Faster Rural Broadband
It has been announced that the first round of funding has been agreed for faster rural broadband.
I am not a high consumer of broadband capacity, as most of my on-line activity is e-mail and blogging.
However, I’m a strong believer that every home and business should have superfast broadband, as this will be one of the ways to create employment everywhere.
It can’t be installed everywhere too soon!
Manchester United Set A Good Example
There are pictures and a long report in the Daily Mail about how Manchester United took the train to London for Saturday’s Champions League Final.
I can remember when football teams regularly took the train. In fact on one trip down on a Saturday evening from Darlington, I shared a carriage with the Millwall team that has just beaten Newcastle United in the FA Cup.
He’s Done More Damage and Killed More than Bin Laden
Someone has just said this on BBC Breakfast about Ratko Mladic.
Let’s hope he gets his final rewards in the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, just like Bin Laden should have faced a similar court!
But will the arrest of Ratko Mladic be a force for good? Mark Urban on the BBC has tried to answer that question here.
Jailed For Speaking Out Against the Death Penalty
Alan Shadrake has been jailed in Singapore for writing a book about the country’s use of the death pemalty. Here’s an extract from the report on the BBC.
A British author of a book about the death penalty in Singapore, Alan Shadrake, has lost his appeal against a six-week jail sentence.
The 76-year old, convicted of insulting the judiciary, will undergo medical tests before beginning his sentence.
His book, Once A Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice in the Dock, alleges a lack of impartiality in the implementation of Singapore’s laws.
It’s about time, that the death penalty was abolished everywhere. Jailing seventy-six-year old authors doesn’t do the case of those who believe in it much good.
The Legacy of the Hackney Mole Man
The Mole Man of Hackney or William Lyttle became notorious because of all the tunnels he dug under his house and in some cases his neighbours. He supposedly has cost Hackney Council around £400,000 in making his house safe. This report from the Guardian a few years back gives a lot of detail.
Even now, a couple of years after his death, the site is still in the middle of a planning argument according to this report.
This is a difficult one, in that the building may once have had some architectural merit. I also know from personal experience how expensive it can be to restore buildings when they get to this state. So a complete restoration may only be possible by someone who has more money and imagination than sense.
I’m glad I don’t live next to what is left of the house.
Is Measles Making A Comeback?
I had measles as an adult at twenty-eight, at the same time as I had chickenpox. I would not wish that on anybody, and hopefully it didn’t leave me with any long-term health problems. My sister had it very badly as a child and it might have explained her poor eyesight. I also know of people slightly older than myself, who have suffered seriously from the disease.
So when I read that there has been a large increase in measles, I get worried.
It would appear that most are related to young people who have travelled abroad.
It says the latest cases are mainly among unvaccinated people under 25 years old and are centred on “small clusters in universities, schools or families or associated with travel abroad”.
I feel that we should encourage more vaccination. I would not recommend my experience of the disease to anyone! But I was lucky! Others may not be so!
The Anonymous Widower 