Life, the Universe and Everything

Wainlodes Combe Hill canal Near Haw Bridge Deerhurst From  Deerhurst churchyard  Bishops Norton

Here's a little test. Go to Google and start to type in a politician's name followed by "is a" and see what you get. Here's what I found:

It's commonly alleged that Iain Duncan Smith is evil - you can even find a website pointing out that he looks like Fritz Sauckel who organised slave labour for Nazi Germany but I've worked out why he does what he does. No, it's not particularly that he's a member of the Conservative Party or that he's stupid or out of touch. The truth is that he has an "elephant in the room". As I've pointed out before , there are around 2.5 million unemployed but only 0.5 million vacancies. He must know that so why does he continue to "support" the unemployed with a plethora of schemes? I got the answer listening to Graham Hoyle who used to be Chief Executive of the  Association of Employment & Learning Providers ( Video ). He picks up on the economy and the jobs market mismatch and how not everyone can have a job. Very crudely, there could to a be a policy that says who gets the 0.5 million  jobs and leaves 2.0 million on the dole. To ...

Download a PDF here A parody of the 1979 "Britain isn't working" poster by the Conservative Party. This one is by Church Action on Poverty

(Caution, mostly geeky) I first suspected I needed a Satnav in 2006. I got lost in outer Northampton and then lost again in Brackley. The Brackley incident was particularly annoying because my route planning was to follow signs to Brackley and then pick up signs to Oxford but there weren't any. Lots back to Northampton, the ring road and the Town Centre (which I visited several times) but nothing for Oxford. I just checked on Google Streetview and found some relevant signs but perhaps they weren't there in 2006, or it was dark and I was tired. My next encounter with GPS technology was when a camera I bought came with a built in GPS. This was quite irritating because sorted itself out so slowly it tended to stamp the pictures with the position the camera had been in for the previous picture. Even when it didn’t do that, it was often wrong by 25m horizontally which annoyed me. So finally I bought a Garmin Nuvi52LM. I first tried it out on foot because I'd had a ...

These anti-austerity protests originated in Sicily a year or two ago and have now spread There are conflicting reports of why the Police removed their helmets. Some sources including this video say it was out of solidarity with the protests. Others report that taking helmets off is standard practice when danger levels have lowered.

The idea for this blog post came to me after a friend mentioned teleporting on Facebook. I suggested she teleport over to my local pub some 100 miles away from her for excellent cider and music. If she'd had the technology she'd have been able to do that and still be home in time to make cocoa for her fiancé. It got me thinking about how cheap and effective teleportation might affect our lives. It certainly would make keeping up with far-flung friends easier. Of course, this is nothing new  - other bits of technology have done that - the car, telephone and Internet  spring to mind. These were not always instant solutions - cars still cost money to drive and a few decades ago, a long distance phone call was ten times the cost of a local call even within the UK. Still, if teleporting was possible, you'd be able to enjoy a real hug. Another factor, familiar to traffic engineers is that if travel becomes easier, congestion rises to meet it. That would be unlikely to affect...