Cool stuff on the Underground, Part 1

I really like this signal at Clapham North station. It's an original London Underground roundel, with a working colour light signal actually built into the structure. Not only that, I strongly suspect that when the new signalling system on the Northern Line goes live, it will become redundant, at which I will liberate it for my back garden. As long as they don't catch me carrying it up the escalator.

I only read one book, but it's a good book, don't you know

Clapham North's Thought of the Day.






Never heard of Harold Kushner, although I will look him up. I'd be more inclined to see life as a process of certainties being slowly eroded. Still, as long as his Good Book doesn't include stoning women to death for refusing to marry their rapist, that's fine with me.



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Help drug addicts, don't sterilise them

I've been thinking about the new charity initiative to sterilise drug addicts for the princely sum of £200. It seems an obvious conclusion that children of drug-addicted paremts will suffer in life, from the physical effects of addiction, as well as the less immediately apparent, but no less serious, consequences of being born into low socio-economic status, and the likelihood of ending up in care.

It occurred to me, though, that the motives of the charity in question are less than altruistic. What they're actually angry about is the burden to society that these children represent. So what do you do? Do you help the afflicted? Give them shelters, therapy, some sort of helping hand towards escaping drug addiction?

Nah. Far too difficult, and expensive. Why bother? Just give them the snip, and boot them out the door. Job done, sod the junkie. How charitable.

And where is the money likely to end up? In the hands of drug dealers, shortly after being exchanged for another hit, as the charity Addaction commented. I think this short-sighted move is exploiting sick people for a selfish motive, and ignores the real issues behind drug addiction. This is a deep-seated social problem, which is not going to disappear with short-term measures such as this, quite apart from the complex issues of liberty that arise.

"It doesn't deal with addicts who are already parents, it doesn't help people recover and it doesn't offer any positive solution," said Addaction's chief executive, Simon Antrobus.

The woman behind it is planning to go to Haiti next, and start sterilising there as well. Surely the hurricane was enough? Shouldn't we be doing something more tangible to help these people?

No cure for cancer?

The pope has reportedly canonised Australia's first saint. However, the quality of the Guardian's reporting of the event was diminished for me by its unquestioning acceptance of her "healing" of two sufferers of leukaemia and lung cancer, respectively.

Really? Were these people really cured solely by praying to this nun, or was medicine involved in any way? Are there any reported incidents of cancer victims not being cured by the power of prayer? Were these miracles proven by scientific method? Somehow, I doubt it.

It's unhelpful when a paper like the Guardian, which really ought to know better, allows this superstitious nonsense to pass as news.

Haven't got the facility to post links to the article as we're visiting family for the day, but I will once I get back home.


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Leyton Orient 1 Hartlepool United 0

That was a game of two halves if ever I saw one. At half-time Iwas coontemplateing the worst match I'd seen this season - no creativity, no invention, very few chances, against a Hartlepool team who didn't exactly look to be trying too hard to set the game on fire. But on the introduction of Tehoue and Mpoku early in the second half, Orient looked the more likely to win, and eventually scored from Tehoue's lashed-in shot from about 3 yards out in the last minute of normal time.

I thought Orient missed Dawson's drive and tenacity in midfield - we never seemed to threaten anything from that area, lots of poor touches, especially from Coxy (most unusual) and Omozusi. Chorley took over as captain, which looks like it's encouraged him to believe he's Franz Beckenbauer, as shown by his new-found tendnecy to go on long, loping runs forward with the ball. Apart from that, he was easily our best player in the first half, heading away all balls into the box, and generally being his usual solid self. Lee Butcher also acquitted himself well, in the absence of Jamie Jones.

The dismal first half looked like giving way to a dismal second half, until Mpoku came on and immediately began turning the Hartlepool right-back inside out, and whipping balls into the box on a regular basis. After a few mazy dribbles, they put two men on him, a sign that they couldn't cope with his twists and turns, and eventually resorted to some cynical fouling, giving away a couple of freekicks in dangerous positions.

Even Mpoku's freekick on the right, where he somehow slipped over while striking the ball, still resulted in the corner fromwhich Tehoue scored. All in all, he could do no wrong, and would have thoroughly desrved the man of the match award, even though he was only on the pitch for less than half the game.

Maybe Orient could benefit from a twin attack of Mpoku on the left and Cox on the right - we could certainly use a presence on the right, we never seem to threaten from that side of the pitch. Can't argue with 1-0 though, these were opponents we should always expect to beat.

Legendary football club sold to cigar-totin' Yankee speculator

Well, that appears to be that, then. It seems we won't get the schadenfreude of seeing Liverpool drop into the Championship now.

But the whole parade of foreign billionaires owning British footballing institutions leaves an awful taste in the mouth. I still yearn for the day we follow the example of Germany, where football clubs must be 51% owned by the club members.

No sympathy please, we're British

Meanwhile, Richard Littlejohn of the same paper clearly couldn't give a toss about the whole episode. Well, of course not, they don't even speak English, do they?

I discovered this week that twice as many men have died in accidents on British building sites since 2001 as have been killed in action in Afghanistan. But you won't be seeing a Panorama special on them any day soon.
Unlike the Chilean miners, there won't be any movies made about these unfortunate construction workers, nor any book deals or newspaper serialisations.

Somehow, I don't think Richard's worries about the plight of British construction workers will manifest themselves in action. It would be interesting to find out about the ethnic composition of these victims, presumably of poor working practices, given the preponderance of foreign nationals in the British construction industry, and Littlejohn's well-known pleasant disposition towards immigrants.

According to Littlejohn, they wouldn't have stood a prayer in this country anyway.

Call me callous, but I couldn't help wondering what would have happened if 33 men had been trapped down one of our few remaining British mines.
Under our modern elf 'n' safety culture, the emergency services are actively discouraged from risking their own lives to save others.

Now, working as I do on the railway, an industry that historically has had a shockingly high rate of deaths among workers, I can tell Richard that "elf'n'safety" culture is primarily directed towards preventing accidents. Clearly the best way of saving people trapped down a mine is not to have them in the position to be trapped in the first place.

But of course, Littlejohn isn't with us for reasoned analysis, just the usual knee-jerk reactions. After all, if he really cared about people dying needlessly in the UK, he would be sounding off about the 2,500 people killed on Britain's roads annually, in a downward trend coinciding with the increase on Britain's roads of speed cameras. Instead of spouting rubbish like this.