A lot comes out of North Korea, and most of it ranges from incredible to unbelievable however recent statements that they will later this month Feb 2016 launch a satellite bearing rocket needs taking seriously. Seemingly thats the views of the two major Japanese airlines too. All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines.
Pyonyang announced their window for this latest piece of joy to be between February 8th-25th at least that is what they notified the UN. However one hour ago it has been reported that this window has changed to 7th-14th. Indeed CNN report that North korea today Feb 6th may have started fuelling their rocket. So where is the missile likely to be heading? Currently missile parts and debris are expected to fall into the waters off the Phillipines. So planes that fly over these areas will get diverted.
Currently reported news suggests that the window of 8th-10th Feb is when it will likely launch. This has caused great excitement in USA even over Superbowl weekend. In anticipation of the North Korean launch in the coming days, the U.S. Navy has positioned a Japan-based guided-missile destroyer, outfitted with the latest anti-ballistic missile defense technology to successfully shoot down the missile if the U.S. military thinks it is a threat to the homeland. One always wonders who makes these decisions. A lot runs through my head including are they having a good day and do they have undiagnosed Adult ADHD.
Japan are also quite reasonably interested in this launch due to their proximity. Ahead of the expected launch, Japan has deployed PAC-3 missile batteries in the downtown Tokyo to shoot down any rocket debris.
So what do North Korea know about missile testing? My opinion is that not all is known and what we do think we know may be fallible, however there are known tests 1993-2014 and North Korea has also fired a number of short-range missiles into the Sea of Japan (East Sea of Korea), apparently as political gestures.
South Korea remain largely unimpressed by this missile launch. South Korea called the plan a “direct challenge against the international community,” and warned that North Korea would pay a “grave price” if it went ahead.
So should we be concerned? Frankly yes. Actions such as these from North Korea may lead to other later joy and happiness. But the real question is what exactly are they doing?
Though North Korea says it’s putting a satellite into orbit, the launch may be viewed as a front for a ballistic missile test.
U.S. officials have said the same type of rocket used to launch the satellite could also be used to fire a long-range missile.
On Feb 9th 2015 a year ago, Ray Mills, aged 66 years, was arrested on suspicion of killing his wife Linda Mills with knives and a hammer. Both were “known” to the local community in that residents saw them out and about, but both rarely spoke to anyone other than their next door neighbour. On June 8th 2015 Ray Mills died in Wandworth prison however this never was reported until 14th July.
Ray Mills
Ray Mills never came to trial as three court hearings were adjourned as psychiatric reports were not available. Ray Mills thus had been in custody for four months before his death.
The news of his death came four days after coroner Dr Fiona Wilcox called for a formal investigation into the alarming number of deaths at Wandsworth Prison.
During a pre-inquest hearing into the suicides of two men who shared the same cell and hung themselves months apart, she said the inquest could not go on because of various “themes and common issues” of deaths at the UK’s largest prison.
Eleven men died at the category B prison last year – which she said was three times more than would be expected at a prison. It is not clear whether she knew about Mr Mills and whether his death was included in that figure.
The Ministry of Justice has yet to comment on how Mr Mills died in prison. And that is essentially where we are now.
The house remains in the same condition with a small padlock on the door and no signs of any activity or potential sale. One wonders as what might be happening inside of course.
Ray and Linda Mills House where the murder took place
An inquest into his death has been opened at Westminster Coroners’ Court. The case was due to be reviewed by a coroner on December 7. There is nothing reported regarding this inquest.
So one year on, Ray Mills must be presumed to have murdered his wife, however in the absence of a trial details and proof are unlikely to ever be known. The local residents are not so happy that the house remains closed and uncared for, and details of the cause of death of Ray Mills remain unknown, however one suspects that suicide must be one of the more likely possibilities.
Motspur Park remains a sleepy suburb, half in borough of Merton and the other half in the borough of Kingston. We must await further information.
Mills was awaiting trial at Isleworth Crown Court when he died at Wandsworth Prison on 8 June 2015. An inquest is to take place at Westminster Coroners Court on a date yet to be decided.
Winter 2015-16 has been a strange one with varying temperatures almost daily. Painshill park in Cobham has always been home to many types of ducks and fowl including Egyptian Geese.
Egyptian Goose and Goslings .Painshill Park in Cobham. Copyright Chris Bushe 2016
A few facts worth knowing about them are that they are not actually geese at all but a cross between a goose and a duck. It has many duck-like characteristics, but it also has some external goose-like traits. It is the most widespread of all the African waterfowl. These old-world shelducks were domesticated by the ancient Egyptians, and were considered sacred , and appeared in much of their artwork. The Romans and the Greeks also kept Egyptian Geese in domestic flocks.They can breed all year around, but usually breed in the spring or at the end of a dry season. It thus is somewhat surprising to see baby goslings in early February.The British population dates back to the 18th century, though only formally added to the British list in 1971 and are found mainly in East Anglia, in parkland with lakes. It was officially declared a pest in the U.K. in 2009. There is little surprise that Painshill Park has become home to them over very many years.
Egyptian Goose and Goslings .Painshill Park in Cobham. Copyright Chris Bushe 2016
Egyptian Goose and Goslings .Painshill Park in Cobham. Copyright Chris Bushe 2016
Egyptian Goose and Goslings .Painshill Park in Cobham. Copyright Chris Bushe 2016
There is little doubt that these agencies are wanted by people and are used. They more or less guarantee that one can buy a ticket, albeit at a price over the face value. Many concerts these days do sell out and if fans are prepared to sacrifice their tickets for money that seems reasonable enough. Or does it?
Two things concern me that mitigate some of the above
Some people buy tickets through setting up numerous email addresses and credit cards with the sole purpose of re-selling the tickets. To be fair sellers do try and limit this by imposing various maximum number of tickets limits on what they can do.
That some of these agencies are in fact run by the primary ticket sellers themselves. Is this a problem? Maybe. Lets give an example where it is a problem. I was buying tickets, or attempting to, for a concert where ” presale” tickets went on sale 9 am wednesday morning. Resale codes and knowledge of such sales tend to go the fan clubs and those that follow the mailings or accounts of the various bands. No issue with that. Real fans deserve a chance to buy first, if they have been buying the records, merchandise etc. However by 10 am tickets were already on sale on the re-selling market websites confirming that in fact some buyers had zero intention of doing anything other than selling their tickets on at a large profit. That same company owned both the selling of the tickets and the re-selling , so they were clearly complicit in this. The remainder of the tickets then went on sale friday 9 am. I will not cite the actual company nor event simply because this is common . However An example might be Seatwave.com who are a re-selling company and are part of Ticketmaster as are GetMeIn. For those not so familiar it is not uncommon for such tickets to be priced well over £100 and sometimes over £500. A random example right now on SeatWave.com. Tickets for Noel Gallagher in Liverpool 25th April 2016 are found ranging from £52-£150.
This morning I got an email from Stubhub.
Dear Chris,
Stand Up For Your Right To Buy And Sell Tickets
The Government have launched an independent review into the laws around event ticket resale, and event organisers are pushing hard for new laws which will restrict your right to buy and resell spare tickets at the last minute for sold out events.
We believe that fans should be free to resell tickets for events which they can no longer attend, especially when they are routinely denied refunds by event organisers.
We have therefore launched a petition calling for a clear legal right for fans to be able to resell spare tickets without restrictive terms and conditions being imposed by event organisers.
If you value the right to buy and sell tickets safely and securely on a website of your choice, please lend your voice to our campaign and sign our petition.
Thank you for your support.
The StubHub Team
Should I sign this petition? Part of me wants to as there needs to be a market to indeed sell on unwanted tickets. But a larger part of me says that by doing so I am propagating the exact issue that I have highlighted above.
What is really required is a middle ground where re-selling of tickets cannot take place until all the tickets have been sold, where different companies act as sellers and re-sellers, so there can be no actual nor perceived conflict of interest and whereby somehow those that buy to sell are somehow dissuaded from doing this.
This is becoming an increasingly important market, concert tickets and it is important that the real fans can always have a fair chance of getting tickets. Logging onto a website at 9 am and being told at 9.05 am that all the tickets have gone is curious as there are few events that truly this will happen for. So have a read, have a think, if you have teenagers who are concert goers as them their views and vote in my poll.
Please share this too, as it is important that this gets discussed openly and clearly, as there are far more issues than Stubhub might want us to consider before signing their petition.
Finally there is an additional issue which impinges on the above. That some tickets for concerts never actually go on sale. They are sold separately at higher price. This is not so relevant to the above issues but will of course inflate prices if fewer tickets are sold at anything like the face value of the ticket. Ticketmaster are an example here. and i quote from their website
“About Ticketmaster Platinum
What are Platinum Tickets? Platinum Tickets are some of the best available tickets to concerts and other events made available by artists and event organisers though Ticketmaster. They give fans fair and safe access to some of the best seats in the house at market driven prices.
Are Platinum Tickets resale tickets? No these are not resale tickets. Platinum Tickets are being sold for the very first time through Ticketmaster. The prices are adjusted according to supply and demand, similar to how airline tickets and hotel rooms are sold. The goal is to give the most passionate fans fair and safe access to the best tickets, while allowing the artists and everyone involved in staging live events to price tickets closer to their true value.
Why can’t I buy Platinum Tickets for certain events? Currently Platinum Tickets are not available for all events. Be sure to check Ticketmaster often as new events are continually being added.”
Knowledge is a CATalyst to further development and lack of knowledge is CATastrophic. We are all guilty of not providing further education for our CATs. And before we go on I might mention that there are 347 words all starting with CAT, so this might be a long post. You may need to apply a CATaplasm to your forehead to cool down as something might be happening to your CATabolism.
I have been luck enough to watch this clever CAT, CATapult itself into learning and to CATch it doing reading, homework and revision . So left to its own devices, what does a cat like to read? The Russian Civil War is certainly a good read, and indeed the CAT spent a good hour sprawled out investigating this topic.
This however was not enough and she began to enjoy reading plays, the one that caught her eye was The Secret Rapture by David Hare.
This maybe showed that she was playing CATchup with her knowledge of theatre and last night was caught reading notes on Warhorse. And we have good reason to suspect that she is considering GCSE Drama in her later years. Drama clearly provides a CAThartic experience.
Tonight health officials in Dallas have reported that the first case of Zika being spread by sexual transmission has been reported. Earlier today there was widespread newspaper coverage that travel companies are having to allow cancellations of holidays when pregnant females are travelling. Virgin and Thompson had originally resisted allowing this under the guise it seems of ” we have no policy in place”.
The WHO yesterday at last declared that Zika was a global health emergency, and at last people are starting to understand the real current and future severity of this virus.
The Brazilian politicians are trying to protect the Olympics to be held there later this year, by telling folks that it will not be an issue, Zika , because it is their winter. Countries with negative stances on abortion such as El salvador may also have to take alternate views.
Importantly also two days ago a German company, Genekam, has developed a diagnostic test that can accurately detect the virus in humans. By revealing the virus in the blood but also it is claimed give some indication as to quantity. The importance of this is that as only 20% of those infected actually develops an illness, the test can separate illness from virus carriers. Surprisingly the cost seems as low as 5 euros. The kits have been sent to Brazil where the authorities have significantly reduced the time for the authorisation and approval.
Merton is genuinely an excellent council at recycling in my personal experience, however since xmas many Xmas trees remain waiting for collection , as asked being placed in the front of the property. Despite emails, and multiple twitter messages, many remain uncollected. I personally counted 8 in the roads around me during a 15 minute walk to the station.
So why do I think this has happened? My personal theory is that the idea is to recycle these xmas trees for next xmas. A great idea. More seriously, please come and collect them. I know you invite folks to email you etc, but really all the roads here around KT3 contain xmas trees, so just get the lorry/van whatever out and come and collect please.
Seems the same thing is happening in other parts of the council territory. So maybe come and collect and then work out what went wrong this year. Or shall we just use the same trees next year?
On lastly a serious point, you adopt a zero tolerance littering policy at Wimbledon Station and other environs regarding cigarette ends being thrown on the floor, with immediate punitive fines. I recently wrote a few thoughts on this. Are you not actually creating your own littering crime? Why should the council not be fined £75 for each xmas tree that they should have collected by maybe a week ago or longer? Thoughts.
Firstly please share this post with friends and colleagues. What I am about to describe is a worrying trend and one that I would not like to see expanding. A kind of “legal ” vigilante going under the euphemism of ” Environmental Enforcement”. OK. Picture the scenario. A short one hour visit to Wimbledon and returning to the train station and about to enter. What did I visualise?
I am appalled. There are three I will call them officers with the gentle demeanour of harsh traffic wardens crossed with prison wardens who are ticketing folks under the name of environmental enforcement. Their crimes? Seems throwing cigarette ends anywhere than some specific receptacle. Fixed penalty fines of 75£ or 80£. Those being questioned had a poor grasp of the English language. Apparently this is a criminal offence to throw cigarette ends away like this as one officer explained. My views on…
The rants and warblings of an active and some would say disturbed mind. A Brentford Fc supporter and a psychiatrist and photographer. Welcome to my musings and rants.