Author: Mike

We lost another great actor this weekend with the passing of Charlton Heston. You may not have agreed with his politics, but what an actor!

He made some great films and some rather poor one’s, but overall he made a great contribution to the film industry and will surely be remembered as one of the greats, along with likes of John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Lee Marvin and Gary Cooper to name a few.

It seems to me that we don’t have too many of his sort still making films today, though I suppose you could put Clint Eastwood, Harrison Ford, Bruce Willis and Sean Connery in the same class.

Yes that is the latest excuse for yet more cancelled planes at Heathrow airport today. I am not sure how many days it has been forecast for, but I think I first heard about the impending snow this weekend over 5 days ago. Clearly not enough time for the planners at BAA!

To think that one of the largest airports in Europe can run out of De-Icer is incredible. I can only think that the managers concerned must be rejects that did not make it on to the latest BBC Apprentice show. If what is on the Apprentice show are the best, then the rejects must really be bad and clearly are running parts of BAA and BA!

I know that you should separate sport from politics, but surely one of the guiding principals of the Olympics is that it symbolises freedom to assemble and enjoy sport as and when you want to and to assemble every four years to freely support a celebration of sport.

Clearly the ethnic (as opposed to the many Chinese nationals moved to Tibet) people of Tibet will not have that freedom given to them either now or during the Olympics.

Again this Labour government as have many other western governments allowed their quest for Job and Investment to over shadow their ability to choose right from wrong.

Clearly the Olympic torch should not have gone within a million miles of Downing Street – Gordon didn’t touch it though – it has now become a bit tarnished. If the scenes today in London are anything to go by then I think the torch will be in for a  bit or a rough ride over the next few weeks as it makes its way to China.

I wonder if Brown will have the guts to side with Sarkozy and not go to the opening ceremony? I doubt it, as there  is no backbone in that politician!

Another example of government short-sightedness has come to light through the announcement by UK Science Minister Ian Pearson that the operating budgets for the UK’s ALICE project maybe withdrawn. This is even before the £25 million project has finished being commissioned.

Designed to investigate and demonstrate Particle Accelerator technologies ALICE (Accelerators and Lasers in Combined Experiments) would be the first such device in the UK. If the operating funding is cut UK scientists would then have to rely on and travel to research facilities in the USA or Russia!

How much money are talking about here, just $3 million!

It seems very strange to me that as the UK’s traditional manufacturing continues shrink and with the volatility of the financial markets, surely Science is one area that we have to invest in to make sure that the UK has a serious place in the future of world Science.

Surely the UK government must be able to find £3 million to keep ALICE running? We seem to waste so much money on other less important projects!

With rough hand tactics starting to be used to intimidate the MDC in Zimbabwe, it seems the country hangs on a knife edge.

I hope we will not witness the same problems that occurred in Kenya – a very stable country when compared to Zimbabwe when the political party that apparently won the election were denied their rightful outcome.

Zimbabwe does not need any further strife.

Why don’t I care about Ken Livingstone’s private life?

Who really wants to care, except the stupid mainstream press that is. I wonder why they don’t pay more attention to policy differences between Ken and the other candidates and how as the re-elected mayor he may or may not be a good choice for the future.

The main reason I think, is that it requires a bit more intelligent activity on the part of the press and of course they take the simple way out and start to investigate his private life.

I watched the interview on the TV tonight and for once agreed with everything he was saying, it’s his concern and no one else’s.

Come on Press, get your fingers out start discussing the real policies.

Seems that the noise/clicking (was I being bugged?) on my landmine has finally stayed away this month and have had a pretty consistent connection during March.

There was  a little bit of speed fluctuation, but I suppose that this is to be expected.

Also now know via a second test that the true distance from the Reading South Exchange to my router is 3.84km as the wire ‘threads’ it way underground as opposed the way the bird flies!

Lets hope that this remains the same or even get better during April.

An announcement in response to a question from Liberal Democrat MP for Brent East, Sarah Teather, has revealed that the The Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) ,  has admitted it had lost 96 laptops since 2001.

Another staggering admission by another incompetent government department!

How many laptops in total have been lost by government departments since 2001? I’ve post about many of the losses already, but Silicon.com have the full story here. The number; it’s over 1000 since 2001! Unbelievable!

At last it seems that the end is close for the suffering of the people of Zimbabwe! Unless of course Mugabe is looking for another reason to cheat his way into a win.

I am still amazed that the West has never even tried to get this man out of office before now – of course the fact that Zimbabwe might not have any oil reserves to speak of!

Of course if the MDC do manage to oust Mugabe,
then it will certainly be a new dawn for Zimbabwe. However, country is so badly wounded, it will take a long time to get it back on its feet. This will be a tough task for Morgan Tsvangirai and the MDC.

Lets hope the new administration gets a much help as it needs.

When I saw the report on the BBC about the new species of Penguin that had been discovered that could fly, I fell for it hook line and sinker!!

It’s a great bit of digital editing  and a great April 1st prank.