Friday, August 31, 2007
Help locate London’s fine heritage of Victorian drinking fountains, in celebration of the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association.
Public drinking fountains are a simple, modest yet precious civic amenity under threat from neglect and the rise of environmentally catastrophic bottled water. Turn away from the bottle and join a treasure hunt and celebration of the public drinking fountains of London (not forgetting troughs for the cows).
Use the Google Map below to add your favourite fountains:
View Larger Map
Links:
Photo Essay
Victorian Art and Water
Wikipedia entry
Wednesday, May 9, 2007
British campaigners against European Union plans to outlaw imperial measures like pounds and ounces have claimed victory, according to news reports today. The self-styled ‘metric martyrs’ say they have say they have won the battle to keep Britain imperial, after confirmation from the European Commission’s industry commissioner, Gunther Verheugen, that dual marking of goods in imperial and metric would “continue indefinitely”. Previously the Commission had set a 2009 deadline for the phasing out of imperial measures still widely used in British greengrocers, butchers and supermarkets. (more…)
Monday, February 12, 2007
The past few days have seen new revelations about the cause of the current outbreak of bird flu at a Bernard Matthews turkey farm in Suffolk. It is being widely reported that the outbreak is most likely to have been caused by imports of part-processed turkey from Hungary, which has had several outbreaks of the same H5N1 strain of the disease. Had the government allowed us to exercise a Yuck Factor test on the food we buy, this outbreak, along with BSE and foot and mouth disease, might have been averted. (more…)