The Best Cafe In Eastfield
Marks and Spencer’s cafes are probably best described as safe, with a boring selection of drinks and pastries, that wouldn’t annoy ladies who drink milky coffee.
But the one on the bridge at their Eastfield store is different.
It’s nice to go to a cafe with proper china and nearly all those in that area of the shopping centre use paper cups.
So it’s a no-brainer as to where I go!
It does mean that if I’m lucky, I have to put up with one of the best views in East London.
As Marks and Spencer now have an extensive range of gluten-free foods in the shop below the cafe, Stratford is an ideal place to break a journey with a pit stop for supplies
Have I Put In Enough Sockets?
We live in an age, where every device we have has a different charger and everything else needs to be connected to the mains.
My phone, broadband and Sky television lines all come in at one end of my living room, whereas the ideal place for the television is at the other end on a bracket that allows the television to either face the room or be visible from the kitchen.
So I decided to put upwards of a dozen plugs at each end of the room and run three HDMI cables along the wall, so that I could feed the signals to the television. I also ran aerial and Ethernet cables along the wall. Note the two plastic trunkings.
Until now, I’ve just used long HDMI cables, which because they have to go into the back of the Sky and BT boxes, they go round the bend a few times and make everything difficult.
The new layout, has also allowed me to move my laptop, so that when I use it, I face directly at the television, which is much more comfortable.
Ovo Signs A Breakthrough Deal
It has been announced in This is Money, that Ovo has joined with Plymouth Council, so the council can be a low energy supplier.
Ovo Energy is set to unveil a ground-breaking deal that could pave the way for local councils across the country to become energy suppliers.
A tie-up with Plymouth council will be endorsed today by Energy Secretary Ed Davey when it is announced at the Liberal Democrat party conference in Glasgow.
I think we’ll be seeing a lot of these deals, as councils get more proactive in helping hard-pressed consumers. Come to think of it, the average council, like my one of Hackney, must be quite large purchasers of energy. So they could be getting a good deal too!
Does this deal also mean that councils are thinking more intelligently about energy issues?
After all my next-door council; Islington, has built the innovative Bunhill Energy Centre to provide district heating and electricity.
So some may well be!
But are we? So many people I talk to haven’t moved away from their large energy supplier.
They’re going to change at some time, so it is best to get the pain over now, as probably like my old supplier, they’ll muck up the change.
But once you have changed, you’ll have a piece of paper with all the relevant details of your supplies and meters, so a second change will be a lot easier.
DownThe Hill In A Sunny Sheffield
I took these pictures as I walked from the Leopold Hotel to the station.
The Winter Garden was a total surprise. In fact, when I saw it, I was rather disappointed that I’d had a morning coffee in a Cafe Nero.
It was a very easy walk with the hill.
As I got to the bottom, it struck me that it might have been an idea to put the odd escalator in the climb to make it easier to walk up. Perugia has a similar problem of getting up the hill and they have used escalators to advantage.
A Walk Along The Thames From Erith Station To Crossness
This afternoon I enjoyed the sun and walked along the Thames Path from near Erith Station to the Victorian Pumping Station at Crossness.
When looking at these pictures, you can see some of the places that I also saw on the cruise down the Thames.
I haven’t fully annotated the pictures yet, as finding out what some of the buildings are isn’t easy.
There’s some good technology at work in Crossness and they should tell people about it.
Fracking For Freedom
In this post, I said that Iceland can help us overcome energy shortages, caused by the problem of Putin.
Today in an article in the Sunday Times, Jim Ratcliffe, the boss of chemicals giant Ineos is saying that he would pay landowners and communities £2.5billion. Here’s what the Sunday Times says.
ONE of Britain’s richest men hopes to trigger a shale gas boom by giving away billions of pounds to landowners and communities affected by fracking.
Jim Ratcliffe, the 61-year-old Lancastrian who founded chemicals giant Ineos, has promised to hand over 6% of the revenue from oil and gas wells — 4% to landowners and 2% to local communities — in an effort to jolt the moribund industry into life. The offer would equate to £375m for a typical exploration area of 36 square miles, and goes far beyond the 1% giveaway to which the industry has committed. Ratcliffe estimated the offer could be worth £2.5bn in total.
I would never be affected by fracking here in Central London.
But if we could get all our energy supplies without resorting to those basket cases of Russia and the Middle East, we wouldn’t be in bed with some of the nastiest regimes in the world.
My Worry About Islamic State
I believe that Islamic State are possibly the worst organisation I’ve seen in my lifetime. Even such as Pol Pot in Cambodia and North Korea now, are nowhere near them on a scale of evil. They are in some ways more extreme and violent than Hitler and the Nazis at their worst.
But unlike Hitler, who had virtually no supporters in this country, there are quite a few in the UK, who think that Islamic State have got the right idea.
So by voting to attack Islamic State in Iraq, have we made ourselves a target for these crackpots and religious nutters?
After all, it is really ourselves and France, of the countries against Islamic State, who have significant Muslim populations.
My worry though, is not what terrorists might do, but the reaction of the UK’s population, if another attack like those of July 7th 2005 were to happen.
The Properties Of Turmeric
I’ve often thought that curries seem to perk me up and I posted about it two years ago.
Now there’s this report from Germany, entitled Brain Repair May Be Boosted By Curry Spice. Here’s a flavour.
A spice commonly found in curries may boost the brain’s ability to heal itself, according to a report in the journal Stem Cell Research and Therapy.
The German study suggests a compound found in turmeric could encourage the growth of nerve cells thought to be part of the brain’s repair kit.
I think, I’m off for a curry tonight!
An Evening Cruise On The Thames
I went on an architectural cruise on the Thames, starting from Greenwich and going East.
The pictures show the various sights we saw.
Miliband Forgets The Deficit
I suppose strictly speaking, it’s not his deficit, as it was stared by Blair/Brown, but I see Miliband’s omission of the deficit in his conference speech rather worrying.
I certainly wouldn’t vote for any politician, who omits to tell the full picture.
Miliband is certainly second-rate even compared to Gordon Brown, as he has shown in the last few weeks over the \scottish Referendum.
The Anonymous Widower 