As reported in the Guardian a few days ago, architects Allies & Morrison have come up with a much more affordable version of London’s proposed Garden Bridge — an ill-conceived, cabalistic vanity project if ever there was one. And because it is affordable, and thus won’t be burdened with huge debts or the demands of corporate sponsors, it can be a truly open public space. Basically they are proposing to reuse some of the space on Blackfriars Bridge — a resource which already exists. This sounds eminently feasible.
The Garden Bridge project should be killed — and no I don’t believe Mayor Sadiq Khan when he says it will cost more to cancel it than complete it. This alternative deserves to gain traction.
Read the full Guardian article and Allies & Morrison’s description.
There was a very illuminating article by Simon Jenkins in yesterday’s Guardian under the banner
HS2: the zombie train that refuses to die
In it Jenkins writes the biography of the HS2 rail project — and how over the years it has been fiddled and fudged by governments and interested parties when there is basically no business case, or any other justification, for it.
Whether you agree with Jenkins or not, it doesn’t make very edifying reading.
My view has always been that HS2 is another classic example, like London’s proposed Garden Bridge, of an unjustified vanity project which has got completely out of hand and sucked in politicians who can’t now be seen to back down. Heathrow’s Third Runway isn’t too far behind either. These mega projects are seldom more than politicians “willy waving”.
They’re all projects which need to be killed off — FAST!
If we’ve got that amount of money to waste spend then it would be better spent on more useful infrastructure projects. Let’s start with a couple of nuclear power stations to reduce our dependence on imported coal and dirty oil with a reduction in CO2 emissions.
I despair of politicians, I really do. Doomed! We’re all doomed!
This week a photograph from a few weeks ago, taken on a rather hazy (read, polluted) morning on the way into central London on the A40. I was struck by the sheer amount of metalwork adorning the sky as well as the road.
Metalworks A40 Acton, London; May 2016 Click the image for a larger view
This week we’ll take a quick look at street names. Not just any street names but the less salubrious ones that could have been found in historic London. John Rocque’s 1746 map of London, a brilliant resource, shows an absolute warren of little alleys, courts and slightly larger lanes. Many, of course, took their names from local inns, churches, commercial establishments or trades. Hence … Thread Needle Street, which now houses the Bank of England. Black Friars, named for the nearby monastery. Of Alley (near Strand) which is one of a group of streets named for the various components of landowner George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham’s name and title. Dunghill Mews, off Trafalgar Square, which is now the site of the Canadian High Commission. Whore’s Nest, a self-explanatory name of a courtyard in Southwark along with the nearby Dirty Lane, Foul Lane and Little Cock Alley.
And then, of course there are the even more ribald. London was not the only place to sport a Gropecunt Lane, in fact London apparently had several so named. To which we can only add Shitteborwelane (now Sherborne Lane) off the now King William Street, which was so named to the vast amounts of ordure it once contained.
But one of my favourites, and not at all salacious, is the relatively recent Ha-Ha Road in Greenwich.
The Mangalica (or Mangalitsa) is a Hungarian breed of domestic pig. It was developed in the mid-19th century by cross-breeding Hungarian breeds from Szalonta and Bakony with the Serbian Šumadija breed.
The Mangalica pig grows a thick, woolly coat similar to that of a sheep. It is a quick-growing, “fat-type” hog which does not require any special care, hence its popularity in Hungary.
The only other pig breed noted for having a long coat is the extinct English breed the Lincolnshire Curly Coat.
Lots more on Wikipedia.
Chernobyl was a perfect storm, a damning tale of ineptitude leading to needless loss of life. It was also unequivocally the world’s worst nuclear accident. To many, it is also heralded as proof-positive that nuclear energy was inherently unsafe, a narrative adopted by many anti-nuclear groups … But perception and reality do not always neatly align; in the wake of the disaster, the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR) and others undertook a co-ordinated effort to follow up on health effects … Despite aggressive monitoring for three decades, there has been no significant increase in solid tumours or delayed health effects, even in the hundreds of thousands of minimally protected cleanup workers who helped purge the site after the accident. In the words of the 2008 UNSCEAR report: “There is no scientific evidence of increases in overall cancer incidence or mortality rates or in rates of non-malignant disorders that could be related to radiation exposure … The incidence of leukaemia in the general population, one of the main concerns owing to the shorter time expected between exposure and its occurrence compared with solid cancers, does not appear to be elevated”.
… … …
Unlike the accident in the Ukraine, events at Fukushima in March 2011 were not the result of ineptitude but rather a massive natural disaster in the form of a deadly 15-metre high tsunami** … While the world media fixated on the drama unfolding at the plant, it lost sight of the fact that around 16,000 had just been killed in a massive natural disaster. Despite the preponderance of breathless headlines since the reality is that five years later, radiobiological consequences of Fukushima are practically negligible — no one has died from the event, and is it extraordinarily unlikely that anyone will do so in future. The volume of radioactive leak from the site is so small as to be of no health concern; there is no detectable radiation from the accident in Fukushima grown-food, nor in fish caught off the coast.
… … …
It is important also to see these disasters in the wider context of energy production: when the Banqiao hydroelectric dam failed in China in 1975 it led to at least 171,000 deaths and displaced 11 million people … None of this is to denigrate the vital importance of such technologies, but rather to point out that every form of energy production has some inherent risk.
Do go and read the whole article.
** It is worth noting again that the containment at the Fukushima plant worked largely as designed. Excepting the natural disaster, the root cause failure appears to have been one of shortcomings in plant external safety design and process which would be just as likely with any major plant.
There was an interesting article in yesterday’s Guardian which bears out something I have long thought. It begins …
I shower once a week. Here’s why you should too.
Daily showering is expensive, polluting and unnecessary. The old-school weekly bath or shower — with a brief daily sink-wash — is healthier for the environment, and for us.
When I was a kid, bathtime was a once-a-week affair. We weren’t an unhygienic family — this is just how most of us lived in the 1960s, and I do not remember any horrific body odours resulting from it. By the time I was an adult, I was showering every day. With hindsight, I should have stuck to the old ways.
Indeed so, although in my family bathtime was twice a week, at least for me. If nothing else heating water was inconvenient and expensive in the days before ubiquitous central heating.
As a student I did shower every morning, and often more than once a day as I was playing lots of cricket, squash etc. Otherwise I actually have stuck to my childhood regime. Although it’s a bit more flexible now (partly down to lifestyle and partly as there’s easy hot water) I seldom shower more than a couple of times a week. And even then one seldom needs to spend more than 5 minutes in the shower (according to the article the average shower lasts 10 minutes).
(Now I’m not working, I also seldom shave more than every few days. I can’t stand more than 5 or 6 days beard, but shaving every day gives me far more skin problems.)
Did anyone notice? No of course you didn’t. Most of us don’t lead very dirty lives. Few these days work in dirty industry, down the mines or shovelling muck on the farm — when I concede that a daily bath or shower, after work, would be essential.
Yes, I like that nice, clean, scrubbed and pampered feeling a shower gives you; especially if you can then dive under lovely crisp, fresh bed-linen. It’s pleasant. But it isn’t essential. And on its own it isn’t a good reason for a daily shower (or two).
This is one area where we could go back in time without actually feeling any inconvenience. It would save massive amounts of water; and you would save on the cost of heating that water — both of which would be good for the environment as well as your wallet. On top of which you would probably save some time; and it might actually be better for your skin. That sounds like WIN-WIN to me!
Oh and here’s another take on the question from a plumbing supplier.
Yet one more time George Monbiot, writing in yesterday’s Guardian, has his knife in the government’s environmental policy. He maintains that the massive farming subsidies the government have pumped into grouse moors (mostly owned by their chums) are responsible for the widespread flooding in northern England.
While I’m not qualified to make all the connections made by Monbiot, he does seem to have a good point.
Here’s the Guardian article, and here is the fully referenced version.
OK, so we stuck this guy on top of an f***ing great firework and fired him into orbit.
Apart from the fact it is an obscene waste of money and resources … So what?
I see from the Guardian website on Saturday that, as one might have expected, George Monbiot has his knife in the Paris climate deal (and those who perpetrated it). As so often I fear he could be right.
Eccentric looks at life through the thoughts of a retired working thinker
