We first of all it seems that other stuff catching my eye has kept me away from this blog again for two long!! Where does time go?
A combination of more work on the Allotment; with the very strange weather over the last few months so there has been a lot of catching up to do. Including finishing off my new shed (a lockdown project) albeit the roof is still to on – shortage of roofing materials – and of course lots of planting.
So what has caught my ‘eye’ over the past few months…
World Wide Micro-Chip Shortage – Integrated Circuits or ‘Micro-Chips’ are in everything today from Toasters and Doorbells to the latest Games Consoles, Washing Machines, Smartphones and many other devices. Without ‘Micro-Chips’ the world as we know it today could and probably would not exist. So it is concerning that there is now a world-wide shortage of them.
The reasons vary from the COVID Pandemic slowing down demand in sectors such as Motor Vehicles and yet from a surge in demand for Games Consoles over the last 18 months. Unfortunately the manufacture of Micro-Chips can’t be switched on an off quickly, factories need to bring their production lines, costing hundreds of millions of dollar up speed as and when demands require and that takes time. These issues along with the fires at Renesas in March this year and at AKM late last year will put a big strain on the market and of course increase prices. Let’s hope were not going to see a shortage for too long.
What’s happen to the weather? – Clearly there is much more emerging proof that the climate/weather is changing and speed of it is gathering pace. Looking at the some of the weather over the last three months here in the UK, I am not surprised.
No we are told that the stratosphere is shrinking!! In a very worrying report, and contains some very stark comments that we all need to be very concerned about.
The UK Building Cladding Issue – How can a UK government utterly abandon a sector of society who through no fault of their own are placed in a situation not of their making that will leave them completely financially ruined. Does the government seem to care about ordinary people wanting to have a safe roof over their head, it would seem not!
In a recent decision by the government, an amount of money has been provided that falls far short of what is required to basically fix an issue that is completely the responsibility of the builders of high-rise properties. Clearly the current UK government is more interested in helping their business ‘buddies’ than the ordinary folk of the country.
The Royal Navy Ventures East – As part of Boris Johnson boastful Global Britain the UK’s Carrier Strike Group has begun an overseas deployment scheduled to last some seven months. With a number of nations making up the task group and a number of stops envisaged along the way, this will be a first for the UK in so much as the size of the fleet and massive logistics support involved.
With a proposed transit of the South China Sea, it will be a diplomatically tricky road that the Royal Navy has to tread showing China that the South China Seas are still considered ‘International Waters’ by the west. Of course, it has always been that way in the past, until China has grown to be the international power that it is today. I suspect that UK Task force may meet up with the latest USA Task Force transiting the waters.
I remember my very first trip with the Royal Navy on board HMS Devonshire as we spent just over a year on a journey that took us from Portsmouth to Tokyo and back, however, that’s a story for another post!!
Something strange is happening with online weather forecasts; default pressure information is disappearing!
Yes the TV Broadcast weather programmes do refer to them, but what about the online weather maps?
As can be seen from the above three snaps of today’s weather, none of them (including the UK’s own Met. Office) contain any default information about weather pressure. You have to go and search/click on another link to get this information.
As it is one of the deciding factors in determining our weather, you would think this is something that should be included in the default page setup.
Here are the same three online services Pressure Maps. However, to get them you have follow a link from one of the menus, sometimes filling in extra ‘tick’ boxes (as in the case of the BBC) to get the information you need. It seems strange when a simple adjustment to the web pages could at least show the relevant figure of pressure at any time. The BBC used to have this in the past.
I suppose it’s a bit like information about the Jet Stream; another big influencer of the UK’s weather. Mostly, it does not get mentioned except in fairly rare circumstances. Something else I think should be changed. Here’s today’s view of the Jet Stream. Not from the above services as I could find any info quickly about the Jet Stream on those sites. Google on the other hand…
I’ve always been interested in the Weather and will be installing a personal weather station sometime in 2020. However, here’s is a look at the pressure difference as I see it using my Grandfather’s Mercury based Barometer, which does seem to give fairly accurate readings.
Looking at this, you can see quite a difference between the pressure this week and last week’s due to the deluge of rain of rain we had.
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