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There has a been a lot of talk today about the frequency of rubbish collection in the UK. Apparently, many Councils are moving to alternate week collections: recyclables one week, and ordinary household rubbish the next. There have been a lot of complaints about this, with people saying that their bins smell or that they are getting maggot infestations. Inevitably, the Daily Mail has weighed in with the “The Great Dustbin Revolt”.

Personally, I think it’s revolting that people throw so much away, particularly food waste, which is what must be generating most of the smell and maggots. I know that not everyone has the space to compost food waste, but buying only as much as you need would be a start. If more councils offered a food/green waste collection along with other recyclables (with firmly sealing containers), a twice weekly collection shouldn’t be a problem at all. Another approach might be to offer a weekly collection, but charge by weight for non-recyclable waste, offering a credit for recyclable waste. I suspect that would focus people’s minds on reducing their waste output rather effectively.

We get a weekly household waste collection, with a fortnightly recycling collection (paper, cans and glass), but we fill about half a dustbin sack a week now that we compost our food scraps and green waste. The vast majority of what we throw away is plastic-like stuff that we can’t recycle locally, and some of which is deposited on our front drive by passing littering kids (grr…).

Japan has a fantastic (though rather complicated) recycling system because they have very little land available for landfill. Just because we’ve got a bit more land, I don’t see why we should waste it all by burying our rubbish.

I was casually reading Mac Net Journal yesterday (always an interesting read), when my eyes fell upon an entry containing the result of the day’s Tour de France stage, which I hadn’t yet seen. Eeek. I tried to tear my eyes away, but my brain had already digested the news—it’s a shame it doesn’t work so efficiently when I’m reading academic papers. It also made me wish my brain had an ‘Undo’ button. Anyway, the Stage was a really exciting one, and made me realize what a unique sport cycling is.

If you haven’t yet seen Stage 15 and want to, don’t under any circumstances click the ‘More…’ button below.

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This year’s Tour de France is turning into a cracker. Most of the stages have been really exciting, with brave break-away challenges being pulled back at the very last moment. Watching once such recapture a few days ago, it occurred to me to wonder what the peloton sounds like. You don’t get any sense of the sound from the TV coverage, but I imagine that if you are desperately clinging to a slender lead, the metallic hiss of chain on chainring and rumble of tyre on tarmac of the 200-odd bikes bearing down on you must feel like being pursued by a huge and hungry python.

Those Tour de France riders really are made of steel. Tyler Hamilton is continuing to compete despite a broken collar bone, another had a high fever and Jimmy Casper had to ride in a neck brace because of a severe neck injury. Jimmy was interviewed after the stage and asked if it wasn’t really painful cycling with a neck injury. Instead of yelling, “Well what do you think!”, as I would have done, he just shrugged his shoulders in a rather Gallic way and said, “We are not girls.”

Well, they may shave their legs¹, but I think we can definitely say that they aren’t girly.

¹“It helps the wounds to heal when we get road rash injuries”. Yeah, right…

Just about the only sport I bother to watch is cycling: more specifically the Tour de France. Before we go any further, my interest has nothing at all to do with the plethora of rather fit men wearing tight lycra. Honestly. I think that anyone who does the Tour is practically certifiable. It’s nearly 3,500 km of hell over three weeks, some of it up gradients that most people would only contemplate attempting with the help of ropes and oxygen masks. One competitor had to pull out before the tour because he was undergoing surgery for a saddle sore. The very idea of a saddle sore so severe that it requires surgery makes me wince.

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We’ve just been watching Jon Snow on Channel 4 news interviewing Alastair Campbell. For those of you not based in the UK, Campbell—an un-elected Press Secretary for the Labour party—is complaining loudly about the neutrality of the BBC and their defence correspondent, Andrew Gilligan. Gilligan reported that souces inside the intelligence service were unhappy about the Iraq dossier being beefed up (or ‘sexed up’ as the media seems to have it) with some rather dodgy information at the last minute, to make the case for war stronger.

Alastair Campbell seems to be acting like a complete bully over this. If he’s so sure that the report was inaccurate, why doesn’t he sue the BBC for libel? Perhaps because he knows that the case wouldn’t stand up in court. He even said that the ‘file on that correspondent is growing’. What’s that—a threat? “I’ll set MI5 on you.”

All through the interview, we were shouting at the TV, urging Jon Snow on: “Get ‘im, Jon, go on!” How Jon Snow stopped himself actually hitting Alastair Campbell is beyond me.

Wildlife seems to be fighting back: after the lives blighted by otters allegations, comes the ‘family besieged by swans’ shocker. This story was on page 1 of our local paper, the Oxford Times:

Residents of a canal-side community say they are being kept under virtual siege by a family of swans. A pair of swans, followed by their six cygnets, have been pecking at cars and front doors, intimidating residents, terrifying children and leaving a mess in gardens in Lane Close, Kidlington. One couple visiting their daughter in the street said they were trapped in their car while the swans circled the vehicle and pecked on the door. Another resident keeps her front door locked because they try to pull the door handle down with their beaks and push their way inside.

I shouldn’t make fun of people’s fears (I once got mugged by a duck), but I’m afraid that I laughed like a mad woman. I have this great image of a film trailer. That gravelly-voiced man who does all the action and horror film trailers starts to speak. “It started with an innocent trip to the park, but now innocence has turned to terror. [Cut to image of a glass front door, with a silhouette of a swan on the other side]. Now, they’re coming to you—and this time, they want the whole loaf. [Handle on door is rattled menacingly, cue ‘Psycho’-like strings].”

I read a very sad article in Thursday’s Guardian today (yes, I know it’s Sunday already – give me a break). The number of Gaelic speakers has declined 15% in the last 10 years to less than 60,000. Once it falls below 50,000, it will be officially declared dead. I love the Gaelic language. When I lived for a summer on a boat in the Isle of Mull, my only aural entertainment (apart from the sea, seals, deer, curlews and oystercatchers – which were wonderful) was Gaelic language talk radio, a tape of Billy Connolly and a recording of Faure’s Requiem. It was an odd but interesting mixture.

I only know the merest smattering of Gaelic words, but I loved just listening to the music of it. I even have some ‘Teach Yourself Gaelic’ tapes somewhere, but I’m the world’s worst linguist, so I’ve never got very far with it. Perhaps I’ll give it another go; I might be able to keep the numbers at 50,001.

Mike Russell of the Scottish National Party said:

“Language expresses where you live and your angle to the world; it is a way of seeing. There are things we say that you can only express in a certain language. It has huge impact. Are we saying we can preserve a building here and a bird there but we can’t preserve that?”

It’s not often—-or ever—-that I post about political matters here. This is partly because I know that I wouldn’t do it justice, but also because I think that political/moral issues are just too complicated to discuss in a short piece of writing. But this statement by Tony Blair really made me go, “What!”:

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The recent snow chaos, with motorists stuck in their cars for 20 hours, might have been tailor-made to showcase the Great British Stereotype. Namely:

• British infrastructure, creaky at the best of times, inevitably buckles under the strain of totally unexpected events—such as a snow storm that was clearly indicated on all of the TV and Radio weather forecasts.
• Despite the fact most conversations between British people are principally to do with the weather in some way, we have a fundamental inability to cope with any meteorological conditions more extreme than a light drizzle.
• ‘Plucky’ Brits stuck for 20 hours in their freezing cars on the M11 will always display a ‘Blitz spirit’, making jokes and cups of tea for one another and singing “Roll Out The Barrel”. Or so we are told. My arse.

So, Winston Churchill won the Greatest Britons poll in the end. A fairly worthy winner I suppose, but frankly, I don’t see the point. For one thing, I don’t really see how you can compare such a varied bunch of people at all and come out with a single measure of “greatness”. Are we judging people in the context of their time, or ours? Elizabeth I was certainly a strong and intelligent woman, and it’s nothing short of miraculous that she even managed to survive for 45 years, let alone keep power for that length of time. But today, that feat would be much less remarkable.

In the end, it seemed to come down to who appealed most to the public (which can surely be the only explanation for the appearance of Princess Diana in the top ten). In other words, just another popularity contest.

So, in the end Gunther von Hagens didn’t get arrested at his little freakshow, I mean educational event.

Should he have been arrested? It’s true that the the average member of the public (if there is such a thing) has a shocking lack of knowledge about his or her own body. This must contribute to health problems and to exacerbate fear when something goes wrong. If a doctor tells you that your spleen is damaged and may have to be removed - and you don’t know what the hell your spleen is or whether you can live without it - it’s very frightening. So better knowledge of anatomy and medicine can only be a good thing.

But… It’s obvious to anyone with a brain (still in their skull and not removed with a hacksaw and a spoon) that von Hagens was in this for the publicity, whatever he says. The “Bodyworlds” logo on his gown was a bit of a give away, to be honest. And that can’t be right.

So, it looks like the Fire Brigade are almost certain to go on strike in the next few weeks. I can’t say that I’m surprised, or, for that matter, unsympathetic. They get paid pretty poorly for a dangerous and difficult job, and they’ve lost patience. I’d be amazed if they do get a 40% rise, but it pays to aim high, I suppose. House prices being what they are in the South, public sector workers have no hope at all of buying a family home (nor have I, for that matter). I saw one news piece some time ago, where a firefighter was sleeping in his car because his family home was a 300 mile round trip away - an insane situation for anyone, let alone someone with such a critical job.

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So Saddam got 100% backing for another seven years, eh? With 100% turnout of 11.5 million voters? Yeah, right. A BBC correspondent on Today said that when asked whether they thought that the result was slightly laughable, they said that it must be right because nobody would vote against him. Impeccable logic.

Love this though…