Current Reading, and general stuff

For those keeping watch, I've finally finished the Dune Universe set of books that's

• Dune: The Butlerian Jihad
• Dune: The Machine Crusade
• Dune: The Battle of Corrin
• Dune: House Atreides
• Dune: House Harkonnen
• Dune: House Corrino
• Dune
• Dune Messiah
• Children of Dune
• God Emporer of Dune
• Heretics of Dune
• Chapter House Dune
• Hunters of Dune

Phew! Interesting to go through in one sitting as it were, highlights the inconsistencies. Not only between the new and original series, but even between some of the Frank Herbert books too.

As is my habit I've now switched to non-fiction with The Best Democracy Money can buy" by Greg Palast (there is a revised edition also available) I was going to go for another of his books "Armed Madhouse", but as I've got both I thought I might as well go chronologically.

Only started re-reading it this morning, I got in half-an-hour, so I'm only up to page 60 or so. Favourite line so far is from DBT discussing the American 2000 presidential election where, apparently, manually checking records on the telephone doesn't have to include using the telephone. Beautiful.

I ventured warily out on Saturday morning into town. I decided to walk as it's not far, I need the exercise, you can't take pictures easily from a moving car, and I couldn't be bothered to get the car out. The snow was still present, but melting, and I came upon that fundamental perversion of health and safety. The simple fact that they'd gritted the roads, but once again had failed to do anything with the paths. Compacted snow had essentially turned the path to ice, and I resorted to walking on the still snowy verge closer to the traffic.

The town was far better, but judging by the condition of paths on the bridge I'd say that was more due to the heavy foot traffic then by planning. No wonder we shut down when it snows, we close roads to vehicular traffic and yet provide no other safe means of transport. Oh yes it's different in a car then it is on foot, a car skidding into another or onto the pavement has different consequences to someone slipping and falling arse over tit, but who's going to risk that? Better to stay at home in the warm.

The town was fairly busy considering, both the Co-op and Tesco Express had a fair few people bustling about. According to one cashier it was "packed yesterday [Friday]" that's the old siege mentality at work "Oh my god snow! Quick get in three hundred cans of spam to last it out"

We (well Kidderminster) get a mention on the BBC website due to the gritters getting stuck in traffic and Jack Straw appears to put his foot in it when he states that people should be "better prepared to defy the weather" Yep that's right it's all our fault, we're all a bunch of soft southern jessies. When I were a lad my grandfather thought nothing of making the twenty-mile trip to work through 6 foot of snow and raging blizzards, up-hill, carrying sack o' coal on his back to stoke furnace of t' mill with nothing but pork drippings sarnies to keep his strength up.

<sigh> I do agree in part though, we do seem to take any old excuse to take the day of work, it's therefore up to the government to remove those excuses. I'm not talking carrot or stick here I'm talking a reappraisal of our entire traffic infrastructure. Why can't our roads cope with snow, hell why can't they cope with rain? Why do leaves perpetually cause trains to cancel services, why can't airports keep runways clear? I'm not saying they can stay functioning whatever the weather, some conditions are quite clearly dangerous, but everything falls apart for conditions other countries would consider normal. Someone needs to ask these questions and, better yet, get some answers.