Sarah Palin ‘believed Queen was in charge of British forces in Iraq’
Another article from the Daily Telegraph.
I think if the Queen had been in charge, we wouldn’t have had a war in Iraq.
Sarah Palin always strikes me that if she had had a word fight with any of the great wordsmiths, she’d have been metaphorically hung, drawn and quartered.
Zara Phillips Turned Away from Horse Event
This was the headline on a report in the Daily Telegraph.
I wonder what Disgusted from Tunbridge Wells thinks of it all.
Remembering M.R.D. Foot
M. R. D. Foot, who has recently died, was an historian, whose wartime exploits and subsequent researches led him to be a leading authority on the Special Operations Executive.
I seem to have come across him first, as he had written one of C’s books for her History and Politics course at Liverpool. But I remember him most for his book that he wrote in conjunction with Jimmy Langley, MI9: Escape and Evasion in 1939-1945. In there he relates how the first two British servicemen to make a Home Run from Germany were two Sikh sergeants in the Pioneer Corps.
It is a tale that has fascinated me and no-one seems to have any more knowledge than that one line in the book.
Hopefully, one day the tale will fully surface.
Basques Want to Join an Independent Scotland
I can’t work out if this was a Spanish joke or not, but it is reported in today’s Times. The leader of one of their political parties has said it and has also waxed lyrical about kilts and said that Edinbrgh should replace Madrid as their capital.
Probably it’s just another way of stating the old adage – You don’t have to be mad to be the leader of a political party, but it helps.
I actually think on a day of such miserable foreign news, the story lightens everything up.
On the other hand it could be a large publicity stunt on behalf of Bilbao-based company CAF, who are building the trams for Edinburgh’s tram system and they want to get it finished and of course get paid. When it does get finished, I suspect that a mixture of Scots, Basques, paella and Scotch will be a good recipe for a party.
Bureaucracy Isn’t All Bad or How to Get a UK Pension Forecast
I am 65 in a few months and I need to find out what my State Pension is going to be, so that I can plan my life accordingly.
As I live only a short walk from my local Jobcentre Plus and they helped me with my winter heating allowance, I decided they would be the first place to try.
They couldn’t help me directly, but they gave me a list of useful numbers and told me to ring the Pension Service on 0845 606 0265. This incidentally is free from BT, but expensive from a mobile.
After I got home, I rang the number and they told me that the simplest way was to ring another toll-free number, 0845 300 0168.
It took me about ten minutes before I gave them all the information they needed, like both out National Insurance numbers, C’s Date of Death and our Date of Marriage.
The guy at the other end said, I’d get the Pension Forecast through the post in about ten days.
It was all fairly painless! And there were no charges anywhere. Not even phone ones!
The Tube
I watched the first part of this documentary about the London Underground on BBC2 last night and it was fascinating.
The thing that impressed me most, was how a very multi-racial staff acted as a coherent team and stood up so well to the hassle they got.
I shall be watching next week.
New Track for the London Overground
To connect the Overground from the two Peckham stations; Rye and Queen’s Road to Surrey Quays station, a new length of track has to be laid. These pictures show the Peckham end.
As the pictures were taken by a train going towards London Bridge, the new track is very much in the right background
This post shows the junction at the other end, where it joins the southern branches of the East London line.
Peckham Rye Station – A Station Designed By Several Committees
Peckham Rye station, which is is the next on from Denmark Hill station, looks like a station, that has been designed by several different individuals or committees, who had no idea what a team or a design brief was. All of these pictures were taken there.
It must have started better as the original station was designed by Charles Henry Driver, a noted Victorian architect. But I suspect the myriad companies, who have owned it since didn’t have a clue. Or it could have been a classic British Rail fix it without beauty job.
It’s also got the awful long staircases beloved of station architects until a few years ago.
Denmark Hill Station
Denmark Hill station is the next after Clapham High Street and is the station for Kings College Hospital and is a large four platform station. At the moment, the station is undergoing a major rebuilding as these pictures show.
Note that when it’s finished, the station will have lifts and a pub. Although at the moment, it’s rather a mess of scaffolding.
Incidentally, adding Denmark Hill station to the London Overground, will put a third major hospital on the line, after the Royal Free at Hampstead Heath and the Royal London at Whitechapel.
Clapham High Street Station
From Wandsworth Road station I walked to Clapham High Street station, which looked as if it had once been larger with more platforms and if you read the Wikipedia link it had. It had once even had overhead electric power for the trains. But no more, as these pictures show.
The odd thing is that two of these pictures contain light engines. In one it’s just a single and in the other two are coupled together.
Incidentally, Clapham High Street and Clapham North are considered an interchange on Oyster, so when the London Overground is fully open, it offers a simple way from the southerly parts of the Northern line to Hackney.
The Anonymous Widower 