Who Said This? – The Answer
Margaret Thatcher!
An article by Charles Clover, who would probably be described as an environmentalist, wrote the article in the Sunday Times entitled, “If only we still had Thatcher, the scientist and mother of cleaner energy”.
Or read this one in the Guardian or this one in the Independent.
But whatever, you say about Margaret Thatcher, she was a trained scientist and worked as one. Name another Prime Minister or President of any country, with those qualifications!
Who Said This?
This quotation is published in today’s Sunday Times.
It is possible that . . . we have unwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself
So who said it?
I’ll give you a clue, in that it was said in an address to the Royal Society, by someone who was tutored at Oxford University, by the Nobel Prize winner; Dorothy Hodgkin.
Was it an environmentalist like Lord Melchett or Jonathan Porritt, a scientist like David Bellamy or a politician like Al Gore or Caroline Lucas?
The answer is in today’s Sunday Times in an absolute must-read article.
I will post later, who said it.
Superb Advertising
I saw this on a lamp post, by the bus stop at the Angel.
Superb Advertising
People, who have seen it had already torn off some of the tear-off strips of the Man With A Van, so I hope he gets some business.
it’s such a simple, but superb idea.
Two Quotes From Antonio Carluccio
The Times yesterday had two quotes from Antonio Carluccio.
Religion is hypocritical.
He says that he abandoned it forty years ago. With me it was probably nearly sixty, when I discovered how good science is.
Cooking is good for attracting girls.
He says he taught himself, as he couldn’t afford to go to restaurants.
I’m teaching myself, not because I can’t afford the restaurants, but because restaurants don’t cook what I like. As to whther it attracts girls, I couldn’t possibly comment.
Shopping Centres Aren’t For Me!
Tomorrow, I’m going to Sheffield to see Ipswich at Wednesday. As there is now a Carluccio’s at Meadowhall, I thought that it might be an easy place to have lunch before the match.
I’ve booked a ticket out of Kings Cross to get to Meadowhall with a change at Doncaster, rather than go the obvious way of St. Pancras and Sheffield.
So I thought, I’d look up where Carluccio’s was in Meadowhall on the web. They are apparently in the Oasis Dining Area. But can I find a plan, which shows me where that is in the centre? No! Of course not! After all, the one thing I don’t want to do, is walk past every useless shop in the place, as I would expect few would have any goods that I would ever need. But that is what these infernal shopping centres want me to do, as they think I might buy something. But I’m going to a football match and then home to London!
After all, I’m only ever going to Meadowhall for one reason! And that is to have lunch!
In fact this is probably why I don’t use shopping centres. when I go shopping, I generally need some specific things and have a list of shops I will visit to get what I want! I don’t want to walk miles, when I need one specific item.
I suppose you could call it precision shopping. I arrive, buy and retreat immediately.
Often with John Lewis, I just go and check out what I need, write down the stock number and then go home and order it over the Internet.
They must love shoppers like me!
Giving My Left Hand Something To Do
For years, I always carried my briefcase in my left hand, but not by the handle. I seem to remember that at school it wasn’t the done thing to use handles or put satchels over your shoulder, but to hold it with your hand underneath.
So now that the hand suffers a bit from neglect syndrome, I’ve got out my old briefcase, to give the hand something to do.
My Dunhill Briefcase
The case incidentally was a present from C in perhaps about 1972 or 1973. Dunhill have fitted two new zips over the years, as I’ve never found one that suits my lifestyle so much.
The Greatest British Olympian Ever
With the retirement of Sir Chris Hoy, who numerically is our greatest Olympian, the debate is starting as to who is the greatest.
There are many worthies amongst my favourites, but then only one would be on a vote for the top ten greatest Olympians.
But that one Olympian does stand out.
I remember on the 6th of July 2005, sitting with C in the kitchen listening as Lord Coe put the final speech in London’s bid for the 2012 Olympics.
She was a barrister and said it was the finest plea in mitigation she’d ever heard. He delivered it superbly. You can read the speech and othe others here and C was right. it was written, so that if we failed in the bid, as was expected, then Princess Anne, Lord Coe, Ken Livingstone, Tessa Jowell, Denise Lewis and the others involved, could come home knowing that they’d given it a very good shot.
Fortunately, Lord Coe got the result most people really wanted and the rest as they say is history.
Many people did not ever see, Sebastian Coe running. I didn’t see his Olympic trumphs, but I did see him on the television many times in the 1980s. he had a grace and created excitement, like no other athlete of the period.
So as someone, who won gold medals on the track and gave us the magnificent London 2012 Olympics, there can only be one choice for Britain’s greatest Olympian.
We Shouldn’t live Near Petrochemical Plants
In my three years at ICI in the late 1960s, I went over several chemical plants. I have heard so many stories about how supposedly safe plants have exploded killing numbers of people.
On one plant, I heard a tale of an instrument being installed to analyse the gases in a burner. The instrument found that the gases were in such a composition that they might explode. The plant manager immediately shut the plant down and they worked out a strategy to run the plant in a safe manner. They informed the European chemical company from whom they had licensed the design of the plant of what they had found and were politely told that it wasn’t possible to build an instrument that could measure the composition of the gases. A few months later, the European company’s plant buried itself in a hillside.
And then there was the Flixborough disaster in 1974. I had left ICI by that date, but I was in contact with some of my former colleagues and also some other chemical engineers. From somewhere I heard the rumour that one of the problems at Flixborough was that the plant had originally been designed in metric units and then to build it, these had been converted to Imperial. So when they bypassed a reactor, they got the calculations wrong.
Remember that ICI went fully metric in about 1955 for chemical plant design. Safety was one of the reasons they stated!
Now these all go to show, that no matter how careful you are, mistakes will get made. Mistakes you can’t afford to make, when dealing with dangerous chemicals.
Therefore every chemical or petrochemical plant should be assessed for danger and an appropriate exclusion zone declared around it, where no houses, offices or other dangerous plants are allowed.
It would appear that in the latest explosion in Texas, that there were houses too near to the plant that exploded.
A Bad Case Of Oops On Regent Street
You occasionally see post boxes knocked over by an accident.
A Bad Case Of Oops On Regent Street
But this is the first time, I can remember seeing a double one on the skew.
And Now Thomas Heatherwick Coins A New Word
My Internet trawl for the New Bus for London, picked up this article in the Financial Times called Touched With Madeness about Thomas Heatherwick.
So many quirky ideas, may look good on paper, but can’t be made. His can, although he had a few early ones suffered from problems. But then so did Brunel’s.
Hence the idea that every idea and design should have the quality of madeness or the ability to be made.
The Anonymous Widower 