The Brave Toads of England - according to CBS

Surfing through the CBS News site on their "World" category I find the only reference to England is a story about - wait for it - toads!
Yes what grips Americans about England is that in Yatton, Somerset (about 15 miles from where I live) they have Toad watches in the spring. Apparently the stupid animals get so intent on sex that they cross roads without checking to see if they're clear. Squishy squashy - very flat toads. So the good people of Yatton go on patrol looking for toads near the roadside - very often with the male riding on the female's back so that other toads cannot screw her - and lift them across the road. The stupid presenter even went so far as to describe the toad's squeaks of obvious fright as a "thank you". This is even worse than the old Disney "isn't that a lovely panda?" type of natural history film.
With this amount of interest in British news from the US media I wonder why we bother to support the US in Iraq. The American public probably aren't even aware that we do support them at all.
After all, we're all miles too busy looking after the toads ...

Severn Barrage Saves the Day - or does it?

Talk in energy-producing circles is returning to building barrages across tidal estuaries. The Severn estuary has one of the largest differences between high and low tide in the world so it is always in the minds of planners trying to satiate the demand for energy. A barrage across this stretch of water would provide 6-7% of Britain's energy needs at current rates. The costs would be enormous financially with numbers far above anything anyone can really think about. But on the plus side 30,000-40,000 people would be employed on building the project over about 15 years. Ongoing employment for about 10,000 people would be generated by the power industry and tourism (water sports, industrial tourism, etc) after the whole thing was built. Great - nothing but positives. A very successful, but much smaller, project in Brittany, France shows us that much of this conjecture is very possible.
Not that simple. What about the environment. This estuary is vital to many species of wildlife. Migratory wildfowl utilise the area. Other local wildlife, including salmon and other fishes, would be radically affected. Silting of the river above the barrage is a problem which has not been adequately addressed by reports and studies.
Nobody is really considering the other options.
Perhaps if the investment made in the barrage was diverted to better energy efficiency in everyones' homes the decreased demand for electricity would be more than the potential energy generated by the scheme. I don't know (here I go again, pontificating without all the facts) but I'm not sure that we should always consider more energy production instead of less energy demand.
Once again better men than me don't have the answers. Nuff said . . .

Smoking kills . . .

So a bloke goes into hospital with a skin disease.
He is treated with a special gel which covers his skin and is supposed to ease his skin complaint.
He is under stress because he hopes the treatment will work so he nips out onto the fire escape to have a fag to calm his nerves.
Nobody has told him that the gel is highly inflammable.
Bloke literally goes up in smoke as he sparks up his fag.
Doctors try to save him from severe burns - they fail.
Bloke dies of severe burns.
Unfortunately this is a true story. It actually happened in a hospital in Yorkshire. I haven't given names - it's not necessary and would only give more pain to relatives.
Smoking is a killer anyway without adding unnecessary additional risks by not telling the patient that he is a living roman candle.

Not In My Back Yard

So the energy crisis is looming in Britain. We will not have enough to meet our needs in the very near future. Not so long ago Tony Blair was all for renewable energy sources - wind power, wave power, solar power - all things which would go on indefinitely without dangerous emissions or waste. All systems which would need strong investment to make them happen. But lots of energy consumers, ordinary people like you and me, didn't like the thought of windmills across their lovely green hills spoiling their panoramic view. Or large barrages across their estuaries causing problems with the wildlife etc. So what seemed to be an ideal answer to the problem became a problem in itself. So now Tony has reverted to thoughts of a new generation of nuclear power stations. That in itself has all sorts of issues over nuclear waste, decomissioning of old power stations, disposal of the radioactive materials left behind etc.
Has nobody thought that the best answer is to use less energy? If we all switched off our televisions and computers instead of leaving them on standby there would be a considerable saving in electricity. If we only used energy efficient lights - and then only when needed - we could save 80% of our lighting energy. If more people walked to work and didn't take their children to school by car but made them walk even more fossil fuel-burning energy would be saved.
Good idea, you say. But it needs to be acted upon by us all. It's no good expecting everyone else to do it without your own contribution.
Nuff said.

Shopper of the future!

I've finally entered the e-shopping age - bought an article on eBay! Sure, I've bought things on the net from various companies before now, from airline tickets to memory cards - but I've never ventured into the auction scenario. No one was more surprised than me to see the message "You've won".
I'm going to have to be very careful not to get the bug so much that I spend too much money. But it does give one a good feeling to know that you have a bargain.

In the Tick of Time

Oh my God, my wife's turned into a nerd!
Yes folks, it's true. She's got the family tree bug again - this time finding more ancestors on her maternal side. Last time we looked at the Quaintance family. This took us to register offices, county records offices and churches in Devon. Out of it we got back two hundred or so years, contacted lots of long-lost relatives, and finally took over a whole village for a weekend for a Quaintance family reunion. It seems like hundreds of us crowded into a village hall and a family tree was displayed which went round three walls of the hall.
This time, however, the wife is older, wiser and much less inclined to travel. She is researching the Renouf side of her maternal ancestry, originating in Jersey, CI. So internet searching is the order of the day. I find her on the computer at any time of the day or night. Sometimes all I get from her is "Let me show you what I've found about Renouf on the net . . . "
So tonight was one of those nights. She got a possible line back to 1700 and showed me how she had got there. Like a fool I sat down and tried a different search - almost immediately turning up a likely link from 1674. We took the tree back to him and it looks as certain as one can be that this is her great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. That's a great number of greats - I think that makes her eleventh generation. Wow! I'm finding this quite exciting. She should have asked me in the first place! In the process of this search I noticed in one search a reference to an 18th century long case clock signed Edouard Renouf. I even found pictures of two different clocks by this bloke. I'm now searching for references to 18th century clocks to see if I can find more about the man and whether his family continued in the same profession. I can see I'm getting drawn into the net. But at least while I'm doing this I can get on to my computer to write this blog.
Saved in the tick of time.

Keep Walking

Steve Vaught is a remarkable man. He realised he was grossly overweight and decided to do something about it by walking from one side of the US to the other. Starting in SanDiego he has marched through eleven pairs of shoes so far. The BBC caught up with him in Cambridge, Ohio and told his story to the world. Steve has so far lost more than six stones in weight and walked more than 2,000 miles. His intended destination is Manhattan. His weight-loss is coming along fine but it is not helped by the fact that most eating places serve "fried this, battered that ..." As the report said Steve would have been happy to breakfast on meusli but Ohio is definitely not meusli country. In the walking interview he noted that the billboards on the outskirts of towns usually consisted of adverts for fast-food joints or churches. He remarked that both types of establishment catered for the same thing - to ease your pain. Feed your stomach or your spiritual needs. That's a neat analogy Steve. Perhaps if more of us got out of our cars and off our fat asses and walked we wouldn't feel the need for either of these types of false plastic establishments. It would certainly lead to cleaner air with less gas-guzzlers on the road. Perhaps it would help the environment too. But most of all it could possibly change a whole mind-set of consumerism.
I hope you have started a revolution Steve - you're a real hero.
Think on all you burger-eating, gas-guzzling, lazy good-for-nothing layabouts.

Spel it rite!

Watching ABC (Australia) News tonight I saw one headline:

GAILS AND RAIN HIT KARRATHA COAST

Surely they've got the spelling wrong. Ignorant colonials! It should really read:

GAILS AND REIGN FIT KARATE TOAST

Beyond Belief

Zacarias Moussaoui is on trial in Virginia on charges connected with the September 11 massacre. Although his lawyers tried to stop him taking the stand for fear that it would further incriminate him he has made bold and sweeping statements in court. He claims that, although he was arrested in August 2001 he knew the targets of the 7/11 raids but he did not know their exact timing. He claims he bought a radio in prison so that he could listen to the news on the Twin Towers disaster. He rejoiced when he heard the death toll rise.
Further he claims that, if he had not been already in prison, he had been ordered by Osama Bin Laden to hi-jack a fifth airliner and fly it into the White House. One of his fellow hi-jackers would have been Richard Reid, the British "shoe bomber".
Now there are some - not necessarily all of them Muslim fanatics - who would have been rejoicing if the White House had been hit, especially if George W. had been in residence at the time. Putting that aside these are astounding claims by Mr Moussaoui. He already faces the death penalty. These admissions will almost certainly guarantee that it will be carried out. One begins to wonder about his motives. Does he feel aggrieved that he was unable to join his fellow conspirators in the glorious attack on US imperialists? Does he want to become another "martyr" for the cause of his fanatical brand of Islam? If so, in doing so, is he also sewing the seeds of doubt in the US security system about how much they really knew? Is he dressing it up, knowing that he has nothing to lose?
In short, is this just his last weapon against the US Imperialists? Put doubt and uncertainty where they thought they had it all sewn up. Undermine the faith of the American public in the ability of their own security services. Mr Moussaoui has nothing to lose and perhaps, in his own mind, great glory in the afterlife to gain by these statements.
I don't know what to believe. But this show trial, designed to show America is meting out justice against the terrorists, is being turned around by this man and will bring nothing but uncertainty and disquiet for America.

Freedom?

Norman Kember has been freed from captivity in Iraq. Thank goodness.
Thanks also must go to the soldiers who risked possible death in the operation to free him and his colleagues. Thanks must also go to whoever it was who tipped off his captors that the operation was coming - because when the soldiers got there all the captors had disappeared. They must have known that the only other way was to fight to the death, probably killing the hostages on the way, and thankfully they chose the path of life and freedom.
Mr Kember is 74. He has seen a lot of life. He went to Iraq, sponsored by a peace organisation, with the admirable intention of trying to secure peace between Christians and Muslims. He must have known that it was a pretty futile exercise. He even recognised the possibility of being taken captive by some terrorist group because he had stated before he went that, in such a scenario, he would not wish a military operation with the risk to the lives of soldiers to be carried out in order to rescue him. Luckily for him the military ignored his request and he was rescued.
The organisation which sponsored the group's visit has since stated that it is considering disbanding because of the risks involved. The whole visit was futile from the start.
Mr Kember is lucky to be alive. Thank goodness he is for the sake of his wife and family. But Mr Kember should never have been there in the first place. Such actions can never do any good. They just create opportunities for others to put their own views in the only way they know how - with violence.