Monthly Archives: October 2007

History

A pub quiz killer question

October 6, 2007 – 11:47 am

Who was the first person to transport live cargo in an aeroplane?

It was (later) Lietenant Colonel J.T.C. Moore-Brabazon, who was minister of aircraft production during the Second World War, and a champion of female flyers. (The animal was a piglet in a wastepaper basket tied to the wing strut of his French-built Voisin in 1909. It would appear its eventual fate was not recorded.)

(From Spitfire Women of World War II, by Giles Whittell, which is a delightful read – more soon when I can snatch the time, p.110)

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Environmental politics

Becoming a bag lady

October 6, 2007 – 12:00 am

The problem with not taking plastic carrier bags when you go shopping is that when you need some, as for bundling up collections of Green Party leaflets for collection by volunteers for delivery, you haven’t got any. So if you saw a woman slightly furtively pulling plastic bags out of the recycling bin in Bloomsbury Waitrose this evening, yes that was me…

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Politics

If you are preparing for an early UK election, don’t stop

October 5, 2007 – 11:35 am

It is the nature of media coverage on such an issue to swing back and forth widely. But I’m still betting on November.
Some evidence:

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London Media

Somers Town fine dining

October 4, 2007 – 2:40 pm

On the Chalton Road market, under the filter shade of a healthily plump tree, watching the world go by, mushroom and tomato omelette, with rather good chips, and a cuppa, £3.80. That’s value. (And I even noticed that next door a Japanese restaurant is being fitted out – so possibilities of variety as well.)

And a Daily Telegraph that someone had left provided curiously schizophrenic reading – on one page “shock” that David Cameron yesterday used to “swear” word pissed (drunk), on national television. More “shocking”: “The word caused not even a murmur among delegates, and the BBC received no complaints.”

Several pages later, associated with this story although apparently not on the web, an outline of the legal status of the sexual practice of “dogging”, in considerable detail.

You wonder if the same editor did both pages.

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Environmental politics

We inventive humans

October 2, 2007 – 8:45 pm

One thing that amazes me is how many anti-environmentalists like to claim that “green” energy sources are impractical, and will never supply what we need. But what’s lacking is not the possibilities, but the will.

I’ve just been pointed to one other alternative form of solar energy, and been musing on the inventiveness of Homo sapiens sapiens, as delightfully demonstrated in the video below…

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Blogging/IT

Britblog – the audio version

October 2, 2007 – 8:42 pm

Delivered in my not so dulcet tones – you can find it as part of the complete one-hour Five Live programme on the BBC Pods and Blogs website, or on Matt Wardman’s handy short form collection.

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