More than a whimsy of wet stuff at the Castle this morn;
dark and dingy too, in fact if it continues I may need a dinghy...
Finally finished the garden-spread the 8 bags of free
compost around the beds and managed to go arse over tip while playing chase
with his Maj on the moss-twisted an ankle and did even more damage to the right
elbow.
The moral is-old farts shouldn’t forget that although the
mind operates at the age of 12 years the body doesn’t...
And has had yet another pop at smokers, this time he reckons
that putting nicotine stuff behind doors will: a; help more addicts give up, b;
ensure “we no longer see smoking as a part of life”, and c; stop encouraging young
people to start smoking, and has put totally imaginary adverts on the box
pretending that we will kill all our babies.
Couple of points:
Smokers contribute Billions more in taxes than they take out
from the NHS, they die younger and therefore reduce the pension bill and if
everyone gave up tomorrow the money lost will have to be recouped from those
miserable sods of non smokers and the even more miserable ex-smokers.
Serves em right...
Russia has as many spies operating in Britain today as it
did during the Cold War, security services believe.
Up to half the staff at the Russian embassy in London could
be involved in intelligence gathering, a senior source told The Daily
Telegraph.
Around 40 Moscow spies are believed to be operating in this
country at any one time. Some are involved in traditional state espionage,
while others monitor London-based oligarchs or engage in industrial spying for
the commercial benefit of Russian firms.
There are fears Russia will ramp up its efforts over the
coming months while the UK security services focus on the Olympic Games and the
Queen’s Jubilee celebrations.
Har, bleedin har-they are expecting to gather “intelligence”
about the Piss Poor Policies Millionaires Club Coalition; I hope they copy all
they have done-that will fuck up Russia even more...
Thanks to the Piss Poor Policies perpetrated by the self
elected Millionaires Club Coalition spending on welfare payments, schools and
hospitals will have to be slashed by billions of pounds more than the
Government has planned for as a result of economic downturn, Treasury estimates
revealed yesterday.
The cuts – more than £10bn a year by 2016 – are likely to
result in further swingeing reductions to benefits and public sector services
well beyond the next election.
A cut of £10bn in the welfare budget roughly equates to an
average of £500 a year for each of the 18 million people on benefits – a
£10-a-week prospective drop in income for the poorest families. The current
spending round has already has seen £18bn in welfare cuts.
On top of this, further departmental spending cuts are
expected to be necessary – at a rate similar to the current reductions.
Alien reptile in disguise George (Bullingdon club bore) Osborne
said “at current rates the welfare budget was set to rise and consume a third
of all public sector spending”.
"If nothing is done to curb welfare bills further, then
the full weight of the spending restraint will fall on departmental
budgets," he said.
He added that even if the rate of cuts imposed on
departmental budgets were to continue beyond the current spending review period
they would need to find further savings in welfare payments of £10 bn by 2016.
"The next spending review will have to confront
this," the Chancellor said.
Still, it won’t be their problem by 2016...
Parts of Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital could
be turned into hotel and housing under plans announced by its NHS owners.
West London Mental Health NHS Trust hopes to interest a
developer to convert the old Grade II Victorian buildings at Crowthorne, Berks.
Officials said the plans would help fund a £254million
redevelopment of the remaining facilities at the hospital.
The homes and hotel rooms would be just a few hundred metres
away from the new psychiatric unit but would be shielded by trees outside the
high security perimeter.
Last month Bracknell Forest Council approved plans for an
upgrade of the hospital, which will have 10 new wards, providing accommodation
for 210 patients.
Construction of the new building in the high security
facility is expected to start in the autumn of 2013. It is expected to open to
patients in late 2016.
40-year-old Ukrainian artist Dmitriy Khristenkho
creates intricate miniature models of motorcycles using component originating
from watches. Khristenkho carefully breaks up the watches, shaping each part
using a grindstone to ensure they are all the perfect size and shape before
spending hours painstakingly gluing each component by hand. Each motorcycle can
take anything up to 50 hours to complete. The complex creations sell for more
than £300 each, with demand for personalized bespoke models rising.
That works out about six squids an hour...cheap at half the
price.
And finally:
Scientists at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge have
used light to help push electrons through a classically impenetrable barrier.
While quantum tunnelling is at the heart of the peculiar wave nature of
particles, this is the first time that it has been controlled by light. Their
research is published today, 05 April, in the journal Science.
Particles cannot normally pass through walls, but if they
are small enough quantum mechanics says that it can happen. This occurs during
the production of radioactive decay and in many chemical reactions as well as
in scanning tunnelling microscopes.
According to team leader, Professor Jeremy Baumberg, “the
trick to telling electrons how to pass through walls, is to now marry them with
light”.
This marriage is fated because the light is in the form of
cavity photons, packets of light trapped to bounce back and forth between
mirrors which sandwich the electrons oscillating through their wall.
Research scientist Peter Cristofolini added: “The offspring
of this marriage are actually new indivisible particles, made of both light and
matter, which disappear through the slab-like walls of semiconductor at will.”
One of the features of these new particles, which the team
christened ‘dipolaritons’, is that they are stretched out in a specific
direction rather like a bar magnet. And just like magnets, they feel extremely
strong forces between each other.
Such strongly interacting particles are behind a whole slew
of recent interest from semiconductor physicists who are trying to make
condensates, the equivalent of superconductors and superfluids that travel
without loss, in semiconductors.
Being in two places at once, these new electronic particles
hold the promise of transferring ideas from atomic physics into practical
devices, using quantum mechanics visible to the eye.
Yeah right...I think...beam me up Scotty...
That’s it: I’m orf to get some smart
clothing
And today’s thought:
Natural physics
Angus
