I’m sure spending Christmas in prison is not much fun at all and walking naked across the UK must be hard on the feet:
The former Royal Marine made the 900-mile journey to question society’s attitude towards the human body [Naked rambler completes his trek]
I appreciate the fact that he’s trying to get us to lighten up but, really, in this weather?
2005: Hitch Hikers Guide Is Coming
2004: Shop ‘Til You Drop
2003: Lost In La Macha
2003: The Digital Music Debate
I am not a star gazer by any stretch of the imagination but I am fascinated by the pictures of Mars coming from the Express Probe, there really are some interesting images. It’s amazing to think that not very long ago we believed there were little green men on Mars. It’s a great achievement for the scientists involved. On a sadder note for those interested in life beyond the stars, it has been announced that one of the most successful space projects is to be allowed to gradually die as no more servicing missions will be made to the Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble also had some great pictures of Mars – although I really do think it should be known as the orange planet.
I’ve just updated my computer’s wallpaper to use a picture from Hubble, although I have chosen something from Jupiter as my background image. I really should try and learn a little more about the planets and what is happening there. Maybe I should have made something like that a New Year’s resolution. Ah well, there’s always next year.
2004: London Buses
2003: 8 Mile
I am not sure if it was the recent New Year’s message from Tony Blair telling us how great everything is (despite the tough choices) or Michael Howard’s ‘too much control from the centre’ message that got me to thinking about British Prime Minister’s in my lifetime and, one evening, the question came up, ‘can you name all the PMs since you were born’?
Now, I did manage to get it correct, although I got the order of those when I was little, slightly wrong. The first PM I remember is James Callaghan (and with it I have memories of power cuts) but of course there were some before him and I managed to name them.
While I was coming up with the list I did, for a moment, forget John Major and was later surprised to learn that he came to the job in 1990 and was defeated by Tony Blair in 1997. He had more-or-less seven years in the top job. That came as a bit of a shock.
When I think back to my time as a student, Margaret Thatcher was in power for a great deal of it. I have mental images of the Iron Lady ruling her over-whelming parliamentary majority with nothing but a handbag to beat her party. What shocked me, as I was checking the list of Prime Ministers I had come up with, with was that Tony Blair’s New Labour has had a bigger majority in The House than either of Mrs Thatcher’s governments.
So, for my own record, British Prime Minister’s since my birth (the year is the year they came to the job):
(Full list of British Prime Ministers since 1721 at Burke’s Peerage)
and those majorities at recent elections:
There seems to be some dispute about the June 2001 majority. Some figures put it at 166. I use the election results pages at Keele for these numbers.
2003: The Good Girl
While writing my review of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, I was looking through Sir Ian McKellen’s website and was interested to learn he lived for a time in the same town I was born in, Wigan.
I wanted to write something today that didn’t mention delayed trains, the weather in London (it’s very windy and rainy right now), student fees or American visa requirements: I want to say something about all of them but they’d mainly be moans and I don’t want to moan today! So, off for soup is a great idea then.
2005: Love In The Song Title
Worthy of note – and not covered by a lot of the media – but Tim Berners-Lee has been awarded a knighthood for his work on developing HTML which allowed the web to become a useful tool for millions of people. Whatever you think of the Honours List I think this recognition is certainly deserved. [FT: Unsung heroes dominate UK honours list]