What’s the Deal With the Heathrow Express Train?

Twickenham Stadium, the home of rugby union in England. Also the home of the NFL in London, as well as occasional concerts, including U2, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna.

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We’re in London now. Kensington is our home away from home for the next three weeks.

I’ve never used the express train from Heathrow before, but I did this time. What’s the consensus on this? Is it worth it? That depends a bit on where you’re going, I suppose, but here’s how it seemed to play out to me. The starting point is the entrance to the tube station in Terminal 2/3:

Basically, we paid about $60 to avoid the 20-minute schlep with luggage. Which might be worth it, I suppose, but it seems kinda pricey. I think we would have been better off taking a taxi from the airport or else using the tube and then taking our chances on finding a taxi at Earl’s Court. Live and learn.

BY THE WAY: I forgot to mention this, but if you want to follow our vacation more regularly—and really, why wouldn’t you?—you can check out my Facebook page. I’m not much of a Facebooker, but for vacation photos and commentary it seems like the best tool for the job.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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