Good Health, A Healthy Brain, and Good Connections.

They say that the only way to keep a healthy brain as one gets older is by lots of exercise. Well I do that by walking between 4 and 7 Kms each day.

They say one should also keep a healthy brain by constantly challenging it with new tasks & learning lots of new things. Well I’ve got that well and truly sorted.

They also say that one should get out and have a good social life. That gets much more tricky if a lot of ones closest or oldest friends are scattered around the world. That’s why I like trying to chat on line or by phone. It’s also because a lot of the campaigning work I do is via email, and that’s just not the same.

Plus a few good chats help to counter what might otherwise be a complete feeling of isolation.

[ This is also important in terms of supporting friends who live many miles away & who find it difficult to get out because of their medical condition. ]

These are all aspects of life which I’ve discovered work well for me since my retirement. They also counter the fact that one does not see or communicate with the same people each day at work.

All of which means that I always make such to visit the library & do my shopping on a daily basis. That also means that I’m always able to eat very fresh food.

There is also that aspect of ones life which people forget while young, and that is just how many of the friends one knew may be dead. While other people one may of lost contact with many years ago.

The other aspect of keeping ones brain active is my visiting new places, or revisiting places one has not been to in a long time. That’s known as learning or relearning how to get around various locations, especially as places one once known well do tend to change over the years.

I offer these thoughts as a way of showing just how my mind works.

Bagging Up The Plastic Rubbish.

The plastic problem – Up and until now.

There has been a lot of very worrying news stories of late about plastics in the oceans,

and the problems caused by plastic particulates.

Yet the only solutions to this which ever seem to be mentioned are recycling plastic bottles,

phasing out the use of plastic cups or cutlery, or getting groups of volunteers to go clean up their local beaches.

There has also been a lot of protests about the use of plastic packaging.

This goes hand in glove with trying to persuade the supermarkets to stop selling fruit and vegetables in plastic bags, netting, or containers, by selling them as loose items.

That matches in with the campaign to stop a lot of food waste from occurring.

On the plus side I have noted that some cafes and bars have switched from plastic to biodegradable straws.

The plastic problem – What else we can do.

If we are going to solve problem of all the plastic in the sea, then we need to do much more about this as a society.

One solution will be to switch from plastic to biodegradable rubbish bags. That will mean pushing for them to be made available in all the supermarkets at an affordable price. It would also help if these were to become available via each of the rubbish collecting local authorities.

Cleaning up the plastic pollution is going to take a while to do, but we can do something by trying to cut down the amount of plastics which currently land up inside of plastic rubbish sacks.

Spycops – We Still Need To Know.

The Undercover Policing Inquiry has now cost over Nine Million Pounds, but very little of the information we need to know has been released in to the public domain.

I’m what is known as a Core Participant in the Inquiry. That is because I was subjected to the activities of spycop Bob Lambert, who I knew as Bob Robinson.

Yet despite the fact that there were some 140 spycops since the Special Demonstration Squad [SDS] was set up in 1968, we still only know a few of who they were.

The inquiry has consistently refused to release most of their real or cover names. This is because many of the former spycops have claimed it would breach their rights under article 8 of the Human Rights act.

Err —- – –

Sir John Mitting who chairs the inquiry has also stated it would be wrong to give their names of many of them: – because of their ages.

That is despite the fact that many spycops victims are of the same age or older than these perpitrators.

Thus these anonymity rulings take no account of the emotional damage and emotional stress that these spycops have caused, and continue to cause by their behaviour.

This has left all of the victims of these spycops questioning the way in which the inquiry is being conducted.

The Other List.

From the remarkably few cover names which have been released, and what has been discover by activists, we now know a few of the spycop names, and some of the groups or organisations they infiltrated.

Aside from the Greenpeace [ London ] group which I was involved within during the 1970s & 1980s, there are other groups, organisations, and periodicals which I knew, or worked with, which were infiltrated.

Over the years I must of meet a number of spycops, or been effected by their activities.

That is because I first became a peace activist at the end of 1968.

It has been admitted that there were circa 1000 groups and organisation which were infiltrated by spycops That includes groups, periodicals, and political parties, with a very divergent range of opinions.

We need to have this list, and know just which cover names were being used.

They Say It Can’t Be Done.

Really ? ! ! ?

I keep reading about just how difficult it will be to develop an ecologically sound social society.

Yet I also keep reading how it can be done.

So here are a few example to show what has been done so far.

Recycling.

Recycling in Denmark via the use of a Deposit system law.

Plastic Recycling in Japan

Better public transport in our city centres.

Here is what is going to be achived in Cambridge.

While the periodical TRAMWAYS & URBAN TRANSIT shows just what is being achieved throughout the world.

The pedestrianisation of our city centres.

Here is what is planned for Oxford St.

While here is what has been achieved in one Danish City.

It can and must be done.

Getting Out Of The Place.

Dr Ian Fairlie has just produced one of the most thought provoking articles which I have read in a long while.

Evacuations after Severe Nuclear Accidents

In it he examines: –

– The experience of evacuations during the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

– Whether lengthy evacuations from large cities are feasible?

– Some emergency plans for evacuations in North America.

Having read it I started to think about just what might happen if a major accident were to occur again at Windscale, which is now know as Sellafield.

Evacuation Routes

One of the presumptions which the planners make in their thinking is that everything will be fine, or up and running on the day.

Could it be that they presume that there are no blocked or impassible roads across Cumbria, track work on the railways, or the kind of flooding which occurred in the lake district during 2015 ?

The only railway line out of the area runs along the West Cumbrian coast, which includes a station at Sellafield.

So any railway evacuation from the area will be to the south via Barrow to Lancaster, or to the north and Carlisle via Whitehaven.

These are also the route which are used to take nukiller waste flasks to Sellafield. So any evacuation should include just what to do about these flasks, as they are not designed for long term storage of irradiated fuel rods.

Moving the sick.

Any evacuation from the area will entail moving patients in Whitehaven up to Carlisle or further afield.

Does the NHS have the capacity to move all these patients in a hurry, and are there enough ambulances to transport them ?

Given all the publicity about how hospital corridors are been used for patients waiting beds to be freed up before they are admitted, then we might land up with a shortage of hospital corridors to put them in.

Then there are all of the individuals who will need to be evacuated from Care Homes or Hospices in the region.

I wonder just where they might be sent ?

I’m left wondering just how many evacuation plans take in to accounts any of the above?

Yes it’s all questions, questions, and more questions, but that’s the easy part.

Getting answers and finding the right solutions is going to take some time.

False Solutions Or Joined Up Campaigning ?

Most of the greatest issues which we face can not be dealt with in isolation.

That is why we need to rethink how we approach many of the most urgent issues which endanger us all, and that means we do need to engage in joined up campaigning.

Here are just a few examples of how this might be achieved.

Plastic Ship Building

If we were to live in a society in which people thought more about our rubbish, then not only would a lot of our ecological problems be over, but in doing so we could solve many of our economic problems too.

Ship building & Barrow

Of course the other side of this is just how we clean up the oceans of all the plastic which is floating in it, Getting that done will require many specialist sea craft to scoop it all up. There are a number of designs for such craft. All we have to do is build them.

The other aspect of this is that the collected plastics can be recycled & that will mean less oil being drilled.

While the ship building industry can switch over their production away from that of building war ships.

Many is the time we get to hear that something needs to be done in order to create jobs, but the kind of jobs on offer, or which might be on offer, create more problems than they will ever solve.

For example in the arms trade.

What is needed is a some creative thinking in order to stop this kind of thing occurring.

Past Examples

An earlier example of what might be done is The Lucas plan, which came up with Road Rail Vehicles.

Yet for many politicians the priority is not so much looking to save our future, but to save something of the glories of a false past.

This is especially so with regards WW1, and how it is being used to encourage militarism.

Yet in Germany there are a number of memorials to the Unknown deserter, but no such memorial exists within the UK.

Although there is a Conscientious Objectors Commemorative Stone in Tavistock Square.

Future Examples

Other examples of what can and should be done include: –

– Planting more trees & creating new forests.

– Moving towards a better public transport system, with the creation of many more tram and railway lines.

– Stopping nukiller power via the use of wind and solar power.

Living In The Past

Memory is a funny thing.

A lot of what can come to mind is triggered by looking at pictures from ones past, or in conversations with old friends and comrades.

The Number Game.

The average adult English speaker will know between 15,000 to 23,000 words.

Yet the more interesting question is

– How many people does the average person physically meet in a lifetime?

– Just how many of their names do we tend to remember ?

What complicates this is knowing so many people with the Same First names, or Surnames.

That’s never mind all the campaigning groups, organisations, NGOs, or public bodies one has had contact with over the years.

Then there are the names of films one has watched, titles of books one has read, and places which one has visited over the years.

So just remembering all of these names is something which comes down to almost being able to list them all as if by rote.

Memory not gone, but fewer day by day triggers to set it in motion.

As I keep growing older there is more of my past to recall, yet there is a catch to this which I have discovered of late.

There are not the same people around me to talk over the events of yesteryear.

That’s especially so given that I have had something like 20 jobs and lived in the same number of places over the years.

While many of the people I knew in my youth are dead, lost contact with, or have moved on to different locations around the world.

So knowing how to look up these names has becomes much more important to me with the passing year.

Mispronouncing the past.

Of course just to confuse any persons name by pronounce it in the wrong way can be something of a problem.

Thus the right name can be lost to one – at least in the very short term.

For example: – by saying ow when it sound of been ov,

or thinking that it starts with Ph while it should be Th.

So one does need to keep this in mind.

Reminiscing with ones old friends and comrades.

One of the joys of seeing old friends is to talk over what we did in the past.

The old comrades getting together, and talking about the previous campaigns they were involved with, is one of the best aspects of being a long term activist.

That is where the collective memory which comes in to play.

Between us we can remember more people and events than as isolated individuals.

Poor Dears.

One of the excuses being by the Met as to why some of the cover names of former spycops should not be publicly revealed by the ongoing public inquiry in to undercover policing, is that they very frail and have impaired memories.

Poor Dears!

They can not be expected to remember exactly what they did in the past!

It’s a wonderful excuse for maintaining a situation whereby they will not be held accountable for their actions.

Yet that is just an excuse.

There is still a need for those of us who were spied upon to know just who they were,and exactly what damage they did at the time.

Once we have those undercover names, then the real memory challenges will need to be done.

Without that there can be no social justice.

Costing The Radioactive Waste In Contrast To That Of Brexit

Short Term

I was once told by one of the highly armed members of the Met police Diplomatic Protection Squad that the trouble with politicians is that they only concern themselves with what happens up to the next election.

It’s amazing just what kind of conversations one can have while on a picket line.

There is something very similar which has been going in relationship to Brexit.

I’ll not go in to what effect it is happened due so far, but will note the following.

– The UK economy is now in stagnation, with growing inflation, as real incomes keep declining.

– While public spending on health care, public transport, and education is still being slashed.

As to the whole Brexit process, it can be summed up in one word: –

Shambolic.

Yet all of this can still be reversed.

Long Term

What can’t be reversed is the amount of public money which will have to be spent over many hundred years in cleaning up the effects of having had a nukiller power industry.

Even the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority state that we are: –

‘Dealing with uncertainty.’

‘ The decommissioning mission is scheduled for completion in 2120, more than a century after the creation of the NDA.

The precision of any cost forecast over such long time scales is clearly open to question.

Calculating the total decommissioning bill is extremely difficult. In the short term, where there is greater certainty about the nature of the work to be completed, costs can be forecast with more accuracy.’

The most telling statement being that: –

‘In recognition of this uncertainty, the NDA publishes a range of estimates that could potentially be realistic. Based on the best data now available, different assumptions could produce figures somewhere between £97 billion and £222 billion.’

Now just contrast that with the much debated Brexit exit figures which are currently being thrown about.

Thus it should be noted.

The trouble with politicians is that most of them are fiscally illiterate, as they are unable to do look at any long term costings.

Sorting Out The Hex

I’m currently reading a lot about Capenhurst, and the issue of just what happens to depleted Uranium Hexafluoride.

There are a number of issues which follow on from this research, but it is going to take a while before any report on it is completed.

In the meanwhile there are a lot of questions which have been thrown up.

Such as: – Just how will all of this Hex be decommission ?

One thing is very obvious to me.

URENCO has created a major problem due to the way in which Uranium is enriched, and that is in the form of a very large quantity of depleted Uranium Hexafluoride.

Nukiller Waste Flasks – The Unknown Facts.

We know just what nukiller waste flasks look like from the outside, but their interior design is unknown.

We also know very little about how they are tested or maintained.

Thus what we are left with are some very worrying questions.

What we know.

– They are transported through our city centres on a regular basis.

– These waste trains are operated by DRS [ Direct Rail Services ], which is subsidiary company of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.

– That they carry highly radioactive used fuel rods from the various nukiller reactors to Sellafield.

Testing the Design

Yet we know very little about the construction of these flasks, how often they are subjected to any structural tests, or just how long each flask is in use before it needs to be replaced.

The flasks were designed over 40 years, and I wonder just what potential stress points might show up if they were ever to be subjected to any modern computer modelling tests.

What we need to see.

What needs to kept in mind is that none of the activists I’ve talked to about this issue have ever seen any photographs of technical drawings of the inner parts of these flasks.

The best we ever get to see are illustrations such as this.

Thus while all the illustrations of these flasks show the fuel rods stacked horizontally, they might well be loaded vertically, which would make it faster to load and unload them.

It’s a Steel

When Steel is subjected to Radiation, then some of it becomes radioactive Cobalt 60.

Thus some of these flasks must contain Cobol 60, or at least the Skip in which the fuel rods are placed.

What we don’t know is just how much radioactivity the skips which form the central part of the flask has been subjected to.

This is not something which can be calculated by the length of time the flasks have been in existence, but by the total number of hours the used fuel rods been placed in them.

These are just a few of the questions which we need to ask and keep asking.

Further Reading.

Surrey, John.

The Urban Transportation of Irradiated Fuel.

This book was published in 1984, and contains one of the most useful illustrations of how a waste flask is constructed which I’ve yet to see.