Not On-Line

I am a railway fan - not the anorak type - but someone who finds that rail is still the most civilized way to travel and I would support all realistic proposals to improve the current network (TGVs anyone?). However when I read proposals such as this http://dylanje.blogspot.com:80/2008/06/north-south-rail-links-new-approach_24.html I wonder which planet people are on.

A dual-track line built to a similar standard as the Marches line would be hideously expensive. It would be unfeasible to
re-use the routes of closed lines such as the Mid-Wales Railway (MWR) because they, frankly, were built on the cheap way back in the
1860s and were awful railways in the first place - slow, poor capacity, tight alignments, narrow tunnels etc (the narrow
tunnel bit is interesting - not all lines were built to the same loading guage and to save money some - such as the MWR - were
built to a basic a standard as possible!) and so, in effect, a new railway would have to built from scratch - if double track....and frankly you could forget that.

The problem with single track is that it wouldn't help North-South communications one jot: fast services would be impossible
owing to the need for passing places and if old trackbeds were re-used then they would keep the speed down. So we would have the situation
of a long-distance local service - not much different to the current situation on the Heart of Wales or the Cambrian routes where maximum speeds are limited (70MPH tops on the Cambrian Main Line; much less on the Coast and the HoW). A rebuilding of lines to link the North and South of Wales is romantic rubbish.

Where has the taste gone?

A few weeks ago my daughter brought back so carrots that a friend of hers had grown on his grandfather's farm. They looked awful - twisty, curly and decidedly unappetising. Until you tasted them. Real old-fashioned carrot taste which was absolutely lovely. Wind forwards to today. Carrots which looked gorgeous from Tescos, lovely orange look but they tasted of absolutely nothing. Literally nothing. I could have been eating hot cardboard. Supermarkets have been brilliant at bringing us cheap food but at what cost (and I am going to ignore here issues such as carbon miles)? The loss of taste in what we eat has been considerable - the supermarkets assumption that looks are everything (and to be fair I am not certain who is pushing this - is this consumer or supermarket driven?). I want my food to taste of something .. so please ...

Popular Crime

It has always fascinated me how some crimes have always held the popular fascination and today's Times is no exception. In essense it's saying that Dr Crippen who was hung in 1910 for the murder of his wife was framed. Now part of the fascination is the fact that wireless was used by the master of the Montrose to inform London of this suspicions that Crippen and Ethel Le Neave were on board. Story here
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article4232359.ece

However I wonder if NHS Blog Doctor will sue?
http://nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com/

Doctor Who

and it was well worth watching!

Andy Murray

At least he won his match in plenty of time before Doctor Who started!

Villiage Idiots

Just come off a call with a security specialist who wanted my advice on Unix password security. Apparently a live sys admin's idea of good security is "The old passwords will be removed and password set to the username with a blank password."


Why do we bother?

Well done Boris ....

I see Boris has announced that anyone who is in receipt of a pension under the War Pensions Scheme or the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme (and that includes war widows and widowers and eligible dependents) will be intitled to free transport within London. Excellent idea ... Is the rest of the country listening?

The difference between opponents and enemies

I am a Conservative and I will do my damndest to help the Conservatives gain power but I consider Labour to be my opponents and not my enemies (yes I know its an old political cliche but its still true!) so I get deeply worried when I see Labour coming in behind the BNP - who I really despise.

How to abuse statistics

I heard Harriet Harman on the Today programme this morning discussing pay-rate differentials bewtween men and women and she came up with this glorious piece: "Female part-time workers still earned 40% less per hour than their full-time male counterparts" (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7474801.stm) That is a load of sphericals to be honest. Try comparing like with like Harriet: part-time male workers with part-time female workers, or perhaps female full-time workers with male full-time workers?

Our friends and allies

I have long held the British armed forces in great esteem - especially since I come from a family with very strong military connections (my grandfather was an Old Contemptible) and hold the Gurkhas in especial esteem. So when I hear a story about an ex-Gurkha being turned away from an NHS cardiology unit I am appalled. Now I suppose it might be argued that in some respects Gurkhas join up through no love of Britain but because it provides a way out of poverty in Nepal, but that misses the point: they joined OUR forces and I believe that a duty of care exists to those people who served in our military. Its not just that Tul Bahadur Pun was turned away but was threatened with a very large bill.

One final point: Mr Pun won a VC in Burma

Story here: http://www.hounslowchronicle.co.uk/west-london-news/local-hounslow-news/2008/06/25/west-mid-turn-gurkha-hero-away-109642-21149076/

Un-remployed

There is a most bizarre posting over here http://batsgirl.blogspot.com/2008/06/naughty-remploy.html and here http://burningourmoney.blogspot.com/2008/06/bat-girl-meets-remploy.html about the antics of Remploy (a government sponsored quango whose aim to to provide "gainful" employment for disabled people).

Go and read ....

A clicking of the hips

One of the minor issues about hip OA is that with certain twisting movements you can get a distict "click" from the hip. Doesn't hurt but is sure is irritating. Since noise=wear this means the hip is getting worse (as if the increased stiffness hadn't already told me that ....)

ooh many joys

The Skivvy

I know it is difficult to find useful employment for a 16 year old who will only be present for a week but why can't companies who take on work-experience students give these guys something stimulanting to do? Spending 4 hours burning CDs is not going to impress anyone as to how offices work or whether it is work that is worth doing in a future career.

Cry beloved country

I made a fair number of visits to Zimbabwe in the 1990s in order to run computer training courses (I doubt that today they could afford the training courses let alone the computers which would require spending against hard currencies like the Outer Mongolian Tugrug) and I from my limited experience - I only visited Harare - I really enjoyed the place. But even then having an open discussion about what one person called "Uncle Bob" required a gentle walk in the open air. Information was limited (the fact that the Finance Minister had died of AIDS related meningitis was suppressed and when I showed my host a copy of the Economist where this was mentioned I received "So he DID die of AIDS") and although I could freely walk the streets I felt there was a state of tension (The roads outside the Presidents Palaces were closed overnight for example) throughout.

So the news today that the MDC has pulled out of the second election has saddened me but not surprised me. I totally understand why they did it: Mugabe would have terrorised, cheated his way to victory anyway - the odds on there being a free and fair election were roughly similar to me going to Mars tomorrow - and so by pulling out Morgan Tsvangira has at least saved some peoples lives (at least in the short term - I fear for the longer).

I think the time for saying "its Africa's problem - leave it to the Africans" has passed. It is the world's issue. I am NOT advocating sending 16 Air Assault Brigade in (for 2 reasons: one where the bloody hell are we going to get the troops from and (2) we have got a bloody nose elsewhere from doing just that) but intensive concerted pressure from the world community esp South Africa where Thabo Mbeki must stop his "quiet diplomacy" which Mugabe ignores, might (frankly SA is the only African country which probably counts I am afraid). The vomit inducng sight of Mugabe flying around the world, attending UN conferences (which he will again) at the same time as his thugs are attacking hs own people is just too much.

Clearing out the library

Books books books and more bloody books ... Been clearing out a massive pile of the things of which only fraction are worth reading ! M&B (not mine!) by the bucket load but a fair few I have been looking for :-) One or two I wonder why the hell I bought (Roger Penrose's "Road to Reality" falls into that category since it is so obtuse and mathematically beyond me that my poor brain couldn't cope with it!) but some I will be re-reading: John Sugden's Nelson - A dream of glory is a superb biography of the first part of the admiral's life and it would be difficult to better; Correlli Barnett's "Engage the enemy more closely" is a brilliant portrayal of the RN in WW2. And complete Sherlock Holmes even turned up ... Think son #2 will enjoy that.

The only issue has been that all of this has required a hell of a lot of bending down ... ouch....

Fete worse than death

School fete today, duty calls and went whilst the bottle tombola was still fairly fresh (and with some success I hasten to add, winning a couple of bottles of real champagne which is rare to find in such places) and although the skies were leaden, the rain held off which was a suprise given the forecast. Son #1 found it strange - he is leaving the school in about 2 weeks and in some ways I get the impression that mentally he already has. It is going to be a yank for him after six years, the breaking up of friendships (they rarely suvive despite everlasting protestations) and the formation of new ones.

I also found it difficult but for more immediate reasons: after a reasonable week my leg pretty well gave up -sharp stabbling pains right down the leg into the knee. And that pretty well was that ....

Examinations

Well son number 1 finished his GCSEs today and is going around like an inebriated toddler - permamently on a high, made worse by drinking Red Bull or some such vile concoction. He thinks that is that but, assuming (!) that he passes each stage and wants, of course, to continue, although he does at the moment, this is just the first part of what could be a very long haul: GCSEs, AS, A2, first year uni, second and last, but not least, finals. Even with a potential gap year that is still a formidable challenge which he must surmount and I hope that he, who is so laid back that he is horizontal, realises that.

Maths fun

"But Dad! You can't have a square root of a negative number!"

"Yes you can" I reply "you just can't write it down."

"eh?"

"Its called an imaginary number"

"But if its imaginary how can you have it?"

We had been discussing some maths tests which he had done and one of the things on the paper was square roots. Now just for amusement (ok ok evil pleasure) I asked him what the square root of -1 was.

"Its called i" I told him "so whats i times i?"

"i squared .... " came the reply ....

Stargate mercifully distracted him at that point.

A dash into town ..

Just come back from a raiding party on M&S. Heard that they had Islay Single Malt for £14.99. Now for various reasons - health, cost etc - I drink much less than I used to and anyway now prefer quality to quantity so a bottle like that will last me for months.

Anyway, I grabbed the last bottle on the shelf - 10 yr old. OK Fair enough perfectly happy with that.

Half the fun of buying supermarket own brands such as this is trying to work out who actually makes it. Now for Islay malts is relatively simple: there are only about 8 on the island and since M&S kindly stated on the label that it was made for them by Burn Stewart distilleries a simple google pointed me at Bunnahabhain. Not one I know well but I suspect I will find out ...

Stereotypes ....

Its odd how stereotypes creep even into medicine. A week or so ago I had an appointment at my local orthopaedic clinic to discuss my hip. The traditional view of orthopaedic surgeons is that they are male and built like prop-forwards since only males have the physical strength to disarticulate a hip or to hack through bone (orthopaedics has been described as the closest thing to carpentry in medicine btw!) and so I was rather surprised to see a young (well compared to me anyway!), slim and elegant female doctor come in to examine me.

After a thorough examination of my leg, I discussed with her about orthopaedics. She then admitted that she intended to specialise in hand-surgery and not hips (although she mentioned that she there is a knack to wrenching a femur out of its socket. Something which in my present condition I was trying not to imagine) .....

A Talk with the physio

"Reflexology?" I asked her. I was surprised to hear a medical professional say that she was prepared to use that. I bit my tongue before I could say what was thinking: "Isn't that quack medicine?" but when you have two wrecked legs you are willing to try anything. One leg is long standing (or rather it isn't I suppose - Cue Peter Cooke & Dudley More joke ) following an amputation as a youngster. The other leg problems are of more recent origin - osteoarthritis and will require a hip replacement sometime in the future. Now OA for anyone is bad news but when you are in my position it creates more issues. I used to be able to hop to the shower room in the morning but not anymore: I have to use my spare leg now (not a pretty sight by the way) to walk the few yards from the bedroom before clambering into the shower. I used to have to pause two or three times each morning to let the pain subside on the landing.



So I had a chat with the physio at the limb centre today to discuss the options an?d that is where reflexology came in. I know nothing about reflexology but I suspect I will now. She has asked me to contact my GP in order to get the go ahead. Wonder how he will take it.