, and go to a mystery cinema screening that turned out to be the new The Running Man 🏃
November 8, 2025 at 9:52 PM
If they were Quorn ones, mine can go through a pack of those a day! Hope it wasn’t too exhausting
November 8, 2025 at 9:45 PM
The bus was three minutes earlier than timetabled (it’s not a timing stop), thankfully I was already there. Off to hear a 1874 choir and four-hands piano version of Verdi’s Requiem in Shirley
November 8, 2025 at 1:12 PM
Oh, sure, who would do that! Apart from the people who missed a birthday, poor things. Have two anniversaries :-) But when else do you get the chance to remind people about calendar changes ;)
November 8, 2025 at 8:21 AM
Is theatricalia.com some form of archive?
Theatricalia
theatricalia.com
November 6, 2025 at 1:17 PM
Welcome to my life 🤣

Similar to bsky.app/profile/drac...
It’s like a mirror to Crowley in Good Omens...

“You’ll like this,” he said. His smile became even wider and more conspiratorial. “I tied up every portable telephone system in Central London for forty-five minutes at lunchtime,” he said. There was silence, except for the distant swishing of cars.
The eye-catching thing which would resonate is not some big shiny new idea, it's getting the basics right so that people can access the care they need when they need it. Focus on, and investment in, primary care will go a long way to improve the experience for millions of voters.
November 6, 2025 at 12:56 PM
Do you have a meter? We got one and our bill dropped massively
November 3, 2025 at 10:57 PM
Redirecting...
www.facebook.com
November 3, 2025 at 7:40 PM