Thursday, 31 December 2009

Happy New Year

May I wish everyone a very happy 2010 ....

Friday, 25 December 2009

Campaign For Nuclear Disarmament

Why on earth (well not quite given that there is a space ship there as well) has Google got the symbol of the CND on its logo today?











Happy Christmas

Thursday, 24 December 2009

Harvesting potatoes

Lets have some late harvest potatoes, she said a few months ago. Planted some seed potatoes in a number of potato bags and let them grow.

Now the idea was that we would have lovely new potatoes for Christmas dinner; however there was one slight hitch when I came to harvest them this morning ... the bags and the compost were frozen solid!

Anyone harvested potatoes with a sledgehammer before?

Sunday, 20 December 2009

0101 days to go ...

My nerdish son has a Christmas countdown ... In binary ....


Sad

Anarchy in the UK ...

So the great British public said "we will not go quietly into the X-Factor night" and have done a huge V sign to the mass-produced sterile "music" that emanates from the Cowell factory - he who considers that he has a God given right to monopolise the Christmas charts. I downloaded a copy, not because I especially like "Killing In The Name" but because I wanted to register my views. One thing though - I thought that it was the young who railed against the world - not old farts like me ....

Saturday, 19 December 2009

Carter-Ruck on the good guys side?

Had to take a large drink having read this here "

Carter-Ruck, defending Thomsen on a no-win, no-fee basis, says the action should be struck out because the words complained of in the writ are clearly not defamatory.

GE Healthcare is also suing over an article that appeared under Thomsen’s name in Imaging Management, a medical journal, published in Belgium, which referred to rumours that the company had been warned about possible problems with its product."


I feel ill ......

Sunday, 13 December 2009

How to lose the propaganda war

Unless the public are convinced by the need to modify their behaviour in response to the (overwhelming in my view) evidence concerning man-made global warming then all the climate change conferences in the world will be a complete waste of time. At the moment the sceptics (ranging from the the outright deniers through to those who question whether it is man's activities that are responsible for climate change) are - certainly in the UK and the US - are winning the propaganda battle.

Influential articles from journalists (ranging from the obsessional Christopher Booker in the Telegraph to articles like this in the Mail on Sunday) have sown huge doubt in the non-scientific public (and possibly amongst those scientists who are not climate specialists). Similar articles have occurred in the right-wing press in the States (just google Climategate and you will see what I mean) encouraged, I suspect, by some very powerful lobby groups have, along with what appears on the surface to be dreadful behaviour by those scientists at UEA, will make the task of carrying the public forwards that much harder.

(As an aside: please don't expect scientists to behave as if they are not as vain as the rest of us! Just read James Watson's Double Helix and you will see my point)

Friday, 11 December 2009

Priorities right?

On the day that Brown has promised over a billion pounds to the poorer, third world countries to help combat global warming ( I bet the Swiss bankers were rubbing their hands in glee) the news has broken that massive defence cuts are imminent is astonishing.

Irrespective of the politics of global warming (and yes I am a believer not a sceptic) the first comment that came to mind is where the hell is this money that Brown has promised for global warming coming from? And secondly the first priority of any government is to protect its citizens. For Brown to promise billions of pounds at the same time as slashing the defence budget is just ludicrous.

As for the fact that our soldiers are fighting a war in Afghanistan ... well .....

Thursday, 10 December 2009

Memory time

My father was a keen railway enthusiast - cadging trips on footplates back in the days when engines were steam powered . As a doctor he knew many of the railwaymen especially since he ran their first aid training courses in and around Oswestry. So I was surprised and moved to find this series of photographs in and around the town.

http://www.cambrianrailways.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=46