Writing about web page http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/medialog/

(Originally written 2004–06-16 13:01)
Just when warwick blogs were starting to look interesting, they start posting all their press releases as a blog too, and cluttering up the aggregate feed. How dull. All this stuff is already on the newsandevents site, so what’s the point? Other than that the news site is painfully slow, I guess.

Writing about web page http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=531995

(Originally written 2004–06-16 08:07)

The Independent has an excellent front page today, discussing the benefits of europe. Here are some highlights:

After UKIP’s shock successes in the European elections, Tony Blair said yesterday withdrawal would be ‘extraordinary foolishness’. So what would it mean for Britain?

Economy

Britain would suffer a permanent loss of £23bn a year if we pulled out, says the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, an independent think-tank.

Economic growth would be lower by 2.5 per cent, according to some leading economists’ estimates.

Travel

100,000 Britons work in EU countries and 450,000 Britons live in them, including 200,000 pensioners.

British holidaymakers have the right to free health care in any member state with the E111 form.

EU airline deregulation has halved the cost of flights, causing a massive travel expansion. EU rules now mean airlines must offer compensation if they overbook.

Social reform

Workers would be unable to bring sex, race or disability claims against their employers.

The 48-hour working week, regular breaks between shifts and a minimum 11-hour rest between shifts would also be obsolete. There would no longer be a statutory four-weeks annual holiday.

EU directives give two weeks’ statutory paternity leave and increased maternity leave.

Trade

British businesses enjoy tariff-free access to the largest market in the world; 55 per cent of the UK’s trade is with the EU. Every year the UK imports £129bn worth of goods from its EU partners and exports £105bn to them; the total is more than half of all our global trade.

In contrast, trade with the US is £52bn annually, about 12 per cent of the total. Not in these figures are services, such as banking and insurance, worth £160bn a year, which might be hit by withdrawal.

Some 3.2 million jobs are directly associated with the export of goods and services to the EU. About 750,000 businesses trade with our EU partners.

We need the EU more than it needs us: 9.5 per cent of the UK economy is trade with the rest of the EU; the reverse figure is 2.4 per cent.

If Britain withdrew, businesses would have to obey EU regulations to trade with Europe, without power to amend them.

Law & the constitution

An army of lawyers and two or three full parliamentary terms would be needed to disentangle Britain from Europe. No one has any idea of the cost.

The Government would have to repeal hundreds of EU directives in UK law.

British representation at the European Parliament and Commission would end. Trading laws that would affect us would be passed without consideration of their effect on British interests.

Environment

Catalytic converters would not have been made compulsory without the EU and there would have been no ban on leaded petrol.

The 1994 EU habitats directive bans interference in breeding places of endangered species. It has been used by campaigners to prevent roads, housing and industrial projects.

EU curbs on sulphur emissions from French and Spanish power stations limit acid rain that falls in Britain.

Consumer

The cost of phone calls has halved thanks to the EU’s liberalisation of the telecoms market.

The cost of electricity to consumers fell by 6.5 per cent between 1996 and 2001.

EU deregulation has introduced competition on airline routes once jealously protected by national airlines.

The European Commission has taken action against the British Government over customs officers stopping travellers bringing unlimited amounts of alcohol and tobacco for their own use into the UK.

Writing about web page http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/click/rss/0.91/public/-/1/hi/uk_politics/3807675.stm

(Originally written 2004–06-15 13:09)

I’m pleased that once the UK finally gives up on the EU, I’ll still have the benefits via my swedish citizenship…

(Originally written 2004–06-15 12:32)
I am making plastics. Or not, depending on whether the chemistry gods smile on me. Today, they do not.

I’m really filling in gaps for a poster that I have to present next wednesday(!), so wanted to have complete tables of the activity of the various catalysts that I’m working on. I’ve just run the one I’d left until last – and it looks like it’s done nothing. Which is okay, because that’s really what’s expected.

More worrying was that I’ve been getting inconsistent results with a very good catalyst – Zirconocene dichloride. Problem is that it’s so good that you have to use very little of it, and it then doesn’t take very much to kill it off. Oh well.

Get nice graphs from the data when it does work :-)

(Originally written 2004–06-14 23:35)

Kind of. Well enough to use the snowdome at Tamworth without somebody holding my hand. Recreational Standard apparantly. I can turn and stop and not crash into people and stuff. Looking forward to skiing with Andrea now. Just have to save up for a holiday :)
It’s seriously good fun. And cheap at the snowdome, for students anyway – just £15/hr for lessons, and at this time of year it’s really quiet – the busiest lesson that I was on was 3 students and 2 instructors :) One was one-on-one, and the others had two students. This I consider to be a good student-tutor ratio.
Just have to get the posture right now… apparantly I tend to ski like I’m sitting on the toilet. Hence weight on the back of the skis, and all goes bad. But that happens less often now. I’m getting the hang of controlling speed by traversing, rather than snowploughing. Which is fun :)
It’s great when you ski using the feedback from the snow to know what’s going on – it just suddenly clicked for me. Don’t need to think about the angle, or the motion, or anything; instead you feel the snow under your skis, feel the pressure on your legs, and get your feedback that way.

It rules.

Well, here I am amongst the hallowed turf of warwick blogs. Pleased to meet y’all, and so on. I’m about to migrate all my blog entries from my existing blog onto here, so there’ll be quite a few posts with no chronology… Oh well. Here goes… :-)