Worry Nought

Some times you spend a lot of time dreading when something will happen, you know it is just a matter of time, like seeing old school bullies or ex girlfriends after several decades. You imagine all sorts of things  occurring, the scenes, the threats of violence, the anger, the pain.
 

Then it happens and they don't recognise you and walk straight by.

Blunt Daggers

Nadine Dorries finally got around to resigning. It is a magnificently irrational rant worthy of Trump. The most amazing thing about it is that she can clearly see Sunak for what he is a spiv and chancer deaf to reality but totally fails to see that in Johnson.

In a functioning political system, someone capable of writing this would not been in the House of Commons. If the more preposterous and paranoid conspiracy theory bits are removed and it was from a serious person it would, again in a functioning system, cause serious problems for the PM.

Thatcher was famously brought down by a resignation speech from the mild-mannered Geoffrey Howe. This letter is the roar of a paper tiger, an insubstantial rant by an insignificant person, it signifies nothing and will have no effect other than perhaps be a footnote about petulant impotence.

 

Dear Prime Minister,

It has been the greatest honour and privilege of my life to have served the good people of Mid Bedfordshire as their MP for eighteen years and I count myself blessed to have worked in Westminster for almost a quarter of a century. Despite what some in the media and you yourself have implied, my team of caseworkers and I have continued to work for my constituents faithfully and diligently to this day.

When I arrived in Mid Bedfordshire in 2005, I inherited a Conservative majority of 8,000. Over five elections this has increased to almost 25,000, making it one of the safest seats in the country. A legacy I am proud of.

During my time as a Member of Parliament, I have served as a back bencher, a bill Committee Chair, a Parliamentary Under Secretary of State before becoming Minister of State in the Department of Health and Social Care during the Covid crisis, after which I was appointed as Secretary of State at the department of Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport. The offer to continue in my Cabinet role was extended to me by your predecessor, Liz Truss, and I am grateful for your personal phone call on the morning you appointed your cabinet in October, even if I declined to take the call.

As politicians, one of the greatest things we can do is to empower people to have opportunities to achieve their aspirations and to help them to change their lives for the better. In DHSC I championed meaningful improvements to maternity and neonatal safety. I launched the women's health strategy and pushed forward a national evidence-based trial for Group B Strep testing in pregnant women with the aim to reduce infant deaths. When I resigned as Secretary of State for DCMS I was able to thank the professional, dedicated, and hard-working civil servants for making our department the highest performing in Whitehall. We worked tirelessly to strengthen the Online Safety Bill to protect young people, froze the BBC licence fee, included the sale of Channel 4 into the Media Bill to protect its long-term future and led the world in imposing cultural sanctions when Putin invaded Ukraine.

I worked with and encouraged the tech sector, to search out untaught talents such as creative and critical thinking in deprived communities offering those who faced a life on low unskilled pay or benefits, access to higher paid employment and social mobility. What many of the CEOs I spoke to in the tech sector and business leaders really wanted was meaningful regulatory reform from you as chancellor to enable companies not only to establish in the UK, but to list on the London Stock Exchange rather than New York. You flashed your gleaming smile in your Prada shoes and Savile Row suit from behind a camera, but you just weren't listening. All they received in return were platitudes and a speech illustrating how wonderful life was in California. London is now losing its appeal as more UK-based companies seek better listing opportunities in the U.S. That, Prime Minister, is entirely down to you.

Videos

Long before my resignation announcement, in July 2022, I had advised the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, of my intention to step down. Senior figures in the party, close allies of yours, have continued to this day to implore me to wait until the next general election rather than inflict yet another damaging by-election on the party at a time when we are consistently twenty points behind in the polls.

Having witnessed first-hand, as Boris Johnson and then Liz Truss were taken down, I decided that the British people had a right to know what was happening in their name. Why is it that we have had five Conservative Prime Ministers since 2010, with not one of the previous four having left office as the result of losing a general election? That is a democratic deficit which the mother of parliaments should be deeply ashamed of and which, as you and I know, is the result of the machinations of a small group of individuals embedded deep at the centre of the party and Downing St.

To start with, my investigations focused on the political assassination of Boris Johnson, but as I spoke to more and more people - and I have spoken to a lot of people, from ex-Prime Ministers, Cabinet Ministers both ex and current through all levels of government and Westminster and even journalists - a dark story emerged which grew ever more disturbing with each person I spoke to.

It became clear to me as I worked that remaining as a back bencher was incompatible with publishing a book which exposes how the democratic process at the heart of our party has been corrupted. As I uncovered this alarming situation I knew, such were the forces ranged against me, that I was grateful to retain my parliamentary privilege until today. And, as you also know Prime Minister, those forces are today the most powerful figures in the land. The onslaught against me even included the bizarre spectacle of the Cabinet Secretary claiming (without evidence) to a select committee that he had reported me to the Whips and Speakers office (not only have neither office been able to confirm this was true, but they have no power to act, as he well knows). It is surely as clear a breach of Civil Service impartiality as you could wish to see.

But worst of all has been the spectacle of a Prime Minister demeaning his office by opening the gates to whip up a public frenzy against one of his own MPs. You failed to mention in your public comments that there could be no writ moved for a by-election over summer. And that the earliest any by-election could take place is at the end of September. The clearly orchestrated and almost daily personal attacks demonstrates the pitifully low level your Government has descended to.

It is a modus operandi established by your allies which has targeted Boris Johnson, transferred to Liz Truss and now moved on to me. But I have not been a Prime Minister. I do not have security or protection. Attacks from people, led by you, declared open season on myself and the past weeks have resulted in the police having to visit my home and contact me on a number of occasions due to threats to my person.

Since you took office a year ago, the country is run by a zombie Parliament where nothing meaningful has happened. What exactly has been done or have you achieved? You hold the office of Prime Minister unelected, without a single vote, not even from your own MPs. You have no mandate from the people and the Government is adrift. You have squandered the goodwill of the nation, for what?

And what a difference it is now since 2019, when Boris Johnson won an eighty-seat majority and a greater percentage of the vote share than Tony Blair in the Labour landslide victory of '97. We were a mere five points behind on the day he was removed from office. Since you became Prime Minister, his manifesto has been completely abandoned. We cannot simply disregard the democratic choice of the electorate, remove both the Prime Minister and the manifesto commitments they voted for and then expect to return to the people in the hope that they will continue to unquestioningly support us. They have agency, they will use it.

Levelling up has been discarded and with it, those deprived communities it sought to serve. Social care, ready to be launched, abandoned along with the hope of all of those who care for the elderly and the vulnerable. The Online Safety Bill has been watered down. BBC funding reform, the clock run down. The Mental Health Act, timed out. Defence spending, reduced. Our commitment to net zero, animal welfare and the green issues so relevant to the planet and voters under 40, squandered. As Lord Goldsmith wrote in his own resignation letter, because you simply do not care about the environment or the natural world. What exactly is it you do stand for?

You have increased Corporation tax to 25 per cent, taking us to the level of the highest tax take since World War two at 75 per cent of GDP, and you have completely failed in reducing illegal immigration or delivering on the benefits of Brexit. The bonfire of EU legislation, swerved. The Windsor framework agreement, a dead duck, brought into existence by shady promises of future preferment with grubby rewards and potential gongs to MPs. Stormont is still not sitting.

Disregarding your own chancellor, last week you took credit for reducing inflation, citing your 'plan'. There has been no budget, no new fiscal measures, no debate, there is no plan. Such statements take the British public for fools. The decline in the price of commodities such as oil and gas, the eased pressure on the supply of wheat and the increase in interest rates by the Bank of England are what has taken the heat out of the economy and reduced inflation. For you to personally claim credit for this was disingenuous at the very least.

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It is a fact that there is no affection for Keir Starmer out on the doorstep. He does not have the winning X factor qualities of a Thatcher, a Blair, or a Boris Johnson, and sadly, Prime Minister, neither do you. Your actions have left some 200 or more of my MP colleagues to face an electoral tsunami and the loss of their livelihoods, because in your impatience to become Prime Minister you put your personal ambition above the stability of the country and our economy. Bewildered, we look in vain for the grand political vision for the people of this great country to hold on to, that would make all this disruption and subsequent inertia worthwhile, and we find absolutely nothing.

I shall take some comfort from explaining to people exactly how you and your allies achieved this undemocratic upheaval in my book. I am a proud working-class Conservative which is why the Levelling Up agenda was so important to me. I know personally how effective a strong and helping hand can be to lift someone out of poverty and how vision, hope and opportunity can change lives. You have abandoned the fundamental principles of Conservatism. History will not judge you kindly.

I shall today inform the Chancellor of my intention to take the Chiltern Hundreds, enabling the writ to be moved on September the 4th for the by-election you are so desperately seeking to take place.

Yours sincerely,

Nadine Dorries

 

Own Branded Cola Ranked

1. Tesco Xero Cola (50p) has an extra taste I couldn't put my finger on. Reminiscent of Cola flavour sweets. Not at all unpleasant
 

2. Sainsbury's Cola Zero(47p). Not at all unpleasant.
 

3. Aldi Vive zX Cola(47p)
 

4. ASDA Diet Cola (60p)
 

5. Morrisons (79p) for the Low Sugar variety are the most expensive and definitely not the best, but far closer to the best than it is to the worst.
 

6. Lidl Freeway Cola.(47p) Tasteless. If you drink it with your eyes closed,  it tastes like fizzy water. It is only disappointing if you drink it with your eyes open because the mind expects flavour but this is lacking.

 

Liverpool Echo Control Freaks

The Echo seem to be trying to secure its position as a reliable wall of silence. Not content with taking money from Google to help it destroy independent local magazines, it has apparently now started attacking a local college and threatening to  sever links with it if it continues to have one of its critics as a student.

As part of her journalism course at Liverpool Community College, Helen Wilke was sent to do 2 days of observation at the Echo. The first day passed off uneventfully, however, the 2nd had hardly gotten started when she was called into the office of the editor Maria Breslin and apparently told that she wasn't welcome.

Not content with this when the College tried to find a way around Helen not completing this essential part of the course. They were allegedly told that the Echo would end its association with the college if Helen remained on the course.

Anyway, read the full details in The Post.

Several people claim to have approached various people & parts of  Reach PLC, the Echo's owners and none of the claim to have received a reply. If any company other than the Echo tried this in Liverpool the Echo would be all over the story but not in this case. Neither has the rest of the media said anything, except for the independents.

It looks like the Echo subscription to the Old Boys club is paying off well and the walls of silence in Liverpool are holding up well.

What say you Sally?

AI is good but not at what you think.

One of the problems with AI is that you can never really be sure that it has learnt what you wanted to teach it, the same can be true of animals.
One thing that people have tried to train Dogs and AI to do is to identify tanks so that they can be attacked and destroyed. In 2 cases I'm aware of it has gone wrong and in nearly the same way.
In WW2 the Russians trained dogs to find tanks and hide under them, little did the dogs know that they were carrying bombs with timers on them. The dogs were well trained and back at base they worked flawlessly, unfortunately, the dogs hadn't learnt to ID tanks in general but Russian tanks specifically because that's what they had been trained on.
When they were let loose on the battlefield the dogs sought out the nearest Russian tank, not the nearby German tanks and hide under them. It was already going to be a bad day for the dogs but it was now also a bad day for the Russian tank crew.
In the 70s and 80s, the US trained computer AIs to identify tanks hidden in satellite & aerial pictures, and the AI's got very good at it. However, as the easiest way to get pictures is to take photographs of your own side's tanks so they only really learnt to ID hidden US tanks.
While training a soldier to recognise tanks, in general, could be done, with these pictures, training AI could not because it is very difficult for them to go from a specific case to a general one.
While a human can cope with the idea of a tank as a concept, to a dog or AI it is just a collection of angles and shapes, and each design philosophy tends to have its subset of angles and shapes.
When it comes to people's opinions of architecture similar things happen, each person picks out what they use to identify good and bad architecture. To an aesthete or architect, the lines of a Georgian building are unmistakable, the regular patterns, the window size and the minimal decoration. Producing a pastiche of such thing should be and is easy, Bath is covered in them and the vast majority are disliked.
The reason they are disliked seems to be nothing to do with the architecture because that is virtually the same, the haters must be picking up on something else. Frequently these modern buildings are described as soulless, which is a description levelled at all modern buildings.
However, it doesn't seem that this soul resides in the architecture it resides somewhere else. The algorithm that is being used by some to identify bad architecture is not using the architecture in its deliberation but something else.
Recently I had a nose around Bath and talked to a couple of locals some of the schemes slagged off looked like very good pastiches but I think there were a couple of clues. In modern buildings, the quality of the stone is very good, it might not be genuine stone as it might have been processed to make it more uniform, the older buildings virtually all have flaws in the stone.
A lot of these flaws look like they would have been visible when it was first used whilst others are a product of weathering, exacerbating previously unseen flaws. In the image below the lower parts of the building seems to be far older than the upper parts. Whether this is true I can't say, the building looks to have had a significant rebuild and the contrast is clear.
I don't believe a lot of the people who object to new buildings of any style modernist or not are objecting to the architecture instead they are subconsciously picking up the cues about age and basing their critique on that. This means that no building will ever live up to their standards because they simply aren't compatible with new buildings.
We see a greater acceptance now of brutalist architecture, sure there are still lots of people who slag it off and call any building they don't like Brutalist, but more and more buildings are being seen for themselves rather than their date of birth. I think this is down to weathering and not to a change in taste.
This begs the question is it worth building anything to blend in and I think the answer is very rarely. These Georgian buildings were radical in their day and if we want to keep to their spirit modern building should also be radical and with equal ambition for longevity.

The building below is new, a fine pastiche and hated.

How to make a Quad spool gas turbine

The Garrett ATF3 is one of the most unusual triple spool jet engines there is. In most triple spool engines all 3 shafts are concentric. That is, the high-pressure shaft is inside a hollow intermediate shaft which is inside the low-pressure shaft. In the ATF3 the intermediate is still inside the low, but the high-pressure shaft, while colinear with the other 2 it is behind them.

Below is a fairly typical twin-spool design. Notice how the inner spool is rotating faster than the out. It is this different rotation speed that leads to the increase in efficiency, but it does add weight and complexity which puts up the cost of production and maintenance. A 4 spool of this design would be unlikely to give a sufficient increase in efficiency to offset the costs.

From K. Aainsqatsi

As you can see from the ATF3 below, the front section outlined in green is very similar to the twin-spool engine but where the combustion chamber is the hot gas is piped off to the rear of the engine, turned through 90 degrees and through a centrifugal compressor. Only then does it hit the combustion chambers. From there it flows through the high-pressure turbine before flowing backwards through various turbines, turning 180 degrees and exiting, mixed with the bypass stream.

It is slightly unorthodox here as the turbine driving the low-pressure compressor is actually at a higher pressure than the one driving the high pressure.

The back-to-forward flow helps keep the engine length down and minimises losses from the hot gas. The centrifugal compressor and reverse flow combustion also help keep the length down but make the entire thing rather wide.

The original Whittle engine had a very similar arrangement for very similar reasons, and on small engines, centrifugal compressors are not unheard of.

ATF3

 

Base drawing from here

Quad spool and beyond

To make a quad spool all you would need to do is replace the front twin spool with a triple spool or convert the aft section to double. In theory you could get pent or oct spool engines before hitting the 3 concentric spool limit.

I can only assume the benefit still isn't worth the extra weight and complexity.

 

4 solid walls.

Liverpool is a city built on 4 solid walls, to be precise 4 solid walls of silence. The one you will hear about most of is the general one where people don't help the police doesn't matter how shit the crooks make your life, don't help the police, Brian Ashton is a strong exponent of this.

The second one is in the police, never grass up your colleagues no matter what they have done, by all means, give them nicknames like "The Rapist" and when they get caught pretend they were never really police anyway.

In LCC you also never grass up your colleagu, no matter how badly they treat the public and no matter how much they lie, you can also rely on large numbers of cops to help with this one as you are all in public service. Remember as a council staff member it is your city and you get to call the shots.

The final one is the one in the Echo when you can be called by a journo from the Echo and have all sorts of wild allegations angrily thrown at you. When you point out some of the simple factual errors like your place of birth and schooling they get more hesitant as it becomes clear they have been fed a pack of nonsense by someone. Do they apologise for doing someone's dirty work and help get to the bottom of what has caused this abuse, of course not, they just hang up, but that's all in a days work.
When you complain to the editor one Al Machray, he repeats some other rubbish angrily and surprise surprise can't find any record of your number being called and insist it didn't happen.

You can rely on the likes of the other Al's at the echo, together with the Gow's to bring things up every so often just to keep stirring.

If the people of Liverpool had any sense they'd boycott the Echo as much as they do the Sun.

If there is a roof on this room it's provided by the security guards, eager to please anyone in power who might overlook their dodgy behaviour.

Simply the Worst

This route is 5:30 minutes with no WiFi or power and to make matters worse it is on the slowest possible route. Well equal slowest but you have to go via Lincoln to get to the same time

Just to given an idea of how appalling this route is I worked out all the alternatives which turn out to be something like.

or in the real world.

Note the lines in black on the map below, no longer exist but would make the journey quicker. The red bypass under Derby has no passenger services so all timings involve 5 minutes turn around in Derby, there was a bit of track to allow a turn east while passing through Derby north but that has gone.

                                                       

After messing around with the National Rail route planner and discovering it is very buggy and very limited and totally unfriendly I got these timings. These are for the fastest journeys between various points, you cannot make these journeys at this speed now because you'd have long gaps waiting for connections. 

 The UK rail system is now so messed up you cannot do a lot of the routes without multiple tickets. By a strange fluke, the slowest route I could find has exactly the same time as the current direct route and in order to do that, I had to go via Lincoln, at least no reversing at Sheffield. The current route is the slowest possible route. If the route through Bakewell ever reopens that will be physically the shortest but unlikely the fastest.

Another possible route would be Liverpool->Chester->Crewe using the Halton curve. that would add about 35 minutes to the Liverpeel Crewe section.

The British Rail Class 755 would seem ideally suited to the journey, the current trains are British_Rail_Class_158.

CrossCountry would be the ideal operator for this.

Food, Fuel and Plastic from pollution

Carbon is used for many things and a lot of that carbon is acquired from oil, it makes a lot of sense to use Carbon obtained from direct air capture to make those products.

Plastics are some of the most common materials over 311 million tonnes are various plastics are produced every year, of that 230 million tonnes is carbon.

It is not a vast  amount as just under 3% of global CO2 output, the equivalent of 33.8 million mature trees. One of the problems is in breaking the CO2 bonds recently a new Technique doubles conversion of CO2 to plastic component.

NASA long had an ambition to turn astronauts CO2  waste into food and a Finnish company has managed the trick see Food from thin air. This flour like product would be a good replacement for soya flour,which is currently decimating the amazon basin. 

There have also been recent improvements in the processes for converting CO2 into long chain hydrocarbons suitable for jet engines and potentially other heavy fuel systems like diesel.

 New Iron-based Catalyst Converts Carbon Dioxide into Jet Fuel

Freedom from AntiVaxers.

I want the right to refuse to have unvaccinated people with no medical reason in my flat and if I had a shop in my shop.
You want the right not to risk a vaccine, I want the right not to be exposed to your potential mutant infection. Having an endemic infection caused by people who choose not to be vaccinated, not only means that people who cannot be vaccinated are at risk, it means increases the number of mutations, mutations that will inevitably lead to a bypassing of the effectiveness of the vaccine.
As usual, a lot of the anti-vax stuff is from the libertarian right, which wants people to be free to do the things that libertarian right-wingers approve of but not the things other more socially-minded people approve of.
If the owner of any establishment bans those who are voluntarily unvaccinated, what legal recourse do they have if those banned enter? Is it trespass or assault? Being unvaccinated for some will be a choice, a choice that has long term consequences for others, they are seeking to impose themselves but will moan continually about their loss of freedom with no consideration of the freedom of others.
In a free society, everyone must make compromises to allow the freedom of others, the Anti-vaxers will entertain no compromise by them.

Liverpool International Railway Station

Requirements

One of the questions that come up every so often is "If Liverpool gets an HS2/NPR connection where will the station be?". It is a difficult question to answer, Steve Rotheram and the LCR have effectively ruled out expanding Lime Street, saying it is simply not possible, and I completely agree. This hasn't stopped some people, who seem more interested in the architecture than the practicality of the solution.

It is important to set out the requirements for a proper connection. For me, this is full length 400m GC gauge trains. The LCR has added close proximity to Lime Street and the existing station to that I'd add it needs to be outside the loop for practical reasons.

The space we need is defined by the with of a GC Gauge carriage,  which is 3.29m, the platforms at a minimum of 12m with an extra meter for wiggle room giving a total of 19.58m per 2 line set. For simplicity let's call it 20m.

The absolute minimum number of platforms is 4 this assumes HS2 & NPR, in reality adding some extra platforms for intentional and classic long-distance makes sense, so a more realistic size is 6 or 8 platforms. this would allow for reasonable expansion or transfer of all long-distance express trains to the new station. Leavening regional and semi-fast for Lime street & local for Central station. This means we are looking for a site 60m or 80m wide.

 Location

I do have a site in mind which fore fills all the requirements with perhaps up to 100m available if a small amount of pavement is taken. That site is currently occupied by the Mount Pleasant Car Park and the 051 nightclub, between Mount Pleasant and Brownlow Hill.

 

Taking 80m line and extending 450m forward takes the end of the platforms to under the cathedral.

Building

The land climbs from the Lime street and is some 10 meters higher by May Street several meters of headspace would be needed for this interface. Having 2 concourses allows the lower concourse at the platform end to be a reasonable size and to be constructed in a pit providing a cliff-like at May Street for the tunnelling to start, meeting the incoming 2 line tunnel.

Constructing an 80m span underground would be challenging.  Leaving supporting walls or building the walls would make the task easier, 3 walls each of 1m would add only 3m to the overall width and arranged as below they would provide fireproof divides between each platform in the underground section. 

Track layout.

 

 

 

Since the King's Cross fire there have been very strict rules for underground stations design to reduce the risks from fire. One of these is for excellent ventilation, to remove fumes, while the upper booking hall would prevent natural vertical ventilation, it could be provided lateral or vertically at the edge.

This would be unlikely to provide sufficient ventilation for the platforms. To accomplish this providing force extraction/insertion via vertical shafts at the end of the platforms could provide the needed throughput for the platforms with the Lower concourse side vents providing the entrance or exit points.

This would leave the area above the concourses free for use as a significant building.

Connections

Providing access to Liverpool's other main stations via travelators could utilise the existent access to central from the basement of Lewis's.

A station of this size would likely mean that other than an expansion of Liverpool central no new station would be needed for 100 years. Providing support for an international connection via the channel tunnel.

Full Connection

I know that currently HS2 plans barely include Liverpool as anything other than a minor adjunct but here are several plans for a dedicated Liverpool line from 20 Miles More to my own far cheaper plan here at Lymm to Lime Street.

 

Thetford to Norwich in 200 years.

In a fit of boredom, I plotted out a Thetford Norwich canal to bring Norwich into the 18th century and Thetford the 17th. If for some reason you want the KMZ Thetford-Norwich Canal.kmz. 

The high point is just south-east of Wymondham College north-west of London Road. Great Britain topographic map, elevation, relief

If I could find a decent overlay for google earth with contour lines I might be able to find a slightly better route or at least align it better with the rivers. The bits either side of the peak should be smooth as they follow water courses and there are, as far as I know no rapids or wiers on the route.

It is the Thet canalised from Thetford to the north side of the A11 near Besthorpe then a link across for further canalisation to Dyke Beck->To the River Tiffey which feeds into the Yare near Great Melton. In a Kayak your portage might be as little at 1.5 miles.

The Little Ouse Waveney route would look like

In the past there where plans to link Thetford with Bishop Stortford via the Little Ouse or Stor but the railways killed them off.  That would have linked Thetford to London. Another less detailed plan would have linked Thetford to the Waveney, via the little Ouse, this would have brought a connection to Lowestoft.

 

 

This is the Waveney route, it follows the Little Ouse then the Waveney The lack of a central summit means this has far less rise and if your desire was to connect to the ports this would be the way to go. it also connects to Beccles. The route is 99% the Norfolk Suffolk border.

Today though I think you would go for the Norwich route for a better broads connection it would be more tourist-friendly and would also be a better connection if the inland waterways are brought back to life by robotic traffic by even the standards of the 18th Century the summit at Attleborough is rather low and would require no more than 20 locks over the length of the canal.

If you want the google earth file it is LittleOuse-Waveney.kmz

 

If Thetford was connected to the canal network, though recently the last few miles is not supposed to be navigable, it may well be for small boats. This link would give access from east to west Liverpool & Wales to the Broads.

State of The Synthetic Hydrocarbon Art

Some of the first steps in the replacement of fossil hydrocarbons with synthetics and the journey has started in am oil rich country, Norway. From January, jet fuel in Norway must contain 0.5% of biofuel, at the moment the cost is four times the cost of fossil fuel.This fuel must be made of waste fats and vegetable oil, but not palm oil. SAS have a stated aim of powering all it domestic flights by biofuel. Norway plans to increase the required proportion to 30% by 2030.

This is obviously unsustainable for the entire aviation industry. Which means Europe’s first power-to-liquid demo plant in Norway plans renewable aviation fuel production in 2023. makes sense.

This uses the techniques outline in my blog Extinction Rebellion's biggest mistake but chemistry doesn't stand still. In February, Waseda University  in Japan announced.

Scientists developed a new method to convert carbon dioxide to methane with an electric field at low temperatures. In comparison to previous methods, this new method can produce any amount of methane whenever necessary. Because methane is a valuable gas which can be used to generate heat and electricity, this method could be exploited to help reduce the use of fossil fuels and prevent global warming.

The process drops the temperature of the conversion from 300-400°C to 100°C, not only does this use a different catalyst but also adds an electric field. Reducing the temperature required gives a large reduction in the energy required. The conversion to methane is only half of the 2 energy intense processes involves in making methane.

The other energy intense process is the production of hydrogen from water and that is currently an area of intense research as not only does it have bearing on the production of synthetic hydrocarbons but hydrogen is a potential energy in its own right. Only its low density and difficulty in storage make it a less than ideal fuel. The Royal Society gave 4 options given in "Options for producing low-carbon hydrogen at scale".
They are Thermochemical Routes to Hydrogen, Electrolytic Routes to Hydrogen, Biological Routes to Hydrogen and Solar to Fuels Routes to Hydrogen all of which have their niche usage. The ball has begun to move.

There is also artificial photosynthesis a process which looks to perform the complete production in a single device a synthetic leaf.

Sickesair https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

Zilog on.

While it may surprise some of you not only do Zilog still exists but they still make the Z80 as well as a host of other chips variously based on it. I recently pulled to buts a broken soldering iron only to find a Zilog microcontroller in there. Likely your TV has one. I put tother a few symbols for KiCad for the Z80, Z180, Z380, eZ80 and a few others and stored them as Z80-CPU-for-KiCADon GitHub.
I've done some Z8 but the collection of them is massive so it will be a long time before they are done. If at all, some of the ones I have done are below.

• Z80
• Z180 
• Z280
• Z380
• eZ80
• Z8
• CIO
• KIO
• DART
• SIO
• Z16c32
• Z16c35
• Z53c80
• Z8536
• Z8l382
• Z85c30
• Z08530
• Z08536
• Z16c30
• Z80230
• Z80380

The Z380, an 8-bit chip with 4 gigabytes of memory space, is the best.

L2R Z8, Z80, Z180, Z380 & eZ80

That 16g was an unthinkably large amount of memory about 16,000 times bigger than you average PC at the time(1994), now a single SRAM chip does it all for £110.

A Phoenix from the ashes on Upper Parliament street.

For a bit of background see this blog from over 18 months ago.
It has been reborn as 18F/3306 Land on Upper Parliament St between Mulgrave St and Kingsley Rd SchoolL8 by the same developer.
The height of the buildings has been reduced by 1 story and there slight fewer flats. Various paths have been reduced to allow more green space and the tree planting is up so maintaining the number of trees. A break in the building provides a path through the development address the concerns of the residents.
The objections raised seem to have been dealt with 1 by 1 making it very difficult to raise new objections but I'm sure this will happen a debate on the subject is already going on here amongst those likely to support the development.
I prefer the old development but will happily support this. I attended the planning meeting and the developers have addressed all the planning concerns, I doubt it will stop those with the more bizarre or unreasonable objections trying to stop.
Hopefully, the rebirth of Upper Parliament street as a proper thoroughfare is underway.

Update. The new application if before the planning committee on the 18th of June 2019. See Land on Upper Parliament St between Mulgrave St and Kingsley Rd SchoolL8 

Update

This was passed on the 18 June.

Renders from the developer's application.

Kirkdale impasse

Kirkdale sits to the north of Liverpool city centre, it stretches all the way from Leeds street to the border with Sefton and from the River to Scotland Road & Walton Vale. It used to be a densely packed area and was often described as having "great community spirit" but that also went with "great sectarian violence".

Kirkdale centred on the site of application 17F/0587

History

It was an area with great pockets of the deepest poverty, the earliest records of my paternal grandfather's family have all 7 of them living in a cellar on Limekiln Lane. Each floor of the house would be rented out to different families, I believe it was the English who got the ground floor and the Scots the upper, though it may be the other way around, whichever way it was the English got the best floor. Oh, and by floor, this could be a single room and the stairs would be a ladder.
My earliest memories of the area date from the early 70s getting a bus through the area it was a bit run down but largely intact. The main roads were lined the entire length by buildings mostly terraces with shops on the ground floor and the occasional ornate pub.
Towards the end of the 70s when my family got a car I can remember going along Vauxhall and I swear I remember the heat when driving past the Tate and Lyle refinery. Further, at around Marybone, there was a petrol station but under a set of offices.

Today

Drive down either Scotland Road or Stanley Road and then you are in for a grim journey, what was once an entirely built-up area of terraces both great and small, is now a patchwork of derelict land, grassed over with the odd tree and interspersed with the corpses of roads that ran through it. The residential part used to be to the east of Vauxhall Road to the west of the was industrial and the docks, most of the industry is gone as is the housing to the east. In place of the Tate and Lyle factory has sprung up the Eldonian Village a scab of semi-detached suburbia, taking what should be prime sites for offices or industry.
You'll often hear complaints that areas like Kirkdale do not have the same services as other parts of the city, often accompanied by comments that they have lost various ones. It is true they have but the services that were in the area were there to serve a large community both residential and industrial. When the infrastructure needs replacing or cuts need to be made, Kirkdale's reduced population meant that it didn't have a large enough population to justify the services. So whether they be council or private businesses they either closed down or moved out. If you want them back then you need a bigger population and that will not happen with bungalows and semi-detached houses.

17F/0587

Looking north

A recent planning application 17F/0587 has caused a lot of debate, one organisation, whose HQ is opposite the proposed site, it is to the left of the above image, put up the following tweet.

It uses some interesting phrases "absent landlord", I'll assume this is shorthand for "Absentee landlord", this in a derogatory sense applied to 2 groups, one is landlords who rent out their property but do not ensure the maintenance of the property, they are absent from the life of the property, not simply absent from the local area. The other is to do with the large holdings in Ireland granted during the plantation of Ireland to English landlords who simply rented out the entire holding and still resided in England and simply took the wealth out of Ireland and spent it in England.
The term is not really applicable in either sense here as the owners of these properties have to release them on a regular basis if they fall into disappear people will go elsewhere. It also unclear how they are irresponsible.
The other claim is that they are putting "profit before people", this kind of phrase was often used when dangerous working practices cause harm to employees or to the surrounding people. It is not entirely clear which people are being harmed by this building. Sure some do not want the building but that doesn't really constitute meaningful harm especially when the site being taken is far from unique.
Apparently "Kirkdale is an inclusive community" this quite clearly questionable as one of the things that have come up is that the locals want to control who comes into their area when that was suggested it garnered at least one like.

Students seem to attract a particular ire, it is interesting to ask why someone who had ambitions for their children who wanted them to get an education and get on would look at their children and see potential students but in this area, they seem almost a different species something that is nothing to do with them.

While I haven't seen it mentioned in this context yet, gentrification seems to be one of the fears of the community. Gentrification, where is it bad, is where it forces out those already resident in an area, it would take a lot of building in the Kirkdale ward before there was any chance of the locals being pushed out. The only building in Kirkdale at the moment could never be described as gentrification it simple regeneration of derelict land.
"real people" was another term used this is a worrying phrase at it suggests there are some non-real people, people who are in someone way fake or fraudulent and don't require being treated like "real people" it is a horrible phrase which covers up all sorts of bigotries and hatred. It is a phrase that UKIP & the EDL like to use when differentiating their knuckle-dragging followers from those they see as "the urban elite". Controlling who moves into your area is not usually something associated with inclusive communities.
One of the other phrases used as criticism was "multi-storey" anything over a bungalow is "multi-storey", in this case, the proposed development is the same height as the surrounding buildings, though being flat-roofed it fits in one more habitable floor but, this makes it the dread "multi-storey". The phrase is used to conjure up images of the 15 storey buildings that were badly built in the 1960s, some were awful but a lot were simply trashed by the locals.
What are the elected representatives of the area doing to illustrate the contradictions in what the residents have said they want, well it seems nothing. Instead, they seem intent on blocking development and possibly incurring extra expenses for the council. The recent blocking of application 17F/0441, a modest affair on Scotland road was blocked against the advice of the Planning Dept on what seems spurious ground, any appeal outside the council will all most certainly to succeed but will, of course, cost everyone involve cash, but it will allow the councillors to say look at what we did. In the case of 17F/0441, no locals registered objections with the council.

Village

Some have suggested the site should be a Village Green, this is a bit of problem as Kirkdale is not a village but I think it gives an insight into the mind of some of the protestors, they want a return to the rural life in Cranford et al. but of course those are fictional sugar-coated idealisations, which never existed. While it might be difficult for us to understand today but the reason people moved to the horrors of Victorian Cities from the countryside was that life was actually better in the cities. Even today being poor in the countryside is probably worse than in the city, as everything is more expensive or far further away and the transport is very bad. What cities have is not village greens but squares like Abercromby Square and Falkner Square with gardens at the heart of them.

The future

This entire episode looks like a massive combination of childishness, NIMBYism all tied up with inverse snobbery. Individuals have conflicting ambitions and like children will not give up any but simply insist they should get there way. There is an unhealthy chunk of small-minded isolationism when it comes to people who might possibly be from a different socio-economic group. There is a complete lack of leadership from elected representatives, who know that their best chance of keeping votes is just to play along as they think the locals can be fobbed off with blaming others when their plans trip each other up.
It is pretty appalling and is not good for the city, the residents of Kirkdale want their own "managed decline" well if they want to live in the suburbs or the countryside perhaps they should go and live there. Kirkdale's location within the city determines what its inner-city nature should be, that is what made it what it was and defines what it needs to be, the city as a whole will have to decide to end the selfish NIMBY attitude surrounding the area for good and have to expose the self-serving attitude of those who seek to be community leaders exposed.
The community is a fractious one the Eldonian Village Hall was burnt down in an arson attack, I do not think anyone was prosecuted but the suspicion was that it was connected to some internecine rivalries. Who knows how many people are for or against this development, it is only the loudest voices the can be heard and they seem to hail from a far wider area than just Kirkdale.

08/08/2017

This application was turned down today.

Exceptionalism is Unexceptional

Exceptionalism is a word often linked with America, in the phrase American Exceptionalism, the belief held by some Americans that the USA is a special country for some reason, whether it is manifest destiny or some rubbish based on the King James Bible. The one thing that is not Exceptional about American Exceptionalism is that it is not exceptional. Every country I can think of, or people or tribe has some belief that in some way their grouping is exceptional, because of some unique accident of history.
The exceptionalism comes in 2 forms the exceptional good, "we" brought, light/democracy/peace/rule of law to the world or the exceptionally bad. "We" brought death/famine/despair to the world.
They sit in the same category as religious belief, god created the world for us to live in, we are special not animals. You see bits of it in all sorts of places, making us better or worse than animals. In SciFi we are either the great bringers of enlightenment or a plague on the galaxy. To the rational mind we are a boring unexceptional species in the galaxy and at home we just as boring and unexceptional as any other creature, and similarly so our countries.
Whether it the "we are great" rhetoric of the Nationalists or the "we are terrible" of the Alt-Nationalists they both seek to make us, who ever we are special, and it is really sad. In the UK we have UKIP at one end and say stop the ware at the other. I'll let you decided which is which.

The Mind of the Corbynite

I've seen a few comments from hardcore Corbynites of the form "X was ranting about Corbyn on the telly, I asked them who they where voting for, they said Labour. You have to laugh".
It is rather disturbing comment, what do they find funny, is it they they think that behind at he slagging of of Corbyn, X really agrees with him but cannot bear to say it or is it a laugh at X who had the party the voted for stolen from them, yet they still cannot break the habits of a life time and so are playing into the Corbynites hands? Neither is good, there are a few other possible explanation but neither show they Corbynites in a good light.
After this election Corbyn et all, will be claiming that every vote for Labour was a vote for Corbyn, let us not forget these knowing comments from the Corbynites when they make these claims, while standing around in the ashes trying to blame everyone else but themselves.

Corbynshite

Corbynites and Momentum can go on about policy till there blue in the face, they still miss the point that the electorate hates Corbyn, no matter how many quite sensible socially progressive policies they put forward looming large over them will be Corbyn and his ilk.
What the voters see with Corbyn is a pathetic whiney little man who could not organise a piss up in a vegan brewery.  He is also a charisma black hole, with no hint of leadership ability, that no one outside of his cliche can imagine as PM, he would be as out of place as PM as Trump is as President.

Let me list the problems.

Pacifism

This as far as the general population is concerned is a weakness, if you have views and beliefs then you should be prepared to fight for them, as a private set of views very few will see them as a major fault however when it comes to a Prime minister, then it is a disbar. If through some accident or misfortune you end up a hostage of some warlord or tyrant in the middle of nowhere, then you don't want to find that the PM has moral objections to sending in a bunch of highly trained heavies to get you out. If someone wants to sign a note and opt-out of any use of violence to rescue them, then fine.

AntiWest

For all its failing western civilisation has achieved a lot, you might think the poor are hard done by but there is no one who would find their standard of living or life expectancy any better 100 years ago but Corbyn reeks of disdain for the west.

Iraq

While he may have been correct about the mess of the Iraq war, we don't know for certain that through some unforeseen set of circumstances it might have been worse if the war had not happened. Corbyn's objects to the war were not based on the specific set of circumstances of the war it was part of a blanket objection, which given that others are prepared to start wars, is not a vote winner.

Competence

The first year of his leadership was a mess and it hasn't got much better. With the Virgin trains stunt, only a moron could have made such a hash of it. He and his team seem incapable of understanding that if you attack anyone, justified or not, they will defend themselves. This inability to see that others will look after their own self-interest rather than just roll over is something Corbyn shares with the brexiteers and the likes of Farage. The empty-headed love some Kippers have for Farage is mirrored in the Corbynites love of JC.

Brexit

His performance in the Brexit campaign was abysmal. His decisions to impose a 3 line whip to support the government line was bad, but to make it even worse he, later on, managed to condemn the everything that 3 line whip had been put in place to support. His varying position looks very much like political expedience on a moment by moment basis, as if by support a point of view half the time and opposing it the other half of the time will result in him being supported by both sides, it will not it will end up with the support of none.

Blair

The constant slagging off of Tony Blair and the Blairites is very counter productive but it is about the only thing that unites the Corbynites, but even if Blair had only achieved 1 thing it would be more than Corbyn has achieved, he has been a disloyal back bencher for years and Blair achieved more for the poor the Corbyn ever has or will, see.

Hypocrisy

Corbyn hold the record for the most votes against the Labour leadership, that he and has supporters go on so much about the disloyalty of others is just pathetic hypocrisy and obviously so, watching his supporters twist and turn as they try to defend the abuse heaped on those who do not follow "the leaders" will is galling.

Corbynites

The biggest area of liability is his supporters, they are just appalling in general. The more they behave like themselves the more they make him unelectable.The average Labour voter is appalled by them but the Corbynites are only interested in themselves, they have no idea whose votes put Labour in power and whose votes lost Labour power.

Len McCluskey

Gobshite.

New LOR North extension.

If the LOR was rebuilt as per my earlier blog, then it still wouldn't connect to one of the original destinations of Merseytram, Kirkby.

In it final form the LOR was connected to the main rail network at Seaforth, see this map. Until the 1990s the route was still clear, though now it has been filled in with houses. The LOR's trains usually terminated at Seaforth & Litherland station. During the Grand national meeting, some trains would go to Aintree Racecourse railway station via the North Mersey Branch.

The North Mersey Branch heading east as it crosses the Southport line.

From it junction with the Southport line, there remains a single unelectrified set of rails, maintained by network rail to their minimum standard and used by maintenance vehicles to access the Ormskirk line. A junction connects the remaining line to Aintree station, but beyond the junction one bridge has been removed but the rest of the route is clear to Fazakerley junction on the Kirkby line between Kirkby and Fazakerley.

Extension

In my original plan, I terminated the New LOR at Sandhills station. The track there is now down to 2 set of rails, previously there were many more lines as out to Southport was quad and the North Liverpool Extension Line also passed through, see here. In the intervening stations between Sandhills and the Junction for the North Mersey Branch, the remains of the extra lines can clearly be seen. This would allow extra lines if needed to connect the New LOR from Sandhills to the North Mersey branch. Though as the lines currently only carry four trains per hour, it would be possible to fit additional services in Tram Trains.
Mersey rail has long term plans to reintroduce services on the North Mersey branch to Aintree, with at least 2 intermediate stations. On the map at the top of the page, the line from Sandhills to Aintree is marked in white as it is either in use or Merseyrail has expressed some interest in use/

Beyond Aintree

Merseyrail's plans involve leaving the North Mersey Branch at the Aintree North Curve that might be a reasonable thing, however, it would also be possible to reinstate the line beyond Aintree to Fazakerley Junction.  It would then join Merseyrail's line into Kirkby, taking advantage of the Bridge over the M57, though as this is only a single track it may represent a bottleneck.
At Some point, the line would leave Merseyrail, perhaps after Kirkby station and revert to tram running through Kirkby, where it could be used not only for people intending to use the LOR into Liverpool but also as a feeder for Kirkby station for trains heading East or West. This corresponds to the purple line on the map at the top.
This is an additional 7 km of surface lines over what Merseyrail has either work at the moment or plans to have in use. Which using the costing in the original article come to between £119.21 and £238.41 million, bringing the total for the system to £550 & 1280 million. The biggest disruption in the build would be putting the track down on Kirkby's roads.