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WANTING to travel from Great Britain to Ireland, Geoff Steedman looked up routes online. He was offered a route involving a ferry from Holyhead in Wales to “Dublin Ferry Port” – a location with which he was not familiar. Helpfully, the National Rail website he was using offers maps of the locations served.

Geoff clicked. He was presented with the railways’ double-arrow logo in the middle of a plain blue rectangle. Zooming out – a long way – he discovered that the National Rail computer holds the belief that Dublin Ferry Port is roughly 1000 kilometres due south of Accra, Ghana.…

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