Hello, you glorious beasts.   🚂 💰️ How to get 100% off long-distance train travel  🏘️ 🤑 The UK’s cheapest cities 🇨🇳 💴 The Chinese govt pays students to come home  But enough idle talk—to business.  How I got 100% off my train travel In 2023, I found a way to get 100% off my long-distance train travel between London and Carlisle. All because the trains were delayed.  I deserved nothing less. UK rail prices are the highest in Europe, but roughly 40% of trains are late.    Even after I bought a railcard, split my ticket and got off at cheaper stations, I was forking out close to £100 six times a year for the luxury of travelling 8 hours on a journey that should take 4.   Then it hit me: train companies reimburse customers for every delayed train.   Avanti West Coast offers customers:   15 minutes — 25% off  30 minutes — 50% off  1 hour + — 100% off I wouldn’t pay a penny if I could predict when trains would be disrupted. The question was then, how could I predict whether a train would be delayed?   Let me introduce you to my…  Train Delay Prediction Paradigm (TDPP) There are three essential ingredients to the TDPP:   Strike action leads to staff shortages. This means fewer drivers, staff, and maintenance workers. RMT has to notify the public two weeks before they plan to strike. There is usually a knock-on effect lasting several days, before and after.  Planned engineering works  This is the icing on the cake, particularly if there’s strike action. Trains are sometimes deliberately delayed to allow the engineers to do their work. You can monitor these online in real time.   For a bonus ball, combine planned engineering works and strike action with winter weather—your train will be delayed, no question about it, e.g., trains are usually delayed when it snows.   Certain stations are more likely to experience delays too. National Rail now publishes the data in real time, the madmen.   Add spice by considering the impact of the Christmas holidays, football games, and peak travel times.   I started monitoring these risks.   ✅ I chose specific days when I knew there would be strikes, using the RMT’s website to select the right days.   ✅ I tried to align strike-affected days with planned engineering works along the London-Glasgow route.   ✅ I checked for floods, snow, and all manners of ill weather. And tried to align my travel with peak festive season times.   The magic happens when these factors all come together.  I.E f the baseline chance of delay is 10%, engineering works add 25%, strikes add 35%, and bad weather adds 20%, then when all these problems happen, there's a 90% chance your train will be delayed. The results With some anxiety, I booked my eye-wateringly expensive tickets.   The journeys were delayed every time.  Oh yes. I paid those parasitic Avanti vampires zero, zilch, nada, nothing—I rode for free.  All I had to do after was take a photo of my ticket, fill out an online form, and send it to Avanti.  Sure, there were some pretty brutal ‘all-dayers’.  But I’d use them as an opportunity to get a load of work done, free from distractions.  It was fun—I felt like I was winning.  And it was better than the alternatives:  Hiding in the toilet from the ticket inspector   Feigning deafness when he came  Speaking passionately in Italian until someone took pity on me  Crying  Taking the ticket inspector aside and quietly but forcefully insinuating that I worked for Intelligence and the fate of England was in his hands.  Only the TDPP would allow me to carry on my family name with honour. Final thoughts If you plan to do this, use it to get serious work done.   Only do it for journeys of 3+ hours.  Pack a sandwich (or 4)  The system is shoddy—if you’re smart, you can make it pay for its mistakes.   Well, well, well: what do we have here?   RMT just informed the public of planned strike action til May.   I see planned engineering works all along the line.   So what are you waiting for, you glorious beasts? Chinese government pays students to come home  The Chinese government pays UK-based Chinese uni students money if they return to China.  One student was allegedly offered between £5,000-£6,000 to return home.   They offer several other well-documented incentives:   Simplified startup registration  Tax breaks  Reduced costs for floor space  Startup investment Better education for children  Easier access to hukou (public services).  No surprises, then, that increasing numbers of Chinese students are flocking home to the People’s Republic.   Time to learn Mandarin, you madmen.  The UK’s cheapest cities revealedAberdeen is the cheapest city in the UK, according to the property company Zoopla.   The average house costs only £119,350. Compare that to London’s least expensive borough, Havering, with its median house price of £306,480.   Liverpool (£130,800)  Glasgow (£152,270)  Sheffield (£156,990)  Newcastle (£150,360).   You know what that means: we head north! Someone took it a bit too seriously.....