Jeremy Corbyn Courts The Rural Vote!
There is an article in The Spectator entitled Meet the new anti-meat, anti-shooting, pro-badger shadow Defra secretary.
Would You Hire Someone You’ve Never Met?
I don’t think I would!
But Jeremy Corbyn did according to this article on the BBC. This is the start of the article.
Jeremy Corbyn has chosen Lucy Powell as his new Shadow Education Secretary despite never meeting her.
It is an interesting way to build a team.
Jeremy Corbyn Sugests Women-Only Carriages On Trains
According to this article on the BBC, Jeremy Corbyn is suggesting that women-only carriages should be introduced in the UK. This is the start of the article.
Labour leadership contender Jeremy Corbyn has said he would consider women-only rail carriages to help stem a rise in assaults on public transport.
Mr Corbyn told the Independent he would consult women on the suggestion.
But the idea was attacked as outdated and unhelpful by his Labour leadership rivals Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham.
I have no view one way or another on the actual proposal, but practically there are problems.
Most new urban trains, like those on the London Overground, Underground, Thameslink and Crossrail are effectively built as one long articulated carriage. This picture shows the inside of a Class 378 train on the Overground.
This layout increases capacity, enables passengers to spread themselves to less-crowded parts of the train and get to the appropriate carriage for disembarking.
I am not sure whether it is a safer layout, but on a couple of occasions, I’ve had a drunk or a noisy baby sit by me, whilst I’m trying to read, so I’ve quietly moved to another part of the train. It must also be an easier train to monitor for security purposes.
The layout also makes evacuation of the train easier in the case of an incident, like a complete power failure in a tunnel, as you’d just walk to one end of the train to be taken down steps by the emergency services.
If there was a segregated area for women, this would be extremely difficult to incorporate into a train designed in this way. It might even compromise the tunnel evacuation procedures.
So to create some women-only trains would mean an expensive rebuild, new trains, or a lot of work to make tunnels fit the new circumstances.
An alternate would be to make one train in six say, women only!
And surely, if you have women-only trains, you should also have women-only buses, taxis and minicabs. I think the latter are one of the worst places for attacks on women. This article in the Daily Mail has the headline of No woman is safe in a minicab, says rape judge. It may be an exaggeration as it’s the Daily Mail, but it does say there are 100,000 private hire drivers in the country and questions the checking procedures.
It would be far better, if instead of making public transport safer for a particular group, we made it safe for everybody who wants to use it.
I was travelling on the Overground recently, when on arrival at Dalston Junction station, a blind, black lady in her forties was met by a uniformed Overground stationman, who led her professionally up the stairs and through the barriers.
Every station in the UK should be mandated to follow the Overground rule of station staff being present from the first train of the day until the last. Also if you need special assistance on the Overground, you don’t need to give prior warning. This page on the Transport for London web site, details their policy.
Does Jeremy Corbyn Really Support Coal?
I am very surprised by this report in the Daily Mirror, which talks about Jeremy Corbyn and coal. Here’s the first paragraph.
Jeremy Corbyn could bring back coal mines despite vowing to ‘keep fossil fuels in the ground’.
The article goes on to talk about carbon capture technology to burn coal without producing any carbon dioxide.
I have been to learned lectures on this technology and there’s about as much chance of making it work economically, as landing an astronaut on the Sun.
I may be wrong about carbon capture technology, but we would be better spending the investment on insulating our woefully energy-inefficient buildings, so everybody had a lower energy bill.
We obviously need more electricity and there are better ways of generating it without the carbon problem.
My preferred methods would be.
- Importing electricity generated by geothermal and hydroelectric power stations in Iceland using an undersea cable. The so-called IceLink is described on this page on the National Grid web site.
- Tidal power in the Severn and other western estuaries. The Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon is a project that has started.
- Offshore wind and wave.
- Solar panels on buildings. Technology is improving and costs are falling.
- Local energy generation using small-scale systems like the Bunhill Energy Centre in Islington.
I also believe that if we funded research in our best Universities, we could fundamentally change our energy use, generation and conservation.
We might even be able to do without using more of the following types of power generation in the future.
- Coal, with all its problems of pollution and the carbon dioxide it generates.
- Nuclear, with all its problems of high cost and unacceptability by certain sections of the population.
- On-shore wind, with all its visual intrusion.
I think the future is going to be scientifically green.
I suspect that in twenty or thirty years time, our main uses of fossil fuels, like oil and gas, will be in the production of needed chemicals, heat energy for industrial processes and powering transport.
Who Is CB?
If you use Anagram Genius to find an anagram of “Jeremy Corbyn”, you get the following result.
Enjoy Merry CB
So who is CB?
At least his anagram wasn’t rude, unlike some other politicians!
The Anonymous Widower 