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.

    Middle East Conflict

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    I recently saw an interesting post by Robert Peston on X (formerly known as Twitter) in relation to the current situation in the Middle East.

    “I have become increasingly worried that the charge of antisemitism is being levelled to silence legitimate and important debate. Antisemitism is on the rise, but there is also a rise in the unscrupulous use of the term to silence reasonable questions about the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza. This article in the Harvard Crimson by Jewish community leader Bernie Steinberg warns of incipient McCarthyism.“

    “It is worth reading, whichever side of the debate you are on https://thecrimson.com/article/2023/1“

    I’ve also just finished reading a fascinating book, A Line in the Sand, which for me has offered up a lot of explanation about the long history of why there have been so many conflicts. This is also worth a read. There are of course many other books on the subject available as well.

    It caught my eye… 1-2024

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    It’s a New Year! So, I am determined to post more this year and there is nothing like the first day of the new year to start off the first post.

    X (previously known as Twitter) continues to change since Elon Musk took over. I have not been a very big poster on the platform, apart from the NHS & Royal Navy tweets (or mini-newsletters as I might call them) that I put out on an infrequent basis.

    I do find that it is still a platform to use when all else fails which can focus a supplier’s attention when you have issues with providers of Gas, Electric and water and they need a bit of persuasion to respond. They just don’t like bad karma!

    One change I have seen over the last year is a drop in the random casual tweets containing nothing of consequence just taking up space on the timeline to the increase in more general information tweets as well an increase in various business related tweets appearing. Not sure if that is to do with my ‘Following’ list or just the tweaking of the various ‘algorithms’ that are behind everything now. However, in my opinion it does not seem to have gone downhill as much as some pundits were predicting, though I don’t think its long-term survival is safe yet.

    Here are a couple of tweets which were not on my ‘Follow’ list that popped up today.

    Marsh Family Songs — Which I always love.

    History

    National Public Radio (NPR) is an American non-profit media organization. NPR Music — one of the best online place to find information on music of all types — is also the home of Tiny Desk Concerts. I’ve been dipping in and out of this site for quite a few years and have found it to be a great place to find new artists from across the world of music, to already established names like Sting, Seal, Florence + the Machine and Mariachi Flor De Toloache to name just few of the many acts to feature.

    If you want to find new music of any genre you can think of, then this is a place to start. Here are some new ones I recently came across — Marta Pereira da Costa from Portugal, Laufey from Iceland and music from the USA Broadway stage show Sweeney Todd.

    Why does it take so long for Governments and particular UK governments to admit to their mistakes and properly compensate people for the errors are committed by them?

    As this story continues to show, there is still a long way to go before the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire and their relatives of get closure on the issue. Likewise, the Post Office computer scandal drags on, as does the Contaminated Blood enquiry.

    Why can’t governments act faster?

    The shrinking size of memory.

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    Computer memory, that is!! I am working my way through a backlog of books that I have accumulated over the past eighteen months, the latest one of which is Turing’s Cathedral by George Dyson (no relation to the vacuum manufacture).

    Not a straightforward history of computing book. But more an investigation into the backgrounds of who was who in the various developments of calculating/computing machines over time, which has led us to where we are today and how a group of people wanted to build a computer that would make Alan Turing’s theory of a ‘universal machine’ reality.

    I am only halfway through it, as I can’t stop going to search the internet to look up information relative to the progress of the story. Having worked with computers since I was seventeen after joining the Royal Navy in 1964 it’s fascinating to learn more about how the theories of such things as computer memory became reality.

    To show one example of how far computer memory has come, here is an image of an original Ferrite Ring core memory, showing 64 cores in an 8 by 8 matrix to hold just eight bytes!

    On top of it is an 8 GB SanDisk memory card, one billion time more memory in one quarter of the area taking up by the Ferrite Core matrix!

    Of course this is an old picture, I saw an article last week about a 1.5 TB SanDisk memory card! There are other larger cards with higher capacities, but it’s amazing to see this amount of storage packed into such a small space. What would Alan Turing have made of this?

    It caught my eye… 7–2023

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    More Big-Brother actions from the UK Government, it seems that a number of government departments including the Department for Environment Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) and the Department for Business and Trade are searching social media to build ‘dossiers’ on people who are critics of the UK Government as a way of stopping them from appearing on government sponsored platforms. More info here.

    Continuing the theme of Big-Brother, with the continuing rise in organised shoplifting, many stores have joined a Government sponsored scheme to install facial recognition software alongside their in-store cameras.

    Although there is now a big pushback from various rights organisations including Liberty, Amnesty International and Big Brother Watch due to too many false alarms.

    With the government actively sponsoring a downturn in house building, here’s an interesting article about just how bad many of the new house are when new homeowners take them over from developers.

    Makes you wonder just what you’re getting for your money.

    It caught my eye… 6–2023

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    According to press reports, The Guardian, The FT, This is Money; Thames Water could be about to run out of money!

    I thought the whole idea of privatization was that it was going to be better for all!

    Funny how things turn out.

    The UK Department of Work & Pensions (DWP) confirms plans to check bank accounts to stop £1.3 billion in benefit fraud. In an update to legislation, the UK Government has giving itself the power to look into all UK citizens banks account that receive state benefits!

    Big Brother on the march, again! Why not look at the UK.Gov?

    A very written article about this very subject — How the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill is the government’s latest erosion of hard-won rights!

    With Climate change high on the agenda at the moment and with COP28 taking place in Dubai, it is interesting to learn that Scientists in Scotland are using robotic subsea gliders to check ocean currents for signs of climate collapse.

    They are monitoring the “conveyor belt” which carries warm and cool water between the Caribbean and the Arctic.

    Let’s hope that they find out what’s happening soon.

    Allotment update

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    It’s been eight years since I took on my first ever allotment and over those years I’ve managed to grow quite a variety of produce. The plot had lain unused for two years, so it took quite a bit of work to bring it back into full production. Over that time, I’ve added a couple of dwarf fruit trees and other soft fruits, which have been reasonably successful.

    In 2019, I decided to take on a second plot. I do like a challenge; this had also not been used for a number of years. This was of course pre-covid, when not many people were interested in taking on allotments that were ‘unworkable’ without lots of upfront effort. Needless to say, a lot of work has also been carried out on this plot since then to bring this one back into production.

    However, time moves on and this year I decided to give up my first plot. Having two plots does require a lot of time/effort to keep up with the various tasks. The Allotment Site run by Woodley Town Council also now has a long waiting list for allotment plots – due to the high interest/uptake of allotments during the Covid period.

    So hopefully someone from the waiting list will benefit from an active allotment plot.

    Here are a few images from the eight years on that plot.

    In the meantime work progresses on the remaining plot, which has taken a little longer than I thought and still have some more tasks stuff to do. However, I do have a good shed!

    It has also delivered some great produce and will hopefully keep doing this over the coming years.

    Selection of images from remaining plot since 2019