A True Underground Advert
I spotted this advert at Swiss Cottage station today.
I’m surprised the censors of Transport for London didn’t ban it.
Another version of the advert is also running around on a 476 bus near me. But in that one a single lady is lying down to fit the bus.
Historic Ye Olde Swiss Cottage Pub Calls Time
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the BBC.
This is the sub-heading.
An historic north-west London pub which a Tube station and the surrounding area was named after has closed having been in business for nearly two centuries.
These paragraphs add detail to the story.
Campaigners are hoping Ye Olde Swiss Cottage can be saved after its operator, Samuel Smith’s Brewery, closed the pub on Saturday.
The brewery did not respond to BBC London’s questions over the fate of the uniquely designed pub.
Joanne Scott, from the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), said its closure was a “real loss for the local community and also for London”.
Swiss Cottage Tube station and the local area both took their name from the pub which has stood on the site since the 1830s.
It is not known why it was designed in the style of a Swiss chalet but has become a local landmark.
As I was in the area today, visiiting Finchley Road coach stop and it was a lovely sunny day, I went and took these pictures.
Although in the early 1970s, c, myself and our three boys lived within walking distance of this pub, I can’t remember ever visiting it. If we did go out because of the expense of a babysitter, we usually went to the theatre, a cinema or a restaurant.
In those days, the only pub we visited regularly, was the New Merlin’s Cave, where we would go with friends to see George Melly and John Chilton’s Feetwarmers.
A
Appeasement 2.0
The low point of Russia’s war in Ukraine is that Trummkopf, has repeated Chamberlain’s mistake at Munich and presented Putin with Appeasement 2.0.
I wasn’t around in the days of Munich and Chamberlain, but my father was well-informed, as he was in Geneva doing something possibly at the League of Nations and heard a lot of the truth about what was going on in Czechoslovakia and Ukraine at first hand. He believed there was little to choose between Hitler and Stalin on the scale of evil.
In the 1970s, I worked with an Jewish Austrian engineer, who was called Samuels, at the GLC, who had escaped from Austria just before WW2 and then spent the war in the Royal Engineers in bomb disposal. After the war, he was an observer at Nuremberg.
He was one of the most amazing people, I’ve ever met and he taught me a lot about project management.
Aggregation In Artemis
One of the features of Artemis was aggregation, which enabled the project manager to total up the resources they’d need for a project.
I might have programmed the original aggregation for Mr. Samuels, but I can certainly remember discussing it with him. He needed it to check that particular sub-contractors weren’t overstreching themselves.
I lost contact with Mr. Samuels, when his wife died and he moved to CERN in Geneva. But he’s one of several people, who helped frame the design of Artemis.
Soviet War Crimes
This Wikipedia entry is entitled Soviet War Crimes.
This is the first paragraph.
From 1917 to 1991, a multitude of war crimes and crimes against humanity were carried out by the Soviet Union or any of its Soviet republics, including the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and its armed forces. They include acts which were committed by the Red Army (later called the Soviet Army) as well as acts which were committed by the country’s secret police, NKVD, including its Internal Troops. In many cases, these acts were committed upon the direct orders of Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin in pursuance of the early Soviet policy of Red Terror as a means to justify executions and political repression. In other instances they were committed without orders by Soviet troops against prisoners of war or civilians of countries that had been in armed conflict with the USSR, or they were committed during partisan warfare.
As a teenager, my father used to tell me stories of atrocities by the Soviet Union and told me, he believed Stalin was on a level with Hitler.
One of the worst atrocities was the Katyn massacre in 1940, which is described in this Wikipedia entry and starts with this paragraph.
The Katyn massacre was a series of mass executions of nearly 22,000 Polish military and police officers, border guards, and intelligentsia prisoners of war carried out by the Soviet Union, specifically the NKVD (the Soviet secret police), at Joseph Stalin’s order in April and May 1940. Though the killings also occurred in the Kalinin and Kharkiv NKVD prisons and elsewhere, the massacre is named after the Katyn forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered by Nazi German forces in 1943.
I haven’t found out, what my father was doing in 1940, but I am fairly sure he knew of the Katyn and other massacres, as he occasionally commented.
Note.
- The involvement of the NKVD.
- The Katyn massacre is a sub-plot in the film Enigma, which has this Wikipedia entry.
I took this picture of a memorial to Katyn in the centre of Birmingham.
I believe that we ignore the lessons of Soviet behaviour at Katyn, at our peril.
In Vladimir Putin’s Wikipedia entry, there is this paragraph about his parents.
Putin’s mother was a factory worker, and his father was a conscript in the Soviet Navy, serving in the submarine fleet in the early 1930s. During the early stage of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, his father served in the destruction battalion of the NKVD. Later, he was transferred to the regular army and was severely wounded in 1942. Putin’s maternal grandmother was killed by the German occupiers of Tver region in 1941, and his maternal uncles disappeared on the Eastern Front during World War II.
It appears that Putin Senior left the NKVD destruction battalion before 1942. Does that mean he could have been at Katyn?
I do suspect, that Putin Senior told some interesting stories to his son, about the correct ways to deal with your opponents and wage a war.
Conclusion
We are treading a very similar path over eighty years later.
Ryanair Flies Into Sahara on Sea (And Africa’s Oldest Conflict)
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article in The Times.
This is the sub-heading.
Chieftains fighting for a strip of land claimed by Morocco are threatening to step up attacks as the tourist industry grows
These are the first three paragraphs.
Towards the end of the flight on Ryanair’s new route to Dakhla a vast expanse of apparently pristine desert coastline unfurls below.
But this land is nowhere near as tranquil as it looks from above. Instead the Irish airline’s choice of destination has flown the company into the heart of Africa’s longest-running conflict.
These direct flights from Madrid and Lanzarote take its planes to the coastal town in Western Sahara, a tract of desert the size of Britain that tribal chieftains and three countries have struggled to control through the centuries.
This is a Google Map showing the location of Western Sahara with respect to the Canary Islands.
Note.
- The islands off the recognisable coast of North West Africa are the Canary Islands.
- Lanzarote is the Southermostof the two North-Eastern islands.
- Western Sahara is to the South-East of the Canary Islands.
- Dakhla is on the Africa coast at the Southern edge of the map.
The map will be enlarged if you click on it.
I have my thoughts on this article.
Western Sahara And Coeliac Disease
I have a feeling that this area has one of the highest levels of coeliac disease in the world.
- It all started some years ago, when they had a terrible famine, so the US donated a lot of wheat to alleviate the famine.
- But the people of Western Sahara don’t grow wheat and their bodily systems can’t cope with gluten.
- This gave the people a lot of coeliac disease, which can be passed on genetically.
A similar process went on during the slave trade, where the slavers fed their captives on bread made from wheat and water. Consequently, many of the slaves suffered from various problems and that could be why many died on the crossing. These days there is coeliac genes among the Caribbean and American black population that has been passed down through the generations.
After their first actions, it only looks like Trummkopf and his sidekick are going to make matters worse, after their destruction of US Aid.
The Lady On The Train
One of the most amazing people, I’ve ever met was a New York State Supreme Court Judge. It is wrong to guess a lady’s edge, but she was about my age; late seventies, black, well-dressed and sat down next to me in Second Class with the biggest smile on her face on the train between Cambridge and London.
She was at a legal conference of senior judges from all over the world at Cambridge University and was going exploring in London.
The reason for the smile was extraordinary. When she went to the ticket counter, she was surprised that the Pakistani-as-she-described him ticket guy asked for her age. He then asked, if she would be doing any other travelling in the UK and when she said yes, he sold her a Senior Railcard as well. She had found it such a surreal experience, that would never have happened in the States that she was still laughing, when the sat down.
She could of course have been not just a New York State Supreme Court Judge, but a full United States Supreme Court Judge and I’d misheard, although I doubt she would have been one of Trump’s picks last time around.
I do hope that when Trump finds himself in the United States Supreme Court as he inevitably will, that she is there to give her verdict.
AI Putin Film Puts Russian President In Nappies
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on The Times.
This is the sub-heading.
Patryk Vega has attracted the attention of Kremlin agents with his wild new ‘deepfake’ biopic that is set to be released in Britain
These first three paragraphs add more to the story.
When he is not plotting invasions or political terror, President Putin likes to watch old Soviet war films. Now he has the opportunity to watch himself in a starring role on the big screen, but it’s doubtful he will enjoy what he sees.
A new AI-assisted film that is released this month about Putin’s life features him wearing soiled adult nappies, working as a taxi driver after the collapse of the Soviet Union and cheating on his former wife.
The film, entitled Putin, is the work of Patryk Vega, a Polish director who is best known for his gory depictions of the criminal underworld. He has described it as the world’s “first deepfake” film.
If it is shown near me, I think I’ll go and see it.
There is a trailer on the internet, that looks professional.
When I was growing up in the 1960s, Polish films had an Art House following.
I particularly remember two.
Both films were by Roman Polanski.
Building A New Concrete Revolution To Net Zero
he title of this post, is the same as that of this article on Pearls and Irritations.
The article is a good explanation of the contributions concrete makes to global warming and what we should do about it.
At least I can find entrepreneurs and scientists willing to develop concretes that will be friendlier to the planet.
- Low-Carbon Concrete: Separating Greenwash From Reality
- Earth Friendly Concrete
- Carbon-Neutral Concrete Prototype Wins €100k Architecture Prize For UK Scientists
- UK Breakthrough Could Slash Emissions From Cement
- HS2 Reveals Dramatic Carbon Saving With Ambitious Modular Design For Thame Valley Viaduct
I believe that this will be a problem that will be solved by technology.
Trump’s Eyeing Greenland – But Other Arctic Investment Is Frozen
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on the BBC.
The BBC Article is a good introduction to Trump’s ideas for Greenland.
This is my one thought.
Do we side with Trump and the United States or our Danish friends?
Don’t Live In Islington If You’re A Pedestrian!
On Sunday, I went to lunch with my son in Walthamstow.
To catch the bus, I have to negotiate these these traffic lights at Southgate and Balls Pond Roads.
Note that to operate the lights, you must push the button to cross.
As I reached forward to push the button to cross, a car came racing up from Dalston Junction.
- Seeing me standing there with my hand forward, he thought it would be funny to give me a good splashing, which he did by going through the deep water.
- His girlfriend was laughing as she passed close by me in the nearside seat.
- Unfortunately, I didn’t get to read the car’s registration number.
- But I did see the Tesla logo on the boot.
If I had though, judging by the look of the guy and his girl, he might not have been the sort of guy, you report to the police.
What really annoyed me, was having to walk back to my house to change into dry clothes.
I do hope though, that the Borough of Islington fix the levels of the roads to eliminate the flooding.
But they are not good as street presentation as I wrote about in Islington Socialism At Work!
The Anonymous Widower 