The Good
 
Manchester played a major role in the industrial revolution a couple of hundred years ago and is due to do so again in the technological and environmental revolution that is picking up momentum. It has agreed a local industry strategy with the Government which will see the region become carbon neutral by 2038, the national target being 2050. It plans to be at the heart of the digital and green technology industries in the UK. Hopefully, we will see other cities and regions following suite and even trying to beat Manchester!
 
Another good…
 
A few decades ago, the EU wanted to say we couldn’t call chocolate made in Britain chocolate, but instead call it vegerat! Not sure what they would say if we were still members of the EU if, no when, Mondelez International, who own Cadbury, succeed in creating healthy chocolate. They are ploughing £4.75m into research at their science centre in Reading in a bid to create low sugar chocolate products and introduce more fibre into the products, while retaining the appeal, even seductive quality, of chocolate.
 
The Bad
 
You might think otherwise from recent postings, but I don’t hate social media and I’m not one for constant legislation, banning or controlling this and that. Fake news was around long before President Trump and I don’t subscribe to the endless conspiracy theories that were in circulation long before social media, but we now hear that LinkedIn is being used by foreign spies. The British, German and French governments are all warning us that foreign powers are creating fake profiles on LinkedIn and that even the pictures of the non-existent people are computer-created to draw us in. LinkedIn say that a fake profile breaks the conditions of use, but so what. If something is exposed, it will be taken down only to be replaced by another. What recourse will there ever be and to whom? George Orwell’s watch was wrong!
 
Another bad…
 
So, half of supermarket packaging can’t be recycled, that’s not good, but you cannot change the world over night. At least the message has been received and things are changing. Yes, organic carrots are sold wrapped in cheap plastic, but there is a much bigger problem. Most council tips have great recycling records, but why? The answer is easy, just look at the vast number of categories to put things in. I have commercial experience in the leisure sector and we had a lot more categories than you get at home. Different councils have different categories and mix different things together. I have argued for years that the concept is good, and we must do it, but we are just not geared up to make it work. That’s why masses of stuff that has been dutifully segregated by all of us ends up in landfill sites, abroad. Poland has been taking at least 800,000 tonnes for years, but I think is now cutting back or may have stopped. Even Malaysia and China have said they have been taking stuff for landfill but won’t do it anymore.
 
We need to get it right, but it looks as if we will have to find a lot more landfill sites in the country. Stuff destined for recycling will end up in landfill because it is contaminated with other recycling stuff. The most bizarre thing I have heard on the subject of contamination is that you can’t put shredded paper in with other paper!
 
The Mad
 
The entire world of politics might be considered mad at the moment, but Chuka Umunna gets the gold star! Chuka was rising star in the Labour Party who put his name forward for the Leadership election and then withdrew because of media interest in his then girlfriend, now wife, and her family. It was only after he withdrew that Jeremy Corbyn joined the race! I interviewed him a couple of years ago at the London Grill Club and when I asked him about standing for leadership again he came out with all the tried and tested loyalty quotes, even when I said that Corbyn was 30 years older than him, so it was likely at some point there would be a vacancy for leadership! Not for me to say whether the media interest is right or wrong, as I said then, but it is naïve to say it’s not fair and should not be allowed, as I also said then.
 
So, a few months ago, unhappy at the Corbyn Labour Party, as indeed are many of my long-standing socialist friends, he ups sticks and is a founding father of Change UK. Now, having been around a few years, I thought it was a futile, but sincere, gesture by all those involved and doomed to failure. I remember, as if it were yesterday, the Gang of Four, all of whom were political heavyweights and they failed, so what hope did Change UK actually have? I put this to Lord Lester at the London Grill Club recently, the former human rights lawyer who did so much to get the legislation passed, who said, and he knew Roy Jenkins well having worked with him for years, that the Gang of Four might have succeeded were it not for the Falklands War. A fair debating point, but I still think they would have failed.
 
But Chuka has now decided to pack up his toys again and join the Lib Dems, which is where the Gang of Four went out to pasture! They were the Dems! Of course, we have had all the tried and tested phrases being trotted out again, but come on Chuka. The country voted leave and he was a remainer imploring everyone to stay in and improve the EU from within. So why didn’t he do that in the Labour Party? He says he has no ambition to lead the Lib Dems and missed the membership cut off to get a vote in the forthcoming leadership election, but on the simple facts of life expectancy, he had the opportunity to have a crack at leading the Labour Party. Corbyn, Blair, Smith, Kinnock, Foot and Wilson all made the Labour Party in their images, and it was different every time.
 
Madness, but he showed a sense of humour when I asked him about whether he preferred to be driven by a driverless car or Jeremy Clarkson, and you can see it here.
 
And finally…
 
Why would you fly if you owned a train line that went to where you wanted to go? You might argue, at a pinch, time, but is it really much quicker? It turns out that Network Rail has a policy of taking the cheapest route from A to B, so if a plane is cheaper they fly. A flight from Cardiff to Anglesey can be as low as £19.99, but a train ticket is £84. On a bargain deal, if available, it still costs £32.50. Now, I know that the track and the trains themselves are owned by different people, but it’s not what I would truly call an arm’s length transaction. The train operators have to use Network Rail’s tracks, they can’t take an alternative route. Network Rail can’t let the track out to someone else. Only in rush hour are trains ever full, so wouldn’t it make sense for Network Rail to have a deal with the operators on price, a sort of private John Lewis standard, so that the money at least stays within the railway family?

​The Good
 
The largest growth in people using the internet for the first time are aged between 65 and 74! As much as 47 per cent of people over 75 are now using the internet too, up from 20 per cent seven years ago! Many folk my age have been using the web for work for years and have had little or no choice in doing so, but those who didn’t need to use it for work are less likely to use it personally. It now appears this is changing. How much of that use is to keep in touch with grandchildren I wonder? It’s far better than social media. Only in Luxembourg and Denmark you’ll find more people between the ages of 16 and 74 regularly using the internet than in the UK.
 
Another good…
 
Well, I can’t say I’ve ever really been a fan of Madonna. I like some of her music and respect her talent and hard work though. Without doubt she has used and milked social media for all it is worth, including Instagram which she uses often. Now, perhaps after realising her daughter’s vulnerability and risk on the social media site, she has criticised Instagram. What do they say about poachers and gamekeepers? Anything and anyone that helps clean up the social media sites and protect the kids deserves a cheer!
 
The Bad
 
Have you ever wondered why we hear of so many people suffering from food allergies these days? Indeed, maybe we even suffer ourselves. If so, you probably have to assume that the stereotype explanation for so many things these days is that we are just less inhibited or more aware, but that may not be the case. Research at the University of Naples has found a link between people with food allergies and sugary, fatty substances under their skin. Between two to seven per cent of adults now suffer from food allergies, five times as many as 20 years ago. Some say it has something to do with the immune system, they call it hygiene hypothesis. The sugary fats build up under the skin and causes the gut to leak. The most likely culprit is junk food.
 
 Another bad…
 
Staying on the subject of danger and food, there’s been an outbreak of listeria in hospital sandwiches. Three people died initially, but that has now risen to five and over 40 NHS Trusts are on alert following the outbreak. Those who died were at the Manchester Royal Infirmary and Aintree Hospital in Liverpool. Listeria is unpleasant, but normally will not seriously affect healthy people. The sandwiches came from The Good Food Chain who developed a special range called ‘Whole Lotta Good’ specifically for hospitals. Obviously, they buy in the ingredients. Soil is a common source of listeria, but it is usually killed by cooking. Most sandwiches will contain salad though, and the listeria can find its way into meat, cheese and pate. It was pate over 30 years ago that caused the last serious outbreak and one of the problems is that once it is in the ‘system’, it is easily spread by utensils and cold temperatures don’t kill it.
 
The Mad
 
Does this qualify as mad? Perhaps not, but I love it and it’s not a normal sort of experiment. 157 people were asked by the Crossmodal Research Laboratory in Oxford to each sit in six different rooms painted different colours. These were dark blue, coral, olive green, mustard yellow, pink and purple. They were asked which the most comfortable room was, and which made them feel the warmest. The rooms were all at a set fixed 18 degrees centigrade. The outcome? Half felt most comfortable in the coral room but a third actually said they were warmer in the olive green room! So, you could save £270 a year on heating if you paint the rooms olive green! Well, as someone who did that in my hall 15 years ago and is a devotee and disciple to the power of the mind, I say great!
 
And finally…
 
Now, as a life member of the dyslectic club, which has some very distinguished members, I welcomed the red lines, blue lines and green lines that arrived as part of the great technological revolution of computerisation. I actually think I have learnt how to spell better as a result and even use better grammar. I remember in the early days of text, which I rarely use now, how annoying the autocorrection was, because it was often totally wrong and made a nonsense of what was being written… and I’d miss it!
 
I suspect President Trump may be dyslectic, though I’ve never seen any reference to it, but he Tweets a lot. Although, I can’t believe that he actually types it all himself and suspect he dictates it. Now, I know I have a low opinion of staff ability, born of bitter experience, but at that level I’d expect people to see what the autopilot does. The Princes of Whales gaff was almost certainly autocorrection. It was missed by staff and took 25 minutes to correct. It also suggests that Wales isn’t in the President’s Twitter dictionary! I suppose we should be grateful for the fact that we no longer live in times when such an incidence would be seen as a gross insult and lead to a diplomatic incident or worse. It is mad!

​The Good
 
We have heard a lot in the last sixty years about everyday products that have been a spin-off of space exploration, and they have made life better. But now we hear of something dubbed ‘Earth Scan’, that will enable doctors to identify bowel cancer much quicker. I say space technology, while it comes from there, it is actually artificial intelligence, or AI. We live in incredible times for scientific development, especially in AI, and the way it is going to develop over the next 20 years is mind blowing. There is a fear of it on the streets through. Now, in 20 years I might be dead, so some will say it’s easy for me to say this, but I think it’s great and we should embrace it, not fear it.
 
Another good…
 
I don’t know what I weighed when I was born, and my parents have been dead for 30 years, so I can’t ask. But I know it would have been more than 8.6 ounces! No, that’s not a mistype for 8lb 6oz… it is 8.6 ounces!
 
The family from San Diego want to remain anonymous, good for them, but they agreed that the hospital could release redacted details of the girl’s birth last December. She was given an hour to live having been born almost twenty-three and a half weeks into her mother’s pregnancy, but she just kept breathing and growing and at five months old went home a healthy 5lb baby girl.
 
I suspect it’s down to a mixture of a child with a natural positive instinct, great medical care, dedicated staff, and advanced medical procedures.
 
The Bad
 
I hesitated to write on this theme again, but it is only when we are all acting, and screaming, that anything will be done. Social media has much to contribute to life, but I seriously wonder, and always have, if it really does have a net benefit. True, I use it commercially, but not as an individual. We read about people learning how to make bombs, how to self-harm and being encouraged to do so, groomed by perverts and exposed to numerous other damaging scenarios. The social media companies claim to be doing something about it, indeed one cannot deny that they are, but how seriously? I’m not going to hit you with a mass of statistics, just look on Ofcom’s website for those. Around 80% of adults think that Facebook is the worst social media offender and about the same percentage of kids aged between 12 and 15 had potentially harmful experiences online in the last year.
 
Although falling in popularity, Facebook is also seen as the largest source of fake news.
 
Another bad…
 
I guess kids from poorer backgrounds see two routes to fame and wealth these days; pop music and football. I’ve got nothing against either but football, and sport in general, does so much good for all kids generally and not just the very lucky few. So, I was saddened to read while we were in Scotland for our Land’s End to John o’ Groats trip, that over 100 council-owned football pitches have closed since 2010. So, I looked further and it’s no better in the rest of Britain where another 610 council-owned football pitches had closed. We’ll no doubt be told it is all a fallout of the austerity years, but I suspect more than that. The lure of selling off a prime site for development will be powerful, in any economic times. We need green space in our towns and cities and I marvel when I walk, which I do often, in my beloved London at just how much green space there is. When you see it from the air coming in to land it is incredible. I’ve been involved in creating sporting facilities, cricket and football, as the spin-off of housing development, small housing development, when I lived in a village in Somerset. You can use a ‘Section 106’ to make the developer fund a replacement pitch out of town, but that will reduce the value of the land being sold. Councils have no problem doing that when the vendor is from the private sector, but it appears it’s not the same when they are the vendor, the beneficiary of the gain!
 
The Mad
 
Now it’s not very often you hear me singing the praises of the French, especially President Macron! But he’s had a great idea and is being slagged off by the establishment for it! He wants to invite young, free-thinking, new-thinking architects to submit design ideas for the Notre Dame. Established French architects and the Paris Council have ridiculed the idea, although Britain’s Norman Foster, who is now 83, seems to be the favourite!
 
Who knows what ideas the young might have, but it is total madness not to allow them to express them. I have always seen the French as a nation of socialist peasants, some say I’m wrong and maybe I am, but this sort of behaviour suggests not! Let the young be part of the process! You don’t have to accept their ideas and they will benefit from the experience.
 
And finally…
 
Now, this is wonderful madness and I might sell my washing machine and get into this business. A street in a gentrified area of Brooklyn, New York, is abuzz with all sorts of designer shops and restaurants, but now also has a slightly different laundrette. The brain child of Corinna Williams, the premises has a café and flower patio. The soft drinks are free and there’s film screenings – you can even sing along to karaoke! There’s another in Manhattan East Village that is an English-themed bar and laundrette offering Old Specked Hen!
 
There are more coming… Love it!

​The Good
 
I’ve written a lot about mental health and devoted half an hour every week to it on my radio show Faversham Natters in January, as well as appearing as a guest on many other radio stations. It is a simple subject and a yet complicated one. We are learning the great value of talking, particularly when it comes to us men. The New Zealand Prime Minister is leading the way having introduced the world’s first ‘wellbeing budget’. Applauded by some but criticised by others, the measures were included in the first budget since the murder of 51 people in March at a mosque in Christchurch, which also included additional funding for the intelligence agencies. Obviously, it has a gimmick value, but let’s not belittle the fact that it has us talking about the issues of mental health and will help to de-stigmatize it.
 
Another good…
 
Of course there are those who try to explain away the recent success of the British economy; in part they will be right that stock piling against a no deal Brexit has had a positive impact, but that doesn’t explain it all. Yes, the Chancellor is right to say the economy is “robust”; yes, it is right to be cautious about the future, but growth in the construction industry, which is absolutely crucial to the success of the economy, isn’t Brexit driven, although, yes, the decline in car production is concerning. But I suspect that the car-buying public and corporates are also changing their buying habits. Cars don’t rust as they used to, engines, gearboxes and other mechanical bits last longer which is why manufacturers are offering longer and longer warranty periods as a competitive feature. I know several businesses who in the last five years have changed their policy from changing cars every three years to every four years. That’s good because it shows that the quality and reliability are getting better.
 
But back to the main theme, despite all the political chaos, the economy is remarkably resilient – just think what will happen when we know where we are on Brexit. That great British ‘get on with it’ spirit will flourish, whatever the prevailing wind!
 
The Bad
 
We have been on our Land’s End to John o’ Groats journey for over four weeks now, as Tracy cycles to raise money for the UK Sepsis Trust. We reached Glasgow on 23rd May, so for the last ten days I have been reading papers that have a Scottish slant. Some of it is scary!
 
I have written before about too many people going to university to get sometimes useless and meaningless degrees. There has not been enough emphasis in higher and further education in technology, so I recently welcomed the government’s initiative in allocating addition funds for technical teaching. The Bank of Scotland Consumer Digital Index tells us that 48% of Scots don’t have the skills to deal with digital problems. Now, it’s not a case of old folk not being able to use the internet, we are talking about young people not having the basic digital skills employees need them to have to do a job in the modern world. Maybe they are not so social media driven in Scotland, or maybe that is all they can do. I’ve read that people with digital skills earn about £12,500 a year more than those without – I’d be off to night school tonight!
 
Another bad…
 
So, President Trump has a favourite, maybe one and a bit favourites, in the race to become leader of the Tory Party and Prime Minister. It is totally outrageous that he expresses any opinion. The role of an elected President in a democracy combines the role of our Head of State, the Queen, and our political/executive leader, the Prime Minister. Of course, the Queen would never meddle in the affairs of another nation, but can you imagine the outcry if she did? And who would be likely to shout loudest in this country? The Republicans… Not only is Trump America’s national leader, but he’s also a Republican!
 
As you know, I’m a great one for the ‘KISS’ principle; Keep It Simple Stupid, and attitudes on little things being an insight into attitudes in bigger things. Something I find both annoying, actually rude, and giving insight into people’s attitude is when people walk into a room and turn lights up, down, on or off, adjust TV settings, or alter curtains without saying anything. It’s meddling, pure and simple. But hold on a minute! We know Trump is not universally popular in this country. We know he is a schemer, maybe he is reverse selling by saying he favours a candidate he actually wants to see lose knowing some people will do the opposite of what he says!
 
What a twisted world we live in!
 
The Mad
 
Someone has conducted a survey on how long it takes drivers to start arguing with passengers in cars! And the answer? 18 minutes! Is that back street driving, road rage, directional issues or just, going back to my bit on Trump, just another example of the increase in the disease of meddling? And often meddling in ignorance! I’d be interested how long it takes in other environments, but whilst this sounds like a mad piece of research at first, it may have something to contribute to road safety. I’d say arguments in cars and talking to people in the back seat are as, or more, dangerous than being on the phone. Maybe it should be illegal to talk in cars?!
 
And finally…
 
The Dutch first brought gin into everyday use in about 1700, selling it in pharmacies as a treatment for gout and stomach complaints. It wasn’t quite as we know it now and people didn’t like the taste, so the juniper berry was added, which was also thought to have medicinal benefit.
 
Now, a Dutch professor of molecular astrophysics, Ewine van Dishoeck, tells us that there are huge clouds of alcohol in space and that they helped start life! They think that the activity which created life on earth didn’t start here after all, but in giant gas clouds way out in the universe. They have discovered alcohol which has a role in creating proteins found in antifreeze, acetone and nail varnish remover among other things. Ah, I hear you ask, is this a trace or something more? Something serious? I’m writing in Thurso, Scotland, as we near the end of LEJOG, so it seems apt to use a local calculator. One small gas cloud will contain the alcohol equivalent of thousands of billions of bottles of Scotch!
 
You may remember my piece about Mars, the red planet, being the ideal climate for growing a specialist white wine grape. Now it appears that there really is a Scotch mist way up above us, that far from being rare is very plentiful. It’s life, Jock, but not as we know it!