Liverpool Comes To London
HMS Liverpool is in London this weekend and I went to have a look.
Note the red liver bird, which gives the ship it’s nickname of Crazy Red Chicken.
Pudding Mill Lane Portal – 29th January 2012
These pictures taken on Friday, show that it’s progressing compared to the last time I visited.
The pictures were actually taken through the door window of a DLR train. as it left Pudding Mill Lane station in the direction of Bow Church station.
Around Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park
This park is based on the old Tower Hamlets Cemetery and is now a nature reserve as well.
I went on Friday to have a look round and took these pictures.
Note the daffodils and the derelict St. Clements Hospital. The War Memorial is still intact and hasn’t suffered from metal thieves.
Is This The Sickest Lawsuit Ever?
David Belniak was drunk, had taken cocaine and Xanax, when he crashed his car at 88 mph into the back of someone else’s in a 55 mph zone and killed all four occupants. He got a twelve year sentence and you can read the whole story here in the Daily Mail.
He is now suing the relatives of those he killed for the mental anguish he went through.
I’ve Never Eaten A Chicken McNugget!
And after Rod Liddle’s description of what goes in them, I surely don’t think I’ve missed any essential food or vitamins. He entitles the piece,
Listen up, you silly McNuggets: start saying ‘no’ to kids, so I think you can get his drift. Or should I say his very caustic drift, as he weaves the story round the life and imminent death of Stacey Irvine, who’s lived on McNuggets since she was two.
When Was The Last Time Sussex Had Two Teams in the Fifth Round of the FA Cup?
With Crawley beating Hull at the KC Stadium and Brighton beating Newcastle at home by the same score, it means that Sussex has two teams in the fifth round of the FA Cup for the first time. Brighton of course did make the 1983 Cup Final.
I do suspect that the draw might be fixed so that they play each other, as who would fancy a trip to the Deep South.
It’s actually quite a small list of counties that have two League teams outside of the obvious, like Greater London, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Tyne and Wear and a few others, who have two clubs anyway. I can find Bristol, Derbyshire, Devon, Essex and Hampshire. And of course Sussex.
What Do You Get When You Cross Good Engineering With Good Financial Skills?
February’s Modern Railways magazine has an interesting article about how a whole new lengthened set of trains are being created to work the South West London services for South West Trains.
Currently these services are worked by 4-car Class 458 and Class 450 trains.
For various reasons South West Trains want to go to a 10-car railway, which would mean the simplest solution would be to lengthen the Class 450s to 5-cars and run them in pairs as required. But this would require upwards of about a hundred new carriages and typically these cost about a million pounds each.
But then Porterbrook’s engineers and managers got involved and suggested using the redundant purpose built fleet of 8-car Gatwick Express Class 460 that were surplus to requirements to lengthen the Class 458’s to 5-car trains. This is possible as both sets of trains were built by Alstom to a common design.
So South West Trains will get what they want at a lesser cost and probably earlier too.
The irony is that Porterbrook, is basically a train leasing company and not an engineering one.
So next time you ask, what have bankers done for us, look at a clever piece of work like this. But then it was probably led by engineers who understood money, rather than bankers who understood engineering.
All of the best engineers I’ve worked with always understood the monetary implications of what they did! Some also understood marketing too!
One Of My Least Favourite Stadia Will Get a Station
The Ricoh Arena at Coventry is a reas9onable stadium, unless you want to get there when the buses aren’t running from the centre. That happened on News Years Day in 2011 as I reported here.
But it would now appear that by December 2013, it will have its own station! About time too!
Is Hull Going to be Connected Properly to the Rest of the UK?
Modern Railways are quoted in their February edition, that NetworkRail are going to investigate pushing the TransPennine electrification on from York to Selby and Hull.
This sounds like a good idea and I suspect that all those Hullensians will be pleased. It will also keep NetworkRail’s electrification train busy, especially as that line doesn’t have too many bridges, tunnels and viaducts.
Should Paul Scholes Captain GB in the Olympics?
Rules say that for Olympic football, you must pick an under-23 side, but you are allowed three overage players in your side. This article in the Daily Mail says that Giggs, Scholes and Beckham could be those overage players.
Obviously others will have their view and especially, when it is known, who’s not going to Euro-2012.
The Anonymous Widower 