Thieves Target Sochi 2014
I found this story in the Moscow Times after being pointed to the thefts by the headline in The Times of Thieves Try To Scrap Winter Olympics. here’s the first paragraph of the story.
With less than three months left until the Winter Olympic Games, city authorities in Sochi are embroiled in a battle with an unexpected vice: the theft of manhole covers by metal scavengers.
Some 800 manhole covers were stolen in the last couple of weeks, most of them sold as scrap metal to any one of 20 recycling companies, city officials said.
I suppose President Putin is blaming gay thieves.
I Choose The wrong Way Home
I regularly have supper near Oxford Circus station, just as I did tonight.
To come back, I have a myriad number of ways.
1. I can take a 73 bus virtually all the way or change at the Angel for a 30, 38 or 56, which stop closer to my house. I use this route, when I’ve got a big parcel from John Lewis, as the 3 stop, is right outside the front door of the store.
2. I can take the Central line to Bank station and then take a 21, 76 or 141 bus.
3. A similar route is to go to St. Paul’s station and then a 56 bus.
4. I can take the Victoria line to Highbury and Islington station and then take a 30 or 277 bus.
5. Another route is to take Victoria lie to Kings Cross and then take a 30 bus to home.
On the other hand, one of the advantages of Kondon’s transport system, is that there are innumerable ways of getting from A to B.
The number of routes seems to keep growing.
Tonight, I tried to get home, using route 2, but there had been an accident, so the buses had virtually stopped running.
It was a very wrong choice.
In the end, I took a 43 to the Angel and theb git a 56 ti my house.
Keyhole Surgery For Gas Mains
I like this story from the Standard, as it shows how good design and clever technology can make the solving of everyday problems, quicker and easier. Here’s the first paragraph.
A £1m robot will today complete work repairing gas mains in London without having to dig a single hole in the street in a UK first that it is claimed will save thousands of hours of disruption to motorists.
It may have cost a lot, but how much did it save?
Does The Internet Lead Us To Strange Places?
This report on the BBC about the end of the GOCE satellite, was to me very much a must-read, as it covers a lot of my interests. It probably will make a lot of others think about the Falkland Islands too. But it was this paragraph that caught my eye.
American military data timed this event to have occurred at 00:16 GMT, or 21:16 local Falkland time – just as Bill, his wife Vicky, and dad, Tony Chater, were making their way home after spending the day with King Penguins.
I hadn’t realised that there were King Penguins on the islands. Looking them up in Wikipedia, it said that the biggest King Penguin colony is on Crozet Island, which is a French overseas territory.
There really are some amazing places in this world, some of which are virtually inaccessible.
A Sad Row Of Bottles
I have two drink problems. The first is that I never drink more than one bottle of cyder or beer in an evening and secondly, my fridge that keeps the wine cold has gone and died.
So now, I have a large number of bottles, that are probably ruined and I doubt I’ll drink them!
A Sad Row Of Bottles
I suppose, if I was an alcoholic, they’d have gone by now.
I’ve already poured some once-nice rose down the sink. But judging by the smell, I only missed stripping my gut and ending in hospital.
I’ve Just Switched To Ovo Energy
I will save myself a hundred and sixteen pounds a year, by swapping to Ovo Energy. Perhaps not much, but if I refer a friend and they sign up, we both get a twenty.
So if you want me to recommend you, I’m happy to do that. We could have a nice meal either by ourselves or together on the bonus!
Incidentally, I’ve found that I’ve got a lot in credit with my previous supplier. So hopefully, I’ll have that in my account in a few weeks. After all, it’s my money and it looks better in my bank account or wallet.
John Major Talks Sense
I have always liked John Major and I have liked him even more, since I saw his talk to the Cambridge Chief Executives Group. Then, in the depth of his troubles, he talked sense in bucketfuls and explained how the economy was coming round. He was so right in everything he said and it made me think, that what a lot of stupid idiots most of our politicians are.
Now in a speech in Norfolk, he has detailed his views. It’s reported here in the Guardian.
The first paragraph, criticises the lack of social mobility.
Sir John Major has criticised the “truly shocking” dominance of the upper echelons of power in Britain by the privately educated and affluent middle class, it was reported.
Both myself and especially my late wife, climbed from fairly ordinary families to somewhere near the top. C, who was a barrister, was one of the few of her profession, I ever met, who had come from a working class family and clawed her way up the hard way. But then we both had the sort of education, that John Major had enjoyed.
This dominance of power and especially in the Civil Service, by the privately educated middle class, is one of the things that I deplore. Last Thursday I was on a New Bus for London and sitting in one of the set of four seats in the middle. These tend to be where the chatty congregate, so as I moved over to let a guy about fifty sit down, I made a comment, as you often do. We chatted and he said that he worked in the Home Office and when I talked about the bus, I got the impression, he’d never used a NB4L before. I said I was living in Hackney after my stroke and he said he had worked with my MP. ~This could have been on the Identity Card Scheme. He pitied me in that I had to live in such a crime-ridden borough. He then asked if I thought that the country was going to the dogs. I said it wasn’t and said I was hopeful things would get better. If this idiot, is one of the Civil Service’s finest, then heaven help us. But I suppose, he went to a good independent school and probably a decent college at Oxford or Cambridge. Just like my labour MP! Not like my late wife and myself, who went to good grammar schools and a good redbrick University.
John Major went on to talk about education and is reported to have said this.
Major said: “Our education system should help children out of the circumstances in which they were born, not lock them into the circumstances in which they were born.
“We need them to fly as high as their luck, their ability and their sheer hard graft can actually take them. And it isn’t going to happen magically.”
If John Major, my late wife and myself had been born in the last couple of decades, would we have risen to the surface? The sixties was a time, when those that wanted to did and many of us, square pegs, managed to rise from the round holes where society pigeon-holed us.
I also remember that when I was at meetings of the educated in Cambridge, I was one of the shortest around, as my family hasn’t always had the good food of the middle and upper classes. But then they often didn’t have some of my better characteristics. Or my worse!
John Major also put forward his views on gay marriage.
On one issue that has caused Conservative grass-roots dissent – gay marriage – he urged people to accept times had changed. “We may be unsettled by them, but David Cameron and his colleagues have no choice but to deal with this new world. They cannot, Canute-like order it to go away because it won’t,” he said.
He is totally right. We don’t define the way the world chooses to go, but we have to live in it and accomodate it.
The report finishes by giving his views on Ukip.
And on another major area of concern, he recommended a less-confrontational approach to the threat of the UK Independence Party.
“We don’t need to make personal attacks on Ukip,” he said. “Many of the Ukip supporters are patriotic Britons who fear their country is changing.
“It is far more productive to expose the follies in their policies.”
I always wonder what would have happened to the world, if John Major had won the 1997 General Election.
Is Any Ipswich Town Fan Going To Doncaster On Boxing Day?
I am trying to see every Ipswich Town match this season. The problem is Boxing Day, when we play at Doncaster.
As the trains and coaches aren’t running and to make things worse the Underground in London could be on strike, it would appear that the only way to go is to hire a car and driver, a helicopter and pilot or just hitch.
Unless of course, someone who’s going from London, can fit a small Ipswich fan in the boot of their car!
Any sensible ideas will be welcome!
A Very Good Football Trip
As I said here, my trip to Blackpool, yesterday, started well at Kings Cross.
As I had a few minutes before the Glasgow train to Preston, I had time to visit the Virgin First Class lounge at Euston. I think some companies charge extra for the lounge if you’re on a cheap ticket or close it altogether at weekends, but Virgin don’t seem to penny pinch like that at Euston.
The train was on time to Preston, but it did look very much like rain.
Approaching Preston
As I had booked to Blackpool North station, which is a walk of three kilometres to the ground, I asked if I could use my ticket to Blackpool South station, which is only about eight hundred metres. I was informed that there would be no problem by someone from Northern Rail! I certainly hadn’t found a Jobsworth.
The guy on the train gave the same story and I arrived at the station to walk to Bloomfield Road.
Walking To Bloomfield Road
I made it in plenty of time, walking in the sun, although the weather was threatening.
It really started to rain, just as I got under cover in my seat.
The match was a topsy-turvy affair, with Ipswich winning with the odd goal in five, scored in stoppage time. Ipswich were one-nil down at half-time, so unusually for a manager, Mick McCarthy threw caution to the wind and played with four forwards across the field.
He got the result all the Ipswich fans wanted and you do wonder, if he hasn’t found the best way to use the talent he has available.
I must admit, I did look at the two Blackpool goals last night on the BBC and I can’t help feeling that if Cresswell and Smith had been playing, one or both of these goals might not have been scored.
In the end the Ipswich fans all went about their journeys home happy with the result, so the two Blackpool goals didn’t matter.
As it connects better to the London trains, I decided to do the long walk to Blackpool North station. However, I didn’t have to walk all the way, as I found a 14 bus, that went near the station. There was the usual silly ticketing palaver, you get with a bus pass outside London and I do wonder if bus companies have shares in those that produce ticket paper.
I got a crowded train to Preston fairly easily, but it arrived there, just as a Euston train was departing. A Virgin employee told me, I had an hour to wait, but as I had an Off-Peak ticket I could take any train. I then realised, it would be nice to eat something, so as a Manchester Piccadilly train was alongside, a gluten-free supper in Carluccio’s at Piccadilly station beckoned. I could then take one of the more numerous trains to London. The Virgin also told me, that the Manchester to London trains weren’t busy, as City and United weren’t playing.
Where had all the Jobsworths gone?
I had my supper in Carluccio’s at a fast pace and made the 19:35 train with ease. I had intended to upgrade to First, but as I got four seats and a table to myself in Stearage, I didn’t bother. In fact the fifteen pound upgrade, I didn’t buy, virtually paid for my meal in Carluccio’s.
As I’d arrived in Piccadilly virtually dead on seven, I’d ordered, waited for and eaten my meal in about half-an-hour, whilst checking the news and the football results on the excellent wi-fi. So with luck, I’d be able to go straight home from Euston and catch the start of Match of the Day.
I did! It had been a very good trip.
In a few years time, going from London to Blackpool will be a lot easier, as they are electrifying the line from Preston, as part of the major electrification between Manchester, Liverpool and Preston. It has also been stated that this will mean a tour-hourly service of faster electric trains to and from London. But as I’ll still have the problem of getting a decent gluten-free meal on the way down, but as it will be a greatly improved service from Blackpool to Manchester Piccadilly, I can still go via Manchester and have a decent meal, whilst changing trains.
In fact, if like I did, you have a ticket from Blackpool North to London, you will have several stations, where you can change onto a fast train to London, if you just missed a direct train and didn’t want to wait two hours. You could change at Preston, Manchester Piccadilly, Liverpool or even Wigan North Western.
I can’t help but feel, that this long-awaited electrification is going to make a lot of difference to the whole of the triangle based on Manchester, Liverpool and Blackpool.
It should have been done years ago!
Underground Art
I had a letter published in The Times yesterday, under this heading.
I’ve been thinking for a long time about the way large bronze sculptures and statues keep getting nicked by Philistines and criminals, who don’t care one jot about our artistic heritage. We also have the controversy over Tower Hamlet’s Henry Moore statue, that they may have to sell.
So when The Times published a piece on art on the Moscow Metro, I wrote to the paper. This is what I said.
Your report “Moscow’s Metro is transformed into a real work of art” (Nov 7) offers a solution to the problem of what to do with the Henry Moore sculpture owned by Tower Hamlets council, as well as other statues owned by local authorities.
Many of our stations have a suitable space, and given that they are pretty secure why don’t we move some artworks there? Statues would interest more people in a station than they do tucked away in a park or housing estate, as they are now.
The more I think about this, the more I think the idea could be a runner.
Tower Hamlets incidentally, has three major stations; Canary Wharf, Shoreditch High Street and Whitechapel. The latter is currently being rebuilt for Crossrail.
All it needs to find a space for the Henry Moore, is a bit of creative and artistic thinking! To site the statue in public in a station, may actually cost less in the long term, as surely insurance would not be so expensive.
The Anonymous Widower 