AndyRobertsPhotos
Cow and calf
Blue House Farm Nature Reserve North Fambridge
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I posted to flickr.com
Cow and calf
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/6227563705/
October 9 2011, 4:54pm | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
Cow and calf
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/6227562745/
AndyRobertsPhotos
Cow and calf
Blue House Farm Nature Reserve North Fambridge
October 9 2011, 4:53pm | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
Calf
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/6228076798/
AndyRobertsPhotos
Calf
Blue House Farm Nature Reserve North Fambridge
October 9 2011, 4:52pm | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
Last Day of Summer 2011
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/6227551461/
AndyRobertsPhotos
Last Day of Summer 2011
Blue House Farm Nature Reserve North Fambridge
October 9 2011, 4:50pm | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
Last Day of Summer 2011
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/6228066828/
AndyRobertsPhotos
Last Day of Summer 2011
Blue House Farm Nature Reserve North Fambridge
October 9 2011, 4:49pm | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
Blue House Farm Nature Reserve North Fambridge
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/6228062570/
AndyRobertsPhotos
Blue House Farm Nature Reserve North Fambridge
Blue House Farm Nature Reserve North Fambridge
October 9 2011, 4:48pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
Radioactive water from Japan’s Fukushima plant is leaking into sea
Tepco officials say that a 20cm crack found in a containment pit under reactor two may be source of radioactive water from Japan‘s Fukushima plant leaking into the sea.
This article titled “Radioactive water from Japan’s Fukushima plant is leaking into sea” was written by David Batty and agencies, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 2nd April 2011 12.14 UTC Radioactive water from Japan’s quake-striken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is leaking into the sea, its operator said. The 20cm (8in) crack in a containment pit under reactor two may be the source of recent radiation in coastal waters, Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) officials said. Hidehiko Nishiyama, deputy director-general of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, said Tepco was planning to pour concrete into the pit to seal the crack, which may have been leaking since the magnitude 9.0 earthquake three weeks ago. “This could be one of the sources of seawater contamination,” Nishiyama said. “There could be other similar cracks in the area, and we must find them as quickly as possible.” Readings released on Saturday showed radiation in seawater had spread to 25 miles (40km) south of the plant. The concentration of iodine there was twice the legal limit, but officials stressed it was still well below levels that are dangerous to human health. The announcement of the radioactive leak came as Japan’s prime minister Naoto Kan surveyed the damage in the town of Rikuzentakata, which was gutted by the devastating tsunami that hit the country following the quake. The prime minister bowed his head for a minute of silence in front of the town hall, one of the few buildings still standing, which has all its windows blown out and debris piled up in front of it. “The government fully supports you until the end,” Kan later told 250 people at an elementary school that is serving as an evacuation centre. He met with the town’s mayor, Megumi Shimanuki, whose 38-year-old wife was swept away in the wave and is still missing. Shimanuki, whose family is living in a similar shelter 100 miles (160km) away in Natori, said Kan did not spend enough time with people on the ground. “The government has been too focused on the Fukushima power plant rather than the tsunami victims,” said Shimanuki, 35. “Both deserve attention.” One member of the power plant crew described difficult conditions inside the complex in an interview in the Mainichi newspaper. He said the plant has run out of the nylon protective booties that workers put over their shoes. “We only put something like plastic garbage bags you can buy at a convenience store and sealed them with masking tape,” said the anonymous worker. He added that the grounds of the power plant were littered with dead fish churned up by the tsunami. Japanese media reported that nuclear workers had been offered up to 400,000 yen (£3,000) a day to work inside the crippled reactors. Before the crisis some contract workers were reportedly being paid as little as 10,000 to 20,000 yen (£75 to £150) a day. Three weeks after the tsunami more than 165,000 people are living in shelters, while 260,000 households still do not have running water and 170,000 do not have electricity.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogRadioactive water from Japan’s Fukushima plant is leaking into sea
Related posts:Fukushima nuclear plant blast puts Japan on high alert Japan faces new setback in fight to avert disaster at Fukushima plant Visualising radiation leaks from the Fukushima nuclear power plant
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April 2 2011, 2:40pm | Comments »
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I posted to distributedresearch.net
April will indeed be cruel, but we don’t have to take it
Forthcoming cuts and pain which nobody is really prepared for. Will Wisconsin and Egypt come to Britain?
This article titled “April will indeed be cruel, but we don’t have to take it” was written by Polly Toynbee, for The Guardian on Saturday 26th February 2011 07.30 UTC Forget snow – every part of the Office for National Statistics report on the economy was bad news: household spending, business investment, services, finance, construction, even previously hopeful manufacturing figures – all revised downwards – plus declining house prices and anything else you can measure. The one shard of hope is that the lunatic tendency on the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee (Andrew Sentance) may be silenced on raising interest rates. Rising inflation is almost entirely beyond British control – oil and commodity prices. While real pay falls for all but bankers and FTSE boardrooms (up 55%), there is no home-grown wage inflation. Imagine the mayhem in raising the cost of mortgages and business borrowing just as hundreds of thousands more lose their jobs. If things are this bad before the serious austerity has begun, what lies ahead? April will indeed be cruel – and frightening as the great £81bn axe falls. This is a real-life economic experiment, one last chance to prove that Herbert Hoover was right after all and Franklin Roosevelt and Keynes wrong. Or that Churchill was right about the gold standard – except these days its equivalent is the deficit. The Treasury’s breezy “don’t care” riposte to the new figures was alarming in tone and content: “It doesn’t change the need to deal with the nation’s credit card – the country is borrowing more this year than is spent on the entire NHS.” That is cheap propaganda, not economics – a sign that Treasury civil servants have become a missionary cadre. We can only hope this bravado disguises anxiety – and a readiness to U-turn if nothing improves. But the “no plan B” chancellor shows no sign of it. Only a month to go. The shock in April will be profound. Ben Page of Ipsos Mori says: “People have no idea how their pay packets will change. Three-quarters expect to be affected, but they don’t know how.” Cameron-supporting papers sound no alarm, and television doesn’t begin to convey the coming severity. People are still foxed by a government whose every word belies its actions – Cameron still pretends the NHS, education and Sure Start are protected, and only public sector fat is cut; private companies will pick up the unemployed, banks are being seriously taxed and a “big society” will burst forth. Add “not” to everything he says and then you see how the cuts fall everywhere while charitable giving drops: 30,000 give-as-you-earn payroll donors just dropped out. A survey this week shows most large companies and 70% of small ones won’t employ public sector staff, no doubt prejudiced by the daily Eric Pickles and Francis Maude anti-public servants hate campaign. It hasn’t begun yet. Library and Sure Start doors begin closing in April. Rising NHS waiting times are hidden by not letting GPs refer. From 31 March, 300,000 public-sector staff and more from the voluntary sector start to be fired. And most families earning over £18,000 will find pay packet cuts in tax credits and national insurance, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Child benefit is frozen for three years – a cut of 10% or more at current inflation. Public employees’ pay is frozen for two years. In April the lowered threshold for the 40% tax band brings another 750,000 earners into the higher rate; anyone on £50,000 loses £500 a year, just as wages fall further behind an inflation they see emblazoned outside every petrol station inflation. By 2015 25% of earners will be on the 40% rate, the IFS reckons, up from 11% (though no doubt pre-election tax giveaways will ease that). How explosive will all this be? Ed Balls recalls the disastrous abolition of the 10p tax rate: it passed parliament with hardly a murmur – but when implemented a year later it went nuclear. Mori’s Ben Page says this is unknown territory: the cuts are so deep that public rage may become burned into the national psyche, even if the economy picks up and even with pre-election tax bribes. “They are now 10 points behind. Thatcher, hated for her cuts, was only saved by war and a disastrous opposition.” However, Cameron is still popular and the Tory vote has not dropped: so far Labour scores only at Lib Dem expense. But Page points out that, for the first time, support for cutting the deficit has dipped below 50%: he expects it to fall fast after April. What would you do? That’s the challenge for all critics of the cuts. The most important answer is: not this. If this is the cure then the medicine is more lethal than the disease, economically and socially. Take soaring 16 to 24-year-old unemployment, nearly a million not learning or working. That’s 15% before either the future jobs fund or education maintenance allowance has been axed. Here is the great social deficit, a jobless depressed generation, phenomenally expensive and almost impossible to rescue later. Take away the wiped-out youth services offering help. Take away the Sure Starts, the breakfast and homework clubs, leaving children unhelped until too late. That is the permanent human deficit, more damaging and intractable than fiscal debt, a cost uncounted by blinkered economists. What would you do? Not sit by while Bob Diamond takes a £9m bonus and corporations avoid billions in tax. Make sure everyone really is in it together: sharing pain fairly matters even more than sharing good times well. Be open about who earns what: these cuts fall hardest on many of the poorest. Ed Balls rightly posits extending the 50p tax band down to £100,000, to people like me who will pay relatively little extra. Cuts, yes some, but fewer slower, letting growth over time take the strain. Invest in the infrastructure the CBI calls for and reassure markets by having business onside. Build superfast broadband, railways, green energy, housing, whatever kickstarts recovery. Above all, give back the abolished job guarantee to every young person. What can you do? Last Saturday, I was at UK Uncut’s sit-in at Barclays: many more should join this Saturday’s RBS events – see http://www.ukuncut.org.uk. Enjoy their witty symbolism: taxpayers rescued the banks with a trillion pounds, so until banks are fairly taxed turn them into the libraries, classrooms and swimming pools they caused to be shut down. The Robin Hood campaign shows how taxing 0.05% on every transaction yields £20bn, enough to stop all NHS cuts. A ComRes poll finds 75% of Tory voters want bank bonuses clawed back. The government should expect a turn in the tide after April brings the worst of what the banks have done to everyone.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.
Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogApril will indeed be cruel, but we don’t have to take it
Related posts:UK Uncut protesters target Barclays over tax avoidance Those Wisconsin unions Budget Deficit
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February 26 2011, 2:18am | Comments »
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I posted to flickr.com
Tree House
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aroberts/4814405297/
AndyRob
Tree House
July 21 2010, 4:48am | Comments »
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I posted to youtube.com
The House is an allegory for The Mind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91vstzt1Cyc&feature=youtube_gdata
February 11 2010, 5:26am | Comments »
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I posted to hubpages.com
A Review of the House Season Premiere
http://hubpages.com/hub/A-Review-of-the-House-Season-Premiere
I knew that House would have to mellow out a little. I have remained a steadfast House fanatic since the beginning, but I know that House's antics have lost him a fan, or two. I know my mom has gotten a...
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September 22 2009, 11:13pm | Comments »
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