Beasley's Place

UK General Election 2024

June 12, 2024June 12, 2024 MikeLeave a comment

A bit behind with my blogging, again!

However, here’s a subject to wakes us all up!! So a lot is being talked about at the moment on what all the major parties will do for ‘us’ to win our votes in the up-coming General Election. There have been quite a few items on various media channels about how the state of the economy has been handled over the past 14 years under the various past Tory Governments.

One of the best reports that I recently ‘tripped’ over via Twitter, or should say X was from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. They have produced a report consisting of 13 graphs that show just what has happened under past Conservative Government control over the past 14 years, they explain a lot about why the UK is in the mess it in. You can also download the whole report here.

But here are the graphs for a quick peruse now.

Allotment Update

April 18, 2024April 18, 2024 MikeLeave a comment

Not posted about this subject in a while. At the end of November 2023 I decided to give one of my plots (the first one I had taken on some eight years ago) as I was finding that time does not now seem to let me cover the work required for two plots.

It has not been used for over three years and after a lot of work, became a very productive plot, which I hope the new tenant will enjoy it as much as I did.

So, over the winter-2023/2024 it was a matter of moving stuff over to the plot I decided to keep. In the end that was just two Blueberry plants as the fruits tree that I had planted 4 years ago had really taken hold and were too big to move. The same was true to be said for the small poly-tunnel that I had for 6 years. I had managed to anchor that down so well it would not budge! I will look at investing in a new one when I have cleared more of my current plot.

Work on the ‘new’ plot continues, I took this over in 2019, again this one had been abandoned for over three years – I do like a challenge! But good progress has been made and it’s become a productive plot.

There had to be some major changes to the plot, one of which was to build a new shed as there was no life left in the old one. I also decided to put some water tanks inside to collect rainwater, which was a very good idea with the recent hot summers we have had. I nearly emptied them a couple of years ago when the on-site water tanks were running low.

Pleased with the progress and looking forward to 2024 season, which I hope is as good as 2023 was.

Some Navy News

April 1, 2024April 1, 2024 MikeLeave a comment

In another excellent in-depth report, the Navy Lookout delves into the Royal Navy surface fleet’s future. Seems that there will be a lot of potential influences over the coming years, one hopes that any future change of government is not going to affect those too much. As always, the article’s comments also add extra value to the story.

That said, world-conflicts can also change that direction as well.

It seems that the end has finally arrived for RFA Diligence a forward repair ship of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary with the announcement that is it finally to be scrapped after no suitable buyers came forward.

Seems a bit of a waste, but there again I suppose those MOD (N) guys must know what they are doing!

It caught my eye… 7-2024

April 1, 2024April 1, 2024 MikeLeave a comment

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

March 29, 2024 MikeLeave a comment

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

March 13, 2024March 13, 2024 MikeLeave a comment

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

Worldwide Browser Market Share

March 1, 2024March 1, 2024 MikeLeave a comment

It’s interesting to see how much share Googles Chrome has taken in the world of Internet Browser usage. Here are some charts from various sources to show the different makeup of the browser market. Click on each image for expanded view.

It caught my eye… 4-2024

February 9, 2024 MikeLeave a comment

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!

January 31, 2024January 31, 2024 MikeLeave a comment

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.