Dinosaurs Wreck Daylight Saving Bill
The latest attempt at saving lives by moving the clocks an hour forward has been wrecked by those MPs, who have gone against the main will of the House of Commons, the government and the people of the UK, by using procedural tricks to talk the Bill out. Read all about it in the Guardian.
It’s funny, but now I live in London instead of Suffolk, I’m more in favour than ever of the bill. I have just walked back from a bus in semi-darkness. So in Islington and Hackney, the lights aren’t too bad, but it was just at this time of night last winter, when a teenage girl was killed as she crossed between two buses, just round the corner from where I live. An hour of extra daylight and she might still be alive. She probably shouldn’t have done it, but who hasn’t.
If the Scots, who weren’t the major objectors this time incidentally, want a different timezone to England, then that is their business.
But how many other pedestrians will have to die before this lunacy is corrected.
An Excursion At Wood Green
I went to Turnpike Lane, as I was going to Cockfosters to be picked up by a friend from school. It is an ideal station to be picked up on the northern part of the M25.
I was ahead of time, so I got off at Wood Green, where my father had his printing works and had a walk round. The station itself is virtually unchanged from 1967 or so, which was the last time I used it. Although, the escalators have been modernised and passenger barriers have been installed. But this view is almost identical.
Wood Green Station
Except for a few details and the Ocado van.
I walked down Station Road took this picture of the works.
H Miller & Sons, Wood Green
Note that until perhaps twenty years or so ago, there was a sign saying, H Miller and Sons, above the widest of the arches, which then had a pair of double doors. My father was one of the sons.
My father’s office in the building was at the top left, where new brickwork can be seen. I spent many an hour on a desk there as a young child sitting on a pile of leather bound ledgers watching the trains go to and from the now closed Palace Gates station.
In the photograph, you can also see the parapet, where my grandmother’s ginger cat went about its business in this tale.
Here is a photo of the Jolly Anglers, which hasn’t changed that much since my father used to illegally take me in for lunch in the 1950s.
The Jolly Anglers, Station Road, Wood Green
I also took a photo of where the Rex Cinema used to be.
Where the Rex Cinema in Wood Green Was
Many a day, I would go there, whilst my parents worked. It wasn’t that bad a cinema and was magnitudes better than the Essoldo in East Barnet, which had a collander for a roof.
Krushchev Would Feel At Home
Turnpike Lane station is one of the few stations on the northern part of the Piccadilly line with some of the original 1930s details still intact.
Here’s some rather superb uplighters, that would not look out of place in a hotel of the period like the Savoy.
Uplighters at Turnpike Lane Station
And here’s the escalators.
Escalators at Turnpike Lane Station
The escalators are virtually identical to those on the Moscow Metro, as London Underground had a lot to do with installing them. When I was in Moscow in 2000, the escalators there still had their wooden treads. Because of the Kings Cross Fire, most, if not all, of those in London have now been replaced.
As Nikita Kruschev was one of those incharge of building the Moscow system, he would be pleased that London Underground still has some of the details from the 1930s similarly to those installed in Moscow.
North Shall Be East
When I used to use the northern part of the Piccadilly line, you always talked about going north and south. So from Turnpike Lane, or Turnpicky Larny in the local speak, to get to Cockfosters, you took a northbound train. But not any more, as this picture taken at the station shows.
North Shall be East
London Underground, now uses a convention, that the line has the same cardinal directions at every station.
Doctors Catch Bob Crow Syndrome
I like this use of words in a leader in The Times today.
I would define Bob Crow syndrome, as being unwilling to give up salaries and pensions, that are way above what similar groups of employees are getting.
The leader does praise British Airways pilots, who graciously took a pay cut rather than see their jobs disappear.
Is God He or She?
I don’t believe in any supreme being, but I find it strange that Christianity, Islam and a lot of other religions assume that God is male. Others do have famale deities, so it’s not universal.
It would be a real problem for some religions and especially sects in some, if God did appear and she was female. It would certainly cause a lot of embarrassment. But I suppose they wouldn’t believe her, as their God is male.
At least not believing in anything means, I won’t have that problem.
God Isn’t Listening
Apparently, Texas is in the midst of a drought.
According to The Times today, last April Rick Perry, the governor and Presidential candidate, lead a prayer for rain in the state.
And guess what?
It hasn’t rained.
Either God doesn’t exist or he/she doesn’t like the fact that Rick Perry executes a lot of people in his state.
The Artist at the Barbican
I went to the Barbican Centre last night to see The Artist.
It was well worth seeing and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
It is very much a feel-good film.
Perhaps, I’m being sentimental, but I also felt it was about how you get over loss. The main character had lost his career because of talking films and was very much on the point of suicide after a downward spiral. He was in the end saved by his dog and another actor, Peppi.
I hope it wins the Oscar for best film, but will this happen as the film is French?
All I want now, is my Peppi to come along.
Jon Snow Is Everywhere
It’s a good cause and I agree with the charity’s aims.
Trees for Cities Advert with Jon Snow
Adverts for Trees for Cities are everywhere on the Underground and they feature Jon Snow.
I was at Liverpool University, just before Jon Snow organised the protest against Lord Salisbury, who at the time was Chancellor of the university. There must have been an earlier protest, as I remember something about 1968. In Engineering, who didn’t take too much of a political stance. the reasons were a bit above our head. Although, we did think that Lord Salisbury was not the sort of old right-wing political buffer, who should hold that position. Wikipedia says this about the protest in 1970.
Apart from his political career Salisbury was Chancellor of the University of Liverpool from 1951 until 1971. In 1970, students at the university staged an occupation at Senate House to demand his removal, over his support for apartheid and similarly reactionary views.
I think it is true to say, that today, anybody with those views wouldn’t hold such a position.
In the end Jon Snow was rusticated for organising the protest, but the University did later award him an honorary Doctor of Letters in 2011.
C’s tutor at the University was Robert Kilroy Silk. He was also one of the organisers of the protest against Lord Salisbury, but I have read that at the last minute he didn’t turn up. It couldn’t have been because he was giving a tutorial to C, as she had graduated from the university in the previous year and we were living in London. Obviously, no punishment was handed down to Kilroy Silk.
C always found him odious and I can remember her stinking with tobacco smoke after she had been to one of his tutorials, where he chain-smoked Capstan Full Strength all the way through.
He obviously left the right impression on her, as once we were standing next to him at Newmarket racecourse and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get her to approach him and speak of her times at Liverpool under his tutelage.
So now I think justice has been done. Kilroy was here, briefly and Jon Snow is everywhere. Sadly C is no more, but I still have her memories of her tutor in my mind.
McQueen on the Green
I took this picture as I passed the Screen on Islington Green.
McQueen on the Green
It’s nice to see humour and creativity in something as mundane as a cinema advert. I can’t imagine a major chain doing something like this.
The Anonymous Widower 