Government to Sponsor Engineering Prize
This has been announced in The Times today and is also reported in The Engineer.
They ask if it should be called the Brunel, Boulton, Babbage or Bazalgette Prize.
I have my view and it should be called the Blumlein Prize after Alan Dower Blumlein.
I wrote to The Times and they published my letter on the 12th. Here’s an extract.
Sir, I think we should choose the engineer who has probably had the greatest effect on everyone’s lives in the past 100 years. And that is the pioneer of electronics, Alan Dower Blumlein, who, after he perfected stereo recording and electronic television, went on to develop the electronics for radar. He was a true genius who was granted 128 patents before he died at the age of just 38, in a plane crash while testing an airborne radar in 1942.
I am an electrical engineer myself and I was horrified to see that at the new Olympic site there is no mention that it is alongside Bazalgette’s massive Northern Outfall Sewer and that this superb piece of Victorian engineering is being used as a public viewing platform for the works at the site. In due course the waste water from the site will be pumped into the sewer to continue its journey via the beautiful Moorish pumping station at Abbey Mills to the treatment works at Beckton. The Olympic site really is standing on the shoulders of a giant.
Are Police Drivers Really This Stupid?
According to The Times today, policemen and I suspect policewomen as well are very adept at misfuelling their cars, as this extract shows.
Police forces have spent more than £300,000 in the past two years repairing diesel cars and vans damaged by officers who filled them with petrol.
Almost one in six diesel vehicles owned by the Metropolitan Police — the worst offender — was filled incorrectly, costing more than £170,000. Many forces have had to fit preventive caps and warning stickers because of the number of incidents.
How many plods have done it more than once. Surely, you get fired on the second time!
I’ve never done it and won’t now, as I don’t drive!
I do remember though a lady in serious distress once at Sainsburys in Haverhill. She’d taken her husband’s car to supposedly stay at her sister’s on Saturday night at somewhere that wasn’t Haverhill. But she’d gone to have a tryst with a man there. So being the good girl, she had left early on Sunday morning and then she’d gratefully replaced the fuel she had used. Except that she had put petrol in her husband’s diesel car. I’ve never seen a woman in so much tears, except where a death was involved.
Not My View of Burnley
Burnley gets a pasting from The Times today. Here’s a flavour.
Burnley has been called “Poundland” land by a councillor because it has so many discount and £1 stores.
The Lancashire town has had its fair share of hard economic times since the Industrial Revolution.
Only last month it was highlighted in a survey as having the lowest property prices in Britain. Four of the top five streets with the lowest house prices in England and Wales are in the town.
Perhaps after my last three years, I tend to see everything half-full rather than half-empty.
I won’t deny Burnley has problems, but it has a lot of things going for it, like the football club and Towneley Hall. And I would say that everybody I met last Saturday was friendly and very welcoming. That includes stewards and police too!
It was definitely an enjoyable day out and I shall be going next year, if we’re both in the same division.
World Heritage Sites
Listening to the warm-up to the Grand National today on Radio 5 this morning, it struck me that none of the UK’s historic racecourses are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Liverpool city centre is but surely one of Aintree, Ascot, Epsom and Newmarket should be listed.
After all Newmarket and the Heath have been associated with horses since the time of Boudicca. Newmarket is actually a corruption of New Horse Market. And every thoroughbred horse can trace its ancestry back to the small town in West Suffolk.
And when it comes to other places that should be listed, the Forth Bridge is rightly on the provisional list, but Joseph Balzalgette‘s historic London sewers are not!
The Gluten-Free Desert That is Ipswich
I support Ipswich Town and have a season ticket at Portman Road, as I’ve probably stated before.
My biggest problem at home matches is eating properly. Today, I shall as usual catch the 13:00 train from Liverpool Street. As too I have a lot to do this morning before I leave, I shall not have time to get to the shops to buy any gluten-free bread to make myself some sandwiches. So I will probably go into Spitalfields by Liverpool Street station to either Leon or Carluccio’s to have lunch before I travel.
I do find Carluccio’s gluten-free full Italian breakfast with a coffee and juice particularly good value at £9.75 and they are usually very prompt with serving it. I’ll probably go to Leon‘s today, after trying it a few days ago.
You might ask, why I don’t travel to Ipswich on an earlier train and have lunch there!
I could go to Pizza Express and have a salad Nicoise, but the last time I tried this they were full. Or I could go to Loch Fyne, but that is quite a walk from both the football ground and the town centre. When I was stuck in Cambridge a few weeks ago, I went to their small Waitrose in the Grafton Centre and bought a four bean salad, some bananas and a couple of EatNakd bars to tide me over. But there is no town centre Waitrose in Ipswich.
On the other hand if I wanted greasy burgers, chips, gassy lager or other rubbish, I have plenty of choice.
I should also leave Ipswich Town out of this, as their restaurants can do gluten-free food. And when I had it once it was good.
The Anonymous Widower 