I had a moment of brain failure last night. At some point I was asked if I wanted to run 10K for fun at the end of September. Why did I say “I’ll think about it overnight”? I find myself this morning having paid £10 to enter the Nike Run London event. What have I done? I haven’t run anywhere for 10 years. I even have a policy of not running for a train because another one will come along eventually.
Apparently we need £40 million to cope with our rising fridge problem. £40 million! It amazes me how much we need to spend to recycle. Wow. And I can’t get the council to deliver my recycling bags. [recycling link]
2004: The Madness Of Business Travel
2002: How far is 10K in Miles?
After last night’s little rant on the state of the London Underground system, I heard about this morning’s nonsense from the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) to start charging commuters more to sit on over-crowded, dirty, late-running trains. I guess the plan reasons that charging higher fares means fewer people will travel by train. Surely, this proves that an integrated transport policy for London’s workers remains a non-existent dream. Ken Livingston wants to charge people for driving into central London. The SRA wants to charge more for travelling on trains. How are people expected to get into work? The answer is they will still drive and take the train and it will cost them more – status quo remains. It seems to me that nobody is prepared to do what it takes to sort transport in the South East out. And that still stinks.
So then, I got to thinking about John Prescott’s [John Prescott as Boss of Bosses?] little plan to build more affordable housing in the South East of England (to ease the chronic housing shortage, apparently). Affordable housing implies that this is aimed at people on a lower wage (am I taking a big leap here?). How, exactly, are these people going to get to work in London if train prices rise and roads get tolls? Again, it appears inconsistent and badly thought out. Why not take some of these £4 billion and encourage businesses to move out of the South East to areas where there are too many houses or where there is less congestion. If we’re not careful, the UK will topple over as the South East of Britain sinks into The Channel under the weight of all the people migrating from other parts of the country.
No other posts on this day.
The great struggle to and from work in London is over as another strike by London Underground staff finishes and the tube returns to its normal, over-crowded, hot, sticky self. I don’t think there can be a person in this City who does not believe that the Underground is under funded and appears, at times, not too far from breaking point. Summer brings its own special brand of problems for London’s sub-terrain commuters: hot, sweaty and stuck in tunnels on the way to the office does not make for a contented work force. When will Tony Blair, Ken Livingston and Bob Crow stop using the Underground as a great big political football and start doing something to ease the plight of those who try and use London’s public transport on a regular basis? I, along with most people who have chosen to live, work or visit London, am fed up with the self-serving posturing of the politicians and union leaders. I can’t say if I think the strike was wrong or not but I do know that the very fact that non of the parties involved are currently at a negotiating table resolving all issues and developing long-term strategies for coping with increasing commuter volumes stinks worse than the armpits of that harassed member of the public I will be squashed against tomorrow morning. Please somebody, for the sake of those of us who voted for you and pay for you, sort out the mess. [current tube status]
2005: Fans Vote On Qualifying Rules
2003: 40 Days and 40 Nights
2003: Consumers Around Your Product
2003: No More Netscape
2002: 50 things
2002: I say “medieval” – You say “medireview”
Overyourhead is London-based blogger bloke. He has this list [official site] from Birmingham’s Thinktank. Thinktank is the city’s new museum of science and technology and looks fantastic. I will certainly pay it a visit on my next voyage to Birmingham. The list of 50 things that have most affected our lives in the last 50 years is one of those fascinating lists that I will read and re-read for a long time to come. I can’t decide which affected me most but there was a woman on the radio last night citing 1955 – the invention of the non-stick saucepan – as being fairly important to modern life. As I have never found a non-stick pan that is exactly that, then I would have to disagree.
2005: Fans Vote On Qualifying Rules
2003: 40 Days and 40 Nights
2003: Consumers Around Your Product
2003: No More Netscape
2002: London Life Underground
2002: I say “medieval” – You say “medireview”
And so to another link of the day: Never ask Yahoo for a Medieval Mocha. [Related]
2005: Fans Vote On Qualifying Rules
2003: 40 Days and 40 Nights
2003: Consumers Around Your Product
2003: No More Netscape
2002: London Life Underground
2002: 50 things
Since I started more-or-less daily blogging, I have taken more of an interest in other people’s musings. Today I find that everybody (well, Tom Coates and Ben Hammersley) is linking to this from Amazon (more accurately, this). Given that I would buy everything on Amazon if I could, I am very interested in anything they do. I am a devoted Amazonian (I just made that up but it sounds good). Actually, I wouldn’t buy everything but almost everything. (Public Service Announcement: other e-commerce sites are available). Of course this also means that I can place a shameless link to my WishList. Shameless is OK as nobody will ever buy anything from it. Something on there might rank at Daypop’s WishList Chart one day.
2005: links for 2005-07-17
2005: In Case Of Emergency
2003: Rain Breaks Heatwave
2003: Gay Consumers Are Good
Why do I always seem to post the links the rest of the blogging world sees? Anyway, this caught my attention today. I use the internet for research purposes but I was not fortunate enough to have access when I was studying. This article essentially implies that researching on the ‘Net is not as good as reading a good old-fashioned book. “The quality of information [on the Internet] is below what you find in print,” according to the story. Perhaps it is but then most of the information still remains free on the web. I wonder if we’ll ever get an appropriate charging model that allows people to use the ‘Net for the research they need but pay in the same way as those who buy the books. Is it down to the libraries to pay to put the information online? On the upside, “‘Net thinkers are said to generate work quickly and make connections easily”. I know one thing for sure, Google is a lot easier than the old Encyclopedia Index volume.
2005: links for 2005-07-16
2005: Harry’s Here
2003: Paris Photographs
Finally Gordon Brown is spending some money on public services in the UK. Today the Government announced £511 billion worth of spending. They are focussing on education with some of that but also targeting poor performing public services whose managers may be removed and replaced if they do not meet performance goals. Why do I think we will have more overseers and less doers in the future? I hope not. It’s about time this government fulfilled some of its promises that many people believed were made back in 1997 when they first came to power. I want to the government build a better society and, at the heart of that, better public service provision is required. [Yahoo]
2006: Changing The Face of Pop
2005: Trafalgar Square Vigil
2003: A 4 Minute Warning
I got more then you
And you can set it free
I can catch the moon in my hand
Don’t you know who I am
Remember my name
Well for no reason at all, I decided to look up what was the number one UK single on this day in 1982 (I don’t even know why I chose that year). Well, it’s a bit of a minefield as it somewhat depends on which chart you count as being the “official” chart. Still, it would appear that it was Irene Cara and the theme from Fame which is, of course, one of the greatest records from my childhood.
2005: Two Minutes Silence
2003: 1789 And All That
2003: Wind Power
2003: Power of the Idea
2002: Ask Homer (and remember HotWired)