vivweb01

Editor's note: Looking back at this blog from 2022 has been instructive in showing just how much has changed since then...and how much hasn't.... Putin is obviously as resolved as ever to continue is 'special operation' in Ukraine, and as the devious campaigner that he is, has found ways to circumvent all attempts by the West to broker a cease-fire deal. Even that arch-deal maker himself, Trump, well into his last term and clearly in 'legacy-seeking' mode, has singularly failed to make any impression, and has now finally realised that Putin has been 'playing him' all along. His surprise comments in a BBC interview this summer confirmed this, but Trump obviously hasn't given up yet on arranging his 'master deal'.  When he does finally realise it's hopeless, and that Putin's obsession is 'hard wired', things could get quite unpleasant for Russia on the economic front, and more to the point, for anyone found to be continuing to t...

  'Norovirus' (otherwise known as the 'winter vomiting bug') is the term in general use to describe the symptoms of an unpleasant stomach complaint caused by a virus.  This isn’t a new virus, in contrast with the causative agent of Covid19 i.e SARS-CoV-2. Many of us will already have been exposed to Norovirus during our lifetimes. It’s certainly not a ‘nice to have’, particularly for the very young and the elderly. Its incidence is to some extent seasonal, and the virus does seem to be gaining the upper hand this winter, with significant numbers catching it in UK, hence the recent reports in the news media. There have been quite a few consequent hospital admissions over the last few weeks, hence the use of the term 'epidemic' in the press. The NHS is concerned about a rapid influx of new patients, at a time when it's already stretched to the limit,  if the situation continues to worsen. The recent surge in admissions hospitals are already facing due to an em...

Making long term predictions about political outcomes nationally is a risky process indeed. In some ways it’s comparable to weather forecasting – the earth’s atmosphere is a chaotic system and trying to predict its behaviour locally more than 2 or 3 days ahead with any degree of accuracy still presents us with many uncertainties, despite all our advances in predictive technology (including even AI!). And we’ve all seen recently how long a week is in politics nowadays, let alone a month, or indeed 3 years - chaos seems to reign there, also. Although 2029 is thus a very long way ahead from a political point of view, and Labour's leadership and cabinet teams will be focused on more immediate policy decisions, their advance planners will already be thinking hard, and I suspect with some trepidation, about their electoral prospects…and not solely for the next general election. After the hammering both major parties took in the May 2025 local elections, largely at the hands of Fa...

  We've been hearing rather a lot about ‘Black Holes’ over the last few months….some would argue a bit too much. Sadly, little attempt has been made to explain their true origin or properties, and the focus instead has been on explaining how terrible things are likely to get for us all because of them...and how much extra cash we're going to have to part with in order to fill them. In an attempt to dispel some of the current UK.Gov-induced pre-budget gloom and despondency, I’ll take a light-hearted look at these not-so-celestial phenomena and attempt to explain them for the interested reader. Firstly, do they resemble the cosmological feature of the same name that we're all familiar with? In some ways, they would certainly appear to.... Physical black holes are frequently found at the centres of galaxies, and have such huge masses that their gravitational attraction sucks in everything in their vicinity, including light. They thus have a habit of getting progressiv...