The body does slow down with age, and weekends can often drip by with routine household tasks. When most tasks are accomplished it’s threatening dark and that’s mostly because of your  late start. So on a rain besmirched day, like today, Sunday 24th, I lit the wood burner early and settled into some bird mags and then my newly purchased twin volumes of  Birds of Scotland. It fired me up and lifted the “cabin fever”, it reminded me of the days when I was 18 and keen on fly fishing, my mate (big Gordon) and I would eagerly await the 15th of march, the ides of March, the start of the brown trout season. Flies had been researched and clumsily constructed and casts made, the river had been walked at least twice before the Ides, and large trout imagined in dark whirling eddies.

I don’t fish any more but the anticipation is the same and lifts the cabin fever that can descend in the dark days of winter. I should of course be out in wild weather on the Fife coast looking for ring billed gulls and long billed Dowitchers, but heh I can lift cabin fever in front of my wood burner. I should frequent Loch Leven more often particularly as sea Eagles are around, public viewing of birds is OK but not the best experience. Mind you when you find something exceptional, my instinct is to share, like the time I spotted a Pair of black throated divers in Loch Turret in breeding plumage, not the place for these shy birds. As my telescope is trained on them along comes a walker with a serious pair of binoculars, after a few words I am relaxed enough to confide with him. I don’t announce what he is about to see, I say take a look, he then looks, looks at me and I confirm, yup, black throated divers. If I hadn’t shared that moment the experience would have be less.

wilderness and wildness are important for everyone to experience and to hopefully understand their own connection in the biosphere.

http://gregpytel.blogspot.com/

try this blog spot for a very interesting view of the financial crisis (don’t think it’s over) and bankers behaviour.

I obviously would never make a banker as I cannot see how a bonus can be paid until the taxpayers money is paid back. But we are shareholders so the money will not appear as a debt, but if we are the major share holders then surely we can veto these payments when management meetings are held, I understand major shareholders are present at some of these.

It is apparent that bonuses will be paid, with the banks paying the extra tax, well done Mr Darling, our money going round in circles!!

If you haven’t heard Billy Bragg’s stance visit;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7012775/Billy-Bragg-in-protest-against-bankers.html

The post title is a book title by Joe Moran, not finished it yet but can still recommend it to you folk interested in our roads’ history. This author is not dilatory when it comes to detail, it is crammed with it. I did have to point out through his blog spot that a central reservation is a central reserve, mere pedantry I know but how often can you correct a University lecturer?

Hope he doesn’t read this as I will no doubt have made several grammatical errors.

It’s

decorative, particularly on trees

land smoothing, blanketing

mouldable, a plaything

represents Christmas to those of us in the north

is like breaking a spell when you are the first to walk on it

Cornices, don’t be the first !

Is easy to shovel

puts superior smiles on 4 x 4 drivers

brings neighbours together, in mutual car shoving, complaining and snow moving

increases wellie sales

Increases bird numbers and variety to your feeding table

makes it very important to feed and water the birds

makes driving “interesting”

bonus time for gritter drivers

nice for a couple of days…….

add your own snow feelings in comments

Well how were 192 countries ever going to agree?  the developing world had their hand out and the developed world need to look after their economies, this, that puts money in the hand of the developing world. I never liked the stance of the G77’s  Sudanese chairman, I heard a long interview with him on the BBC’s world service, and he was clearly educated, erudite, and entrenched in his views. Anyway he doesn’t matter, as he represents the nations with the hand out, those of you who have read most of my posts will remember the “golden rule” he who has the gold rules.  Nowt changes.  So Mr Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping I would be very interested to hear what you say to those 77 countries you chaired what you achieved for them.

China’s people and the politicians know they are polluting the rivers and their air, and I believe they will react to this, in a market place way, they amongst  the polluting regions can react very fast to generating new non polluting technologies, they are communist and a dictatorship. The clumsy democracies will react much more slowly, unless and I suspect (hope) this will happen,  a “clean power” race, develops in the market place between China and America. Europe has the lead on this but the market place is Europe it needs to be America, China and India. Russia the worlds third largest polluter is difficult for me to understand, I am not sure anyone can predict it’s stance?

Anyway the science stood resolute, no well read sensible person  can say the climate is not changing, some flat earth people say it’s just a normal cycle, Mr Milankovitch, I think they refer to, tell that to the people whose houses are built on Tundra, ask the people in Cumbria, ask the sub-Saharan people in Kenya, ask the Italian border patrols who now have to move the border poles ever year as the glacier they are in moves.

Copenhagen worked in certain ways, It  recognised, and put front stage,  that the climate is changing and for most people this  is a very serious concern. For the business aware there is a huge market place for less polluting energy methods from recognising that the concerned people of the planet will change their behaviours given a market place alternative. The politicians need to act to encourage this behavioural change.

Also a climate change event in America that is country wide, and not in California, would be very appropriate. Something like a large blanket of snow, needs to be the worst on record sweeping down the East coast,

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/2009/12/20/blizzard-hell-as-america-is-struck-by-worst-snowstorms-for-six-years-86908-21911055/

only six years ! let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

try this connection too

www.avaaz.org/en/after_copenhagen/?cl=419385382%26v=5072

and here is a truly encouraging tale, imagine this industrialised, what you don’t have to imagine is human ingenuity. Like green power it just has to be politically harnessed.

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/10/05/malawi.wind.boy/index.html

Pictures today of Gordon Brown kitted up with all the protective gear in Afghanistan, well why not give him a taste of what the troops have to endure by sending him out in less than the best vehicles that they have, to Helmand province. Be more than his defect eye that would be half shut and shut. And the great perpetrator of our entry into the illegal war in Iraq, Mr Middle East peace maker, Mr Tony Blair, is making blaa blaa about WMD’s I would have found another reason to invade, he declares, this dictator (Saddam) bombed and gassed his own people, he espoused. Yeh well what about China and Tibet? how about Burma? How about Russia? How about Zimbabwe?

Seems like when you get to the top, as an earner and or politically, you become bullet proof as the establishment gathers round and protects you. How many times has Fred the shreds house windows been panned in? well just the once I’ll warrant, there are probably web cams on his street paid for by you know who.

So if GB is bullet proof why was he wearing all that gear? Oh yes, real bullets from the real world !!

Can you believe the absolute brass neck of these egregious bankers? going to resign as they can’t represent the whole of the shareholders to their benefit. Well they blooming well should have resigned when they were representing the whole of the shareholders when the share price was 20p. Was that to their benefit? Call their bluff Mr Darling, on behalf of the majority shareholders, us! How can they say this top talent needs rewarding, this is the top talent that brought the bank to it’s nadir.

Take the one point something Billion quid and give it to the retail side of the bank and to the RBS people made redundant, if Charles Dickens were alive today I feel a novel would result given the iniquity of the behaviour of the board of the RBS.

I bet this all ends in a political fudge, well that might just be the last straw for many Labour voters.

Below is an excerpt from the internet, adding to my sparse folklore knowledge of the magpie, this by a chance remark from a colleague who stated his wife saluted a lone magpie and issued a greeting. Well we knew he was / is dithering on a delicate edge of sanity but his wife also?

Seems not, she is following an age old superstition that I and her still borderline husband were not aware of !!

Magpie Superstitions

There is an age old rhyme regarding magpie superstitions, brought to the fore in the 1970’s, by the children’s programme named after the birds, which implies that if you see these birds in numbers you will have varying degrees of fortune. The magpie superstitions rhyme goes: “One for sorrow, Two for joy, Three for a girl, Four for a boy, Five for silver, Six for gold, Seven for a secret never to be told. ” Never been quite sure what to expect if I ever saw eight or more!

The majority of magpie superstitions however, revolve around the lone magpie. There are some curious customs associated with this. It is the most common of the magpie superstitions, and throughout the British Isles it is believed that it is unlucky to look upon a lone magpie and there are some interesting regional beliefs about what you should do to ward off any bad luck. For example: In Scotland and Northern Ireland one should salute the lone magpie; whereas in some parts of England one should wave or doff your hat! Magpie superstitions in Yorkshire suggests that the bird is associated with witchcraft and therefore an ill omen – one should make a sign of a cross or take off your hat in respect to ward off any evil. Another from remote parts of the White Rose County, suggests that an individual should imitate the lone magpie’s missing partner – and loudly; although I‘m not sure I can recall what noise one makes! Apparently the magpie has significance overseas as well – in Korea, one of the more popular magpie superstitions, has folk believing that the magpie is a bird of inspirational instinct, which can foretell people that they will have visitors or house guests in the near future.

http://www.superstitious-minds.info/Magpie-Superstitions.html

Poem? I found

Magpie #1

Magpies are the
Park bench drunks
of the bird kingdom;
They hang about all day,
Screech at each other
And everyone else.
Nothing to do,
Nowhere else to go.

They feed from rubbish bins;
The mangled remains of Saturday’s
Discarded donner
Is their idea of a Sunday roast.

They steal
For the sake of it;
A piece of foil,
A priceless diamond,
They’re not really bothered,
So long as it sparkles.
Their nests must be
Boudoirs of bling.

From listening to various radio programmes it is apparent that large investment banks particularly Goldman Sachs, are investing in super computers. principally in America, seemingly these computers can monitor all selling and buying of shares and have algorithms that cause the super computer to act ahead of  the normal system that has alerted the super computer through the normal system to a deal on which to act. I don’t pretend to understand stocks and shares and the dealing that goes around them. But the principal of share holding is surely to help companies that you favour with your money to assist them to further prosper and employ people, make profits and you receive a dividend and increased share price from when you purchased the stock you favoured. Or you lose money, win some, lose some.

These high frequency traders are, in America, 2% of the traders but account for 73% of transactions. Trillions of daily transactions buying shares and selling them at 1p or 2p difference to their benefit.

who does this benefit?

got it?

just those banks and their shareholders, who are now mainly the tax payers. So that’s great we will profit?  no it will end up in that treasury vault, that institution that can afford to sponsor wars but not decrease poverty.

The banks are at it already, using capitalism to kill capitalism. This is not happening just in America, from memory a super computer room is being built in England as I type, in Guildford?

have a read

http://advancedtrading.com/algorithms/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=218401501#undefined

I don’t read newspapers, I get my news through the radio, I have a great little DAB radio that is first into my suitcase, when travelling. The business programme on Radio Scotland on Sunday got my ears fully tuned in. It was the prosaically named James Smith, Chairman of Shell, Shell UK I guess as I may have missed this point, however the reason I was listening with attention was, he was espousing the same doctrines for planet salvation as Tom Friedman in his book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded. The guy is no dumb red neck Texan, this Brit is fully switched on, he talked about Shell investing in sustainable biofuels, the opposite of what the Bush admin did and world grain prices shot up, increasing poverty and political instability. Shell are investing in the future, in carbon capture, carbon capping and echoing Friedman’s book terms for trade for energy. In other words use the market place and cost the environmental damage of carbon release and let the techies, scientists and capitalists sort it out. He did not actually use the words smart electrons but it was heavily inferred that IT can greatly assist in delivering electricity at the cheapest cost by balancing supply to demand with smart meters etc. I swear he has read, understood and taken on the solutions outlined in Hot, flat, and Crowded. I don’t care how he got there, I am mightily impressed he has.

Gives a person hope, gives the planet hope.

I had a meeting today with a newish testing lab in Scotland. CET Safehouse have arrived in the small marketplace in Scotland, and  have a tool that the others do not have, Internet reporting.  An evolved system, some five years in the making, not only does it act as a an electronic booking in system but it also has the worksheets and the report sheets integral to the whole system. In CET safehouse’s system they transfer into your inbox your checked and authorised results, this means you can pick up your results as fast as they produce them. UKAS still seem to rely on your final reporting function as the paper “certificate” being produced and checked and signed.

Wake up to the electronic era UKAS!

And one day after the announcement,  Soil Mechanics have acquired from Bureau Veritas (BV) the whole of their testing labs.

Saynors to Weeks to BV to soil mechanics, a lot of  “us”  have history in those links.

And on the back of the award for the A96 project, Morrison Construction will have their own UKAS site based laboratory.

I did deliver my pavement design talk to my senior colleagues on two separate occasions this week. Fortunately my stumbling performance was politely received, my highland hosts have an imbued politeness, which contrasts with my part weggie assertiveness. (Pure dead aggression, bye the way, know what I mean?)

To the talk, my spreadsheet brings together everything I put in text, and highlights, “where’s the money”. I have set it at 80 MSA  as that would appear to be the “design” standard adopted by Transport Scotland for most trunk roads. Perhaps so, if you have the money, order the best you can.

As I mentioned before class 4 designs are far too expensive, this cost comes from the foundation, the class 4 pavement is the cheapest as it is the thinnest. So I’m not sure where the highways agency thinks a class 4 foundation will be used, perhaps I need to run a few more designs with different foundation CBRs.  All blacktop surfaced foundations are more expensive than hydraulically bound materials at 80 MSA. this should worry the blacktop boys as even the very good EME2 material does not feature as a base. I also believe I can reduce my HBM prices as I have induced cracks in  HBM foundations when I now believe I was being conservative.

Other features that emerged were discussions on what needs cracked, it seems clear that mixes with 10 N/mm2 at 7 days, laid widths more than 4.75m and all HBM bases with a blacktop surface, need induced cracking. the other item was laying tolerances, it is clear that series 700 is not up to speed with the new requirements. No negative tolerances are a particular problem and need careful thought and discussion at tender time and when subsequently placing a sub-contract. Do both pre-tender?

A adjunct to pavement design was raised by me, Transport Scotland have road compliance testing at years 3, 4 and 5, this includes the deflectograph. If this shows potential defects, then investigation follows. If your pavement suffers from debonding, it probably will show as a potential defect. It is vital therefore, to “prove” your design was built to the DMRB, to record your bond coat applications, with all the attendant spraybar and product certificates. This will be necessary till a bond test is introduced. Also have the lab that cores the pavement from the upper layers to record and photograph the whole core before any splitting is performed.

[View with PicLens]

Just had a great week in Cornwall with our friends. Cornwall for those who have not visited the county, is different, different in speech, different in topography, different in many subtle ways. Building for instance, the older roofs are built differently, no sarking, but across the roof joists  are purlions (i’m guessing here) and the slates (from Cornwall) are lime mortared on. It would appear to be a measure of coping with the different slate depths, the mortar evens it out, least they don’t rattle as mine do in a storm.

It was the walls I wanted to bring to your attention and the narrow streets with houses jammed together. There must be an abundance of stone, flat and long, (granite aside) for all the field walls that would be dry stane dykes in Scotland are earth filled double walls, replicated on the a new section of the A 30 where you can see from my pics the end of the wall and the new plants in the earth in the wall. There is a pic of a typical lane off the main road, you can see where the vegetation has been cut back and the wall is now completely obscured by the plant growth. Driving in these lanes, is like being in a forest, you cannot fix the horizon and after a few turns you have no idea which way you are facing, my ebay tom tom one came into it’s own. If you want to explore the Cornwall countryside without a sat nav best of luck! These walls/hedgerows must be linear nature reserves, and there are many, many miles of them, see the pic looking out to sea on the West coast, showing the landscape by fields. Magpies abound.

For you roadbuilders note the drainage detail in the picture of the planted wall, no filter drains to block up and (not) maintain, water is schooshed away in the concrete vee channel to presumably a suds pond.

Now the narrow streets and jumbled together houses, not sure of why, but I suspect lack of planning, thank goodness as it is now quaint, plus a hard life making a living, from the sea and the land. We visited the towns of Wadebridge, St Ives, Truro and Falmouth on this visit and I have to say the people are very welcoming, warm and eager to help, it makes such a difference. For the foodies, I have to say you don’t have to pay Rick Stein twice the price for very good sea food, we had excellent food wherever we lunched, and I had seafood by preference.

Cornwall in speech is as advertised, different, it has gender like French, I heard “liked that he” , and when working with fibreboard that was a tight fit my younger accomplice said “he fits now” as we crammed it in. Wish I could remember more but a cask strength Laphroaig, as a gift, seems to have reduced my memory.

The news by my radio brought information that two girls had jumped of Erskine bridge, and died, if you do that mid span it is a long drop. A certain death plunge. As my mind contemplated this tragedy, and I wondered, what did they think, contemplate, discuss on that hours walk from their care home to the bridge?

Did these young vulnerable kids discuss the prospect of a hereafter? did their minds baulk at what if I can’t do it? did they think of the thoughts of those connected to them and left behind? and was it “told you so” or what? I have so many questions from this news item, nae tragedy that I am left in bewilderment , determined to die, what were those last hours like as they walked to the bridge?

For whatever they discussed it was no deterrent.

I hear magpies all over the place but not in Perth or the surrounding countryside. See former post on Magpies. Well last night the familiar chuckling call was heard from a a large silver birch in the next doors garden, and it startled me, a magpie ! here. You can’t miss a magpie, a wonderfully exotic crow and it gave my son (whom I called from the house) and I a decent fly by along the roofs, cackling as it went. My son remarked ” bet it has trouble finding a mate” he is not wrong, we have seen two magpies in 34 years, and I mean we as he saw the last one as well. Magpies are not welcomed by everyone and the added pressure on nesting garden birds is a particular issue with them, that and the added pressure from damn cats ever on the prowl. I heard on the news this morning about “super cats” large hybrid cats that have a waiting list and are thousands of pounds each. If a super cat appears in my garden it may be followed by lampost posters seeking a lost moggie. I could handle a magpie though.