This Must Not Happen Again!
On paper and in the news this trial for environmental crime looks like a good result for the Environment Agency.
But should they have acted a lot earlier to put this criminal, who used threats and intimidation to make money by dumping toxic waste in the countryside, out of business.
Who too, is going to pay for the clean-up of the site?
The Tube Map In German
The Times publishes the work of an interprising academic today. It is the London Underground Tube Map translated into German. You can download it here.
He is not the first. There is another one here, which seems to have been designed after the consumption of copious amounts of alcohol and ham. Click on this map for explanations of the various names. I particularly like Southgate, for which the term “penalty misser” has been used.
The Good Don’t Always Die Young!
Unless of course you consider 95 to be before your time.
Arthur Budgett was a racehorse trainer, who is one of only two people to have bred, owned and trained two Derby winners. In his case they were Blakeney and Morston. C and I actually used Blakeney to cover one of our mares and I had the pleasure of meeting the horse several times at the National Stud, where he was very much a favourite of everybody.
To get more of the flavour of someone who seems to have been a truly good man, read his obituary in the Telegraph. I particularly like this paragraph.
That he had only two head lads — Denis Rayson and Tow Dowdeswell — throughout the 30 years that he was training speaks elegantly of his consistency of character and the esteem in which he was held by his staff. Despite all the success he enjoyed, Arthur Budgett remained a modest and unfailingly courteous man, though he would fight his corner resolutely when he thought he was being unfairly treated — as happened when one of his horses was subjected to a dope test, and an official attempted to prevent him from having an independent vet carrying out another test. Budgett won his point; had he not done so, his career could have been brought to a very early end.
They don’t make people like that these days. More’s the pity.
The Queen’s New Photo
The Queen has had a new portrait photograph taken and it is shown here on the BBC.
I don’t like it as it is too formal and looks like the sort of rubbish monarchs would have had painted hundreds of years ago.
I bet she likes this one much better!
Is London The Best Therapist In The World?
Today, I had to go for the MRI Scan to my arm and shoulder. I decided as the weather was so good that despite my hay fever and the high pollen count, I’d walk to the hospital from Great Portland Street station.
Flower Gardens in Regent's Park
As you can see Regent’s Park was at it’s glorious best and ready for the real summer. One Cypriot couple I met had come to the Park specifically to see the roses. Madame Tussaud eat your heart out! Who wants to see a lot of wax models? I don’t! Unless you can stick pins in them!
I walked past the Open Air Theatre and on to the lake, where mothers were doing what they have for hundreds of years and we used to do in the 1970s and that is feed the ducks and geese.
Feeding the Ducks in Regent's Park Lake
C had a phobia about large birds and I can remember her screaming madly, when a gaggle of angry geese almost chased her into the lake, not far from where the above picture was taken.
She didn’t fall in there, but she did have to jump in here to retrieve our middle son, who fell in throwing bread for the ducks on the other side of thec lake.
Where Our Son Fell In
Both survived without any harm, although it was rather wet walk home to our flat just north of the Park.
I was also pleased to see that the rails, I remember so well because of a photo I took, are still in place after forty years.
A Fence in Regent's Park
They say things don’t last, but memories and that fence do!
A few minutes later I was at the hospital on the other side of the Park.
It seems that in many places in London, I seem to come across items, buildings and bridges that remind me of my past, comfort me and tell me that I did the right thing to come home to the city of my birth and childhood.
She is my friend and therapist and she is always with me.
And for me, as I live in her bounds, all the consultations cost is a bit of effort and perhaps some rubber from my trainers. She is truly the best free therapist in the world! But then others will say that about New York, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Rome and masses of other places.
But it is only your home city that can reach the places in the mind that others can’t reach.
The Real Problem With Olympic Tickets
I did get a few tickets, but not the real ones I wanted like the cycling and the 5,000 metres. I did get some for the beach volleyball though!
I should have applied for more events and perhaps only two tickets for each, rather than the three or four I did.
The real problem isw that for some events there are just not enough tickets. And that doesn’t mean that too many are going to sponsors and the great and good.
Take the equestrian events, which are being held in Greenwich Park. I applied for the cross-country day for the eventing and got none. It should have been held in a larger venue, where they could really have spread everything out. Three venues would have offered much more space and they already have purpose built grandstands that can take over 50,000 spectators. These are the racecourses at Epsom, Ascot and Sandown. If you really want space, then you could have done it at Newmarket, the biggest horse centre in the world. After all, if you are doing the sailing at Weymouth, surely putting the eventing slightly out of London wouldn’t have been a problem.
And then of course there’s the British. And I’ll chuck the Irish in here as well. All of us, be we English, Scotch, Welsh or Irish love our sport and big events. Just look at all the fans, who are going to Glastonbury this weekend, to get filthy dirty in the mud. It’s an event and we’ll go and fill it.
When did you last here of a major sporting or cultural event in these isles, that wasn’t a success. I go to Liverpool regularly and many there will tell you how the celebrations in 2008, when the city was European Capital of Culture was a real party, something to be proud of and also an event that kicked the city into the future.
So did we do the Olympics in too small a way?
Littering
A new campaign is being started to stop the amount of litter, getting on the streets.
I think some of the problems are down to the way we are designed.
One of the reasons we create so much litter, is we only have two hands. I’ve just watched a mother pushing a buggy down the street to take her child to school, whilst she was smoking with one hand and texting with the other. The dog end went on the pavement. Here in Hackney we have some very clean streets, due to an excellent street team, but people should use the bins provided.
Most of the litter on the streets is discarded flyers from fast food shops, taxi companies and others, dog ends and empty beer cans. The latter strangely seem to be put in many cases in my can and bottle recycling bin, which sits on my front patio, by the wheelie bin.
On a more serious note, there were 50,000 or so blockages in the London sewers last year. One was an infamous Fatberg outside a fast food restaurant in Leicester Square, but many were caused by people putting their rubbish down the toilet rather than walking downstairs to put rubbish in their communal bins.
The Anonymous Widower 