An addendum to what Charlie Stross said @ 157: travelling in the UK takes forever because the roads are so awful. It took 21/2 hours to travel the 100 miles to Portsmouth from north of London to collect my daughter from university in December - and that was an easier drive than we have had in the past! Much of the delay is because the motorways have far too many entrances: they are used as local short-cuts, not as bypasses. Consequently there are far too many cars on what are supposed to be fast roads. As for the awful 10 hours it took to travel 250 miles to visit my father-in-law last year... *shudder*
I suspect that time, rather than distance, is the most important statistic. 100 miles is a long way when one travels at an average speed of 35mph!
I have always wanted to visit the US but now I think I'll pass.
An addition to Charlie's comment at no. 23:
When I was a librarian in North London a-many years ago, one of our readers was very keen on drafting young people willy-nilly into the army, and wrote to the Ministry of Defence demanding a change in the law. She came in one day utterly furious because the MoD had told her that they weren't interested because they wanted recruits who genuinely wanted to be professional soldiers, and they also said that the Army was not, and never would be, a dumping-ground for yobs. She wanted to organise a march through London in favour of conscription, and was also furious when I told her that she would have to get permission from the local police...
My father (who joined up in 1940) is scathing about the draft: his Army was professional in spite of, not because of, conscription. (He says that Sergeants are the backbone of any Army.) He says that the trickiest juggling-act after WWII was not de-mobilisation but the re-integration of soldiers into civilian life.
He was, as Vonnegut would say, there.
Even before I heard about this I grieved for the people who had lost friends and families. Having read Mr Bishop's books, I feel even worse about this dreadful affair. My thoughts and prayers are with him, his family, and the families of everyone touched by this tragedy.
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