Journal Entries
Why...
Posted Feb 8, 2008
...are the buttons on the remote control on my new video recorder embossed in Braille?
Discuss this Journal entry [5]
Latest reply: Feb 8, 2008
End of an Era
Posted Jan 25, 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/7200432.stm
This story is interesting because it holds up a mirror to the behaviour of the governments we had at the time. After the miner's strike - which, I'm glad to say for different reasons altogether, the miners lost - the Conservative government pursued a policy of mine closures, partly as punishment but partly because some pits were simply unviable. However, they overreached themselves when in the early 90's, with John Major in power, they decided that having cut away the dead wood they were going to go for the living tree, mainly as retribution for the miner's strike. There was a huge public backlash, and a certain slimy Cabinet member suffered a well-deserved heart attack as a result.
The miners at tower Colliery bought out the pit and continued to work it successfully despite the claim that the pit was economically unviable. They showed that the then Conservative government, having run out of ideas and justification for their actions, were hell-bent on imposing their ideology regardless. How many more pits could have carried on working? How many more were perfectly viable, given the right management?
Discuss this Journal entry [10]
Latest reply: Jan 25, 2008
I needn't have bothered
Posted Jan 18, 2008
I decided to get a Bluetooth headset as I have had several calls while driving my car. I pulled up at the lights tonight alongside a decrepit hatchback given a hot-hatch makeover, to see a bloke not only talking into his mobile phone but watching a movie on a DVD screen bolted to his dashboard! I got away from him as quickly as I possibly could.
Discuss this Journal entry [23]
Latest reply: Jan 18, 2008
This'll make me think twice before buying Czech again
Posted Jan 15, 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7189556.stm
Rilke would have had something to say about it.
"His gaze has from the pasing of the bars
grown so tired, that it holds nothing anymore.
It seems to him there are a thousand bars
and behind a thousand bars no world."
Discuss this Journal entry [1]
Latest reply: Jan 15, 2008
Raking over the Nuclear Embers
Posted Jan 12, 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jan/12/climatechange.carbonemissions1
King is quite right on this point. As I've said many times beforehand, I'm an environmentalist but I'm no Green. The difference between the two is that the former recognises that there is a problem and is willing to explore all possible options to solve it, whereas the latter has already made their mind up about what kind of solution is appropriate, regardless of circumstance. They have their hammer, and everything looks like a nail.
What really irks me, though, is the fact that the debate is being conducted as if it were still the 1970s. Nuclear power has moved on a hell of a lot. Has anyone heard the phrase 'fast reactor' being uttered in recent memory? No? Well, fast reactors burn *everything* and produce small amounts of waste that have a half-life in decades. They also don't require fuel reprocessing (therefore no weapons grade material can be produced) *and* they actually *manufacture* fuel from unusable U238, leading to an almost limitless supply of nuclear fuel. I'm pretty certain that Greenpeace are now crossing their fingers and hoping that the Government has conveniently forgotten about this technology because if they haven't, and they propose using it, then any opposition will be exposed as Luddism, pure and simple.
Discuss this Journal entry [10]
Latest reply: Jan 12, 2008
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