The Emirates Air-Line Progresses
I took some pictures a few weeks ago of the Emirates Air-Line before. But they were in the dark.
These ones are much better.
Parking in Disabled Spaces
I took this picture today by the O2.
Parking in Disabled Spaces
It shows a row of cars parked in disabled spaces. I did look but couldn’t see one disabled badge. Perhaps my eyes aren’t very good.
Next time I go, I’ll have another look and show number plates next time.
Nuclear Dilemmas
The Times today reports that an independent Scotland under the SNP would want no part of the Trident nuclear missiles based at Faslane. So this would mean we’d need to build new facilities in England. The extra cost would mean that those arguing against Trident replacement be helped greatly.
I actually think that we should scrap Trident and if we needed to keep a nuclear deterrent, we should use cruise missiles fired from a vessel like an Astute class submarine.
But the bigger nuclear diemma is over nuclear power. It is being reported that today, David Cameron and Nicholas Sarkozy will sign a wide ranging treaty which among other things enables new nuclear power stations in the UK.
But Francois Hollande has said, that if he wins the French Presidency, he’ll scrap nuclear power in France. Remember that Scotland will need nuclear power, when the wind doesn’t blow.
Let’s have some engineers in politics.
A Mayor For Manchester?
Rochdale though sums up one of the problems of Manchester. You have all these individual towns, that it would seem don’t talk to each other. Some are proposing that there needs to be a mayor for Greater Manchester. There was a big article in The Times yesterday about a mayor for Manchester.
Recently,on my travels to the 92 football grounds in the UK in alphabetical order by public transport, I put England under a savage microscope. Some places like Exeter, Sheffield and Newcastle were no problem, as everything was signed and easy to understand.
But the biggest contrast was between Hartlepool and Manchester. I’d expected a post-industrial dump in the first and a modern city in the second.
I was so wrong about the first and was surprised to see a town that had pulled itself out of the abyss, with the help of a mayor who fought for the town. Manchester may have some nice new buildings and attractions, but it has the most disintegrated public transport system in the UK. Try turning up at Piccadilly station in a wheelchair and getting to Oldham hospital to see your mother, who’s fallen and broken her hip, without using a taxi! I know London isn’t perfect, but try getting from Euston to Barnet General.
Where was Manchester buses, welcoming booth at the station? Why didn’t the buses talk me through their route? Where were the street and bus maps at every bus stop? Where were the wheel-chair accessible buses with separate doors for entrance and exit?
London’s bus system has improved so much over the last few years and this is probably down to one person being in charge of the whole system, who reports directly to the mayor.
We are having a mayoral election in London in May. Manchester could do a lot worse than ask the one who comes second to be their interim mayor, with a major responsibility to sort out their transport system and make it friendly and understandable to everybody and especially visitors and the disabled.
Rochdale
To illustrate how bad some of our town centres have become, BBC Breakfast is looking at Rochdale, where 1 in 6 of the shops are empty, today.
Surely the problems of Rochdale are going to get worse in the next couple of years, when they open the Metrolink to Manchester.
As it opens in Summer 2012, it looks like some of the rats have left before the ship sinks, making the problems worse. Dorothy Perkins, Mcdonalds and The Body Shop were named in the program.
It looks a classic case of planning a city bit-by-bit in isolation. The new Metrolink will bring people into the centre for their shopping. But it seems, they haven’t thought about Rochdale.
On my travels I did go to Eccles and that town surprised me. So what have they done right in Eccles and wrong in Rochdale?
Blackpool is the Smoking and Pregnancy Capital of England
Apparently according to this report from GPs, 30.3 % of pregnant women in the NHS Blackpool area continue to smoke, as against 20% for the north as a whole. By contrast in NHS Brent in London, the figure is just 2.8 %.
I would suspect that Blackpool doesn’t need a mayor, but a real Norland Nanny, to sort them all out. Preferably with an AK-47!
Olympic Tickets
What has happened here is that the organisers got their sums wrong.
They based the number of tickets on what had been sold for previous games in places like Athens, Sydney and Barcelona.
But they forgot some things in their calculations. How about these?
London has lots of residents, who have families who live abroad. So what better time to have a family reunion?
Lots of those who work in the City are highly paid EU citizens. So what better time to buy a lot of tickets so all your friends and family from Ireland, Germany or Spain can see the Olympics?
London has lots of attractions, so many ordinary people in nearby EU countries, who probably won’t get another chance to see an Olympics, are making the London their big holiday this year. Rio will be a bit expensive next time round. The Irish certainly will be coming in droves, as we all know they love a party.
So if anything, the shortage of Olympic tickets is more of a success thing than anything else. Although you could blame London’s unique place in the world and being a member of the EU as important too.
A Swiss Proposal To Clean Up Space
The Swiss has put forward a proposal for a satellite to clean up space junk. Read about it here.
I can remember reading a similar proposal in the Meccano Magazine over fifty years ago.
A lot of ideas are not new, but just recycled using better technology. Perhaps the designer was clearing out his loft or wherever the Swiss put their junk and found the magazine.
Early Repayment Rules for Student Loans
Traditionally, there has generally been a penalty for early repayment of loans, but some of the new ethical online loan companies, like Zopa use no penalty as a selling point. So do Wonka, who I wouldn’t normally describe as ethical. Even Nationwide charges an extra 30 days interest if you settle your loan early.
So for the student loan companies to charge would be going against what is now accepted as normal and back to the bad old past, where early repayment was a major part of a loan company’s profits.
As this seems to have been a Liberal Democrat idea, who are supposed to be forward thinking or at least not backward, you can read what you like into the proposal.
I don’t need to borrow money, but if I did, I would always do it from a reputable company, that had no penalty for early repayment.
Rocks and Climate Change: How We Can Stop Pulling the Carbon Trigger
Today, I went to another lecture at the Geological Society of London, the title of which is the title of this post.
The entertaining lecture was given by Bryan Lovell, who is Senior Research Fellow in Earth Sciences at Cambridge University. He talked about how 55 million years ago a rapid global warming effect called the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum changed the world forever and led to the creation of the first apes. Some of the proof of this is believed to be the unusual puddingstone found in places like Hertfordshire, which was created at the time. As he said the rocks tell us what happens if you don’t control global warming and that the earth can cope with it, but animals can’t.
One point he then said was that the oil industry can store safely underground the carbon dioxide captured from a coal-fired power station at a reasonable price.
He then said that although the scientific case has been established beyond doubt and even Shell accepts there is man made global warning, but we haven’t convinced ourselves of the need to act. He said that now is the time to tell the story written in the rocks – in verse, in film and in song. He was at Harvard in the 1960s and no-one got anywhere about convincing the Americans about the wrongness of the Vietnam War, until Joan Baez got involved. We need another Joan. And unfortunately someone, who could have written and performed something eloquent; Dory Previn, died on Tuesday.
The Anonymous Widower 