Campaigner

Excellent news for eco-warriors everywhere. The noted actor Mr. Jeremy Irons has become a green campaigner, and will be tirelessly raising awareness on sustainability. He starred in one of my all time favourite films, Dead Ringers (which included one of most disturbing movie lines ever uttered: "they're gynecological instruments for operating on mutant women"), and was the voice of the baddie (of course, because he's English) in the Lion King, which I must have seen a thousand times when the boys were little.

Launching himself as a green campaigner, Irons has revealed plans to make a documentary about sustainability and waste disposal, likening himself to Michael Moore, the controversial film maker, although “not as silly”.

[From Earth will bite us back, warns Irons - Times Online]

It transpires that Mr. Irons has seven homes, one of them a castle, which I think is an excellent benchmark for sustainability, so I hereby commit myself to the cause of sustainability and I before my peers, with hand on heart, I promise to never have more than seven homes.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Handicapped

I went shopping at Waitrose the other day and as I was walking across the car park a red BMV -- a fancy one -- drove in and parked in one of the handicapped parking spaces. As I walked closer, I could see that the vehicle did, indeed, have a blue badge. Note for foreign readers: "blue badges" are the much-abused scheme for allowing disabled people to park near to the shops.

The only occupant, a very large gentleman got out and strolled off to go shopping. A poser. What do you do? I could have said, "I say, old chap, it's damnably thoughtless to park there when a genuinely handicapped person might need to park there shortly!". I didn't, of course, because querying anyone about anything will get you stabbed in modern Britain so I just walked on, fuming.

Why are we conditioned to put up with this sort of mindless anti-social behaviour? They take this kind of thing seriously in Texas.

Clark admits that she parked in a yellow-striped space next to a handicap space for a few minutes March 8 but said she never saw a "no parking" sign until after an officer pointed it out to her while writing the ticket.

"It's outrageous," Clark said. "I wasn't driving drunk. I wasn't speeding in a school zone."

If Clark had been speeding 35 mph over the limit in a school zone, her fine would have been $324, about half of the parking ticket cost, according to the court's website.

[From Everything's bigger in Texas, like a $640 parking ticket | McClatchy]

I think a £400 parking fine for abusing the spaces at Waitrose is quite reasonable.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

A8

"This paper assesses the fiscal consequences of migration to the UK from the Central and Eastern European countries that joined the EU in May 2004 (A8 countries). We show that A8 immigrants who arrived after EU enlargement in 2004, and who have at least one year of residence – and are therefore legally eligible to claim benefits - are 60% less likely than natives to receive state benefits or tax credits, and 58% less likely to live in social housing": this comes from "Assessing the Fiscal Costs and Benefits of A8 Migration to the UK"

Thus, from an empirical position, the immigration problem might be restated as:

• How can we get more productive immigrants to come here (ie, Poles) while stopping less productive immigrants from making it across the channel and,
• How can we persuade the feckless and stupid (whether immigrants or not) to leave?

The second point is particularly difficult. Clearly, if you are feckless and stupid, you will have no incentive to do anything other than stay here and live on welfare. But suppose you were offered the chance to go and live somewhere sunny like Sierra Leone for 2/3 of your benefits? After all, 2/3 of UK benefits is a tidy income by Sierra Leone standards and it would be a way for us to save a third on the welfare budget right away.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Headcaselines

Looking at today's paper reminded me of last month when I was in the office on April Fool's Day being teased by my fellow workers because I couldn't figure out which of the news stories in the Telegraph, Independent and Guardian were the traditional April 1st spoof stories and which were real. At the time this was most amusing, but since then I've begun to worry: isn't there something rather unsettling about living in a country where you can no longer distinguish between reality and clumsy satire? In the news over the last few days there have been stories of a female soldier who has won a payout for sexual discrimination from the Army because she couldn't go on parade because she couldn't sort out child care for her daughter, a major high street store selling padded bras for 7 year-old girls, a complaint that wildlife film makers such as David Attenborough don't pay attention to animals right to privacy and school that has suspended a teacher for saying "blackboard" instead of the politically-correct "chalkboard". OK, so I made one of them up, but you'll never guess which one. Does that disturb you as much as it disturbs me?

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

NHS Indirect

If I was sick, I certainly wouldn't take any advice from the staff of NHS Direct who, it transpires, take an average of 23 sick days per year each. I'm not saying that if I had to listening to members of the public calling me about their nauseating ailments I wouldn't fancy a couple of days a month on the club, but this is more than twice the already too high day a month sick average for all NHS staff. Actually, if I was sick, the NHS would be the absolutely last place I would call. I'd call a taxi instead of calling them.

Dr Tracey Leigh, the out-of-hours GP who was on call, diagnosed the boy with swine flu after following a flowchart to help identify his symptoms... However, Louis was actually suffering from a rare form of diabetes which had not been diagnosed, and was experiencing symptoms of kidney failure related to that disease. When his mother found him in bed the next day he was cold and had stopped breathing.

[From Boy died after NHS staff wrongly diagnosed swine flu | Society | The Guardian]

Basically, if you get really ill, don't call anyone. Go to hospital and get some real attention.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Eruption of memory

What with all of the news about the volcano, the newspapers and TV have repeated many times the story of the British Airways jumbo jet that lost all power when it flew into an ash cloud created by the eruption of Mount Galunggung in Indonesia in 1982. You'll remember the story of the heroics of the pilots who, having lost all four engines, decided to glide the plane into the sea but (after it had fallen from 36,000 feet to 24,000 feet) managed to restart the engines and land the plane safely. The point is that you can't see volcanic dust clouds on radar and that's why they've grounded all of the flights in Europe, because if the jets flew into the clouds then their engines would clog.

The events around one British Airways flight in 1982 reveal the potential dangers of this sort of dust... The passenger jet effectively turned into a glider... When all four engines on the Boeing 747 being flown by Captain Eric Moody shut down at 37,000ft, he hadn't a clue why.

[From BBC News - When volcanic ash stopped a Jumbo at 37,000ft]

This story always reminds me of my experiences on the ground. I was living in Bandung in central Java when that volcano went off. And when the ash cloud reached us, it was honestly one of the most unusual days of my entire life. We'd been told that the ash cloud might come but I don't remember that having any connotations. I don't remember thinking anything about it, other than that I'd never seen a volcanic ash cloud. When we woke up in the morning it was pitch black. I mean absolutely black, not like dark at night when there's still a little moonlight or starlight to see by. I mean it was absolutely pitch black, the ash blocked out the sun completely. Visibility out in the streets was maybe 50 feet maximum. You couldn't see the dust in the air right in front of your face but you couldn't see 50 feet. It was like being in fog where you can't see the fog right in front of your face.

Since we didn't know what else to do, we got into the car and slowly navigated our way to the office. Everyone was driving very slowly with their headlights on. I can't remember ash on the ground. It wasn't like snow where it was piling up on the side of the road, I don't remember that at all. I just remember a coating of dust on everything. When we got to the office, we were issued with face masks. They just covered your nose and mouth with a sort of cotton pad which was held in place with an aluminium frame and some elastic. I actually hadn't found it difficult to breathe but it was really shocking after you put the masks on because after no more than a few minutes you could see a red film building up on the face mask where the volcanic dust was building up on the cotton instead of, presumably, going into your lungs.

It was a really strange day to spend a day, a whole day, in the pitch dark. And I can still remember how it felt sort of other-worldly to be walking round in total darkness in the middle of the day. The volcano didn't seem to affect anything in the sense that it didn't seem to stop cars from running or computers from operating. We were running some DEC mini and some early PCs (XT?) with Microsoft's now long-forgotten version of Unix called Xenix. Perhaps equipment was just more robust in those days, jet-engines excepted.

While in a reminiscing about volcanoes mood, I've also upload three pictures of my visit to Anak Krakatoa ("child of Krakatoa") in 1983. It had erupted a couple of years earlier but was quiet when we got there so we just made our way up it! It was hot, but not intolerable, and it was quite exciting to stand on the top.

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]

Copycat

That was fun -- we went over to see Rory Bremner at the Yvonne Arnaud in Guildford. It was part of Rory's Election Battlebus Tour 2010. The first part of the show was him doing "stand up" commentary on the election, the second part involved the Lb Dem candidate for Guildford (a marginal), a wonk from the Lib Dems (the Tories were invited by didn't come) and Edwina Currie. It was actually jolly enjoyable: he's a good MC, being a) clever and b) quick, but there could have been a few more questions from the crowd. I wanted to ask a question (about immigration) but didn't get picked, so I'll ask it here: "You don't have to be a member of the BNP to be concerned about uncontrolled mass immigration to the UK, so could the panel bypass their metropolitan, liberal and faintly patronising statements about immigration from the first half of the show and give us their honest opinions on the topic? Specifically, given the revelation that uncontrolled mass immigration was a deliberate New Labour policy, how they would answer the concerns of the good burghers of Peterborough about the collapse of their civic infrastructure under the strain of it?"

In the future, everyone will be famous to fifteen people.
[posted with ecto]