vivweb01blog

There has been much argument and a marked polarisation of views recently on the question of what to do about that well-loved icon of British pre-history, Stonehenge. The principal issue seems to be the congestion on the nearby A303 (the ‘road to the sun’ as it often prosaically called) and how to relieve it.  Users of this busy single-carriageway arterial cross-country road linking the M3 with the A30 to the East of Exeter regularly endure tailbacks several miles long around Stonehenge during the peak holiday season. The fact that has been allowed to remain a two-lane road in this day and age almost beggars belief, and a relief road scheme is urgently needed. (see Figure 4) A bypass of some description has been under consideration for the last 50 years, but until very recently no progress had been made, due largely to the efforts of the environmental lobby. Several news outlets reported last week that the plans for a road tunnel, originally approved in 2020 then challenged in the

  Just a quick 'heads up' on a very useful tool I came across some years ago for downloading BBC programmes direct from iPlayer servers – and have used regularly ever since. As a committed user of BBC’s services for many years previously, I joined the online viewing revolution and started using iPlayer in the early 2010s. Not being particularly keen on ‘live’ streaming, and in any case having a limited broadband download allowance at the time, I took to selective downloading of anything that particularly took my interest. As for the old VCR recordings we all remember making in the 80s and 90s, the problem was finding time to actually watch what I'd recorded. I quickly became tired of discovering that much of what I'd painstakingly downloaded from iPlayer, and had finally got round to looking at, had already expired, and was unreadable due to DRM-protection.  A workround was therefore a must, and fortunately one presented itself in the form of GetiPlayer. This softwa

In view of the current reflections on AI and what its consequences are likely to be, I couldn't resist revisiting an early blog I'd written on the subject early last year....  Could it be that AI is already evolving - without us realising it ? Enjoy.... Travelodge and the ‘Escapist’ Robot – Is it cleverer than we think ? An entertaining news story took my eye last week and brightened things up somewhat amidst the anticyclonic gloom of late January in UK…. Apparently a cleaning robot being used by the Travelodge hotel in Cambridge went AWOL, and was later found under a hedge nearby. ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-60084347 ). Having checked my calendar to ensure I hadn’t managed to hibernate without realising it,   thus missing February and March this year and landing on 1st April, I then verified that other news outlets were also reporting the story. After reading a couple of them, I wiped my eyes and started writing… As you can imagine, much mirt

  The expression ‘The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread’ seems to be on everyone's lips in the UK media nowadays, and has even been adopted as the title of a documentary radio series on Radio 4.  Whenever I hear it used to describe yet another ‘wonder-product’, I have to ask myself where on earth it came from…. As it stands, the phrase implies that the process of slicing bread during its manufacture really does represent an improvement over ‘prior art’ (presumably this would have been un -sliced bread). The nearest I’ve come to an explanation for this somewhat inexplicable enthusiasm in the past for sliced bread as a ‘new and revolutionary' product is that housewives* in the 1950s were so fed up with having to slice their loaves themselves that they couldn’t wait for someone else to do it for them. To my mind, slicing bread as part of its manufacturing process has some notable disadvantages – let’s take a look at a few of them: 1)       1)  The slicing process introduces fu

  A new Covid sub-variant responsible for a surge of infections in India is giving rise to concerns that it could also lead to a significant rise in hospitalisations and deaths in the UK this autumn. Research indicates that the new variant, named Arcturus, could be significantly more infectious than previous sub-variants in the Omicron series, which are still predominant throughout Europe and the USA. Also known as Omicron sub-variant XBB.1.16, Arcturus was first identified in January and has been monitored by the World Health Organisation (WHO) since 22 March, which upgraded it to a “ variant of interest ” in mid-April. WHO reports suggest that Arcturus doesn’t so far appear to be producing symptoms any more severe than the prevalent Omicron variants.   It has only one additional mutation in the spike protein, but lab investigations so far have confirmed it does exhibit increased infectivity over the other Omicron B variants, as well as the potential for increased pathogenicity.

  I’ve often wondered what might have happened to the UK’s fortunes if David Cameron hadn’t decided to hold a referendum on EU membership in June 2016. Given his obvious desire to see us stay in EU, and the adverse public opinion on immigration and its effect on jobs in particular at the time, I'm sure I'm not alone in wondering why on earth he did…. The Background Although he had promised a referendum in the 2015 manifesto, to be held some time during the lifetime of the parliament, Cameron had plenty of wriggle room and could easily have ‘kept his powder dry’ until much later in the parliamentary term, which he had already fixed at a full 5 years. Although the precise reasons why he went so early in the parliament aren’t 100% clear, I suspect a large part of the impetus was his failure to gain significant concessions on free movement from Brussels by early 2016. A detailed examination of the issues thought to have led to his decision can be viewed here . Some commentato

  ASDA recently joined the other majors and the discounters in reducing the price of milk and there has been much hype in the media about this.  However what has not yet been extensively reported is an important policy change on price reductions which, I suspect, they were hoping to introduce ‘by stealth’ while consumer focus was diverted elsewhere. This move will have a far greater effect on some of the prices we pay than a few pence off the price of a ‘pinta’ – read on to find out why… Some Background I recently revised an article which was first published last autumn on supermarket food. This was a time when the cost-of-living crisis was beginning to hit us all hard. The article was primarily aimed at highlighting food waste and what we could do to reduce it, thereby saving ourselves money and helping protect the environment. What emerged at the time was that many people were already finding it necessary to use food banks to feed their families adequately, and those that were