Herald & Post Columns The Herald & Post, and anyone related to them take no responsibility for anything I write on here. This is all my own work, and consequently, my own fault.
Apparently a single report has “proved” that cars are more environmentally friendly than trains. As you might spot on the link, the issue has been needlessly politicised by a bunch of anti-environmentalist cretins who have their heads in the sand, who seem to have no problem with ignoring an almost unanimous consensus that climate change is occurring.
I’m going to be generous and take the bullet pointed headlines of this at face value, and “accept” that cars have been proven to be more environmentally friendly than trains - even though the report only takes into account one hyperthetical journey, and seems to make assumptions about the occupancy of all of the vehicles involved, and the fuel consumptions of thousands of different types of cars.
Despite all of this, I would still argue that if we are serious about tackling global warming, then the last thing we should do is shut down the railways and give everyone cars. Why? Because its easier to make a couple of thousand trains more energy efficient than it is force everyone to buy a hybrid car.
Sure, using fossil fuels to power trains probably isn’t a good idea, but trains can be (more) easily upgraded to run off of electricity… electricity that can be generated entirely cleanly. A lot of railways are electrified - the London Underground, Eurostar (thus presumably the rest of the South East), and so on. Sure, this isn’t going to help if the source of the electricity is burning oil in a power station somewhere, but equally it could be generated by some wind turbines if they’d build some.
Car usage, being a “capitalist” mode of transport, as it is hilariously called on Guido’s blog, suffers from the so-called tragedy of the commons. In other words, why should I cut down on the amount of energy I consume?
Trains don’t have this problem, as its not possible to pick and choose your train. There’s no sports-utility-trains that go to the same places, that consume more fuel and make you feel important.
So I reckon it would be easier to upgrade the train network to more environmentally friendly trains, assuming such things exist or can be invented, than convince the general public to give a damn about the environment.
(Hypocrisy alert! I also drive a band C car… I’ll get a Prius whenever I finally start earning a lot of money. But I still like trains.)
People came almost literally from all over the country - we had people who’d come from Scotland, Wales, East Anglia, Kent, the south coast - almost everywhere really. My friend Jeroen, who’s from the Netherlands, had even given up a day of his holiday in London to meet us all.
Nearly everyone who was there.
Being the webmaster and technically the owner of a major website has its perks. In the afternoon, when we were all in Hyde Park, my fellow administrators and I managed to persuade a couple of the lesser proletariat to go and buy us drinks. The other interesting thing was that because I’m the webmaster, the bloke at the top, I sort of assumed the leadership position. I was making executive decisions about where we should go and where we should go and so on.
Jeroen, Mike, Me, Steffan and Terry - the PKMN.NET Administration team.
It was when I was speaking to the group as a whole and leading people to a spot in the park that I realised that I had created an army. I’d re-iterate that it was amazing, but I fear that it could be (correctly) interpreted that I was enjoying the power trip and megalomania more than I was the meeting people.
Most of the gang lasted until Leicester Square.
After the “official” meet in Hyde Park, about fourteen of us took a trip to Leicester Square to acquisition some food, before (at my command) heading to Westminster via Trafalgar Square. It’s not a trip to London if you don’t see Big Ben. It wasn’t until we were sitting in an underground bar in the former Greater London Council meeting (just across the Thames from Parliament) that we realised we were missing someone. Whoops.
We found him eventually though. As the evening went on it ended up with seven of us, the most hardcore of the gang going to another pub near Euston station - which coincidentally, was a Scream pub. In other words, the same brand of pubs I go to all of the time - and it was just like the ones in Leicester, with its stacker, video jukebox and pool table. The only difference was that it was charging London Prices.
I recently found out the shock news that Midland Mainline have lost their franchise! From November 11th, the new franchise, East Midlands Trains will takeover. I might play the Last Post on my trumpet to mourn Midland Mainline’s typically delayed death.
Now I know that I’ve had my differences with MM in the past, but I’m actually a little bit worried about what could happen to the trains that I rely on to go about my business. This is probably a sign of me getting old: rather than welcoming change with open arms, ready to embrace it like a needy Shetland pony, I’m scared and want to resist this change. Because change is a Bad Thing.
After all, what is wrong with the current service? I think half-hourly services to London and Leicester suit me fine… What if they change it and ruin my perfectly timed schedule?
I’m worried that I’ve become a bit of a train nerd, as I’ve spent quite a while on Wikipedia reading up on this and the rail network in general, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what’ll happen to all of the trains and MM when EMT take over. Will ownership of the trains and stations and so on automatically transfer to EMT? Will they just paint new logos on the trains? Will Midland Mainline go bankrupt now that they won’t actually have any trains to operate? I imagine not having a railway to put your trains on makes making money out of rail travel quite difficult.
To try and put my mind at rest, I’ve been reading the EMT website. The unfortunate thing though is that despite all of the standard corporate garb, it reads with a subtext of “we’re bastards, and we’re going to find new and exciting ways to screw over the customer”…
They’ve set up an FAQ primarily aimed at employees to answer some of their questions. As you might imagine, they’re pretty hard hitting:
“What do you think about Eurostar moving to St Pancras?
This is a great opportunity for East Midlands Trains and the region, journey times to Paris will be improved and the investment in St Pancras will be of great benefit to our staff and customers.”
Phew, I thought they were going to say “We hate it, as we hate foreigners, and the thought of Eurostar being anywhere near our trains physically sickens us and sends us into a blind rage”.
I think the most telling sign of all though that the glory days are over and that the Stagecoach (owners of EMT) capitalist fat-cats have moved in, ruthlessly stealing the train contract from the lovely family owned company (er, Mr & Mrs National Express Group, owners of MM), is this question on the FAQ though:
“Will the present free tea and coffee service continue?
There will be no change to this service for November 11th, after which it is our intention that the free tea and coffee service will continue as part of the first class service only.”
Way to screw-over the little guy, you bastards! Typically rich capitalists literally catering for the rich at the expense of the poor!
And if this is any indication that they’re going to be doing some cost cutting, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised if they realise that “cattle class” doesn’t just have to be an expression. They could pack us proles into open-air cattle trucks mounted on to train wheels, like the early days of rail travel.
Disclosure: I’ve been sent this to review by the PR company as I’m a dreadful sell out.
Machine have a their debut single coming out next month. Its called ‘Please Yourself’ and will be out on September 24th (on Gronland Records).
I’ve actually had to put off reviewing this for about a week now as I can’t pin them down. They sound a bit… electronic… but not really? I imagine this is the point in the review when someone with GCSE music could give it an accurate description. As it is, I didn’t do GCSE music, and as a fan of punk music, I don’t really get much exposure to the technical aspects of music production. So I’d describe the genre of the song as “popular music” in the broadest possible sense.
The press release describes the song as “swinging from cinematic beauty to Killing-Joke-beating-on-Blondie malevolence”. It does sound a bit like Blondie. By which I mean, there’s a woman singing in quite a high voice - although its definitely a couple of octaves lower than Blondie.
The band are apparently a three piece with a guitar and a laptop - I’m not sure what the third chap does on the single as the singing is performed by “guest vocalist” Lucie Johnston, whoever she is.
What I assume is the B-side on the single, ‘Rising Up’ is more of the same and follows the same pattern of a whiny verse and a more… er, ‘music-esque’ chorus.
All in all, its not a bad single - not really my thing, but it is pretty catchy.
As you might know, I’m doing a BA at the moment, so as you might imagine, science isn’t my strong point - and isn’t the strong point of the other people on my course either. There’s one guy on my course, who I think it is fair to say I have a pretty “combative” “relationship” with, who once claimed that the Moon is approximately half way between the Earth and the Sun.
I was discussing this the other day with my friend Michael, and we were wildly speculating about the possible implications if the universe really were like that. I speculated that if it were the case, then the Moon would have to be massive in order to appear the same size in the night’s sky - and that it probably wouldn’t be orbiting us, it’d probably be orbiting the Sun. Maybe we’d have a binary star system… but I don’t really know what I’m talking about. We both didn’t really know enough about cosmology (surprise, surprise) to commentate.
So we thought, who would know about something like this? Then it struck us: who has been recently on TV with an excellently informative yet accessible TV series about the Cosmos? Adam Hart Davis, of course. I’d already pestered him with stupid questions via e-mail before, so we tried it again. Confirming his place as the best celebrity, he sent this excellent response:
“Hi there,
What a simple question, and what a complicated answer. If the Moon were 46 million miles away, instead of a quarter of a million, there would be many consequences.
First, we would scarcely be able to see it, since it would look about 200 times smaller than it does now. Second, it would probably take much longer to orbit the Earth - so out months would become many times longer.
Third, at that distance it would be closer to the Sun, in part of its orbit, than Venus; so it might well get captured by Venus, by Mercury, or by the Sun; in which case we would lose it altogether.
Fourth, the Earth’s tilt and magnetic field are probably stabilized by the Moon; if we lost the Moon we might wobble and waver, and our seasons might become chaotic or disappear completely.
There is more information in my book The cosmos - a beginner’s guide.
Good luck,
Adam”
I don’t know what I like more: the fact that a celebrity took the time to send a fairly detailed response to an obscure question, or the fact that his answer more than disproves the “hypothesis” that the Moon is half way between the Earth and the Sun. Maybe he just wanted to plug his book.
This week I’ve written about football. And probably not gained many new fans in the process. Click here to read it, or click here for the original version.
You, yes, you at the back, have you been paying attention? For the past month I’ve been attempting to learn the trumpet for a silly bet. Long story short, my friend Fundar (its a nickname), who plays the trumpet, bet me that I couldn’t play the Last Post better than him within a month. I’ve been recording videos every day to chart my progress. Click here to have a look.
The plan was that we’d have a big Last Post-Off some time this week to determine who is the best at playing the Last Post. Unfortunately though, despite my month of practising, Fundar is doing the most dishonourable thing possible: trying to welch on the bet.
I linked him to the latest video yesterday, which if I say so myself, is pretty good for a beginner. I can pretty much play the whole thing now, but not yet string it all together into one tune.
Unfortunately, Fundar messaged me back doing (blog commentator in-joke alert!) a very French thing and capitulating without even putting up much of a fight. In what I’m sure is a complete and utter coincidence and in no way related to the surprisingly decent trumpeting in the video, he told me that “the trumpet-off is off”, making up a vague excuse about being busy. This wouldn’t be so bad if I had time to talk him into confronting his trumpet rival: he’s going up north back to university at the weekend.
So in summary: I’ve won, but it’s a horrible victory, as there’s no stupid video to post on the internet at the end of it - which really, is what this whole thing is about. I wanted to make a Rocky-esque training montage and be the underdog everyone loves, but alas, no.
Fundar is clearly a chicken, and his eggs are made of deceit. He should probably sell the eggs too, as he now owes me a tenner.
I’m still going to keep playing the trumpet though - at least for the two more months I have it rented, in order to get some value for money. Anyone want to join a ska band?
Back when I was at school, I was told that one day I could be a great javelinist, but I threw it all away when I decided that I actually wanted to be an attendant at a hedge maze, even though it is literally a dead-end job.
I did briefly consider what it would be like to have a career as a pigeon fancier (perhaps in year 3 after watching the Look & Read serial Geordie Racer), but then I remembered that my feelings towards pigeons were entirely platonic, and if I took it up as a career, I’d be living a lie as I just wouldn’t feel the same way about them.
Some people have the luxury of the name of their degree telling them what career to go into. For example, if you’re studying archaeology, you can be pretty certain that you’re going to end up being an archaeologist, and if you’re studying homoeopathy you can be pretty sure that you’re wasting your life. Unfortunately there are no job titles that are “bloke who knows a bit about International Relations & Globalisation”.
I suppose this does have its benefits - it gives me more of a choice about what field I go into. I think I should aim pretty high, as I’d hate to end up as, say, a toilet cleaner - job security would be rock bottom, as any time your boss could call you into the office to tell you that you’ve been made redundant by Toilet Duck.
I think when trying to decide on the direction of your career, it is important to consider the factors other than the cold, hard cash - such as the extras that the job might include, like free BUPA coverage or something… what hairdressers might term fringe benefits.
It’s a shame I’m training to be a Bachelor of Arts and not the Sciences because being a geologist could have been a pretty smart move - I hear their job rocks. You might even get a company car, although I guess there’s always the risk that it could be something akin to what Fred Flintstone drives. Actually, there’s a thought: being a cars salesman could be quite lucrative - I’d be perfectly placed to get a discount sports car when I need to buy a mid-life-crisis-mobile in a couple of decades time.
Another enviable science job might be what Colin Pillinger does. He’s the failed rocket scientist behind Beagle 2, the British Martian lander that failed to get to Mars. It must be a pretty easy job - anyone can make a Mars Lander that doesn’t work. I made one this afternoon by sellotaping a Coke bottle to the sellotape dispenser - and it failed to make it to Mars, just like Beagle 2. I made another failed lander a few minutes ago by stacking up some CD cases and hoping for the best… and it didn’t even make it into the Earth’s upper-atmosphere!
Its this lack of decision about career direction that makes me want to stay in education for as long as possible.
I’ve just watched the most incredible episode of Megastructures. The series usually looks at big engineering projects around the world, like the Dubai Palm Island or the channel tunnel or whatever, but it appears to be running out of steam. The episode I’m watching is about concrete.
It started out by essentially broadcasting a list of the things concrete is used for, showing the viewer famous buildings from around the world, and the panama canal, that sort of thing, to illustrate how vital yet unappreciated concrete is to society.
What makes it so bemusing is that it is written like it is funded by some sort of concrete advocacy group, as it is full of lines like “The mighty Hoover Dam is a testament to the power of concrete”, spliced in between talking heads explaining that they can’t imagine a world without concrete.
“Its hard to imagine the Hoover Dam being made by anything other than concrete”.
“The dam required a substance that is strong and resistant to water… only one substance met that requirement” - cut to stock footage of concrete being poured whilst generic guitar rock music is dubbed over the top. It carried on like this for forty minutes.
The documentary claimed that “concrete had conquered the water… the next challenge was to conquer the skies”, and the tone changed slightly. The talkingheads started slagging off concrete’s arch-rival, steel. The whole narrative turned a little bit defensive. It seemed to essentially boil down to “yeah, steel is alright if you want to build some pretty tall buildings, but if you want really tall, there’s only one substance you need”.
It bought out the big guns, like the Burj Dubai skyscraper. “Nearly every inch of this desert skyscraper… is concrete”, it told the viewer, before later concluding that “the future for concrete is limitless”. It also used the dreadful pun that concrete is “laying the foundations for our future” at least four times, and I wasn’t even deliberately counting.
This programme has taught me a valuable lesson. I think that everyone reading this should take a moment to appreciate the concrete in our lives. It is the foundation of our society after all.
The new football season has started. Apparently. I literally cannot name anything I find more tedious than what basically amounts to a contest to see who is better at performing an arbitrary set of tasks. aside from perhaps having to feign interest about how other people are or what they’ve been up to.
Its a shame that football doesn’t really have an overall point, given the number of people who concern themselves with it. There’s no transferable skills that the players learn by playing football - it isn’t going to teach you to manage accounts or how to use various business-orientated software packages, so it is essentially just a lucratively paid dead-end job.
Fans might argue that the point is to win the cup… but what’s the point in that? At the end of the season the scores are reset and everyone starts again. What is there to work towards if everyone in the end loses? It would make much more sense if the football league were like international relations, and points were retained permanently. If the points system were adjusted so that it was 3 for a win, 0 for a draw and -3 for a loss, a team’s rank would essentially be the cumulative sum of its success throughout history. Sure, things might get to a point where one team, say, Rome, dominate all of Europe, but sooner or later a clever German team would spring up from no where, or they’d be internal factions and splintering off into new teams.
I think football could also take some tips from professional wrestling - which is almost as bad, but infinitely more watchable, because there’s the possibility that maybe someone could actually die. They should make it rigged, so that it is more exciting to watch, as footballers would be able to collude to do all sorts of spectacular things. The Harlem Globetrotters in basketball provide a surprisingly accurate analogy to justify this line of thinking.
Each team could have their own themetune, which rather than be a dreary national anthem, could be some generic heavy rock music, and the commentators would be allowed to go massively over the top screaming at the slightest thing (Jonathan Pierce already does this). The team with the cup wouldn’t keep it for a year - they can be challenged at any time, and if you beat the team, your team instantly gain the cup.
And of course, if you knock the referee out, anything goes and you can do what you like to win, be it pick up the ball to run with it, or hit the opposing team with a chair. You wouldn’t have to worry about it being a bad influence on people watching, as football fans are already quite adept at rioting anyway.
I think I make a pretty reasoned case why the national past time is rubbish. Next week I’ll be slagging off the Beatles and claiming that Bill Hicks is overrated.
