Prince Andrew, probable son of Queen Elizabeth II and Lord Carnarvon (aka earl of Porchester, aka Henry George Reginald Molyneux Herbert) is in trouble with the National Audit Office over his travelling expenses for last year. The Prince likes to use the RAF as his own personal taxi service rather than more mundane options like train or car.
Yesterday I was reading the paper version of The Independent. I was intrigued by a British experiment of the 1930’s where over 150 schools taught pupils outside in all weathers in the belief that “fresh air” would prevent TB. You can read the online version of that article here. Today I had a taste of that myself as I struggled to write Javscript at my laptop while local double glazing company Polarglaze replaced all my windows. In what must be the coldest day of the year so far, snow frequently blew in the house. The new windows are as great as the old ones were bad. The old ones were just 3mm thick in bare aluminium frames and were frequently covered in condensation. The new ones are Pilkington K “bounce the heat back into the room” jobbies in smart white frames.
Thatcher pleads guilty. Heh heh. I blame the parents. It’s such a shame he plea bargained to just a fine because I like the idea of a Thatcher in jail.
The Chinese State Circus are in town for a few days so, for the 4th time in 10 years, I went to see them. Every time I see them the acts have changed completely (bar one) and every new act is just as amazing and as impressive as the new ones, just thinking them up must be a feat in itself. The only act that they keep is the number-of-people-on-one-bicycle, an act for which they hold the world record (12 if I counted them correctly). My favourite acts of the show were the “balancing chairs” act and the “juggling with urns”.
Watched the Marcel Theroux (how many more Theroux’s are there?) documentary The End Of the World as We Know It last night. Pretty depressing. Irreversible damage to the planet may be done in as little as 20 years from now (i.e., within our lifetime but longer than the lifetime of most political administrations) due to high carbon emissions and what little we are doing about it is simply too little. Various alternative energy forms (tidal, wind, etc) were looked at and rejected as not being efficient enough as well as having other problems.
James Lovelock, father of the Green Movement and originator of the Gaia Theory proposed that nuclear power is the safest and most effective energy source. Marcel then visited Chernobyl to see what it’s like there nearly 20 years after the disaster there. That was pretty harrowing but we were told how the “occasional Chernobyl” would still be less harmful to the planet than our current usage of fossil fuels. I felt encouraged by the return of animals and plant life to an evacuated town near Chernobyl: at least flora and fauna could survive our attempts to break the planet even if we don’t.
Whilst “safe” nuclear fuel may be possible it is currently a political kiss of death for any political party. so who will build them? If countries do build new nuclear power plants, how will they dispose of the waste? What happens if the waste gets in the “wrong hands”?
As if this wasn’t enough Marcel then flitted over to India to point out that as developing countries like India and China become more affluent and more industrial their energy demands will increase and further add to climate change effects.
Sadly, most people in Britain wanted to complain to the BBC about the screening of Jerry Springer The Opera rather than hassle their MP about saving the planet.
It should be no surprise that Addenbrookes comes near the top of MRSA league tables. I have a friend who works there and is often told to clean a ward to “MRSA standard” by herself despite such a task requiring 3 people. Moving cleaners to different wards on different days (which also happens) suggests that the hospital is short of cleaners, not good. It is also damaging to morale for the cleaners, with the same ward(s) to clean people can take pride in their job and be held responsible for their work. Now Unison has highlighted this problem too saying that the fight against MRSA needs more cleaners.
