The Last Gunfighter
In my view and in no particular order, the greatest racing drivers are Manuel Fangio, Strirling Moss, Jack Brabham, Tazio Nuvolari, Jackie Stewart, Jim Clark, Ayton Senna, Nikki Lauda, James Hunt and Michael Schumacher. Some may argue about including some in this list, but no-one can argue with the fact that on balance the really great drivers lived to tell the tale. It can also be argued that Clark and Senna suffered freak accidents. But so did Felipe Massa. Luckily he survived.
So the news that today, Michael Shumacher is to return is extraordinary. But it is to be welcomed.
It is the return of the last gunfighter.
But then I can’t complain. I’m nearly 62 and I’m still writing software after almost 44 years.
Green Woodpecker
According to my Collins Bird Guide, green woodpeckers are shy and wary. But obviously, this juvenile, who I think is a male, isn’t! I took this video on the front drive just outside my office window. He was perhaps four metres away at the furthest.
If you want to know more go to the RSPB site.
When we first moved here about fifteen years ago, I never saw a green woodpecker. Now I usually see one or two every day in the summer months. I suspect that the individual in the video comes most days to eat on the ants in the grass. He’s always in the same place.
Now I have got some decent photos of him, I will be able to check.
A Technical Note – The video was filmed on a Fuji S5700, still/video camera and processed from a .avi file into .wmv using Windows Movie Maker. The latter software is excellent and comes FREE with Windows XP and Vista.
Nasty to Esther
Esther Rantzen is standing for election in the next Parliament.
I wish her luck.
But the celebrity ex-MPs on BBC Breakfast Time were not very welcoming of her actions. Humm! Perhaps they are jealous of her energy and guts!
Rural Crime in Suffolk Still Falling
This was the headline in Saturday’s East Anglian Daily Times. The article doesn’t seem to have been posted.
I’ve only had a couple of incidents in the last twenty years and these involved people nicking stuff from outbuildings where I lived.
The figure shows that in the whole of Suffolk, just 68.8 crimes were reported per 1,000 of the population, making it one of the lowest levels in the country.
The Police put it down to the work of Safer Neighbourhood Teams, but I actually wonder if the low levels of crime are for deeper reasons.
Suffolk is a pretty prosperous county and it has fairly low unemployment, so there are probably a lot fewer people who need to turn to crime. It also hasn’t until recently had a large student population and according to various writers, a lot of crime is around students, who are not as careful with their accommodation and possessions than most of us.
I travel to London a lot and you notice a very different attitude on the part of the Police you meet on the street between the Met and the Suffolk Constabulary. The former tends to be remote and aggressive, whilst my local force tries to act as part of the community and be reasonably pleasant. So is it just that in Suffolk, we give the Police the information they need. Ipswich certainly did that with the murders of several women a couple of years ago.
So there might be a lesson here.
Keep the Police forces small and local. Co-operate on a higher level by all means and use compatible systems, but do people prefer to deal with an officer, who is not just a policeman, but part of the community as well?
I think they do!
Lightning Sadly Strikes Twice
Hopefully Felipe Massa will be OK after his freak accident, whilst qualifying on Saturday, but tragically Henry Surtees was not so lucky. Both were hit with bits of other cars, that happened to be bouncing on the track.
Motor racing is dangerous, but so are other sports, like horse riding and rugby, although motor racing has just had a bad week. But what is interesting is that the authorities are probing the reasons for the accidents and that some of the ideas they incorporate eventually filter down to our daily life.
But as a statistician, I can’t help feeling that both accidents were against odds of thousands to one.
After all on Sunday in Hungary, Alonso’s Renault lost a wheel and it bounced harmlessly down the track, before coming to rest by a crash barrier. But that was totally avoidable, as the mechanics had not put the wheel on correctly.
It also has lessons for us all, in that how many of us check all the wheels before we take our car on the road?
Sometimes I do, but on my last trip to Holland, I found on return that I had a damaged tyre, which probably should have been changed before I left. A failure would have been supremely annoying, as my Jaguar does not have a proper spare wheel! And do you know how to change a wheel on your car?
So although the tragic events on the race track of last week, were very sad and my heart goes out to everyone involved, do we take those simple precautions that would make us all safer on the roads, at work and especially in the home?
I doubt it!
The Anonymous Widower 