Defeated by the weather again! I woke up, listened to the rain lashing down, turned over and went back to sleep for a while. It was still going when I got up some time later, not in quite the spectacular fashion of earlier but the kind of thin, persistent stuff which you can see blowing in swathes across the hillside. Drought! What drought? The weathermen may well say that July was the driest on record but even they admit that most of the Northwest of England still managed average rainfall!
Right! That’s enough of that! Assuming the rain stops later, I’ll go for a walk at some point. And I have to admit that yesterday was lovely: balmy sunshine for most of the day, a little bit of a breeze, perfect for drying the washing.
Over in sunny Spain, the poster encouraging every woman to accept that her body is “beach ready” continues to stir up controversy. First there was the woman with a prosthetic leg who had a healthy leg photoshopped. Now a woman who survived cancer has complained that her face was photoshopped onto someone else’s body. The women’s institute, part of Spain’s Equality Ministry, has apparently said, “We did not know that images of real women had been used. We sincerely apologise for any damages that may have been caused to you. The aim of our campaign is to recognise body diversity in all its dimensions, and we will be glad to collaborate with you in any related action.” Oh, dear! Someone should have checked! Ignorance is no excuse. It smacks of “the dog ate my homework”!
Meanwhile, the Labour Party here still has difficulties and disagreements as Lisa Nandy, Shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up (a silly title if ever there was one!) visits the picket lines. Nobody seems to know if she was given permission to do so. That in itself is indicative of some disarray. Should MPs from a party supposedly linked to trades unions need permission to attend a picket line? Modern times!
Lisa Nandy is one of the British people currently banned from visiting Russia. So are Kier Starmer, David Lammy, David Cameron and Piers Morgan, along with a host of businessmen and journalists “who contribute to London’s hostile course aimed at the demonising of our country and contributing to its international isolation,” according to the Russian foreign ministry in a statement published on its website on Monday. Another aspect of the crazy world we live in.
And now scientists are talking about the speed at which the earth spins. Who knew that the earth could spin at different speeds, rather like my washing machine.
“While the Earth is slowing down over the longer term, the situation is messier on shorter timescales. Inside the Earth is a molten core; its surface is a mass of shifting continents, swelling oceans and vanishing glaciers. The entire planet is wrapped in a thick blanket of gases and it wobbles as it spins on its axis. All of these influence the Earth’s rotation, speeding it up or slowing it down, although the changes are essentially imperceptible.
According to Nasa, stronger winds in El Niño years can slow down the planet’s spin, extending the day by a fraction of a millisecond. Earthquakes, on the other hand, can have the opposite effect. The 2004 earthquake that unleashed a tsunami in the Indian Ocean shifted enough rock to shorten the length of the day by nearly three microseconds.”
They have to fiddle with the clocks: “To keep clocks in line with the planet’s spin, the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations body, has taken to adding occasional leap seconds in June or December – most recently in 2016 – effectively stopping the clocks for a second so that the Earth can catch up. The first leap second was added in 1972. The next opportunity is in December 2022, although with Earth spinning so fast of late, it is unlikely to be needed.”
It begins to sound like the start of a science fiction story: the world spinning out of control! Which it might still be doing in terms of climate change, political instability, increasing inequality, poverty and food shortages! However, as the time changes are only microseconds, I decided not to add this to my list of stuff to be worried about.
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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