Category Archives: current affairs

current affairs, environment

Oxford-Cambridge Expressway

I’d never heard of the Oxford-Cambridge Expressway, which seems to be a new mega-road linking the two university cities. And no wonder, because it seems to be being cookd up behind closed doors.

Yesterday’s Guardian ran a typically robust piece from George Monbiot attacking both the scheme and the governments approach:

This disastrous new project will change the face of Britain
yet no debate is allowed

Monbiot’s article links to a number of the government documents, which do seem to substantiate many of his assertions. Beyond that I leave readers to make up their own minds.

current affairs, environment, ramblings

HS2 (again)

1 Comment

Lord (Tony) Berkeley writes a regular column in the Railway Magazine. In the July issue he once again takes a very scathing look at HS2. The article isn’t online but here are a few key extracts:

Head in sand over escalating HS2 costs

New Civil Engineer reports design elements for one of the main design and construct contracts let for the civil works were coming in at 18% over the target price, up from £6.6billion to £7.8bn.

… some bids were as much as 30% to 40% higher than their individual target price.

… the project is probably running three to four years late, even before any serious work on the ground has started. Other estimates from along the route indicate the project is held up because the purchases of the necessary land and additional areas needed for accommodation works are late.

Has HS2 allowed for the cost of diverting a 12in-diameter fuel pipe a dozen times along the route? Have they applied to the National Grid for the necessary power supply for the trains and for the required capital cost contribution to build the necessary power station capacity? Have they allowed for the cost of driving piles to support 20km of double slab track in the mushy ground of the Trent Valley?

I have asked many questions in the Lords since that time and have always been told the funding
envelope of £23.73bn at 2015 prices is still valid.

Given what we are now discovering there seems to be every reason to suppose the out-turn cost of Phase 1 will be a lot closer to £50bn than the DfT’s £25bn.

Surely it is time to reflect on why ministers continue to allow HS2 to have a blank cheque to spend what they like – a figure likely to reach more than £100bn if Phases 2A and 2B are included – while at the same time starving Network Rail of any investment …

It is all investment in the railway and there are many who believe £100bn could make a massive
difference to improving the present network in a greater number of beneficial ways.

Now we know that Tony Berkeley is a powerful voice in the rail freight side of the industry (so he’s not totally unbiased), but he is also a respected civil engineer. Even if half of what he says were to stand up to scrutiny (and from what I’ve read I’m unsure about the cost figures quoted) then it is yet another damning condemnation of this benighted government.

HS2 is a vanity project, pure and simple. It is government “willy waving” on a massive scale. See, for instance, this in the Spectator, this and this in the Daily Mail.

And all of that is without the environmental damage HS2 will do – as the Woodland Trust and the National Trust highlight.

Isn’t it time for everyone to come clean and admit that we just cannot afford HS2? Environmentally or financially. If nothing else, wherever the money is supposed to be coming from, it just isn’t there. Not when we have such a huge public debt. Not now, and certainly not after Brexit.

current affairs

Civil Partnerships

So, yesterday the UK’s Supreme Court ruled that allowing only same-sex couples to have a civil partnership was discriminatory. See, for example, the BBC News report.

Well what a surprise! Surely this was so easily foreseeable by even the most intellectually challenged politician.

So on top of everything else they have to worry about, the government now have to do something – although they will naturally drag their heels as long as they can, and probably until someone takes then to court again because they’ve done nothing. They have a track record, after all.

But really, where is the problem? Isn’t the answer so very simple?

  1. Every couple, whether same-sex or mixed-sex, should be entitled to a civil ceremony. I don’t care what you call it: civil partnership or marriage they are essentially identical. This should be the default arrangement which grants partnership rights as “marriage” (in it’s multifarious forms) does now. And it should be a purely civil occasion, like current “registry office” weddings.
  2. If the couple desire a religious element to their conjunction, then they can have whatever church, temple, synagogue, mosque they choose (and which will play along) give them a separate religious ceremony. Just as some couples now have a civil wedding and a blessing in church.

Just what were the politicians thinking of in making the current mess in the first place?

Gawdelpus!

current affairs, environment

Enviroconcern

Two articles on environmental concerns in the Guardian during the week caught my attention.

First George Monbiot slices into agriculture and our habit of eating meat in The best way to save the planet? Drop meat and dairy. While he may be technically correct, I don’t see this being very practical – although of course most of us could happily eat much less meat than we do.

Secondly Simon Jenkins inserts quite a few daggers between the ribs of Heathrow’s proposed Third Runway in Heathrow airport’s polluting new runway is a macho folly. Jenkins doesn’t say it in as many words, but it is essentially just a vanity project and willy-waving by the erstwhile BAA. To be sure, the alternatives aren’t too wonderful either, but then as I’ve been saying for a long time we have to get to grips with our fetish for flying everywhere – two, three, four long-haul holidays a year are just not sustainable.

current affairs, ramblings

It’s not Cricket, or is it?

So, a couple of Aussies have been banned for tampering with the match ball.

This should not be a surprise, except that they were using an artificial aid to do so – which, however tempting, is frankly stupid as well as cheating. And they got caught.

Ball doctoring goes on in cricket at all levels, it is very easy and it isn’t new.

Some dust on the hand can easily rough up one side of the ball, as can boot studs or a fingernail, while shining the other side with hair gel to help the ball swing. Shining the ball on the trousers/shirt/handkerchief is legal. Using hair gel, dust, fingernails or studs isn’t.

It is also very easy to lift the seam with just a thumbnail and some sleight of hand while (allegedly) removing dirt from the seam. Removing the dirt is legal but lifting the seam isn’t.

And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

I was never more than a jobbing club third XI cricketer, and yet I was shown some of the techniques on more than one occasion. I never doctored a ball during a match – I wasn’t good enough that it would have made any useful difference anyway – nor did I ever spot it happening when I was umpiring, but I did use it to prolong the useful life of practice balls.

current affairs, freedom of speech, science

Trickery from PC Plod

There was a sneakily released Home Office press release in the early hours of last Saturday:

Police trial new Home Office mobile fingerprint technology
New mobile fingerprinting technology will allow frontline officers across the country to use their smartphones to identify people in less than a minute …

Needless to say Liberty are up in arms as there is no parliamentary oversight nor any proper public consultation.
Anyone who is stopped and fingerprinted on the street (and anyone could be at the whim of PC Plod) will have no opportunity to seek legal advice beforehand, there does not seem to be any discussion of consent, nor is there any indication of whether the information obtained will be retained and if so for how long or for what.
PC Plod is all too good at being ham-fisted and over-zealous with such initiatives, which is why it is important there should be oversight and consultation.
I find this especially disturbing as there is no scientific basis for the certainty with which fingerprints are used for identification. See, for example, this October 2017 article from Science Daily which reports this scientific examination.
As Liberty’s blog post says:

If you have been affected by these new measures, please tell Liberty about it and get legal advice quickly.