23/07/2010 by paul.

Was down the pub last night and a friend mentioned an interesting comparison between the BP oil disaster and the Union Carbide Gas disaster.
The BP oil disaster caused the death of 11 workers, which of couse is a tragedy, and an immense amount of damage to the environment in the Gulf area, and possible else where in due course, plus considerable damage to the local economies . The oil drilling operation was operated on behalf of BP by a third party, under the control of BP.  US is a powerfull country and estimates for the total cost to BP range from $3.2bn to $100bn.
In 1984, Union Carbide India Ltd, owned by Union Carbide USA, caused an estimated 3787 deaths through a gas leakage. The causes for both the BP oil disaster and the Union Carbide disaster are though to result from failure to act upon known weaknesses in operating proceedures and equipment.  India is a poor company with limited power on the wortld stage and the people killed were poor people. The total cost to Union Carbide, as negotiated with the Indian government, was $470M…..  

Hmmm!

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06/07/2010 by paul.

I have been pondering on the use of the plastic tongs in Tesco (or other supermatkets, I guess) at the bread counter.
The tongs are placed in the bread roll bins, inferring that you should use them to select your bread rolls and place the rolls into the plastic bag for the check-out. I think that it is meant to be a sort of hygene issue.
I always pick up my rolls with my hands and take them to the check-out and I am dying for someone to tell me off and insist that I use the tongs to handle the rolls. 
I want to ask the manager of Tesco, what exactly is the roll of the tong ?.
If I pick up my roll and take it home, as far as I can see, any germs on the roll, assuming that it has not been rolling around on the floor behind the counter, at any time, are my germs.  Also, if I use the tongs, I will transfer the germs from the previous customer to use the tongs, to my hands, and then in due course to the roll.    Also, if I use the tongs, I will transfer my germs to the tongs and then in due course to the next customer to use the tongs.
It strikes me that the tongs are an excellent means of transferring germs around….but I suspect that those who placed the tongs in the bread bin, meant quite the opposite.         Perhaps, as soon as anyone has used the tongs, an assistant rushes out and sanitises them before they are used by the next customer …!!!    Hmm! I doubt it.
So, come on supermarket manager, ask me to use the tongs…please….then I can ask my question.

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06/05/2010 by paul.

It has occurred to me that it should be mandatory that all politicians are ugly. Then, when television debates are aired, Daily Mail readers, or similar, would not exclaim “Oooh ! isn’t he lovely….. I must vote for him” or something similar.   

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29/07/2009 by paul.

Well, the weatherman definately said, earlier this year..”it will be a summer of BBQs”, now we learn that it will be wet and unsettled for the near future and that they didn’t really mean we would have a good summer !!
Definition of an expert…someone (often with an exagerated sense of self importance…maybe a politician) who is marginally less ignorant than the rest of us…but non-the-less, ignorant.  Weather men fall into that category…and so do financial “experts”

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30/11/2008 by paul.

I have been working in the electronics industry for 40 years and 2 months…I know that because I have just seen it on the redundancy settlement that I have received.            Now I am not shedding any tears over this, since I have seen it coming for a couple of years..and I stress that it has nothing to do with the ‘highly spun’ current recession.  What is weird, is the reaction of others to the news (of my redundancy, not the global self inflicted recession).     As soon a I tell anyone that I am being made redundant, they immediately adopt a sympathetic posture and voice a high degree of concern …., so I immediately have to re-assure them that it is no real deal to me.         In fact I have just been to the hairdressers and as part of that often forced convesation that takes place as ones hair is being cut, the young girl asked by if “I was on holiday today”, “just popped out of the office”  and whether” I would be leaving the office early today” (being a friday).      So, I just said “no” “yes”  and “probably” in that order, rather than saying that today was the last day of 40 years working for a multinational company and that today was the last day that I would be driving 100 miles on the motorway to get to/from the office. Also the last time that I would frequent that particular hairdressers.                                  So for the first time in a long, long time, I have just had to buy myself a car and a mobile phone (the later being a lot more complicated than the former), and on Monday …..well, I am not quite sure what happens from Monday.

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11/11/2008 by paul.

It could have been written for a sitcom.    Here in Solihull, at the 11th. hour, of the 11th. month etc. the girls in the office decided that we should all observe the 2 minutes of silence.
So, to mark the beginning and the end of the 2 minutes, they sounded the fire alarm.  Within a few moments of the sounding of the alarm for the beginning of the 2 minutes, the main switchboard phone rang. Of course, it was not answered, due to the silence.
Immediately after the 2 minutes, it was discovered that the unanswered phone call, was from the fire brigade. Receiving no answer, they rushed round to put out the fire…..making a lot of noise

Doh !    

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11/07/2008 by paul.

Having been somewhat bored at the office, the other day. I took a visit to one of my favourite sites………”Bad science” (see the link on this blog).

There I found an article entitled “All time classic creationalist pwnage”. This is a quite an entertaining article and through this article, I followed a link to “Conservapedia”, which promotes itself as a “trustworthy encyclopedia” and an alternative to Wikipedia. Now, clearly (to my moderate view point) Conservapedia is promoting a somewhat fundamentalist  view on life, but I found an entry in Conservapedia on Wikipedia. Since Conservapedia’s views on Wikipedia appear to be a bit on the extreme side, I thought I would check Wikipedia’s views on Conservapedia.

The Wikipedia view on Conservapedia is a little more restrained, but somehow, through the Wikipedia article, I found myself at another  Wiki site, by the name of RationalWiki.

Now Rationalwiki , whose aim is to “refuting anti-science….refuting…crank ideas..authoritarianism…fundamentalism”  is almost an alternative to Conservapedia.

Brilliant….another hard day at the office over     

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29/04/2008 by paul.

I was a bit upset at the beginning of the year, when I paid £1.11 for a litre of diesel, but now I have just paid £1.20 and just heard that the price is expected to rise to £1.50, by the end of the year.    Aaaaaagh!
I am sure that an economist could correct me, but I an equally sure that i recall, many years ago, being told that the cost of fuel was rising due to the (then) strong $. OK, so now the $ is weak, why is it not offsetting the other fuel inflation factors…..Those factors being - excessive tax (thank you Gordon), excessive profits - “BP and Shell profits jump”, and industrial action by a bunch of workers that wish to retain a type of pension scheme that most of us lost many years ago. All further aggrevated by the Chineese discovering the motor car and our cousins in the New World, continuing to enjoy the use of low cost fuel in some very inefficient motor cars.
I did recently read that fuel consumption on motorways can be reduced significantly, by keeping to the 70mph limit. Since most of my driving is on the motorway network, I have tried to save fueld by setting the cruise control to just under 70. I have to say that it is quite effective and I have certainly noticed a difference in my fuel consumption….but…most lorries seem to travel at speeds between 60 and 70, whilst most cars travel at sppeds in excess of 80. This means that driving at 70 is a real pain. You slowly catch up on the lorries, but get stuck because of all the cars that are wizzing past at 80+. It may well be more fuel efficient, but it is certainly a lot more dangerous   

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11/02/2008 by paul.

Been having some serious thoughts about Organic.  Now and again, I buy organic veg. in the supermarket…. if it is going cheap ….. but do not really make a habit of it…but with the exception of tomatoes. A few years ago we visited the south eastern coast of Spain, as part of our search for a suitable holiday home. As the plane descended over the Sierra Nevada and into Almeria airport, the view out of the window was impressive, to say the least. The sun was reflecting of a mass of lakes and the whole area looked very picturesque…..until just before touch down, when we realised that the lakes were, in fact, massive areas of polythene. In reality, closer inspection revealed virtually that every bit of level ground (excluding runway) was covered with cities of polythene. The ground itself, seemed stony and dry, but inside the polythene cities, vast plantations of vegetables existed, with an emphasis on tomatoes. I subsequently understood that the tomatoes existed on a cocktail of fertiliser and pesticide. In addition, very few local Spaniards worked within the polythene cities and that the main source of labour wasNorth Africa…after all, goodness knows what effect prolonged exposure to the enhanced atmosphere in the cities might have and the locals were no fools.

With immediate effect, I resolved to move to organic tomatoes. A bit naive really, since it is clear that most other vegetables in the supermarket also come from Spain and no doubt, are being “grown” under similar conditions. So I really should be moving to organic for all of my vegetables.  My real problem is….that I don’t trust anybody, especially government advisory bodies.  History clearly demonstrates that today’s wisdom is tomorrow’s ridicule……

I read the other week, in the Sunday Times, a review of a book about the history of food additives. I meant to buy the book, but have now lost that copy of the Sunday Times and cannot remember the name of the book. Probably just as well, really.  But, whilst following some links in Wikipedia, the other day, I can across an entry on “Smartfresh” a “brand of synthetic produce quality enhancer based upon 1-methylcyclopropene” (what ever that is). Amongst other things, it is used as a gas to prolong storage life of fruit and is “perfectly safe”. Hmmm! like smoking was, not that many years ago, or the miracle development of hydrogenated vegetable oil,  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans_fat ]   used for a similar purpose.       

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21/01/2008 by paul.

Having thought, earlier in the month,  about the fees that professional executors charge, I decided to re-write my will. The previous version appointed a firm of professions administrators to act on my behalf. 
This I have now done and the administrators are now in the family. Whilst re-writing the will, it occurred to me that there existed an opportunity to save further monies, by expressing the wish that ( in due course) no undue costs should be occurred in the purchase of an elaborate coffin etc. It seems absolutely crazy that such sums are spent on a bit of wood that will lie rotting in the ground.  I thought about the provision for a highly ecco-friendly cardboard coffin. Then Mary e-mailed me a link to a site that advertises a much more obscure means of disposal……http://www.heavenlystarsfireworks.com/…….  it is so “bad taste” that it is almost demands consideration.
I guess that cremation is a pre-requisite…..the mind boggles, otherwise  

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