Two Blue Plaques In Cable Street
I generally note the blue plaques I pass, as I walk around. This morning, I was on the way to pick something up in the area and passed two.
The Angel Of Cable Street
Hannah Billig seems to have been a remarkable doctor. But then she was awarded a George Medal for courage and bravery in the Blitz and she was called the Angel of Cable Street.
Jack Kid Berg
This plaque to Jack Kid Berg was a hundred metres or so further on. He seemed to have had an good and long life.
I also seem to remember that along with Ted Kid Lewis he was one of my father’s sporting heroes.
New Houses That Get Flooded
In the recent heavy rain and resulting floods, I’m surprised to see how many new houses have got flooded.
My father told me never to buy a house that could be flooded and I have followed his advice and never bought a house that has ever suffered a flood.
Governments are pussy-footing around the problem, as this article shows. There should be a law, that means if any new properties flood, then the developer is responsible for fixing the problem. This would probably mean, houses were built, that were much suitable for our climate. They would probably be unsaleable to many punters, who prefer Pete Seeger‘s Little Boxes.
But hey! We have some of the best and most innovative architects in this country! The trouble is we also have a lot of very conservative people and especially politicians and planners, who think inside the box!
Incidentally, Pete Seeger is still alive at 94. Hopefully, his music is still making us think!
Bank Regulator Says Bank IT Systems Are Antiquated
This article from the BBC, tells how a senior regulator thinks that the IT systems of UK banks are antiquated. Here’s the jist.
A regulator from the Bank of England has told the inquiry into Northern Ireland’s banking system that he is a “very long way” from being able to say that UK banks have robust IT systems.
The Prudential Regulation Authority, should publish an on-line list of all the computer failures, that we could all see. After all, you wouldn’t want to transfer your account to a bank with a crap computer system, would you?
There’s Gold In Them There Bogs!
When he appeared on BBC radio this morning, one of those in charge of this project to mine gold in Ireland, said he’d lost count of the jokes about lucky Irish and leprechauns.
I suppose it will be a good area for the many Irish comedians to mine too!
Towards The Paperless Society
On the BBC’s News web site today, these are two of their top ten stories; the scrapping of the car tax disc and driving licence records going on-line.
Obviously, these don’t affect me as I don’t have a driving licence or own a car.
But they do show the way that society is going. After all, for many of us, the only contact with our bank or credit card provider is through the Internet.
The one area, where we don’t seem to be going on-line and paperless is healthcare.
The two stories today claim that this paperless route may save us money on car insurance.
So why is healthcare not following the same route?
It doesn’t necessarily mean a loss of privacy and the need to carry a health card, as we do when we travel in Europe, so I’d put it down to a lack of vision of those who run healthcare and the NHS in particular.
Wireless Electric Buses In Milton Keynes
This is a very good story about how bus technology is getting better. Here’s the intro.
Electric buses which their developers say can run all day are set to begin service.
A fleet of eight new electric vehicles will operate along a busy route in Milton Keynes from late January.
The buses can run for longer by virtue of a wireless booster charge they receive at the start and end of the route from plates in the road.
Remember that a lot of hybrid buses, like the New Bus for London, are effectively electric buses, where the electric power is provided by an on-board generator coupled to a battery or other energy storage device.
So could this type of pick up be fitted to these buses, to top up the battery at each end of the route? If I look the local route I use most; the 38, at the outer end of Clapton Pond, there is a vast bus parking area, which could easily charge buses for several minutes, whilst waiting to depart. I suspect that Victoria might be a bit more difficult, as space is more limited.
Obviously, the bus would need a clever GPS-savvy on-board control-system, that would decide where to get the electricity from. But as the bus would have an on-board generator, it would never get stuck without power.
For this and other reasons, all the buses for towns and cities, we build should be electric or hybrid. The specification of the New Bus for London, says this.
The engine is a Cummins ISBe 4.5l unit, rated at 185kW.
A typical engine like this Ford unit, used in vehicles like a Land Rover Discovery is 2.7l and is rated at about 150kW.
It’s an interesting comparison.
Will The New Overground Lines Get New Trains?
News is starting to filter out about the takeover of the Lea Valley lines by TfL and the London Overground. The Standard had a big article yesterday. The new map is also starting to appear in the media.
This is an extract from the Standard article.
When TfL acquires the West Anglia inner suburban services it will replace the 30-year-old carriages with 30 new four-car electric units, as well as procuring electric trains for the Gospel Oak to Barking line of the Overground.
There are also plans to upgrade 23 Overground stations by 2016.
At present the lines are served by Class 315 and Class 317 trains. It looks like the numerous Class 315 trains will be moved on, but the Class 317 trains are being refurbished. So some Class 317 trains might be retained.
But this means that there will have to be some new trains to replace the Class 315, which will probably be London Overground’s Class 378. I would suspect, there’s a cost saving on having only one class of trains on the Overground. Politicians will think it looks nicer too and gives better photo opportunities.
I like the Class 378 trains and I said so in this post. Here’s the relevant bit.
In some ways , the stars of the line are the Class 378 trains. You rarely hear of train failures and the interiors still seem pristine after nearly four years of service. And now, because of their design, they’re being extended by the simple addition of a fifth carriage in the middle.
And of course they were all designed and built in Derby!
Derby will be pleased at the thought of 120 new carriages! But will some bean counter buy too few!
My prudent ancestry says that to convert a few Class 317 trains to look like Class 378 to passengers and use them selectively might be an attractive alternative to some of the new trains. Provided of course the non-standard fleet didn’t come with a large maintenance penalty. Remember though, that we’re very good at train refurbishment and updating in this country and underneath the grubby exterior of the current Class 317s, a set of legendary Mark 3 coaches, are struggling to get out.
The Power Of The Weather
These pictures from the BBC, sum it all up.
How To Be Green
This arrived as an e-mail from that green island across the sea; Ireland. It cried out to be posted.
When at a store checkout the young cashier suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own shopping bags in future because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment..
The woman apologised and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.”
The cashier responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”
She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day. Back then, we returned milk bottles, pop bottles and beer bottles to the shop. The shop sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got blunt.
But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.
We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every shop and office building. We walked to the shop and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two streets.
But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.
Back then, we washed the baby’s nappies because we didn’t have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 2200watts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.
But that young lady is right. We didn’t have the green thing back in our day.
Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the county of Yorkshire. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us.. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the post, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not polystyrene or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn petrol just to cut the lawn.. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.
But she’s right. We didn’t have the green thing back then.
We drank water from a fountain or a tap when we were thirsty instead of demanding a plastic bottle flown in from another country. We accepted that a lot of food was seasonal and didn’t expect to have out of season products flown thousands of air miles around the world. We actually cooked food that didn’t come out of a packet, tin or plastic wrapping and we could even wash our own vegetables and chop our own salad.
But we didn’t have the green thing back then.
Back then, people caught a train or a bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their mothers into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical socket in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn’t need a computerised gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza place.
But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we oldies were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?
Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson in conservation from a smart-ass young person.
Remember: Don’t make old people mad. We don’t like being old in the first place, so it doesn’t take much to piss us off…
A Solution To Travelling Paperwork
On my trips to Europe, where I fly out and then take a train back, one of the biggest problems is all the bits of paper for airline and train tickets and hotel reservations, you have to take. I used to take these in a secure A4 folder like this one.
A Secure A4 Folder
But it is rather large and is a bit of a nuisance to get out of my small case. As most of my tickets are A4 sheets of paper, which folds in half to A5, I thought that an A5 version of this folder would be ideal. I’d tried out stationers near me, so this was why I was at Tottenham Hale today, to visit Staples. They didn’t have any, but they did have this clear plastic zip up A5 bag.
Staples A5 Zip Bag
Several would have been ideal on my home run from Stockholm, where I was constantly changing currency, so I could have had bags for Sweden, Denmark, Euroland and the UK.
My only mistake today was just buying two. But at a pound or less a time, I can afford them!
The Anonymous Widower 