Match Six – Ipswich 2 – Millwall 0
Town got their second win of the season and the match was again lit up, by a sparkling display from the eighteen-year-old Teddy Bishop. He combined well with McGoldrick and their joint persistence made the first goal.
Walking to the ground from the station is easy at Ipswich, especially as you can see the ground virtually all the way and there are several maps. But surely those near the ground, should show the layout of the stadium to ease the walks of supporters and visitors.
History But No Stand Information
But at least Ipswich has got maps, which is more that can be said for most large cities and towns.
Millwall have a bad reputation for fan behaviour, but on the way home, I was sat with three fans and they were just phlegmatic about their teams performance.
The police told me, that they’d just had a nice trip to the country.
Art At Spitalfields
It is always good to walk through Spitalfields to get to Liverpool Street station.
The goat has been there for some time, but it’s the first time I’ve looked at Cecil Balmond‘s work!
London’s Garden Station
With the English love of gardening, you’d think that there would be lots of railway and Underground stations in the capital, which celebrate gardens.
But there are only three; Covent Garden, Kew Gardens and Ruislip Gardens.
The first is not really a garden now and who has heard of the last, but everybody has heard of the second.
So as I had heard the station had a pub on the platform, I went to take a look.
I just had a glass of real cider, but unfortunately the pub called the Tap On The Line had one of the most coeliac-unfriendly menus I’ve found in a long time.
The piece de resistance, was that the chips were oven chips, which as any coeliac knows are enhanced with wheat, so are not gluten-free. Even McDonalds manage to make their fries gluten-free!
You would be better off bringing a picnic to eat in Kew Gardens, which is four hundred metres away.
A Control Engineer’s View On The Result Of The Scottish Referendum
I trained as a Control Engineer in the 1960s and applying what I learned then to everyday systems is fun.
Avoid Discontinuities
One of the first things, you should do in designing a system is avoid discontinuities.
Take riding a bicycle. One of the things you try to avoid is steps, as even a single one like a kerb is a discontinuity to be got around. It is much easier to ride along a nice flat, smooth road.
I live in London and as I walk around, I see more and more instances, where steps have been removed or made easier. Even our Class 378 trains on the Overground, are in most instances step-across to get in or out.
So whether the Scots vote for independence or not, the trend in life is to remove discontinuities, so Edinburgh and Westminster must work to remove them. Here’s a few that we should have, as we share an island.
- An Interchangeable Currency
- A Public Transport System, that is continuous.
- A Legal System, where a crime in one country is a crime in the other.
- A Health System with similar access.
- Continuous Telephone and Internet
There are probably a few other things, but these don’t impact on the minutia of daily life.
We should be eliminating these, but politicians love creating a few more or are stopping the elimination of some. Take metrication and adjusting the clocks to European time, for two simple examples.
Avoid Large Control Movements
When you control a system, like our simple example of riding a bike, imagine you only had the options of turning the handlebars hard left or hard right. You’d soon fall off!
So in other words to make a system better, you do everything in a softly-softly mode. If you need to get from one state to another you do it in a smooth set of planned movements taking account of conditions over which you have no control.
Just think of the complicated process of landing an aircraft. It probably goes fine, until the aircraft gets struck by an unexpected lightning bolt. After that the experience and training of the pilot takes over.
Plan Ahead For Change
Changes can be difficult, if you don’t plan for them. That is why natural disasters like floods and earthquakes cause so many problems in the world.
But take some recent earthquakes in California and Japan. Some large cities like Tokyo avoided anything other than minor damage, because of good planning.
At present there are two mega projects in the UK; Crossrail and the Scottish Referendum.
I am surrounded in London by disruption caused by Crossrail, but everything has been planned minutely, to cause the smallest amount of pain. This planning was a long process taking many years.
Where is the planning in the separation of Scotland and the rest of the UK? Alex Salmond has decided to inflict all the pain afterwards.
In other words, he is like most politicians. Fuck you Jack, I’m alright and I’ve made my place in history!
The others are no better, as Devo Max should have been devolved to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in the first place. After all, the Isles of Man, Jersey and Guernsey seem to get on well with us all and isn’t that what they’ve got.
A Safari To The Wilds Of Barking
This morning, I took the bus to Barking Riverside to get a feel of the area, that in a few years time will be served by the Gospel Oak to Barking Line Extension to Barking Riverside.
The Ripple Nature Reserve in the area, is just like some of the industrial wastelands, that I remember from my childhood in London after the Second World War.
One Tax We Don’t Have To Pay
I was reading an article in the Sunday Times about how Germans are leaving churches in droves as they don’t want to pay the church tax. Here’s the jist.
When it comes to a choice between God and mammon, German churchgoers are overwhelmingly choosing mammon.
Hundreds of thousands of citizens have been leaving the German churches every year, appalled by child sex abuse scandals and outrageous spending by clerical fat cats.
It would appear that for the average wage earner, it could be several thousand euros, which all church members pay to their chosen church.
There’s more about the so-called church tax in Wikipedia and I was surprised at how many countries have one. Here’s what Wikipedia says about the tax in Austria.
Church tax is compulsory for Catholics in Austria, with a rate of 1.1%. This tax was introduced by Hitler in 1939. After World War II, the tax was retained in order to keep the Church independent of political powers.
The Sunday Times said that some Catholics in Germany, who don’t pay the tax might be refused a religious burial. How charitable is that, when apparently the Catholic Church in Germany is said in the article to be worth £341bn.
Many of us moan about tax rates, but at least here’s one tax, that we don’t have to pay.
Are English-Based Politicians Making Scots More Likely To Vote Yes?
Reports like this one on the BBC are saying that the Scottish Referendum is swinging towards independence.
There’s an old medical joke told by doctors. – “You can always tell a Barts man, but you can’t tell him anything!”
I suspect that in terms of politics this applies to Scots. After all the voting patterns for Scotland are very different to England in General Elections.
So as the No campaign seems to be based around those who found political fortune in Westminster, does the Yes Campaign have an advantage. Even Alistair Darling represents an Edinburgh constituency, so he must go down well in Glasgow.
So what is the No Campaign doing?
According to reports like this one, they’re sending in their secret weapon – John Prescott.
I have a feeling that this could give the Yes Campaign a winning push!
Liverpool Gets Another Event
This morning Liverpool is hosting the start of the Tour of Britain.
It seems to me, that since being European Capital of Culture in 2008, Liverpool has received more of the large events, than it should have on the law of averages.
Perhaps, it’s just that the City is more efficient in attracting them!
On the other hand the Sea Odyssey of 2012, brought 800,000 people into the centre and had an economic impact of £32million.
So they know that events work.
It’ll be interesting to see the figures for the Tour de Yorkshire in Leeds and Sheffield.
You Are Absolutely Bonkers
This was the wonderful accolade that was given to Peter Duncan and his partner on Tumble.
He is putting us all to shame, doing what he does on the show, only a few years younger than I am!
The Tall Ships Race 2014
I went with a friend to see the tall ships moored in London for the Tall Ships Race 2014.
We started at Canary Wharf, then moved on to Woolwich, before going to Greenwich.
To avoid the crush, we escaped under the river, using the Greenwich Foot Tunnel, before finally taking a look at the ships from the North Bank.
The Anonymous Widower 