Lights, Fun, Action At Kings Cross
I heard of this art installation in the Standard, so I went to Kings Cross station to have a look.
It’s certainly fun! It’s part of the arts program at Kings Cross and is called Identified Flying Object. This page gives more details.
It should win an award for the most innovative use of LED ropelights.
However, I do feel there is a case for someone to be on the swing in the middle covered in a few more ropelights or perhaps some photo-luminescent paint.
The possibilities are endless!
Fracked Or Fiction
I went to the London Geological Society today to see a lecture called.
Fracked or fiction: so what are the risks associated with shale gas exploitation?
The lecture is described here on their web site.
They will put up a video in two or three weeks, which you can watch to make your own mind up.
My overwhelming conclusion after the lecture was that before we can embrace fracking in earnest, we must collect a lot more information. For example, we don’t know the background levels ofearthquakes and natural gas seepage in this country. So if say it is thought, that fracking had caused a small earthquake, can we be sure that that isn’t one that we habitually get in this country.
A secondary conclusion, is that my engineering knowledge indicated that there are several very fruitful areas for the development of new technological solutions to mitigate some of the possible problems of fracking.
Stopping fracking is probably an easy task for opponents, as it can be portrayed as dangerous in several ways, that appeal to the sensationalist media. And of course the benefits of low gas prices aren’t so obvious, until they actually happen.
You can compare fracking with that other nimby-opposed project; HS2. This can be opposed in terms of noise, vibration and construction and visual disturbance cost, but the benefits of better and faster journeys is easier to understand by the man on the Birmingham train.
What The Heck Is This?
I like properly engineered or crafted products.
What The Heck Is This?
As a clue, it is cast in solid brass!
Can anybody tell me, what to use it for?
Should Scottish Islands Be Given More Independence?
The BBC this morning is running a report about more independence from Scotland and the rest of the UK.
Scottish Secretary Alistair Carmichael has promised to deliver greater powers for the Northern and Western Isles.
The Orkney and Shetland MP said government from Edinburgh had been “just as bad and just as dangerous” for the islands “as it is from London.”
He hopes to deliver “genuine and long lasting reform,” and said an agreement should be in place by midsummer.
Why not?
It could be argued that a greater degree of independence hasn’t done the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands any harm!
But if we look at giving this independence to any area of the UK, giving them control of their strengths and natural resources and such things as infrastructure, education and planning could only be positive.
I probably know most about infrastructure and especially railways than anything else and if we look at Scotland and London, where transport policy has been partially devolved, we’ll see a lot more rail projects than say in the North East or South West, so I’ll look at one example.
If East Anglia had control of its transport, they would have probably dualled the A47, A11 and A140 by now and would be seriously thinking about improving the London to Norwich and the Peterborough to Ipswich rail lines. The latter is probably needed to be electrified, to enable Felixstowe to compete with the London Gateway.
This type of local control could only be good for an area.
But as I said in this article on Mayors, central government doesn’t like to give up power.
The Most Disastrous Television Channel Launch In History
In four days time on the 20th April, it will be the fiftieth anniversary of the attempted launch of BBC2.
I remember it well. My family thought we’d give it a go, but then a power cut in West London changed everything.
The whole incident is reported here. Here’s the first paragraph.
Fifty years ago this weekend, BBC Two went on the air for the first time. Or rather, it was supposed to go on the air. In fact, a massive power cut wiped out the entire launch schedule and led to one of the most disastrous nights in broadcasting history.
It was supposed to be a spectacular opening night for BBC Two. In the end, it was a spectacular shambles.
When the history of television is written a hundred years from now, this night will have a strong chance to be the worst start to any channel ever.
However, the bad start probably gave the channel an awful lot of publicity.
You should remember that in the nineteen-sixties power cuts were a much more common occurence than they are now. The electrical network just wasn’t as good as it is today.
Should We Nuke Russia?
The title of this post is not a serious question in the way you think it is.
I was thinking about how we control Russia in its expansion into Ukraine and wondered how much gas we buy from the country. Google found me this article on the Forbes web site. It has the title of Nukes Best Option Against Russian Gas. It however did give some interesting facts about Russia and its gas, particularly with respect to the sale of the gas. The article contained the answer that I wanted in this sentence.
Russia gets about €300 billion a year (US$417 billion/yr) from fuel exports to Europe, almost 20% of its GDP
So it looks like that by its policies and purchases, the EU is strongly supporting Russia. The article also contained these paragraphs.
It is unfortunate that Germany closed down almost half of their nuclear plants in the wake of Fukushima, 8 out of 17. Nukes really come in handy during this kind of energy conflict. It would behoove Germany to rethink that decision and to postpone their plans to shut down the remaining nuclear plants over the next ten years, to give them more leverage to address the Russian aggression as they continue transitioning to alternatives.
Until recently, Germany’s 17 nuclear plants produced power exceeding the energy produced by all of the Russian gas entering Germany. With eight shut down, the amount of nuclear energy produced still offsets much of that produced by Russian gas. If Germany insists on prematurely shutting the rest of its nuclear fleet, then the amount of gas needing to be imported into the country will double, even with projected increases in renewables.
This explains the title of the article.
The writer has a point. Whether we like it or not, Europe and especially Germany is playing the Russian’s game, by buying more gas and giving Putin the funds to be aggressive.
The sooner we stop buying gas from Russia the better. We need to start fracking and build more nuclear power stations.
A Glow In The Dark Road
I found this story on the BBC web site. It describes how photo-luminescence is going to be used in The Netherlands to make a road safer. It follows a similar idea in a park in Hammersmith that I reported here.
I backed a guy, who was doing something similar thirty years ago, but nothing came of it, I probably wasted a grand, so it wasn’t something I couldn’t affoprd.
I have only seen one successful application of the technology and that was in the Hotel Windsor in Nice to create a ceiling of stars, that dimmed as you went to sleep.
It was very romantic and I wonder if the hotel still has the same ceiling.
But whatever happens to the road in The Netherlands, I believe it is a technology that has lots of applications and we’ll see a lot of it in the future.
Countryfile Is Showing The Gormley Statues
Just watching Countryfile and it’s showing the Gormley statues on Crosby Beach.
Mayors Are The Future
This is the theme of an interesting article in The Spectator entitled Governments have failed – mayors are the future. It is a must read.
As a Londoner, I always argue, that London’s transport system and especially the Underground, Overground and buses are so good, because they are controlled and often designed by people who answer to the people, business and visitors to London.
I can remember, when I left London in the 1960s and started to use Liverpool buses a lot, how I found the plastic covered seats strange, compared to the cloth ones on the RT buses in London.
Even in those days, London did its own thing, because that is what London Transport, the controlling Greater London Council and electorate wanted. Ken and Boris have raised this local control to a new level. And it’s not just these two, but the next London mayor, whoever he or she is and which party they belong to, will raise the standard higher.
This paragraph is very much to the point.
Londoners (there are more of them than Scots and Welsh put together) can argue that Boris has made more of an impact on their lives than David Cameron. And this is with the Mayor of London having fewer powers than most mayors. He is one of many from around the world — Tony Tan in Singapore, Yury Luzhkov of Moscow and Wolfgang Schuster in Stuttgart — who argue that the city is the optimum government unit.
So when voters outside of London complain that London gets too big a slice of the cake, is the problem not London, but their second-rate politicians, who fight local squabbles, rather than do the best for their electorate?
You also have the problem that central government doesn’t like giving power to elected mayors in cities, as it reduces their own power.
But surely, if say Leeds wants a tram system, then that should be a decision for the people, businesses and local politicians of that city.
Why Is Liverpool Street In London So Named?
I pass through Liverpool Street station in London several times a week. As I have strong educational and connections to Liverpool, I’d started to wonder why the street that gives the station is so named.
Liverpool Street is the street that lies in front of the main south entrance to the station and you cross it going between the heart of the City of London and the station.
It is obviously, a road that doesn’t go or point anywhere near Liverpool.
So it is either a name chosen by some developer in the mists of time or perhaps it is named after a historical figure.
The obvious candidate is one of the Earls of Liverpool. According to Wikipedia, it was named after the Second Earl of Liverpool, who was Prime Minister from 1812 to 1827.
Wikipedia doesn’t record if he visited the city after which his title was named.
The Anonymous Widower 