Thanks to Henry Moore and BBC News Online for the Headline.
The DNB (Dutch National Bank)has been buying and selling it’s gold stakes which have now been moved to London from North America for ‘geopoltical reasons’.
Anyone who knows the history of Dutch Traders know that they have shown themselves historically to be a pretty canny lot.
So about a third of DNB’s gold will be more easy to trade if needed It’s now being held by The Bank of England and not exposed to the vagaries caused by the Trump/Carney altercation and the continuing uncertainty in the Middle East.
Still,interestingly, from a practical point of view 27 tonnes of physical gold bars were transported securely across the Atlantic and no one will say how. Puts the UK’s great Train Robbery into perspective doesn’t it?
An exciting development has been patented in the US,by a United Emirates University to help prevent damage to buildings hit by earthquakes
The purely mechanical method relies on giant spherical steel balls contained in a cage which can move with physical stress caused by the seismic movement and absorb the stress and thus protect the building.
The beauty of not needing a power source makes the design suitable for regions where power outings are common and where power supplies are likely to be taken out by a catastrophic event such as an earthquake.
Thanks to George King and BBC Online News for the Headline
A record number of 16.9million parking charges were issued by Private Companies in 2025/2026. So most drivers have come across a situation where they are trying to park and want to get a ticket, but there is no signal and there is a sign saying no card or cash payments .
It really doesn’t matter how old you are, some oldies “love” technology, most don’t.No one should be forced to sign up for applications or indeed scan bar codes ( which are notoriously scammy).
Recently on holiday in Cornwall we got a ticket, my partner thought it had gone through, but it hadn’t so we got a fine on our return home. It was stressful in the car park , we must have spent about half an hour trying to pay and then stressful when we got home. I do actually believe we tried ringing the number for customer service help but we couldn’t get through. My partner paid the fine as the letter was quite threatening.
The latest twist to the sorry scenario is that Cornwall Council has put a sign up in their Council run Car Parks to say that they have had to increase parking charges as they have lost money for Council supplied social services that they used to pay for with EC grants, but that they could no longer apply for as the UK was no longer part of the EC and that the increased parking charges are now used to pay for local services. I suppose moving to cashless and card less payments was another way for them to save money.
Rightly or wrongly I reduce my stress levels by going to places where the parking isn’t complicated. Hence we go to National Trust sites( parking included in membership, ticket machines run on solar power, but you can always leave your card in the window of the car.)Also we do tend to park where there is free parking, some places just seem to think it helps local businesses which it does.
We frequent coffee shops and local shops because we can park for free. There is no doubt in my mind that hospital car parks should be free to those who have appointments or are visiting sick relatives. That to me is a no brainer.
There is something called the British Car Park Association (is your car park a member )and what do the B.C.A think of fining vunerable people, not sure anyone has asked them? However, parking is a money maker for many organisations both Public and Private. Do they really want to make things easier for us or anyone for that matter? The answer is no.
Thanks to Matthew Lockwood and BBC Online for the Headline
You see it everywhere, lots of piles of rubbish which should be disposed of in a sensible fashion. Just dumped in lay-bys , behind residential areas, entrances to farmers fields, farmers land itself. The disruption and unpleasantness it causes , and in this particular instance the harm to health is significant.
When these people are caught on CCTV, they really don’t look like the brightest tool in the box, is this really what the problem is? Are these people the school children who thought it was OK to throw all their waste packaging on to the ground despite there being bins available , Do they grow up to be fly tippers?
The 200 tonnes of asbestos that was left by the roadside in four trailers cost the Council £200,000 to clear up and make safe.
I’ve no doubt that the people who dumped it feel they are somehow working outside the box, they weren’t going to pay anyone for “processing” the waste. Why should they? They’d done the job of removing it from wherever it was and now someone has a nice shiny new building. They rebelled against a system and sneakily dumped it where the Council will have to foot the bill.
Perhaps , we need to look at this a different way. Perhaps Councils’ and Governments should advertise that rather than fly-tip, if the expense of “processing” is for whatever reason felt to be too high, contact them and see what can be done.
I’m sure in the long run that would be cheaper than having to clear up the mess randomly , investigate criminality and also encourage people to look after there environment. Prevention is better than cure. I think this would be a lot less expensive than having to clear up rubbish after it has been dumped and also the significant cost of prosecuting a case even if it can be proven. Not to mention the damage to the environment and wildlife.
As I say fly-tippers don’t look the brightest tools in the box , perhaps they need help. It might save money in the long run.
Thanks to Luis Reyes at AutoNotion (sorry the Headline is too long)
So to process all this data generated by us we need servers. Servers need electricity and water( to cool them down). Microsoft trialed having a server in the coastal waters off Scotland which worked well for them, using the surrounding sea water to cool the servers and an efficient wind powered electricity supply. The underwater tube was hermetically sealed and pumped full of nitrogen to prevent any oxidisation.
The trial was a success , but the project was scrapped as the concern was how do they access the tube when things go wrong and possibly the practicalities of having an underwater server in a busy New York waterway with all the associated paperwork in getting access. The environmentalists were concerned by “heating up the sea water”.
Enter the Chinese who have built a full scale version of an underwater Server closely based on the Microsoft Pilot and seem to be having some success with it.
The problem remains that Servers on land require, a massive water supply ( for cooling all our hot ideas!) and a small power station requirement for electricity. Not to mention all the concrete used to house the server.
I thank Autonotion for explaining the situation so well,it seems sad that the Servers use so much energy and perhaps we need to understand better what use they are being put to and is it worth destroying the planet?
Thanks to Tommy Begley and Motorcycle News for the Headline.
Sad to say, despite the Ace Cafe being in a superb location in London on the North Circular Road , accessible to many bikers and a Legendary Biker’s Caf, (reopened thirty years ago by Mark Wilsmore )
Since the 17th July this year,it’s had to close its doors at 6pm on Friday evening.
This is a great shame as on a Friday night how brilliant it must have been to gather at this iconic venue and meet up with other bikers over nice food and drink. To sit and watch the world go by in their very boring cars.
Unfortunately, due to irresponsible rat run bikers taking to the North Circular until the early hours and causing distress and potential fatalities Mark had to make the decision that he could no longer open on Friday Evening as the risks to his customers and other road users on the North Circular was too great.
Rossi and Barry Sheene have said that racing on bikes on public roads is a risk too great to take. Stick to the Race Days, with their run offs and no stone walls , barriers or telegraph poles and enjoy your coffee and bacon rolls on a sunny evening. So the Ace Cafe can get back to being a brilliant place to go on a Friday night in London.
The Creamfields Festival is held on land owned by the Daresbury Estate, about half an hours drive from Liverpool. I read a blog about someone who has been to the festival four times and recommends it. It’s electronic dance music , House and Tech House, Techno and Trance.
The Daresbury Estate is quite an extensive area, however, in true Modern Day Pirate Fashion, the drug dealers who wanted to “supply” at the festival buried their various stashes in the land where the festival would be held, presumably in the middle of the night over a period of months before the festival started with the intention of unearthing them when the festival was running, thus getting by the strict security at the Festival.
They were foiled by the Police and presumably sniffer dogs who must have had a whale of the time running across the land and finding stashes of buried drugs. The Police with the usual dry humour have said that if anyone wants to reclaim their property to please contact them. The fact that these stashes have been found has probably saved someone’s life, drugs are so dangerous and unpredictable.
Thanks to Dan Sales and BBC Online News for the Headline.
A father and his two sons were on the ascent up to the summit of Mount Fuji when his 7 year old complained that he was tired.
The father in what he described “as a rash decision” decided to continue with his older son and leave the child sitting on a bench with some snacks and a soft drink. The bench was located at a height of 6500ft (over 2000metres) and conditions were foggy and rainy.
The father continued his hike and was three hours hike away when the Police caught up with him and after eight hours he was reunited with his “tired and fussy seven year old”.
The poor dad was probably coerced into going further by the elder son who was probably glad to see the back of the little “whiner”. The dad was caught between a stone and a hard place. Glad it all ended well though.
Thanks to Danielle Herbert and BBC News Online for the Headline
For one little boy a shoe box with gifts in it for Christmas , prepared and sent nearly 40 years ago helped him so much with the trauma of having to leave his home Country of Croatia and move to Sweden , because of the conflict in the Balkans. The boy never forgot that kindness.
All he had was a photo of the two children who had prepared the box and their location written on the back of the photograph, “Mold in Wales”. He put a message out on Facebook through a Mold Community Group and this time social media proved a positive influence and the family who had sent the box recognised their picture and got in touch with the boy who is 40 years old now. The children who sent the box have grown up now and it’s their children who want to keep the tradition of sending shoe box gifts going as they can see what a difference it can make.
Thanks to John Bowden and the Independent Online for the Headline.
I never really trusted polls and now even less. Apparently the candidate who really had no chance and was a poor third in the election anyway. Commissioned a poll to say they were a lot more popular than they were and to make things worse the pollster fiddled the figures to make it look like the candidate James Fishback looked more popular than he was.
Have no fear James Fishback was not elected and also The Polling Aggregator (whoever they are ) said it would not use the particular poll company in its analytics in the future( would we know?)
thenotsomightyom 