Particulate limits

I read on the air quality news website with interest gove pledging to enshrine who particulate limits into uk law. 

I experienced a petaseconds worth of elation, before realising just what that'll mean here in the land of the topsy turvy. To make sure nothing had changed, i opened the curtains, and sure enough tfl's buses were parked outside with their engines running. So despite all the pledges and chippy promises, nothing will actually change. Don't believe me? The next time you're out and around, just take a look at the gritty, dirty, urban streets, and just see how many of your fellow species are actually doing anything positive towards the betterment of nature... the species is still oh so very fucked.

Even scientists who initially prevaricated and couched their words in more conservative tomes are becoming increasingly shrill. But for decorum you can almost here them saying "why can't you people open your eyes, and see what's going on, what's coming and at least try to change!" But that will require, well thought. Thinking. Perhaps even empathy. Apart from extinction rebellion and other such groups, just look around. The majority will truly only care when they experience 55+ celsius degree summers as an annual event, roads melting, glass turning into mini flame-torches, and being unable to venture outside during any hour of daylight. Okay that last bit might take more creeping venus like temperatures, but as a species, without the numerous technological advances and generally filled shopping shelves, how many of us would be able to operate with rapid changing environments.

So as I sit with windows open and listen to bus engines being revved and rumblingly idled, mere feet from the bus stand, i wonder at this wonderful example of town planning, and whether tfl's pr spin team (if given an opportunity) would say that it is one of the greenest stands ever!  

Visualising slender tendrils of fumes and particulates soaring through and lodging in my brain, chest and spleen, i wonder just how much popcorn we'll need to watch the end of the world, or if we will simply croak long before then with brains full of crap and lungs full of sea-water.

At least before the last wave laps over i can wave a feeble fist, in solidarity with pollution sufferers everywhere.

Breathe in: 1, 2- cough.

UK deaths from air pollution as high as reported during the 1952 'great smog'.
http://www.environmental-protection.org.uk/news/detail/?id=2820

Surviving an asteroid strike?

Surely, and I could be wrong here, but if a moderately sized asteroid haphazardly punches a hole slap bang in-between, let's say paternoster square & paternoster row in london, then no matter how much invested in anything, will actually do anything but momentarily (micro or nano second-ish) slow your transformation from relatively dense combined atoms into their bright & vaporised disparate counterparts.  

Rest easy, as the same sort of thing would already have happened a few micro or nano-seconds earlier, to those unfortunate enough to be within the strike zone of any incoming hurtling heavenly body - so why worry?  

For those in London and the south east, deciding where to go if our fair, gentle, slopping sectioned part of the country were unfortunate enough to be in imminent danger of being wiped off the map (by a 200m asteroid), would have to consider making plans to journey at least 100 miles away and somewhere in a ditch, before coming close to having  a 51% chance of survival; with the added hardship of many degree burns, loss of mobile signals and nothing handy in the nearest tesco metro.  

The choice, therefore, is simple: voluntarily head to coventry, or be wiped off the face of the planet, or spending thousands or millions, and briefly cocking two-fingers at every one else and laughing as they're being vaporised, before you to end up in the smoke cloud.

Coventry, wiped off the map, disapprobation?  Coventry...

"Buses - Noise Issues with 242 Bus, from Hackney

A resident of powerscroft road asked whether the extension of the 308 bus route will effect the workings of the 242 as that bus is already causing lots of noise pollution in the area due to squealing brakes etc. The questioner also asked whether the current model of bus on the 242 route could not replaced with a single decker.

In reply steve said that tfl has taken up the brakes issue with arriva and again agreed to feedback to tfl resident’s concerns re: noise."

That was 2003/4.

Seven years later, you would have thought a capital-wide improvement would have launched, finally put this thing out of its misery. Sadly not.

But how have things improved?

1. Increase frequency of buses utilising terminus's.
2. Increase in driver pay.

How have things worsened for residential victims?

1. Increasing frequency of drivers not switching off their engines whilst stationary (multiplied by many hundreds per day)
2. Increase in frequency of drivers using their horn to say hello, say goodbye.
3. Increase in squealing brakes.
4. Increase in pollution due to (see 1).
5. Increase in vibration (severe, see 1).
6. Increase in drivers two-fingers to anything said by customer services, the bus garage, their operators, rule 124 of the highway code, their training...

... this could go on, but lunch is calling.