Today's News

[Lizzie48]

Daisy, he did have to go into quarantine but lived to be a fine old age, 18 if I remember rightly.

[Gemini]

More tube stations! The people living close to them will be glad I imagine.

When I lived in London I lived between three tube stations (Tufnell Park, Holloway Road, Archway) but none were actually near, a fair walk especially if you have bags to carry.

[Daisy]

Gem, when we lived north of London I used to meet up with a friend visiting London. It was a bit like an obstacle course planning a route with a babe in arms and a lively toddler, plus essential bag of nappies, drinks, food, etc. It's quite surprising how far you do have to walk sometimes!
I wouldn't want to do it now.

[Gemini]

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-us-to-relax-travel-rules-for-vaccinated-passengers-from-uk-and-eu-source-says-12412964

[Daisy]

Gem - warn Florida - here you come!

[Daisy]

Carbon Dioxide shortages? How can that happen - surely part of the problem with global warming and climate change is that we are releasing too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere?

The main producer of artificial fertiliser in Britain, CF Industries, has shut down production of its two sites in the UK - Billingham on Teesside and Ince, near Chester. The price of natural gas has risen steeply - 250% since January, with a 79% increase in August alone, leading the company to stop production because of the high prices.

Carbon dioxide is a by-product of the production of artificial fertilisers. CF Industries say that the price of natural gas, used in the production process, was too high to sustain production.

Ince alone produces a million tonnes of fertiliser per annum, and supplies farmers and growers. It's the largest UK producer of compound fertilisers - industrial quantities of the small bags of NPK fertiliser you may buy in the local garden centre.

This story caught my eye because I worked at the Ince plant for a while in the late 60s - when it was just starting up. It was then owned by a British oil company and an American conglomerate. The American company pulled out pretty fast when production problems arose, leaving the UK oil company to flounder on. It was eventually sold to, I think, a Dutch company. It was quite an eerie place, sited on reclaimed land near the River Mersey. Damp, misty and cold it felt as though you were entering an alien landscape every day.

[Gemini]

A bit of a spooky place to work Daisy!

[Plantaholic]

That doesn’t sound pleasant Daisy.

[Daisy]

Gem, it was a bit spooky especially in the winter - it always made me think of the opening scenes of Great Expectations, and the eerie marshes! It was so damp I had to have Canadian 'winter' leads on my car or it wouldn't start!

Plant, it wasn't unpleasant as a place to work, but when the production line went wrong it could be quite noticeable - mainly our tights would start melting into little holes!

[Daisy]

Some of us have missed our Aqua or other swimming sessions during the lockdowns, and are pleased that swimming activities have started up again, despite the lack of some facilities. But Team GB and ParalympicsGB gained their best ever medal tally in the Tokyo Olympics, including a total of 9 golds.

However, Swim England is warning that up to 2,000 swimming pools in England could be closed by 2030 if urgent action isn't taken to invest in the pools built in the 60s and 70s and are now showing their age. If this is allowed to happen we could find ourselves having to travel greater distances (if that is possible) and making it impossible for some promising youngsters to reach their potential. To say nothing of the youngsters who will never get a chance to learn to swim in the first place.

Swim England figures show that 4.7 million people swim at least twice a month - it's one of the most popular physical activities in the country. They make a convincing case for leisure and competitive swimming ultimately saving the NHS millions of pounds each year by keeping us healthier and fitter.

[Gemini]

It would be a great shame if we lost any pools.

We lost one in York when part of the leisure centre I once worked in was sold off for a hotel. When I worked in the crèche at that leisure centre I attended many meeting at which York Council pledged that there would always be a pool on that site

[Daisy]

Gem - how sad that the pool was replaced by a hotel.

I'm sure the Council had a very good reason - and I'm sure it involved finances!

[Daisy]

Today, we're stepping into what many of us might see as an alien concept - NFTs (Non-fungible tokens - and no it's not a typing mistake!)

You may have seen the picture of a little girl looking out of the corner of her big brown eyes "Side-eying Chloe". Chloe Clem's mum took the photo when her DD, than 2, looked very unimpressed when she was taken to a surprise Disneyland trip. It's become an internet sensation and now the picture is being sold for thousands of dollar at auction. Where it differs from many 'works of art' or collectables is that it's being sold as an NFT. This means that the buyer will own the digital image only.

I had to look this next bit up! A fungible asset is something you can swap for something else of the same value - if you were given two 50p coins in return for a £1 coin, that would be fungible. A non-fungible asset is something that has unique properties/characteristics that can't be exchanged with something else - like a house, or an original painting. There's only one "Scream" or "Mona Lisa".

I hope you're still with me on this (I'm struggling a bit to understand the concept).

In the digital world NFTs are one-off assets which you can buy and sell like the Mona Lisa - at whatever price the market will bear. But of course, digital files can be easily copied over and over again. With NFTs the artwork can be tokenised (!) to create a digital certificate, and this certificate can be bought and sold, like a one of a kind physical asset.

A record of who own what is stored on what's known as the blockchain - a kind of ledger maintained by thousands of computers round the world.

Anyone want to "Scream"!

[Gemini]

Blinded by science!

[Oma]

I fell at the first hurdle im afraid, that all sounded Chinese to me