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A personal weblog with photographs and comments. Quiet ramblings, quite rambling...

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• Oh no! John! - (2)
  
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• Turn cash into less cash - (6)
  

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Working on a Saturday sucks, especially when the computer network and systems fail to come up and (after several hours) you have to reschedule the work until the following day.

Another nasty Friday evening today as I and several thousand other commuters faced long delays on the M25.

Here are a few interesting links: A visitor to Oxted posts some photos; while someone else went into Oxted and was attacked by chavs. Mmm. Here’s some random London graffiti.

I may be posting irregularly over the coming week - the power supply adaptor for my personal laptop has broken and I am in the throws of ordering a replacement from Dell.

The above video shows Caroline Lucas MEP (Green Party) addressing tens of thousands of demonstrators at a central London national Stop the War rally. She called on the government to scrap plans to replace Trident and withdraw UK troops from Iraq. P

I took this photograph in the same place as this one last year.

In unrelated news, Mark Taylor highlights that the local brewery Westerham Brewery has gone holistic:

In summary (from their website), the Westerham Brewery state that they have launched one of the only Fairtrade beers available in draught form (South East of England only - elsewhere it is in bottles).  The William Wilberforce Freedom Ale was launched during Fairtrade fortnight (beginning on 26th February).  The William Wilberforce Freedom Ale is made with Fairtrade Demerara sugar from Fairtrade plantations in Malawi, southeast Africa. More than 20% of the dry weight ingredients are made up of the sugar, which permits the beer to carry the Fairtrade mark. There is a local link to William Wilberforce, because the anti-slave trade campaigner was friends with William Pitt, who lived near Westerham. A local oak tree which they met under is now known as the Wilberforce Oak. 

The release of this ale is timed to coincide with the 300th anniversary of the abolition of slave trading in the UK.  Moreover the Westerham Brewery is concerned with the issue of slavery today.  They state on their website:

People trafficking is one of the worlds fastest growing illegal industries, devastating the lives of men, women and children who are taken by deception or coercion from their homes for exploitation. The Westerham Brewery supports Stop the Traffik and will make a donation from the sales proceeds of the beer to support their work in fighting slavery today.

Stop The Traffik is a global coalition of organizations, communities & individuals raising awareness of people trafficking & promoting practical action through a global declaration, media, events, celebrities & projects around the world through 2006 & 2007. http://www.stopthetraffik.org.uk

I would just add that when people in the UK think of slavery and people trafficing they tend to think of it happening in far-off third world countries. In actual fact it’s happening closer than you think:

The harsh reality is that Croydon is one of the biggest ‘ports’ for human trafficking in the UK. We want that to stop and we want the people enslaved by this trade in human life to be brought to justice. Everyone has a role to play: men, women, the council, the police, our parliamentary representatives and the media.

Join us in the fight to rid our town of the injustice of slavery that is Human Trafficking.

Pigeons and people behave quite similarly in railway stations. They walk around the concourses, they eat and they make a mess.

My current client is an American multinational, run by a woman. We were talking about her on Friday and some of the managers who have met her said that she is very down to earth and approachable, and not a 1980’s male-clone at all. Rebecca Blood recently blogged about an Economist article about the global glass ceiling. It has some surprises: the Phillipines has the highest percentage of senior management positions held by women (50%). The US is only in 6th position (behind such diverse democracies as Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa).  Britain is in 9th position.

This is La Rucola restaurant in Uxbridge, where we went on Thursday for lunch to say goodbye to one of our client’s employees who resigned to join another company. It is a genuine Italian restaurant whichi s found at the base of a residential apartment block.

Tonight Bluemeanie and I took Gogo and Popple to see Miney perform with SCYWO at the finalé of the Farnham Festival.  The other performers at the concert were the Farnham Youth Choir, and the Alton College Jazz Band.  The Farnham Youth Choir’s performance included the world premiere of Jonathan Dove’s “It sounded as if the Streets were running”, commissioned for the choir by Andreas Klatt.) It was based on the American poet Emily Dickenson’s poem of the same name:

It sounded as if the Streets were running
And then — the Streets stood still —
Eclipse — was all we could see at the Window
And Awe — was all we could feel.

By and by — the boldest stole out of his Covert
To see if Time was there —
Nature was in an Opal Apron,
Mixing fresher Air.

This is my youngest cousin Maxine. She’s a second cousin, and is the baby in the photograph, not the man! Lately when I heard Joan Baez singing Dylan’s Forever Young I thought of Maxine:

Forever Young

May God bless and keep you always,
May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung,
May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous,
May you grow up to be true,
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you.
May you always be courageous,
Stand upright and be strong,
May you stay forever young.

May your hands always be busy,
May your feet always be swift,
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift.
May your heart always be joyful,
May your song always be sung,
May you stay forever young.

I suppose that a boerelf is a farming elf. Sort of like Dobby but a country cousin. I found the grafitti scratched onto this railway carriage on the Metropolitan Line in London earlier this evening (on the way to a work function). I had assumed it must be an Afrikaans speaking vandal who was responsible, but now think boerelf could also be a Dutch word. According to Yahoo there’s even a boerelf in China.

One of my clients is Xerox who have recently adopted the commendable aim of producing zero landfill waste at their Uxbridge site by the end of 2008.  A week or so ago the banner above appeared.  Xerox already has an extensive recycling program. According to a 2004 article:

Totalling up the waste saved from landfill, the energy not consumed, the air and water pollution prevented and the injuries avoided, Xerox has marked the progress its environment, health and safety programme in its 10th annual progress report. Among the results cited in the 2004 report Xerox said it has kept more than 680 million kilograms of waste out of landfills since 1991 by taking back and re-manufacturing copiers and printers that have reached the end of their lives and by reusing or recycling parts from them. That weight is equivalent to a line of more than 88,000 school buses stretching for 550 miles claimed Xerox.

Last year alone, the company has claimed to have prevented 73 million kilograms of materials from entering landfills, through re-use and recycling of Xerox equipment and supplies.

The great thing about recycling schemes is that they are measured and set a standard for continuous improvement.  This week new labels appeared on the existing recycling bins throughout the site.



Xerox has a three bin recycling system, it is being expanded into a mixed recycling programme. The three bin system remains, but the “paper” bin is now used to recycle a wider variety of items, including all types of paper, newspapers, magazines, aluminium cans, glass and plastic bottles and cardboard.  The bin for items for the landfill is also labelled as such.  The above photograph illustrates the two main bins and gives a sample of the contents. The current bin labels are temporary. Users are being invited to comment on the design of the labelling.

This whole week the recycling company Grundon has put up a display on site and are enthusiastically educating Xerox staff and contractors about the new regime and its aims.  They are handing out promotional items.  The photo below illustrates a section of their display, with one of the Grundon representatives.



I love the name Grundon, it’s so Adamsish or even Rowlinesque.

This little passage between two alleyways reminds me of a maze. 

This afternoon I took Scarlett to a singing lesson a few minutes away from the above house. I had previouisly seen the picture of this house taken 52 years ago and was interested to see what the house would look like now.  The house in question is the one in front of which the red van has parked (illegally) so I could not take an ideal photograph for comparative purposes. I wasn’t even going to post this photo - I am sort of muscling into Fink’s project! 

Here’s the background explanation, and the above photograph on Flickr.

Oh, it was Mothering Sunday today and the BBC had an article about its history, see The fight to copyright Mother’s Day.

This photo was taken at the end of last month and shows a car parked outside my client’s premises one morning. It seems that a truck reversing (or turning) next door smashed into the side of this car causing extensive damage.  At the end of the day I saw the car being towed away.  Click on the photo to see the detail of the damaged window and door.

I have been waiting up for Scarlett and her friend, but she just phoned to say she’s shifting from one Paddy’s day party to another and will only be home at about 2am,. So I’m going to hit the sack ... Just time to point you to the Airship World Conference to be held in Cape Town in January next year. These craft might just be the thing of the future: they are economical, environmentally friendly, can go anywhere, are safe, ...

The photograph above was taken at 7:00 am in December last year (three months ago).  The photograph below was taken in the same place at the same time, but three days ago.

According to a leaflet which came through the door today:

Australia emits 30% more greenhouse cases per capita than the United States.

Tenterden is home of the Kent and East Sussex Railway and the Colonel Stephens Railway Museum.  I visited it on a rainy day last year, and this is some of the footage I shot.

Last night after work I whizzed through London to Surrey Quays to visit The Teasdales, and meet Maxine. I only had my camera phone on me, so my own photos are rubbish and not worth posting here.  It was also Lynette’s birthday so we had a special supper and chatted till late.