It caught my eye… 7-2024

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I watched a great travel programme last week featuring Ben Fogle about his trip Into the Congo on Channel 5.

Spread over three episodes, it covered some fascinating aspects facing the Indigenous tribes within parts of the Congo.

Searching for some background, I came across this interesting website covering all the different tribes of Africa. I think it can be said that we don’t know enough about the peoples of one of the biggest continents on the planet. Certainly opened my eyes as to the number of issues threatening their ancient and varied lives as society changes around them.

Seems Tesco is in the news again, but not for the right reasons, Booker the food wholesaler—who I did not know had been bought by the Tesco group a while ago, is accused of using Booker to try and ‘squeeze’ village stores out of business through some unscrupulous tactics.

It turns out that through Booker, the same is happening to branches of Landis, Budgens and Premier shops. It seems that the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority did not pay much attention as to what might happen to smaller stores as it waived the Tesco takeover of Booker through. Hmmm!!

As the potential famine situation in Gaza and other places in the world continue to increase, an IPC Overview and Classification System report has appeared covering the Gaza Strip in detail.

It does not make good reading.

It caught my eye… 6-2024

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Amazingly, the list of cities around the world that are literally sinking is increasing dramatically. This is due to a number of reasons, mainly related to Environmental changes that are affecting the ground on which have been built over the years of their existence.

In a recent report, The World Economic Forum cited 11 cities that could entirely disappear by 2100. It’s not a problem confined to one area, it seems to be a world-wide problem from Bangladesh to Egypt and Houston, USA. The USA is also covered more deeply in this Newsweek report using data from NASA images.

This one definitely caught my eye, having been in the Navy I always like to keep up to date with any changes that are happening, this one is significant.

With HMS Vengeance having just returned from its epic 201-day mission under the sea, this Technical Briefing from Navy Lookout just shows how the underwater threat has changed over recent years. It is going to change further and faster as more nations deploy their own submarines. If you’re interested in this aspect of our defence, it’s worth a read, including the comments.

2nd May 2024 and local elections are looming. But could it also be a snap General Election? Make sure that you have done everything you need to obtain your Voter ID.

The Electoral Commission has full information about this. There is a deadline to obtain a valid Voter ID, it’s 24th April 2024. Don’t delay.

It caught my eye… 5-2024

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In one of my past roles I was involved with multilingual dictionary production and even attended a lexicography conference in Lorient, France in 2004.

So it was surprising to read this article in the Guardian about Disappearing tongues: the endangered language crisis. It’s one of their long-reads, but worthwhile seeing where the world’s languages are heading.

Seems that the ever-changing climate of earth is continuing to affect all aspects of life, including the oceans fish population. Reported on Earth.com, it appears that the world’s oceans are losing their ability to sustain plankton.

Being at the bottom of the ocean food-chain, this is a worrying development.

There’s nothing like a dish of lovely Risotto to satisfy an empty stomach. However, not all is well in the rice fields of the Po Valley in northern Italy where Arborio and Carnaroli rice, the most suited to Risotto are grown.

Recovery from recent droughts will take some time and it appears that other rice varieties being trialled just can’t offer the same quality of dish.

Having spent some thirty minutes on the phone to my own water company, Thames Water, about a 30% increase in my monthly payments, I am not surprised to read that I am not alone in thinking what this report says.

Seems to me that we are not getting enough regulation from OFWAT or the UK Government about this subject

It caught my eye… 4-2024

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Australia has been in the news quite a bit recently as it continues to experience very high summer temperatures.

I have also just finished watching a BBC iPlayer catch-up program called “The Australian Wars”, which deals with the conquest of Australia by the incoming colonial settlers and the battles that took place as they displaced the First Nations Indigenous Australians.

It’s a very interesting up to date (2022) and alarming documentary and a depressing reflection on British colonialism that has lasted much longer than you would think. Only recently, Australians voted in an historic referendum when all six states voted No to a proposal to amend the constitution to recognise First Nations people and create a body for them to advise the government.

Here we go again…

More problems for the Royal Navy as the HMS Queen Elizabeth Aircraft Carrier has had to suddenly withdraw from NATO’s Steadfast Defender 2024 exercise.

It does make you wonder if we, the taxpayers, are really getting value for money in our latest purchases for the Royal Navy.

It seems that it is suffering from similar issues that the HMS Prince of Wales suffered from and were only resolved by dry-docking in Scotland. Let’s hope that doesn’t happen this time.

Good news or the lack of it on all the news channels tends to get pushed to the end of newscasts and sometimes treated ‘time-fillers’.

Well, here’s a site that claims to have a ‘1,000 Bits of Good News You May Have Missed in 2023′. Some interesting snippets from its site include:

Nuclear Fusion – The Holy Grail!

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The search for an endless supply of free energy has been around ever since humans have been around.

However, it now seems that we are approaching the moment when we may have access to a supply of endless environmentally friendly energy, although at some considerable development costs.

An experimental JT-60SA nuclear reactor in Japan’s Ibaraki Prefecture seems the best opportunity of far to be able to deliver a sustainable and near limitless power source, according to recent press reports.

The struggle to be able to produce limitless energy from a Fusion Reaction (the same energy that powers the Sun) rather than from a Fissile Reaction (the same produced in Nuclear Reactors and of course nuclear bombs) has been going on for many decades. Only recently has major progress been achieved, both in the JT-60A trials and at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California (LLNL) where scientists manage to get more energy out than the energy that was used to run the reaction.

Therein lies the ‘rub’; how to reduce the energy needed to sustain a fusion reaction so that it is possible to get long term access to this so called limitless ‘free’ energy. For example, the group at the LLNL had to use lasers to fuse two light atoms into a single one, releasing 3.15MJ (megajoules) of energy from 2.05MJ of input – roughly enough to boil a kettle!

It seems we are close, but there is still some way to go to having this type of energy at the flick of a switch.

Click on the image for an explanation of the differences.

It caught my eye… 3-2024

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Physician Associates (PA’s) seem to be a big topic in the mainstream media at the moment, with some questions being asked about the potential of replacing doctors.

Various arguments for and against have also been put forward to about PA’s being used to fill the shortfall in recruitment of new trainee doctors.

There is still some confusion about their role in the wider medical environment. However, an article about PA’s and their roles at the Reading NHS Foundation Trust makes for interesting reading.

News this week indicates that the search for missing sailor Simon Parkes, who disappeared 31 years ago in Gibraltar while serving on HMS Illustrious, has restarted as Police investigate a car park in Gibraltar.

The investigation into Simon Parkes disappearance has also been linked to serial killer Allan Grimson who was serving on HMS Illustrious as a Petty Officer at the same time. He was subsequently jailed for the murder of two other men, one of which was also a sailor serving on HMS Edinburgh at the time of his death. Let’s hope this mystery is cleared up finally.

It seems from figures emerging that 2023 was a very hot year indeed. The UK according to various researchers had its second-hottest year on record.

Reports from around the world back up the ongoing warming of the planet and shows no sign of abating. For example, meteorologists in Australia have already warning about massive increases in temperatures across a lot of the country for this week.

It seems, from various sources, that if we have not already passed it; we are certainly close to passing the point of no return for more massive changes in the Earth’s climate.

The Royal Navy—What’s happening?

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I have come across a number of recent articles discussing the current state of the Royal Navy. You can find access to the various news items below, which cover lack of manpower and early retirement of ships.

    Finally, this from the Navy Lookout site, which I think has a pretty good handle on the current situation in the Royal Navy.

    It’s sad to see an organisation where I spent many of my formative years in such a mess. I’m not sure what the solutions are to boost recruitment so that we can keep more ships manned. However, I certainly think that politicians of all parties have a lot to answer for their actions (or lack of) over the past number of years.

    Mobile Phone Coverage in the UK

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    We’ve all been there; somewhere in the UK trying to make a call or use the internet on a mobile phone to find; we have no signal!

    Ofcom’s Mobile Phone Coverage map, which I have used on the left, seems to show a pretty good coverage across the UK.

    You can click on the image to find out more details from your own postcode area point of view.

    Looking at all the 4 main mobile phone networks (three, O2, ee & vodafone) using this service, we can see slightly different coverage maps than those of Ofcom which paint a different picture with not so much full coverage of the UK.

    So, just how good is the coverage of mobile phone coverage in the UK? I came across this report about United Kingdom Mobile Insights from m2catalyst a couple of days ago and clearly this a company is delving deep into mobile phone coverage not only in the UK but also around the world.

    Information in the Coverage-qoe/Traffic analysis/Digital divide report includes detailed measurement of the UK mobile phone network coverage. What’s also interesting is a comparison of where the UK sits in relationship to other countries for Connected Coverage and Traffic Percentage, the UK does not come out very well.

    The whole report can be downloaded at the end of the online report page, as are reports from many other countries around the work. Happy reading; that is, if you have a connection!!!

    It caught my eye… 2-2024

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    Wow!! What a lot of rain over the past few weeks and it seems that we have another example of climate change. That of course is no help to the people are having to bail out their homes from the latest inundation of flood water. Help from Citizens Advice is available.

    As the chart on the left shows (click to get a bigger version), the planets’ climate is continuing to change, is it approaching the point of no return? One hope not for all our sakes.

    With the sad news that Derek Draper has died today at the young age of 56, Long-Covid continues to cast its shadow over many people.

    A recent report indicated that, even in people that have recovered to some degree, they are still affected by it when trying to exercise to get back to full health. If you’re suffering from Long-Covid, here’s a Long Covid recovery guide from the British Heart Foundation.

    With Solar flare activity increasing and intensifying—see the recent Northern Lights magnificent shows, another effect of solar flares you may have personally experienced is interference in terrestrial broadcast TV and Radio signals. I have here in the last few weeks.

    Italy could soon have a solution to this as a side-benefit to its requirement to provide a reliable TV/Radio signal across all of its regions, in particular the most mountainous areas, by having an internet fall-back. It makes interesting reading and compares how a few other countries are progressing.