beatnic - just wondering

Your expected outcome:
Liberal Democrat

Your actual outcome:

Lab -22
Con -53
	Lib Dem 88
UKIP -3
	Green 52

You should vote: Liberal Democrat

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

My life is full of uncertainty at the moment.

I’ve heard people describe similar situations as like standing at the edge of a precipice.

But I don’t feel like that.

I feel like I’m standing on my favourite beach looking out across the ocean towards the horizon - a world of possibility.

Anything can happen.

Now that the election has been called, you can use this site to find out what your ex-MP did throughout the last parliament. We have performance stats, speeches, voting records and more…

theyworkforyou.com

Good luck London!

Links:
Paula Radcliffe
London Marathon
London 2012

Adaptonyms (also known as textonyms and cellodromes) are words that can be typed with the same sequence of keys on a cell phone using predictive text. For example the sequence “2-3-3″ can produce “bed”, “add”, or “bee”.

Source: Wikipedia

Yesterday I texted a friend to let him know we’d “good to pub”. What I meant to write was “gone to pub”. Anyway he got the idea!

It got us talking about the perils of predictive text.

One friend pointed out that when you want to write “Mum”, the phone insists on offering “Nun” first, even though it’s much less commonly used and comes later in the alphabet. “Book” being offered before “Cool” is perhaps more understandable, but not when you think about which age group does the most texting.

The other day I got a puncture on my way in to work and wanted to text ahead to warn people I’d be late. “Got puncture in Canceryell” (hello, I’m trying to write Camberwell, what on earth is this word?)

Andy becomes body… there are loads of examples. Fortunately I don’t think I’ve offended anyone yet but I can see how it could happen.

And even though I must have written my name hundreds of times my phone never learns to offer it first. When I tap 642 I want Nic not Mic.

My ISP (PlusNet) just had a major hiccup whilst upgrading their free web-hosting service which resulted in everyone’s files going up in smoke on Thursday morning. As a result my blog was down for the day and there was much chatter on PlusNet’s message boards.

Luckily I’ve been backing up my files and data for my blog, but not so regularly that I haven’t lost of a couple of changes I made using the browser-based file editing system in WordPress.

The lesson for me here is to back up files every time I make the slightest change.

A lesson for PlusNet could be to send out an advance warning email (this was planned work after all) to all customers using CGI space, giving us a chance to check we’re properly backed up - it wouldn’t have cost more than the time to write it, and would have saved a lot of people a lot of bother.

That’s how much Tesco makes according to this article by James Robinson in today’s Observer newspaper. That’s not far off a quarter of a million pounds an hour, or £6million per day. Nice work if you can get it.

The statistic that really startled me though is that Tesco takes £1 of every £8 we spend as consumers in the UK. That really must make them alarmingly powerful.

I wonder what their view on localism is.

East Dulwich came about when four local land owners sold up their estates to building prospectors in the final years of Queen Victoria’s reign. The largest of the four was the Friern Manor Farm estate.

On the East Dulwich section of the curiously named Ideal homes: suburbia in focus (complete with garden gnomes in the logo), there are a couple of great Ordnance Survey maps from the mid to late 19th century, and some sepia photos of Goose Green and Barry Road.

Transport played an important role with the coming of railways to Herne Hill in 1862, West Dulwich and Sydenham Hill in 1863 and East Dulwich and North Dulwich in 1868. Cheaper fares of the 1880s further stimulated demand and the arrival of the tram along Lordship Lane, Dog Kennel Hill and Peckham Rye in the early 20th century sealed the area’s success.

The houses were aimed at socially mobile members of the lower middle classes - typically London clerks - and the new population was largely one of young families.

So… not much change there then

This week a hugely important UN-backed report, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was published about how rapidly we’re destroying our planet.

It’s four main findings are:

• Humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively in the last 50 years than in any other period. This was done largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel. More land was converted to agriculture since 1945 than in the 18th and 19th centuries combined. More than half of all the synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, first made in 1913, ever used on the planet has been used since 1985. Experts say that this resulted in a substantial and largely irreversible loss in diversity of life on Earth, with some 10 to 30 percent of the mammal, bird and amphibian species currently threatened with extinction.
• Ecosystem changes that have contributed substantial net gains in human well-being and economic development have been achieved at growing costs in the form of degradation of other services. Only four ecosystem services have been enhanced in the last 50 years: increases in crop, livestock and aquaculture production, and increased carbon sequestration for global climate regulation. Two services – capture fisheries and fresh water – are now well beyond levels that can sustain current, much less future, demands. Experts say that these problems will substantially diminish the benefits for future generations.
• The degradation of ecosystem services could grow significantly worse during the first half of this century and is a barrier to achieving the UN Millennium Development Goals. In all the four plausible futures explored by the scientists, they project progress in eliminating hunger, but at far slower rates than needed to halve number of people suffering from hunger by 2015. Experts warn that changes in ecosystems such as deforestation influence the abundance of human pathogens such as malaria and cholera, as well as the risk of emergence of new diseases. Malaria, for example, accounts for 11 percent of the disease burden in Africa and had it been eliminated 35 years ago, the continent’s gross domestic product would have increased by $100 billion.
• The challenge of reversing the degradation of ecosystems while meeting increasing demands can be met under some scenarios involving significant policy and institutional changes. However, these changes will be large and are not currently under way. The report mentions options that exist to conserve or enhance ecosystem services that reduce negative trade-offs or that will positively impact other services. Protection of natural forests, for example, not only conserves wildlife but also supplies fresh water and reduces carbon emissions.

“The over-riding conclusion of this assessment is that it lies within the power of human societies to ease the strains we are putting on the nature services of the planet, while continuing to use them to bring better living standards to all,” said the MA board of directors [...]

Worrying stuff, but we can do something about it.

It reminded me of a book called Change the World for a Fiver by the We Are What We Do movement. I like the way the graphic design in the book makes me stop and ponder the messages for longer than I might do otherwise.

If you want to know more, have a look at the We Are What We Do website

Why not buy the book right now (or buy several and give them to your friends)?