Archive for the 'General' Category

I see from the Nottinghamshire History Blog that iron-age remains have been found during roadworks for the widening of the A46.

There are helpful links to the Highways Agency’s Flickr account and press-release, with this gruesome picture amongst them.

I am tempted to make a joke about dying in a traffic jam trying to leave Widmerpool, but I probably shouldn’t.

Sun’s almost come out – and this is pretty huge actually. There’s thousands here.

Originally uploaded by nilexuk.

- Taken at 3:12 PM on July 31, 2010 – uploaded by ShoZu

This post appeared on www.libdemvoice.org earlier today. We seem to be suffering a little technical difficulties, so I am reposting it here to help it get out to a wider audience, given the constraints of time. Please do not reply here – please send your message to the email address given. Do, please, pass this info on to the people who are contacting you, particularly party members who will want to have their say.

On Saturday afternoon the party’s Federal Executive is meeting to discuss how the party should handle the Parliamentary situation. There’s no pre-set, universally supported answer to this so the FE’s discussion is going to be meaningful and important – which means that if you want to influence what the party does, now is the time to let the FE know.

Because many members of the Federal Executive are scattered around the country – sleeping, travelling back from election counts, making their way to London and so on – the FE members may be hard to get hold of and many will not necessarily be checking their emails frequently.

Therefore, in order to ensure that people have a chance to send in a view that will be read before the meeting, we’ve agreed with the Party President Ros Scott a special email address – balancedparliament@libdemvoice.org which can be used to email in your views. A member of staff will collate all the messages and make sure that they are drawn to the attention of Ross and also reported to the members of the FE in time for their discussion.

A few tips when emailing this address:
- Given the pressures of time, short and concise messages are likely to be more effective than 12 pages essays
- As with letter writing or lobbying more generally, saying in full who you are and where you’re from is likely to add to the impact of the message
- Please send your message as soon as possible

My name is Alex, and that puts me near the top of the phone book in most of my friends’ mobile phones.

This means that when my friends sit on their phones, or put them in their handbags unlocked or leave them where their toddlers can get hold of them, it’s me that receives the call or text message.

I can’t tell you how many blank texts and silent calls I’ve had as a result. Strange long messages where all you can hear is muffled chat. Phone calls on Christmas morning from Lib Dem campaigners talking to their mothers. Pre-verbalisations from very small people who’ve learned how to use phones before they’ve learned to talk. To bowdlerise a phrase from the King, text messages straight from your arse.

So here’s my top tip. Please put a fake number in your phone book ahead of the top named person there. A short number that won’t terminate in a call or a text message if it’s dialled by accident.

And all the Alexes, Anns and Abigails you know will thank you.

I’ve a little bit of a thing for interesting facts that have an obvious connection once explained but seem a little weird at first hearing.

For example, the smoking ban means that the drains need cleaning more often. The reason? Much of the smoking now happens outside. More cigarette butts are dropped into the gulleys than were before, and those butts fill the drains faster than you’d think. And, also, apparently, don’t rot down as fast as you’d think either.

A recent episode of QI talked about how the Chinese civilisation developed porcelain and fine china very early on meant that they didn’t need to develop glass to hold hot or dangerous liquids and consequently didn’t discover lenses, which meant their scholars all had to stop reading in their 30s and 40s, which had a repercussion to their entire society. Fascinating.

So I’m intrigued to find out all the various ramifications of the ash cloud from an Iceland volcano that’s stopped all commercial air travel into the UK and most of Northern Europe.

There’s the very obvious. No travel. My brother probably didn’t get to a wedding in Dublin. Thousands of returning package holiday makers are stranded in accommodation that isn’t being needed by thousands of holiday makers who can’t depart. And Whitney Housten, who was in Nottingham yesterday, is having to make her way to Ireland by ferry.

Then there’s some slightly stretchier but still obvious ones: the Channel Islands have run out of blood for medical reasons, so the the RNLI are helping out. Lots of our fruit and veg is air freighted, so we might have few weeks when bananas and oranges are unobtainable or expensive. Apparently, a lot of our cut flowers come from Africa, and the bottom has fallen out of that market. And there’s been a massive saving in CO2 emissions.

There was also the reports of the delay to the Polish commemorations. One air disaster has devastated the top of Polish political society, and another air incident has delayed the state funerals because other world leaders cannot get their to pay their respects.

Once the airlines are allowed to fly again, there will be a huge adjustment to the schedules to try and get things back on track. It was complicated enough to do that after the various strikes, with a need for empty flights to get the planes back in the right places. This BBC story gives an indication of the complexity – I’d be intrigued to be a fly on the wall of offices full of people trying to sort out the mess of getting the crews and planes back in roughly the right place. It will be weeks before all the schedules are working properly again.

But these are all still fairly foreseeable consequences of the three day stoppage of air travel. There must be some really weird ones out there too – so what have you heard?

Oh, one last thing – this ash cloud is all but invisible from the ground and doesn’t appear to stop the sunlight getting through. I bet some people are having a hard time believing there’s actually anything up there at all. Has anyone seen any nice conspiracy theories about why the authorities REALLY want to ground all commercial planes?