Corbyn Not Happy With Shoot-To-Kill
This article on the BBC web site is entitled Jeremy Corbyn ‘not happy’ with shoot-to-kill policy.
What would this mean for armed police officers, who came across a group of Islamic State terrorists murdering people in a theatre?
- They could offer themselves up as human shields.
- They could wait until the attackers ran out of bullets and arrest them.
- They could call Corbyn and ask him to negotiate.
Jeremy Corbyn’s thought processes are useless against the nutters of Islamic State.
Walking From Haggerston Station To Mare Street
I did this walk as the area from East of Haggerston Road through London Fields is going to be traffic calmed, as described in this page on the Hackney Council website.
This report in the Hackney Citizen is entitled London Fields residents clash over car-cutting measures. This is said.
Residents are at loggerheads over council proposals for a car-free zone to the west of London Fields.
During the three-month trial period, due to begin in January, Middleton Road and surrounding streets will be blocked off to motorists, allowing cyclists and pedestrians to travel freely down Middleton Road.
Residents will still be permitted motor access to all streets.
Nothing is as difficult as getting the correct mix of traffic. They also provided this map.
Car-Free Route Through London Fields
So I took a lot of pictures as I walked.
My observations.
- It was a charming walk, through fairly wide streets with lots of trees. Hackney is no crime-ridden wasteland!
- There was no sign of any traffic calming.
- The area has a high level of cycling. I suppose being flat helps.
- There were a few cases of traffic rushing about.
- Stonebridge Gardens is being upgraded with a new design.
I remember the area from the 1970s, when C ran a short life house for ex-prisoners, just off Mare Street. You could say the area has improved, without too much drastic change. This Google Map shows the area, where I walked.
Haggerston To London Fields
Haggerston station is on the East London Line at the West (left) and London Fields station on the Lea Valley Line is to the right of the green space that is London Fields, with its fifty metre heated outdoor pool. Mare Street is the A107 running down the map to the right of the railway.
I live just a few hundred metres from the top left corner of the map.
It will be interesting to repeat this walk, when the traffic calming is complete and they’ve finished painting the bridge.
A Lesson In Traffic Management
On Friday, next door got low water pressure. So now we have a chicane around the hole that Thames Water have dug, whilst they look for the problem!
My road certainly seems quieter, as traffic could be much less and slower.
Perhaps Thames Water and National Grid, should be asked to dig holes in rat runs as a traffic-calming measure!
It’s Only Cash Or Contactless Credit Card For Me!
I had a chat with a solicitor, I met on a train yesterday about credit card fraud. I said that I try to use my contactless card if possible and get mildly annoyed if a company expects me to enter my pin for a purchase of about a tenner.
She agreed and said she had been involved in formulating the legal basis of the payments policy of a large retailer. She made some interesting points.
- Fraud on contactless cards seems to be lower than predicted. We both added a caveat of Not Yet!
- Some retailers have reported a strong move from cash to contactless cards.
- Research has shown, that people keep contactless cards very safe, in a place like a deep pocket, to avoid accidental transactions.
I also said that a policeman had told me, that stolen contactless cards aren’t often used in a contactless manner. She said that thirty quid isn’t worth getting caught for, when there’s a bent shop where you can make thousands.
I said that, I once used my ordinary card in a branch of a well-known franchise to purchase an SD card. The lady, who served me, was a Muslim from her dress and when my card didn’t work in the machine, she told me that she’d used the wrong one. So she asked me to put my card in another. Which I did and the purchase was completed.
Within a few hours my card had been cloned and some expensive purchases were made. My companion confirmed it was a trick beloved of small shops and garages.
So I had been conned by a simple sleight-of-hand! Did the money end up with Islamic State? Probably not, but you do wonder!
I now only use cash or contactless credit card for my smaller purchases.
I also now rarely use small shops, unless I’ve known them for some time. And I certainly wouldn’t use a credit card without it being contactless.
The LaMiLo Project
Few have heard of the LaMiLo Project, which is an EU funded project to reduce truck traffic and the consequent air pollution in cities.
I hadn’t until half-an-hour ago, although I knew there were experiments going on at Euston.
This page on the London Councils web site, gives more details about the pilot project in London.
In this pilot a freight train was brought into Euston station in the middle of the night and pallets of goods were unloaded on to smaller trucks for onward delivery in Central London.
This is said on the London Councils web site about the pilot.
The pilot has provided outstanding results; it has seen 50,000 items delivered to over 250 councils building, leading to a 46% reduction in the number of vehicle trips and a 45% reduction in kilometres travelled.
It sounds like an idea worth pursuing. Although Nigel Farage would object to the EU involvement.
Up Yours, Putin!
I tend to think that the reports of doping by Russia’s athletes, like this report in the Guardian entitled How Russian athletics’ rotten system built a wall to conceal doping and deceit, could be more significant politically. than anybody thinks. After all it follows a very similar pattern to their dealings with Ukraine and other former Soviet possessions, where Russia thinks itself to be able to ignore the standards of the rest of the World.
They should be banned from the Olympics in Rio!
I also suspect that the bombing of the airliner in Egypt was not deliberately targeted at a Russian plane. If that is the case, as some experts have said, it was Putin’s bad luck and our good!
The sooner Putin is removed from power, the better it will be for everyone. Except perhaps for a few Russian oligarchs!
My father, who was a very strong anti-dictator and anti-fascist would rate Putin alongside Hitler and Stalin.
He would have laughed like a drain at Peter Brookes cartoon in The Times, where Putin is shown laying a wreath sfter the air crash, with a speech bubble of “What sort of a rat blows hundreds of innocent civilians out of the sky?” As he turns to walk away, you can see his rodent’s tail.
Is liking cartoons in my genes?
They’re Not So Silly In Suffolk
I once had a letter published in The Times after C died, in which I praised the joined up thinking, between the Registrars and the Council, which got me a virtually automatic Council Tax reduction.
Have you ever wondered what happened to all those businesses, that were displaced by the Olympics in Stratford?
Quite a few ended up in Haverhill, as St. Edmundsbury Council thought that would be a good place to relocate and they had the sites available. So the Council achieved the highest rate of inward investment of any Council in England in 2012, by some intelligent marketing of the businesses to be displaced. One unlikely story, I heard, was that someone from the Council walked around and knocked on doors!
BBC Breakfast was joking this morning that Bury St. Edmunds-based brewer, Greene King have an export boom to China after David Cameron took the Chinese leader to the local pub and gave him a pint of Greene King IPA.
It’s all reported in this article in the Guardian, entitled Greene King strikes gold as Chinese demand soars after Xi Jinping pint.
Swansea Tidal Lagoon In The Independent
I have a feeling that the Swansea Tidal Lagoon could be a very worthwhile way of generating electricity.
Today, there is this article in the Independent entitled Swansea’s tidal lagoon project delayed amid concerns over costs.
It is a comprehensive review of the technology and contains some interesting nuggets.
- The Swansea scheme has a capacity of 320MWh
- The company is saying up to five other places could have a lagoon power station and together they would develop eight per cent of our electricity.
But to me, its biggest advantage, is once it is built, with maintenance, it will continue to produce zero-carbon energy for a long time.
I shall be watching this project with a lot of interest.
Atlantic Superconnection Features In The Sunday Times
I am an electrical engineer by training and although possibly the only work I’ve done in the power field directly is to wire a plug, I know the technology of power generation fairly well.
Ever since I went to Iceland last year and first heard about IceLink, I’ve followed the project with interest.
Today there is an article in The Sunday Times entitled Cameron wants sea cable to bring lava power from Iceland.
It talks about the involvement of a company called Atlantic Superconnection
Read the article and follow the company!
Good News For Redcar
I have a Google Alert set for “York Potash”, as contrary to the media who are ignoring the story, I believe that the new potash mine at Whitby being developed by York Potash could be economically valuable to the area around Middlesbrough.
The Alert found this article on a web site called Engineering and Mining Journal entitled Sirius Minerals Receives Approval For York Potash.
The article gives a positive report on the mine. I liked this bit.
The project lies between Whitby and Scarborough, extending about 16 km inland from the coast and up to 14 km offshore. According to the company, York potash will be a deep-shaft mine of unprecedented design. Within this area lies the thickest and highest grade polyhalite ore reserve in the world. Development of the 20-million-metric-ton-per-year (mt/y) operation would take place in two phases. The first phase is designed provide 10 million mt/y before scaling up to full capacity over a number of years.
That is serious engineering and a hell of a lot of potash.
Hopefully, it’ll give an upturn to the workers and residents of Teeside.
A quick estimate gives that the full capacity of the mine, is equivalent to about the weight of nine hundred HMS Invincibles, give or take a Harrier or two.
The Anonymous Widower 