Londoners Don’t Seem Bothered About Fire Station Closures
I find this story about public meetings on the closure of fire stations rather interesting. Here’s a paragraph.
Londoners have been turning up in single figures to meetings on Boris Johnson’s fire station closure plans which are costing more than £100,000 to stage.
A single resident attended events in Newham, Brent and Harrow while just two turned up in Barking & Dagenham and four in the City of London. Mr Johnson plans to axe 12 fire stations, 18 engines and 520 jobs to save £45 million from the fire service budget.
You can take several view on this from two extremes.
If you are a die-hard supporter of cuts and would vote for Boris at all costs, you probably wouldn’t go.
But I suspect, that it’s more down to the fact, that we rarely see a serious incident. I have only seen one this year and that appeared to be a fire in an empty building, which perhaps half a dozen appliances attended.
If only a few attended some of these meeting, it would seem that they weren’t even picketed by fire-fighters and their families.
So I suspect, that Londoners in general, aren’t particularly worried about the plans.
Badgers, Foxes and Deer
As I write this, there is a debate going on about the badger cull on Radio 5. Living in Hackney, I have no vested interest, as what happens won’t effect me directly.
When I first moved back to Suffolk at the start of the 1970s, I never saw a badger until perhaps 2006, and then on one night coming back from a restaurant I saw several in the lanes north of Haverhill. Over the last twenty years, I started to see dead badgers increasingly on the road.
Foxes too, were very rare in East Suffolk, where I lived until about the mid-1990s. I had never seen one alive, but I had smelt the odd fox. In West Suffolk, we had foxes everywhere and now in Hackney, I saw one cross the road in front of me, as I walked with a friend to the local church.
Deer too, have shown a remarkable rise in numbers. In fact, the only claim, I ever made on my car insurance in recent years, was when a deer jumped in front of my car, when C was driving.
All of these animals have no natural predator in the UK, and they are rapidly increasing in numbers.
There will come a time, when we will need to cull badgers, foxes and deer, very strongly, as otherwise we’ll be overrun with them. As it is foxes and badgers are carnivores, so what effect will unsustainable high levels have on our other native birds and animals? As it is already, some believe that foxes are feeding aggressively on our hedgehog population, as I reported here.
If we don’t keep our large mammals to a healthy level, we will be seeing a lot of other problems.
Schweppes Ruin The Summer
These adverts are on buses all over London.
Schweppes Ruin The Summer
No wonder the weather is so cold and wet! Perhaps they should be advertising cocoa!
It’s Mary Rose Next Week
Now that the Mary Rose museum has opened in Portsmouth, it has given me a suggestion about where to go next week.
As I’m also going to see the Vasa in Stockholm later next month, it will be an interesting comparison.
The Terror Of Packaging
These bacon packs from Waitrose are some of the many packaging ideas, that need to be opened with smoething sharp.
The Terror Of Packaging
Once you’ve opened the packet, you then have to wrap it all in clingfilm, with all the problems that means, otherwise it quickly goes off.
I think, I’ll find a proper butchers that sells loose bacon, so I can buy the quantity I want.
It’s all a plot to get us more, than we actually need.
I probably need three rashers of bacon, twice a week at most.
PayDay Saving
Is this an alternative approach to PayDay Lending?
PayDay Saving
I hope the Winchester isn’t like the one in Minder.
Nationalism And The England Football Team
I went to the England match against Ireland last night at Wembley and although it wasn’t the best of matches, a thought about the England team struck me, as I listened to the phone-in on Radio 5 about English Nationalism.
It is surprising how many of the England team, could have been eligible to play for other countries. For example, Wayne Rooney and Gary Cahill have an Irish heritage and Phil Jagielka has a Polish father and a Scottish mother.
On the other hand, I think at least one of the black players, was born in England to parents, who were also born here.
So nothing is ever what it seems!
I myself, have two strong immigrant lines in my genes; Jew and Huguenot, so when it comes for me to define what is Englishness, I can get rather lost.
Perhaps being of mixed genes is a requirement to being a true Englishman or Englishwoman. After all Churchill had an American mother, Brunel had a French father and Alan Blumlein had a German father, to name but three.
I often define myself as a London Mongrel and when asked to fill in forms about my race, if I think I can get away with it, I do.
Could it all be down to hybrid vigour? It’s proper scientific name is heterosis.
I also like this quote on nationalism by Albert Einstein.
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
He is right!
Nude Cyclists For Jesus Convention
Every so often a series of amusing letters appears in The Times.
Yesterday, they were talking about people holding up signs to greet relatives at airports. This absolute gem was posted.
As a tender-hearted mother I have driven many miles to collect my sons from far-flung airports at all hours. It is a small compensation to take with me a large greeting sign, often along the lines of “Nude Cyclists for Jesus Convention” or similar. It amuses me.
I can’t see C or most of the mothers I know, ever putting up a sign like that for one of their children.
On the other hand, the letter writer seems to be my kind of lady, as I like to think I don’t do boring either, and C stated many times, that she married me, because she knew life wouldn’t be boring.
A Pattern For New Buses for London Is Starting To Emerge
Next month on the 22nd, London bus route 24, gets the New Bus for London. Route 24 has always been a high-profile route and was the first to have the new RML Routemasters in the late 1960s. So it wasn’t a surprise to me, that this route through the homes of the chattering classes, was the first to be wholly converted. The route has a peak requirement of 26 buses according to Wikipedia.
Now it has been announced that Route 11, will be the next to be upgraded to new buses from September 21st. According to the report 25 buses will be used to replace a current requirement of 26. This reduction is probably to be expected as anybody who uses Route 38 regularly as I do, knows that over a distance, they are faster than their normal cousins, as they spend less time at stops. More than once, I’ve noticed four or more 38’s indicated on the display at a bus stop and when they arrive, it’s the New Bus for London leading the convoy.
Will the introduction on Route 11 lead to complaints as they are going down one of the most congested roads in London; Kings Road, Chelsea? On the other hand, it is just the sort of road, where the hop-on and hop-off facility of the buses will come into its own. Hopefully, it’ll entice a few of Chelsea’s residents out of their tractors. It’ll be interesting to read about how the buses are received on Route 11.
Both Route 24 and 11, have a peak requirement of about 25 buses, so as 600 of these buses are expected to be delivered in the next few years, that means they’ll run on 24 routes, if they go in batches of 25.
The more you look at it, the more the introduction of the eight prototype buses on Route 38, was a well-thought out trial to find out how they would be received by the public and how they would perform.
For a start, the terminus at Hackney Central is close to their depot at Ash Grove, so if a bus went AWOL, it could easily be replaced in service by one of the other normal buses on the route. In fact, I’ve not heard of any rumours of serious problems with these buses, although I did see one broken down in the Essex Road. One apparently, also got white-vanned up the backside.
Route 38, is a very cosmopolitan route, with every type of person using the buses, as it goes through both some expensive housing and some big estates, not known for being genteel. So they would get feedback from all sorts and I suspect they have.
Route 38 is also one, with lots of varied traffic conditions, from routes that tend to be pretty clear for a lot of the day, to the congestion of the West End.
I think they have only one major problem, and that is that if Transport for London decided to redeploy the Hackney 8, there would be a lot of protests.
I believe that to use some of the six hundred New Buses for London to fully upgrade Route 38, could be one of the positive things that could be done to give a stimulus to Hackney.
The Anonymous Widower 