How Times Change
After C and I did our Sunday morning shopping, one of the first things I would do on return, was to remove the sections of the Sunday Times, we didn’t read.
I still do it, except that the sections I bin are different.
One of the first to go is Driving, as I have little interest these days.
Man Attacked By Rogue Beach Hut
The title of this post is my take on this story.
It’s definitely something that could end up on Have I Got News for You.
Britain Is Becoming Less Violent
According to this report on the BBC about a report from the Institute for Economics and Peace, Britain is becoming a less violent place.
On the other hand, you do get different perceptions from talking to people. Several times, when I say to someone, as I did last Saturday, that I live in Hackney, there is a general view that it is an area with crime and rioting all the time, and a generally low standard of living.
Since, I’ve moved to this area, I’ve not seen anything the least bit violent, an aggressive dog or anything to worry about. There was the tragic incident round the corner, where a young girl was run over by a hit-and-run driver, but she got off a bus and ran behind it to cross the road without looking, despite the fact, there is a light-controlled crossing a few metres away. I don’t think we can put that down to the area, as this sort of incident happens everywhere.
I think there has been one case of housebreaking in the area, where someone went out and left a window open. There was certainly more petty thieving when I lived in rural Suffolk, than this area of Hackney.
The only crime, that appears to be common, is the con artists, who come up with all sorts of non-violent scams. I think, the fake gold ring trick, has been tried on me, about four times in the last year, but only once in the local area. Another time was actually outside Selfridges.
But then, there have always been scammers and let’s face it the Internet is full of them!
Katherine Jenkins At The Marathon
There seems to have been a lot of criticism of Katherine Jenkins at the London Marathon. It’s reported here on the BBC. This is an extract, containing comments from a Daily Mail columnist.
She then criticised the singer’s appearance, describing her £200 Prada sunglasses, full make-up, “immaculate” ponytail and “raisin-sized” diamond earrings.
So what! She wouldn’t be the first runner, who wanted to look her best.
I actually saw her perform once at a private party and she was definitely worth whatever the organisers paid.
Is this just another case of Tall Poppy Syndrome?
If I was a celebrity treated in this way in these circumstances by a columnist, I’d challenge them to a race, with the loser paying several thousand to a charity of the winner’s choice.
The Scottish Currency Question
If I could have ten pence for every politician, who’s put forward his view on the question of what currency Scotland has if they vote for independence, i wouldn’t be just a rich man, but a very rich man.
Surely, the amount of energy expended by politicians, would power a reasonably-sized city like Glasgow.
All of these politicians are flying in the face of the new reality, which is starting to sweep the world. Just read this article on the web site; SmallBusiness.co.uk about the future of banking. Here’s the first paragraph.
I was recently invited onto Evan Davis’ BBC radio and TV show ‘The Bottom Line’ for a discussion on alternative finance. Alongside me was Zopa founder Giles Andrews, the founder of Zopa – a UK peer-to-peer lending platform, and Michael Joseph, the former CEO of Safaricom, which set up M-Pesa, a mobile payment system, in Kenya.
It is the last bit that is the most significant. It also says this about banking and particularly M-Pesa.
The day-to-day of banking is changing world-wide and banks are not the ones driving the innovation. For instance, by some measures, Starbucks is among the 200 largest banks by deposits in the US, having $3 billion on their in-store card in 2012. Both Google and Amazon are also talking about providing finance to users of their marketplaces. At the other end of the economic spectrum, 31 per cent of Kenyan GDP now flows through M-Pesa, which is so simple it can be operated on a very modest Nokia phone and has no physical bank branch presence.
So does it matter about whether an individual or a company has their bank account in pounds, dollars, euros, thistles or beans? It only matters to the individual concerned. As someone living in and spending most of his money in the UK, I would probably keep my account in pounds! Although switching to euros, should be just a choice on the account.
Unfortunately, this transparent and convenient system would be unacceptable to the banks, as they make so much money on currency conversion.
I do wonder, if my new-found liking for cash, may be a personal reaction to the greed of the banks. If I pay by cash in Carluccio’s, I can leave a tip easily. It also seems to get good service, as the staff in many restaurants know me and have the gluten-free menu ready immediately I walk in. It’s also faster to settle up and there is nothing worse than waiting to get away, whilst a dim waitress struggles with a credit card terminal.
So to me, in a few years time, the Scottish currency question will be irrelevant to most people and companies in Scotland. They will pay their taxes in whatever currency the Scottish government uses or is forced to use and keep their bank account in whatever is convenient for their lifestyle or business.
So let’s get going on research to capture all that hot air being spoken to generate lots of electricity.
Andrew Wakefield And The Swansea Measles Outbreak
The Guardian has a well-written piece on the measles outbreak in South Wales. Here’s the introduction.
The Department of Health has dismissed claims by a former doctor who started a global scare about the MMR vaccine that officials were responsible for the outbreak of measles in south Wales.
C and I immunised all our children and we never regretted it.
As someone, who had measles as an adult, i wouldn’t want that to be inflicted on anybody. I was also lucky in that I didn’t get any complications.
My thoughts now are that I hope the epidemic subsides and no-one suffers from catching measles. I would suggest to Wakefield, that he shuts up, as otherwise, I think he might find himself in bigger trouble.
Murder At Minchenden
My old school; Minchenden Grammar School in Southgate was a fairly peaceful place most of the time, but last night just down from the school, a murder was committed, as is reported here. When I went to see the Olympic Torch in Southgate, we walked through the area.
Now This Is What I Call A Tunnel!
This story from the BBC web site is more significant than you think. Here’s the introduction.
The Norwegian government has backed an ambitious plan to create the world’s first ship tunnel. But why has nobody tackled this engineering feat before?
At 45m high (148ft) and 36m (111ft) wide, the Stad Ship Tunnel will be the only one of its kind – a passage through solid rock able to accommodate 16,000 tonne freight and passenger ships.
Ship canals have long been used to make journeys more direct and safer but the Stad peninsula is a mountainous divide, peaking at 645m, between the Norwegian Sea to the north and the North Sea to the south.
it may or may not go ahead, but it does show how confident engineers and tunnellers are in their hole digging.
And that is the significance of the story!
Crossrail in London is being dug in soft ground, but it shows how by-passes can be created under London with relative ease.
We shall be seeing a lot more tunnels in the next few decades, as the technology is just getting better every year.
We Shouldn’t live Near Petrochemical Plants
In my three years at ICI in the late 1960s, I went over several chemical plants. I have heard so many stories about how supposedly safe plants have exploded killing numbers of people.
On one plant, I heard a tale of an instrument being installed to analyse the gases in a burner. The instrument found that the gases were in such a composition that they might explode. The plant manager immediately shut the plant down and they worked out a strategy to run the plant in a safe manner. They informed the European chemical company from whom they had licensed the design of the plant of what they had found and were politely told that it wasn’t possible to build an instrument that could measure the composition of the gases. A few months later, the European company’s plant buried itself in a hillside.
And then there was the Flixborough disaster in 1974. I had left ICI by that date, but I was in contact with some of my former colleagues and also some other chemical engineers. From somewhere I heard the rumour that one of the problems at Flixborough was that the plant had originally been designed in metric units and then to build it, these had been converted to Imperial. So when they bypassed a reactor, they got the calculations wrong.
Remember that ICI went fully metric in about 1955 for chemical plant design. Safety was one of the reasons they stated!
Now these all go to show, that no matter how careful you are, mistakes will get made. Mistakes you can’t afford to make, when dealing with dangerous chemicals.
Therefore every chemical or petrochemical plant should be assessed for danger and an appropriate exclusion zone declared around it, where no houses, offices or other dangerous plants are allowed.
It would appear that in the latest explosion in Texas, that there were houses too near to the plant that exploded.
A Judge Holds Himself In Contempt
I like this story from the Wall Street Journal.
it’s about a judge, who held himself in contempt of court, when his mobile phone rang.
The Anonymous Widower 