John Linton Having had limited success with the TI HSPA service on the train trip from Central London to the ‘wilds’ of Hertfordshire I was interested to see what happened as we got further away from London. The first hour or so of our trip was up one of the busiest motorways in the UK (the M1) for 100 or so miles and as you would expect the HSPA service operated at a lower speed, but continuous, connection on the times we tested it on that part of the journey achieving connectivity speeds of between 400 and 2.400kbps (while the car was doing over 90 mph and sometimes over 110 mph – would be nice to have roads like these in Australia).
Once we turned off the motorway and began to move to the centre of the Derbyshire Peak District National Park on progressively less used roads the download speed gradually dropped but as long we weren’t in a heavily wooded ‘valley’ the browsing speed and email speeds were no different to what I experience on my ADSL2 services in Sydney.
The last time it was able to connect was deep (high?) in the National Park , approaching ‘the end of the line’ in terms of the last village before just the high peaks remained. I was able to use my web mail connection and browse to get the ‘live’ US National League baseball scores at around 150 kbps and there were no noticeable delays.
A mile or so up the road where there was no habitation in sight for 360 degrees with the exception of the truly beautiful English country side and the particular beauty of the high peak tors, gorges and wild uplands there was no signal. So the HSPA service had delivered pretty much as I expected it would and, for a user like me, would be just fine for my needs.
We found one of those great pubs (of which there appear to be ten’s of thousands in the UK) with a great and really comfortable room for the night and relaxed in their bar over a couple of drinks. As I have no signal in this remote place I am typing this blog using Word and will send it when we again get a signal once we are on a road that has a signal.
Some days ago, I don’t remember exactly when, I rambled on about remuneration and sick days and other personnel issues and was incautious enough to comment that the possible new ‘government’s’ “maternity leave legislation” would mean that company’s like Exetel would not employ many/any females in the future. For my lack of political correctness (or what passes for that in Australia these days I received a few comments about my “sexism”.
I didn’t bother to respond as harshly as I was inclined to but I was amused to see an interview with the EU head of ‘equal rights’ in a copy of the Times left in the bar of the hotel who was bemoaning the fact that now the UK, in line with most other EU countries , was about to enact legislation providing for 12 month paid maternity leave and the right to flexible working hours for as long as a mother had children living at home.
What was her complaint?
She said that ‘equal rights’ had now succeeded so well that more and more companies throughout the EU had stopped hiring females and a poll of UK companies indicated that 85% of respondents (protected by anonymity in the poll) – had said they would now no longer hire females.
Uh duh! ……and this seemed to have surprised her!
For the people who accused me of being “sexist” – it has nothing to do with gender - it’s totally economic – no employer would hire an employee who will cost $60,000 more than a suitable alternative and who will disrupt the efficient operation of the company.
The landlord/owner of the pub I was staying at agreed completely. He said that English hotel owners all over the UK were no longer hiring bar or restaurant staff as ‘permanent employees’ but had for several years been hiring other EU nationals (particularly from Poland) on 6 – 12 month employment contracts that had specific ‘no maternity leave’ clauses in them.
So….no “sexism” …..simply financial reality.