Gordon Brown

The papers are reporting that Gordon Brown’s speech at the Labour Party conference has been warmly acclaimed and mention that the Prime Minister “highlighted his role in helping lower income families”. Shouldn’t that be his role in “helping lower families’ income”? Also, I’m not sure that I get his concluding point about the last words of the poor Rwandan kid who was killed. Is that supposed to be in Rwandan, or it is a pop at extraordinary rendition, intended to illustrate the point that people will say anything under torture and are mostly incomprehensible as opposed to providing helpful intelligence?

Likewise, at the start of page 11, he seems to be stooping to a childish Mary Whitehouse Experience “The History Professors” level in his characterisation of Mr Cameron’s position on the difference between the Labour and Tory levels of public investment. Is that really what Mr Cameron said?

Labels: UK politics

Starbucks

Right that’s it; just got back to my desk and Starbucks has yet again made my cappucino with skimmed milk without me requesting it. Has this become the default option these days? I know it’s not very British, I’ll get funny looks, and people will think that I am an unhealthy git, but I am going to have to get American about this and complain next time.

Labels: whinges

Wine tasting

I went on an introduction to wine tasting evening yesterday at Oddbins. Four whites, four reds and two Huber dessert wines — an eiswein and a trockenbeerenauslesen. Was swallowing not spitting (seemed a shame to waste it) so ended up drinking a fair bit of wine. Highlights were a Spanish Ribera del Duero, the Vega Sicilia Valbuena 2002, which apparently retails at 75 nicker a bottle and a 2005 Australian Shiraz, D’Arenberg’s “The Dead Arm”. I was sufficiently carried away by my enthusiasm to buy a couple of bottles of the latter, which is presumably why they are happy for people to swallow rather than spit!

Labels: booze

10K

Did a 10K race in Victoria Park on Sunday. The results are now out and my official time was 41:21, as I had expected having timed with my own watch (excuse — not training). That’s my new official personal best, my previous best in a race being 41:48 in 2005 (excuse — weather / over–long course). The goal remains to get round in under 40 and to that end I have signed up for a series of six 10Ks around Regents Park, taking place on the first Sunday of each month starting from October. The target time is a big ask for me: although 8 seconds per kilometre quicker doesn’t sound like much, I have now had three attempts at getting under 40 minutes, having decided in November 2004 after my first one that this was the goal, but have not managed it yet (excuse — crowds) (although I guess three tries in four years isn’t exactly a lot).

Labels: training

Aldgate triangle

It appears that they have decided to totally screw up the Aldgate gyratory system. Basically, they have taken what was three lanes in each direction and reduced it to two or even one. The land that was previously road is used instead for enormous pedestrian islands complete with numerous new pedestrian crossings and traffic lights. Some new open space is also made available for local tramps and juvenile delinquents to get drunk in while the employed are at work or trying to sleep.

Presumably the rationale is to increase traffic congestion as much as possible (in the supposed interests of pedestrian safety and better amenities for the local pissheads community) in order to make driving an even more miserable experience than it is at the moment, in the hope that people will give up and walk. But I thought that Ken Livingstone had moved on? Must be a legacy project…

Update 22.09.08: OK, I take it all back. Now that the roadworks are over, this is better for traffic flow than it used to be. The open space for getting drunk in isn’t ready yet, so I don’t know about that, but this time I will make sure that I go and get drunk in it and try it out before jumping to any conclusions.

Labels: driving, london

BBC headsets

Why have BBC reporters who wear those headsets with a earpiece and a microphone on a stalk started using flesh–coloured foam deelies on the microphones instead of the traditional black (e.g. Sue Barker during the Olympics and the reporter from the Republican convention at the moment)? You can obviously still see the microphone bulb despite the camouflage, so it just looks like a huge carbuncle on the side of their face. Not attractive.

Labels: TV

London crime map

This is interesting: London crime maps courtesy of the Metropolitan Police. The information is presented with a fine degree of granularity, going down to a sub–ward level, which is essentially a couple of dozen streets (according to this article, it could have been on an even more detailed street–by–street basis, but this was ruled out on privacy grounds). I wonder whether my household insurance quote will go down, because although in about the highest risk postcode in the country according to the insurers, it appears that I am in a lower risk sub–ward. One can live in hope. The likely impact on property prices would appear to be favourable also. In any event, it is good to know that when walking the neighbourhood streets and when asleep in bed at night, I am at least in the nice part of Shitville.

Labels: crime, london