The By-Election That Was a Disgrace
The by-election in Feltham and Heston yesterday was a disgrace.
After a record low turnout of just 29%, do they really deserve an MP.
Perhaps if the turnout is below say 40%, then the election should be rerun.
Using Mobile Phones whilst Driving
According to this piece on the BBC, the police are cracking down on people, who use their mobile phone whilst driving.
Edward King was on and e told how an AA man, had said the only punishment needed was to lose your phone number, so you’d have to get another.
What a simple idea! Often the simple ideas are the best.
I’m certain it would work well.
Bankers Get Their Just Desserts
I like this story in The Times about how Bob Diamond has fired some of the jerks in Barclays. Remember that Mr. Diamond has dual British-American nationality so he obviously knows the British equivalent of jerk. I wonder if he called them all a wunch of bankers as he gave them their P45s.
I particularly liked this bit.
Mr Diamond referred to an infamous episode in 2002, when six Barclays bankers celebrating their bonuses spent £44,000 at the London restaurant Petrus, as “the no jerk rule personified”.
“That was embarrassing,” he said. “It was taking advantage — we have a responsibility to our colleagues and to have acted that way in a public place was inexcusable.”
The bankers consumed a 1982 Montrachet costing £1,400 and three bottles of Petrus Pomerol, the 1945 at £11,600, the 1946 at £9,400, and the 1947 at £12,300. There was also a dessert wine, costing £9,200. The restaurant threw in the food for free.
They may have got their food free, but did that include desserts. There’s more details of it here on the BBC.
Boris on the Euro Crisis
Boris Johnson is always quotable, but this is one of his best.
The EU’s move to protect the euro might “save the cancer rather than the patient”.
Where would newspapers be without Boris?
The Olympic Torch is Going to Dublin
I didn’t realise this, until I read this article in the Irish Times.
But then the Irish always like a good party.
And I’ve always found, that the English often get on better with the Southern Irish, than they do with the Scots and the Northern Irish.
Technology Means It Would Be Easier to Leave the Euro Than It Was To Join
When I wrote the piece about Michael Spencer’s thoughts on the drachma, I didn’t think the whole thing through. I didn’t think about all the new notes that would need to be printed and the conversion of cash machines.
But this article sets it all out. It also contains this interesting paragraph.
“It also rather depends on how individual institutions adapted their systems to the original change-over to the euro,” says Lewis. “My guess is that many organisations in Greece might simply have put a converter around their existing systems, rather as some UK companies did when we went decimal in 1971 – we discovered in the run-up to the year 2000 that at least one major insurance company’s accounts were still running in pounds, shillings and pence!”
So we were still using £sd in 2000. I’ll also admit that in some of the systems I’ve programmed, where we displayed data in Iranian dates or Korean currency, what went on underneath wasn’t pretty. But it worked!
So how did I find the article. A friend told me that De La Rue were printing drachma notes. So I used Google and found that Greece would probably use its own security printer.
Although the De La Rue share price was up by one percent today.
The Sharing of Patient Data
David Cameron is getting a lot of criticism about his plans to anonymously share patient data with private companies.
As someone, who has lost two close relatives to difficult cancers and suffered a serious stroke, I can’t see what the problem is about, if the patients personal details are kept confidential.
I was once told by a senior research manager of a big German pharmaceutical company, that only about fifteen percent of medical databases have been analysed to any great extent. He felt that it would take an increasing part of medical research.
My son was part of a major trial being coordinated by a renowned British University. I was invited to see their work and was totally impressed at the care they were taking to make sure the data was correct and properly safeguarded. They were also looking for patterns in the data, as any clue, however small, might be invaluable in the fight against disease.
One thing that has to be said, is that if you are looking at any database for patterns, then that database must be complete, with no errors in the data. I have come across researchers, who when they are trying to prove something in a field like archaeology, first clean the data of anything that doesn’t fit their theories.
That is the biggest problem in research.
Michael Spencer’s Thoughts on the Drachma and Taxation
Michael Spencer is the CEO of ICAP and someone whose business judgement I respect. He’s also a man with strong Suffolk connections, which is always a plus point.
An article with the headline of “Spencer ready for return of drachma”, sums up his view on what to do, if or when Greece falls out of the euro.
He s also very forthright on what would happen if the financial transaction tax is imposed on the City.
After reading the article though, I suspect it will never be levied, as everybody has too much to lose. Except of course countries like Dubai, who’d laugh all the way to the bank, if it was implemented in substantial parts of the world.
One thing I like about Mr. Spencer, is that his company does its bit for charity. Here’s their page.
If you can get a copy of the article, read it!
If you look at ICAP’s major competitors, they are either in London or based in the United States. Not one is based on German or French soil. So if the European Union brought in a unilateral transaction zone and the UK didn’t levy it, they’d raise precisely zilch. Would banks like Deutsche Bank do their business in Frankfurt, when they could do it cheaper in New York? Of course they would!
Where Are All The Containers Going?
I found this table in the December 2011 edition of Modern Railways. It shows the total number of freight trains per day at a number of points on the rail network for the three years 2011, 2020 and 2030.
Colchester – 39 21 32
March – 34 85 98
Huntingdon – 10 38 63
Kettering – 18 19 19
Tring – 65 87 132
Pangbourne – 53 93 125
Action Grange – 60 130 171
As many of these trains will be 30 to 40 boxes long, I’m sure that there will be a lot of complaints from the Nimbys, who thought they’d bought a quiet cottage in the countryside and now find they’ve got one heavy freight train every half hour. Some will even run in the depths of the night.
But at least the increase will get the trucks off the road.
Analogue Computing at the Science Museum
There were reports in the papers this week about James Lovell selling the checklist that he used to correctly setup the lunar module to get them back home.
What is always missed out in these discussions, is that all of the calculations for the Apollo moon landings were done on a simulator, built using two PACE 231R analgue computers linked together.
At the Science Museum, they did have Lord Kelvin’s differential analyser, but although it was impressive, with lots of impressive engineering and brass gears, there was little to indicate, what this type of machine grew into by the 1960s. Without analogue computers to solve the complicated dynamics of the moon landings, the Americans wouldn’t have been able to get there when they did. Digital computing didn’t have the capability to match a PACE 231R to solve the simultaneous differential equations involved until the mid 1970s.
I was lucky enough to work with a PACE 231R and there are pictures of the one I used here.
There doesn’t appear to be a working PACE 231R anywhere in the world. But to get one to work would be a lot easier than say to get an early digital machine working. An analogue computer is basically a peg board that links a series of amplifiers together. Now I know that these amplifiers are thermionic valve and not transistor, but a typical machine would have a hundred or so of them. And as they use something very akin to 1960s audio technology, finding someone to fix them would not be difficult. Our machine at ICI Plastics in Welwyn Garden City, was carefully looked after by one Eddie Kniter, a Pole, who walked his way to Switzerland to escape the Nazis.
I wonder if the Science Museum has one of these machines in its reserve collection. Getting it working, would really show kids how differential equations are useful in real life.
Returning to Apollo, I remember that the magazine, Simulation, published by Simulation Councils Inc., had a detailed description in one issue of all the simulators and simulations done in connection with the project.
I’d love to get hold of a copy.
The Anonymous Widower 