A Walk Along The Thames
One of the great things about the River Thames in London, is that for most of its route, you can walk along the banks, using the Thames Path.
Today, was rather cold, but I felt I needed a walk, so I walked along the north bank of the Thames from London Bridge to Wapping, with a diversion into St.Katherine’s Dock, where I had a cup of tea and a lovely salmon salad for just over six pounds.
I took these pictures along the route.
Next time, I might walk as far as Greenwich and then cross using the foot tunnel, before coming back along the other bank.
Walking Around Margate
I spent a couple of hours in Margate and walked up the front in the sun to the Turner Contemporary and the Sliding House.
The Turner Contemporary was well worth a visit, but the Sliding House was a bit disappointing and was very much inferior to the Dalston House.
Recently, I have been to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Call me a Philistine if you like, but although the building of the Turner Contemporary isn’t of the same standard as the Guggenheim, the art it contains, even if you discount the excellent paintings by Turner, is much better than that in Spain.
The Connection Between The First Tanks And The Classic Routemaster Bus
At first glance, it would appear that there would be little connection between Little Willie, which was one of the prototypes leading to the first tanks of the Great War and the classic Routemaster bus of the 1950s.
But I’ve just read this article on the BBC’s web site about how the tanks were developed in Lincoln. The article talks about the two designers.
The work needed more than technical experience, it needed two very particular men – William Tritton and Lieutenant Walter Wilson.
“Tritton was a brilliant engineer,” says Mr Pullen. “And he was a brilliant leader. He got things done.
“He turned Foster’s around with new ideas and new markets.
“Couple him with Walter Wilson, who was also a good engineer but a genius with things like gearboxes, and they made a brilliant partnership.”
It goes on to describe how they locked themselves in a hotel room and scribbled designs on envelopes and fag packets.
And the rest as they say is history!
Walter Wilson went on to form a company called Self-Changing Gears, that developed pre-selector gearboxes. I never drove a vehicle with one of these gearboxes, but I’ve sat just behind the driver on many a London Transport RT-bus and watched the driver select the gear and then hit the gear change pedal to engage it. The use of this type of transmission, was to make the effort of the constant stopping and starting easier on the driver.
Routemasters , it would appear had a fully-automatic version of the transmission, linking them back to the original tanks.
Will The Scottish Independence Referendum Settle Anything?
I’m from the Don’t Care Tendency on the Scottish Independence Referendum.
But after listening to the debate about who owns the oil in the North Sea, I worry about the result of the referendum!
I can’t believe that if the vote is No, that the Scottish Nationalists will accept it quietly for ever, judging by the passionate arguments they put forward this morning.
And if the answer is Yes, will those against prolong the argument as long as they can?
Either way, it doesn’t bode well for people like me, whose taxes go to finance all of the whims of politicians.
If there is a way, then there should be a gradual disintegration of the United Kingdom. Scotland, Wales and London have shown that it is not a bad idea to devolve powers to locally elected bodies.
But then it was suggested that the North East might like an Assembly and that was rejected.
Abraham Lincoln is supposed to have said.
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
Even with fool replaced by please, it’s probably pretty true and sums up why devolution is so difficult to get right.
Why Has This Art Not Been Sold?
My Internet trawl on the Royal Bank of UK Taxpayers has found this tasty morsel in the Scottish Daily Record web site. Here’s the first paragraph.
Fred the Shred’s stunning corporate art collection is still still under wraps at taxpayer-owned bank despite promises to make it more accessible to the public.
As selling this has no implications for the profitability of the rump of the bank or employment issues, it is a disgrace that it hasn’t been sold or at least displayed in public.
Something New And Very Green In The Laundry
I’ve read about a company called Xeros in The Times today. Their washing machines use 80% less water, 50% less energy and 50% less detergent.
The technology has been spun (?) out of Leeds University and uses special beads to clean the washing. They’re also talking about a washing machine with no programmes ( i.e. a man button!)
They’re not available for domestic use! Yet!
But if all machines in the UK were this efficient, then the water saved would fill twenty million swimming pools!
Why Is It Public Projects Tend To Be Late?
I read in The Times today that the new headquarters building of the European Central Bank is three years late and €500 million over budget.
It’s only similar to Portcullis House, Philharmonie de Paris, the Jubilee Line Extension and innumerable cancelled government computer systems.
At least though in recent years, we seem to be getting our project management better, even if the Eurozone will have to pay the bill for the new ECB headquarters.
Did The Cleaner Get It Right?
Or perhaps he or she knows more about modern art that I do.
The story is reported in full here on the BBC. It’s not the first time cleaners have got confused according to the article. It even happened at the Tate Britain.
Surely, if art is good, it should appear to all tastes. Even cleaners with little education on the minimum wage!
Lighting The Way Affordably
I have dabbled in the past with photoluminescence and C and myself were once enchanted by the starry ceilings of the Hotel Windsor in Nice, but up to now most of the applications have been small.
So I commend Hammersmith and Fulham Council’s plans to use the phenomenon to light up the path in William Parnell Park, as is reported here in the Evening Standard.
There are lots of places, where the proiperty of photoluminesence can be successfully used, although safety applications as detailed here predominate.
We may giggle at the idea now, but in a few years time, this type of lighting, will be used all over the place.
If you’d like to put stars on a child’s bedroom or something similar, there is this UK manufacturer in Bury.
Do I Feel Sorry For President Putin?
You spent all this money on bringing the Winter Olympic Games to Sochi, so you can laud it over the world and especially when your beloved Russia, win the gold medal in your favourite sport; ice hockey.
But then your team gets knocked out in the quarter finals by the Finns.
I think we should all remember that the Russians don’t have a good record against the Finns in the winter.
I used to play real tennis with a Finn. He was very proud of the part his father had played in halting the Russians. He still had the white cotton ski suit his father had worn, stuffed with straw for warmth. This sentence from the Wikipedia article describes the Finnish resistance.
The Finns used effective guerrilla tactics, taking special advantage of superior skiing skills and snow-white layered clothing and executing many surprise ambushes and raids. By the end of December, the Soviets decided to retreat and transfer resources to more critical fronts.
I suspect there was a lot of celebration in Finland after the ice hockey victory.
The Anonymous Widower 