Please Don't Steal Buses, You Could Kill Someone.

And on a completely different topic this short cut takes you to a video shot from a Police helicopter over Wakefield in West Yorkshire. Shane Oldroyd had been drinking and had no money to get home so he stole a bus. A quarter of a million pounds was the cost of his bus ride and he was jailed for at least 3 and a half years today. His driving was described by the judge as 'wicked, dangerous and reckless'. He drove with as much care as the average litter lout drops cigarette butts on the pavement.

Good News From Copenhagen

I'm not going to call it Global Warming anymore. In case it is summer where you live I would mention that it is cold here, -1C last night and 0C today; plus a wind chill factor of -6C. Now I know there are places where that would be regarded as a balmy spring day but not here on the south coast of England. Not until the Gulf Stream stops anyway. Even though it was bitterly cold we made it down to the Irish pub on the Harbour at lunch time. There another hardy drinker poured cold water on the idea of Global Warming and wondered at the point of all the world leaders meeting in Copenhagen. At first I thought he was joking, using the most important meeting in the history of the world, to add weight to his comment about how cold it was. But he wasn't, he really did think that the planet wasn't getting hotter, how could it be given that this was the coldest day in living memory. Some peoples living memory is shorter than others.

But I wasn't despondent, he was in a pub in Torquay, not in the conference in Copenhagen. The people in the conference, world leaders must be well informed, responsible people with the best interests of their people and their peoples’ children uppermost in their hearts and minds. A steely determination to do the right thing. To go down in history as the group the saved the world. They have known this get together was important. They would have spoken to scientists and advisors learned in their fields who would have been able to explain in detail the effects of the rise of more than 2C on weather patterns around the world and how these changes would effect the world's ability to provide enough food and water to keep the population nourished and what steps are needed to keep the rise in temperature below 2C. They wouldn’t, like me have listened to “the man in the pub”. Optimism will shine through even when there are no logical or even illogical reasons to suggest it is the right frame of mind to switch the evening news on to find out what steps our courageous world leaders had decided on to save the planet or to be a little more accurate, all the living creatures on the planet. (Those bigger than single cell organisms at least).

So this group of people, with all the facts at their finger tips, all the graphs showing this and that, all the projections of what would happen if they did nothing, all got round a very big table and decide that nothing needed to be done. I can not think the side meeting between India, China, S. Africa and that other country will have any effect other than to really, really upset at least 50% of the other countries on the planet. Big Brother putting his foot down again. So Global Warming isn’t happening. Terrible things aren’t going to happen to the weather. People will not starve or die of thirst in their hundreds of millions or even billions later on in this or any other century. A large proportion of plant and animal species aren’t heading for extinction.

Well thank God for that.

BA & Unite

In a recent post I suggested that it was most unlikely that the ballot held by the union Unite to strike was anything but completely legal and above board. Sometimes even I get things wrong.

Now I am not suggesting that the union deliberately used tactics to alter the outcome of the voting but it would have been better if they had taken a lot more care to ensure they would not find themselves in the position they are in now. Like telling their members in advance that they would be on strike for 12 days over Christmas and not spring it on them after they had voted to strike. The public reaction to this as well as cabin crews writing on the net and the failure of Flyglobespan should make the cabin crew think more carefully before putting their cross in the square marked " Do you want to be hated by a million people?" in the next ballot, if the union are stupid enough to have one that is.
Mind you the whole thing could be solved quite simply, sell BA to Virgin and have done with it.

Bus on it's Side

Not often you see a double decker on it's side. The driver of the red truck was arrested after this incident in London. The bus, a C3, was hit as it drove along a main road. Three people were injured in the accident including the driver of the bus. None of the injuries are life threatening thank goodness. A video, (available here) taken a hour or so later showed the front of the bus and someone had changed the destination blind to read "Sorry, not in service." A nice touch. The driver has since been released from hospital but the two passengers injured are still detained in a serious but stable condition.

Public Transport Over Christmas (Not just in Torquay)

As you can see there are, as usual, no buses on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day and reduced services on other days. The curtailment of services on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve at 20:00 also continues. Plan your journeys with care.

If you were planing to fly somewhere this Christmas by British Airways, the peoples favorite airlines then I regret you wont be able to unless something dramatic turns up. The vote by 9 to 1 to strike leads one to a choice of 3 conclusions. One, the vote was rigged. Two, given BA's desperate financial situation, the cabin crews are all, well 90% of them, off their heads. Three BA really are treating their cabin crews very badly indeed. Choice one is the least likely in this day and age. It is hard to rig votes now a days given the scrutiny

that such a ballot would be under. Two I also find unlikely, there are just too many of them for all of them to have switched their brains off all at the same time. So maybe they have a justifiable grievance against management in which case lets hope, possibly forlornly, that this strike doesn't actually happen other wise in the short term there will be a million very upset people about this Christmas. In the long term; will BA stay the peoples favorite airline and more worryingly, will BA stay an airline.

At least there is one slight consolation if the strike does go ahead. It will put back the impact of global warming a few days with all these planes sat on the ground over Christmas.

What Are You Doing To Save The Planet?

I was watching the news the other day and the Copenhagen conference came up. Seems to me we need drastic measures to be taken soon if the world isn't going to be come a pretty grim place in a generation or two. Now if it the weather patterns change to the point being suggested and people begin to starve or their homes get washed away some time after 2050 then it really doesn’t concern me as I probably wont be around then. But future generations are going to say some nasty things about me, like why didn’t I do something to stop emitting all the greenhouses gases entering the atmosphere and making life more or less intolerable for those who manage to be born any time after 2050. I mean it isn’t as if I didn’t know it was going to happen, back in 1347 no one knew the Black Death was about to enter Europe and kill half the people living there and even if the did there was not much they could have done about other than pray. But I can do something about the present problem. And I do, I switch the TV off at night, no stand by for me. I only fill the kettle up with just enough water, saves on the fuel bill as well as saves the planet. I take a bag with me to the shops, no free plastic bag for me. I don’t drive a car 2 miles to the shops and back when I could walk, I haven’t got a car that‘s why.

Thinking about cars I remember something suggested in the 70s when we all believed petrol was about to run out. Each car would have a number, between 1 and 5, displayed prominently front and back. Monday would be Day 1 Tuesday Day 2 through to Friday Day 5 Saturday would be Day 1 Sunday Day 2 Monday Day 3 and so on for ever. If you had 3 on your car you couldn’t drive it on any Day 3. If you did it would go in the crusher. Your driving licence would be stamped with the same Day number as your car and if you bought an other car it would have the same Day number. This would reduce the greenhouse gases produced by the car by 20%. That sounds pretty good to me. But there is a snag. There always is. Can you see Gordon Brown or Berack Obarma or that nice Mr Rudd or any other world leader going on their National TV and explaining this to the car driving public? And wining the next election.

Now there was an other TV program later on that evening dealing with the same subject which mention that car emissions only amounted to 15% of all greenhouse gases. So the drastic measure I have outlined here, that of giving up the use of your car for 2 days a week would only reduce the total carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere by 5%. It would do nothing to actually reduce the CO2 that is already there. Now I know there is new technology on it’s way that will produce cars that don’t have internal combustion engines. How long will it take until every internal combustion engine in the world is switch off for ever? Ten years?

But that isn’t the point, if a draconian measure like the one I suggested with the disruption to the western world’s life style would have such a negligible effect then what sort of effect would any conceivable effective measure have on us? And would we be prepared to put up with it to save a world that many of us wont be around to see?

There has been talk of emails that have been passed between scientists that global warming sceptics are saying prove that it's all big a lie. I hope it is but some how I doubt it.

Gas Leak In Union St

This was the Union St, the main shopping street in Torquay this morning. A small gas leak in one of the shops and the road was closed. Amongst the fire engines and gas board truck sits the Land Train. A case of being in the right place at the right time.
Here crowds of people wait for the all clear so they can get about their shopping.

And a number 12 caught up in the traffic mayhem that always accompanies such incidents. The whole thing started at 10:30 and the road was opened just after 12.