Can We Delay Fracking?
Or any other new means of energy creation for that matter?
There has just been a very heated debate about fracking on BBC Radio 5 Live and the amount of hot air produced could power the whole of Sussex without doubt.
Most of the arguments on both sides were fact-free and full of emotion, with accusations of lying and wrong facts from both sides.
The most significant energy news of the day is this story from the Guardian. It says that domestic energy use has dropped by a quarter since 2005.
More work in this field could actually delay the crunch, when we need to build lots of new power stations, be they powered by whatever.
That delay is the time to use to research every method of obtaining energy fully.
The trouble is this would probably give engineers and scientists enough time, to find a solution that ended all the arguments, so a lot of protesters and believers in uneconomic technologies would be kicked soundly into the long grass.
If I’d had a pound for every scientifically incorrect argument about energy I’d heard, I’d be a very rich man.
My Birthday Present To Myself!
A couple of weeks ago, I decided to go back to the only mobile phone, I’ve ever been comfortable with; a Nokia 6310i.
My Birthday Present To Myself!
It arrived today and after charging it up, I can’t understand, why I didn’t buy another one earlier!
It does the things I need, like make and receive phone calls and texts and store useful pieces of information.
It’s also comfortable in your hand, in a way that modern phones just aren’t.
I got it on the Internet for £90, which may seem a lot for a twenty-year-old phone.
But then there is no substitute for good design.
Things I Really Want For My Birthday
Today is my birthday and a few years ago, I didn’t think I’d make the next one, let alone the fourth after my stroke.
I’m happy living here in leafy Dalston at the eastern edge of Hackney, but there are a few things, I want for my birthday.
The first is that, I’d love to get my breathing back to the level it was when I lived with C. All I’ve got is a permanently runny nose, just like I had as a child. Perhaps, it’s just London, although it really started after C died and got a lot worse when I had the stroke. If I look back on the last few years, there are times, when it goes, but why does it go. Two doctors have said it’s hay fever, but then another has said, I’ve no allergy except gluten. Certainly, the sea seems to make it better. So perhaps, I need to find an attractive widow, who lives by the coast in say Liverpool or Brighton.
I’d also like my bathroom finished, as it’s been a long time since the first builders started and then effectively gave up or went bust. The job started with the removal of the old bathroom in October last year.
I’d also like some stacking chairs for my living room to go with my table.
At least I’m getting one thing, I really really want and that is having supper in Arbutus.
But I suppose the best birthday present is outside my control. I did think about going to see the World Athletics Championships in Moscow this week. I didn’t, but I didn’t know that Mo Farah would be running in the final tonight. If I had, it might have swayed me.
But knowing my luck, he won’t win tonight! If it had been tomorrow, he’d have walked it.
Shanklin
I got off the Island Line train at the end, which was Shanklin.
As you can see I walked to the beach and then went back up the hill to the station.
I was glad to see a map, although the town had lots of finger posts and my original navigation system had no difficulty finding my way around.
Ivy Bank
I saw this sign in Shanklin and it reminded me of the worst hotel I ever stayed in.
Ivy Bank
It was in Monmouth in Wales and my father used to tell the tale with gusto. My parents, my sister and myself, had arrived late in the afternoon in the town and as ever, my father hadn’t booked a hotel, so he went searching and found this hotel called Ivy Bank. It had an air about it like a house, where someone has just died and everybody except for the maiden aunt has moved out. I can’t remember who slept where, but I can remember going down for breakfast and we sat like dummies waiting for the other guests or some staff to turn up. In the end the lady, turned up dressed like some stereotype out of films where doors creek and virgins scream. But she was carrying an enormous tray covered in every sort of food to make up the largest English or more truthfully Welsh, breakfast I’ve ever seen.
It was good and we ate well, before my father paid for the rooms and food and we left.
It later transpired that my mother hadn’t slept, as she could hear, what she thought were rats running all over the place.
Since that date, I have vowed never to set food in any house, pub, restaurant or hotel called Ivy Bank.
Felixstowe v. London Gateway
With London Gateway receiving its first ship in November, the war of words between the port and its rivals is hotting up.
There’s a report here from the Daily Telegraph, which says that Felixstowe will be a cheaper port to use. But it was produced by the port’s owners, so we should probably add a shovel of sea salt.
As a man of Suffolk, who has seen Felixstowe rise from a small dock to the giant port it is today, London Gateway should probably look at the lessons of history, where Suffolk has a proud record of taking on invaders. Boadicea’s descendents will give London Gateway a very strong and probably dirty fight.
london Gateway makes a lot about having the land for a large logistics park by the port, but then you’ve still got to get the containers to the market and can London’s roads, the M25 and the railways cope with getting the boxes away? The Gospel Oak to Barking line may be being electrified, but will the residents of North London put up with container trains at all hours? Felixstowe is at the end of the line and electrifying the line to Peterborough and beyond, with a certain amount of double-tracking would help that port cut costs further.
We live in interesting times!
Thames Water Gets It Wrong Again
Thames Water has just announced that it is applying to put up water bills. It is reported here on the BBC. Here’s the first couple of paragraphs.
Thames Water has asked its regulator, Ofwat, for permission to raise prices.
It wants to put up bills by about £29 per household during 2014-15, but has asked Ofwat if it can spread the rise over more than one year.
I have been privileged to go on a Thames Water tour of the sewers a couple of years ago, so I know some of the problems they face in dealing with London’s sewage and delivering the city’s water.
But I can’t help comparing the way they handle their customers, with the way Crossrail deals with those who might use their new railway.
From the burst water mains in Herne Hill, Notting Hill and Regent Street recently to the timing of announcements of price rises, they either seem to be unlucky or have no sense of how to use positive information to get customers on their side in a small way. For instance, where is the parallel archaeology project to the Super Sewer, like Crossrail’s one with their new rail line?
We’ve also seen no report on what caused the fatberg in Kingston recently? This would appear to be something that was beyond their control. So why not be honest?
I have seen no reports too, about some of the superb water and sewage engineering, put in by Thames Water at the Olympic site. And where’s the sewer cam on the Internet, that can show the conditions that they have to deal with?
Thames Water seem to be going out of their way to attract bad publicity.
Should We Embrace Fracking?
As an engineer, I have come to some conclusions about fracking.
There is certainly a lot of gas and possibly oil, buried in the ground, that can be accessed using advanced techniques like fracking in the UK.
Countries like the United States have certainly benefited from fracking with low gas prices and increased manufacturing activity.
There have been problems, as there were in Blackpool in the UK with fracking.
But are we throwing the resources of our great engineering universities, like Newcastle, Surrey, Southampton, Aberdeen, Manchester and Liverpool at the problem? I’ve left out universities that aren’t close to oil and gas reserves.
I doubt it!
Knowing engineering and engineers as I do, I suspect they could come up with better methods, that would benefit the UK and perhaps other countries, who have large difficult gas reserves and are nervous of using fracking and other methods.
So should the major oil and gas companies, be spending a few hundred millions investing in the future?
Why Would You Bank At Barclays?
Over my life, I’ve banked at Barclays at some times and I’ve never really had any complaints, although at times, I’ve had a bit of aggravation.
But looking at the spam, I’m getting, I wouldn’t be banking there now, as they seem to be the target of most of the phishing attempts, I’m getting in my Inbox. In fact, I had six this morning and I think I’ve had about twenty in the last week.
One of the reasons I bank at Nationwide, is that they only send me two e-mails a month, to tell me my statements are ready. I even send those to an e-mail address, that I don’t use for anything else.
I do wonder if phishing Barclays accounts is more successful for criminals, as why would they target Barclays customers, rather than those say of First Direct, about whom I can’t ever remember receiving a phishing message.
I think I’ll keep all the bank phishing messages I get over the next week or so.
Better Than Chugging
I saw this sign outside Oxfam in Islington.
Better Than Chugging
It’s so much better than annoying people with chuggers.
The Anonymous Widower 