Fast forward to 2012 and Ken’s re-election bid next year and what has he got? The problem this time is that Ken does not look like the radical outsider he did in 2000. This time he is the institutional one, against Boris the buffoon who many still love despite his policy inadequacies. While Ken may struggle in the character stakes, he could partially make up for it with eye-catching policies… but what could those be?

Ken has already ruled out re-introducing the western extension of the Congestion Charge zone, and has so far focussed only on public transport fares (his ‘Fare Deal‘), promising to cut fares in 2012, freeze in 2013 and an inflation only increase in 2014 (PDF here). The plan is at least partially financed (according to the Evening Standard). There is also the proposal to ‘set out a full cycling policy closer to the election’ on the Tell Ken part of his campaign site. But these are all small things so far.

So are we going to get a major announcement on something from Ken? And if so, how could it look?

For a start any bold policy from Ken would have to be about transport – it’s the vital issue for the future of London, and one of the few areas where the GLA and Mayor have genuine power. The policy would have to be either low cost, or cost-returning in a short time frame (that would seem to rule out Ken’s statements about Crossrail 2 and 3 becoming policies). The future investment plans for the tube are also set for the coming 5-10 years, and could there be room for any defining policy there anyway?

If there is to be a bold policy from Ken then it has to come in the roads / pollution / congestion area. Central London still has chronic air pollution. While cycling has been on the increase, recent cycle deaths have highlighted how the city has a long way to go before it is genuinely cycle friendly.

Essentially roads policy for London over the last 5 years has only been framed in terms of winners – helping cyclists, improving buses etc. – but to advance further towards a pedestrian and cycle friendly city something has to give.

Vehicle speeds would need to be lowered (a blanket 20mph speed limit, with cameras to enforce it?) and parking spaces and, in some cases, even traffic lanes removed to allow proper cycle lanes separate from the traffic to be constructed (this is what Copenhagen did). This all needs to be done in a way that is sensitive to businesses based in central London – goods still need to be shipped by motor vehicle but passenger transport need not be by car – it should instead be made more pleasant to walk and cycle. At the very least the issue of a pedestrianised Oxford Street needs to be revisited.

Could Ken hence advocate a vision for London as a walking and cycling city, with a 10-step plan to achieve it? I’m not holding my breath…

But did I do it all wrong? And am I still doing it all wrong?

The point of my visit is an example. At 15:30 this afternoon I’ll cross the start line for the Berlin Inline Skate marathon. I’ll complete the 42km in about 1 hour and 20 minutes, all being well, placing me among the better skaters. But I’m not going to be right up with the best of them because I do not have the dedication to give my life over to the sport. I may well not be skilled enough either, but I’ve never got to the stage to really know.

Conversely a few thousand Labour Party members will be congregating today in Liverpool for Labour Party Conference. I’ll be there tomorrow, for 3 days, but if I were really dedicated to the pursuit of a career in politics I should be there for every moment, tweeting sycophantically on #lab11 and schmoozing with the top brass rather than growing frustrated at the same old talking heads blathering away at the fringe events.

Professionally, looking at it one way, things have not moved on either – I worked freelance for the first time in 2002 (just after my first Berlin stint), and I still am, to all intents and purposes, a freelancer. Some of the projects I do are a little more responsible these days, but beyond that…?

Then, lastly, there’s the matter of place. 12 months ago I moved on from Brussels, and considered Berlin as a place to live. I thought London was a better bet, professionally. That may indeed eventually prove to be the case, and there are other up-sides of the choice that I could not have foreseen, but being back in Berlin makes me wonder once more whether I actually made the right choice.

Perhaps it’s not right to say I’m doing everything wrong, but I do feel I’m doing everything by halves. What should I really get my teeth stuck into? I don’t know the answer to that just at the moment, and it’s nagging at me.

Only now there is a complement to the TV – social media, and especially Twitter. Yet that has of course not stopped a whole host of nay-sayers bemoaning the role of social media.

Here then is a practical guide to following a breaking news story via social media, and what to watch out for.

1. Social media can tell you when something is happening, and where the good coverage is
Perhaps the simplest of all – use social media to give a pointer towards the best coverage in the traditional media. On Sunday night Twitter was full of news about the rebels’ advance on Tripoli, a cue to turn on the TV for some live video. Secondly, tweets from across the UK political spectrum were wondering why BBC had no up-to-date footage, while Sky’s Alex Crawford was on a Tripoli street with gunfire in the background. I wouldn’t normally touch Sky News but this time it was the best bet.

2. Follow people you trust
This sounds easier than it can prove to be in practice. On social media you have everything from the journalists on the front line to the equivalent of a drunken conversation in a pub, so you need to cut through the noise to get to the good content. Chances are that NPR’s Andy Carvin (@acarvin) is going to be aggregating coverage of any major story, so he’s a good person to start with. I’ve met Andy – he’s a pro and I trust his judgment.

Beyond that look at what people you know personally are writing – my good friend in Oslo Bente Kalsnes (@benteka) mentioned Rune Håkonsen (@runehak) and his live tweets about Utøya. Rune’s biog states he works for NRK, he’s reputable, so follow. For the London riots Neal Mann (@fieldproducer) was mentioned so widely that he was a must-follow. In short trust people who people you trust also trust.

Services like Klout or PeerIndex might be able to tell you if someone is generally reputable but won’t help you much when a news story is breaking.

3. On social media, verification of facts happens in public – don’t be drawn in unless there is good reason
The number of observations and comments online can lead to contrary points of view being expressed simultaneously, best summed up in the case of the Tripoli advance in this tweet by @gdwilliamson:

So Gadaffi is both dead and captured according to Twitter. Truly, he is Schrodinger's Dictator.

21.08.2011 21:08 via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@gdwilliamson

Graham Williamson

Conversely the intelligence and analysis of people online can beat the mainstream media to get to the bottom of a complex event, as shown in response to the Oslo and Utøya attacks when the mainstream media was slow to reject the jihadist terrorism link.

As an individual, make sure you only write what you can yourself verify, and do not assume things you read are true. However be ready to analyse trends and thoughtful reflections – these may turn out to be correct, and opinions may be aired online that simply are not available in the mainstream media.

4. Social Media can provide information you cannot easily get any other way
On one of the nights of the London riots I was in west London and had no idea what was going on in Bow, the area of east London where I normally live. I asked for news about Bow on Twitter, adding #londonriots to my tweet. Two individuals I have never met and do not follow were in Bow and tweeted their observations. Of course all of the points above about trust etc., needs to be applied to their response, but conversely no mainstream media was complete in its coverage (as Dave Hill explains in relation to Woolwich).

For Utøya I wanted to know if all my Norwegian friends were safe, and here Twitter could not help me, and sending an e-mail to a few dozen people would have been an over-reaction. But a quick glance at all my Norwegian friends’ Facebook profiles showed they were all ok.

5. Have a sense of humour
Perhaps not as important as the other four points, but – even in times of difficulty – comments on social media can sometimes make you smile. Can you imagine the BBC calling Gadaffi Schrodinger’s dictator? Or tongue in cheek connections between London and Tripoli?

Now there's a way to check if these rebels are political and genuine. Is the Tripoli outlet of JD sports intact?

21.08.2011 21:23 via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@ByrneToff

Thomas Byrne

Here then is a guide to how to get the cheapest Eurostar tickets on the London-Brussels route, using DB’s website rather than Eurostar.com. The standard price is €49.00 single, sometimes a saving of 50%.
NOTE: there’s a worked example at the end of the post.

1. You need to book tickets from London to Germany, or Germany to London, on trains via Brussels. Your best bet is to look for connections to or from Aachen Hbf, the first main station after the border with Belgium.
2. Start first by working out what Eurostar trains you want to take, at which times and on which dates. You can do this using Eurostar.com or DB Reiseauskunft (also available in English). Don’t worry about the prices of these tickets, just concern yourself with the times and dates. Keep these window(s) with the train times open. Note that the price of the Eurostar leg does not determine the price of the total ticket.
3. Next work out the train connections between Bruxelles Midi (the Eurostar terminus) and Aachen Hbf, using DB Reiseauskunft. You need to look for ICE trains only (not Thalys), and you can break your journey for up to 48 hours in Brussels. In other words find an ICE that leaves from Brussels to Aachen less than 48 hours after your Eurostar will arrive, or an ICE that arrives in Brussels from Aachen less than 48 hours before your Eurostar leaves. You need to find ICE trains that offer you a price of €19.00 for this connection. If you’re offered higher prices your total price to/from London will also be higher. The price of the whole ticket is determined by the price of the Brussels-Aachen part, so seek out that €19.00 ticket! Keep these windows open as well.
4. Then put the two parts together, booking using DB Reiseauskunft. Make your starting station London St Pancras International and your end station Aachen Hbf (or vice versa) and – the important part – click ‘enter stopovers’ (Zwischenhalte angeben) and enter Bruxelles Midi. Enter the total amount of hours and minutes needed between the two legs of the journey, making sure that your Eurostar will connect with an ICE and not with a Thalys (or ICE connect to a Eurostar).
5. This should give you €49.00 as the price for a single ticket, plus a €2.50 charge. This can then be booked off the DB website with a credit card, with a PDF file produced that you can print at home. These tickets do not work in the automatic ticket gates for Eurostar – you have to go to the desk beside the gates to get a boarding ticket.
6. Of course there is no need to actually take the Brussels-Aachen leg of the journey.

If you have a BahnCard25 you can save an additional €5, making the ticket €44.00, plus a €2.50 charge.

What are the downsides? First, if you’re booking really long in advance, Eurostar.com might be a fraction cheaper. This trick works best for trains booked a month or so in advance. Second, it works only for tickets that cannot be exchanged. Third, you don’t earn any Carte Blanche points. Fourth, you do not get to choose your seat in Eurostar (although you can probably ask the people nicely at the terminal!)

Anyway, as the explanation above is not too simple to follow, here is a worked example. Click each screenshot to view it at full size.

The train I want to take – the 0827 from London – is highlighted.

The next available ICE at €19.00 to Aachen leaves at 1425, a little over 2 hours after the Eurostar arrives.

When I click ‘Enter stopovers’ I then enter Bruxelles Midi and 02:10 in the stopover time, and hit search.

Bingo – a €49 single ticket on Eurostar.

These trains are more than a month away at the time of writing, but a single for the 0827 departure on Eurostar.com is already £56. I have managed to book €49.00 DB tickets when the price of a single on Eurostar.com was more than £100, hence saving more than 50%.

Is Google passing a judgement on the Icelandic economy, that the country and its embassy are up for sale?

It’s not too dissimilar from the ‘No More Lethal Lorries‘ campaign by LCC. Here the emphasis is different, with a 5-point plan: Cyclist-awareness training for drivers, Drivers must take more responsibility, Safer design for London lorries, Higher standards from lorry operators and More responsible procurement. I prefer their multi-faceted approach, but determining if these points are achievable is rather more complex, and how apply this to London only, when so much European law is involved in all of this?

I think there is also a lot of progress to be made on road and cycle lane design to help deal with this issue, a matter raised numerous times in the excellent ‘Traffic‘ by Tom Vanderbilt. Cycle lanes are often too narrow to allow safe passage along the inside of trucks waiting at traffic lights, and when cycle lanes are in place they often make lanes for traffic very narrow – that’s very much the problem with the Cycle Superhighway 2 currently in development though my part of London.

Anyway, in conclusion: I’m not going to mail my MEPs about the See Me, Save Me campaign, but I have finally got around to joining London Cycling Campaign. You can sign up here.

But not so in London. What is my role in this city? It’s a bit hard to define, and the events here demonstrate that.

I attended and ran a session at Netroots UK, but the session was on fundraising and not about blogging or networking or party politics. I couldn’t attend the Fabians’ New Year conference but suppose I would have pottered along and have been generally underwhelmed. The RSA today ran an event with Evgeny Morozov about Wikileaks and I hadn’t even realised it was happening…

This weekend is ukgovcamp but I am not public sector enough for that, so will not be there, even though I know most of the organisers. Policy Network are running an event entitled “What future for Europe?” – worth going to that as it’s one of the few big EU events in London? But I wouldn’t have gone to something like that when I lived in Brussels, it’s too general. The Fabians have something similar a week later. I’m a leftish blogger and Fabian member, but their event doesn’t even have a programme yet… I will for sure be at eCampaigning Forum in Oxford in March, primarily an event for NGO campaign folks, even though I have done rather little work in that sector since the Atheist Buses. Further into the future I’ll probably be at PdF in NYC in June and the World Humanist Congress in Oslo in August.

What a mess!

More worryingly all of this sums up my general confusion being in London. What am I here? Am I a web nerd? A web comms trainer? An EU training person? How much am I about intellectual stuff, how much about practical training? Am I better off working with the public sector, with political parties, with non-partisan campaigns, or with NGOs? How much EU stuff should I do? How much UK stuff? How much blogging? How much party politics, either offline or online? At the moment I’m trying to do all of that, working silly hours, and have a rubbish bank balance. Something isn’t right.

Ideas how to fix it?

The shocking thing is the price.

Köln-London is €66.50* and Bruxelles-London is £121 (€142.38). Even if the Eurostar ticket were part of a return journey it would still be £86.50 (€101.79). The inflexible through ticket from Köln is less than half the price, AND includes the extra journey from Köln to Bruxelles!

So if I want to book cheap single tickets from Bruxelles to London, should I at the same time consult DB to see if their options are cheaper, and simply disgard the Bruxelles-Köln part? Will that even work, as the barcode on the DB ticket is different to a regular Eurostar barcode? Whichever way something is very odd here, and I’ll report further once I’ve taken this trip in December.

* This price contains a BahnCard 25 reduction. Without BahnCard the price is €69.00 – i.e. BahnCard reduction seems to not apply to Eurostar.